by Maj Sjowall
Maybe not, but he had another, more personal, reason for his request. He’d never seen even a picture of either Broberg or Helena Hansson, and he was merely curious. He wanted to see what they looked like, talk to them, establish some kind of human contact and then see what his own reactions were.
Hampus Broberg and Helena Hansson were formally placed under arrest before Stockholm’s Civic Court at five minutes after ten the following morning, Wednesday, July 9. They left Stockholm on the noon plane the same day, Broberg accompanied by a warden and Helena Hansson by a female prison guard and Åsa Torell, who was going to discuss joint investigation work with her colleagues in Malmö.
They landed at Bulltofta at a quarter to two.
22
On the tip of Amager, immediately south of Kastrup airport, is Dragør. It’s one of the smaller towns in Denmark, with about four to five thousand inhabitants, and now probably best known for its large new ferry harbor. In the summertime ferries shuttle between Dragør and Limhamn on the Swedish side, carrying all the Swedish cars traveling to and from the Continent. The ferries do a steady business even during the winter, mostly with heavier vehicles, trucks, buses and trailers. All year round housewives travel from Malmö to Dragør to buy tax-free merchandise on board and groceries, which are cheaper in Denmark.
Not so very long ago the little port had a reputation as a resort, and there was constant activity in the harbor, where fishing boats lay rail by rail.
As a health resort, Dragør had the advantage of being within commuting distance of Copenhagen. Now the proximity to the capital city is merely a disadvantage; the water off Dragør’s piers and beaches is so polluted that it isn’t suitable for either swimming or fishing.
The town and its buildings, however, haven’t changed appreciably since the days when ladies lazily twirled their parasols on the beach promenade, carefully shielding their alabaster complexions against the ruinous rays of the sun, and along the shore gentlemen dressed in jersey bathing suits hardly flattering to their beerbellies, cautiously sampled the waters for their medicinal effects.
The houses are squat and picturesque, painted or plastered in a variety of gay colors, the gardens are verdant, smelling of berries, flowers and lush vegetation, and the winding streets narrow and often paved with cobblestones. The stinking automobile traffic that roars to and from the ferries sweeps past the outskirts of the town, and relative peace reigns in the old quarter between the harbor and the highway.
Summer vacationers still come to Dragør, despite the poor swimming. All the rooms in the Strand Hotel were taken on this Tuesday early in July.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and on the veranda outside of the hotel, a family of three was just finishing their late lunch. The parents lingered over a cup of coffee and a coffee ring, but the boy, who was six and whose name was Jens, couldn’t sit still any longer.
He ran excitedly back and forth between the tables, constantly nagging his parents.
“Can’t we go now? I want to look at the boats. Finish your coffee. Hurry up. Let’s go now. Can’t we go down to the boats now?”
And so on until his mother and father gave in and stood up.
Hand in hand, they strolled down toward the old harbor pavilion, which is now a museum. There were only two fishing boats tied up in the harbor—there were usually more—meaning that several had to be out in the Sound, catching mercury-contaminated plaice.
The boy stopped at the edge of the pier and began to throw stones and sticks into the muddy water. He saw several interesting objects bobbing against the side of the wharf, but they were too far away for him to reach them.
The ferry harbor was down the beach. Several cars were lined up on the large asphalt approach waiting for the ferry, which could be seen drawing closer out on the sparkling water.
The three vacationers turned and wandered slowly back along the pier and in among buildings and houses. They stopped on Nordre Strandvej and chatted with an acquaintance who was out walking his dog.
Then they continued along the road to where the houses ended and Kastrup airport began. There they turned off to the right and went down to the beach.
Jens found the wreck of a green plastic boat at the edge of the beach and played with it, while his parents sat in the beach grass and watched. At last he tired of this and went exploring for things that had been washed up. He found an empty milk carton, a beer can and a condom and then bitterly regretted showing his finds to his parents, who made him throw everything away again.
At the moment his father stood up and shouted at him, he caught sight of something intriguing at the water’s edge. A box, it looked like. Maybe a treasure chest. He ran to pick it up.
His father took the box from him, of course. He screamed a little in protest but soon gave up. He knew it didn’t do any good.
Jens’ parents examined the box. It was waterlogged, and the black grainy paper, which had been glued to the thick cardboard, had come loose in some places.
But it wasn’t dented, and the lid, which wasn’t quite closed, seemed undamaged.
When they looked closer they could make out printing on the top:
ARMINIUS .22
And right underneath, in smaller letters:
Made in West Germany.
The box aroused their curiosity somewhat.
They opened it cautiously, so as not to damage the soaked lid.
The inside of the box was lined with polystyrene, compressed from the kind of plastic particles that get washed up in countless millions on the Swedish and Danish beaches on the Sound, the Baltic and the North Sea.
Two one-inch-deep profiles had been cut out of the white polystyrene block. One of them was in the shape of a revolver with a very long barrel; the other was less well defined, and they couldn’t tell immediately what it was.
“A box for a toy gun,” said the woman and shrugged her shoulders.
“Don’t be silly,” the man said. “There was a real revolver in this box.”
“How do you know that?”
“It even says the make on the lid. An Arminius .22. And look here. This space is for an extra butt, so you can exchange it for one with a larger gripping surface.”
“Uh,” the woman said. “I think guns are horrible.”
The man laughed.
He didn’t throw the box away, but kept on carrying it as they walked up toward the road.
“It’s only a box,” he said. “Nothing to be scared of.”
“But still,” the woman said. “What if the revolver or the pistol had still been in there, loaded, and Jens found it and …?”
The man laughed again and stroked his wife’s cheek.
“You and your imagination,” he said. “If the revolver had been in there the box would never have floated ashore. It’s a pretty heavy number, a .22 like this. Besides, there couldn’t have been a gun in this box when it was thrown in the sea. Nobody throws away an expensive thing like a revolver …”
“… unless he’s a gangster who wants to get rid of a murder weapon,” his wife interrupted. “What if …”
She stopped short and yanked at her husband’s sleeve.
“… What if that’s it? I think we should take this box to the police station.”
“Are you crazy? And be laughed at?”
They started walking again. Jens ran in front of them; he’d forgotten his treasure box.
“Well, but even so,” she said. “You never know. It can’t do any harm. We’ll go to the police.”
The wife was stubborn, and the man, who’d had ten years’ experience of it, knew it was usually easier to give in than to disagree.
And so it happened that a quarter of an hour later Police Sergeant Larsen in Dragør had his blotter ruined by a wet revolver box from West Germany.
23
Whereas everything happened on Monday and something on Tuesday, nothing at all happened on Wednesday. Nothing that furthered the investigation, anyway.
Martin Beck had the feeli
ng as soon as he awoke. That it would be a peculiar day.
He felt ill at ease and dissatisfied. He’d gone to sleep late and awakened early, with a leaden taste in his mouth and his head throbbing with unfinished trains of thought.
The same subdued mood prevailed at the police station. Månsson was silent and pensive, thumbing through his papers time and again and systematically crushing his never-ending toothpicks between his teeth. Skacke seemed discouraged, and Backlund polished his glasses with an injured look on his face.
Martin Beck knew from experience that lulls of this sort occurred during every difficult investigation. They could last for days and weeks and all too often could never be broken. The material they had to work on led nowhere, all their resources appeared exhausted, and all the clues reduced to empty nothingness.
If he’d followed his instinct, he would simply have dropped everything, taken the train to Falsterbo, lain down on the beach and let the rare Swedish warmth wash over him. The morning newspapers had reported water temperatures of 70°, which really was unusually warm for the Baltic.
But, of course, a Chief Inspector doesn’t do that, especially in the midst of looking for a murderer.
It was all extremely annoying. He needed both physical and mental activity, but didn’t know what to do. So he was even less capable of telling anyone else what to do. After a few hours of blatant inactivity, Skacke asked frankly, “What should I do?”
“Go ask Månsson.”
“I already did.”
Martin Beck shook his head and walked into his room.
He looked at the clock. Still only eleven.
Almost three hours till the plane bringing Broberg and Helena Hansson was due in Malmö.
For want of anything better to do, he called Palmgren’s office and asked to speak to Mats Linder.
“Mr. Linder isn’t available,” the blond receptionist said lazily. “But …”
“But what?”
“I can connect you with his secretary.”
Mats Linder was indeed unavailable. He had left for Johannesburg on the Tuesday afternoon flight from Kastrup.
On urgent business.
For the moment he wasn’t even available in Johannesburg, in case anyone should have the absurd idea of trying to call him there.
Since the plane was still in the air.
It was uncertain when Mr. Linder would return.
Had the trip been planned?
Mr. Linder always planned his trips very carefully.
Said the efficient secretary authoritatively.
Martin Beck hung up and looked reproachfully at the telephone.
Hmm. The confrontation between Broberg and Linder just went down the drain.
Struck by a thought, he lifted the receiver again and dialed Aero-fragt’s number on Kultorvet in Copenhagen.
Certainly.
Mr. Hoff-Jensen had suddenly been obliged to leave for Lisbon that morning.
It would be possible to reach him later at the Hotel Tivoli on Avenida da Liberdade.
But for the moment the plane was still in the air.
It was uncertain when he would return to Denmark.
Martin Beck conveyed the news to Månsson, who shrugged apathetically.
At two-thirty Broberg and Helena Hansson finally arrived.
In addition to the prison warden and an enormous bandage, Broberg arrived with his lawyer.
He didn’t say anything, but the lawyer was not at a loss for words.
Mr. Broberg couldn’t talk, since he’d been subjected to the most vicious kind of police brutality. And even if he’d been able to say anything, he had nothing to add to what he’d already stated in his testimony exactly one week ago.
The lawyer continued his prepared speech, now and then throwing murderous glances at Skacke, who was operating the tape recorder. Skacke blushed.
Martin Beck didn’t, however. He sat with his chin cupped in his left hand and gazed intently at the man with the bandage.
Broberg was a completely different type from Linder and Hoff-Jensen. He was heavy-set, had red hair and coarse, brutal features. Squinty, pale blue eyes, a pot belly and the kind of head that would have sent him posthaste to the gas chamber if the late Lombrosi’s criminological theories had been correct.
The man was simply loathsome to look at and was also ostentatiously and tastelessly dressed. You almost felt sorry for him, Martin Beck thought.
The lawyer felt professionally sorry for Broberg. He talked and talked, and Martin Beck let him, even though the man must have been repeating largely what he’d said to no avail at the court proceedings.
But the guy had to do what he had to do for the fat fee he would get when he eventually managed to have Broberg acquitted—or almost—and Gunvald Larsson and Zachrisson penalized for breach of authority.
And he wouldn’t mind if that did happen. Martin Beck had long been depressed about Gunvald Larsson’s methods, but had refrained from intervening, in the sacred name of loyalty.
When the lawyer reached the end of the saga of Brobergian suffering, Martin Beck said, still without taking his eyes off the prisoner, “Mr. Broberg, you can’t talk then?”
A shake of the head.
“What is your opinion of Mats Linder?”
A shrug of the shoulders.
“Do you think he’s capable of assuming responsibility for the company?”
Another shrug.
He examined Broberg for almost a minute longer and tried to catch the expression in his dull, unsteady eyes.
The man was obviously scared, but he also looked ready for a fight.
At last Martin Beck said to the lawyer, “Well, I gather that your client has been upset by the events of the past week. For the time being, maybe we should call it a day.”
Everyone looked equally surprised—Broberg, the lawyer, Skacke and even the warden.
Martin Beck got up and went to hear how Månsson and Backlund were getting along with Helena Hansson.
He met Åsa Torell in the corridor.
“What’s she saying?”
“A whole lot of stuff. But hardly anything you can use.”
“What hotel are you staying at?”
“Same as you. The Savoy.”
“Then maybe we could eat dinner together tonight?”
If they could, perhaps there’d be a pleasant end to this otherwise dismal day.
“It might be difficult,” Åsa Torell said evasively. “I may have a lot to do here today.”
She avoided meeting his eyes. Which was easy, since she didn’t even come up to his shoulder.
Helena Hansson talked and talked. Månsson sat stock-still at the table. The tape recorder hummed. Backlund paced up and down the room with a shocked expression on his face. A death blow must have been dealt to his belief in the purity of life.
Martin Beck stood just inside the door, his elbows propped on a metal cabinet, and observed the woman while she repeated word for word what she’d said previously to Kollberg.
But now nothing was left of the semi-respectable façade or the thinly applied veneer.
In fact, she looked thoroughly unnerved and worn out. Just a whore, who’d got out of her depth and was scared to death. Tears trickled down her cheeks, and she soon started giving details of everyone and everything in her line of business, obviously in the hope that she would get off lightly.
It was all very depressing, and Martin Beck left as quietly and considerately as he’d come.
He returned to his room, now empty and even warmer than before.
He observed that the chair Hampus Broberg had sat in was moist from perspiration, both on the seat and the back.
The telephone rang.
Malm, of course.
Who else?
“What the he—what in the world are you up to?”
“The investigation.”
“Just a minute,” Malm said irritatedly. “Was it not understood, even quite clearly stated, that this investigation would
be conducted as discreetly and efficiently as possible?”
“Yes.”
“Do you consider a wild shooting match and a fight in the middle of Stockholm to be discreet?”
“No.”
“Have you seen the newspapers?”
“Yes. I’ve seen the newspapers.”
“How do you think they’ll look tomorrow?”
“Don’t know.”
“Isn’t it going a little too far for the police to pressure for the arrest of two people who are probably completely innocent?”
The Chief Superintendent had a point there, obviously, and Martin Beck didn’t answer right away.
“Well,” he said at last, “maybe it will look a little peculiar.”
“Peculiar? Do you realize down there that I’m on the firing line for this?”
“That’s too bad.”
“I can tell you that the Chief of Police is just as upset as I am. We’ve been conferring for hours up in his room …”
Mules may ease each other’s itch, thought Martin Beck. That had to be a quotation from Latin.
“How did you get in to see him?” he asked innocently.
“How I got in to see him?” Malm echoed. “What are you talking about? Is that your idea of a joke?”
It was well known that the Chief of Police was reluctant to talk to people. Rumor had it that some high official had even threatened to haul a fork truck up to the National Police Board and force the doors of the holy of holies in order to have a face-to-face conversation. However, the dignitary in question had a great weakness for giving speeches, both to the nation and to defenseless groups of his private army.
“Well,” Malm said, “can you at least say that an arrest is imminent?”
“No.”
“Do you know who the murderer is, but need more evidence?”
“No.”
“Do you know what circles he moves in?”
“Not the slightest idea.”
“That’s absurd.”
“You think so?”
“What in the world do you want me to say to the parties concerned?”
“The truth.”
“What truth?”
“No progress.”
“No progress? After a week of investigation? With our best men on the case?”