“I’ll do a quick round of knocking on doors.”
Huss left the von Knecht bedchamber.
She came back sooner than she expected. Andersson was surprised when he ran into her in the downstairs hall again.
“Not a single neighbor is home. It’s dark and quiet in all three apartments. And I rang the bells and knocked on the doors,” she assured him.
Andersson looked pensive.
“That explains the lack of curious neighbors. And it made things easier for the killer. Headquarters couldn’t get any of the neighbors on the phone either. By the way, I looked into the last room upstairs. A TV room. Nothing of interest. Just a bunch of pictures and a giant TV.”
He nodded toward the kitchen door.
“Let’s look it over.”
The kitchen was ultramodern, probably at least fifty square meters. In the middle of the room there was a huge cooking island with an enormous copper ventilation hood. The upper and lower cupboards had carved doors of red-toned cherry wood. On the floor a silk rug lay upon dark red-glazed parquet that gleamed. In front of the stove and around the kitchen island reddish brown tile had been laid. The walls were light colored, almost white. Beams ran across the ceiling, glazed the same color as the floor. Everything was clean and in immaculate order. The door of the dishwasher was ajar. Cautiously the superintendent poked the end of his flashlight inside and looked around.
“Dishes done. No dishes on the drainboard,” he declared.
“Sven, look above the counter,” said Irene. “There are kitchen implements hanging underneath the ventilator hood.”
Five centimeters above the edge of the hood ran a rod that was soldered fast. It had small hooks on it, and various kitchen implements hung on them. They didn’t see any meat cleaver. Andersson looked a little perplexed and asked, “What do you use a meat cleaver for?”
Irene was amazed that he didn’t know, but restrained herself.
“One side has a sharp edge for chopping off tendons and gristle. The wide, flat part you use to pound the meat to make it thinner and more tender. I wouldn’t think it would be used much these days. Usually meat is already cut up and tenderized when you buy it.”
“We’ll have to compare the wooden handle of the cleaver with the handles of the implements hanging here. It seems to be the same style. And here’s an empty hook,” said the superintendent.
“I get the feeling these are only for decoration. The tools don’t seem to have been used. I’ve certainly never seen a more virginal whisk! And look how the wooden handles match the cupboard doors exactly,” Irene snorted.
She pointed to a door on the far wall. “I wonder where that leads?”
“Looks like an ordinary door to the kitchen stairs. The techs will check it out tomorrow,” Andersson decided.
He stifled another yawn before he went on, “I think we’ve been pretty thorough even though it’s just the preliminary survey. Anything we’ve forgotten?”
Irene understood that the superintendent’s question was rhetorical, but that door was bothering her. An image from her memory had been insistently pricking at the back of her mind, and now it popped up. She remembered the four doors downstairs off the little square courtyard in back. The five stairways of all the main entry halls opened onto it, if she remembered it correctly. She hadn’t seen anything that looked like back kitchen stairs. There was every reason to look behind the door before they left, she thought.
Andersson sighed but lumbered over to the door with her. With a cautious shove she managed to open it. Behind it was no kitchen stairway, but a large scullery. The beams of the flashlights played over broom closets, a clothes dryer, drying cupboard, and a washing machine. On the latter a red light was blinking, indicating that the wash was done. Again Irene used her pen, so that she wouldn’t leave any fingerprints or wipe off any that were already there, as she opened the lid of the washing machine.
“A sheet. He put a sheet and towels in the washing machine before he met his killer,” she said dramatically to the superintendent.
They went back out through the kitchen, stepped over the rug in the hall, and inspected the guest suite. Inside the door was an airy bedroom with a queen-size bed. They glanced quickly in the guest bathroom, without finding anything of interest.
Chapter Three
IRENE HUSS DROVE HOME through the midnight stillness of Göteborg. Here and there electric candlesticks had begun to appear in windows, although it was more than a week and a half until the beginning of Advent. Was it because of the Christmas decorations in stores being displayed earlier and earlier, or was it merely a sign of the longing for light in the dense winter darkness? Speaking of light, Jenny needed a new candlestick for her window. The old one had shortcircuited last year. Was it Jenny or Katarina who said that she’d rather have a birch-bark star? Sometimes it was hard to remember which of them said what. Even though the girls were twins, they were so unlike in every way that people hardly believed they were even sisters. Jenny was most like Krister, a little uncommunicative and just as blond. But she hadn’t inherited her father’s interest in food, devoting herself instead mostly to music. Katarina was dark like Irene, extroverted and sporty. She had started going with Irene to the dojo when she was ten. Now she was thirteen and was about to be certified for a green belt, ukemi-waza.
Irene had been seventeen when she got hers. At nineteen she became the Nordic female champion in judo, and two years later the European champion. Of course in the women’s competitions there hadn’t been much significant opposition in the rest of Europe seventeen years ago, but it had still given her high status at the police academy.
Her fellow students still talked about the time an instructor came to the academy to address “the need for the police to know some basics of self-defense.” He was a cocksure Stockholmer who intended to show the puny police cadets how a real ninja hero defended himself.
He called up the skinniest boy in class, a wiry kid from Småland who never in his life had trained in any martial arts. On the other hand, he did belong to the Swedish national team in table tennis. The cadet was told to put a choke hold on the instructor from behind, and he obediently complied. Quickly the instructor grabbed the Ping-Pong player’s left hand, turned ninety degrees toward him, pressed his hand hard against his shoulder, and put him down on the mat with an o-sotootoshi. There was just one problem-you don’t push down wiry cadets from Småland any old way you like. Especially if they’re on the national Ping-Pong team. The cadet flared up and resisted, and then his shoulder dislocated. It hurt like hell and the poor guy lay there writhing on the mat. Instruction was halted as the student was taken to the emergency room to have his shoulder reset.
Irene was outraged. During lunch she made a decision. It was against the ground rules of the sport, but the instructor had to be put in his place. He had used a move that belonged to a blue belt, much too high a difficulty level for a beginner.
After lunch the instructor came back to the gym. With a smirk he said he hoped that “this little incident hadn’t scared them off from further practice.” No one answered, and the mood was gloomy. Quickly the instructor turned to his students and said, “Anyone figure out the hold and want to try?”
Ha, right into the trap! Irene stood up before anyone else could volunteer. With feigned shyness she lowered her eyes and said in her thickest Göteborg accent, “I guess I could give it a try.”