“Carl Larsson did the paintings, in the early eighteen nineties.”
The police turned their faces to the top of the stairs, where the voice had come from. In his disguise, Henrik von Knecht looked undeniably bizarre. He peered down at the four officers and nodded to Irene before he continued.
“Inspector Huss was kind enough to help me get past the press. Shall we go upstairs?” He gestured toward the elevator door. The police trudged up the stairs and squeezed into the tiny elevator. A brass plate said MAX. FIVE PERSONS. Irene sincerely hoped that meant full-grown persons. She made a point of introducing Henrik von Knecht to the other three: Superintendent Andersson and the crime scene technicians Svante Malm and Per Svensson. The latter was carrying the heavy lighting equipment and various cameras.
The elevator took them up to the fifth floor without a hitch. They stepped out and walked over to a huge carved double door. A slender wrought-iron grid in the shape of entwined French lilies covered the door’s cut-glass window. The carvings on the lower half of the door represented leaping and gamboling deer. Svante Malm put his lips together to whistle, impressed by its magnificence.
Irene thought that Henrik von Knecht seemed to have recovered a little of his spirit during their game of hide-and-seek with the press. But when they stepped out of the elevator the rigid expression was back on his face. Superintendent Andersson saw it too.
“You don’t need to go into the apartment with us,” he said kindly.
“But I want to!”
His reply came like a cobra strike. The superintendent was surprised, and he hesitated. “I see, all right. But you have to stay right next to us. You can’t touch anything, sit on any chairs, or turn on any lights. Of course we’re grateful that you can guide us through the apartment. How big is it?”
“Three hundred fifty square meters. It takes up the whole floor. The other three flats in the building take up a whole floor too. Pappa bought this building in the late seventies and had it renovated very carefully. It’s on the National Register, of course,” he informed them.
“So there are only three other apartments in the whole building?”
“Right.”
While they were talking, the superintendent had put on a pair of thin rubber gloves. With a gesture he asked Henrik von Knecht for the door key. He took it and unlocked the door.
Gingerly gripping the very end of the door handle, he pressed it down and opened the door to the apartment.
“Don’t touch any light switches in the hall. Turn on your flashlights,” Svante Malm exhorted. He sighed and went on, “The laser is broken, so I’ll have to use the good old powder method.”
As soon as the technician said this, he began to search for the light switch with the beam from his flashlight. When he found it just inside the door, he asked Irene to keep her flashlight pointed at the switch while he blew metallic powder over the entire plastic switch plate. Carefully he brushed away the excess, pressed a thin plastic sheet over the surface, and then peeled it off. A look of astonishment spread across his long, narrow face.
“Completely blank. Not a single mark! Someone has wiped the switch plate clean,” he said, astounded.
“That’s probably why it smells like Ajax,” said Irene.
She sniffed the air. There was something else. A cigar. That explained the Christmas mood that had stolen over her unconscious when they stepped into the hall. A memory from her childhood Christmases. Her mother’s Ajax and her father’s Christmas cigar. She turned to von Knecht.
“Did your father smoke cigars?”
“Yes, sometimes. On festive occasions. .”
His voice died out to a whisper. He swallowed hard, for he too had noticed the cigar smell. Barely moving his lips, he whispered to Irene, “Why are they taking fingerprints?”
She thought about what the medical examiner had said, but decided to evade his question. “Just routine. We always do this when we’re called to the scene of a sudden death,” she explained.
He made no comment but clenched his jaws so hard that the muscles bulged out like rock-hard pillows along his jawline.
Svante Malm turned on the light in the hall, which was airy and of an imposing size. The ceiling had to be four meters high. The floor was made of light gray marble. To the right of the door paraded five built-in wardrobes with doors carved of some dark wood. The one in the middle was adorned with an oval mirror that took up almost the entire door panel. Despite this, one of the biggest and most ornamental mirrors Irene had ever seen loomed up on the opposite wall. Below it stood an equally ornate gilt console table. Superintendent Andersson turned to von Knecht.
“Can you give us a rough idea of the apartment’s layout?”
“Of course. The door next to the mirror leads to a toilet. The door after that goes to the kitchen.”
“And the door opposite the kitchen, next to the wardrobes?”
“It leads to the guest suite on this level. There’s also a separate bathroom with a toilet in there. Straight ahead we have the door to the living room. All the way in, to the left, is the stairway to the upper floor. Up there are the library, a small den, sauna, bedroom, TV room, and billiard room. And a bathroom with a toilet and Jacuzzi.”
Svante Malm had stopped in front of a shiny polished bureau with gilt fittings, rounded lines, and checkerboard veneer in alternating light and dark wood. With reverence in his voice he said, “I just have to ask: Is this a Haupt bureau?”
Henrik von Knecht snorted involuntarily. “No, the Haupt is in the library. Pappa bought this one in London. The insured value is five hundred fifty thousand kronor. Also a fine piece,” he said.
None of the policemen could think of anything to say. The superintendent turned to Irene. “You might as well stay here with Henrik while we take a look around,” he said.
“I’d like to come with you. There could be something that’s out of the ordinary,” von Knecht quickly countered.
He jutted out his chin and his mouth took on a stubborn look. Andersson gave him an appraising glance and nodded his assent. He turned to the crime scene technicians.
“Let’s check the balcony first,” he decided.
As a group they headed for the wide entrance to the living room. They stepped cautiously onto the vast, soft rug in the middle of the hall floor. Irene couldn’t help stopping to admire its shimmering gold pattern, which depicted a beautiful tree with birds and stylized animals, surrounded by a climbing plant like a grapevine against a dark blue background. She could feel von Knecht looking at her.
“That’s a semi-antique Motashemi-Keshan,” he said knowledgeably.
She had a fleeting vision of her latest investment on the rug front, a rusty red rug with small primitive stick figures in the corners. The salesperson at IKEA had assured her that it was a genuine, hand-tied Gabbeh, for the reasonable price of only two thousand kronor. She loved her rug and thought that it lit up the whole living room from its place beneath the coffee table.
Suddenly she had the equally fierce and foolish impulse to defend her rug. With more vehemence than she intended, she snapped, “Are you some kind of museum guy, or what?”
“No, but I deal in antiques,” he replied curtly.
They stood in the doorway until Henrik left the living room. In the flashlight beam Svante Malm was performing his fingerprint procedure on the big light switch panel, with the same negative results. Irene could sense that they were in a very large dining room. Light from the street filtered in through the sheer, drawn curtains. Windows seemed to run from floor to ceiling along the entire outer wall. Why did it feel like they were in a church? Since there weren’t any prints to be found, Malm flicked on the lights. Shiny, heavy brass chandeliers illuminated a huge dining room. They were all surprised and oddly awestruck, but the superintendent collected himself and said, “All right, then. Has everyone put on their plastic booties?”