The Glass Devil

Chapter 1

THE INTERCOM ON DETECTIVE Inspector Irene Huss’s desk beeped.

“It’s Sven. Is Tommy there?”

“No. He’s interrogating a suspect in custody in the Speedy murder case. He probably won’t be back before five at the earliest.”

Criminal Superintendent Sven Andersson snorted into the intercom. “He’ll have his hands full if he’s going to try and soften up Asko Pihlainen. He may not be back until five a.m. tomorrow!”

Even though the superintendent couldn’t see it, Irene Huss nodded her agreement.

“Is there anything I can help you with?” she asked. She began to hope that she might be able to leave the piles of boring reports which, for some unexplainable reason, had the tendency to pile up on her desk. The fact that she loathed paperwork and gladly put it off may have had something to do with this.

“Come to my office and we’ll talk.”

The superintendent hadn’t finished his sentence before Irene hopped up. If the boss called, she didn’t have to be urged to respond. That she would have to stop writing reports was simply an unfortunate side effect.

Andersson looked contemplative. He leaned back in his chair, which whined under his weight, nodded at Irene, and motioned her to the visitor’s chair. He sat quietly, seemingly at a loss as to how to begin. The silence started to become oppressive. His asthmatic breaths seemed to echo in the room. He pressed the palms of his hands together; his knuckles popped; he rested the lower of his double chins against the tips of his fingers and stared blankly at a point above Irene’s head. Finally, he slapped his hands on the desktop, rose with difficulty, and said, “It’ll have to be you and me. We’ll have to go.”

Without providing any more details, he took his coat from the hook near the door. “We’re leaving immediately,” he called over his shoulder.

Irene went to her office to get her jacket. I’m just like Sammie: Jingle the leash and say the magic word out, and I’ll come running eagerly without asking where to, she thought, ironically.

“FIRST, I was thinking about sending a patrol car, but it’s so damn difficult to get ahold of a free one. And to send it out into the woods around Norssjön. . No. It’s better that I take care of it myself,” Superintendent Andersson told her as they drove toward Boråsleden.

Irene was about to point out that he actually wasn’t alone, but she knew her boss and remained silent. She didn’t want to tease him because she really liked him.

“Maybe I should explain,” Andersson said.

“Yes, please,” Irene replied.

She tried not to sound sarcastic. Apparently, she didn’t, because he continued. “My cousin called me. He’s the principal of a charter school here in the city.”

Irene was surprised to learn that Sven Andersson had a cousin. They had worked together for almost fifteen years, and she had never heard about any of his relatives. She had always thought of him as being completely alone. Divorced, no children, no close relatives, no friends. A lone wolf: that was the phrase that popped up when she thought about her boss.

“Georg, my cousin, is very worried. One of the teachers hasn’t been seen at work since yesterday. He doesn’t answer his telephone when they call. No one answers at his parents’ house either. Georg is concerned because apparently this teacher has had a difficult time and may be depressed. It seemed as if he is afraid the guy may have committed suicide.”

“But that’s not a reason to dispatch two inspectors from the Crime Police. Your first idea, to send a patrol car, seems more appropriate,” Irene said.

She cast a sideways glance at Andersson and saw a flush rise from his neck and flare over his round cheeks.

“I’ll decide what’s appropriate,” he snapped.

He turned his head and looked out the side window. Irene cursed her big mouth. Now he was sulking and wouldn’t say another word.

The silence in the car felt heavy. Only the metronomic scraping of the windshield wipers could be heard. Snow mixed with rain had been falling since last night and showed no signs of letting up. Finally, Irene said, “Do you know where we’re going?”

“Yes. Turn down toward Hällingsjö, and after a kilometer¹ or so there will be a sign for Norssjön. That’s where you turn in, and then I’ll show you the way.”

“How come you know the roads so well?”

“I went there once, for a crayfish party.”

“To the teacher’s home?” Irene asked, surprised.

“No, it was at his parents’ cottage.”

Her sense that something was fishy was confirmed. There were probably several reasons for her boss to have reacted the way he did, but one of them was clear. In some way, he was personally mixed up in this.

A crayfish party at his parents’. . Suddenly even friends of the superintendent’s were popping up! He spent time with people and attended their parties. Wow! Irene decided not to let the conversation end.

“Then you don’t know the teacher at all?” she continued.

“No. I’ve never met him. Only his sister.”

“Is she also a teacher?”

“I don’t know. She was little then.”

He took a deep breath and turned his face toward Irene. “I know what you’re wondering. It was seventeen years ago. I was recently divorced, and my cousin thought that I needed to get out and meet people. That’s why I ended up at the parents’ crayfish party. They’re acquaintances of Georg and his wife, Bettan.”

Irene pondered. She had to admit that this unexpected trip woke her investigatory instincts. But it wasn’t concern over the teacher’s fate that had stirred them up, but rather sheer curiosity about the superintendent’s personal life. They had known each other so long, and she had never supposed that he had one.

“Have you ever seen them again?” she asked.

“No.”

So, no lasting friendship had developed.

“What do the teacher’s parents do?”

“The father is a pastor. The mother is probably a housewife. Pastors’ wives probably have a lot of work to do at home. Church coffees and stuff like that,” Andersson said, evasively.

Irene decided to try to find out as much as possible about Andersson’s newly discovered social life. “How was the party? I mean. . it was held at a pastor’s house. There’s usually quite a bit of drinking at crayfish parties.”

The superintendent broke into a smile. “You can say that again! It ended with the pastor passing out drunk as a skunk in the porch swing. His wife had thrown in the towel several hours earlier and gone to bed inside the house. She seemed to have no tolerance for alcohol at all. The rest of us in the group were pretty drunk.”

“Were there many people there?”

Andersson thought for a moment before he answered, “Nine-no, ten including me. This is where you turn off.”

He pointed, Irene turned off, and Andersson directed her to take another left just after that. “Go straight for a few kilometers, and we’ll reach Norssjön,” he said.

Irene had been driving on autopilot while her brain processed the information she’d received from Andersson.

“Is it a large summer cottage?” she asked.

“No. Pretty ordinary. Georg and Bettan had a camper, so we slept in that. Bettan’s a teacher and works at Georg’s school. She was probably the one who thought of inviting me to the party. It’s better these days since we don’t see each other as often, but she used to try to fix me up with all her boring teacher colleagues.”

“Did it work at that party?” Irene asked.

Andersson just chuckled softly.

The road to Norssjön appeared. Snowy woods lined both sides of the narrow asphalt-paved road. Now and then they glimpsed a small glade with a house, or a small gravel lane snaking its way into the vegetation.

“Slowly, now. It’s here somewhere,” Andersson said.

As far as Irene was concerned, everything around them was underbrush and it all looked the same. She was impressed that Andersson had such a good memory after so many years.

“There. Turn,” he said.

A hand-painted sign placed by the main road pointed toward a narrow gravel trail. “Luck Cottage” was written on it in faded blue letters on a white background. There was a barely discernible flower border around the sign.

Irene turned onto the gravel. The road was bumpy and poorly maintained. A thick forest of spruce hemmed them in. Three small cottages popped up between some trees a short distance down the road. Irene started slowing, but the superintendent told her to continue. They drove for about another hundred meters* until the road ended. Irene saw a fence surrounding a house that was painted brick-red. Irene parked the unmarked police car outside the gate.

They got out and stretched. Everything was quiet aside from the rattle of the falling sleet. A relatively new black Skoda was parked inside the open wooden gates. It was remarkably dirty, and there was a star-shaped crack in the windshield. They started toward the cottage on a path of slippery snow-and moss-covered stones. No sign of life could be seen. The superintendent tried the door handle, but the door was locked.

“The outside light is on,” he remarked loudly.

Irene started to walk around the house in order to look through the mullioned windows.

When she looked in through the first window, she spotted him right away.

“Sven!” she called.

The superintendent lumbered over to her. She pointed.

They were looking into a simple kitchen. Through its open door, they could see a man’s body lying on its back in the hall. His legs and lower body weren’t visible, but his upper body and head were. Or what was left of his head. It was enough to determine that he was dead. Under his open jacket, the front of his light-colored shirt was covered with rust-red blood. One hand was resting on the threshold to the kitchen. Inside the threshold was a plastic bag with food. Some of the items had rolled out onto the kitchen floor.

Andersson turned toward Irene with a grim face. “Call for backup. This is no suicide.”