by Maj Sjowall
“Then Mr. Palmgren would be a victim chosen at random?”
The man reflected. Then he smiled his faint smile again and said, “That’s for the police to try to figure out.”
“From what I gather, Mr. Palmgren did considerable business abroad?”
“Yes, that’s correct. His commercial interests were numerous and varied. What we deal with here is the original business—the import and export of fish for the canning industry. This firm was founded by old Palmgren, Vicke’s father. I’m too young to have known him. As for other foreign transactions, I really know very little.”
He paused and added, “But it seems highly probable that I’ll have to become closer acquainted with them now.”
“Who is taking over the main responsibility for … the concern?”
“Charlotte, I suppose. She should be the sole heir. There aren’t any children or any other relatives in the picture. But the corporation lawyers will have to clarify that. The firm’s main lawyer had to break off his vacation very hastily. He came home on Friday night and since then has been at work going through the documents with his assistants. For the time being we are working here as usual.”
Working? Martin Beck thought.
“Are you planning on being Mr. Palmgren’s successor?” Månsson suddenly put in.
“No,” Linder said. “I wouldn’t say that, actually. Besides, I have neither the experience nor the talent required for managing a business emp—”
He broke off and Månsson didn’t pursue the topic. Martin Beck didn’t say anything, either. It was Linder himself who continued, “For the present I’m completely satisfied with my position here. And I can assure you that even this part of the business takes some running.”
“Is herring a good business?” Martin Beck said.
The other man smiled indulgently.
“Well, we deal in more than herring. In any case, I can assure you that the company’s financial status is very sound.”
Martin Beck felt it necessary to try a new line of attack.
“I presume that you knew all the people at the banquet fairly well.”
He reflected awhile and said, “Yes. Except Mr. Broberg’s secretary.”
Wasn’t there some animosity in his features? Martin Beck felt that there was something afoot and forged ahead.
“Isn’t Mr. Broberg considerably older than you, both in terms of age and years with the Palmgren concern?”
“Yes, he’s about forty-five.”
“Forty-three,” said Martin Beck. “And how long has he worked for Palmgren?”
“Since the middle of the fifties. About fifteen years.”
It was apparent that Mats Linder disliked the subject.
“Still, you do have a more privileged position, don’t you?”
“That depends on what you mean by privileged. Hampus Broberg is located in Stockholm, as vice-president of the real estate company there. He also has charge of the stock activities.”
Linder’s face expressed strong disapproval. Now we’ve got to stay with it, Martin Beck thought. Sooner or later we might get the guy to make a slip of the tongue.
“But it seems quite obvious that Mr. Palmgren had more confidence in you than in Broberg. And yet Broberg has worked for him for fifteen years and you for only … yes, how long has it been?”
“Almost five years,” Mats Linder said.
“Didn’t Mr. Palmgren trust Broberg?”
“Too much.”
Linder said and tightened his lips as if he wanted to annul the answer and erase it from the report of the proceedings.
“Do you consider Broberg unreliable?” Martin Beck asked immediately.
“I don’t want to answer that question.”
“Have disagreements come up between you and him?”
Linder sat quietly awhile. It seemed as though he were trying to assess the situation.
“Yes,” he said at long last.
“What were these disagreements about?”
“That’s a strictly private business matter.”
“Don’t you consider him loyal to the firm?”
Linder said nothing. It didn’t matter now, since he’d already answered the question in principle.
“Well, we’ll have to talk to Mr. Broberg about that,” Martin Beck said in a casual tone.
The man behind the desk took a long, thin cigarillo out of his inner pocket, peeled off the cellophane wrapper and lit it carefully.
“But I don’t understand what this has to do with my boss’s murder,” he said.
“Maybe nothing at all,” Martin Beck said. “We’ll just have to see.”
“Is there anything else you gentlemen would like to know?” Linder asked, puffing on the cigar.
“You had a meeting on Wednesday afternoon, didn’t you?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Where?”
“Here.”
“In this room?”
“No, in the conference room.”
“What was the meeting actually about?”
“Internal affairs. I’m not able to give a more detailed account of what was said, and wouldn’t if I could. Let’s just say that Mr. Palmgren was going to withdraw from the business for a while and wanted a report on the situation here in Scandinavia.”
“Did he make any criticisms during this review? Was there anything that Mr. Palmgren wasn’t pleased with?”
The answer came after a short hesitation.
“No.”
“Perhaps you thought that some criticism would’ve been in order?”
Linder didn’t answer.
“You might have objections to our talking with Hampus Broberg?”
“On the contrary,” Linder murmured.
“Excuse me, I didn’t catch what you said?”
“It was nothing.”
Silence. Martin Beck didn’t think he could pursue this track much further. There had to be something rotten here, but nothing that indicated that it had anything to do with the murder.
Månsson seemed totally impassive, and Linder waited to see what would happen.
“In any case, it seems quite clear that Mr. Palmgren had more confidence in you than in Broberg,” Martin Beck said, as if stating an obvious fact.
“That’s possible,” Linder said drily. “But anyhow, it doesn’t have anything to do with his death.”
“We’ll just have to see,” Martin Beck said.
The other man’s eyes flashed. He had a hard time hiding the fact that he was furious.
“Well, we’ve already taken up a great deal of your precious time,” Martin Beck said.
“Yes, you have, to tell the truth. The sooner this conversation is concluded, the better. For you and for me. I don’t see any purpose in going over this again.”
“Then we’ll leave it at that,” Martin Beck said, making an attempt to stand up.
“Thank you,” Linder said.
His tone was sarcastic and extremely guarded.
At this point Månsson sat up and said slowly, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Such as?”
“What kind of relationship do you have with Charlotte Palmgren?”
“I know her.”
“How well do you know her?”
“That ought to be my private affair.”
“That, of course, is correct. But I’d still like you to answer the question.”
“What question?”
“Are you having an affair with Mrs. Palmgren?”
Linder looked at him, coldly and deprecatingly.
After a minute of silence, he crushed his cigarillo in the ashtray and said, “Yes.”
“A love affair?”
“A sexual relationship. I sleep with her sometimes, to put it simply, in language that even policemen can understand.”
“How long has this relationship gone on?”
“For two years.”
“Did Viktor Palmgren know abou
t it?”
“No.”
“And if he’d known about it, how would he have reacted?”
“I don’t know.”
“He might have objected?”
“I’m not so sure. Charlotte and I are broad-minded people. We don’t care about convention. Viktor Palmgren was like that, too. Besides, their marriage was more of a practical arrangement than an emotional commitment.”
“When did you see her last?”
“Charlotte? Two hours ago.”
Månsson dug around in his breast pocket for another toothpick. He examined it and said, “How is she in bed?”
Mats Linder stared at him speechless. Finally he said, “Are you out of your mind?”
They stood up and said good-bye, without receiving an answer. The efficient, dark-haired secretary showed them out to the waiting room, where the blonde at the reception desk was carrying on a private conversation, cooing into one of her telephones.
When they were sitting in the car Månsson said, “Smart kid.”
“Yes.”
“Smart enough to tell the truth when he knows that a lie could be exposed. You can bet Palmgren had a lot of use for him.”
“Mats Linder’s obviously had a good teacher,” Martin Beck said.
“Is he smart enough not to have people shot? That’s the question,” Månsson said.
Martin Beck shrugged.
12
Lennart Kollberg didn’t know which way to turn.
The job he’d been assigned to seemed both repugnant and pointless. It never occurred to him, however, that it would turn out to be complicated.
He would call on a couple of people, talk to them, and that’s all there would be to it.
A little before ten o’clock he left the South police station in Västberga, where all was quiet and peaceful, largely because of the shortage of personnel. There was no shortage of work, however, for all varieties of crime flourished better than ever in the fertile topsoil provided by the welfare state.
The reasons for this were cloaked in mystery—at least for those who had the responsibility of governing and for the experts who had the delicate task of trying to make the society function smoothly.
Behind its spectacular topographical façade and under its polished, semi-fashionable surface, Stockholm had become an asphalt jungle, where drug addiction and sexual perversion ran more rampant than ever. Unscrupulous profiteers could make enormous profits quite legally on pornography of the smuttiest kind. Professional criminals became not only more numerous but also better organized. An impoverished proletariat was also being created, especially among the elderly. Inflation had given rise to one of the highest costs of living in the world, and the latest surveys showed that many pensioners had to live on dog and cat food in order to make ends meet.
The fact that juvenile delinquency and alcoholism (which had always been a problem) continued to increase surprised no one but those with responsible positions in the Civil Service and at the Cabinet level.
Stockholm.
Not much was left of the city where Kollberg was born and grew up. With the sanction of the city planners, the steam shovels of real estate speculators and the bulldozers of the traffic “experts” had devastated most of the respectable old settlement. By now the few sanctuaries of culture that remained were pitiful in appearance. The city’s character, atmosphere and style of life had disappeared, or rather, changed, and it wasn’t easy to do anything about it.
Meanwhile more squeaks were appearing in the police machinery, which was overworked, partly because of the shortage of men. But there were other, more important reasons.
It was less important to recruit more policemen than to get better ones—no one seemed to have thought of that.
Thought Lennart Kollberg.
It took a while to get out to the housing project managed by Hampus Broberg. It was located far to the south, in an area that had been countryside in Kollberg’s youth, a place where he used to go on school excursions when he was a child. It resembled far too many of the rent traps built during recent years—an isolated group of high-rise apartments, slapped together quickly and carelessly, whose sole purpose was to make as large a profit as possible for the owner while at the same time guaranteeing unpleasantness and discomfort for the unfortunate people who had to live there. Since the housing shortage had been kept alive artificially for many years, even these apartments were in great demand, and the rents were close to astronomical.
Presumably the realty office occupied the best rooms—those built with the greatest care. However, even in these, moisture had seeped through, and the doorposts had warped so much that they’d already come loose from the masonry.
The greatest drawback from Kollberg’s point of view, however, was that Hampus Broberg wasn’t to be found there.
In addition to Broberg’s private office, which was spacious and rather stylishly furnished, there was a conference room and two small rooms, which were inhabited by a caretaker and two female employees—the first a woman of fifty and the second a girl who had barely turned nineteen.
The older woman looked like a real monster. Kollberg guessed that her main duty was to threaten eviction and to refuse repairs. The girl was clumsy and ugly, had acne and looked bullied. The caretaker seemed resigned. He must have had the thankless job of seeing to it that the drains and toilets worked just well enough to get by.
Kollberg proceeded on the assumption that he should talk to the monster.
No, Mr. Broberg wasn’t here. He hadn’t shown up since Friday afternoon. Then he’d been in his office for about ten minutes and then left again, carrying a briefcase.
No, Mr. Broberg hadn’t said anything about when he was coming back.
No, neither of the ladies’ names was Helena Hansson, nor had they ever heard of anyone by that name.
However, Mr. Broberg did have another office, in the city. On Kungsgatan, to be exact. Both he and Miss Hansson would certainly be there.
No, Mr. Palmgren didn’t concern himself with the upkeep of the properties. Since the area had been built up four years ago, he’d only been there on two occasions, both times in the company of Mr. Broberg.
What did they do at the office? Collect rents and keep the tenants in order, of course.
“And that’s not the easiest thing in the world,” said the monster caustically.
“Okay, I get the picture,” Kollberg said. And left.
He got into his car and drove north toward Stockholm.
On the way he passed temptingly close to his own home in the borough of Skärmarbrink. His family was there—his daughter Bodil, who would soon be two years old, and above all Gun, who seemed to grow prettier and more irresistible every day. Kollberg was a sensualist, and had been careful to choose a wife who would comply with his exacting demands.
He steeled himself, however, sighed deeply, wiped the sweat off his forehead with his shirt sleeve and drove on toward the center of Stockholm. He parked on Kungsgatan and stepped out. Then he went into the entrance to check that he’d gone to the right address.
According to the directory, the house contained mostly film companies and law offices, but it also had what he was looking for.
On the fourth floor, there was listed not only HAMPUS BROBERG INC., but also VIKTOR PALMGREN LOAN & FINANCE.
Kollberg rode up on a creaking, aged elevator and found that both company plaques decorated the same snuff-colored door. He grasped the doorknob and found the door locked. There was a doorbell, but he ignored it and, true to habit, hammered on the door with his fist.
A woman opened, looked at him with big brown eyes and said, “What in the world is the matter?”
“I’m looking for Mr. Broberg.”
“He isn’t here.”
“Is your name Helena Hansson?”
“No, it isn’t. Who are you?”
Kollberg pulled himself together and took his identification card out of his back pocket.
“Excuse me,”
he said. “It must be the fault of this heat.”
“I see,” she said. “The police.”
“Right. The name’s Kollberg. May I come in for a minute?”
“Of course,” the woman said and stepped aside.
The room he entered looked like a run-of-the-mill office with tables, folders, typewriter, filing cabinets and all the usual accessories. Through a half-open door he could see into another room, which was apparently Hampus Broberg’s private office. Smaller than the secretary’s, but more comfortable, it seemed almost entirely taken up by a desk and a large safe.
While Kollberg was looking around, the woman had turned the lock on the door. Then she stared at him inquiringly and said, “Why did you ask me if my name was Hansson?”
She was about thirty-five years old, slender and dark, with thick eyebrows and short hair.
“I thought you were Mr. Broberg’s secretary,” Kollberg said absentmindedly.
“Actually I am Mr. Broberg’s secretary.”
“Well, in that case …”
“My name isn’t Hansson,” she continued, “and it never has been.”
Looking at her obliquely, he saw that she wore two broad gold bands on the ring finger of her left hand.
“What is your name, then?”
“Sara Moberg.”
“You weren’t in Malmö last Wednesday when Mr. Palmgren was shot?”
“Certainly not.”
“We were told that Mr. Broberg was in Malmö at the time and that his secretary was with him.”
“In that case it wasn’t me. I never go along on his trips.”
“And the secretary’s name was Hansson,” Kollberg said stubbornly, taking a dog-eared piece of paper out of his pants pocket.
He glared at it and said, “Miss Helena Hansson. That’s what it says here.”
“I don’t know anyone by that name. Besides, I’m married and have two children. As I said before, I never go along on trips.”
“Then who could this Miss Hansson have been?”
“No idea.”
“Maybe an employee in some other branch of the company?”
“I’ve never heard of her, at any rate.”
The woman looked at him sharply and said, “Until now.”
Then she added vaguely, “Of course, there are traveling secretaries, as they’re called.”