by Maj Sjowall
“One moment,” Melander said.
There was silence in the room. Gunvald Larsson looked expectantly at Melander.
“Can’t I go?” the girl asked. “You did promise.”
“Yes,” Melander answered. “Of course you can go. We just have to check up first that you’re right. For your own sake. Oh, one thing more.”
“Yes. What?”
“He’s not alone in the room, eh?”
“No,” the girl said very quietly.
“What’s your name, by the way?” Gunvald Larsson asked.
“None of your damn business.”
“Take her away,” Gunvald Larsson said.
Melander got up, opened the door to the next room and said:
“Rönn, we have a lady here, do you mind if she sits with you for a while?”
Rönn appeared in the doorway. His eyes and nose were red. He took in the scene.
“Not at all.”
“Blow your nose,” Larsson said.
“Shall I give her some coffee?”
“Good idea,” Melander said.
He held the door for her and said politely:
“This way, please.”
The girl got up and went out. In the doorway she stopped and gave Gunvald Larsson and Martin Beck a cold, hard stare. Evidently they had not succeeded in making her like them. Something wrong with our basic psychological training, Martin Beck thought.
Then she looked at Melander and said slowly:
“Who’s going to get him?”
“We are,” Melander said kindly. “That’s what the police are for.”
She didn’t move, but went on looking at Melander. At last she said:
“He’s dangerous.”
“How dangerous?”
“Very dangerous. He shoots. He’ll probably shoot me too.”
“Not for a long time,” Gunvald Larsson said.
She ignored him.
“He has two submachine guns in the room. Loaded. And an ordinary pistol. He has said …”
Martin Beck said nothing, but waited for Melander’s reply, hoping that Gunvald Larsson would keep quiet.
“What has he said?” Melander asked.
“That he’ll never let himself be taken alive. I know he means it.”
She still went on standing there.
“That’s all,” she said.
“Thank you,” Melander said, closing the door after her.
“Huh,” Gunvald Larsson said.
“Fix the warrant,” Martin Beck said as soon as the door was shut. “And out with the town plan.”
The blueprint of the town plan was on the desk before Melander had finished making the short phone call that gave them the legal right to do what they were about to do.
“It might be pretty tough,” Martin Beck said.
“Yes,” Gunvald Larsson agreed.
He opened a drawer, took out his service pistol and weighed it for a moment in his hand. Martin Beck, like most Swedish plainclothes policemen, carried a pistol in a shoulder holster in case he had to use it when on duty. Gunvald Larsson, on the other hand, had got himself a special clip with which he could fasten the holster to the waistband of his trousers. Slinging the pistol so that it hung by his right hip he said:
“Okay, I’ll grab him myself. Coming?”
Martin Beck looked thoughtfully at Gunvald Larsson, who was a good half head taller than himself and looked gigantic now that he was standing up.
“It’s the only way,” Larsson said. “How else can we do it? Just imagine a horde of guys with submachine guns and tear-gas bombs and bullet-proof vests running in through that entrance and across the yard with him firing like a madman through the windows and out onto the staircase. Or are you yourself or the police commissioner or the prime minister or the king going to stand and shout through a megaphone, ‘You’re surrounded. Better give yourself up.’ ”
“Tear gas through the keyhole,” Melander said.
“That’s an idea,” Gunvald Larsson said. “But it doesn’t appeal to me. Presumably the key’s on the inside. No, plainclothes men in the street and two men go in. Coming?”
“Sure,” Martin Beck said.
He would rather have had Kollberg with him, but the mugger was without doubt Gunvald Larsson’s man.
Luntmakargatan lies in the part of Stockholm known as Norrmalm. A long narrow street with mainly old buildings. It stretches from Brunnsgatan in the south to Odengatan in the north, with a lot of workshops on the street level and shabby dwellings in the houses across the yard.
They were there in less than ten minutes.
14
“Pity you don’t have the computer with you,” Gunvald Larsson said. “You could break the door down with it.”
“Yes,” Martin Beck said.
They parked the car in Rådmansgatan, went around the corner and saw several colleagues on the sidewalks near the entrance to number 57.
The arrival of the police did not seem to have attracted anyone’s attention.
“We’ll go in …” Gunvald Larsson began, and checked himself.
Perhaps he remembered his lower rank, for he looked at his wrist watch and said:
“I suggest I go in with you half a minute behind me.”
Martin Beck nodded, crossed the street, stood in front of the shop window of Gustaf Blomdin’s jeweler’s shop and watched an unusually beautiful old grandfather clock tick away thirty seconds. Then he turned on his heel, crossed the road diagonally without bothering about the traffic and entered the main doorway of number 57.
He crossed the yard without looking up at the windows, opened the door onto the staircase and went swiftly and quietly up the stairs. From the workshop on the main floor came the muffled pounding of machinery.
The paint had flaked off the door of the apartment; sure enough, it bore the name Simonsson. Not a sound could be heard from inside, nor from Gunvald Larsson, who was standing, quite still and straight, to the right of the door. He passed his fingers lightly across the cracked paneling.
Then he glanced inquiringly at Martin Beck.
Martin Beck regarded the door for a second or two and nodded. He stood to the left of it, tense and with his back to the wall.
Despite his height and weight, Gunvald Larsson moved very quickly and silently in his rubber-soled sandals. Supporting himself with his right shoulder against the wall opposite the door, he stood tensed for a few seconds. He had evidently made sure that the key was in the lock on the inside, and it was obvious that Rolf Lundgren’s private world would not remain private much longer. Martin Beck barely had time to think this before Gunvald Larsson flung his two hundred pounds against the door, crouching slightly and with his left shoulder forward.
The door flew open with a crash, wrenched off both lock and upper hinge, and Gunvald Larsson followed it into the room through a cascade of dry splinters. Martin Beck was only half a yard behind him, striding smoothly and swiftly. His pistol was raised.
The mugger was lying on his back in bed with his right arm locked under a woman’s neck, but he managed to get it free, spin around and fling his upper body towards the floor and thrust his hand under the bed. When Gunvald Larsson struck him he was already kneeling with the submachine gun resting on the floor but with his right hand closed around the extended metal frame.
Gunvald Larsson struck him only once, with open hand and not very hard, but it was enough to make the mugger drop the weapon and tumble backwards against the wall, where he remained sitting with his left arm over his face.
“Don’t hit me,” he said.
He was naked. The woman, who had leaped up from the bed a second later, was wearing a wrist watch with a tartan strap. She stood stock still with her back to the wall on the other side of the bed, staring from the submachine gun on the floor to the gigantic fair man in the tweed suit. She made not the slightest attempt to cover herself. She was a pretty girl with short hair and long, slim legs. She had young breasts with large, pale-brown
nipples and a prominent dark line from the navel to the moist, dark-brown patch of hair around her private parts. She also had dark, bushy hair in her armpits. There was already goose-flesh on her thighs, arms and breasts.
A man from the workshop on the ground floor was gaping through the broken door.
Martin Beck was struck by the absurdity of the situation and for the first time in weeks he felt the corners of his mouth twitch. He was standing in the middle of a room in broad daylight pointing a 7.65-millimeter Walther at two naked people while a man in a blue carpenter’s apron and with a foot-rule in his right hand stared at him in amazement.
He put his pistol away. A policeman appeared outside the door and told the workman to get a move on.
“What!” the girl exclaimed.
Gunvald Larsson looked at her with distaste and said:
“Get your clothes on.”
After a moment he added:
“If you have any.”
He was standing with his right foot on the submachine gun. With a glance at the mugger he said:
“You too. Get your clothes on.”
The mugger was a muscular, well-built young man with a fine suntan, apart from a narrow white band across his thighs, and with long fair hair on his arms and legs. He straightened up slowly, holding his right hand in front of his genitals, and said:
“That goddam stinking little slob.”
Another policeman entered the room and stared. The girl still stood motionless with her palms pressed against the wall and her fingers wide apart, but the expression in her brown eyes showed that she was pulling herself together.
Martin Beck looked around the room and saw a blue cotton dress slung over the back of a kitchen chair. On the chair were also a pair of panties, a bra and a string bag. Under it, on the floor, was a pair of sandals. Handing her the dress he said:
“Who are you?”
The girl stretched out her right hand and took the dress but did not put it on. Looking at him with her clear brown eyes she said:
“My name’s Lisbeth Hedvig Maria Karlström. Who are you?”
“A policeman.”
“I’m reading modern languages at Stockholm University and have passed my finals in English.”
“And this is what you learn at the university?” Gunvald Larsson said without turning his head.
“I came of age a year ago and I’m wearing a diaphragm.”
“How long have you known this man?” Martin Beck asked.
The girl still made no attempt to get dressed. Instead, she looked at her wrist watch and said:
“For exactly two hours and twenty-five minutes. I met him at the Vanadis Baths.”
In the other part of the room the man was fumbling putting on his underpants and khaki trousers.
“That’s nothing much to show the ladies,” Gunvald Larsson said.
“You’re a boor,” the girl said.
“Think so?”
Gunvald Larsson said this without taking his eyes off the mugger. He had looked at the girl only once.
“On with your shirt now,” he urged paternally. “Now your socks. And shoes. That’s a good boy.”
Two uniformed radio policemen had entered the room; they admired the scenery for a moment, then led the mugger away.
“Get dressed, please,” Martin Beck said to the girl.
At last she drew the dress over her head, went over to the chair, put on her panties and slipped her feet into the sandals. Rolled up the bra and put it in the string bag.
“What has he done?” she asked.
“Sex maniac,” Gunvald Larsson said.
Martin Beck saw her turn pale and swallow. She looked at him inquiringly. He shook his head. She swallowed again and said uncertainly:
“Shall I …”
“There’s no need. Just give your name and address to the officer outside. Good-bye.”
The girl went out.
“You let her go!” Gunvald Larsson said in amazement.
“Yes,” Martin Beck said.
Then he shrugged and said:
“Let’s go through things, shall we?”
15
Five hours later the time was half past five and Rolf Evert Lundgren had still admitted nothing but the fact that his name was Rolf Evert Lundgren.
They had stood around him, and sat opposite him, and he had smoked their cigarettes, and the tape recorder had turned and turned, and his name was still Rolf Evert Lundgren and anyway, it was on his driver’s license.
They had asked and asked and asked him questions, Martin Beck, and Melander, and Gunvald Larsson, and Kollberg, and Rönn, and even Hammar, who was now chief superintendent, had been in and looked at him and said one or two well-chosen words. His name was still Rolf Evert Lundgren and anyway it was on his driver’s license and the only thing that seemed to annoy him was when Rönn sneezed without holding a handkerchief to his mouth.
The absurd thing was that had it concerned only himself he could have pleaded not guilty for all they cared, right through every interrogation and every conceivable court of appeal and his entire prison sentence, for in the one-room apartment across the yard and in the built-in wardrobe they had found not only two submachine guns and a Smith and Wesson 38 Special but also objects which definitely bound him to four of the robberies, plus the bandanna handkerchief, the tennis shoes, the nylon pullover with the monogram on the breast pocket, two thousand preludin pills, the brass knuckles and several stolen cameras.
At six o’clock Rolf Evert Lundgren sat drinking coffee with Superintendent Martin Beck of the homicide squad and Detective Inspector Fredrik Melander. All three took two lumps of sugar and all three were equally glum and exhausted as they sipped at their paper mugs.
“The absurd thing is that if this had concerned only yourself we could have called it a day now and gone home,” Martin Beck said.
“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” Lundgren said.
“I mean what’s so silly is …”
“Oh, stop nagging.”
Martin Beck made no reply; he sat quite still, staring at the arrested man. Melander said nothing either.
At six fifteen Martin Beck drank up his coffee, which was now stone cold, crumpled up the mug and dropped it into the wastepaper basket.
They had tried persuasion, kindness, severity, logic, shock tactics; they had tried to get him to engage a lawyer and they had asked him ten times if he wanted anything to eat. In fact, they had tried everything except striking him. Martin Beck had noticed that Gunvald Larsson had been several times on the point of resorting even to this forbidden method but had realized that it wouldn’t do to hit suspects, especially while superintendents and commissioners were running in and out of the room. At last this had annoyed Gunvald Larsson so much that he had gone home.
At half past six Melander also went home. Rönn came in and sat down. Rolf Evert Lundgren said:
“Put that filthy handkerchief away. I don’t want your germs.”
Rönn, who was a mediocre policeman with mediocre imagination and a mediocre sense of humor, considered for a moment the possibility of being the first interrogator in the history of crime to extract a confession by sneezing, but refrained.
Of course the normal thing, Martin Beck thought, was to let the accused sleep on the matter. But was there time to sleep on the matter? The man in the green T-shirt and khaki trousers did not seem particularly sleepy and had not even mentioned the matter. Oh well, sooner or later they would have to let him rest.
“That lady who came here this morning,” Rönn said by way of introduction, and sneezed.
“That goddam stinking little slob,” the accused muttered, sinking into a dejected silence.
After a while he said:
“She loves me, so she says. She says I need her.”
Martin Beck nodded. Another minute or so passed before the man went on:
“I don’t love her. I need her about as much as I need dandruff.”
Don’t na
g, Martin Beck thought. Say nothing.
“I like to have decent girls,” Lundgren said. “What I’d really like is one decent girl. Then to get picked up thanks to that jealous slob.”
Silence.
“Slob,” Lundgren muttered to himself. Silence.
“She’s good for only one thing.”
Sure, thought Martin Beck, but this time he was wrong. Thirty seconds later the man in the green T-shirt said:
“Okay.”
“Let’s talk now,” Martin Beck said.
“Okay. But I want one thing straight first. That slob can give me an alibi for that business last Monday. In Tanto Park. I was with her then.”
“We know that already,” Rönn said.
“You do? Oh, so she did tell you that.”
“Yes,” Rönn said.
Martin Beck stared at him; so Rönn had not bothered to mention this simple fact to anyone else in the department. He could not help saying:
“That’s nice to know. It absolves Lundgren here from suspicion.”
“Yes, it does,” Rönn said calmly.
“Let’s talk now,” Martin Beck said.
Lundgren eyed him narrowly.
“Not us,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Not you, I don’t want to talk to you,” Lundgren explained.
“Who then?” Martin Beck asked patiently.
“With the guy that nabbed me. The tall one.”
“Where’s Gunvald?” Martin Beck asked.
“Gone home,” Rönn replied with a sigh.
“Phone for him.”
Rönn sighed again, Martin Beck knew why. Gunvald Larsson lived at Bollmora, a suburb far to the south.
“He needs rest,” Rönn said. “He’s had a tiring day. Nabbing a big gangster like this.”
“Shut up,” Lundgren said.
Rönn sneezed and reached for the phone.
Martin Beck went into another room and called up Hammar, who said at once:
“Can this Lundgren be considered cleared of suspicion as regards the murder?”
“Rönn questioned his mistress earlier today. She seems able to give him an alibi for the murder in Tanto Park. As for Vanadis Park last Friday, of course, he hasn’t one.”
“I grasp that,” Hammar said. “What do you think yourself?”