The Torso: A Detective Inspector Huss Investigation, Vol. 2 (4 page)

“How often did she call?”

“Usually once a week. A few times it might have been ten days between calls.”

“When did you last hear from her?”

“She called one evening in the middle of March. Janne answered the phone. I had parent-teacher meetings.”

“What did she say?”

“Not very much. As I said, it was Janne who answered the phone.”

“How is the relationship between Isabell and your husband?”

A loud sigh could be heard. “As you know, there were already problems when we were living in Fiskebäck. Bell was eleven when Janne and I met. Because contact with her father had been irregular since the divorce, it had only been the two of us for five years. And then Janne came and got between us. You must remember all of the times she ran away and came to your house and you weren’t allowed to say where she was because she wanted me to worry.”

“You don’t think it could be something like that this time? She is staying away so that you’ll start to worry. . . .”

“That’s exactly what the police in both Sweden and Denmark want me to think! They don’t believe that she’s disappeared!”

“She’s disappeared? What do you mean?”

“She isn’t in Copenhagen! All of April went by and I didn’t hear anything from her. The Thursday before Walpurgis Night Eve I took the day off and went down to Copenhagen. First I went to Bell’s address. You have no idea what a seedy-looking hovel it was! A big dirty apartment building next to Søndre Frihavn. I went up the stairs to the landing where Bell supposedly lived but there was no apartment with three girls as roommates. Of course I knocked and asked all the tenants who were home. No one had seen or heard anything about those three girls.”

Monika paused. “Finally, I got ahold of a phone book and started searching for modeling agencies and photographers. There’s no modeling agency called Scandinavian Models, and there’s no photographer named Jytte Pedersen. I went to all of the photographers and agencies I could find. I had a picture of Bell with me that I showed them. None of the photographers had seen her. Then it was the weekend so I went home. But I reported Bell as missing to the Danish police before I left.”

Her voice cut off again and Irene had to wait a long time. In the meantime, she jotted down notes on a pad hanging on the wall by the phone.

Monika snuffled and continued in an unsteady voice. “They were . . . laughing! They didn’t think it was alarming that a seventeen-year-old had disappeared in Copenhagen. According to them, that kind of thing happens every day. Young girls run away from their parents in order to experience the big city. Apparently completely normal! They said that all the police could do was post a description and see if she popped up in connection with some other case. They practically told me to my face that they weren’t going to do anything!”

And what could they do? Send out patrols to look for Isabell from Vänersborg? Irene realized that it wouldn’t be a good idea to even suggest such a thought. Instead she asked, “Have you contacted the Swedish police?”

“Yes, on May 2, last Sunday. They have the same outlook as their Danish colleagues.”

Irene thought hard. “You said that Isabell called. Did she ever write cards or letters?”

“No. She was never much for writing.”

“Try and remember what she said. About the apartment. About the other two girls. About working as a model . . . everything!”

“She said the first names of the girls she was sharing with were Linn and Petra. She mostly talked about all of the new friends she was meeting. There were people from all over the world. There was an English boy named Steven and an American named Robin. The girls usually went out together and then they met tons of people. Of course there were a lot of other models. One friend’s name was Heidi. Then she talked about how it was fun but difficult to be photographed.”

“You don’t know any of the last names of the people she mentioned?”

“No. She said that she had bought a lot of clothes. She and the other girls would go out on the town and shop. She has always been crazy about clothes, and now she is earning quite a bit. If I know her, she is spending all of it on clothes and makeup.”

“How did she describe the apartment and the building?”

“As being very nice and pleasant.”

“But it didn’t match the reality.”

“No.”

“Has she said anything else that you later found to be a lie?”

“Not that I can think of.”

Irene chose her words carefully before she said, “Unfortunately, the situation is just as both my Swedish and Danish colleagues have said. There isn’t much the police can do as long as there is no clear indication of a crime unless she shows up in connection with some police investigation. But you can always hire a private detective.”

“That would be too expensive. But maybe that’s what I’ll have to do. What do you think has happened to her?”

“It’s difficult to say. One possibility is that she is in hiding of her own free will for some reason. Another is that she isn’t in Copenhagen anymore. Isn’t there a chance that she went to England again?”

“But she should have called!”

“Yes. That’s what’s worrisome, that she hasn’t. I think you should ask the police you contacted here in Sweden to register her with Interpol.”

Monika thought this over. Irene had no more to say, so she just waited.

“Will you call if you come up with something?”

“Of course. Can I get your numbers at home and at work?” Irene wrote down the information on the notepad. She didn’t entertain much hope of needing to use it in future. There wasn’t a lot a detective inspector with a full-time job in Göteborg could do.

 

THE HAIRDRESSER had cut off too much. When she revealed the results to her husband, his comments confirmed her fears.

For the last seventeen years he had viewed her hairstyle intensely and critically. Now he raised his hand in greeting and said, “Howdy, Bob.”

Naturally, she felt offended but at the same time she had to admit that she should have stopped the woman sooner. Irene decided that it was the hairdresser’s fault. She had placed a picture of a young and fresh-looking model in Irene’s face and said, “Look at this. Just your style. Tough but still feminine. A bit sixties retro, if you remember the Twiggy cut. Easy to take care of. And then we’ll just add some darker red-brown highlights.”

If Irene remembered the Twiggy cut . . . every girl’s ideal at the end of the 1960s. She had been nine or ten years old. Without saying anything to her mother, she had made an appointment with the ladies’ hairdresser at Guldhedstorget. The sweet-smelling plump hairdresser with bright red lipstick had wondered in a friendly way if Irene really was determined to cut off her long hair. Irene had declared that she was. And she also wanted to look like Twiggy. Perhaps the hair became Twiggylike, but not the rest of Irene. No one would ever mix them up—not then and not later.

And now she had gone and done it again.

With a sigh, Detective Inspector Irene Huss looked at her reflection in the hallway mirror critically. She saw a tall slender woman, dressed in black pants and a light blue V-neck cotton top. Her hair was very short but the color was nice. Her usual dark brown hair had a deep red luster. All of the gray streaks were covered, and in the hall light she looked younger than her forty years. If she didn’t step too close to the mirror.

With a hefty pull, the outside door was thrown open and her twin daughters tried to squeeze through the doorway at the same time. When the argument over who was going to take the last coat hanger was sorted out, the girls turned to their mother.

“We’ve been and looked at them. It’s him,” said Jenny.

“Without a doubt,” Katarina agreed.

As one, mother and daughters moved to the kitchen where the two male members of the family were gathered. Since Krister worked as a master chef and cooked both as a career and a hobby, he had started on their late dinner. Sammie was sitting next to him expectantly, completely concentrated on his master’s activities. A tasty morsel might fall on the floor.

“Katarina and Jenny have been to look at them. No doubt that Sammie’s the father,” said Irene.

“Then the ill-tempered shrew was right when she called and scolded us,” Krister remarked.

“Of course she was angry! Her purebred poodle had gone and pleased herself with a terrier! But she only has herself to blame. You don’t let a bitch in heat out in the yard in a neighborhood with row houses. Not with the low fences we have here. She even complained to me that the bitch is an international champion,” Irene informed them.

“So, Sammie, you’ve been consorting with a champion,” Krister said harshly but with a faint smile on his lips.

If this had been a cartoon, a question mark would have lit up over Sammie’s head. He had such a look of wonder on his face as he glanced from one to the other that they felt as though they could almost see it floating over him. Jenny was the one who couldn’t control herself and burst out in snorting laughter. The others joined in and soon they were all laughing so hard they were crying. But then Sammie became grumpy. If there was anything a dog with self-esteem loathed, it was being laughed at and made a fool of. With his tail between his legs he left the kitchen and went upstairs to the second floor. There he went into Jenny’s room and crawled under the bed.

“There are three of them!” Jenny said. “The cutest ever! Two girls and one boy. They sort of look like Sammie when he was a puppy. But much smaller since they are only three weeks old and also much darker and—”

“Of course! The mother is black,” interrupted Katarina.

“Obviously, I know that’s the reason why! But the old bag has threatened to put them to sleep if we don’t help her find homes for them.”

“A mix between a poodle and a terrier doesn’t sound entirely successful. Based on looks they will probably be absolutely adorable. But as for temperament and personality . . . I don’t know,” said Irene, wondering.

“What have you done to your hair!” Katarina burst out. She hadn’t noticed her mother’s new hairstyle until that moment.

“The newest of the new. Perfect,” Irene asserted.

“And you complained when I cut my hair short,” said Jenny.

“Cut it short! You
shaved
it off!” Katarina reminded her.

Jenny didn’t continue with the discussion about her very short haircut of a few years earlier. Both girls sat quietly and inspected their mother’s new look. Irene looked back at her daughters. Twins, but still so different that people often didn’t think they were even sisters.

Katarina was the very image of herself at that age. Already one hundred and seventy-three centimeters tall and in good shape. She had Irene’s coloring, with dark brown hair and dark blue eyes, and a complexion that took to the sun easily. Jenny was the image of her father or, maybe more accurately, of her aunts on her father’s side. To her own exasperation she was the shortest in the family. Since the girls had already turned sixteen, they probably wouldn’t grow any more. Jenny’s hair was golden blonde, she had light blue eyes and a fair complexion that was very sensitive to the sun. She usually whined about how unfairly fate had affected her looks compared to those of her sister. The truth was that Jenny was beautiful, but she just couldn’t see it herself.

In order to put a stop to the daughters’ critical staring, Irene asked, “What’s for dinner?”

“It’s Wednesday. Vegetarian. I’m making a Thai vegetable stew with coconut milk,” Krister answered.

Irene sighed inside. Even though they had eaten vegetarian meals three days a week for almost two years, she still had a hard time getting used to such different food. It started when Jenny decided to become a vegan and Krister felt he needed to lose at least twenty kilos.
³
The family changed eating habits. Jenny ate vegetarian dishes on the days when the rest of the family gorged on poultry, fish, and meat. Krister hadn’t lost his twenty kilos, but he was at least under a hundred. Because he was so tall, he didn’t give the impression of being heavy, just robust and impressive. But Irene knew that his knees had started protesting against all the extra weight. This kept him from going on long walks with Sammie, but he did swim almost two thousand meters every week at the Frölunda community center pool. He would turn fifty this fall. Irene didn’t hold out much hope that he would become thinner or have more energy; instead, she realized that she would have to satisfy herself with the changes in eating and exercise habits he had already made.

THE SEARCH AREA HAD been widened every hour and the radius from Killevik continued to grow, but so far no one had made any new discoveries.

Superintendent Andersson tried to reach Pathology. Professor Stridner sent a message that she was busy and would get in touch as soon as she had time. Hannu was plowing through the register for persons who had been missing since New Year’s. He still hadn’t found any promising leads. None of this improved the superintendent’s frame of mind.

“We are standing here twiddling our thumbs. Someone must be missing this person!” he burst out.

Irene tried to calm him down. “It’s barely been two days since we found the sack, and the public isn’t aware of the tattoo. It might provide a clue to the victim.”

Andersson reflected as he rocked back and forth on the soles of his feet. Finally he cleared his throat with difficulty. “The tattoo . . . my line of sight was disrupted, I didn’t get a good look. What was it a picture of?”

Since he had been standing several meters away from the examination table it was quite understandable that he hadn’t been able to see the tattoo. Tactfully, Irene refrained from pointing this out and turned to the remaining colleagues in the room. “Stridner believes that it’s a Chinese character encircled by a dragon biting its own tail. It wasn’t very easy to see since the dog had bitten right on the tattoo and the body was decomposing . . . you know. But she described the character as an upside-down
y
, with two cross lines on the stem—one at the fork of the
y
and the other a bit higher up on the stem. The dragon is tattooed in several colors, and according to Stridner, it’s a real work of art.”