Книга - The Man on the Balcony

The Man on the Balcony
Maj Sjowall

Per Wahloo


The third book in the hugely acclaimed Martin Beck series: the novels that shaped the future of Scandinavian crime fiction and influenced writers from Stieg Larrson to Jo Nesbo, Henning Mankell and Lars Kepplar.Someone is assaulting and killing young girls in the once-peaceful parks of Stockholm. Detective Inspector Marin Beck has two witnesses: a cold-blooded mugger who won’t say much, and a three-year-old boy who can’t say much. The killer will strike again, and the police are getting nowhere. Can Beck crack the case before time runs out?







MAJ SJÖWALL



AND PER WAHLÖÖ









The Man on the Balcony

Translated from the Swedish by Alan Blair



















Copyright (#ucc30fb76-e312-5a7c-93b7-b7b393c14276)


4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

This ebook first published by Harper Perennial in 2007



This 4th Estate edition published in 2016



This translation first published by Random House Inc, New York, in 1968



Originally published in Sweden by P. A. Norstedt & Soners Forlag



Copyright text © Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö 1967



Cover photograph © Shutterstock



PS Section © Richard Shephard 2007



PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.



A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library



This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors’ imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.



All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.



Source ISBN: 9780007439133

Ebook Edition © APRIL 2009 ISBN: 9780007323531

Version: 2018-05-18


From the reviews of the Martin Beck series (#ucc30fb76-e312-5a7c-93b7-b7b393c14276):

‘First class’

Daily Telegraph

‘One of the most authentic, gripping and profound collections of police procedural ever accomplished’

MICHAEL CONNELLY

‘Hauntingly effective storytelling’

New York Times

‘There's just no question about it: the reigning King and Queen of mystery fiction are Maj Sjöwall and her husband Per Wahlöö’

The National Observer

‘Sjöwall/Wahlöö are the best writers of police procedural in the world’

Birmingham Post


This is for Barbara and Newton




Contents


Cover (#u3cf9cc6f-272f-5a34-a769-f61d1e2004c2)

Title Page (#u7cea2d1d-f6d2-53da-ae5e-0ea1246920c2)

Copyright

Praise



Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

About the Authors

Also by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

About the Publisher




1 (#ucc30fb76-e312-5a7c-93b7-b7b393c14276)


At a quarter to three the sun rose.

An hour and a half earlier the traffic had thinned out and died away, together with the noise of the last night revellers on their way home. The street-sweeping machines had passed, leaving dark wet strips here and there on the asphalt. An ambulance had wailed down the long, straight street. A black car with white mudguards, radio antenna on the roof and the word POLICE in white block letters on the sides had glided past, silently and slowly. Five minutes later the tinkle of broken glass had been heard as someone drove a gloved hand through a shop window; then came the sound of running footsteps and a car tearing off down a sidestreet.

The man on the balcony had observed all this. The balcony was the ordinary kind with tubular iron rail and sides of corrugated metal. He had stood leaning on the rail, and the glow of his cigarette had been a tiny dark-red spot in the dark. At regular intervals he had stubbed out a cigarette, carefully picked the butt – barely a third of an inch long – out of the wooden holder and placed it beside the others. Ten of these butts were already neatly lined up along the edge of the saucer on the little garden table.

It was quiet now, as quiet as it could be on a mild early summer's night in a big city. A couple of hours still remained before the women who delivered the newspapers appeared, pushing their converted prams, and before the first office cleaner went to work.

The bleak half-light of dawn was dispersed slowly; the first hesitant sunbeams groped over the five-storeyed and six-storeyed blocks of flats and were reflected in the television aerials and the round chimney pots above the roofs on the other side of the street. Then the light fell on the metal roofs themselves, slid quickly down and crept over the eaves along plastered brick walls with rows of unseeing windows, most of which were screened by drawn curtains or lowered Venetian blinds.

The man on the balcony leaned over and looked down the street. It ran from north to south and was long and straight; he could survey a stretch of more than two thousand yards. Once it had been an avenue, a showplace and the pride of the city, but forty years had passed since it was built. The street was almost exactly the same age as the man on the balcony.

When he strained his eyes he could make out a lone figure in the far distance. Perhaps a policeman. For the first time in several hours he went into the flat; he passed through the living room and out into the kitchen. It was broad daylight now and he had no need to switch on the electric light; in fact he used it very sparingly even in the winter. Opening a cupboard, he took out an enamel coffeepot, then measured one and a half cups of water and two spoonfuls of coarse-ground coffee. He put the pot on the stove, struck a match and lit the gas. Felt the match with his fingertips to make sure it had gone out, then opened the door of the cupboard under the sink and threw the dead match into the bin liner. He stood at the stove until the coffee had boiled up, then turned the gas off and went out to the bathroom and urinated while waiting for the grounds to sink. He avoided flushing the toilet so as not to disturb the neighbours. Went back to the kitchen, poured the coffee carefully into the cup, took a lump of sugar from the half-empty packet on the sink and a spoon out of the drawer. Then he carried the cup to the balcony, put it on the varnished wooden table and sat down on the folding chair. The sun had already climbed fairly high and lit up the front of the buildings on the other side of the street down as far as the two lowest flats. Taking a nickel-plated snuffbox from his trouser pocket, he crumbled the cigarette butts one by one, letting the tobacco flakes run through his fingers down into the round metal box and crumpling the bits of paper into pea-sized balls which he placed on the chipped saucer. He stirred the coffee and drank it very slowly. The sirens sounded again, far away. He stood up and watched the ambulance as the howl grew louder and louder and then subsided. A minute later the ambulance was nothing but a small white rectangle which turned left at the north end of the street and vanished from sight. Sitting down again on the folding chair he abstractedly stirred the coffee, which was now cold. He sat quite still, listening to the city wake up around him, at first reluctantly and undecidedly.

The man on the balcony was of average height and normal build. His face was nondescript and he was dressed in a white shirt with no tie, unpressed brown gabardine trousers, grey socks and black shoes. His hair was thin and brushed straight back, he had a big nose and grey-blue eyes.

The time was half past six on the morning of 2 June 1967. The city was Stockholm.

The man on the balcony had no feeling of being observed. He had no particular feeling of anything. He thought he would make some oatmeal a little later.

The street was coming alive. The stream of vehicles was denser and every time the traffic lights at the intersection changed to red the line of waiting cars grew longer. A baker's van tooted angrily at a cyclist who swung out heedlessly into the road. Two cars behind braked with a screech.

The man got up, leaned his arms on the balcony rail and looked down into the street. The cyclist wobbled anxiously in towards the kerb, pretending not to hear the abuse slung at him by the delivery man.

On the pavements a few pedestrians hurried along. Two women in light summer dresses stood talking by the petrol station below the balcony, and farther away a man was exercising his dog. He jerked impatiently at the lead while the dachshund unconcernedly sniffed around the trunk of a tree.

The man on the balcony straightened up, smoothed his thinning hair and put his hands in his pockets. The time now was twenty to eight and the sun was high. He looked up at the sky where a jet plane was drawing a trail of white wool in the blue. Then he lowered his eyes once more to the street and watched an elderly white-haired woman in a pale-blue coat who was standing outside the baker's in the building opposite. She fumbled for a long time in her handbag before getting out a key and unlocking the door. He saw her take out the key, put it in the lock on the inside and then shut the door after her. Drawn down behind the pane of the door was a white blind with the word CLOSED.

At the same moment the door to the flats above the baker's opened and a little girl came out into the sunshine. The man on the balcony moved back a step, took his hands out of his pockets and stood quite still. His eyes were glued to the girl down in the street.

She looked about eight or nine and was carrying a red-checked satchel. She was wearing a short blue skirt, a striped T-shirt and a red jacket with sleeves that were too short. On her feet she had black wooden-soled sandals that made her long thin legs seem even longer and thinner. She turned to the left outside the door and started walking slowly along the street with lowered head.

The man on the balcony followed her with his eyes. When she had gone about twenty yards she stopped, raised her hand to her breast and stood like that for a moment. Then she opened the satchel and rummaged in it while she turned and began to walk back. Then she broke into a run and rushed back inside without closing the satchel.

The man on the balcony stood quite still and watched the entrance door close behind her. Some minutes passed before it opened again and the girl came out. She had closed the satchel now and walked more quickly. Her fair hair was tied in a pony tail and swung against her back. When she got to the end of the block she turned the corner and disappeared.

The time was three minutes to eight. The man turned around, went inside and into the kitchen. There he drank a glass of water, rinsed the glass, put it on the rack and went out again on to the balcony.

He sat down on the folding chair and laid his left arm on the rail. He lit a cigarette and looked down into the street while he smoked.




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The time by the electric wall-clock was five minutes to eleven and the date, according to the calendar on Gunvald Larsson's desk, was Friday, 2 June 1967.

Martin Beck was only in the room by chance. He had just come in and put down his case on the floor inside the door. He had said hello, laid his hat beside the carafe on the filing cabinet, taken a glass from the tray and filled it with water, leaned against the cabinet and was about to drink. The man behind the desk looked at him ill-humouredly and said:

‘Have they sent you here too? What have we done wrong now?’

Martin Beck took a sip of water.

‘Nothing, as far as I know. And don't worry. I only came up to see Melander. I asked him to do something for me. Where is he?’

‘In the lavatory as usual.’

Melander's curious capacity for always being in the lavatory was a hackneyed joke, and although there was a grain of truth in it Martin Beck for some reason felt irritated.

Mostly, however, he kept his irritation to himself. He gave the man at the desk a calm, searching look and said:

‘What's bothering you?’

‘What do you think? The muggings of course. There was one in Vanadis Park last night again.’

‘So I heard.’

‘A pensioner who was out with his dog. Struck on the head from behind. A hundred and forty kronor in his wallet. Concussion. Still in hospital. Heard nothing. Saw nothing.’

Martin Beck was silent.

‘This was the eighth time in two weeks. That guy will end by killing someone.’

Martin Beck drained the glass and put it down.

‘If someone doesn't grab him soon,’ Gunvald Larsson said.

‘Who do you mean by someone?’

‘The police, for Christ's sake. Us. Anybody. A civil patrol from the protection squad in ninth district was there ten minutes before it happened.’

‘And when it happened? Where were they then?’

‘Sitting over coffee at the station. It's the same all the time. If there's a policeman hiding in every bush in Vanadis Park, then it happens in Vasa Park, and if there's a policeman hiding in every bush in both Vanadis Park and Vasa Park, then he pops up in Lill-Jans Wood.’

‘And if there's a policeman in every bush there too?’

‘Then the demonstrators break up the US Trade Centre and set fire to the American embassy. This is no joking matter,’ Gunvald Larsson added stiffly.

Keeping his eyes fixed on him, Martin Beck said:

‘I'm not joking. I just wondered.’

‘This man knows his business. It's almost as if he had radar. There's never a policeman in sight when he attacks.’

Martin Beck rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

‘Send out…’

Larsson broke in at once.

‘Send out? Whom? What? The dog van? And let those damn dogs tear the civil patrol to pieces? Yesterday's victim had a dog, come to that. What good was it to him?’

‘What kind of dog?’

‘How the hell do I know? Shall I interrogate the dog perhaps? Shall I get the dog here and send it out to the lavatory so that Melander can interrogate it?’

Gunvald Larsson said this with great gravity. He pounded the desk with his fist and went on:

‘A lunatic prowls about the parks bashing people on the head and you come here and start talking about dogs!’

‘Actually it wasn't I who…’

Again Gunvald Larsson interrupted him.

‘Anyway, I told you, this man knows his business. He only goes for defenceless old men and women. And always from behind. What was it someone said last week? Oh yes, “he leaped out of the bushes like a panther.”’

‘There's only one way,’ Martin Beck said in a honeyed voice.

‘What's that?’

‘You'd better go out yourself. Disguised as a defenceless old man.’

The man at the desk turned his head and glared at him.

Gunvald Larsson was six foot three and weighed fifteen and a half stone. He had shoulders like a heavyweight boxer and huge hands covered with shaggy blond hair. He had fair hair, brushed straight back, and discontented, clear blue eyes. Kollberg usually completed the description by saying that the expression on his face was that of a motorcyclist.

Just now the blue eyes were looking at Martin Beck with more than the usual disapproval.

Martin Beck shrugged and said:

‘Joking apart…’

And Gunvald Larsson interrupted him at once.

‘Joking apart I can't see anything funny in this. Here am I up to my neck in one of the worst cases of robbery I've ever known, and along you come drivelling about dogs and God knows what.’

Martin Beck realized that the other man, no doubt unintentionally, was about to do something that only few succeeded in: to annoy him to the point of making him lose his temper. And although he was quite well aware of this, he could not help raising his arm from the cabinet and saying:

‘That's enough!’

At that moment, fortunately, Melander came in from the room next door. He was in his shirtsleeves, and had a pipe in his mouth and an open telephone directory in his hands.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Hello,’ said Martin Beck.

‘I thought of the name the second you hung up,’ Melander said. ‘Arvid Larsson. Found him in the telephone directory too. But it's no good calling him. He died in April. Stroke. But he was in the same line of business up to the last. Had a rag-and-bone shop on the south side. It's shut now.’

Martin Beck took the directory, looked at it and nodded. Melander dug a matchbox out of his trouser pocket and began elaborately lighting his pipe. Martin Beck took two steps into the room and put the directory down on the table. Then he went back to the filing cabinet.

‘What are you busy on, you two?’ Gunvald Larsson asked suspiciously.

‘Nothing much,’ Melander said. ‘Martin had forgotten the name of a fence we tried to nab twelve years ago.’

‘And did you?’

‘No,’ said Melander.

‘But you remembered it?’

‘Yes.’

Gunvald Larsson pulled the directory towards him, riffled through it and said:

‘How the devil can you remember the name of a man called Larsson for twelve years?’

‘It's quite easy,’ Melander said gravely.

The telephone rang.

‘First division, duty officer.

‘Sorry, madam, what did you say?

‘What?

‘Am I a detective? This is the duty officer of the first division, Detective Inspector Larsson.

‘And your name is …?’

Gunvald Larsson took a ball-point pen from his breast pocket and scribbled a word. Then sat with the pen in mid-air.

‘And what can I do for you?

‘Sorry, I didn't get that.

‘Eh? A what?

‘A cat?

‘A cat on the balcony?

‘Oh, a man.

‘Is there a man standing on your balcony?’

Gunvald Larsson pushed the telephone directory aside and drew a memo pad towards him. Put pen to paper. Wrote a few words.

‘Yes, I see. What does he look like, did you say?

‘Yes, I'm listening. Thin hair brushed straight back. Big nose. Aha. White shirt. Average height. Hm. Brown trousers. Unbuttoned. What? Oh, the shirt. Blue-grey eyes.

‘One moment, madam. Let's get this straight. You mean he's standing on his own balcony?’

Gunvald Larsson looked from Melander to Martin Beck and shrugged. He went on listening and poked his ear with the pen.

‘Sorry, madam. You say this man is standing on his own balcony? Has he molested you?

‘Oh, he hasn't. What? On the other side of the street? On his own balcony?

‘Then how can you see that he has blue-grey eyes? It must be a very narrow street.

‘What? You're doing what?

‘Now wait a minute, madam. All this man has done is to stand on his own balcony. What else is he doing?

‘Looking down into the street? What's happening in the street?

‘Nothing? What did you say? Cars? Children playing?

‘At night too? Do the children play at night too?

‘Oh, they don't. But he stands there at night? What do you want us to do? Send the dog van?

‘As a matter of fact there's no law forbidding people to stand on their balconies, madam.

‘Report an observation, you say? Heavens above, madam, if everyone reported their observations we'd need three policemen for every inhabitant.

‘Grateful? We ought to be grateful?

‘Impertinent? I've been impertinent? Now look here, madam…’

Gunvald Larsson broke off and sat with the receiver a foot from his ear.

‘She hung up,’ he said in amazement.

After three seconds he banged down the receiver and said:

‘Go to hell, you old bitch.’

He tore off the sheet of paper he had been writing on and carefully wiped the ear wax off the tip of the pen.

‘People are crazy,’ he said. ‘No wonder we get nothing done. Why doesn't the switchboard block calls like that? There ought to be a direct line to the nut house.’

‘You'll just have to get used to it,’ Melander said, calmly taking his telephone directory, closing it and going into the next room.

Gunvald Larsson, having finished cleaning his pen, crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. With a sour look at the suitcase by the door he said:

‘Where are you off to?’

‘Just going down to Motala for a couple of days,’ Martin Beck replied. ‘Something there I must look at.’

‘Oh.’

‘Be back inside a week. But Kollberg will be home today. He's on duty here as from tomorrow. So you needn't worry.’

‘I'm not worrying.’

‘By the way, those robberies…’

‘Yes?’

‘No, it doesn't matter.’

‘If he does it twice more we'll get him,’ Melander said from the next room.

‘Exactly,’ said Martin Beck. ‘So long.’

‘So long,’ Gunvald Larsson replied.




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Martin Beck got to Central Station nineteen minutes before the train was due to leave and thought he would fill in the time by making two telephone calls.

First home.

‘Haven't you left yet?’ his wife said.

He ignored this rhetorical question and merely said:

‘I'll be staying at a hotel called the Palace. Thought you'd better know.’

‘How long will you be away?’

‘A week’

‘How do you know for certain?’

This was a good question. She wasn't dumb at any rate, Martin Beck thought.

‘Love to the children,’ he said, adding after a moment, ‘take care of yourself.’

‘Thanks,’ she said coldly.

He hung up and fished another coin out of his trouser pocket. There was a line in front of the telephone boxes and the people standing nearest glared at him as he put the coin in the slot and dialled the number of southern police headquarters. It took about a minute before he got Kollberg on the line.

‘Beck here. Just wanted to make sure you were back.’

‘Very thoughtful of you,’ Kollberg said. ‘Are you still here?’

‘How's Gun?’

‘Fine. Big as a house of course.’

Gun was Kollberg's wife; she was expecting a baby at the end of August.

‘I'll be back in a week.’

‘So I gather. And by that time I shall no longer be on duty here.’

There was a pause, then Kollberg said:

‘What takes you to Motala?’

‘That fellow…’

‘Which fellow?’

‘That second-hand dealer who was burned to death the night before last. Haven't you…’

‘I read about it in the papers. So what?’

‘I'm going down to have a look.’

‘Are they so dumb they can't clear up an ordinary fire on their own?’

‘Anyway they've asked…’

‘Look here,’ Kollberg said. ‘You might get your wife to swallow that, but you can't kid me. Anyway, I know quite well what they've asked and who has asked it. Who's head of the investigation department at Motala now?’

‘Ahlberg, but…’

‘Exactly. I also know that you've taken five vacation days that were due to you. In other words you're going to Motala in order to sit and tipple at the City Hotel with Ahlberg. Am I right?’

‘Well…’

‘Good luck,’ Kollberg said genially. ‘Behave yourself.’

‘Thanks.’

Martin Beck hung up and the man standing behind him elbowed his way roughly past him. Beck shrugged and went out into the main hall of the station.

Kollberg was right up to a point. This in itself didn't matter in the least, but it was vexing all the same to be seen through so easily. Both he and Kollberg had met Ahlberg in connection with a murder case three summers earlier. The investigation had been long and difficult and in the course of it they had become good friends. Otherwise Ahlberg would hardly have asked the national police board for help and he himself would not have wasted half a day's work on the case.

The station clock showed that the two telephone calls had taken exactly four minutes; there was still a quarter of an hour before the train left. As usual the big hall was swarming with people of all kinds.

Suitcase in hand, he stood there glumly, a man of medium height with a lean face, a broad forehead and a strong jaw. Most of those who saw him probably took him for a bewildered provincial who suddenly found himself in the rush and bustle of the big city.

‘Hi, mister,’ someone said in a hoarse whisper.

He turned to look at the person who had accosted him. A girl in her early teens was standing beside him; she had lank fair hair and was wearing a short batik dress. She was barefoot and dirty and looked the same age as his own daughter. In her cupped right hand she was holding a strip of four photographs, which she let him catch a glimpse of.

It was very easy to trace these pictures. The girl had gone into one of the automatic photo machines, knelt on the stool, pulled her dress up to her armpits and fed her coins into the slot.

The curtains of these photo cubicles had been shortened to knee height, but it didn't seem to have helped much. He glanced at the pictures; young girls these days developed earlier than they used to, he thought. And the little slobs never thought of wearing anything underneath either. All the same, the photos had not come out very well.

‘Twenty-five kronor?’ the child said hopefully.

Martin Beck looked around in annoyance and caught sight of two policemen in uniform on the other side of the hall. He went over to them. One of them recognized him and saluted.

‘Can't you keep the kids here in order?’ Martin Beck said angrily.

‘We do our best, sir.’

The policeman who answered was the same one who had saluted, a young man with blue eyes and a fair, well-trimmed beard.

Martin Beck said nothing but turned and walked towards the glass doors leading out to the platforms. The girl in the batik dress was now standing farther down the hall, looking furtively at the pictures, wondering if there was something wrong with her appearance.

Before long some idiot was sure to buy her photographs.

Then off she would go to Humlegården or Mariatorget and buy purple hearts or marijuana with the money. Or perhaps LSD.

The policeman who recognized him had had a beard. Twenty-four years earlier, when he himself joined the force, policemen had not worn beards.

By the way, why hadn't the other policeman saluted, the one without a beard? Because he hadn't recognized him?

Twenty-four years ago policemen had saluted anyone who came up to them even if he were not a superintendent. Or had they?

In those days girls of fourteen and fifteen had not photographed themselves naked in photo machines and tried to sell the pictures to detective superintendents in order to get money for a fix.

Anyway, he was not a bit pleased with the new title he had got at the beginning of the year. He was not pleased with his new office at southern police headquarters out in the noisy industrial area at Västberga. He was not pleased with his suspicious wife and with the fact that someone like Gunvald Larsson could be made a detective inspector.

Martin Beck sat by the window in his first-class compartment, pondering all this.

The train glided out of the station and past the City Hall. He caught sight of the old white steamer Mariefred, that still plied to Gripsholm, and the publishing house of Norstedt, before the train was swallowed up in the tunnel to the south. When it emerged into daylight again he saw the green expanse of Tantolunden -the park that he was soon going to have nightmares about – and heard the wheels echo on the railway bridge.

By the time the train stopped at Södertälje he was in a better mood. He bought a bottle of mineral water and a stale cheese sandwich from the metal handcart that now replaced the restaurant car on most of the express trains.




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‘Well,’ Ahlberg said, ‘that's how it happened. It was rather chilly that night and he had one of those old-fashioned electric heaters that he stood beside the bed. Then he kicked off the blanket in his sleep and it fell down over the heater and caught fire.’

Martin Beck nodded.

‘It seems quite plausible,’ Ahlberg said. ‘The technical investigation was completed today. I tried to phone you but you had already left.’

They were standing on the site of the fire at Borenshult and between the trees they could glimpse the lake and the flight of locks where they had found a dead woman three years earlier. All that remained of the burned-down house were the foundation and the base of the chimney. The fire brigade had, however, managed to save a small outhouse.

‘There were some stolen goods there,’ Ahlberg said. ‘He was a fence, this fellow Larsson. But he'd been sentenced before, so we weren't surprised. We'll send out a list of the things.’

Martin Beck nodded again, then said:

‘I checked up on his brother in Stockholm. He died last spring. Stroke. He was a fence too.’

‘Seems to have run in the family,’ Ahlberg said.

‘The brother never got caught but Melander remembered him.’

‘Oh yes, Melander … he's like the elephant, he never forgets. You don't work together any more, do you?’

Only sometimes. He's at headquarters in Kungsholmsgatan. Kollberg too, as from today. It's crazy, the way they keep moving us about.’

They turned their backs on the scene of the fire and went back to the car in silence.

A quarter of an hour later Ahlberg drew up in front of the police station, a low yellow-brick building at the corner of Prästgatan and Kungsgatan, just near the main square and the statue of Baltzar von Platen. Half-turning to Martin Beck he said:

‘Now that you're here with nothing to do you might as well stay for a couple of days.’

Martin Beck nodded.

‘We can go out with the motorboat,’ Ahlberg said.

That evening they dined at the City Hotel on the local speciality from Lake Vättern, a delicious salmon trout. They also had a few drinks.

On Saturday they took the motorboat out on the lake. On Sunday too. On Monday Martin Beck borrowed the motorboat. And again on Tuesday. On Wednesday he went to Vadstena and had a look at the castle.

The hotel he was staying at in Motala was modern and comfortable. He got on well with Ahlberg. He read a novel by Kurt Salomonson called The Man Outside. He was enjoying himself.

He deserved it. He had worked very hard during the winter and the spring had been awful. The hope that it would be a quiet summer still remained.




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The mugger had nothing against the weather.

It had started to rain early in the afternoon. At first heavily, then in a steady drizzle which had stopped about seven o'clock. But the sky was still overcast and oppressive and the rain was obviously going to start again soon. It was now nine o'clock and dusk was spreading under the trees. Half an hour or so still remained before lighting-up time.

The mugger had taken off his thin plastic raincoat and laid it beside him on the park bench. He was wearing tennis shoes, khaki trousers and a neat grey nylon pullover with a monogram on the breast pocket. A large red bandanna handkerchief was tied loosely around his neck. He had been in the park or its immediate vicinity for over two hours, observing people closely and calculatingly. On two occasions he had studied the passers-by with special interest and each time it had been not one person but two. The first couple had been a young man and a girl; both were younger than himself, the girl was dressed in sandals and a short black-and-white summer dress, the boy wore a smart blazer and light-grey trousers. They had made their way to the shady paths in the most secluded corner of the park. There they had stopped and embraced. The girl had stood with her back to a tree and after only a few seconds the boy had thrust his right hand up under her skirt and inside the elastic band of her panties and started digging with his fingers between her legs. ‘Someone might come,’ she said mechanically, but she had immediately moved her feet apart. The next second she had closed her eyes and started to twist her hips rhythmically, at the same time scratching the back of the boy's well-trimmed neck with the fingers of her left hand. What she had done with her right hand he had not been able to see, although he had been so close to them that he had caught a glimpse of the white lace panties.

He had walked on the grass, following them with silent steps, and stood crouched behind the bushes less than a dozen yards away. He had carefully weighed the pros and cons. An attack appealed to his sense of humour, but on the other hand the girl had no handbag and also he might not be able to stop her from screaming, which in its turn might impede the practice of his profession. Besides, the boy looked stronger and broader across the shoulders than he had first thought, and anyway it wasn't at all certain that he had any money in his wallet. An attack seemed unwise, so he had crept away as silently as he had come. He was no Peeping Tom, he had more important things to do; in any case, he presumed there wasn't much more to see. Before long the young couple had left the park, now suitably far apart. They had crossed the street and entered a block of flats, the outside of which indicated stable middle-class respectability. In the doorway the girl had straightened her panties and bra and drawn a moistened fingertip along her eyebrows. The boy had combed his hair.

At half past eight his attention focused on the next two people. A red Volvo had stopped in front of the ironmongers at the street corner. Two men were in the front seat. One of them got out and went into the park. He was bareheaded and wore a beige-coloured raincoat. A few minutes later the second man had got out and gone into the park another way; he was wearing a cap and tweed jacket but had no overcoat. After about fifteen minutes they had returned to the car, from different directions and at an interval of some minutes. He had stood with his back to them, looking into the window of the ironmongers, and he had overheard clearly what they said.

‘Well?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What do we do now?’

‘Lill-Jans Wood?’

‘In this weather?’

‘Well…’

‘Okay. But then we have coffee.’

‘Okay.’

They had banged the car doors and driven off.

And now it was nearly nine o'clock and he sat on the bench waiting.

He caught sight of her as soon as she entered the park and knew at once which path she would take. A dumpy, middle-aged woman with overcoat, umbrella and large handbag. Looked promising. Maybe she kept a fruit and tobacco kiosk. He got up and put on the plastic raincoat, cut across the lawn and crouched down behind the bushes. She came on along the path, was almost abreast of him now – in five seconds, perhaps ten. With his left hand he drew the bandanna handkerchief up over his nose and thrust the fingers of his right hand into the brass knuckles. She was only a few yards away now. He moved swiftly and his footsteps on the wet grass were almost silent.

But only almost. He was still a yard behind the woman when she turned around, saw him and opened her mouth to scream. Unreflectingly he struck her across the mouth as hard as he could. He heard a crunch. The woman dropped her umbrella and staggered, then fell to her knees, clutching her handbag with both hands as if she had a baby to protect.

He struck her again, and her nose crunched under the brass knuckles. She fell back, her legs doubled under her, and didn't utter a sound. She was streaming with blood and seemed hardly conscious, but all the same he took a handful of sand from the path and strewed it over her eyes. At the same instant that he tore open the handbag her head flopped to one side, her jaw fell open, and she started to vomit.

Handbag, purse, a wrist watch. Not so bad.

The mugger was already on his way out of the park. As if she'd been protecting a baby, he thought. It could have been such a nice neat job. The silly old bitch.

A quarter of an hour later he was home. The time was half past nine on the evening of 9 June 1967, a Friday. Twenty minutes later it started to rain.




6 (#ucc30fb76-e312-5a7c-93b7-b7b393c14276)


It rained all night but on Saturday morning the sun was shining again, hidden only now and then by the fluffy white clouds that floated across the clear blue sky. It was 10 June, the summer holidays had begun, and on Friday evening long lines of cars had crawled out of town on their way to country cottages, boat jetties and camping sites. But the city was still full of people who, as the weekend promised to be fine, would have to make do with the makeshift country life offered by parks and open-air swimming pools.

The time was a quarter past nine and a line was already waiting outside the pay window of the Vanadis Baths. Sun-thirsty Stockholmers, craving a swim, streamed up the paths leading from Sveavägen.

Two seedy figures crossed Frejgatan against the red light. One was dressed in jeans and a pullover, the other in black trousers and a brown jacket which bulged suspiciously over the left-hand breast pocket. They walked slowly, peering bleary-eyed against the sun. The man with the bulge in his jacket staggered and nearly bumped into a cyclist, an athletic man of sixty or so in a light-grey summer suit, with a pair of wet swimming trunks on the baggage carrier. The cyclist wobbled and had to put one foot to the ground.

‘Clumsy idiots!’ he shouted, as he rode pompously away.

‘Stupid old fool,’ the man with the jacket said. ‘Looks like a damned millionaire. Why, he might have knocked me down. I might have fallen and broken the bottle.’

He stopped indignantly on the pavement and the mere thought of how near he had been to disaster made him shudder and raise his hand to the bottle in his jacket.

‘And do you think he'd have paid for it? Not likely. Sitting pretty, he is, in a swanky apartment at Norr Mälarstrand with his fridge full of champagne, but the sonofabitch wouldn't think of paying for some poor bloke's bottle of booze that he'd broken. Dirty bastard!’

‘But he didn't break it,’ his friend objected quietly.

The second man was much younger; he took his irate companion by the arm and piloted him into the park. They climbed the slope, not towards the pool like the others but on past the gates. Then they turned off on to the path leading from Stefan's Church to the top of the hill. It was a steep pull and they were soon out of breath. Halfway up the younger man said:

‘Sometimes you can find a few coins in the grass behind the tower. If they've been playing poker there the night before. We might scrape enough together for another half-bottle before the off licence closes…’

It was Saturday and the off licences shut at one o'clock.

‘Not a hope. It was raining yesterday.’

‘So it was,’ the younger man said with a sigh.

The path skirted the fence of the bathing enclosure, which was teeming with bathers, some of them tanned so dark that they looked like Negroes, some of them real Negroes, but most of them pale after a long winter without even a week in the Canary Islands.

‘Hey, wait a minute,’ the younger man said. ‘Let's have a look at the girls.’

The older man walked on, saying over his shoulder:

‘Hell, no. Come on, I'm as thirsty as a camel.’

They went on up towards the water tower at the top of the park. Having rounded the gloomy building, they saw to their relief that they had the ground behind the tower to themselves. The older man sat down in the grass, took out the bottle and started unscrewing the cap. The younger man had continued to the top of the slope on the other side, where a red-painted wooden fence sagged.

‘Jocke!’ he shouted. ‘Let's sit here instead. In case anyone comes.’

Jocke got up, wheezing, and bottle in hand followed the other man, who had started down the slope.

‘Here's a good spot,’ the younger man called, ‘by these bush…’

He stopped dead and bent forward.

‘Christ!’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Jesus Christ!’

Jocke came up behind him, saw the girl on the ground, turned aside and vomited.

She was lying with the top part of her body half hidden under a bush. Her legs, wide apart, were stretched out on the damp sand. The face, turned to one side, was bluish and the mouth was open. Her right arm was bent over her head and her left hand lay against her hip, palm upwards.

The fair, longish hair had fallen across her cheek. She was barefoot and dressed in a skirt and a striped cotton T-shirt that had slipped up, leaving her waist bare.

She had been about nine years old.

There was no doubt that she was dead.

The time was five minutes to ten when Jocke and his mate appeared at the ninth district police station in Surbrunnsgatan. They gave a rambling and nervous account of what they had seen in Vanadis Park to a police inspector called Granlund, who was duty officer. Ten minutes later Granlund and four policemen were on the spot.

Only twelve hours had passed since two of the four policemen had been called to an adjacent part of the park, where yet another brutal robbery had taken place. As nearly an hour had passed between the assault and the time it was reported, everyone had taken it for granted that the assailant had made himself scarce. They had therefore not examined the area closely and couldn't say whether the girl's body had been there at that time or not.

The five policemen established the fact that the girl was dead and that as far as they could tell she had been strangled. That was about all they could do for the moment.

While waiting for the detectives and the men from the technical department their main duty was to see that no busybodies came prying about.

Granlund, casting his eye over the scene of the crime, saw that the men from headquarters were not going to have an easy job. It had obviously rained heavily for some time after the body had been put there. On the other hand he thought he knew who the girl was, and the knowledge didn't make him too happy.

At eleven o'clock the previous evening an anxious mother had come to the police station and begged them to search for her daughter. The girl was eight and a half years old. She had gone out to play at about seven, and had not been heard of since. The ninth district had alerted headquarters and all men on patrol had been given the girl's description. The accident wards of all hospitals had been checked.

The description, unfortunately, seemed to fit.

As far as Granlund knew, the missing girl had not been found. Also, she lived in Sveavägen near Vanadis Park. There seemed no room for doubt.

He thought of the girl's parents waiting at home in suspense, and inwardly he prayed that he would not have to be the one who told them the truth.

When the detectives at last arrived Granlund felt as if he had been standing an eternity in the sunshine near the child's little body.

As soon as the experts began their work he left them to it and walked back to the police station, the image of the dead girl branded on his retina.




7 (#ucc30fb76-e312-5a7c-93b7-b7b393c14276)


When Kollberg and Rönn reached the scene of the crime in Vanadis Park the area behind the water tower was properly roped off. The photographer had finished his work and the doctor was busy with his first routine examination of the body.

The ground was still damp and the only footprints near the body were fresh and had almost certainly been made by the men who had found the body. The girl's sandals were lying farther down the slope near the red fence.

When the doctor had finished Kollberg went up to him and said, ‘Well?’

‘Strangled,’ the doctor said. ‘Rape of some sort. Maybe.’

He shrugged.

‘When?’

‘Last evening some time. Find out when she last ate and what…’

‘I know. Do you think it happened here?’

‘I see no signs that it didn't.’

‘No,’ Kollberg said. ‘Why the hell did it have to rain like that.’

‘Huh,’ the doctor said, walking off towards his car.

Kollberg stayed for another half hour, then took a car from the ninth district to the station at Surbrunnsgatan.

The superintendent was at his desk reading a report when Kollberg entered. He greeted him and put the report aside. Pointed to a chair. Kollberg sat down and said:

‘Nasty business.’

‘Yes,’ the superintendent said. ‘Have you found anything?’

‘Not as far as I know. I think the rain has ruined everything.’

‘When do you think it happened? We had an assault case up there last evening. I was just looking at the report.’

‘I don't know,’ Kollberg said. ‘We'll see when we can move her.’

‘Do you think it can be the same guy? That she saw him do it, or something?’

‘If she has been raped it's hardly the same one. A mugger who is also a sex murderer … it's a bit much,’ Kollberg said vaguely.

‘Raped? Did the doctor say so?’

‘He thought it possible.’

Kollberg sighed and rubbed his chin.

‘The boys who drove me here said you know who she is.’

‘Yes,’ the superintendent said. ‘It seems like it. Granlund was in just now and identified her from a photo her mother brought in here last night.’

The superintendent opened a file, took out a snapshot and gave it to Kollberg. The girl who now lay dead in Vanadis Park was leaning against a tree and laughing up at the sun. Kollberg nodded and handed the photo back.

‘Do the parents know that…’

‘No,’ the superintendent said.

He tore a sheet off the note pad in front of him and gave it to Kollberg.

‘Mrs Karin Carlsson, Sveavägen 83,’ Kollberg read aloud.

‘The girl's name was Eva,’ the superintendent said. ‘Someone had better … you had better go there. Now. Before she finds out in a more unpleasant way.’

‘It's quite unpleasant enough as it is,’ Kollberg sighed.

The superintendent regarded him gravely but said nothing.

‘Anyway, I thought this was your district,’ Kollberg said. But he stood up and continued:

‘Okay, okay, I'll go. Someone has to do it.’

In the doorway he turned and said:

‘No wonder we're short of men in the force. You have to be crazy to become a cop.’

As he had left his car by Stefan's Church he decided to walk to Sveavägen. Besides, he wanted to take his time before meeting the girl's parents.

The sun was shining and all traces of the night's rain had already dried up. Kollberg felt slightly sick at the thought of the task ahead of him. It was disagreeable, to say the least. He had been forced into similar tasks before, but now, in the case of a child, the ordeal was worse than ever. If only Martin had been here, he thought; he's much better at this sort of thing than I am. Then he remembered how depressed Martin Beck had always seemed in situations like this, and followed up the train of thought: hah, it's just as hard for everyone, whoever has to do it.

The block of flats where the dead girl had lived was obliquely opposite Vanadis Park, between Surbrunnsgatan and Frejgatan. The lift was out of order and he had to walk up the five flights. He stood still for a moment and got his breath before ringing the doorbell.

The woman opened the door almost at once. She was dressed in a brown cotton housecoat and sandals. Her fair hair was tousled, as if she had been pushing her fingers through it over and over again. When she saw Kollberg her face fell with disappointment, then her expression hovered between hope and fear.

Kollberg showed his identity card and she gave him a desperate, inquiring look.

‘May I come in?’

The woman opened the door wide and stepped back.

‘Haven't you found her?’ she said.

Kollberg walked in without answering. The flat seemed to consist of two rooms. The outer one contained a bed, bookshelves, desk, TV set, chest of drawers and two armchairs, one on each side of a low teak table. The bed was made, presumably no one had slept in it that night. On the blue bedspread was a suitcase, open, and beside it lay piles of neatly folded clothes. A couple of newly ironed cotton dresses hung over the lid of the suitcase. The door of the inner room was open; Kollberg caught sight of a blue-painted bookshelf with books and toys. On top sat a white teddy bear.

‘Do you mind if we sit down?’ Kollberg asked, and sat in one of the armchairs.

The woman remained standing and said:

‘What has happened? Have you found her?’

Kollberg saw the dread and the panic in her eyes and tried to keep quite calm.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Please sit down, Mrs Carlsson. Where is your husband?’

She sat in the armchair opposite Kollberg.

‘I have no husband. We're divorced. Where's Eva? What has happened?’

‘Mrs Carlsson, I'm terribly sorry to tell you this. Your daughter is dead.’

The woman stared at him.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’

Kollberg got up and went over to her.

‘Have you no one who can be with you? Your parents?’

The woman shook her head.

‘It's not true,’ she said.

Kollberg put his hand on her shoulder.

‘I'm terribly sorry, Mrs Carlsson,’ he said lamely.

‘But how? We were going to the country…’

‘We're not sure yet,’ Kollberg replied. ‘We think that she … that she's been the victim of…’

‘Killed? Murdered?’

Kollberg nodded.

The woman shut her eyes and sat stiff and still. Then she opened her eyes and shook her head.

‘Not Eva,’ she said. ‘It's not Eva. You haven't … you've made a mistake.’

‘No,’ Kollberg said. ‘I can't tell you how sorry I am, Mrs Carlsson. Isn't there anyone I can call? Someone I can ask to come here? Your parents or someone?’

‘No, no, not them. I don't want anyone here.’

‘Your ex-husband?’

‘He's living in Malmö, I think.’

Her face was ashen and her eyes were hollow. Kollberg saw that she had not yet grasped what had happened, that she had put up a mental barrier which would not allow the truth past it. He had seen the same reaction before and knew that when she could no longer resist, she would collapse.

‘Who is your doctor, Mrs Carlsson?’ Kollberg asked.

‘Doctor Ström. We were there on Wednesday. Eva had had a tummy ache for several days and as we were going to the country I thought I'd better…’

She broke off and looked at the doorway into the other room.

‘Eva's never sick as a rule. And she soon got over this tummy ache. The doctor thought it was a touch of gastric flu.’

She sat silent for a moment. Then she said, so softly that Kollberg could hardly catch the words:

‘She's all right again now.’

Kollberg looked at her, feeling desperate and idiotic. He did not know what to say or do. She was still sitting with her face turned towards the open door into her daughter's room. He was trying frantically to think of something to say when she suddenly got up and called her daughter's name in a loud, shrill voice. Then she ran into the other room. Kollberg followed her.

The room was bright and nicely furnished. In one corner stood a red-painted box full of toys and at the foot of the narrow bed was an old-fashioned doll's house. A pile of schoolbooks lay on the desk.

The woman was sitting on the edge of the bed, her elbows propped on her knees and face buried in her hands. She rocked to and fro and Kollberg could not hear whether she was crying or not.

He looked at her for a moment, then went out into the hall where he had seen the telephone. An address book lay beside it and in it, sure enough, he found Doctor Ström's number.

The doctor listened while Kollberg explained the situation and promised to come within five minutes.

Kollberg went back to the woman, who was sitting as he had left her. She was making no sound. He sat down beside her and waited. At first he wondered whether he dared touch her, but after a while he put his arm cautiously around her shoulders. She seemed unaware of his presence.

They sat like this until the silence was broken by the doctor's ring at the door.




8 (#ulink_a8a950a0-da19-550d-bc24-5c6455da7496)


Kollberg was sweating as he walked back through Vanadis Park. The cause was neither the steep incline, the humid heat after the rain, nor his tendency to corpulence. At any rate not entirely.

Like most of those who were to deal with this case, he was jaded before the investigation started. He thought of the repulsiveness of the crime itself and he thought of the people who had been so hard hit by its blind meaninglessness. He had been through all this before, how many times he couldn't even say offhand, and he knew exactly how horrible it could turn out to be. And how difficult.

He thought too of the swift gangsterization of this society, which in the last resort must be a product of himself and of the other people who lived in it and had a share in its creation. He thought of the rapid technical expansion that the police force had undergone merely during the last year; despite this, crime always seemed to be one step ahead. He thought of the new investigation methods and the computers, which could mean that this particular criminal might be caught within a few hours, and also what little consolation these excellent technical inventions had to offer the woman he had just left, for example. Or himself. Or the set-faced men who had now gathered around the little body in the bushes between the rocks and the red fence.

He had only seen the body for a few moments, and at a distance, and he didn't want to see it again if he could help it. This he knew to be an impossibility. The mental image of the child in the blue skirt and striped T-shirt was etched into his mind and would always remain there, together with all the others he could never get rid of. He thought of the wooden-soled sandals on the slope and of his own child, as yet unborn; of how this child would look in nine years’ time; of the horror and disgust that this crime would arouse, and what the front pages of the evening papers would look like.

The entire area around the gloomy, fortress-like water tower was roped off now, as well as the steep slope behind it, right down to the steps leading to Ingemarsgatan. He walked past the cars, stopped at the cordon and looked out over the empty playground with its sandpits and swings.

The knowledge that all this had happened before and was certain to happen again was a crushing burden. Since the last time they had got computers and more men and more cars. Since the last time the lighting in the parks had been improved and most of the bushes had been cleared away. Next time there would be still more cars and computers and even less shrubbery. Kollberg wiped his brow at the thought and the handkerchief was wet through.

The journalists and photographers were already there, but fortunately only a few of the inquisitive had as yet found their way here. The journalists and photographers, oddly enough, had become better with the years, partly thanks to the police. The inquisitive would never be any better.

The area around the water tower was strangely quiet, despite all the people. From afar, perhaps from the swimming pool or the playground at Sveavägen, cheerful shouts could be heard and children laughing.

Kollberg remained standing by the cordon. He said nothing, nor did anyone speak to him.

He knew that the homicide squad had been alerted, that the search was being stabilized, that men from the technical division were examining the scene of the crime, that the vice squad had been called in, that a central office was being organized to receive tips from the public, that a special inquiry squad was being prepared to go from door to door, that the coroner was ready and waiting, that every radio patrol car was on the watch, and that no resources would be spared, even his own.

Yet he allowed himself this moment of reflection. It was summer. People were swimming. Tourists were wandering about, map in hand. And in the shrubbery between the rocks and the red fence lay a dead child. It was horrible. And it might get worse.

Still another car, perhaps the ninth or tenth, hummed up the hill from Stefan's Church and stopped. Without actually turning his head, Kollberg saw Gunvald Larsson get out and come up to him.

‘How is it going?’

‘Don't know.’

‘The rain. It poured with rain all night. Probably…’

For once, Gunvald Larsson interrupted himself. After a moment he went on:

‘If they take any footprints they're probably mine. I was here last evening. Soon after ten.’

‘Oh.’

‘The mugger. He struck down an old lady. Not fifty yards from here.’

‘So I heard.’

‘She had just shut up her fruit and confectionery kiosk and was on her way home. With the entire day's takings in her handbag.’

‘Oh?’

‘Every single penny of it. People are crazy,’ Gunvald Larsson said.

He paused again. Nodded towards the rocks and the shrubbery and the red fence and said:

‘She must have been lying there then.’

‘Presumably.’

‘It had already started raining when we got here. And the civil patrol, ninth district, had been here three quarters of an hour before the robbery. They didn't see anything either. She must have been lying here then too.’

‘They were looking for the mugger,’ Kollberg said.

‘Yes. And when he got here they were in Lill-Jans Wood. This was the ninth time.’

‘What about the old woman?’

‘Ambulance case. Rushed to hospital. Shock, fractured jaw, four teeth knocked out, broken nose. All she saw of the man was that he had a red bandanna handkerchief over his face. Lousy description.’

Gunvald Larsson paused again and then said:

‘If I'd had the dog van…’

‘What?’

‘Your admirable pal Beck said that I should send out the dog van, when he was up last week. Maybe a dog would have found…’

He nodded again in the direction of the rocks, as though unwilling to put what he meant into words.

Kollberg didn't like Gunvald Larsson particularly, but this time he sympathized with him.

‘It's possible,’ Kollberg said.

‘Is it sex?’ Gunvald Larsson asked with some hesitation.

‘Presumably.’

‘In that case I don't suppose there's any connection.’

‘No, I don't suppose there is.’

Rönn came up to them from inside the cordon and Larsson said at once:

‘Is it sex?’

‘Yes,’ Rönn said. ‘Looks like it. Pretty certain.’

‘Then there's no connection.’

‘What with?’

‘The mugger.’

‘How are things going?’ Kollberg asked.

‘Badly,’ Rönn said. ‘Everything must have been washed away by the rain. She's soaked to the skin.’

‘Christ, it's sickening,’ Larsson said. ‘Two maniacs prowling around the same place at the same time, one worse than the other.’

He turned on his heel and went back to the car. The last they heard him say was:

‘Christ, what a bloody awful job. Who'd be a cop…’

Rönn watched him for a moment. Then he turned to Kollberg and said:

‘Would you mind coming for a moment, sir?’

Kollberg sighed heavily and swung his legs over the rope.

Martin Beck did not go back to Stockholm until Saturday afternoon, the day before he was due back on duty. Ahlberg saw him off at the station.

He changed trains at Hallsberg and bought the evening papers at the station bookstall. Folded them and tucked them into his raincoat pocket and didn't open them until he had settled down on the express from Gothenburg.

He glanced at the banner headlines and gave a start. The nightmare had begun.

A few hours later for him than for the others. But that was about all.




9 (#ulink_d12b7d7d-baba-5d04-8b70-82fb1d70b818)


There are moments and situations that one would like to avoid at all costs but which cannot be put off. Police are probably faced with such situations more often than other people, and without a doubt they occur more often for some policemen than for others.

One of these situations is to question a woman called Karin Carlsson less than twenty-four hours after she has learned that her eight-year-old daughter has been strangled by a sex maniac. A lone woman who, despite injections and pills, is still suffering from shock and is so apathetic that she is still wearing the same brown cotton housecoat and the same sandals she had on when a corpulent policeman she had never seen before and would never see again had rung her doorbell the day before. Moments such as that immediately before the questioning begins.

A detective superintendent in the homicide squad knows that this questioning cannot be put off, still less avoided, because apart from this one witness there is not a single clue to go on. Because there is not yet a report on the autopsy and because the contents of that report are more or less already known.

Twenty-four hours earlier Martin Beck had been sitting in the stern of a rowboat taking up the nets that he and Ahlberg had put down early the same morning. Now he was standing in a room at investigation headquarters at Kungsholmsgatan with his right elbow propped on a filing cabinet, far too ill at ease even to sit down.

It had been thought suitable for this questioning to be conducted by a woman, a detective inspector of the vice squad. She was about forty-five and her name was Sylvia Granberg. In some ways the choice was a very good one. Sitting at the desk opposite the woman in the brown housecoat she looked as unmoved as the tape recorder she had just started.

When she switched off the apparatus forty minutes later she had undergone no apparent change, nor had she once faltered. Martin Beck noticed this again when, a little later, he played back the tape together with Kollberg and a couple of others.

GRANBERG: I know it's hard for you, Mrs Carlsson, but unfortunately there are certain questions we must put to you. WITNESS: Yes.

G: Your name is Karin Elisabet Carlsson?

W: Yes.

G: When were you born?

W: Sev … nineteenthir …

G: Can you try and keep your head turned towards the microphone when you answer?

W: Seventh of April 1937.

G: And your civil status?

W: What … I …

G: I mean are you single, married or divorced?

W: Divorced.

G: Since when?

W: Six years. Nearly seven.

G: And what is your ex-husband's name?

W: Sigvard Erik Bertil Carlsson.

G: Where does he live?

W: In Malmö … I mean he's registered there … I think.

G: Think? Don't you know?

MARTIN BECK: He's a seaman. We haven't been able to locate him yet.

G: Wasn't the husband liable for support of his daughter?

MB: Yes, of course, but he doesn't seem to have paid up for several years.

W: He … never really cared for Eva.

G: And your daughter's name was Eva Carlsson? No other first name?

W: No.

G: And she was born on the fifth of February 1959?

W: Yes.

G: Would you be good enough to tell us as exactly as possible what happened on Friday evening?

W: Happened … nothing happened. Eva … went out.

G: At what time?

W: Soon after seven. She'd been watching TV and we'd had our dinner.

G: What time was that?

W: At six o'clock. We always had dinner at six, when I got home. I work at a factory that makes lampshades … and I call for Eva at the afternoon nursery on the way home. She goes there herself after school … then we do the shopping on our way …

G: What did she have for dinner?

W: Meatballs … could I have a little water?

G: Of course. Here you are.

W: Thank you. Meatballs and mashed potatoes. And we had ice cream afterwards.

G: What did she drink?

W: Milk.

G: What did you do then?

W: We watched TV for a while … it was a children's programme.

G: And at seven o'clock or just after she went out?

W: Yes, it had stopped raining then. And the news had started on TV. She's not very interested in the news.

G: Did she go out alone?

W: Yes. Do you … you see it was quite light and the school holidays had begun. I told her she could stay out and play until eight. Do you think it … was careless of me?

G: Certainly not. By no means. Then you didn't see her again?

W: No … not until … no, I can't …

G: The identification? We needn't talk about that. When did you start getting worried?

W: I don't know. I was worried the whole time. I'm always worried when she's not at home. You see, she's all …

G: But when did you start looking for her?

W: Not until after half past eight. She's careless sometimes. Stays late with a playmate and forgets to look at the time. You know, children playing …

G: Yes. I see. When did you start searching?

W: About a quarter to nine. I knew she had two playmates the same age she used to go to. I called up the parents of one of them but got no answer.

MB: The family's away. Gone out to their summer cottage over the weekend.

W: I didn't know that. I don't think Eva did either.

G: What did you do then?

W: The other girl's parents have no telephone. So I went there.

G: What time?

W: I can't have got there until after nine, because the street door was locked and it took a while before I got in. I had to stand and wait until someone came. Eva had been there just after seven, but the other girl hadn't been allowed out. Her father said he thought it was too late for little girls to be out alone at that hour. (Pause)

W: Dear God if only I'd … But it was broad daylight and there were people everywhere. If only I hadn't…

G: Had your daughter left there at once?

W: Yes, she said she'd go to the playground.

G: Which playground do you think she meant?

W: The one in Vanadis Park, at Sveavägen. She always went there.

G: She can't have meant the other playground, the one up by the water tower?

W: I don't think so. She never went there. And certainly not alone.

G: Do you think she might have met some other playmates?

W: None that I know of. She always used to play with those two.

G: Well, when you didn't find her at this other place, what did you do then?

W: I … I went to the playground at Sveavägen. It was empty.

G: And then?

W: I didn't know what to do. I went home and waited. I stood in the window watching for her.

G: When did you call the police?

W: Not until later. At five or ten past ten I saw a police car stop by the park and then an ambulance came. It had started raining again by then. I put on my coat and ran there. I … I spoke to a policeman standing there, but he said it was an elderly woman who had hurt herself.

G: Did you go home again after that?

W: Yes. And I saw the light was on in the flat. I was so happy because I thought she had come home. But it was myself who had forgotten to put it out.

G: At what time did you call the police?

W: By half past ten I couldn't stand it any longer. I called up a friend, a woman I know at work. She lives at Hökarängen. She told me to call the police at once.

G: According to the information we have you called at ten minutes to eleven.

W: Yes. And then I went to the police station. The one in Surbrunnsgatan. They were awfully nice and kind. They asked me to tell them what Eva looks … looked like and what she had on. And I'd taken a snapshot with me so they could see what she looked like. They were so kind. The policeman who wrote everything down said that a lot of children got lost or stayed too long at the home of some playmate but that they all usually turned up safely after an hour or two. And …

G: Yes?

W: And he said that if anything had happened, an accident or something, they'd have known about it by that time.

G: What time did you get home again?

W: It was after twelve by then. I sat up waiting … all night. I waited for someone to ring. The police. They had my telephone number, you see, but no one called. I called them up once more anyway. But the man who answered said he had my number written down and that he'd call up at once if … (Pause)

W: But no one called. No one at all. Not in the morning either. And then a plainclothes policeman came and … and said … said that …

G: I don't think we need go on with this.

W: Oh, I see. No.

MB: Your daughter has been accosted by so-called molesters once or twice before, hasn't she?

W: Yes, last autumn. Twice. She thought she knew who it was. Someone who lived in the same block as Eivor, that's the friend who has no telephone.

MB: The one who lives in Hagagatan?

W: Yes. I reported it to the police. We were up here, in this building, and they got Eva to tell a lady all about it. They gave her a whole lot of pictures to look at too, in a big album.

G: There's a record of all that. We got the material out of the files.

MB: I know. But what I was going to ask is whether Eva was molested by this man later. After you reported him to the police?

W: No … not as far as I know. She didn't say anything … and she always tells me …

G: Well, that's about all, Mrs Carlsson.

W: Oh. I see.

MB: Forgive my asking, but where are you going now?

W: I don't know. Not home to …

G: I'll come down with you and we can talk about it. We'll think of something.

W: Thank you. You're very kind.

Kollberg switched off the tape recorder, stared gloomily at Martin Beck and said:

‘That bastard who molested her last autumn…’

‘Yes?’

‘It's the same one Rönn's busy with downstairs. We went and fetched him straight off at midday yesterday.’

‘And?’

‘So far it's merely a triumph for computer technique. He only grins and says it wasn't him.’

‘Which proves?’

‘Nothing, of course. He has no alibi either. Says he was at home asleep in his one-room flat at Hagagatan. Can't quite remember, he says.’

‘Can't remember?’

‘He's a complete alcoholic,’ Kollberg said. ‘At any rate we know that he sat drinking at the Röda Berget restaurant until he was chucked out at about six o'clock. It doesn't look too good for him.’

‘What did he do last time?’

‘Exposed himself. He's an ordinary exhibitionist, as far as I can make out. I have the tape of the interview with the girl here. Yet another triumph for technology.’

The door opened and Rönn came in.

‘Well?’ Kollberg asked.

‘Nothing so far. We'll have to let him come round a bit. Seems done in.’

‘So do you,’ Kollberg said.

He was right; Rönn looked unnaturally pale and his eyes were swollen and red-rimmed.

‘What do you think?’ Martin Beck asked.

‘I don't know what to think,’ Rönn replied. ‘I think I'm sickening for something.’

‘You can do that later,’ Kollberg said. ‘Not now. Let's listen to this tape.’

Martin Beck nodded. The spool of the recorder started turning again. A pleasant female voice said:

‘Questioning of schoolgirl Eva Carlsson born fifth of February 1959. Examining officer Detective Inspector Sonja Hansson.’

Both Martin Beck and Kollberg frowned and missed the next few sentences. They recognized the name and voice all too well. Sonja Hansson was a girl whose death they had very nearly brought about two and a half years earlier when they used her as decoy in a police trap.

‘A miracle she stayed on in the force,’ Kollberg said.

‘Yes,’ Martin Beck agreed.

‘Quiet, I can't hear,’ Rönn said.

He had not been mixed up in it that time.

‘ … so then this man came up to you?’

‘Yes. Eivor and I were standing at the bus stop.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He smelled nasty and he had a funny walk, and he said … it was so funny what he said.’

‘Can you remember what it was?’

‘Yes, he said, “Hello, little girlies, will you jerk me off if I give you five kronor?”’

‘Do you know what he meant by that, Eva?’

‘No, it was so funny. I know what jerk is, because sometimes the girl sitting next to me at school jerks my elbow. But why did the man want us to jerk his elbow? He wasn't sitting down and writing or anything, and anyway…’

‘What did you do then? After he had said that?’

‘He said it several times. Then he walked off and we crept after him.’

‘Crept after him?’

‘Yes, shadowed him. Like on the movies or TV.’

‘Did you dare to?’

‘Humph, there was no harm in it.’

‘Oh yes, Eva, you should watch out for men like that.’

‘Humph, he wasn't dangerous.’

‘Did you see which way he went?’

‘Yes, he went into the flats where Eivor lives and two floors above hers he took out a key and went inside.’

‘Did you both go home then?’

‘Oh no. We crept up and looked at the door. It had his name on it, see.’

‘Yes, I see. And what was his name?’

‘Eriksson, I think. We listened through the letter box too. We could hear him mumbling.’

‘Did you tell your mother about it?’

‘Humph, it was nothing. But it was funny.’

‘But you did tell your mother about what happened yesterday?’

‘About the cows, yes.’

‘Was it the same man?’

‘Ye-es.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Almost.’

‘How old do you think this man is?’

‘Oh, about twenty at least.’

‘How old do you think I am?’

‘Oh, about forty. Or fifty.’

‘Is this man older or younger than I am, do you think?’

‘Oh, much older. Much, much older. How old are you?’

‘Twenty-eight. Well, can you tell me what happened yesterday?’

‘Well, Eivor and I were playing hopscotch in the doorway and he came up and stood there and said, “Come along with me, girlies, and you can watch me milking my cows.”’





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