“Jonny. You mean Jonny,” he said glumly.
“Yes.”
There was a long silence. Finally she took a deep breath and said, “That’s why I’m staying with Mamma for a while longer. But you’re the only one I’m telling. Nobody else. You have the address.”
She turned on her heel and strode out. He nodded to the closed door. THE ARSON technician and the others had already taken their seats when the superintendent came in. He pretended not to notice their inquiring glances, but signaled to Pelle to get started.
Pelle began by telling them that the theory about the devil bomb was stronger than ever. It had been a real charge with explosives in an iron pipe, blasting cap, pentyl fuse, and gasoline containers, just as he originally suspected. The bomb was placed on top of a bureau in the entryway to von Knecht’s office. The reason they knew this was partially due to Sylvia von Knecht. Before she drove up to Marstrand on Friday night, she had helped Pelle make a rough sketch of the apartment and its furnishings.
Tommy raised his hand before he asked his question. “A bomb like that, is it hard to make? Does it take a long time?”
“For someone who knows how, it goes pretty fast. No more than an hour. The problem is getting hold of all the components. You can’t just go into Domus department store and buy blasting caps, plastique explosive, and pentyl fuses. The other stuff is easier to get hold of. To continue with what happened Wednesday night, I have to explain more about the detonator mechanism. The outer door to the office apartment was really solid. It opened outward. A thin steel wire was stretched between the handle on the door and a pin on the spring of the blasting cap. When the door was pulled open by the person we first thought was a young man, but we now know was a woman, the pin was pulled out and the spring struck the blasting cap. Boom! We know the result. It’s only thanks to the solid outer door that there was anything left of the body at all. She was flung backward and was probably knocked unconscious instantly. The reason she was lying in a semiprone position when we found her is probably because she slipped down when the door swung back. We found this in the outer door.”
You could hear a pin drop when the arson technician pulled a thick plastic bag from his pocket. There was a blackened key ring inside.
“And yesterday I found this, at the spot where the body was found.”
Like a magician he pulled another bag out of his pocket. It also contained a key ring, but it was much smaller with only three keys on it. He shook the smaller ring.
“Two of these are car keys. To a Porsche. The third fits a garage door on Molinsgatan, where the von Knecht family keeps their cars.”
They all felt the draft as the phantom passed by. His breath stank of death and ashes when he laughed right in their faces.
Andersson’s eyes were popping out of their sockets like red Ping-Pong balls. His face was turning purple and his breathing was labored as he wheezed. Nobody moved. They all prayed silently that the superintendent wouldn’t have a stroke.
Pelle was disconcerted. He could sense the charged atmosphere, but he wasn’t quite sure what the cause was. So he kept silent and waited for Andersson’s comments on the discovery of the keys.
Andersson tried hard to pull himself together. It wasn’t easy, since even he realized that all the hypotheses and theories he had been working on had dissolved at a single blow. Finally he wheezed resolutely, “Somebody is screwing with us. Have you managed to indentify where the other keys on the ring go?” He asked even though, inside, he already knew the answer.
The arson tech nodded. “Yes. Two of them are to the office door on Berzeliigatan. Two are to von Knecht’s apartment on Molinsgatan, and the last two are to the summerhouse at Marstrand. Three are deadbolt keys and three are a normal Yale type. Each door has a Yale lock and a deadbolt.”
“We’ve always said that both these sets of keys had to be somewhere. And now they’ve both been found at the same impossible place, for Christ’s sake!”
Andersson put into words what everyone was feeling. The arson tech looked bewildered, but decided to go on with his report. He turned a page in his notebook and continued, “The problem right now is to get into a safe that’s set inside the wall. It’s not that large, but it’s in a tricky location, since there’s no floor to stand on. We’re trying to do it by standing on a skylift. We’ll have to drill around the safe and try to lift it out with a standalone.”
Several of the group said simultaneously, “A what?”
Pelle grinned and explained, “A standalone. To put it simply, it’s a big forklift truck on which you can raise the lifting fork very high while the truck stands ‘alone’ on the ground, so to speak.”
A weighty silence descended. It was Irene who finally broke it.
“So the situation is apparently as follows: Pirjo had the keys to von Knecht’s two apartments and to his car. Why in the world would he give her these keys? Sylvia told me that Pirjo didn’t have any keys, that she was always let in to the apartments by someone in the family. And as far as the car is concerned, I wonder whether Pirjo even had a driver’s license. We’ll have to check on that. We know she didn’t have a car. She always took the bus or streetcar. If the car keys were lying where we found Pirjo’s body, did it mean that she had the keys on her? In her pocket, for instance?”
“Yes,” the technician said, “unless someone dropped the keys outside the door and they wound up underneath. . what was her name? … Pirjo, when she was knocked unconscious by the blast. But it doesn’t seem very likely.”
The superintendent recalled what Hannu had said a couple of days earlier and put in, “How could she have gotten the keys?”
Irene tried to think clearly before she replied. “On Monday she was at Molinsgatan with her daughter. She could have taken them then. In that case, I wonder where she found them. After all, Sylvia von Knecht denied the existence of a fourth key ring. Although then the question is, why did she wait until Wednesday evening? Why not Monday or Tuesday evening?”
“Her kids got sick and had a high fever,” said Hannu.
“You might be right about that. A mother has plenty to do when her kids get the flu. And two of Pirjo’s kids had it. But Marjatta was home and could take care of her sick brothers when Pirjo was away for a few hours. On the other hand, maybe they were so sick that they took priority over her little breakin.”
None of them thought that really jibed with the picture they had of Pirjo. Tommy thought out loud, “It doesn’t make sense. On Monday evening Pirjo could have been quite sure that Richard von Knecht wouldn’t be at his office apartment. He had a cold, which she had seen for herself when she was there cleaning that day. On Tuesday evening she wouldn’t have been as sure. No, from a logical standpoint she should have chosen Monday evening. Keep in mind that she didn’t know von Knecht was dead until Wednesday morning!”
Irene nodded agreement and went on, “Maybe she stole the keys, but she chickened out. Not until she found out that von Knecht was dead did she think it was risk-free. Sylvia told me that Pirjo thought her pay was too low. Maybe she was thinking of taking some items and selling them, because she needed money. Although I doubt that Pirjo knew where to go to sell antiques and art. Richard von Knecht didn’t surround himself with off-the-shelf items.”
Fredrik had a suggestion. “Could it have been a put-up job? Let’s say that somebody knows that von Knecht has a particularly valuable item in his apartment, so he asks Pirjo to steal the keys. And then to go into the apartment and steal the thing.”