The Man on the Balcony

by Maj Sjowall

  Everyone seemed worn out from lack of sleep and overwork, even the journalists and photographers.

  After the review Kollberg said to Martin Beck:

  “There are two witnesses.”

  Martin Beck nodded. They both went into the office where Gunvald Larsson and Melander were working.

  “There are two witnesses,” Martin Beck said.

  Melander didn’t even look up from his papers but Larsson said:

  “Hell, you don’t say. And who would they be?”

  “First, the boy in Tanto Park.”

  “Who is three years old?”

  “Exactly.”

  “The girls in the vice squad have tried to talk to him, you know that as well as I do. He can’t even talk. It’s just about as clever as when you told me to question the dog.”

  Martin Beck ignored both the remark and the astonished look that Kollberg gave him.

  “And secondly?” Melander asked, still without looking up.

  “The mugger.”

  “He’s my department,” Gunvald Larsson said.

  “Exactly. Get him.”

  Gunvald Larsson heaved himself back so that the swivel chair creaked. He stared from Martin Beck to Kollberg and said:

  “Look here. What do you think I’ve been doing for three weeks, I and the protection squads of fifth and ninth? Playing Chinese checkers? Are you insinuating that we haven’t tried?”

  “You’ve tried all right. Now the position has changed. Now you must get him.”

  “And how the hell are we to do that? Now?”

  “The mugger knows his job,” Martin Beck said. “You said so yourself. Has he at any time attacked anyone who didn’t have money?”

  “No.”

  “Has he at any time gone for anyone who could defend himself?” Kollberg asked.

  “No.”

  “Have the boys in the protection squad ever been anywhere near?” Martin Beck asked.

  “No.”

  “And what can be the reason?” Kollberg asked again.

  Gunvald Larsson did not answer at once. He poked his ear for a long time with the ball-point pen before saying:

  “He knows his job.”

  “That’s what you said.”

  Gunvald Larsson pondered again for a time. Then he asked:

  “When you were up here ten days ago you started to say something but changed your mind. Why?”

  “Because you interrupted me.”

  “What were you going to say?”

  “That we ought to study the timetable for the robberies,” Melander said, still without looking up. “The systematics. We’ve already done so.”

  “One more thing,” Martin Beck said. “The same as Lennart here implied just now. The mugger is a skilled workman and knows his job, your own conclusion. He’s so good at it that he recognizes the men in the protection squads. Perhaps even the cars.”

  “So what?” Gunvald Larsson said. “Do you mean we should change the whole goddam police force just because of this louse?”

  “You could have got in men from outside,” Kollberg said. “Policewomen as well. Other cars.”

  “It’s too late now anyway,” Larsson said.

  “Yes,” Martin Beck agreed. “It’s too late now. On the other hand it’s twice as urgent for us to get him.”

  “That guy’s not even going to look at a park so long as the murderer goes free,” Gunvald Larsson said.

  “Exactly. At what time was the last robbery committed?”

  “Between nine and a quarter past.”

  “And the murder?”

  “Between seven and eight. Look here, why do you stand there asking about things we all know?”

  “Sorry. Perhaps I wanted to convince myself.”

  “What of?”

  “Of the fact that the mugger saw the girl,” Kollberg said. “And the man who killed her. The mugger wasn’t the sort of guy to act haphazardly. Presumably he had to hang about the park for hours every time before he got his chance. Otherwise he had fantastic luck.”

  “Such luck doesn’t exist,” Melander said. “Not nine times in succession. Five perhaps. Or six.”

  “Get him,” Martin Beck said.

  “Appeal to his sense of justice, eh? So that he gives himself up?”

  “Even that is possible.”

  “Yes,” Melander said, speaking on the phone.

  He listened for a moment and said:

  “Send a radio patrol.”

  “Was it anything?” Kollberg asked.

  “No,” Melander said.

  “Sense of justice,” Gunvald Larsson said, shaking his head. “Your naive faith in the underworld is really … humph, words fail me.”

  “Just at the moment I don’t give a damn what fails you,” Martin Beck said heatedly. “Get that guy.”

  “Use the stoolies,” Kollberg said.

  “Do you think I don’t …” Gunvald Larsson began, but was himself interrupted for once.

  “Wherever he is,” Martin Beck said. “Whether he’s in the Canary Islands or is lying low in a junkie’s pad on the south side. Use the stoolies, and do so much more than before. Use every single contact we have in the underworld, use the newspapers and the radio and the television. Threaten, bribe, coax, promise, do anything at all, but get that guy.”

  “Do you think I haven’t the sense to grasp that myself?”

  “You know what I think of your intelligence,” Kollberg said gravely.

  “Yes, I know,” Gunvald Larsson said good-naturedly. “Well, let’s clear the decks for action.”

  He grabbed the telephone. Martin Beck and Kollberg left the room.

  “Maybe it’ll work,” Martin Beck said.

  “Maybe,” Kollberg replied.

  “Gunvald is not as dumb as he looks.”

  “Isn’t he?”

  “Er … Lennart.”

  “Yes?”

  “Just what’s wrong with you?”

  “The same as what’s wrong with you.”

  “And that is?”

  “I’m scared.”

  Martin Beck made no reply to this. Partly because Kollberg was right, partly because they had known each other for so long that words were not always necessary.

  Impelled by the same thought they went downstairs and into the street. The car, a red Saab, had a provincial numberplate, but belonged nevertheless to the police headquarters in Stockholm.

  “That little boy, whatever his name is,” Martin Beck said thoughtfully.

  “Bo Oskarsson. Known as Bosse.”

  “I met him just for a moment. Who was it that talked to him?”

  “Sylvia, I think. Or maybe it was Sonja.”

  The streets were fairly empty and the heat was oppressive. They drove over the West Bridge, turned down to the Pålsund Canal and continued along Bergsundsstrand, listening the whole time to the chatter of the radio patrols on the 40-meter waveband.

  “Any damned radio ham within a radius of fifty miles can poke his nose into that,” Kollberg said irritably. “Do you know what it would cost to screen off a private radio transmitter?”

  Martin Beck nodded. He had heard that the cost was in the region of 150,000 kronor. Money that wasn’t there.

  Actually they were thinking of something quite different. Last time they had made an all-out effort to catch a murderer it had taken forty days before he was seized. The last time they had had a case like this it had taken about ten days. Now the murderer had struck twice within less than four days. Melander had said that the mugger might have been lucky five or six times. Quite feasible. Applied to the present case this was no longer mathematics but a vision of horror.

  They drove under Liljeholm Bridge, along Hornstull Strand, passed under the railroad bridge and turned up into the residential area where the old sugar mill had once been. Some children were playing in the gardens around the apartment houses, but not many.

  They parked the car and took the elevator to the seventh floor. Rang the d
oorbell, but no one came to the door. After waiting a while Martin Beck rang the bell of the apartment next door. A woman opened the door a chink. Behind her he caught a glimpse of a little girl of five or six.

  “The police,” Kollberg said reassuringly, showing his identity disk.

  “Oh,” the woman said.

  “Do you know if the Oskarsson family are at home?” Martin Beck asked.

  “No, they went away this morning. To relations somewhere. That’s to say the wife and children.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to have …”

  “But it’s not everyone who can,” the woman cut in. “I mean go away.”

  “Do you know where they went?” Kollberg asked.

  “No. But they’ll be back on Friday morning. Then I think they’re leaving again right away.”

  She looked at them and said in explanation:

  “Their vacation starts then.”

  “But the husband is at home?”

  “Yes, this evening. You can call him up.”

  “Yes,” Martin Beck said.

  The little girl grew fretful and tugged at her mother’s skirts.

  “The children get so peevish,” she said. “You can’t let them out. Or is it all right?”

  “Preferably not.”

  “But some people have to,” the woman said. “And a lot of children won’t obey.”

  “Yes, unfortunately.”

  Without a word they went down in the automatic elevator. Without a word they drove northwards through the city, aware of their powerlessness and of their ambivalent attitude to the society they were there to protect.

  They swung up into Vanadis Park and were stopped by a uniformed police officer who recognized neither them nor the car. There was nothing to see in the park. Except a few children who were playing, in spite of everything. And the indefatigable snoopers.

  When they got back to the intersection of Odengatan and Sveavägen Kollberg said:

  “I’m thirsty.”

  Martin Beck nodded. They parked, went into the Metropole restaurant and ordered fruit juice.

  Two other men were sitting at the bar. They had taken off their coats and put them on the bar stools, an act of unconventionalism that showed how hot it really was. They were drinking whisky and soda, and talking earnestly between sips.

  “It’s because there’s no proper punishment,” the younger man said. “A lynching is what’s needed.”

  “Yes,” the older man agreed.

  “I’m sorry to have to say it, but it’s the only thing.”

  Kollberg opened his mouth to say something but changed his mind and drained his glass of fruit juice in one gulp.

  Martin Beck was to hear much the same thing once more that day. In a tobacconist’s, when he went in to buy a pack of cigarettes. The man in front of him was saying:

  “… and do you know what they ought to do when they catch this bastard. They ought to execute him in public, they should show it on TV, and they shouldn’t do it all at once. No, bit by bit for several days.”

  When the man had gone Martin Beck said:

  “Who was that?”

  “His name’s Skog,” the tobacconist said. “He has the radio workshop next door. Decent chap.”

  Back at headquarters Martin Beck reflected that it wasn’t so long since they used to chop a thief’s hands off. Yet people still went on stealing. Plenty of them.

  In the evening he called up Bo Oskarsson’s father.

  “Ingrid and the children? I’ve sent them down to her mother and father in Öland. No, there’s no phone there.”

  “And when will they be back?”

  “On Friday morning. The very same evening we’re going abroad. We don’t damn well dare to stay here.”

  “No,” Martin Beck said wearily.

  This was what happened on Tuesday the thirteenth of June.

  On Wednesday nothing at all happened. The weather grew hotter.

  13

  Soon after eleven o’clock on Thursday something did happen. Martin Beck was standing in what had become his habitual position with his right elbow propped on the filing cabinet and heard the phone ring for what must have been the fiftieth time that morning. Gunvald Larsson answered:

  “Larsson.

  “What?

  “Okay, I’ll be down right away.”

  He stood up and said to Martin Beck:

  “It was the doorman. There’s a girl down there who says she knows something.”

  “About what?”

  Larsson was already in the doorway.

  “The mugger.”

  A minute later the girl was sitting by the desk. She could not have been more than twenty but looked older. She was wearing purple net stockings, high-heeled shoes with open toes and a mini-skirt. Her cleavage was remarkable, and so was the arrangement of her dyed hair; the eyelashes were false and the eyeshadow had been plastered on. Her mouth was small and pouting and her breasts stuck right up in the bra.

  “What is it you know?” Gunvald Larsson said immediately.

  “You wanted to know about him in Vasa Park and Vanadis Park and so on,” she said pertly. “At any rate so I heard.”

  “What else did you come here for?”

  “Don’t rush me,” she said with a toss of her head.

  “What do you know?” Larsson said impatiently.

  “I think you’re being offensive,” she said. “Funny the way all cops are so damn fresh.”

  “If it’s the reward you’re after, there isn’t one,” Larsson said.

  “You can stuff your reward,” the lady said.

  “Why have you come?” Martin Beck asked as gently as he could.

  “I’ve got all the bread I want,” she said.

  Obviously she had come to make a scene—at least that was partly the reason—and was not going to be put off. Martin Beck could see the veins swelling on Gunvald Larsson’s forehead. The girl said:

  “Anyway, I earn a damn sight more than you do.”

  “Yes, with your cu …,” Larsson said, but checked himself and went on:

  “I think the less said the better about the way you earn your money.”

  “One more word like that and I go,” she said.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Larsson retorted.

  “It’s a free country, isn’t it? A democracy or whatever it’s called?”

  “Why have you come here?” Martin Beck asked, only a fraction less gently than the time before.

  “Yes, you sure do want to know, don’t you? Your ears are flapping. I’ve a good mind to leave without saying a word.”

  Melander was the one who broke the deadlock. He raised his head, took the pipe out of his mouth, looked at her for the first time since she had entered the room and said quietly:

  “Won’t you tell us, my dear?”

  “About him in Vanadis Park and Vasa Park and …”

  “Yes, if you really know something,” Melander said.

  “And then I can go?”

  “Of course.”

  “Word of honor?”

  “Word of honor,” Melander replied.

  “And you won’t tell him …”

  She shrugged, speaking mostly to herself:

  “Humph, he’ll guess anyway.”

  “What’s his name?” Melander said.

  “Roffe.”

  “And his surname?”

  “Lundgren. Rolf Lundgren.”

  “Where does he live?” Gunvald Larsson asked.

  “Luntmakargatan 57.”

  “And where is he now?”

  “There,” she said.

  “How do you know for sure he’s the one?” Martin Beck asked.

  He saw something glisten in the girl’s eyes and realized with astonishment that it must be tears.

  “As if I didn’t know,” she mumbled.

  “So you’re going steady with this guy,” Larsson said.

  She stared at him without answering.

  “What’s the name on
the door?” Melander asked.

  “Simonsson.”

  “Whose apartment is it?” Martin Beck asked.

  “His. Roffe’s. I think.”

  “It doesn’t add up,” Larsson said.

  “I suppose he rents it on a sublet. Do you think he’s fool enough to have his own name on the door?”

  “Is he wanted?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “On the run?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh yes, you do,” Martin Beck said. “Has he broken out of prison?”

  “No, he hasn’t. Roffe has never been caught.”

  “This time he’s going to be,” Gunvald Larsson said.

  She stared at him spitefully, her eyes moist,

  Larsson hurled questions at her.

  “Luntmakargatan 57?”

  “Yes. That’s what I said, didn’t I?”

  “The house facing the street or the one across the yard?”

  “Across the yard.”

  “Which floor?”

  “Second.”

  “How big is the apartment?”

  “One room.”

  “And kitchen?”

  “No, no kitchen. Only one room.”

  “How many windows?”

  “Two.”

  “Facing the yard?”

  “No, sea view!”

  Gunvald Larsson bit his lip in annoyance. The veins in his forehead swelled once more.

  “Well now,” Melander said. “He has a one-room apartment on the second floor with two windows facing the yard. Do you know for sure that he’s there now?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  “Have you a key?” Melander asked kindly.

  “No, there is only one.”

  “And he’s locked the door after him?” Martin Beck.

  “Bet your sweet life he has.”

  “Does the door open inwards or outwards?” Gunvald Larsson asked.

  She thought hard.

  “Inwards.”

  “Quite sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many stories in the house facing the yard?” Martin Beck asked.

  “Oh, four or so.”

  “And what’s on the main floor?”

  “A workshop.”

  “Can you see the entrance from the windows?” Larsson asked.

  “No, the Baltic,” the girl retorted. “A bit of the city hall too. And the royal palace.”

  “That’ll do,” Larsson snapped. “Take her away.”

  The girl made a violent gesture.