the disabled list for a while. Although I’ll try to get home care.”
The last he said with a wink and a knowing look toward the door. A young nurse with a waist-long blond braid came in. She nodded to Irene and gave Jimmy a gleaming smile. There was a light blush on her cheeks, and her eyes indicated that she wouldn’t be particularly hard to convince. She chirped at Jimmy, “X-ray preparations. Just a little micro-enema. I’ll come back in a while and help you with the enema, if you want.”
“Now you’re talking, baby,” Jimmy said in English. “No, all kidding aside, I can handle it myself.”
She laughed and left a little yellow plastic tube with a long nozzle on his nightstand. With another bright smile she vanished into the corridor.
Irene stood up and said, “Well, I’ll leave you to your anal orgies. If I can’t stop by tomorrow, I’ll call you.”
“Calling is good enough. Although it’s more fun when you come by.”
He waved with his good hand.
Chapter Fifteen
AT SIX O’CLOCK ON the dot, Tommy Persson rang the doorbell of the Huss residence. Sammie was the first in line to bid him welcome. Since Tommy was one of his favorite guests, it took a while before all the jumping and licking were over.
Conspiratorially, Irene whispered, “The twins are in their room. I said that you’re a grass widower today and that I invited you to dinner. They bought it without comment.”
“Good. How’s Jimmy Olsson doing?”
She gave him a detailed description of the young officer’s health status; Tommy thought it didn’t sound good. If you’re married to a nurse, you’re always learning something about diseases and their treatment.
Since they never talked shop when they were around their families, Irene wanted to know the latest news from HQ before dinner. “How did the interview with Shorty go today?”
Tommy hesitated before he replied. “Not so great. But Jonny actually managed to annoy him so much that he got mad and said something interesting. Jonny finally yelled, ‘Don’t you get it? You’re under suspicion for taking part in everything that happened, as long as you refuse to speak! We’re looking for your cousin’s murderer!’ Then Shorty leaned toward him and snarled, ‘I don’t have to look. That fuck’ll be sorry!’ And then he went back to imitating a clam. We pressured him like mad for several hours. But he’s used to it and it doesn’t bother him in the least. We didn’t get one more syllable out of him. Andersson and Jonny will have a go at him this evening.”
“Interesting. I also got a hot tip. Bobo and Charlotte von Knecht are old acquaintances. She worked as a photo model for him. She was the one who helped him rent the apartments on Berzeliigatan about three years ago.”
“You’ve got to be kidding! Although that’s a point of contact with Bobo, not Shorty. I don’t think she knows Shorty.”
“Maybe. I’m thinking of driving over unannounced to question the lady in more detail tomorrow morning. Want to come along?”
“Sounds just as good as haranguing Shorty. Jonny and Andersson can deal with him.”
An aroma of fried onions that got their stomach juices flowing came wafting into the entryway. Krister stuck his head out the open kitchen door and teasingly shook his spatula at them. “What are you two whispering about?”
“Professional secrets, just professional secrets. For instance, how hard you can hit somebody with a baton without leaving bruises,” his wife replied saucily.
“Great topic of conversation. Come and devote yourself to the hamburgers instead.”
Irene called the twins. Heavy rock rhythms were thumping upstairs. Neither of them seemed to hear her. She went up and opened the door to Jenny’s room.
They were curled up on Jenny’s bed. Jenny was tossing her head in time to the music, while Katarina looked warier. Jenny became aware of her mother’s presence and jumped up to turn off the CD player. But Irene had heard the last line of the song: “We’re gonna clean this country and throw the Jew pigs in the sea. Clean it! Clean it!” Sung with hoarse rock voices, throbbing heavy-metal guitars, and pulsating drums.
Jenny was caught off guard, but collected herself and immediately assumed a defensive position. She said quickly, “It’s not the words I like, but the music!”
Irene looked at her daughter’s shaved head and angrily clenched fists. A feeling of powerlessness descended like a paralyzing blanket over her thoughts, and she couldn’t think of a single appropriate remark. Instead she said with exaggerated good cheer, “Come on now and eat. It’s one of your favorites, Jenny, hamburgers and onions.”
“Did Pappa make his pickles?”
“Of course! And since Tommy is here, there’ll be dessert in the middle of the week.”
“What is it?”
“Apple cake with vanilla ice cream.”
Without showing any great enthusiasm, Jenny shrugged her shoulders. “Okay.”
The year before she would have been the first one down the stairs and seated at the table. Now she shambled after Irene and Katarina and sat down last. Tommy gave her a cheerful hello, his gaze lingering so long on Jenny’s scalp that she was embarrassed. But he didn’t comment on her sudden hair loss.
Pleasant conversation accompanied the dinner. No talk of murder, bombs, motorcycle gangs, dope, or fruitless interrogations with professional crooks. Irene felt safe and relaxed together with her family and her best friend.
When it was time for coffee, Tommy suggested that they go sit in the living room. He smiled at the twins and said, “I feel like telling you an absolutely true story from real life.”
They sat down on the sofa and armchairs around the coffee table. Through the glass top the warm-toned Gabbeh rug was visible, and Irene thought it went very well with the framed Miro print on the wall. At Tommy’s request they turned out all the lights and lit all the candles they could find.
The mood was cozy when Tommy began his story.
“This is both an exciting and very sad story. It begins in Berlin in nineteen thirty-two. The National Socialists, under the leadership of the great agitator Adolf Hitler, are about to take over all of Germany. The people are delighted and see Hitler as their great savior, freeing them from unemployment, poverty, and social injustice. Not to mention his skill at playing on their feelings that an unjust peace had been imposed after the First World War. There was a splendid breeding ground for Nazi ideas in Germany in the thirties. From nineteen thirty-three on the National Socialist Party was the only one permitted. Who would call for democracy, when a whole people rose up and marched in step? Books that were viewed as harmful to the national state were burned and authors were banned from writing. Only music approved by the state could be played. Movies and radio programs had to be censored before they could be broadcast. The schools put ideology on their curriculum, and the teachers who didn’t submit were purged. The Jews also had to be purged. The explanation was that they were active in a worldwide conspiracy that threatened everyone. All Jews had to wear a yellow star on their clothes. Gradually, systems were set up to transport them to huge death camps along with gypsies, Danes, homosexuals, Communists, Norwegians, Russians, Poles, Englishmen-”
“There were never any concentration camps! That’s just propaganda!” Jenny’s face was red with rage, visible even in the soft candlelight.
“Is that right? Who is spreading this propaganda, then?”
“It’s the. . Communists!”
“Who are the Communists of today that are so stubbornly holding on to this lie?”
“It’s the. . Soviet Union!”
“There isn’t anything called the Soviet Union anymore. No, Jenny, the people who were in these camps can tell you all about it. There aren’t many left alive today, but the ones who are still here can testify that it’s no lie. They speak for millions of people who never got out of the concentration camps alive. But even in their homelands there are groups today who deny what happened. It must be a bitter feeling for the Norwegian and Danish
