by Maj Sjowall
Kollberg dropped the subject.
“When did you last see Mr. Broberg?”
“This morning. He came in a little after ten and stayed in his office for about twenty minutes. Then he left. For the bank, I think.”
“Where do you think he is now?”
Glancing at the clock, she said, “Probably at home.”
Kollberg consulted his piece of paper.
“He lives out on Lidingö, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, on Tjädervägen.”
“Is he married?”
“Yes. They have a daughter who’s seventeen. But she and his wife aren’t home. They’re in Switzerland on vacation.”
“Do you know that for a fact?”
“Yes. I ordered their plane tickets myself. Last Friday. It must have come up quickly, for they left the same day.”
“Has Mr. Broberg been working as usual after what happened in Malmö last Wednesday?”
“Well, no,” she said. “No, you could hardly say that. It was very tense around here on Thursday. You see, we didn’t know anything definite then. On Friday we found out that Mr. Palmgren had died. Mr. Broberg was in on Friday for maybe an hour altogether. And today, as I said, he was here for about twenty minutes.”
“Did he say when he planned to get back?”
The woman shook her head.
“Is he usually in the office longer than that?”
“Oh yes, he’s here most of the time. Sits in his office.”
Kollberg walked over to the inner door and let his eyes wander over Hampus Broberg’s room. He took note of three black telephones on the desk and an elegant suitcase standing next to the safe. The suitcase wasn’t big, but it was made of pigskin and had two straps buckled over the top. It looked brand-new.
“Do you know if Mr. Broberg was here on Saturday or Sunday?” he asked.
“Well, somebody was here. We aren’t open on Saturday, so I was off work as usual over the weekend. But when I came in this morning I noticed right away that someone had moved things around.”
“Can this someone have been anyone else but Broberg?”
“Hardly. We’re the only two who have keys to this place.”
“Do you think he’ll come back today?”
“Don’t know. Maybe he went to the bank and then home. That seems quite likely.”
“Lidingö,” murmured Kollberg. “Tjädervägen.”
He was getting even farther away from home.
“Good-bye,” he said abruptly and left.
It was sweltering hot in the car by now, and he perspired profusely on the way to Lidingö.
As he crossed the bridge over Värtan and saw the big ships in Frihamnen and the hundreds of pleasure boats full of half-naked vacationers with tans, he reflected that it was idiotic to rush around like this. Of course he should have stayed in his office, used the telephone and asked these people to come to Västberga. But then none of them would have come, and he would’ve been burned up about that. Besides, Martin Beck had said that it was urgent.
The houses built along Tjädervägen on Lidingö didn’t belong to the super-deluxe class, but they were still light-years away from the decrepit housing project he’d visited earlier. Nobody who lived here was so unfortunate as to have to be milked by characters like Palmgren and Broberg. Large, expensive bungalows with meticulous lawns lined both sides of the street.
Hampus Broberg’s house seemed closed and completely dead. Car tracks led up to the garage doors, but when Kollberg peeked in one of the small side windows, he found the garage empty. Everything indicated that, until quite recently, two cars had been parked there. No one responded to his ringing and pounding, and the blinds behind the large windows were drawn, so that it was impossible to catch a glimpse of what the house looked like inside.
Kollberg panted as he walked over to the house next door. It was larger and more fashionable than Broberg’s; the name on the door was that of a noble family. At least it sounded noble.
He rang the bell and the door was opened by a tall blond woman. She looked cool, and her manner was aristocratic.
When he had identified himself, she peered at him disdainfully and made no move to ask him to come in.
When he stated his business she said coldly, “We are not in the habit of spying on our neighbors. I don’t know Mr. Broberg and am unable to help you.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Perhaps for you, but not for me.”
“Then please excuse me,” Kollberg said.
She looked at him appraisingly and asked a very startling question, “Tell me, who sent you here anyway?”
Both her voice and her clear blue eyes expressed suspicion. She might have been between thirty-five and forty. Extremely well preserved. She reminded him vaguely of someone, but he couldn’t recall who.
“Well, good-bye,” he said dejectedly and shrugged his shoulders.
“Good-bye,” she said emphatically.
Kollberg got into his car and consulted his slip of paper.
Helena Hansson had given an address on Västeråsgatan in Vasastaden and a telephone number. He drove to the police station on Lejonvägen on Lidingö, where several plainclothesmen were brooding over the week’s pools coupon while they drank soft drinks out of paper cups.
“Do you know what Go Ahead Deventer could be?” one of them said.
“No idea,” Kollberg said.
“What about Young Boys?”
“What were those names again?”
“Go Ahead Deventer and Young Boys. They’re soccer teams. Playing in the pools cup matches. But we don’t know where they’re from. You know, the pools cup.”
Kollberg shrugged his fat shoulders. Soccer was one of the things that weren’t of the least interest to him.
“Go Ahead Deventer must be from Deventer,” he said. “That’s a city in Holland.”
“Damn. The National Homicide Squad would know about things like that. Do you think they’re any good?”
“As a matter of fact, I only came here to borrow the telephone,” Kollberg said wearily.
“Go ahead. Use any one you want.”
Kollberg dialed Helena Hansson’s number and got the out-of-order signal. Then he called the telephone company and was consoled with the information that the telephone in question was no longer in use.
“Do you know anything about a Mr. Hampus Broberg?” he asked the two betting policemen.
“Sure, he lives on Tjädervägen. And to live like him, you’ve got to have plenty of money.”
“We only have the better sort of people out here,” said one of the policemen.
“Have you ever had reason to have anything to do with him?”
“Nope,” the other policeman said and poured out more Loranga orange. “We maintain law and order here.”
“This isn’t Stockholm,” said the first one virulently.
“And if we have any crimes, they’re high-class stuff. People don’t go around bashing each other’s heads in with axes. There aren’t any old bums or doped-up kids under every bush. I think we’ll put our money on Go Ahead Deventer, anyway.”
They had completely lost interest in Kollberg.
“Bye,” he said gloomily and left them.
During the long drive to Vasastaden in Stockholm, he considered the fact that even Lidingö had a generous portion of crime behind its polished façade. The only difference was that people were richer and could hide their dirty linen more easily.
There was no elevator in the apartment building on Västeråsgatan, and he had to trudge up five flights of stairs in five different stairwells. The house was dilapidated—neglected by the landlord as usual—and big fat rats ran among the garbage cans on the asphalt courtyard.
He rang doorbells here and there. Several times doors were opened, and various people stared at him in alarm.
People here were afraid of the police—perhaps with good reason.
He didn’t find Helena Hansson.
No o
ne could say if a person by that name lived or had lived there. Giving information to the police obviously wasn’t a popular pastime, and besides, people in apartment buildings like this one generally knew very little about each other.
Kollberg stood out on the street and wiped his face with a handkerchief that was already soaked with hours of perspiration.
He reflected for several minutes.
Then he gave up and drove home.
An hour later his wife said, “Lennart, why do you look so miserable?”
He had showered, eaten, made love to her and then showered again, and was now sitting wrapped in a bath towel, downing a can of cold beer.
“Because I feel miserable,” he said. “That damn job …”
“You should quit.”
“It’s not that easy.”
Kollberg was a policeman, and he still couldn’t help trying to be as good a policeman as possible. Somehow that drive had been built into his psyche; it was like a burden that, for some reason, he had to carry.
The order he’d received from Martin Beck was simple, a routine matter, and now, because of it, he was at his wit’s end. He scowled and said, “Gun, what’s a traveling secretary?”
“Usually some kind of call girl, who goes around with her nightgown, toothbrush and birth control pills in a briefcase.”
“Then she’s nothing but a whore.”
“Right. Available for people like businessmen who are too lazy to pick up some girl in the place they’re staying.”
On reflection, he realized that he needed help. He couldn’t get it out in Västberga, where they were hard-pressed for people during vacation.
A moment later he sighed, went over to the telephone and called the Stockholm police on Kungsholmsgatan.
The person who answered was the last person he wanted to talk to.
Gunvald Larsson.
“How’s it going?” he said sullenly. “What do you think? I’m up to my neck in stabbings, fights, robberies and insane foreigners who are sky-high on LSD. And almost nobody here. Melander is on Värmdö, and Rönn went to Arjeplog last Friday night. Strömgren is on Majorca. And people seem to get more aggressive in this heat. Lose their judgment entirely. What the hell do you want?”
Kollberg detested Gunvald Larsson, who was, in his opinion, only a big, dumb thug with snobbish ways. As far as his judgment went, what was there to say? Gunvald Larsson had lost his in the cradle.
Thought Kollberg. But he said aloud, “Well, it’s about the Palmgren affair.”
“I don’t want to have a thing to do with it,” Gunvald Larsson said immediately. He’d already had enough trouble with it.
Kollberg recounted the tale of his sorrows anyway.
Gunvald Larsson interspersed it with bad-tempered grunts. Once he interrupted and said, “Sitting there jabbering about it won’t get you anywhere. It’s not my job.”
But something must have attracted his attention, for when Kollberg finished, he said, “Did you say Tjädervägen on Lidingö? What was the number?”
Kollberg repeated the number.
“Hmm,” Gunvald Larsson said. “Maybe I can do something for you.”
“That’s decent of you,” Kollberg forced himself to say.
“To tell the truth, I’m not doing it for your sake,” Gunvald Larsson said, as though he really meant it.
He did, too.
Kollberg wondered why he’d become interested. Generosity wasn’t one of Gunvald Larsson’s characteristics.
“About this Hansson whore,” Gunvald Larsson said dismally. “You’d better talk to the Vice Squad.”
“Yes, I’d thought ofthat.”
“Well, of course. It all fits together—she had to show identification down there in Malmö at the first questioning. But she could have made up any damn address she pleased. So probably her name really is Helena Hansson.”
Even Kollberg had thought of that, but refrained from making further comment.
He hung up and immediately dialed again.
This time he asked to be connected with Åsa Torell of the Vice Squad.
13
As soon as the conversation was over, Gunvald Larsson went down, got into his car and drove straight to Lidingö.
His face was taut, set in a strangely grim smile.
He looked at his big hairy hands resting on the steering wheel and chuckled to himself with satisfaction.
Out on Tjädervägen he gave only a passing glance to Broberg’s house, which looked just as deserted as before. Then he went over to the house next door and rang the bell. The door was opened by the same cool, blond woman who had dismissed Kollberg so ignominiously a couple of hours earlier.
When she caught sight of the gigantic man on the step her attitude changed.
“Gunvald,” she said with consternation. “How in the … how can you have the gall to show your face here?”
“Oh,” he said banteringly, “true love never dies.”
“I haven’t seen you for more than ten years, and that I’m grateful for.”
“What a nice thing to say!”
“Your picture was in the newspapers last winter. I burned them all up in the fireplace.”
“You really are sweet.”
She knit her blond eyebrows suspiciously and said, “Did you send that fat guy out here earlier today?”
“As a matter of fact, no. But I’m here for the same reason.”
“You must be crazy.”
“You think so?”
“After all, I can only tell you the same thing I told him. I don’t spy on my neighbors.”
“You don’t? Well, are you going to let me in? Or should I kick your whole goddamned rosewood door in, alabaster paneling and all?”
“You should just die of shame. But you’re probably too thick for that.”
“This is getting better all the time.”
“Well, I’d rather you came in than stand on the steps and disgrace me.”
She opened the door. Gunvald Larsson stepped in.
“Where is that henpecked husband of yours?” he asked.
“Hugold is at the Chief of Staff’s office. He has a great deal of responsibility and is very busy now. The General is on vacation.”
“Kiss my ass,” said Gunvald Larsson. “And he hasn’t even managed to knock you up in thirteen years, or however long it’s been?”
“Eleven,” she said. “And watch yourself. I’m not alone, either.”
“Is that so? Do you have a lover, too? Little cadets, maybe?”
“You can spare me the vulgar remarks. An old friend dropped by for tea. Sonja. Maybe you remember her.”
“No, I don’t, thank goodness.”
“She hasn’t had an easy time of it,” the woman said, touching her blond hair lightly. “But she has a respectable profession anyway. She’s a dentist.”
Gunvald Larsson didn’t say anything. He followed her into a very large, elegant living room. On a low table was a silver tea service, and a tall, slim woman with brown hair sat on the couch nibbling on an English biscuit.
“This is my eldest brother,” said the blonde. “Unfortunately. Gunvald’s his name. He’s a … policeman. Before he was just a thug. The last time I saw him was more than ten years ago and before that the times were few and far between.”
“C’mon now, you behave now,” Gunvald Larsson said.
“You would say that. Where were you, for instance, the last six years Father was alive?”
“At sea. I was working. And that’s more than can be said of any other member of the family.”
“You made us take all the responsibility,” she said bitterly.
“And who laid their mitts on all the money? And everything else?”
“You’d already squandered your part of the inheritance before you received your dishonorable discharge from the Navy,” she said icily.
Gunvald Larsson looked around.
“Oh, fuck,” he said.
“What do you mean by that?�
�
“Exactly what I said. Oh, fuck. Like, where did you get that two-foot silver rooster?”
“Portugal. We bought it in Lisbon during a world cruise.”
“How much did it cost?”
“Several thousand kronor,” she said indifferently. “I don’t remember exactly. What are you called now? Patrolman?”
“First Assistant Detective.”
“Father would turn over in his grave. You mean to say you haven’t even managed to become a superintendent or whatever it’s called? How much do you make?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“What are you doing here? Maybe you want to borrow money? I wouldn’t be surprised.”
She looked at her girlfriend, who had been following the discussion in silence, and added matter-of-factly, “He’s renowned for his insolence.”
“Right,” Gunvald Larsson said and sat down. “Now bring another cup.”
She left the room. Gunvald Larsson looked at the childhood friend with a gleam of interest. She didn’t return the look, and neither of them said anything.
His sister came back with a tea glass in a silver holder, placed on a small engraved silver tray.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“You know that already. You’re going to tell me every single thing you know about this Broberg and his boss. His name was Palmgren and he died last Wednesday.”
“Died?”
“Yes. Don’t you read the newspapers?”
“Maybe I do. But that’s none of your business.”
“He was murdered, moreover. Shot.”
“Murdered? Shot? What kind of horrible doings are you involved in?”
Gunvald Larsson impassively poured tea into his glass.
“Look, I’ve already told you. I don’t spy on the neighbors. And I said so to that other clown you sent along to me this morning.”
Gunvald Larsson took a swallow of tea. Then he put the glass down with a bang.
“Quit making a spectacle of yourself, Kid Sister. You’re as curious as a cat and have been ever since you started walking. I know you know a helluva lot about Broberg. About Palmgren, too, for that matter. I’m convinced that you and that lousy husband of yours know both of them. I have a fairly good idea of how things work in those distinguished circles of yours.”