BIRGITTA MOBERG was in her office. She was surprised when she heard that Andersson had been looking for her. That’s not why she had returned to headquarters; she was there to eat lunch before her meeting with Bobo Torsson. Should they go to the cafeteria together? No, not a good idea.
He motioned to her to come into his office. Without interrupting even once, she listened attentively to his account of what had happened at Pathology. He left out the discussion about his blood pressure since that was no one else’s concern.
Her brown eyes, usually so lively, now looked sad. “It sounds like it actually is Pirjo. Her poor kids, left all alone,” she said.
“What about their stepfather, Larsson?”
“Hannu got hold of him on the phone this morning. Göte Larsson, forty-seven years old. He’s moved down to Malmö. Evidently he lives with a Polish woman in Rosengård. He’s working on a Polish freighter right now. Claims that he hasn’t set foot in Göteborg in two years.”
“Hmm. Welfare will have to look for her relatives in Finland. No, you go on and eat, I’ll wait for Hannu. At one o’clock I’ll be busy for a while, but we’ll meet here at two-thirty.”
“Okay. I’ll try to figure out who von Knecht’s sex partner might have been. Valle Reuter’s little girlfriend Gunnel denied all knowledge of Richard. And I believe her. She was as open as you could want about her gentlemen. No, it has to be someone else. Maybe he got himself a call girl. Too bad he took a sauna and shower.”
With a wave she vanished down the hall toward the lunchroom. Andersson sat there a long time staring thoughtfully into space. Not one usable idea occurred to him. He kept on seeing the image of Pirjo’s charred body. In his ear Stridner’s voice rang, You should be asking what she was doing there!
HE PUT a note on Hannu’s desk. The last line read, “Urgent amp; important info re Pirjo L.,” to underscore the importance of talking to each other.
He returned to his office after a tiresome and sweaty fitting for the uniform pants. Hannu was sitting with a notebook on his lap, looking out his dirt-streaked window. Were the pale, sparse sun breaks also tempting him to go out into the city? His ice-blue eyes revealed nothing of his longing or any other feelings when they turned toward Andersson. They were calm and alert.
Hannu also listened without interrupting. He just nodded a few times. Clearly the pieces fit together for him. The superintendent envied him. He himself thought that everything seemed like one big mess. If only he could get hold of the right string and start to unravel the tangle. But in the present situation they had to sniff around for a while longer and dig where they smelled the most shit. Routine police work, in other words.
The superintendent asked, “What have you found out about Pirjo besides what we already know? Birgitta told me that Pirjo’s old man is in Malmö now, so we can skip him for the time being. What we need is something that can explain where she fits into the picture when it comes to the bomb on Berzeliigatan.”
“I found her in our records. She’s been up twice for shoplifting. Suspended sentence each time. The first time she took some ski overalls at Obs department store, the second time Falun sausage and a box of macaroni at ICA on Angered Square,” Hannu reported.
“Nothing else?”
“No.”
“She doesn’t sound like a terrorist bomber. Interesting that she has a rap sheet; it means she had some criminal inclination, at least. Have you asked our colleagues in Helsinki whether they have anything on her in their records?”
“I have. They’ll get back to me this afternoon.”
“One of your pals in the Helsinki police force?”
Andersson could have bitten off his tongue. But at the same time he was so damned curious about this reticent man. Why? Because he was an old snoop, he chastised himself. Still, the question had been asked. And would get the answer it deserved.
“Yep.”
Calmly Hannu turned to a page in his notebook. Without looking up he began to summarize, “On Monday Pirjo and Marjatta cleaned von Knecht’s apartment. During the night Juha and Timo took sick; they got the flu. Pirjo cleaned the Press Bureau office on Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday morning Pirjo took the bus to the von Knechts’ but had to return home. She told the kids that von Knecht was dead. In the afternoon she cooked dinner. Just after five she told her daughter that she ‘had to go out and do some extra cleaning.’ Then she disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Literally.”
Andersson felt a slight shiver at the back of his neck. He nodded to conceal it and said, “What was she doing at Berzeliigatan?”
The icy blue eyes regarded him for an instant before the answer came. “Cleaning.”
Their eyes met. Both shook their heads simultaneously. His voice heavy and emphatic, as if he were afraid that the meager little idea he had come up with would slip his mind if he dressed it in precise words, Andersson said, “No. She knew that von Knecht was dead. She had two sick kids at home. It was almost six-thirty when the building blew up. No, she didn’t go there to clean, but to steal.”
“Right.”
It was silent again. Both saw the problem. It was Hannu who voiced it. “The key.”
“According to Irene, Sylvia von Knecht said that all the keys she knew of were in place at the apartment on Molinsgatan.”
“That she knew of,” echoed Rauhala.
When he heard his own words repeated, Andersson also understood the solution. Excitedly he said, “There must have been a set of keys that Sylvia didn’t know about! But how did Pirjo get hold of them?”
“Stole them. Or was given them.”
“Stole them?”
“When she cleaned von Knecht’s place on Monday. He might have left them out.”
“Maybe. But was given them?”
“Because she was supposed to clean the office.”
The superintendent understood. Sylvia had told Irene that whenever Richard wanted to have his office cleaned, he would ask Pirjo to come over. He nodded.
“You’ve got a point there. Then he must have given Pirjo the ‘secret’ set of keys. That explains why she had a key and also why Sylvia didn’t miss it. You don’t miss something you don’t know about. I think we’ve come up with something!”
He was almost going to slap Hannu on the back, but at the last moment he thought better of it. He managed to mask the sweeping gesture of his right arm by stroking his bald pate and running his fingers through the sparse fringe of hair.
“Ahem, yes. We’ll have to ask Tommy and Fredrik what turned up today in the arson investigation. We have to establish that it’s really Pirjo lying there in Pathology. Can you talk to her daughter and find out what dentist Pirjo went to? If she went to one, that is.”
He remembered what Stridner had said about the victim’s poor teeth. Hannu gave the superintendent a somber look.
“I’m not saying anything to the kids until we know for sure it’s Pirjo.”
“No, it’s probably a good idea to wait until we’re sure,” Andersson agreed. But inside he was convinced that Pirjo had been found.
“So it wasn’t her on Tuesday.”
“What on Tuesday?”
Hannu gave him a patient look. “It wasn’t Pirjo who cleaned von Knecht’s place on Tuesday while he was having lunch. It must have been the killer. Pirjo was cleaning the Press Bureau.”
Andersson suddenly realized that he was staring at the man across from him. His respect for the weather-beaten man with the icy eyes and the pale blond hair rose another notch. With a slight feeling of shame he recalled how close he had come to accusing him of being the leak to the evening paper. He quickly pushed these thoughts aside and said, “Have you checked that she wasn’t anywhere else, that the Press Bureau was the only place she cleaned on Tuesday afternoon?”