was written he had been in a coma for two weeks. Suddenly Irene noticed a discrepancy between the text and the accompanying photo. The text said that “the parents were keeping vigil,” but in the photo only Sylvia was seen on her way in through the hospital entrance. Maybe they took turns keeping vigil? If she had the chance, she should try to ask Sylvia about it.
A week later the magazine reported that Henrik had come out of the coma. Both the doctors and parents were reticent about his condition. Richard had told the reporter that “Henrik will soon be his old self again!” After that there was no more news of Henrik in the gossip columns.
His father was seen, as before, at various society events. And even Sylvia began to be seen more often—not together with her husband, but in her capacity as a prominent choreographer. She staged several ballets at the Grand Theater, she worked with the Cullberg Ballet in a performance, and she was invited to be guest director of the Helsinki ballet company in the spring of 1991. But she returned home from Finland that same summer. The reason she cited was “homesickness,” but between the lines could be discerned professional differences.
The only report of Henrik and Charlotte’s wedding was a brief announcement with no photo. Irene almost missed it, under the heading HEARD AROUND TOWN. In the middle of the column it said: “Richard and Sylvia von Knecht’s only son Henrik was married to Charlotte, née Croona, in a simple ceremony at the Copenhagen Town Hall on September 10. Present were the couple’s parents and the bride’s siblings.” Irene checked the date in the top corner. A little more than three years ago. She leafed further, but could find nothing else about Henrik and Charlotte.
The last thing she had time to glance at was the report from Richard’s sixtieth birthday celebration out on his private peninsula in Bohuslän province. In all there had been three hundred guests, including various royals, diverse celebrities, and the elite of the financial world and the social register. Irene only took time to look at the pictures; she would read the articles later. He was still good looking. His hair was flecked with gray, thick, with a shock still falling over one eye. He had put on a few kilos since the wedding pictures, but there was no sign of flab. His complexion looked deeply tanned against the white tuxedo. With a champagne glass raised to the camera he smiled his sensuously disarming smile. It was unchanged, just like the glint in his intense blue eyes. Vitality, joie de vivre, sensuality were the words that flew through Irene’s mind. Not the more obvious ones: money, power, influence. Strange, because they were equally apropos when it came to Richard von Knecht.
A quick look at the clock revealed that she had fifteen minutes left until her meeting with Sylvia. It would be best to show up more or less on time. She stuffed the stack of faxes in her bottom desk drawer and slipped a notepad into her jacket pocket.
SYLVIA WAS still upset over the mess in the apartment. She grumbled at Irene, who represented the police in general and the technicians in particular. Irene let her rant, following in her wake into the magnificent living room. The curtains were still open, letting in the gray daylight. Irene went over to one of the high French doors and looked out. A narrow balcony no more than two meters wide ran along the entire room. The balustrade consisted of pink vase-shaped marble columns with lintels of black marble. The railing looked dangerously low. There were also no handles on the outside of the glass doors. This prompted Irene to dismiss her thoughts of a façade-climbing killer. It would be impossible to get in from the outside through the balcony doors. And people would have noticed him, since it would only have been a little past five o’clock. No, that theory was no good.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Sylvia’s plaintive voice.
“Pirjo isn’t answering the phone either, just one of her imbecile kids. Even when I speak Finnish to him he still can’t tell me where Pirjo is. He claims he has the flu and that a Finnish policeman is coming to talk to them this afternoon.”
“That’s true. One of our inspectors speaks Finnish. He’ll get in touch with Pirjo,” said Irene.
“What’s the point of that?”
“She and her daughter may have seen or heard something