The Man on the Balcony

by Maj Sjowall

Kristiansson, who was at the wheel, had just reversed the car on the old parade ground and was now driving westwards along Karlberg Strand.

  “Stop a moment,” Kvant said.

  “Why?”

  “I want to have a look at that boat.”

  After a while Kristiansson said with a yawn:

  “Had a good look?”

  “Yes.”

  They drove on slowly.

  “The park murderer has been caught,” Kristiansson said. “They’ve got him surrounded at Djurgården.”

  “So I heard,” Kvant said.

  “Good thing the kids are down in Skåne.”

  “Yes. Funny thing, you know …”

  He broke off. Kristiansson said nothing.

  “Funny thing,” Kvant went on. “Before I married Siv I was always after the girls. One chick after the other, couldn’t stop. Virile, as they say. In fact, I was goddam randy.”

  “Yes, I remember,” Kristiansson said, yawning.

  “But now—why, now I feel like an old horse that’s been put out to graze. Fall dead asleep the minute I get into bed. And all I think of when I wake up is cornflakes and milk.”

  He made a short, pregnant pause and added:

  “Must be old age creeping on.”

  Kristiansson and Kvant had just turned thirty.

  “Yes,” Kristiansson said.

  He drove past Karlberg bridge and was now only twenty-five yards from the city boundary. Had the park murderer not been surrounded at Djurgården he would probably have swung up to the right to Ekelundsvägen and had a look at what was left of the woods there after the new apartment houses had gone up. But there was no reason to now, and anyway he’d rather not see the National Police College twice in the same day if he could help it. So he continued westwards along the winding road by the water.

  They drove past Talludden and Kvant looked sourly at the teenagers hanging about outside the café and around the cars in the parking lot.

  “By rights we ought to stop and take a look at their goddam rattletraps.”

  “That’s the traffic boys’ headache,” Kristiansson said. “We’re due back at the station in fifteen minutes.”

  They sat for a while in silence.

  “Good thing they’ve pulled in that sex maniac,” Kristiansson said.

  “If only you could once say something I haven’t heard twenty times already.”

  “It’s not so easy.”

  “Siv was in a stinking temper this morning,” Kvant said. “Did I tell you about that lump she thought she had on her left breast? The one she thought might be cancer?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Oh. Well, anyway, I thought now she’s been nagging so long about that lump so I’ll have a good feel myself. She was lying there like a dead fish when the alarm went off and of course I woke up before she did. So I …”

  “Yes, you told me.”

  They had come to the end of Karlberg Strand, but instead of turning up towards the Sundbyberg road—which was the shortest way to the police station—Kristiansson drove straight on and along Huvudsta Allé, a road seldom used by anybody nowadays.

  Later, many people were to ask him why he took that particular road, but that was a question he could not answer. He just took it, and that was that. In any case, Kvant did not react. He had been a radio policeman far too long to ask useless questions. Instead, he said thoughtfully:

  “No, I just can’t make out what has got into her. Siv, I mean.”

  They passed Huvudsta Castle.

  Not much of a castle, come to that, Kristiansson thought for perhaps the five-hundredth time. At home in Skåne there are real castles. With counts and barons in them. Aloud he said:

  “Can you lend me twenty kronor?”

  Kvant nodded. Kristiansson was chronically short of money.

  They drove slowly on. To the right lay a newly built residential area with tall apartment houses, to the left was a narrow but densely wooded strip of land between the road and the Ulvsunda Lake.

  “Stop a minute,” Kvant said.

  “Why?”

  “Call of nature.”

  “We’re nearly there.”

  “Can’t be helped.”

  Kristiansson turned left and let the car glide slowly into one of the clearings. Then he stopped. Kvant got out and walked around the car, over to some low bushes, placed his legs wide apart and whistled as he pulled down the zipper of his fly. He looked over the bushes. Then he turned his head and saw a man standing only five or six yards away, evidently on the same business as himself.

  “Sorry,” Kvant said, turning politely the other way.

  He adjusted his clothes and went towards the car. Kristiansson had opened the door and sat there looking out.

  While still two yards from the car Kvant stopped dead and said:

  “But that man looked like … and behind was sitting …”

  At the same time Kristiansson said:

  “I say, that fellow there …”

  Kvant swung around and strode towards the man by the bushes.

  Kristiansson started to get out of the car.

  The man was dressed in a beige-colored corduroy jacket, grubby white shirt, crumpled brown trousers and black shoes. He was of medium height, with a big nose and thin hair brushed straight back. And he had still not adjusted his clothes.

  When Kvant was only two yards from him the man raised his right arm to his face and said:

  “Don’t hit me.”

  Kvant gave a start.

  “What!” he said.

  Only that morning his wife had told him he was a clumsy great lout and no one could help noticing it, but still, this was the limit. Controlling himself he said:

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Nothing,” the man said.

  He gave a shy, awkward smile. Kvant eyed his clothes.

  “Have you proof of identity?”

  “Yes, I’ve my pension card in my pocket.” Kristiansson came up to them. The man looked at him and said:

  “Don’t hit me.”

  “Isn’t your name Ingemund Fransson?” Kristiansson asked.

  “Yes,” the man replied.

  “I think you’d better come with us,” Kvant said, taking him by the arm.

  The man willingly let himself be led over to the car.

  “Get into the back seat,” Kristiansson said.

  “And do up your fly,” Kvant ordered.

  The man hesitated a moment. Then he smiled and obeyed. Kvant got into the back seat and sat beside him.

  “Let’s have a look at that pension card,” Kvant said.

  The man put his hand into his hip pocket and drew out the pension warrant.

  Kvant looked at it and passed it to Kristiansson.

  “Doesn’t seem any doubt,” Kristiansson said.

  Kvant stared incredulously at the man and said:

  “No, it’s him all right.”

  Kristiansson went around the car, opened the door on the other side and started going through the man’s jacket pockets.

  Now, at close range, he saw that the man’s cheeks were sunken and that his chin was covered with gray stubble that must have been several days old.

  “Here,” Kristiansson said, pulling something out of the inside pocket of the jacket.

  It was a pair of little girls’ pants, light-blue.

  “Hm. That settles it, doesn’t it?” Kvant said. “You’ve killed three little girls, haven’t you? Eh?”

  “Yes,” the man said.

  He smiled and shook his head.

  “I had to,” he said.

  Kristiansson was still standing outside the car.

  “How did you get them to go with you?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’ve a way with children. Children always like me. I show them things. Flowers and so on.”

  Kristiansson pondered for a moment. Then he said:

  “Where did you sleep last night?”

  “The northern cemetery,” t
he man said.

  “Have you slept there all the time?” Kvant asked.

  “No, in other cemeteries too. I don’t really remember.”

  “And in the daytime,” Kristiansson said. “Where have you been in the daytime?”

  “Oh, various places. In the churches a lot. It’s so beautiful there. So quiet and still. You can sit there for hours …”

  “But you made goddam sure you didn’t go home, didn’t you, eh?” Kvant said.

  “I did go once. I had got something on my shoes. And …”

  “Yes?”

  “I had to change them and put on my old sneakers. Then of course I bought new shoes. Very expensive. Outrageously expensive, I don’t mind saying.”

  Kristiansson and Kvant stared at him.

  “And then I fetched my jacket.”

  “I see,” said Kristiansson.

  “It really gets quite chilly when you have to sleep out of doors at night,” the man said conversationally.

  They heard the sound of quick footsteps, and a young woman in a blue smock and wooden-soled shoes came running along. She caught sight of the radio car and stopped dead.

  “Oh,” she said, panting. “I suppose you haven’t … My little girl … I can’t find her … I turned my back for a few minutes and she was gone. You haven’t seen her, have you? She is wearing a red dress …”

  Kvant wound the window down to say something. Then he thought better of it and said politely:

  “Yes, madam. She’s sitting behind the bushes over there playing with a doll. She’s all right. I saw her a few moments ago.”

  Kristiansson instinctively kept the light-blue pants behind his back and tried to smile at the woman. The result was horrible.

  “Not to worry,” he said feebly.

  The woman ran over to the bushes and a moment later they heard a little girl’s clear voice:

  “Hello, Mommy!”

  Ingemund Fransson’s features flattened out and his eyes grew dull and staring.

  Kvant gripped his arm tightly and said:

  “Let’s get moving, Kalle.”

  Kristiansson banged the door, climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. As he backed up towards the road he said:

  “I’m just wondering …”

  “What?” Kvant asked.

  “Who’s the man they’ve pulled in at Djurgården?”

  “Hell, yes, I wonder …” Kvant said.

  “Please don’t grip so hard,” said the man called Ingemund Fransson. “You’re hurting me.”

  “Shut up,” said Kvant.

  Martin Beck was still standing at Biskopsudden in Djurgården, almost five miles from Huvudsta Allé. He stood quite still, chin in hand, looking at Kollberg, who was red in the face and sweating all over. A motorcycle policeman in a white helmet and with a walkie-talkie on his back had just saluted and roared off.

  Two minutes earlier Melander and Rönn had driven the man who said his name was Fristedt home to Bondegatan to give him a chance of proving his identity. But this was only a formality. Neither Martin Beck nor Kollberg doubted any longer that they had been on the wrong track.

  Only one radio car was left. Kollberg was standing by the open door near the driver, Martin Beck a few yards away.

  “Here’s something,” said the man in the radio car. “Something on the radio.”

  “What?” Kollberg asked glumly.

  The policeman listened.

  “A radio patrol at Solna.”

  “Well?”

  “They’ve caught him.”

  “Fransson?”

  “Yes, they’ve got him in the car.”

  Martin Beck came up. Kollberg bent down to hear better.

  “What are they saying?” Martin Beck asked.

  “No doubt whatever,” said the man in the radio car. “Identity established. He has even confessed. What’s more he had a pair of little girls’ light-blue pants in his pocket. Caught red-handed.”

  “What!” Kollberg exclaimed. “Red-handed? Has he …”

  “No, they got there in time. The girl’s unharmed.”

  Martin Beck leaned his forehead against the edge of the car roof. The metal was hot and dusty.

  “Good God, Lennart,” he said, “it’s over.”

  “Yes,” Kollberg replied. “For this time.”