The Terrorists

by Maj Sjowall

  “So what?”

  “Here at National Headquarters we just wish to point out that you have no reason to get mixed up in a whole lot of peripheral crimes which haven’t yet been committed.”

  “Have we done that?”

  “The Commissioner thinks the question of responsibility is important. If crimes are committed elsewhere, that’s not our fault. It has nothing to do with National Headquarters.”

  “Extraordinary,” said Gunvald Larsson. “If I were at National HQ I’d see to it that preventive measures were taken. What do you people do up there? What do you think your job is?”

  “It isn’t our responsibility, it’s the government’s.”

  “Okay, then, I’ll call the Minister.”

  “What?”

  “You heard perfectly well what I said. Goodbye.”

  Gunvald Larsson had never before spoken to a member of the government. For that matter, he had never wanted to, but now he dialed the Department of Justice with a certain gusto. He was put straight through and got the Minister of Justice on the line.

  “Good afternoon,” he said. “My name’s Larsson and I’m from the police. I’m involved in security for the Senator’s visit.”

  “Good afternoon. I’ve heard about you.”

  “There has arisen what strikes me as an unpleasant and meaningless discussion about whose fault it is that there won’t be any policemen in, say, Enköping and Norrtälje next Thursday and Friday.”

  “And?”

  “I’d appreciate an answer to the question, so I can stop arguing about it with all kinds of idiots.”

  “I see. Naturally, the government as a whole takes full responsibility. I can’t see any point in trying to pin the blame on some individual—whoever it was, for example, who insisted on making the invitation in the first place. I shall personally point out to the National Police Headquarters that they must do everything in their power to strengthen crime prevention in districts where there is a severe shortage of manpower.”

  “Excellent,” said Gunvald Larsson. “That’s what I wanted to hear. Goodbye.”

  “Just a moment,” said the Minister of Justice. “I myself telephoned to find out what the situation is on the security front.”

  “We consider it good,” said Gunvald Larsson. “We’re working according to a definite but flexible plan.”

  “Excellent.”

  He really seemed quite sensible, thought Gunvald Larsson, but then the Minister of Justice had the reputation of being a shining exception among the career politicians who were busily steering Sweden down the long and evidently unavoidable slope.

  The day continued with numerous conversations, most of which were largely meaningless. File clerks ran in and out in a constant stream.

  At about ten in the evening, Gunvald Larsson was handed a file, whose contents caused him to sit still for almost half an hour, his head propped in his hands.

  Both Skacke and Martin Beck were still there, but about to go home, and Gunvald Larsson did not want to spoil their evening, so at first he thought he would say nothing about what was in the file until the next day. Then he changed his mind and without comment handed it to Martin Beck, who equally impassively placed it in his briefcase.

  Martin Beck did not reach the house in Tulegatan until twenty past eleven that night.

  He opened the street door with his own key, then went up two flights and rang the bell, using their agreed signal.

  Rhea had keys to his apartment, but he did not have any to hers. Martin Beck couldn’t see that he needed any, as he’d have no reason to be there if she wasn’t home. And when she was home, the door was usually unlocked.

  Thirty seconds or so later she came running to open the door in her bare feet. She was looking unusually lovely, wearing nothing but a soft, fluffy blue-gray jersey that came halfway down her thighs.

  “Damn,” she said. “You didn’t give me enough time. I’ve made something that has to be in the oven for half an hour.”

  When he was inside, she said, “God, you look tired. Shall we take a sauna? It’ll relax you.”

  The year before, Rhea had had a sauna built in the basement for her tenants. When she wanted to use it privately, she simply stuck a note on the basement door.

  Martin Beck changed into an old bathrobe he kept in the bedroom wardrobe, while she went on ahead and got the sauna going. It was a good sauna—dry and very hot.

  Most people sat silently and enjoyed the heat, but Rhea was not that kind of person.

  “How’re things going with your peculiar job?” she asked.

  “Pretty well, I think, but …”

  “But what?”

  “It’s hard to know for certain. I’ve never done anything like it before.”

  “Imagine inviting that s.o.b.,” said Rhea. “What is it, a week now? Until he comes?”

  “Not even that. Next Thursday.”

  “Will it be on the radio or TV?”

  “Both.”

  “I’ll go down to Köpmangatan and watch.”

  “Aren’t you going to demonstrate?”

  “Maybe,” she said moodily. “I ought to. Maybe I’m getting a bit old for demonstrating. It was different a few years ago.”

  “Have you ever heard of something called ULAG?”

  “I’ve read something about it in the papers. What they stand for seems vague. Do you think they might do something here?”

  “There’s the possibility.”

  “They sound dangerous.”

  “Very.”

  “Have you had enough now?”

  The thermometer showed almost a hundred degrees Celsius. She threw a few scoops of water onto the stones and an almost unbearable yet oddly pleasant heat sank from the ceiling.

  They went and showered, then toweled each other down.

  When they got back up to the apartment, a very promising aroma was coming from the kitchen.

  “It smells done,” she said. “Can you manage setting the table?”

  That was about all he could manage—except eating, of course.

  The food was very good and he ate more than he had for a long time. Then he sat in silence for a while, his wineglass in his hand.

  She looked at him. “You look absolutely done in. Go to bed.”

  Martin Beck really was done in. The day of uninterrupted telephoning and conferring had exhausted him. But for some reason he did not want to go to bed at once. He felt too comfortable in this kitchen, with its plaits of garlic bulbs and bunches of wormwood, thyme and rowanberries. After a while he said, “Rhea?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think it was wrong of me to take on this job?”

  She thought for a long time before answering, then said, “That would require quite an involved analysis. But I more than understand that friend of yours who resigned.”

  “Kollberg.”

  “He’s a nice man. I like his wife, too. And I think he did the right thing. He saw that the police as an organization devoted itself to terrorizing mainly two categories of people, socialists and people who couldn’t make it in our class society. He acted according to his conscience and convictions.”

  “I think he was wrong. If all good policemen got out, because they take on other people’s guilt, then only the dumb ones, the dregs, would be left. We’ve talked about this before, anyhow.”

  “You and I have talked about practically everything before. Have you ever thought about that?”

  He nodded.

  “But you asked a concrete question, and now I’ll answer it. Yes, darling, I think you were wrong. What would have happened if you’d refused?”

  “I’d have been given a direct order.”

  “And if you’d refused a direct order?”

  Martin Beck shrugged his shoulders. He was very tired, but the conversation interested him. “I might possibly have been suspended. But to be honest, that’s unlikely. Someone else would simply have been given the job.”

  “Who?”


  “Stig Malm, probably, my so-called chief and immediate superior.”

  “And he’d have made a worse job of it than you? Yes, most likely, but I think you should have refused all the same. That’s what I feel, I mean. Feelings are difficult to analyze. I guess what I feel is this: Our government, which maintains it represents the people, invites a notorious reactionary to come on a visit—a man who might even have been President of the United States a few years ago. Had he been, we would probably have had a global war by now. And on top of all that, he is to be received as an honored guest. Our ministers, with the Prime Minister in the lead, will sit politely chatting with him about the recession and the price of oil and assure him that good old neutral Sweden is still the same firm bulwark against communism it has always been. He’ll be invited to a damned great banquet and be allowed to meet the so-called opposition, which has the same capitalist interests as the government, only slightly more honestly expressed. Then he’ll have lunch with our half-witted puppet king. And all the time he has to be protected so goddamn carefully that presumably he won’t be allowed to see a single demonstrator or even hear that there is any opposition, if Säpo or the CIA don’t tell him. The only thing he’ll notice is that the head of the Communist party isn’t at the banquet.”

  “You’re wrong there. All demonstrators are to be allowed within sight.”

  “If the government doesn’t get scared and talk you out of it, yes. What can you do if the Prime Minister suddenly calls you up and says all the demonstrators are to be transported to Råsunda stadium and kept there?”

  “Then I’ll resign.”

  She looked at him for a long time, her chin resting on her drawn-up knees and her hands clasped around her ankles. Her hair was tangled after the sauna and shower and her irregular features were thoughtful.

  He thought she looked beautiful.

  Finally she said, “You’re great, Martin. But you’ve got a hell of a job. What sort of people are they you get for murder and other horrors? Like the last one—some poor working slob who tried to hit back at the capitalist bastard who had destroyed his life. What’ll he get?”

  “Twelve years, probably.”

  “Twelve years,” she said. “Well, I suppose it was worth it to him.” She did not look happy.

  Then she changed the subject, abruptly, as she often did.

  “The kids are upstairs with Sara, so you can sleep without them jumping on your stomach. On the other hand, I may step on you when I go to bed.”

  It often happened that she went to bed after he had fallen asleep.

  She changed tack again. “I hope you’re aware that this highly honored guest has tens of thousands of lives on his conscience. He was one of the most active forces behind the strategic bombing in North Vietnam. And he was right in there even during the Korean War. He supported MacArthur when he wanted to drop atomic bombs on China.”

  Martin Beck nodded. “I know.” Then he yawned.

  “Go to bed now,” she said firmly. “I’ll bring you breakfast in the morning. What time shall I wake you?”

  “Seven.”

  “Okay.”

  Martin Beck went to bed and fell asleep more or less instantaneously.

  Rhea cleaned up in the kitchen, then went into the bedroom and kissed him on the forehead. He did not react at all. It was warm in the apartment and she took off her jersey, curled up in her favorite armchair and read for a while. She had difficulty sleeping and was often awake long into the small hours. At one time she had tried to cure her insomnia with red wine, but nowadays she made a virtue out of necessity and read a great number of boring papers and suchlike at nights.

  Tonight she read a paper on character appraisal that she herself had written a few years earlier. When she finished it, she looked around and caught sight of Martin Beck’s briefcase. Rhea Nielsen was inquisitive, mostly in a very straightforward way, so she opened it without much thought and began to study the papers, thoroughly and with interest, finally opening the file Gunvald Larsson had handed to Martin Beck just before he left. She examined the contents for a long time, with intense attention and not without a certain surprise.

  At long last she put everything back into the briefcase and went to bed. She stepped on Martin Beck, but he was sleeping so soundly he didn’t wake up.

  Then she lay down close to him with her face turned toward his.

  15

  The Army Museum in Stockholm was on Riddargatan in Östermalm, in the old barracks behind a spacious yard containing neatly kept and grouped old artillery pieces. It filled the whole block between Sibyllegatan and Artillerigatan. The nearest building was not very military: Hedvig Eleonora Church, which despite its fine dome was not one of the city’s historic buildings, nor much to cheer about.

  Nowadays there was not much to cheer about in the Army Museum either, especially since it had been revealed that part of the Security Service had been tucked away in the building, with the museum as an innocent front.

  The heart of the museum was a great hall filled with ancient cannons and various old muskets, but it was not an interest in history that had brought the chief of the Homicide Squad on a visit.

  A fat man was sitting at a desk in a small office studying a chess problem. It was an unusually difficult one, mate in five moves, and now and again he made a note in a shorthand notebook, which he then almost immediately crossed out again. There was a possibility that this was not what he was supposed to be doing, as on the table lay a dismembered pistol and beside his chair a wooden crate full of firearms, some of them with cardboard labels that carried no information at all.

  The man with the chess problem was Lennart Kollberg, Martin Beck’s closest colleague during many difficult years. He had said farewell to the police force about a year before, and his resignation had caused considerable uproar and some acid comment. The fact that one of the country’s best policemen—a man with a solid position of command—had resigned because he could no longer stand being a policeman had not looked so good. Stig Malm had chased through the corridors like a dog with its tongue hanging out trying to carry out the Commissioner’s order that the matter not be made public.

  Naturally, it got out all the same, although the newspapers, by and large, found it no more remarkable that an old policeman should resign than that a sports journalist, satiated with travel, bribes and drink, should say to hell with it all and decide to spend his time with his children watching football on TV. For Martin Beck personally, it had been a misfortune, but he’d get over it. They seldom met privately, but even so a number of tankards had been raised in either Kollberg’s apartment in Skär-marbrink or Martin Beck’s in Köpmangatan.

  “Hi,” said Kollberg now, pleased to see Martin Beck but showing no overwhelming enthusiasm.

  Martin Beck said nothing but thumped his old friend on the back.

  “This is quite interesting,” said Kollberg, nodding at the crate. “A heap of old pistols and revolvers, mostly from various police districts. A lot of people handed in funny old popguns when Parliament made those new laws on the possession of firearms. But the ones who voluntarily brought in their arsenals were, of course, those who’d never even considered trying to shoot with them. No one here has the time or the desire to go through the whole lot and catalogue them properly,” said Kollberg. “But someone thought I’d do for the job, even if half the top brass in the police keep calling me a communist.”

  That someone had been right. Few people could rival Kollberg when it came to being systematic.

  He pointed at the dismantled pistol. “Look at that, for instance. An automatic Russian Nagant, eleven millimeters and as old as the hills. I managed to get it apart, but now don’t know how the hell I’m going to get it together again. And here …” He rummaged in the crate and picked out a gigantic old Colt revolver. “Have you ever seen the likes of this Peacemaker? Well looked-after, too. Åsa Torell kept one like that under her pillow after Stenström was killed. And she kept the safety catch off
, for good measure.”

  “I’ve seen quite a lot of Åsa this summer,” said Martin Beck. “She’s with the Märsta force.”

  “With Märsta-Pärsta?” said Kollberg with a laugh.

  “She and Benny did a good job on that murder in Rotebro.”

  “What murder in Rotebro?”

  “Don’t you read the newspapers?”

  “Yes, but not that kind of thing. Benny? Every time I hear that slob’s name, I’m reminded that he actually saved my life once. Of course, if he hadn’t been such an idiot just beforehand, he wouldn’t have had to.”

  “Benny’s okay,” said Martin Beck. “And Åsa’s become a good policewoman.”

  “Well, well, the ways of the Lord are indeed strange.”

  Although Kollberg had left the church some years earlier, he not infrequently came out with religious quotations.

  “You know,” he went on, “I always thought you and Åsa would get together. It would have been a good solution, and she would have made you a good wife. And you were in love with her, too, though you would never admit it. On top of everything else, she was damned good-looking.”

  Martin Beck smiled and shook his head.

  “What happened that time in Malmö, anyhow?” Kollberg asked. “You know the time I fixed you up with adjoining hotel rooms?”

  “You’ll probably never know,” said Martin Beck. “How’s Gun, for that matter?”

  “Great. She loves working and gets more and more beautiful every day. And I really like looking after the kids sometimes. I’ve even learned to cook. Even better than before,” he added modestly.

  Suddenly his eye lit on something lying near the dismantled pistol, and his hand shot out. “Got it!” he said. “This pin. Have you ever seen such a helluva pin before? I knew I’d find it, of course. This pin is the key to the whole construction.”

  Like lightning, he assembled the firearm, consulted a large loose-leaf file full of stenciled pages, wrote out a card and put the pistol aside, after having tied a label to the trigger guard.