by Maj Sjowall
The man in the street let the shovel fall and went off with the others. It was five o’clock and still Friday.
“Nice job if you can get it,” Gunvald Larsson said. “Just stand there staring.”
“What are you doing yourself?” Melander asked.
“Standing and staring of course. And if the assistant commissioner had his office across the street I bet you anything he would stand in the window staring at me, and if the commissioner was on the floor above here he would stand staring at the assistant commissioner and if the home secretary …”
“Answer the phone instead,” Melander said.
Martin Beck had just entered the room. He stood by the door looking thoughtfully at Gunvald Larsson, who was just saying:
“What do you want me to do about it? Send out the dog van?”
He banged down the receiver, stared at Martin Beck and said:
“What’s up with you?”
“You said something just now that made me think of …”
“The dog van?”
“No, something you said just before that.”
“What did it make you think of?”
“I don’t know. It’s something I can’t call to mind.”
“You’re not alone in that,” Gunvald Larsson said.
Martin Beck shrugged.
“There’s to be a roundup tonight,” he said. “I was just talking to Hammar.”
“Roundup? But everyone’s already worn out,” Gunvald Larsson said. “What will they look like tomorrow?”
“Doesn’t seem very constructive,” Melander said. “Whose idea is it?”
“I don’t know. Hammar didn’t seem very happy about it either.”
“Who’s happy nowadays,” Gunvald Larsson said.
Martin Beck had not been there when the decision was made and had he had a chance he would probably have opposed it. He suspected that the motive was aimlessness in the investigation work and a general feeling that something must be done. The position was indeed very serious; the newspapers and television worked the public up with their vague accounts of the search, and people began saying that “the police did nothing” or “were helpless.” Seventy-five men were now working in the actual search force and the external pressure they were subjected to was enormous. Tips were pouring in every hour and every single one had to be checked, even though it could be seen at a glance that most of them were useless. Added to this was the internal pressure, the knowledge that the murderer not only must be caught but that he must be caught quickly. The investigation was a macabre race with death, and so far there was very little to go on. A vague description based on the evidence of a three-year-old child and a ruthless criminal. A subway ticket. A general idea of the mentality of the man they were hunting. The whole lot intangible and very disturbing.
“This isn’t an investigation, it’s a guessing game,” Hammar had said in regard to the subway ticket.
While this was one of his pet phrases and Martin Beck had heard it often before, it was an apt description of the situation at the moment.
Of course there was just a chance that a big roundup might give a clue, but the possibility seemed remote. The latest roundup had been made as late as Tuesday night and it had failed in its main purpose: to catch the mugger. Against that it had resulted in the seizure of about thirty criminals of various kinds, mainly dope pushers and burglars. This had further increased the burden of work for the police and moreover had caused panic in the underworld.
The roundup tonight meant that many would be jaded tomorrow. And tomorrow perhaps …
But a roundup it was to be and a roundup it was. It started about eleven o’clock and the news spread like wildfire through condemned houses and junkies’ pads. The result was discouraging. Thieves, fences, pimps, prostitutes, all lay low, even most of the junkies. Hour after hour passed and the raid continued with undiminished strength. They caught a burglar red-handed and a fence who had not enough instinct of self-preservation to go to earth. All that the police really succeeded in doing was to stir up the dregs—the homeless, the alcoholics, the drug addicts, those who had lost all hope, those who could not even crawl away when the welfare state turned the stone over. A fourteen-year-old schoolgirl was found naked in an attic. She had taken fifty preludin pills and been raped at least twenty times. But when the police came she was alone. Bleeding, filthy and bruised. She could still talk and gave a rambling account of what had happened, saying she didn’t care. They couldn’t even find her clothes but had to wrap her in an old quilt. They drove her to an address she gave and a person who made out she was her mother said that she had been missing for three days and refused to let her in. Only when the girl collapsed on the stairs did they send for an ambulance. Several similar cases came to light.
At half past four Martin Beck and Kollberg were sitting in a car at Skeppsbron.
“There’s something funny about Gunvald,” Martin Beck said.
“Yes, he’s stupid,” Kollberg said.
“No, something else. Something I can’t put my finger on.”
“Oh?” said Kollberg with a yawn.
Just then an alarm came through on the radio.
“This is Hansson of fifth district. We’re in Västmannagatan. We’ve found a body here. And …”
“Yes?”
“He fits the description.”
They drove straight there. A couple of police cars were drawn up in front of a condemned house. The dead man lay on his back in a room on the third floor. It was extraordinary that he had been able to get up there, for the house was half pulled down and most of the stairs were missing. Martin Beck and Kollberg climbed a light-metal ladder that the police had put up. The man was about thirty-five, with a striking profile, light-blue shirt and dark-brown trousers. Worn-out black shoes. No socks. Thin hair brushed back. They looked at him, someone stifled a yawn.
“Nothing to do but rope off and wait for the technical division to open up,” Kollberg said.
“Hardly worth waiting for,” said Hansson, who was an old hand. “Suffocated by vomit. Clear as daylight.”
“Yes, it looks like it,” Martin Beck said. “How long do you think he’s been dead?”
“Not very long,” Kollberg said.
“No,” Hansson said. “Not in this heat.”
An hour later Martin Beck went home and Kollberg went to Kungsholmsgatan.
They exchanged a few remarks before parting.
“The description did fit.”
“It fits a damn sight too many,” Martin Beck answered.
“And it’s the right district.”
“We must find out who he is first.”
The time was half past six when Martin Beck got home to Bagarmossen. His wife had evidently just woken up. At any rate she was awake and still lay in bed. She looked critically at him and said:
“What a sight you look.”
“Why aren’t you wearing a nightie?”
“It’s so hot. Does it offend you?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
He felt unshaven and frowzy but was too tired to do anything about it. Got undressed and put on his pajamas. Got into bed. Thought: damn stupid idea this double bed, next pay day I’ll buy a divan and put it in the other room.
“Does it get you all excited perhaps?” she said sarcastically.
But he was already asleep.
At eleven o’clock the same morning he was back at Kungsholmsgatan, somewhat hollow-eyed, but bathed and slightly refreshed. Kollberg was still there, and the dead man in Västmannagatan had not yet been identified.
“Not a paper of any kind in his pockets, not so much as a subway ticket.”
“What does the doctor say?”
“Suffocated by vomit, not a doubt. Thinks it’s antifreeze. There was an empty can there.”
“How long had he been dead?”
“Twenty-four hours at the outside.”
They sat silent for a moment.
“I don’t think he�
�s the one,” Kollberg said.
“Nor do I.”
“But you never know.”
“No.”
Two hours later the mugger was confronted with the body.
“Christ, how disgusting,” he said.
And a moment later:
“No, it wasn’t him I saw. I’ve never seen this guy before.”
Then he began to feel sick.
A real tough guy, thought Rönn, who was handcuffed to him and therefore had to accompany him to the lavatory. But he said nothing, merely took a towel and wiped Lundgren’s mouth and forehead.
At investigation headquarters Kollberg said:
“There’s no certainty, all the same.”
“No,” Martin Beck agreed.
21
The time was a quarter to eight on Saturday evening when Kollberg’s wife called up.
“Hello, Kollberg,” he said, picking up the phone.
“What in heaven’s name are you up to, Lennart? You haven’t been home since yesterday morning.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to nag, but I hate being out here all by myself.”
“I know.”
“I want you to know that I’m not cross and I don’t want to seem fretful, but I’m so lonely. I’m a tiny bit scared too.”
“I see. Okay, I’ll come home now.”
“You’re not to come just for my sake, not if there’s something else you must do. As long as I can talk to you for a while.”
“Yes, I’ll come now. At once.”
There was a short pause. Then she said with unexpected gentleness:
“Lennart?”
“Yes?”
“I saw you on TV not long ago. You looked so tired.”
“I am tired. I’ll come home now. So long.”
“So long, darling.”
Kollberg said a few words to Martin Beck, then he went straight down to his car.
Like Martin Beck and Gunvald Larsson, he lived to the south of the city, but rather more centrally. At Palandergatan near the subway station of Skärmarbrink. He drove straight through the city but when he got to Slussen he turned off to the right along Hornsgatan instead of continuing south. It was not difficult for him to analyze his own action.
There was no private life any longer, no time off, no room for thought of anything but duty and responsibility. So long as the murderer was at large, so long as it was light, so long as there was a park, and so long as a child might be playing there, then only the investigation mattered.
Or rather, the hunt. For a police investigation implies that one has factual material to work with, and the few facts available had long since been ground to pieces in the investigation machinery.
He thought of the conclusions in the psychological analysis; the murderer was a figure with no features and no qualities, and the only aim was to seize him before he had time to commit another murder. In order to do this they must be lucky, one of the reporters had said after the evening’s press conference. Kollberg knew that this was an erroneous line of reasoning. He also knew that when the murderer was caught—and he was quite certain that he would be—it would look like luck and would be regarded by many people as a fluke. But it was a case of giving luck a helping hand, of making the net of circumstance that was eventually to catch the criminal as fine-meshed as possible. And this was a task that rested on him. And on every other policeman. Not on any outsider.
That is why Kollberg did not drive straight home, although he had fully intended doing so. Instead, he drove slowly west along Hornsgatan.
Kollberg was very methodical and considered that the taking of chances had no part in police work. He thought, for instance, that Gunvald Larsson had been guilty of a grave mistake when he broke into the mugger’s apartment, even if the door had been old and rickety. Supposing the door had not given at the first assault? Breaking open a door was taking a chance, and was therefore something of which he disapproved on principle. It even happened that he differed from Martin Beck on this point.
He drove around Mariatorget, closely observing the small groups of youngsters in the gardens and around the stands. He knew that this was mostly where schoolchildren and other young people met the small-scale dope pushers. Every day large quantities of hashish, marijuana, preludin and LSD were passed furtively from seller to buyer. And the buyers were getting younger and younger. Soon they would become addicts. Only the day before he had heard that schoolgirls of ten and eleven were offered shots. And there was nothing much the police could do; they just hadn’t the resources. And to make quite sure that vice was bolstered up and those who indulged in it were still further lulled into boastfulness and smug security, this fact was trumpeted out time and again by the country’s mass communication media. Anyway, he doubted whether this was a concern of the police at all. Drug-taking among young people was caused by a catastrophic philosophy which had been provoked by the prevailing system. Consequently society should be duty bound to produce an effective counterargument. One that was not based on smugness and more police officers.
Likewise he couldn’t see the point of striking demonstrators at Hötorget and outside the US Trade Center with sabers and truncheons, though he quite well understood those colleagues who were more or less forced to do so.
Detective Inspector Lennart Kollberg was thinking all this as he turned off down Rosenlundsgatan and Sköldgatan and drove past the miniature golf course at Tantogården. He parked the car and walked along one of the paths leading up into the park.
The daylight was fading and there were not many people about. But naturally a few children were still playing, in spite of everything; come to that you could hardly expect all the children in a big city to be kept indoors just because a murderer was at large. Kollberg went and stood in one of the few sparse shrubberies, putting his right foot up on the stub of a tree. From this vantage point he could see the allotment gardens and the spot where the dead girl had lain five days earlier.
He was not aware of any special reason why he had been drawn to this particular place; perhaps because it was the biggest park in the central part of the city and was within easy reach on his way home. In the distance he saw several children, fairly big, perhaps in their early teens. He stood still, waiting. For what, he didn’t know, perhaps for the children to go home. He was very tired. Now and then he saw a flickering in front of his eyes.
Kollberg was unarmed. Even with the growing gangster mentality and the steadily increasing brutality of crime, he was one of those who urged that the police should be disarmed entirely, and nowadays he carried a pistol only in case of extreme need and then only when directly ordered to do so.
A train trundled past on the high track, and only when the thud of the wheels on the joints began to die away did Kollberg realize that he was no longer alone in the shrubbery.
Then he was lying headlong in the dew-wet grass with the taste of blood in his mouth. Someone had struck him over the back of the neck, very hard and presumably with some kind of weapon.
Whoever struck Kollberg made a mistake. Similar mistakes had been made before, and several people had paid dearly for them.
Moreover, the assailant had put the weight of his body behind the blow and was off balance, and it took Kollberg less than two seconds to roll over on his back and bring his attacker to the ground—a tall, heavy man who fell with a thud. That was all Kollberg had time to take in, for there was a second man, who, his face blank with astonishment, stuck his right hand into his jacket pocket and looked just as amazed when Kollberg, with one knee still on the ground, seized his arm and twisted it.
It was a grip that would have dislocated the arm or even broken it, if Kollberg had not checked himself halfway and contented himself with flinging the man backwards into the bushes.
The man who had struck him was sitting on the ground making faces while he rubbed his right shoulder with his left hand. The rubber truncheon had dropped from his hand. He was dressed in a blue track suit and l
ooked several years younger than Kollberg. The second man crawled out of the bushes. He was older and smaller, and was wearing a corduroy jacket and sports trousers. Both had white sneakers with rubber soles. They looked like a couple of amateur yachtsmen.
“What the hell’s all this?” Kollberg asked.
“Who are you?” asked the man in the track suit.
“Police,” Kollberg replied.
“Oh,” the smaller man said.
He had got up and was sheepishly dusting down his trousers.
“Then I presume we must apologize,” the first man said. “A good trick that, where did you learn it?”
Kollberg made no reply. He had caught sight of a flat object on the ground. He stooped down and picked it up, and saw at once what it was. A small black automatic pistol, an Astra, made in Spain. Kollberg weighed it in his hand and looked suspiciously at the two men.
“Just what the hell is all this?” he said.
The big man stood up and shook himself.
“As I said, we apologize. You stood here behind the bushes spying on the children. And … you know, the murderer …”
“Yes? Go on.”
“We live up here,” the smaller man said, pointing to the apartment houses on the other side of the railroad.
“And?”
“We have children of our own and we know the parents of the girl who was murdered the other day.”
“And?”
“And so as to help …”
“Yes?”
“We have formed our own voluntary civic guard that patrols in the park.”
“You have what?”
“We have formed a voluntary militia …”
Kollberg was overcome by a sudden rage.