The Man on the Balcony

by Maj Sjowall

  Plainclothes and uniformed policemen shook thousands of such people awake on this night, forcing them to their feet, shining flashlights into faces stupid with sleep and demanding proof of identity. Many came in for this five or six times; they moved about from place to place, only to be prodded awake by new police who were just as exhausted as themselves.

  Otherwise the streets were quiet. Not even prostitutes and drug pushers dared to show their faces; evidently they did not realize that the police had less time for them than ever.

  By seven o’clock on Wednesday morning the hunt had died down. Haggard and hollow-eyed policemen stumbled home for a few hours sleep, others dropped like felled trees onto sofas and wooden benches in the guardrooms and dayrooms of the various stations.

  Scores of people were found that night, in the most surprising places, but none of them was called Ingemund Rudolf Fransson.

  At seven o’clock Kollberg and Martin Beck were at headquarters at Kungsholmsgatan. By now they were so tired that they were past feeling it and had got their second wind, as it were.

  Kollberg was standing with his hands behind his back in front of the big map on the wall.

  “He was a gardening laborer,” he said. “Employed by the local council. He worked for eight years in the city parks, he must have got to know them all during that time. And up to now he hasn’t gone outside the actual city limits. He keeps to ground he knows.”

  “If only we could be sure,” Martin Beck said.

  “One thing is certain. He didn’t sleep in any park last night. Not in Stockholm.” Kollberg paused and said reflectively: “Unless we’ve had goddam bad luck.”

  “Exactly,” Martin Beck said. “Besides, there are enormous areas that just can’t be checked effectively at night. Djurgården, Gärdet, Lili-Jans Wood … to say nothing of the districts outside the city.”

  “The Nacka reserve,” Kollberg said.

  “The cemeteries,” Martin Beck said.

  “Yes, the cemeteries … They’re locked, it’s true, but …”

  Martin Beck looked at the clock.

  “The immediate question is: what does he do in the daytime?”

  “That’s what is so fantastic,” Kollberg said. “He evidently walks around town quite openly.”

  “We’ve got to pull him in today,” Martin Beck said. “Anything else is unthinkable.”

  “Yes,” Kollberg said.

  The psychologists were on the alert and came forward with the view that Ingemund Fransson was not deliberately trying to hide or keep out of the way. He was probably in a state of nonconsciousness but acted, also unconsciously, in an intelligent way and with automatic instinct of self-preservation.

  “Very enlightening,” Kollberg said.

  A little later Gunvald Larsson arrived. He had been working independently and along lines of his own.

  “Do you know how far I’ve driven since last evening? Three hundred and forty kilometers. In this goddam city. And slowly. I think he must be some kind of spook.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” Kollberg said.

  Melander also had a point of view.

  “The systematics disturb me. He commits one murder and then another almost immediately afterwards, then there’s an interval of eight days, then a new murder and now …”

  All had points of view.

  The public was hysterical and panic-stricken and the police force overworked.

  The general review of the situation on Wednesday morning had an air of optimism and confidence. On the surface. Deep down inside each man was just as afraid as the next.

  “We need more men,” Hammar said. “Get every available man from the outlying districts. Many will volunteer.”

  And plainclothes men, that was a recurrent theme. Plainclothes police in key places; everyone who had a track suit or old overalls was to take himself out into the bushes.

  “We must have a lot of uniformed men on patrol,” Martin Beck said. “To reassure the public. To give them a sense of security.”

  Thinking of what he had just said, he was overcome by a bitter feeling of hopelessness and helplessness.

  “Compulsory proof of identity in all liquor stores,” Hammar said.

  That was a good idea, but it did not lead to any results.

  Nothing seemed to lead anywhere. The hours of Wednesday dragged past. A dozen or so alarms were received but none of them seemed very hopeful and all turned out in fact to be false.

  Evening came, and a chilly night. The raids continued.

  Nobody slept. Gunvald Larsson drove another three hundred kilometers at 46 öre a kilometer.

  “The dogs are groggy too,” he said when he came back. “They’re even past biting policemen.”

  The morning of Thursday the twenty-second of June gave prospects of a warm but windy day.

  “I’m going up to Skansen to stand there disguised as a maypole,” Gunvald Larsson said.

  No one had the energy to answer him. Martin Beck felt sick and his stomach heaved. When he tried to hold the paper mug to his lips his hand shook so much that he spilled coffee on Melander’s blotting paper. And Melander, who was otherwise very finicky, didn’t even seem to notice.

  Melander was also unusually grave. He was thinking of the timetable. The timetable which showed that it was almost time for the next.

  At two o’clock in the afternoon release came at last. In the form of a telephone call. Rönn answered.

  “Where? In Djurgården?”

  Putting his hand over the mouthpiece, he looked at the others and said:

  “He’s in Djurgården. Several persons have seen him.”

  “If we’re lucky he’s still in South Djurgården, and then we’ve got him cornered,” Kollberg said in the car as they drove east, closely followed by Melander and Rönn.

  South Djurgården is an island and to get there one must cross one of the two bridges across Djurgårdsbrunnsviken and the canal, unless one takes the ferry or has a boat of one’s own. On the third of the island nearest to the center of town are museums, the amusement park of Gröna Lund, summer restaurants, motorboat and yacht clubs, Skansen’s open-air museum and zoo, and the residential district, like a small village, known as Gamla Djurgårdsstaden. The rest of its area is covered with cultivated parkland interspersed with woods. The buildings are old but well preserved: manor houses, mansions, dignified villas and small eighteenth-century wooden houses dotted about, all surrounded by beautiful gardens.

  Melander and Rönn turned off onto the Djurgården bridge while Kollberg and Martin Beck drove straight on to the Djurgården Inn. A few police cars were already drawn up in front of the restaurant.

  The bridge over the canal was cordoned off by a radio patrol car and on the other side they saw another police car driving slowly in the direction of the Manilla deaf and dumb school.

  A small cluster of people stood at the north end of the bridge. As Martin Beck and Kollberg approached, an elderly man detached himself from the group and went up to them.

  “I take it you’re the superintendents,” he said.

  They stopped and Martin Beck nodded.

  “My name’s Nyberg,” the man went on. “I was the one who discovered the murderer and called the police.”

  “Where did you find him?” Martin Beck asked.

  “Below Gröndal. He was standing in the road looking up at the house. I recognized him at once from the picture and description in the papers. At first I didn’t know what to do, whether to try and nab him, but as I got closer I heard him talking to himself. It sounded so odd that I knew he must be dangerous, so I walked up to the inn as quietly as possible and phoned the police.”

  “Talking to himself, was he,” Kollberg remarked. “Did you hear what he said?”

  “He stood there saying he was ill. He expressed himself in a very funny way, but that’s what he said. That he was ill. When I’d phoned I went back but he had gone. Then I kept watch here by the bridge until the police came.”

/>   Martin Beck and Kollberg went on down to the bridge and spoke to the radio policemen.

  The man had been seen by several witnesses between the canal and Manilla, and the witness at Gröndal was obviously the last one to have seen him. As the area had been cordoned off so quickly there was every reason to believe that the man was still in South Djurgården. No bus had crossed the bridge after the witness saw the man at Gröndal. The roads into town had been closed immediately and the man could hardly have got as far as Skansen or Djurgårdsstaden before that. There was not much chance of taking him by surprise, he must already have noticed that the police were out in full force.

  Martin Beck and Kollberg got into their car and drove across the bridge, closely followed by two prowl cars. They stopped on the road between the deaf and dumb school and the bridge and started to organize the hunt from there.

  A quarter of an hour later all available men from several of Stockholm’s police districts had arrived on the scene and about a hundred policemen had been sent out to cover the area between Skansen and Blockhusudden.

  Martin Beck sat in the car directing the search by radio. The search groups were equipped with walkie-talkies and the roads were patroled by squad cars. Dozens of innocent pedestrians were stopped time and again, forced to prove their identity and told to leave the area. At the roadblocks all cars on their way into town were stopped and checked.

  In the park by Rosendal Manor a young man broke into a run when a policeman asked to see his identity card and in panic he ran right into the arms of two other policemen. He refused to say who he was and why he had run. When they searched him they found a loaded 9-millimeter Parabellum in his coat pocket and he was taken straight to the nearest police station.

  “In this way we’ll soon have pulled in every criminal in Stockholm except the one we want,” Kollberg said.

  “He’s lying low somewhere,” said Martin Beck. “This time he can’t escape.”

  “Don’t be so sure. We can’t keep the area cordoned off indefinitely. And if he has got past Skansen …”

  “He didn’t have time. Unless he drove a car and that doesn’t seem likely.”

  “Why not? He might have stolen one,” Kollberg said.

  A voice crackled on the radio. Martin Beck pressed the button and answered.

  “Car ninety-seven, nine seven, here. We’ve found him. Over.”

  “Where are you?” Martin Beck asked.

  “At Biskopsudden. Above the boat club.”

  “We’ll be right over.”

  It took them three minutes to drive to Biskopsudden. Three radio cars, a motorcycle policeman and several plainclothes and uniformed policemen were standing in the road. Between the cars and surrounded by the police stood the man. A radio policeman in a leather jacket was holding his arm bent behind his back.

  The man was thin and somewhat shorter than Martin Beck. He had a big nose, blue-gray eyes, and sandy hair brushed back and rather thin on top. He was dressed in brown trousers, white shirt with no tie, and dark-brown jacket. As Martin Beck and Kollberg came towards him he said:

  “What’s all this?”

  “What’s your name?” Martin Beck asked.

  “Fristedt. Wilhelm Fristedt.”

  “Can you prove your identity?”

  “No, my driver’s license is in the pocket of another coat.”

  “Where have you been during the last two weeks?”

  “Nowhere. I mean at home. In Bondegatan. I’ve been ill.”

  “Alone at home?”

  It was Kollberg who asked. He sounded sarcastic.

  “Yes,” the man replied.

  “Your name’s Fransson, isn’t it?” Martin Beck said kindly.

  “No, it’s Fristedt. Must he grip my arm so tightly? It hurts.”

  Martin Beck nodded to the policeman in the leather jacket.

  “Okay. Put him in the car.”

  He and Kollberg moved to one side and Martin Beck said:

  “What do you think? Is it our man?”

  Kollberg scratched his head.

  “I don’t know. He seems so neat and ordinary. But his appearance tallies and he has no proof of identity. I don’t know.”

  Martin Beck went up to the car and opened the door to the rear seat.

  “What are you doing here in Djurgården?”

  “Nothing. Just out for a walk. What’s all this about?”

  “And you can’t prove your identity?”

  “No, unfortunately.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “In Bondegatan. Why are you asking me all this?”

  “What were you doing last Tuesday?”

  “The day before yesterday? I was at home. I was ill. Today’s the first time I’ve been out in over two weeks.”

  “Who can prove it?” Martin Beck asked. “Was anyone with you when you were ill?”

  “No, I was alone.”

  Martin Beck drummed on the car roof and looked at Kollberg. Kollberg opened the door on the other side, leaned into the car and said:

  “May I ask what it was you said when you were over by Gröndal half an hour ago?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You said something when you stood below Gröndal earlier today.”

  “Oh!” the man said. “Oh, that.”

  He smiled and said:

  “I am the sick lime-tree that withers while still young. Dry leaves I scattered to the wind when on my crown they hung.

  Is that what you mean?”

  The policeman in the leather jacket was gaping at the man.

  “Fröding,” Kollberg said.

  “Yes,” the man said. “Our great poet Fröding. He was living at Gröndal when he died. Not so old but out of his mind.”

  “What’s your job?” Martin Beck asked.

  “I’m a butcher,” the man replied.

  Martin Beck straightened up and looked at Kollberg over the car roof. Kollberg shrugged. Martin Beck lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Then he bent down and looked at the man.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s start again. What’s your name?”

  The sun beat down on the car roof. The man in the back seat mopped his brow and said:

  “Wilhelm Fristedt.”

  30

  One might take Martin Beck for a greenhorn from the country and Kollberg for a sex murderer. One could put a false beard on Rönn and get someone to believe he was Santa Claus, and a confused witness might say that Gunvald Larsson was Chinese. One could no doubt dress up the assistant commissioner as a laborer and the commissioner as a tree. One could probably persuade someone that the minister for home affairs was a policeman. One could, like the Japanese during the Second World War and certain monomaniac photographers, disguise oneself as a bush and make pretense at not being found out. One could hoodwink people about almost anything at all.

  But nothing in this world could make people be mistaken about Kristiansson and Kvant.

  Kristiansson and Kvant were dressed in uniform caps and leather jackets with gilded buttons. Their belts were attached to straps diagonally across their chests and they carried pistols and truncheons. Their dress was due to the fact that they felt cold as soon as the temperature dropped below 70°.

  They were both from the province of Skåne, in the far south.

  Both were six foot two and had blue eyes. Both were broad-shouldered and fair-haired and weighed about 180 pounds. They drove a black Plymouth with white mudguards. It had a searchlight and radio mast, a rotating orange flashlight and two red lights on the roof. In addition, the word POLICE was painted in white block letters on four places: over the doors, on the hood and across the back.

  Kristiansson and Kvant were radio police.

  Before joining the force they had both been regular sergeants in the South Skåne Infantry Regiment at Ystad.

  Both were married and each had two children.

  They had worked together for a long time and knew each other as well as only two men in a radio car
can do. They applied for transfer at the same time and got on badly with everyone except each other.

  Yet they were not really alike and they often got on each other’s nerves. Kristiansson was gentle and conciliatory, Kvant hot-tempered and truculent. Kristiansson never mentioned his wife, Kvant talked of hardly anything else but his. By this time Kristiansson knew everything about her; not only what she said and did, but the most intimate details regarding her body and general behavior.

  They were regarded as complementing each other perfectly.

  They had pulled in many thieves and thousands of drunks and they had put a stop to hundreds of apartment rows; Kvant had even started a few rows himself, since he took it for granted that people always got noisy and troublesome when they suddenly found two policemen standing in their hall.

  They had never made a spectacular scoop of any kind or had their names in the papers. Once, while serving in Malmö, they had driven a drunken journalist, who was murdered six months later, to the casualty department of the hospital. He had cut his wrists. This was the nearest they had ever come to fame.

  The radio car was their second home, with its faint reek of liquor fumes left by all the drunks and with its atmosphere, hard to define, of stale intimacy.

  Some people thought they were stuck-up because they spoke with a Skåne accent, and they themselves were annoyed when certain persons with no feeling for the sound and quality of the dialect tried to mimic them.

  Kristiansson and Kvant did not even belong to the Stockholm police. They were radio police in Solna, outside the city boundary, and knew very little more about the park murders than what they had read in the papers and heard on the radio.

  Soon after half past two on Thursday the twenty-second of June they were right in front of the military academy at Karlberg, with only twenty minutes of their shift to go.