Yvonne!’ or ‘But how in the world did you manage to get his X rays already?’ or the most obvious, ‘How did you get hold of his dentist so quickly?’”
This was her point, and she was savoring the moment. Andersson sighed and raised both palms in a gesture of resignation.
“Okay, okay. Amazingly fast work. . Yvonne, and all that other stuff. I bow to you. But I’d appreciate an answer to my questions, plus facts about von Knecht’s general condition.”
“Oh, you certainly are a demanding man.”
Mischievously she gave him another gleeful look. She was truly enjoying her little joke. With a glance down at the papers on her desk she became the efficient pathologist again. For his part, Andersson preferred this Yvonne Stridner.
“As you may recall, I promised you a list of the von Knecht crowd. I haven’t had time to write it down, but I’ll give you the names before you go. One of the names is Sven Tosse. He’s one of Goteborg’s most talented dentists. Among his patients are both myself and the von Knecht family. This is probably the only common point of contact we have left since my divorce from Tore. His practice is only a stone’s throw from here, on the other side of the street. At Kapellplatsen.”
Andersson had pulled a dog-eared notepad out of his pocket and with a stump of a pencil wrote down the dentist’s name and address.
“I called Sven this morning. Naturally he had seen the news of Richard’s fall in the paper and was deeply shocked. He sent over his nurse with Richard’s X rays, and now the forensic odontologists will take care of the rest.”
“Do you have any doubts that it’s von Knecht’s body?”
“No, but it’s important to cover all bases, since his face was so damaged. Would you like to see him?”
Andersson was unprepared for the question, but quickly shook his head. Autopsy rooms were not pleasant places. Not to mention what usually lay on the table. No, if he could avoid it he preferred not to enter any autopsy room. The bodies he had to look at in the course of his work were bad enough. Although their interests did often coincide, of course, Stridner could keep her corpses to herself.
She stated dryly, “It probably wouldn’t do you much good to look at the body. It was a long drop, certainly more than twenty meters. Well, here’s the data.”
She put a pair of reading glasses on her nose, cleared her throat, looked down at her stack of papers and read: “Height, one hundred eighty-three centimeters. Weight, eighty-two kilos. His age we know, and it corresponds with the body. He was in good shape for his age, good musculature.”
She gave Andersson a knowing glance over the top of her glasses before she looked down at her papers again.
“I won’t go into all the multiple fractures. In brief, I can say that almost every bone in his body was broken. With regard to his condition otherwise, I found some slight arteriosclerosis in his coronary artery, which would definitely increase the risk of heart attack in the future. A healed fracture of his right tibia, his shinbone, that is. The wound looked old. His liver was somewhat enlarged, with incipient fatty degeneration, but moderate so far. A clear indication of a certain level of alcohol intake,” she declared.
“Was he an alcoholic?”
“Absolutely not. Their livers are striated with visible fatty necroses. Even though Richard had recently started to drink more, his liver still had many years left. Apparently he could have lived long enough to die from something other than liver problems. Which he did, of course. And a person can have fatty degeneration of the liver for years without being troubled to any appreciable extent. It’s when liver function begins to fail and we get a conversion to cirrhosis that problems arise. Real problems! But Richard had a way to go yet. I will venture to state that much, even though I’m no expert in the chronological progression of alcohol damage. I sent blood samples in to be tested for alcohol content and also the contents of his stomach. He had eaten a substantial meal, apparently a late lunch. The time of death we know, of course.”
Andersson’s stomach knotted up when he thought of von Knecht’s surely excellent lunch that now lay quivering like a disgusting sludge in a glass jar at the lab.
Stridner gathered up her papers and took off her glasses.
“That’s how far I’ve gotten,” she said.
“How about the slash on the back of his hand? Was it a bad cut?”
“Yes; it wasn’t very deep but it must have hurt terribly. It’s actually curious that he had no defensive wounds on his forearms. There should be some if the fall was preceded by a struggle. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
Both of them sat and pondered this puzzle for a bit. Finally Andersson said, “It must mean that he was clubbed from behind as he stood leaning over the railing. He never had a chance to defend himself against his killer.”
Stridner nodded and a hard expression came over her face.
“That’s probably how it was. A cowardly murderer. But then murderers always are. Cowards.”
She gave Andersson a dark look as though he were personally responsible for the existence of these killers. She continued more pensively, “Or desperate. Fear can drive people to murder. But the most common motives no doubt are revenge or jealousy and perhaps greed. I wonder what it was that drove Richard’s murderer?”
She fell silent again. With a deep sigh she leaned back in her chair and gave Andersson a quick glance.
“The list. You wanted to have the list of those boys. Can you write it down?” she asked in a tone that made it clear that she had no intention of doing so.
The superintendent nodded and got ready with his stubby pencil.
“You don’t have to write down my ex-husband Tore Eiderstam because he died last September. Or Per Nord, he died of leukemia five years ago. And now Richard. .”
She paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and went on, “Sven Tosse, my dentist, and also that of the von Knecht family. He and Sylvia von Knecht were engaged, by the way, before she met Richard. Richard was up in Stockholm for a few years, but he had to return to Goteborg immediately when his father died.”
Andersson was writing as fast as he could. Stridner paused tactfully and waited until he finished the sentence.
“Then we have Valle Reuter. He’s one of our biggest stockbrokers, in more than one sense. He’s the broker for the lot of them, just as Sven is their dentist. His brokerage firm is called Reuter and Lech, as I recall.”
Again she had to wait for Andersson to catch up. With an oath he snapped the point of his pencil. Without a word Stridner handed him a white mechanical pencil with GOTEBORG MEDICAL ADMINISTRATION printed on it.
“Press on the eraser, then the lead will come out. Now where was I? Oh yes, Valle. He lives on the second floor of von Knecht’s building. He’s married to Leila. They have a son who’s a doctor. I had him as an undergraduate a few years ago.”
She seemed to be thinking of whether she knew anything else about Valle Reuter, but couldn’t recall anything.
“The next man is Peder Wahl. He’s married to Ulla, Sven Tosse’s sister. They live on the third floor, but I think they have a vineyard in France where they spend most of their time.”
“What kind of work does he do?” asked Andersson.
In reply, Stridner just raised one eyebrow ironically. Andersson had a feeling that he’d asked the stupidest question of the day, but he couldn’t figure out why. It was best to move on. He looked down at his notepad and said, “I have three names now. Sven Tosse, Valle Reuter, and Peder Wahl. Is that the whole crowd?”
“No. Ivan Viktors, the opera singer.”
Andersson gave a start. It’s not often that you run into your idol in a homicide investigation.
“He retired from the world’s opera stages after his wife died of cancer a year or two ago. There’s one more name, Gustav Ceder. He’s a banker and lives in London. I met him only once.”
Stridner sat twisting a dark red lock of hair as she absentmindedly gazed out the window. It couldn’t have been the sight of the gray buildings of Vasa Hospital that transported her into such a dreamy state. It was her memories. She had been a fantastic help. He ought to tell her that. His glance fell on the clock. He blurted out, “There’s a press conference at one o’clock!”
He jumped up as if his chair had suddenly become electrified.
