Cop Killer

by Maj Sjowall

  “And it’s our very unpleasant and thankless task to take over this rotten society, which we didn’t help to ruin,” the girl said, “and somehow make it habitable again.”

  “Did Christer dislike policemen?” Kollberg said.

  “We all hate cops,” the girl said. “Why shouldn’t we? The cops hate us.”

  “Yes, they sure do,” said one of the boys. “There isn’t any place they’ll leave us alone, and there isn’t anything they’ll let us do. As soon as you sit down on a bench or on the grass, the cops are there giving you a bunch of shit. And if they get the chance, they work us over.”

  “Or make fun of us,” the girl said, “which is almost worse.”

  “Did any of you meet this fellow that Christer had with him in Ljunghusen?”

  “Yes. Caspar,” said the boy who hadn’t said anything. “I talked to him, just for a little while. Then the beer was all gone, so I left.”

  “How did he seem?”

  “Nice guy, I thought. Peaceable, like the rest of us.”

  “You knew he was called Caspar?”

  “Yes, but I think his real name was something else. I think he said something like Robin or Ronnie or something.”

  “What do you think? About what’s happened?”

  “It’s just typical,” said the first boy. “It’s always the way. Everybody hates us, the cops most of all, and then when one of us gets desperate, finally, and puts up a fight, well, it turns out like this. I don’t see why a lot more guys don’t get guns and knives. Why should we be the only ones to take a beating?”

  Kollberg thought for a moment.

  “If you had the chance to do anything you wanted,” he said, “what would you do?”

  “I’d be an astronaut and get spaced right out of sight,” said the first boy.

  But the girl took the question seriously.

  “I’d move out to a farm and live right and healthy and have lots of animals and children and see to it they didn’t get poisoned but grew up to be real human beings.”

  “Can I grow a little hash in your garden?” said the second boy.

  Nothing else of any interest was said, and pretty soon Kollberg went back to Månsson and Skacke.

  They were making progress.

  There was someone named Ronnie Casparsson.

  Who had been in jail and whose fingerprints were all over the steering wheel and the dashboard.

  On top of that, there was an alert gas station owner near Katrineholm who had filled the tank on the car that was stolen in Vellinge on Sunday. The man also remembered that the driver had long blond hair and that he had paid with five-crown coins. He was almost unnaturally observant. He even knew the license number. Kollberg asked him how that had happened.

  “I write down all the license numbers. An old habit of mine. Will there be a reward?”

  “Yes, I’ll buy gas from you next time I come that way,” Kollberg said. “But don’t be surprised if I put on a false beard and fake license plates.”

  By Friday they knew pretty much everything there was to know about Ronnie Casparsson—where his parents lived, where he had last been seen, in which direction he had been driving (north), even his social security number.

  All of this moved the investigation one hell of a long way from Malmö Police District.

  The cop-killer manhunt would continue in other parts of the country.

  “Task Force Malmö is dissolved,” said Malm, militarily. “Report to me here in Stockholm at once.”

  “Kiss my ass,” said Kollberg.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  As he packed his bag and went to fetch his car, he realized that he had had just about enough.

  23

  On Wednesday evening, Ronnie Casparsson learned that one of the policemen involved in the dramatic shootout in Ljunghusen was dead.

  That was the way the woman on the news put it. The dramatic shootout in Ljunghusen.

  He was sitting on the sofa with his mother watching TV, and he heard them read off his description. The man, who is the object of a nationwide manhunt, is about twenty years of age, below average height, has long blond hair, and was last seen wearing jeans and a dark windbreaker.

  He glanced sideways at his mother. She was busy with her knitting, wrinkling her brow and moving her lips. Counting stitches, probably.

  The description was not especially detailed, nor especially accurate. He had just passed his nineteenth birthday, but he knew from experience that people often took him for sixteen or seventeen. He had been wearing a black leather jacket. Moreover, his mother had cut his hair the previous evening, under simulated protest.

  The newscaster also said that he was presumed to be driving a light-green Chevrolet with three sevens in the license number.

  Funny they hadn’t found the car. He hadn’t taken any special pains to hide it. They were sure to find it any moment now.

  “I’ve got to leave tomorrow, Mama,” he said.

  She looked up from her knitting.

  “But Ronnie, can’t you stay till Papa comes home? He’ll be so unhappy when he finds out you’ve come and gone, and he didn’t get a chance to see you.”

  “I have to give the car back. The kid I borrowed it from needs it tomorrow. But I’ll come again soon.”

  His mother sighed.

  “Yes, yes, that’s what you always say,” she said resignedly. “And then we don’t see you for a year.”

  The next morning, he drove into Stockholm.

  He didn’t know where he was headed, but if the police managed to find out who he was, he didn’t want to sit at home with his mother and wait to be arrested. In Stockholm, it was easier to disappear.

  He didn’t have much money, only a couple of the five-crown pieces and two tens his mother had given him. Gas was no problem. He had cut a section off the garden hose in his parents’ garage, and as soon as it got dark, he could get all the gasoline he needed. Of course, most cars had locks on their gas tanks these days, but as long as you weren’t in a hurry, things usually went fine.

  A place to live was more of a problem. He had a couple of friends with their own apartment, and he would drive over and ask them if he could crash with them for a couple of days, but most of the other people he knew were in the same fix he was in. No place to live.

  It was still early when he got to Stockholm, and he drove around aimlessly in the center of town before it struck him that he’d better look up his friends while there was still some chance of catching them in bed.

  They lived in Henriksdal. He drove carefully, anxious not to break any laws or draw attention to himself. The car ran well and was comfortable and pleasant to drive.

  There was a strange name on the door to his friends’ apartment. He rang the bell, and a woman in bathrobe and slippers answered the door. She said she’d moved in a few days ago and that she didn’t know what had become of the previous tenants.

  Caspar wasn’t particularly surprised. He had been to some pretty wild parties there himself, and he knew they’d been threatened with eviction several times.

  He drove back downtown. There wasn’t much gas left in the tank, and he didn’t want to waste the last of his money on gasoline, which he could get for nothing that night. But luck was with him, and he found a free parking space on Skeppsbron.

  As he stood waiting for the “walk” light by the statue of Gustaf III, he turned and looked back at the car. It was last year’s model and still fairly shiny and clean, without a dent or a scrape anywhere on it. It was a common make and looked sober and middle-class. It wasn’t conspicuous in any way. With its new fake plates, to go on driving it would be no great risk.

  He wandered around in the Old City and thought about what he would do.

  He’d been away from Stockholm for two weeks. It felt like an eternity.

  Fourteen days ago, he’d had a little money and so he’d gone to Copenhagen with a couple of other guys. Then, when the money ran out, he’d go
ne to Malmö, where he’d had the misfortune of running into Christer. Who was now dead. It was still hard for him to grasp what had happened. Sunday morning in Ljunghusen had somehow been ripped out of his life. It had nothing to do with him; it was more like something he’d seen in a movie or heard someone tell about than something he’d lived through himself.

  He felt a strong need to talk to someone, to see his friends, to get back to his normal life, and convince himself that nothing had changed.

  But everything had changed. Oh, he’d been on the lam before, but not like this.

  This time it was really serious. He was the object of a nationwide manhunt—that’s what they’d said on TV.

  He couldn’t go looking for his friends. They hung out in Humlegården and Kungsträdgården and Sergel Square, the first places the police would go to look for him.

  He was hungry and went into a shop on Köpmangatan to buy some rolls. A girl in jeans and a leather coat was standing at the counter paying for a box of tea that she was holding under one arm. She had short blond hair, and when she turned around, Caspar could see she was older than he’d thought. Thirty, at least. She looked him right in the face with her searching blue eyes, and for an instant he thought she recognized him and fear tied a knot in his belly.

  “Mr. Beck still isn’t back?” asked the clerk behind the counter, and the woman with the inquisitive gaze finally looked away.

  “No, but he ought to be back any day,” she said.

  Her voice was a little hoarse. She went to the door without looking at Caspar and stepped out into the street.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Nielsen,” the clerk called after her. “Come again.”

  Caspar bought his rolls, but it was some time before the knot in his stomach loosened enough for him to eat them.

  I’m starting to crack up, he thought. I’ve got to pull myself together.

  He left the Old City and crossed Slussen toward Södermalm Square. There were two Finns standing outside the entrance to the subway. He knew them slightly and had talked to them several times, but as he approached the steps leading down to where they stood, he caught sight of two patrolmen walking down Peter Myndes Hill. He changed direction abruptly and walked on toward Götgatan.

  He came to Medborgarplatsen and stopped to stare at the newsbills outside the newspaper kiosk next to Björn’s Garden, POLICEMAN MURDERED, said one, and WOUNDED POLICEMAN DIES another, in fat black type. He read the smaller subheads. Desperado Sought Nationwide read one of them, while the other evening tabloid stated more laconically, Murderer At Large.

  Caspar knew it was him they meant, but he still couldn’t see how they could call him a “desperado” and a “murderer.”

  He had never even held a gun in his hand, and if he had he wouldn’t have had the nerve to use it on another human being, even if he were desperate.

  It hadn’t occurred to him all day to buy the papers, and now that he saw the newsbills, he was afraid to read what they had to say.

  He thought of the green car, full of stolen property and with his fingerprints on the steering wheel. And not only the steering wheel. Once they found the car they would have his fingerprints, and once they had them they would know who they were hunting.

  He remembered that time a year and a half ago all too well—the only time he’d been caught—and he could still see the stamp pad and the card they’d pressed his fingers on. All ten, one after the other.

  Caspar didn’t buy a paper. He went on walking, up one street and down the next, without being conscious of where he was. He racked his brains trying to think of someplace to hide.

  His parents’ house was out of the question. The police would go there as soon as they found out who he was. And they probably knew that already.

  He felt sorry for his mother, and he wished he could explain to her what had happened. That he hadn’t shot anyone. If he could find a place to hide out, maybe he’d write her a letter.

  It was dark by four o’clock, and he started feeling calmer. After all, he hadn’t killed anyone. It was all a misunderstanding, and you can’t be punished for something you haven’t done. Or can you?

  Caspar was cold. He was wearing a thin pullover under his leather jacket, and his worn, washed-out jeans didn’t afford much warmth. And his feet, in tennis shoes, were even colder than his legs. He considered going back to the car. He could try to siphon a little gas and drive out into the country and sleep in the back seat. But he remembered how cold the night was by Lake Sommen three days earlier, and anyway, it was still too early.

  In addition to the rolls, he had bought two hot dogs and a pack of cigarettes, but he still had nineteen crowns.

  He went into a pastry shop on Ringvägen that he’d never been in before. He ordered coffee and two cheese sandwiches and sat down at a table next to a radiator.

  As he lifted the cup to take his first sip of coffee, he heard a voice behind him.

  “Well, if it isn’t Caspar! What made you go get scalped like that? I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  He put down his cup and turned around, his face drawn with terror.

  “Don’t look so scared,” said the girl. “It’s only me. Maggie. You remember me, don’t you?”

  Of course he remembered her. Maggie had been his best friend’s girl for several years, and he had met her the very first day he came to Stockholm, almost three years ago. She and his friend had broken up six months before, and his friend had gone to sea. Caspar hadn’t seen Maggie since then.

  But she was a terrific girl, and he liked her.

  She moved over to his table, and they talked about old times for a while, and finally Caspar decided to tell her about his problem. He told her everything, exactly the way it had happened. Maggie had been reading the papers, and she realized right away what a fix he was in.

  “Poor Caspar,” she said when he was through. “What a rotten mess! I suppose I really ought to advise you to go to the cops and tell them the whole story, but I won’t, because I don’t trust those bastards.”

  She thought for a while, and Caspar sat silently and waited.

  “You can stay at my place,” she said, finally. “I’ve got an apartment out at Midsommarkransen. My boyfriend isn’t going to like it, of course, but he’s not on such good terms with the cops himself, so he ought to understand. And he’s a nice guy—deep down.”

  Caspar’s vocabulary wasn’t really adequate to express his relief and gratitude. But he did his best.

  “You’re one hell of a terrific chick, Maggie. I always said so.”

  Maggie even paid his check and then walked down to Skeppsbron with him to get his car.

  “You can’t afford to get a ticket in your boots,” she said. “And I’ve got money for gas, so don’t worry about that.”

  They drove out to Midsommarkransen with Maggie at the wheel, and Caspar sang at the top of his lungs the whole way there.

  24

  Herrgott Allwright reached behind his right ear with a thumb and two fingers and pushed his hat down over his left eye. It made him look like Huckleberry Finn, albeit thirty-five years older.

  “Today we’ll go out and shoot ourselves a pheasant. And then eat it. I’m one hell of a good cook. That’s one of the advantages of being a bachelor.”

  Martin Beck mumbled something.

  He himself was one of the worst cooks in the world. Maybe that was the result of becoming a bachelor too late. But probably not. Whenever he tried to do any kind of housework, he always had a strong impression that all of his fingers were thumbs.

  “And where are we going to shoot it? Do you own hunting land?”

  “I’ve got friends,” Allwright said. “We have what amounts to a standing invitation. You can borrow some boots from me. And a shotgun—I’ve got two.”

  Allwright grinned and shuffled some papers on his desk.

  “Unless, of course, you think it would be more interesting to refresh your soul in an exchange of views with Folke,” he added.

&nbs
p; Martin Beck shook himself. His conversations with Folke Bengtsson had now reached a state of total stagnation. Somewhat like a chess game where each of the players has nothing but a king and a knight left on the board.

  “I read an interesting thing in here,” Allwright said, picking up a foreign police periodical. “In Dayton, Ohio, a city roughly the same size as Malmö, there have been one hundred and five murders so far this year, which, on a per capita basis, is ten times as many as in New York. Detroit’s the only city with dependable statistics that’s worse. Seventy-one of those murders were committed with firearms. That must be worse than Stockholm.”

  “Does it tell how many robberies and assaults they’ve had?”

  “No, it doesn’t. Now, to compare that with Trelleborg Police District, we’ve had one murder here. And that’s an unusually high figure.”

  “One,” said Martin Beck. “But it’s enough to spoil my sleep. Last night I dreamed about Bengtsson again.”

  Allwright laughed.

  “About Folke? I wouldn’t say anything if you dreamed about Sigbrit.”

  Allwright was touching on a psychological phenomenon that affected Martin Beck and, no doubt, a lot of other policemen in similar positions. Generally speaking, he could go out and inspect a massacred or mutilated corpse without turning a hair. Even if he did feel a certain inner discomfort, he was capable of throwing it aside like an old coat as soon as he got home. On the other hand, he was tormented by situations where he suspected that something wasn’t right—like this matter of Sigbrit Mård and Folke Bengtsson. A man who had been convicted in advance and who could not defend himself. It was somewhat like a lynching.

  “There’s another piece of news from the lab today,” Allwright said. “That rag that I personally found near the body when we were examining the scene of the crime. To tell the truth, I had completely and utterly forgotten about it.”

  He laughed.

  “What did they find?” said Martin Beck.

  “They subjected it to a complete battery of tests,” Allwright said. “Here’s the report. It contained cotton fiber, gravel, dirt, clay, fat, oil, and nickel shavings. The gravel and dirt had exactly the same composition as the sample we took from the mudhole where we found Sigbrit. But the ground where I picked it up, on the other hand, was of a completely different type. So we can advance the theory that whoever murdered Sigbrit used it to dry off his boots. Assuming he was wearing boots, and he must have been.”