Cop Killer

by Maj Sjowall

  “Nickel shavings?” said Martin Beck. “That’s sort of special.”

  “Yes, I thought so. In any case, it is not the sort of evidence that links Folke to the crime.”

  But Folke Bengtsson is going to be convicted, thought Martin Beck. Unless …

  “Enough of that. Come on, let’s go hunting,” Allwright said.

  The hunt was a peculiar experience for Martin Beck, who, as a matter of fact, had never been hunting before. Wearing jeans, a duffle coat, a cap knitted by Evert Johansson’s wife, and Allwright’s extra boots, he stalked across the meadows alongside Allwright, who held Timmy straining at his leash. Martin Beck had the shotgun—Allwright’s extra—crooked in his left elbow, which was the way he had seen real hunters do it, probably in the movies.

  “You get the first shot,” Allwright said. “You’re the guest, after all. I’ll take the second.”

  The meadow was soft and springy underfoot, and the grass was tall and frosty after a cold night. Stubborn flowers defied the hastily approaching winter, and in several places there were great clumps of bluish mushrooms.

  “Blue legs,” Allwright said. “Highly edible. We can pick some on the way back. Give dinner a little je ne sais quoi. Is that the right word?”

  The caps of the mushrooms were frozen, completely or in part, but for being so late in the year, it was a magnificent day. Martin Beck walked along in silence. He had heard that hunters were supposed to be quiet. And he gave very little thought to strangled divorcees, paroled sex criminals, keys that fit no locks, and rags containing nickel shavings.

  The air was clean and pure, and the sky was blue with occasional ragged clouds. A glorious day.

  Then they flushed their first bird, from a point about twelve inches from his feet. Martin Beck was taken completely by surprise, jumped back, fired, and the bird flew away as if shot from a catapult.

  “Jesus,” Allwright said, and laughed. “I wouldn’t want you on my skeet-shooting team. Damn nice of you not to shoot Timmy or me.”

  Martin Beck laughed too. He had warned him that his experience in these matters was, to put it mildly, limited.

  The next pheasant flew up about forty minutes later, and Allwright shot it with such perfect ease that it was almost like something he had done in passing.

  On the way back, Martin Beck devoted himself to picking mushrooms.

  “Yes, mushrooms are easier,” Allwright said. “They stand still.”

  They walked on back to Allwright’s tomato-colored car.

  “Nickel shavings,” said Martin Beck when they reached it. “Where could they have come from?”

  “Some sort of specialized machine shop, I suppose. How do I know?”

  “It might be important.”

  “Could be,” Allwright said.

  He seemed to be thinking only about dinner.

  Which turned out to be singularly delicious. Martin Beck had a hard time remembering when he’d had a better meal.

  Even though Rhea Nielsen was a good cook—and proved it eagerly and often.

  Allwright proved to have all sorts of odd things in his freezer. Morels, for example, that he had picked himself, and a wonderfully tasty mixture of blueberries, blackberries, and wild raspberries. It made a splendid dessert, especially with whipped cream, which, as Allwright put it, was “untouched by anything but human hands.”

  They had just wiped their mouths when the telephone rang.

  “Allwright? … Is that right? … Well, that was really well done. Tell me about it … How? In a letter? … I’ll pass it on. We’ll probably be down sometime in the morning … If you keep that up you might even get a transfer to Anderslöv … You don’t? That’s the silliest thing I ever heard of … Okay, so long.”

  He hung up the phone and peered at Martin Beck.

  “Who was that?”

  “One of the boys in Trelleborg. They’ve found the apartment that belongs to that key in Sigbrit’s purse.”

  Martin Beck was astounded and didn’t bother to hide it.

  “How the hell did they manage that?” he said.

  “There’s a saying in these parts that goes, ‘The dumbest farmer gets the biggest beets.’ Now you might suppose that would apply to a case such as this. But you’d be wrong.”

  Allwright started clearing the table as he talked.

  “The fact is that some of the boys in Trelleborg made up their minds that, by George, they’d find that door if it was in Trelleborg to be found. They made a lot of copies of the key and put in a lot of overtime, and of course when you get down to it, Trelleborg’s not Stockholm or Dayton, Ohio, to take a couple of examples. It isn’t a hell of a big city, and if you’re just pertinacious enough, you generally get where you’re going.”

  He paused and chuckled under his breath. Martin Beck had pulled himself together and was helping with the clearing and the dishes.

  “And there’s another thing that I’d say was an important factor. Some of the boys down there are good. The Chief has a chance to pick them by hand. He doesn’t have to take just anyone, like in Stockholm or Malmö.”

  Since coming to Anderslöv, Martin Beck had been made unusually conscious of the fact that there really were quite a few good policemen among the innumerable mediocrities and the frighteningly large number of complete incompetents.

  “So the boys thought they’d show the big guns from Stockholm—you mostly—that they can do the job even down here south of the highway. And they kept at it till they found the right door. This afternoon. If I know them, they would have stayed with it until they could swear that there was no such lock in Trelleborg.”

  “Did you get any details?”

  “Sure. The address, for example. And some other things. They haven’t touched anything, just looked. A little one-room apartment, not much furniture. Rented by Sigbrit under her maiden name, which happened to be Jönsson. The rent was paid in cash in a stamped envelope with a typewritten address on the first of every month for three and a half years. For that matter, it was paid for this month too, although Sigbrit was dead then and could hardly have paid it herself. So someone else must have taken care of it.”

  “Clark.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I feel pretty sure of it.”

  “There were always two words and a letter typed on the back of the envelope—Rent S. Jönsson.”

  “We’ll have to go down and have a look in the morning.”

  “With pleasure. They’ve sealed the door.”

  “Clark,” said Martin Beck to himself. “Hardly Folke Bengtsson.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s too tight,” said Martin Beck.

  “Well, the rent wasn’t much. Seventy-five crowns. Always the exact amount in the envelope, according to the landlord.”

  Martin Beck shook his head.

  “Not Bengtsson,” he said. “Wrong man. It just doesn’t fit his behavior pattern.”

  “Well, Folke’s a creature of habit,” Allwright said.

  “It doesn’t fit in with his attitude toward women. His view of the so-called opposite sex is different.”

  “Opposite sex,” Allwright said. “You can say that again. Did I tell you about my lady friend in Abbekås? The flesh-eating plant?”

  Martin Beck nodded.

  “Speaking of Clark, he’s a very shadowy figure,” Allwright said. “He doesn’t live here in this district. I can say that with ninety-nine per cent certainty. And I happen to know that the boys in Trelleborg have gone in hard for this Clark business, the description and everything. In their opinion, there’s no such person in the entire Trelleborg Police District.”

  “Mmm,” said Martin Beck.

  “So the possibility remains that Folke made up the whole thing about this man and his car in order to distract attention from himself.”

  “That’s possible,” said Martin Beck.

  But he didn’t believe it.

  They drove to Trelleborg the next day and studied the premises.
r />   The apartment was in a rather small building behind an old apartment house that looked worn but not rundown. The building was on a side street that appeared to be very quiet.

  Sigbrit Mård’s secret retreat was one flight up, on the second floor, as they say in South Sweden.

  Martin Beck let Allwright break the seal. He had the feeling Allwright thought it would be fun, somehow.

  It wasn’t much of an apartment.

  It smelled musty and probably hadn’t been aired out for over a month.

  There was some mail lying on the floor in the hall under the mail slot—various kinds of ads and notices addressed to Occupant.

  The name on the door consisted of detachable white plastic letters forming the pseudonym S. JÖNSSON.

  There was a lavatory on the right side of the hall, with a shelf above the sink for toiletries. Two toothbrushes in the same glass, a package of tampons, lipstick, pancake make-up, nail file, eye shadow. There was a diaphragm in a round plastic box. Sigbrit Mård had apparently not been one to take chances.

  There was also a bar of soap, a shaving brush, and a razor, which did not necessarily mean that the place had been used by a man. Sigbrit had shaved her armpits.

  The single room contained two chairs and a table. There was an ordinary foam rubber mattress against one wall, dressed up with a colorful spread from some bargain basement.

  On the mattress was a pillow with a sky-blue pillow case.

  Beside the table stood an electric heater. It was unplugged, and probably had been for some time.

  They opened the drawers in the table without touching the knobs. Empty, except for some blank sheets of paper and a pad of thin, blue, lined stationery.

  Martin Beck thought he recognized the quality.

  In the kitchen they found the following: a coffee pot, two cups, two glasses, a jar of Nescafé, an unopened bottle of white wine, a half empty bottle of good whisky (Chivas Regal), four cans of beer (Carlsberg), and a tankard of indeterminate origin.

  There was an ashtray in the kitchen and one in the main room. Both were clean.

  “Not much of a love nest,” said Herrgott Allwright.

  Martin Beck said nothing. Allwright knew a great deal about the most disparate things. The one subject about which he knew very little was love.

  There were no lampshades, only naked bulbs. It was all very clean and neat. There were a broom, dustpan, and rag in a cubby in the kitchen.

  Martin Beck crouched down and looked at the pillow. There were two kinds of hairs on it.

  Long blond ones, and others that were much shorter and almost white.

  He studied the mattress. There were stains that could undoubtedly be analyzed, and frizzy hairs.

  “We’re going to want a lab report on this place. And it had better be damn thorough.”

  Allwright nodded.

  “This is the place all right,” said Martin Beck. “That’s for sure. My congratulations to the Trelleborg police.”

  He looked at Allwright.

  “Have you got the stuff to put a new seal on the door?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Allwright slowly.

  They left.

  A little while later they found the patrolman who had discovered the apartment. He was walking a beat on the main street. He had red hair and did not speak the local dialect.

  “Well done,” said Martin Beck.

  “Thanks.”

  “Did you talk to the neighbors?”

  “Yes, but they didn’t know anything. Mostly older folks. They’d noticed that there were people there in the evenings sometimes, but they were mostly the kind who go to bed at seven o’clock. They’d never seen any men there, just a woman. The old lady who’d seen her suddenly decided it might have been one of the girls from the pastry shop, but that was only when I gave her a hint. On the other hand, several of them had seen a beige car parked on the street now and then. A Volvo, they thought.”

  Martin Beck nodded. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place.

  “Good work,” he said, with a feeling of repeating himself.

  “Oh, it was my pleasure,” the policeman said. “Too bad we couldn’t get a lead on this fellow Clark.”

  “If he exists,” said Allwright.

  “He exists,” said Martin Beck as they walked toward the police building. “Rest assured.”

  “If you say so.”

  It was a bitterly cold day, even though the sky was still clear. An East German ferry lay at the slip. It was called the Rügen.

  Uncommonly ugly, thought Martin Beck.

  Boats had been getting uglier and uglier for years.

  Clark, he thought. Rags. Nickel shavings. Beige Volvo. And the impossible Folke Bengtsson.

  His view of all these things was more optimistic now.

  25

  Karl Kristiansson and Kenneth Kvastmo did not make a good team. Although they had manned the same patrol car for a year and a half, they had little to talk about and even less use for one another.

  Kvastmo was from Värmland, a big haystack of a man, with a blond mane, the neck of a bull, and a forehead like a washboard above a broad, meaty nose. As a policeman, he was thorough and persistent, eager and aggressive. In short, a stickler for duty. Besides which, he was very curious.

  Kristiansson had always been lazy, and the years had made him more and more so. He almost never thought about duty, but rather about the soccer pools and food and sometimes about the pain from an old gunshot wound. Another policeman had shot him in the knee a couple of years before, on April 3, 1971, to be exact. That had been the most calamitous day of his life, and there were many unfortunate ones to choose among. He had lost his best friend on that chilly Saturday and had been shot himself. To top it all off, he had had a minimal four right on his infallible soccer pool system.

  In Kristiansson’s opinion, Kvastmo was an incurable blockhead, who did nothing but whine and complain about everything and everyone, and who complicated the job by constantly taking action. For his own part, Kristiansson never took action any more without a direct order, or unless he was very strongly provoked. And as long as he stayed inside the patrol car and contented himself with staring out through the windshield with unseeing blue eyes, he was not easily accessible, not even for the most notorious provocateurs.

  But Kvastmo did everything he could to make life difficult. He fought an unending battle with gangsters. In spite of the fact that the Swedish police had a system of automatic promotions such that accumulating merits paid no appreciable dividends, he was constantly on the lookout for activities that called for police intervention. And given the society he lived in, he seldom had to look far. His dream was to be transferred to the notorious Östermalm Precinct, where, for no good reason, the police always arrested five times as many people as in all of the other Stockholm precincts put together. The new law gave over-zealous policemen a great opportunity to harass people, particularly young people who were, say, sitting on park benches talking to each other because they had nowhere else to go. People of this type were automatically regarded as suspect and could be apprehended immediately. The police could hold them for six hours, work them over at the station house, and release them again, only to make another military-style raid and drag the same people back into the paddy wagon. This was a good way to run things, Kvastmo thought, but unfortunately he was stuck in a precinct where the officers were not quite so bloodthirsty.

  During their many months in the patrol car, Kristiansson had learned at least two things. One bad thing: it was impossible to borrow so much as five crowns from Kvastmo. But also one good thing: Kvastmo was addicted to coffee, and when the man got too insufferable he could always suggest a coffee break.

  The brown liquid had an amazingly positive effect. Kvastmo could sit quietly for at least half an hour, often longer, slurping and smacking his lips and stuffing himself with Danish pastry and almond cake.

  But as soon as they were back in the car again, the good effects
were all undone. He returned at once to his incessant pursuit of suspects and his nagging complaints about the society of thieves they lived in.

  Kristiansson did not like coffee, but he knew it was the price he had to pay for a few moments of relaxation.

  At the moment, they had just finished a lengthy coffee session and found themselves back in the squad car, a black and white Plymouth with a spotlight and flashers and a short-wave radio and every other technical refinement.

  The patrol car, in turn, found itself on Essingeleden, an elevated superhighway that sliced across bays and islands into the center of Stockholm from the south.

  Kristiansson was driving at his usual phlegmatic pace, and Kvastmo was repeating one of his standard lines.

  “Why don’t you answer me, Karl?”

  “What?”

  “I’m talking to you about important things, and you’re not even listening.”

  “Sure I’m listening.”

  “Are you? The hell you are. You’re thinking about something else.”

  “I am?”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Oh …”

  “Broads, I’ll bet.”

  “Well …”

  What Kristiansson had actually been thinking about was oat flakes with strawberry jam and cold milk, but, in order to control his hunger, he had trammeled up the vision of an uncommonly disgusting corpse that, thanks to Kvastmo’s zeal, they had succeeded in discovering the previous summer. But not wanting to reveal his innermost thoughts, he made up another answer. Which he found an immediate use for.

  “Well, what were you thinking about? And why don’t you answer me?”

  “I was thinking about how Leeds has played twenty-eight league matches in a row without a loss, and how Millwall has already been beaten five times at home. It doesn’t make sense.”