The Man on the Balcony

by Maj Sjowall

  “Just before the man strangled her, you mean,” he said.

  “Maybe. The question is: What can we get out of this ticket?”

  “Fingerprints, perhaps,” Kollberg said.

  Melander leaned forward, muttering, while he studied the ticket.

  “Possible but hardly probable,” Martin Beck said. “First of all the person who tore it off the block touched it, then whoever gave it to the boy must have touched it, I grant you, but the boy has had it in his pocket since Monday together with snails and God knows what, and to my shame I’ve touched it too. Apart from that, it’s crumpled and fluffy. But we’ll try, of course. But look at the punch holes first.”

  “I’ve already looked,” Kollberg said. “It’s punched at 1. P.M. on the twelfth, it doesn’t say which month. That can mean …”

  He broke off and all three thought what it might mean. Melander was the one to speak.

  “These one-krona tickets, type 100, are used only within the actual city limits,” he said. “It may be possible to find out when and where it was sold. There are two other numbers on it.”

  “Ring Stockholm Tramways,” Kollberg said.

  “It’s called Stockholm Local Transport now,” Melander said.

  “I know. But the uniform buttons still have ST on them. I suppose they can’t afford to make new ones. How the hell is that possible when it costs a krona to go from Gamla Stan to Slussen—the next station? What does a button cost?”

  Melander was already on his way into the next room. The ticket still lay on the desk, presumably he had photographed it in his mind with serial number and everything. They heard him lift the receiver and dial a number.

  “Did the boy say anything else?” Kollberg asked.

  Martin Beck shook his head.

  “Only that. That he was with the girl and that they met a man. He just found the ticket by chance.”

  Kollberg tipped back his chair and bit his thumbnail.

  “So we have a witness who has presumably both seen and spoken to the murderer. It’s just that this witness is only three years old. Had he been a little older …”

  “The murder would never have happened,” Martin Beck broke in. “At any rate not then and there.”

  Melander came back.

  “They said they’d call up soon.”

  The call came through a quarter of an hour later. Melander listened and made notes. Then he said thank you and hung up.

  Sure enough, the ticket had been bought on the twelfth of June. It had been sold by a ticket clerk at the northern barrier of the subway station at Rådmansgatan. In order to pass that barrier one has to go down through one of the two entrances on either side of Sveavägen on a level with the School of Economics.

  Martin Beck knew the Stockholm subway network very well but he still went over and looked at the wall map.

  If the person who bought the ticket at Rådmansgatan was on his way to Tanto Park, he must change trains either at T-Centralen, Gamla Stan or Slussen. In that case he would come to Zinkensdamm. From there it was about five minutes’ walk to the spot where the dead girl had been found. The journey had been started between one thirty and one forty-five and should have taken about twenty minutes, allowing for changing trains. Between five minutes to two and ten minutes past the person in question could therefore have arrived at Tanto Park. According to the doctor the girl had probably died between two thirty and three o’clock, possibly a little earlier.

  “As regards time it fits,” Martin Beck said.

  At the same second Kollberg said:

  “It fits as regards time. If he went straight there.”

  Haltingly, as though speaking to himself, Melander said:

  “The station isn’t so far from Vanadis Park.”

  “No,” Kollberg said. “But what does that tell us? Nothing. That he rides on the subway from park to park and kills little girls? Come to that, why didn’t he take the 55 bus? He could have gone all the way and not had to walk.”

  “And probably been caught,” Melander said.

  “Yes,” Kollberg agreed. “There are never many people on that bus. They recognize the passengers.”

  Sometimes Martin Beck wished that Kollberg were not quite so talkative. He wished it now, as he licked and stuck down the envelope with the ticket. He had tried to hold on to a thought that flashed past; had Kollberg kept quiet he might have succeeded. Now the moment had gone.

  Having sent off the envelope he called up the laboratory and asked to have the result as soon as possible. The man who answered was called Hjelm and Martin Beck had known him for many years. He sounded rushed and was in a bad mood. He asked if the gentlemen at Kungsholmsgatan and Västberga Allé knew how much he had to do. Martin Beck said he quite realized that their burden of work was inhuman and that he would gladly come along and give a hand if only he were skilled enough to carry out such exacting work. Hjelm muttered something and promised to deal with the ticket right away.

  Kollberg went out to lunch and Melander shut himself up with his piles of papers. Before doing so he said:

  “We have the name of the clerk who sold the ticket at Rådmansgatan. Shall I get someone to talk to her?”

  “By all means,” Martin Beck said.

  He sat down at the desk, glanced through his papers and tried to think. He felt irritable and nervy and presumed that fatigue was to blame. Rönn stuck his head in, looked at him and vanished without a word. Otherwise he was left in peace. Even the telephone was silent for a long time. Just as he was on the verge of dozing off at his desk, something which had never happened before, the phone rang. Before picking up the receiver he looked at the time. Twenty minutes past two. Still Friday. Bravo Hjelm, he thought.

  It was not Hjelm but Ingrid Oskarsson.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” she said. “You must be awfully busy.”

  Martin Beck mumbled some kind of answer and heard himself how unenthusiastic he sounded.

  “But you said I was to ring. It may not be important, but I thought I’d better tell you.”

  “Yes, of course, forgive me, I didn’t hear who it was,” Martin Beck said. “What has happened?”

  “Lena suddenly remembered something Bosse said in the park on Monday. When that happened.”

  “Oh? What?”

  “She says he told her he had met his day daddy.”

  “Day daddy?” he asked.

  And thought: Are there such things?

  “Yes. Bosse was with a day mother during the daytime earlier this year. There are so few day nurseries and I didn’t know what to do with him while I was at work. So I advertised and found a day mother for him in Timmermansgatan.”

  “But didn’t you just say ‘day daddy’?”

  “No, no, what I meant was, this day mother had a husband, he wasn’t there all day but he often came home early, so Bosse saw him nearly every day. And he started calling him day daddy.”

  “And Bosse told Lena that he met him in Tanto Park on Monday?”

  Martin Beck felt his tiredness vanish. Reaching for the note pad he felt in his pocket for a pen.

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Oskarsson said.

  “Did Lena gather whether it was before or after the time he was missing?”

  “She’s sure he didn’t say it until afterwards. That’s why I thought I’d better tell you. I don’t suppose it has anything to do with it at all, he seemed so nice and kind, that man. But if Bosse met him, perhaps he in his turn might have seen or heard something …”

  Martin Beck put pen to paper and asked:

  “What’s his name?”

  “Eskil Engström. He’s a truck driver, I think. They live in Timmermansgatan. I’ve forgotten the number, can you wait a second and I’ll have a look.”

  She came back a minute later and gave him address and telephone number.

  “He seemed such a nice man,” she said. “I saw him quite often when I called for Bosse.”

  “Did Bosse say anything more about this meeting
with the day daddy?”

  “No. And we’ve tried to get him to tell us about it now, but he seems to have forgotten it.”

  “What does the man look like?”

  “Well, it’s hard to say. Pleasant. Bit down at heel, perhaps, but that may be due to his job. He’s about forty-five or fifty, thin-haired. Looks very ordinary.”

  There was silence for a while as Martin Beck made notes. Then he said:

  “If I understand rightly, you don’t leave Bosse with this day mother any more?”

  “No. They’ve no children of their own, it was so dull for him. I was promised a vacancy at a day nursery, but a mother who was a nurse got it instead. They have priority around here.”

  “Where is Bosse now in the daytime?”

  “At home. I had to give up my job.”

  “When did you stop leaving him with the Engströms?”

  She thought for a moment and then said:

  “The first week in April. I had a week off then. When I started work again Mrs. Engström had taken a new day child and couldn’t have Bosse.”

  “Did Bosse like being with her?”

  “Fairly well. I think he liked Mr. Engström best. The day daddy, that is. Do you think he was the one who gave Bosse the ticket?”

  “I don’t know,” Martin Beck replied. “But I’ll try and find out.”

  “I want to help all I can,” she said. “We’re going away this evening, you know that?”

  “Yes, I know. Hope you have a nice trip. Say hello to Bosse for me.

  Martin Beck put down the receiver, thought for a moment, lifted it again and rang the vice squad.

  While waiting for the information he had asked for, he pulled over one of the files lying on the desk and turned the pages until he came to the transcript of the nocturnal interrogation with Rolf Evert Lundgren. He carefully read Lundgren’s scant description of the man he had seen in Vanadis Park. Mrs. Oskarsson’s description of the day daddy was still less detailed, but there was a faint possibility that it might be the same person.

  There was no Eskil Engström in the vice squad’s records.

  Martin Beck closed the file and went into the adjoining room. Gunvald Larsson sat behind his desk, staring broodingly out of the window and picking his teeth with the paper knife.

  “Where’s Lennart?” Martin Beck asked.

  Gunvald Larsson reluctantly finished his dental research, wiped the paper knife on his sleeve and said: “How the hell do I know?”

  “Melander then?”

  Gunvald Larsson put the paper knife down on the pen tray and shrugged.

  “In the lavatory, I suppose. What do you want?”

  “Nothing. What are you doing?”

  Gunvald Larsson did not answer at once. Not until Martin Beck moved towards the door did he say:

  “People are goddam crazy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve just been talking to Hjelm. He wants a word with you, by the way. Well, one of the men at Maria police station finds a pair of women’s pants in the shrubbery at Hornstulls Strand. Without telling us he goes and hands them in to the forensic laboratory, saying that they may be the pants that were missing from the body in Tanto Park. So the boys at the lab stand there staring at a pair of outsize pink pants too big even for Kollberg and wondering what the hell it’s all about. Can you blame them. How stupid can you get in this job?”

  “I’ve often asked myself the same thing,” Martin Beck said. “What else did he say?”

  “Who?”

  “Hjelm.”

  “For you to call him up when you’d finished your little chat on the phone.”

  Martin Beck went back to his temporary desk and called up the forensic laboratory.

  “Oh yes, your subway ticket,” Hjelm said. “We couldn’t develop any worthwhile fingerprints, the paper’s too fluffy.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Martin Beck said.

  “We’re not quite finished with it yet. I’ll send the usual report later. Oh yes, we did find some blue cotton fiber, presumably from the lining of a pocket.”

  Martin Beck thought of the little blue jacket that Bosse had clasped in his arms. He thanked Hjelm and put down the receiver. Then he called a taxi and put on his coat.

  It was Friday, and the big weekend exodus out of the city had already begun, although it was still fairly early in the afternoon. The traffic moved sluggishly over the bridges and despite the driver’s skillful and shrewd maneuvering, the taxi took nearly half an hour to reach Timmermansgatan, on the south side.

  The house was near the southern railroad station. It was old and dilapidated and the entrance was dark and chilly. There were only two doors on the ground floor; one of them opened onto a paved yard with garbage cans and a frame on which carpets were beaten. Martin Beck could just make out the name ENGSTRÖM on the tarnished brass plate on the second door. The bell button was missing and he knocked loudly on the panel of the door.

  The woman who opened the door was about fifty. She was small and lean and was wearing a brown woolen dress and slippers made of floral turkish toweling. She peered doubtfully at Martin Beck through noticeably thick spectacles.

  “Mrs. Engström?”

  “Yes,” she replied in a voice that seemed far too rough to be coming from such a frail woman.

  “Is Mr. Engström at home?”

  “N-no,” she said slowly. “What do you want?”

  “I’d like a word with you. I know one of your day children.”

  “Which one?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Bo Oskarsson. His mother gave me your address. May I come in?”

  The woman held open the door and he went through the little hall, past the kitchen and into the apartment’s one room. Outside the window he saw the garbage cans and the carpet frame. A sofa-bed cluttered with ill-assorted cushions dominated the sparsely furnished room. Martin Beck saw nothing to indicate that children were ever there.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said, “but what have you come about? Has anything happened to Bosse?”

  “I’m a policeman,” Martin Beck said. “It’s purely a routine matter. Nothing to worry about. And Bosse’s quite all right.”

  The woman seemed rather frightened at first, then she seemed to brighten up.

  “Why should I worry?” she said. “I’m not afraid of the police. Is it to do with Eskil?”

  Martin Beck smiled at her.

  “Yes, Mrs. Engström, I really came to speak to your husband. It seems, by the way, that he met Bosse the other day.”

  “Eskil?”

  She looked at Martin Beck in distress.

  “Yes,” he said. “Do you know when he will be home?”

  She stared at Martin Beck with round blue eyes, which looked unnaturally large through the thick lenses.

  “But … but Eskil’s dead,” she said.

  Martin Beck stared back. It was some moments before he recovered himself and was able to say:

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I’m awfully sorry. When did it happen?”

  “On the thirteenth of April this year. A car crash. The doctor said he didn’t have time to think much before the end.”

  The woman went up to the window and stared out at the dismal yard. Martin Beck looked at her bony back in the dress that was a size too large.

  “My deepest sympathy, Mrs. Engström,” he said.

  “Eskil was on his way to Södertälje with his truck,” she went on. “It was a Monday.”

  She turned around and said in a firmer voice:

  “Eskil drove a truck for thirty-two years with a clean license. It wasn’t his fault.”

  “I see,” Martin Beck said. “I’m awfully sorry to have troubled you. There must be some mistake.”

  “And the hooligans who crashed into him were let off lightly,” she said. “Even though the car was stolen.”

  She nodded with a faraway look in her eyes. Went up to the settee and fiddled with the cushions.

&n
bsp; “I’ll go now,” Martin Beck said.

  He was suddenly overcome by claustrophobia. He would like to have walked straight out of the gloomy room with the dreary little woman, but he controlled himself and said:

  “If you don’t mind, I’d be glad if I could see a photograph of your husband before I go.”

  “I have no photo of Eskil.”

  “But you’ve a passport, haven’t you? Or a driver’s license?”

  “We never traveled anywhere so Eskil didn’t have a passport. And the driver’s license is very old.”

  “May I see it?” Martin Beck asked.

  She opened a drawer and took out the license. It was made out in the name of Eskil Johan Albert Engström and had been issued in 1935. The photo showed a young man with shiny, wavy hair, big nose and a small mouth with thin lips.

  “He didn’t look like that now,” the woman said.

  “How did he look? Can you describe him?”

  She didn’t seem at all surprised at the question but answered promptly:

  “He wasn’t as tall as you but a good bit taller than me. And rather thin. His hair was turning gray and had started to fall out. I don’t know what else to say. He had a nice appearance—at least I thought so. Though you couldn’t call him handsome, with his big nose and small mouth. But he looked nice.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Engström,” Martin Beck said. “I’ve disturbed you long enough.”

  She saw him to the door and did not shut it until the street door had closed behind him.

  Martin Beck took a deep breath and strode quickly along the street, northward, longing to get back to his desk.

  On it lay two brief messages.

  The first one was from Melander: The woman who sold the subway ticket is called Gunda Persson. Remembers nothing. No time to look at the passengers, she says.

  The other was from Hammar: Come at once. Urgent.

  20

  Gunvald Larsson stood at the window studying six road workmen, who in their turn were studying a seventh, who was leaning on a shovel.

  “Reminds me of a story,” he said. “We lay in Kalmar once with a minesweeper. I was sitting in the navigation cabin together with the second mate and the boy on watch came in and said, ‘Please, sir, there’s a dead man on the quayside.’ ‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, ‘there’s a dead man on the quayside.’ ‘Dead men don’t stand about on quaysides,’ I said, ‘you must pull yourself together, Johansson.’ ‘But sir,’ he said, ‘it must be a dead man, I’ve been watching him all the time and he hasn’t moved for several hours.’ And the second mate got up and looked out of the porthole and said, ‘Hah, it’s a municipal workman.’ ”