The Terrorists
Page 32
If by “everyone” we mean a very small group of humankind.
Four people, to be exact.
Martin Beck and Rhea were spending that evening with Lennart Kollberg and his wife, and together they had created the conditions for as good a time as anyone could wish for.
No one said very much, but that was mostly because they were playing a game called “crosswords,” a game that seemed very simple. Each had a pen and piece of paper on which were drawn twenty-five squares, and each person in turn said a letter of the alphabet. The players had to fill in the given letters, and none other, and try to make words that read either across or down. They were not allowed to look at each other’s papers.
“X,” said Kollberg, for the third time in the same game, and they all sighed heavily.
There was possibly one fault with this game, thought Martin Beck, and that was that Kollberg won four times out of five—and the fifth time, Rhea won. But when it came to games, both he and Gun Kollberg were used to being losers, so it didn’t matter.
“X, as in ex-policeman,” said Kollberg, breezily, as if they all didn’t know how impossible it was to squeeze in one more example out of that hopeless letter.
Martin Beck stared for a moment at his paper, then shrugged his shoulders and gave up.
“Lennart?”
“Mmm,” said Kollberg.
“Do you remember ten years ago?”
“When we were hunting for Folke Bengtsson and the police had just been nationalized? Yes, I do, and I guess that is a time to remember. But everything that happened afterward? No, goddammit.”
“Do you think that was when it all began?”
Kollberg shook his head. “No, I don’t. And what’s worse, I don’t think this is where it’s going to end.”
“Y,” said Rhea.
Which shut everyone up for a moment.
A little later, the time had come to count the scores. Two points for a two-letter word, three for a three-letter word, and so on. Martin Beck scribbled the numbers on his paper. He was last as usual.
“Although one thing’s certain,” said Kollberg, “and that is that they made a terrible mistake back then. Putting the police in the vanguard of violence is like putting the cart before the horse.”
“Ha! I won!” said Rhea.
“You sure did,” said Kollberg.
Then he said magnanimously to Martin Beck, “Don’t sit there thinking about all that now. Violence has rushed like an avalanche throughout the whole of the Western world over the last ten years. You can’t stop or steer that avalanche on your own. It just increases. That’s not your fault.”
“Isn’t it?”
They all turned their papers over and drew more squares. When Kollberg was ready, he looked at Martin Beck and said, “The trouble with you, Martin, is just that you’ve got the wrong job. At the wrong time. In the wrong part of the world. In the wrong system.”
“Is that all?”
“Roughly,” said Kollberg. “My turn to start? Then I say X—X as in Marx.”
ALSO BY MAJ SJÖWALL AND
PER WAHLÖÖ
ROSEANNA
On a July afternoon, a young woman’s body is dredged from Sweden’s beautiful Lake Vättern. With no clues, Beck begins an investigation not only to uncover a murderer but also to discover who the victim was. Three months later, all Beck knows is that her name was Roseanna and that she could have been strangled by any one of eighty-five people on a cruise. As the melancholic Beck narrows the list of suspects, he is drawn increasingly to the enigma of the victim, a free-spirited traveler with a penchant for casual sex, and to the psychopathology of a murderer with a distinctive—indeed, terrifying—sense of propriety.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39046-2
THE MAN WHO WENT UP IN SMOKE
Inspector Martin Beck of the Stockholm Homicide Squad has his vacation abruptly terminated when the top brass at the foreign office pack him off to Budapest to search for Alf Matsson, who has vanished. Beck investigates viperous Eastern European underworld figures and—at the risk of his life—stumbles upon the international racket in which Matsson was involved. With the coolly efficient local police on his side and a predatory nymphet on his tail, Beck pursues a case whose international implications grow with each new clue.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39048-6
THE MAN ON THE BALCONY
In the once peaceful parks of Stockholm, a killer is stalking young girls and disposing of their bodies. The city is on edge, and an undercurrent of fear has gripped its residents. Martin Beck, now a superintendent, has two possible witnesses: a silent, stone-cold mugger and a mute three-year-old boy. With the likelihood of another murder growing as each day passes, the police force works night and day. But their efforts have offered little insight into the methodology of the killer. Then a distant memory resurfaces in Beck’s mind, and he may just have the break he needs.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39047-9
THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN
On a cold and rainy Stockholm night, nine bus riders are gunned down by a mysterious assassin. The press portrays it as a freak attack and dubs the killer a madman. But Superintendent Martin Beck thinks otherwise—one of his most ambitious young detectives was among those killed—and he suspects it was more than coincidence. Beck seeks out the girlfriend of the murdered detective, and with her help Beck reconstructs the steps that led to his murder. The police comb the country for the killer, only to find that this attack may be connected to a much older cold-case murder.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39050-9
THE FIRE ENGINE THAT DISAPPEARED
The cunning incendiary device that blew the roof off a Stockholm apartment building not only interrupted the small, peaceful orgy underway inside, it nearly took the lives of the eleven occupants. And if one of Martin Beck’s colleagues hadn’t been on the scene, the explosion would have led to a major catastrophe since—for reasons nobody could satisfactorily explain—a regulation fire truck has vanished. Was it terrorism, suicide, or simply a gas leak? And what, if anything, did the explosion have to do with the peculiar death earlier that day of a forty-six-year-old bachelor whose cryptic suicide note consisted of only two words: “Martin Beck”?
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39092-9
MURDER AT THE SAVOY
When Viktor Palmgren, a powerful Swedish industrialist, is shot during his after-dinner speech in the luxurious Hotel Savoy, it sends a shiver down the spine of the international money markets and terrifies the tiny town of Malmö. No one in the restaurant can identify the gunman, and local police are sheepishly baffled. That’s when Beck takes over the scene and quickly picks through Palmgren’s background. What he finds is a web of vice so despicable that it’s hard for him to imagine who wouldn’t want Palmgren dead, but that doesn’t stop him and his team of dedicated detectives from tackling one of their most intriguing cases yet.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39091-2
THE ABOMINABLE MAN
The gruesome murder of a police captain in his hospital room reveals the unsavory history of a man who spent forty years practicing a horrible blend of strong-arm police work and shear brutality. Beck and his colleagues comb Stockholm for the murderer, a demented and deadly rifleman, who has plans for even more chaos. As the tension builds and a feeling of imminent danger grips Beck, his investigation unearths evidence of police corruption. That’s when an even stronger sense of responsibility and something like shame urge him into taking a series of drastic steps, which lead to a shocking disaster.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39090-5
THE LOCKED ROOM
A young blonde in sunglasses robs a bank and kills a hapless citizen. Across town, a corpse with a bullet shot through its heart is found in a locked room—with no gun at the scene. The crimes seem disparate, but to Martin Beck they are two pieces of the same puzzle, and solving it becomes the one way he can escape the pains of his failed marriage and the lingering effects of a near-fatal bullet wound. Exploring the rami
fications of egotism and intellect, luck and accident, this tour de force of detection bears the unmistakable substance of real life.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39049-3
COP KILLER
In a country town, a woman is brutally murdered and left buried in a swamp. There are two main suspects: her closest neighbor and her ex-husband. Meanwhile, on a quiet suburban street a midnight shootout takes place between three cops and two teenage boys. Dead, one cop and one kid. Wounded, two cops. Escaped, one kid. Martin Beck and his partner Lennart Kollberg are called in to investigate. As Beck digs deeper into the murky waters of the young girl’s murder, Kollberg scours the town for the teenager, and together they are forced to examine the changing face of crime.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39089-9
VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD
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