Suddenly Irene was struck by an idea. “It was meningitis that Henrik suffered as a result, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“As a result of what?”
“A childhood illness.”
“Which childhood illness?”
“The mumps.”
There was nothing left of the little contented kitten, only a sorrowful mother huddled in the corner of the sofa. Something clicked in Irene’s mind. One of her male colleagues at the police academy got the mumps while they were attending Ulriksdal. Both his testicles were also affected, and they swelled up so grotesquely that he couldn’t walk. Unfortunately his name was Paul, and he was always called “Paul Fig-Ball” after that. At a party he later confided to Irene and Tommy that there was a great risk that he was now sterile. Apparently it wasn’t an unusual complication in adult men who got the mumps. Had this also happened to Henrik? It was a long shot, but she decided to try.
“It’s common for adult males to become sterile after having the mumps. Were Henrik’s testicles affected?”
Sylvia’s eyes widened with terror. With a horrible crash the ice shattered and she fell through. She hid her face in her hands and began to cry hysterically.
It took twenty minutes before she calmed down enough for Irene to consider her somewhat stable. But Sylvia refused to answer any more questions and stubbornly repeated, “You have to go now! I’m due at the seamstress at one o’clock to try on my dress for the funeral. Go! Go!”
IRENE HAD a lot to think about as she sat in a mediocre pizzeria a few blocks down the street gnawing on the “daily special.” It consisted of a serving of tough lasagne, along with some pitiful cabbage strips in vinegar. The ice water was lukewarm and the coffee looked like Sammie’s bathwater. Not even Irene could manage to drink it. But it didn’t really matter, because questions and facts were tumbling through her head. Sylvia was scared stiff when the spare keys were mentioned. She knew, or had an idea, who might have taken them. Or had they been given to someone? Why wouldn’t Sylvia talk about it? Charlotte von Knecht and Bobo Torsson were old friends and had worked together. She initiated the contact between him and her father-in-law, and then Torsson was able to rent the two apartments. Did they still see each other? Did it have any significance for the investigation? Was this the point of contact they had been looking for? Irene had a hard time believing it. Not in her wildest fantasy could she picture Bobo Torsson knocking down Richard von Knecht and throwing him off the balcony, fabricating the bomb on Berzeliigatan, and then blowing himself to kingdom come. The last maybe by mistake. It wasn’t even logical, since it didn’t answer the question of why.
Why would Bobo murder Richard von Knecht? Why would he destroy his own home and studio? Not to mention himself! Picturing Charlotte in any of these roles was even harder. She certainly wasn’t a bomb maker. But the fact that Bobo and Charlotte knew each other was interesting. Were they still friends? More than friends? It seemed to be time to have a talk with young Fru von Knecht. Henrik von Knecht had gotten the mumps as an adult, and subsequently meningitis. Had the mumps spread to his testicles? If so, was he sterile? Viewed in the light of this latest information, she thought that many of Sylvia’s odd reactions over the past few days became more understandable. If you know that your son is sterile, would you be glad to hear that your daughter-in-law is pregnant? And the follow-up question was possibly even more interesting: In that case, who was the father of Charlotte’s child? Why did Henrik react as he did? According to his own statement he was prepared to try to keep his shaky marriage together, “For the sake of the child and the survival of the family.” That didn’t make sense. Either he thought he was the father of the child, or else he didn’t care. But if he was sterile he must know it! And if he didn’t care, would he then be prepared to continue working on his relationship with Charlotte?
She was aroused from her musings by a voice in her ear.
“’Scuse. Lady want more coffee?” A short, dark waiter was giving her a friendly smile and holding out the glass coffeepot. To her dismay she realized that in her distraction she had actually been sipping the coffee slop.
JIMMY’S FACE brightened with joy when she came in with a bag of goodies and a stack of newspapers. He looked about like he did the day before, only a little darker purple in complexion. The IV was gone and he was sitting in a high-backed vinyl armchair over by the window. There was room for one more patient in the room, but that bed was still empty.
“Hi Jimmy! You look like an LSD hallucination,” Irene said cheerfully.
“Thank you. That’s just what I needed to hear.”
He laughed heartily and they chatted about neutral topics. Irene gave him the latest news on the investigative front. He was exceedingly interested in the information about the traces of narcotics in the summer cabins.
“We’ve been investigating part of the motorcycle gang for a long time. Death Squadron Number One is especially interesting. They’ve been full members of the Hell’s Angels for several years. The gangs ride around Europe and visit each other. It takes a lot before two lowly customs agents down in Helsingborg will start rummaging through twenty Hell’s Angels packs when they’ve been visiting their brothers in Denmark or Holland. We also know that they smuggle narcotics in other ways.”
“Why do they deal drugs?”
“Big business. Hardly any of the members have a job. They need plenty of money for daily living, new choppers and spare parts, clubhouses and weapons. They have enough weapons to start a revolution! And many of them are drug users themselves. So dope for their own use too. They say they belong to ‘the extreme percentage- the sociopaths, for whom no laws apply.’”
He fell silent and both of them had the same thought. It was Jimmy who expressed it. “Sometimes I think,
Once more Irene saw the glow of the explosion and she felt the hot pressure wave against her face. She could only whisper, “They thought about it. They tried.”
Softly, she began to tell him as objectively as possible. Sometimes she had to pause to wipe away her tears, but she wanted him to know the exact course of events. He was the only one who could understand her feelings, since he had been there. While she was speaking, she noticed that the last emotional knots were loosening and she felt a sense of calm rising inside her. A troubling thought occurred to her: Had she transferred her anxiety to Jimmy? Not once during the entire account did he interrupt her. His one visible eye did not waver from her face. But his comment when she was done calmed her.
“What luck that you were the one who was awake and not me! I was always lousy at throwing balls. My best events have always been the high jump and the hundred meters. Those wouldn’t have helped us much!”
He laughed heartily again and offered her some of the candy from the bag. Mentally he seemed unscathed, but his physical damage was much worse.
“A crack in one of the bones in my forearm. Do you know what it’s called? You don’t? Radius fissure. You learn a bunch of useful stuff when you’re in the hospital. Although you have to be healthy to deal with it. Today I spent two hours on my back in Radiology waiting for a skull X ray. To check that there’s no bleeding between the brain membranes. Then you get a. . what was it called? Wait, I wrote it down.”
He got up and shuffled over to his bedside table. With a shock Irene realized that his injuries were even worse than she’d thought.
“Jimmy, what happened to your legs?”
He turned and grimaced. “Violent blows or kicks to my lower back. I have to get it X-rayed tomorrow. They suspect a fracture of one of the tail vertebrae. It hurts like hell to walk or sit. That’s why I’m going to lie down now. You have to come over here. Ah, here’s the note!”
Triumphantly he waved a little scrap of paper torn from a notepad.
“Computer tomography. No, that’s the examination! A machine they stuff you inside. But you don’t feel anything. What they’re afraid I might contract is called subdural hematoma. It can appear several years later, say the doctors. That’s why I can’t go home before Friday. Damn it!”
He said the last when he had to lift his legs onto the bed. With a sigh he went on, “Then I’ll probably be on
