by Maj Sjowall
'Who could make head or tail out of all this?' Gunvald Larsson said.
'In the horizontal position, or position one, both doors are shut,' Ek went on unperturbed. 'In position two, one step upward, the rear entrance door is opened, in position three, two steps upward, both doors are opened. The lever also has two positions downward - numbers four and five. In the first of these, the front entrance door is opened, in the second, both doors are opened'
'Sum up,' said Hammar.
'To sum up,' Ek said, 'the person in question must have moved from his presumed position by the exit door straight forward along the aisle to the driver's seat. He has leaned over the driver, who lay slumped over the wheel, and turned the lever to position two, thereby opening the rear entrance door. That is to say, the one that was still open when the first police car got there.'
Martin Beck picked up the thread at once.
'Actually there are signs showing that the last shots of all were fired while the gunman was moving forward along the aisle. To the left. One of them seems to have hit Stenström.'
'Pure trench warfare tactics,' said Gunvald Larsson.
'Gunvald made a very pertinent comment just now,' Hammar said drily. 'That he didn't understand a thing. All this shows that the murderer was quite at home in the bus and knew how to work the instrument panel'
'At least how to work the doors,' Ek said pedantically.
There was silence in the room. Hammar frowned. At last he said, 'Do you mean to say that someone suddenly went and stood in the middle of the bus, shot everyone there and then simply went on his way? Without anyone having time to react? Without the driver seeing anything in his mirror?'
'No,' Kollberg said. 'Not exactly.'
'What do you mean then?'
"That someone came down the rear stairs from the top deck with the submachine gun at the ready’ Martin Beck said.
'Someone who had been sitting up there alone for a while,' Kollberg said. 'Someone who had taken his time to wait for the most suitable moment'
'How does the bus driver know if there's anyone on the top deck?' Hammar asked.
They all looked expectantly at Ek, who again cleared his throat and said, 'There are photoelectric cells on the stairs. These in their turn send impulses to a counter on the instrument panel. For each passenger who goes up the front stairs the counter adds a one. The driver can therefore keep a check the whole time on how many are up there.'
'And when the bus was found the counter showed zero?'
'Yes.'
Hammar stood in silence for a few seconds. Then he said, 'No. It doesn't hold water.'
'What doesn't?' Martin Beck asked. 'The reconstruction.' 'Why not?' said Kollberg.
'It seems far too well thought out A mentally deranged mass murderer doesn't act with such careful planning.'
'Oh, I dunno,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'That madman in America who shot over thirty people from a tower last summer, he had planned as carefully as hell. He even had food with him.'
'Yes,' Hammar said. 'But there was one thing he hadn't figured out.'
‘What?'
It was Martin Beck who answered: 'How he was to get away.'
12
Seven hours later the time was ten o'clock in the evening and Martin Beck and Kollberg were still at police headquarters on Kungsholmsgatan.
Outside it was dark and the rain had stopped.
Nothing special had occurred. The official word was that the state of the investigation was unchanged.
The dying man at Karolinska Hospital was still dying.
In the course of the afternoon, twenty helpful witnesses had come forward. Nineteen of them turned out to have ridden on other buses.
The only remaining witness was a girl of eighteen who had got on at Nybroplan and gone three stops to Sergels torg, where she had changed to the underground. She said that several passengers had got off at the same time as her, which seemed likely. She managed to recognize the driver, but that was all.
Kollberg paced restlessly up and down, eyeing the door repeatedly as if expecting someone to throw it open and rush into the room.
Martin Beck stood in front of the sketches on the wall. He had clasped his hands behind him and rocked slowly to and fro from sole to heel and back, an irritating habit he had acquired during his years as a constable on the beat long ago and which he had never been able to get rid of since.
They had hung their jackets over the chairbacks and rolled up their shirtsleeves. Kollberg's tie lay on the desk where he had tossed it, and although the room was not particularly warm he was perspiring in the face and under the arms. Martin Beck was seized with a long, racking cough, then he put his hand thoughtfully to his chin and went on studying the sketches.
Kollberg stopped his pacing, looked at him critically and declared, 'You sound awful.'
'And you get more and more like Inga every day.'
And just then Hammar threw open the door and marched in.
'Where are Larsson and Melander?'
'Gone home.'
'And Rönn?'
'At the hospital.'
'Oh yes, of course. Heard anything from there?' Kollberg shook his head. 'You'll be up to full strength tomorrow.' 'Full strength?'
'Reinforcements. From outside.'
Hammar made a short pause. Then he added ambiguously, 'It's considered necessary.'
Martin Beck blew his nose with great care.
'Who is it?' Kollberg asked. 'Or shall I say who are they?'
'A man called Månsson is coming up from Malmö tomorrow. Do you know him?'
'I've met him,' Martin Beck replied without the faintest trace of enthusiasm.
'So have I,' said Kollberg.
'And they're trying to get Gunnar Ahlberg free from Motala.' 'He's OK,' Kollberg said listlessly.
'That's all I know,' Hammar said. 'Someone from Sundersvall, too, I think. Don't know who.'
'I see,' said Martin Beck.
'Unless you solve it before then,' Hammar said bleakly. 'Of course,' Kollberg agreed. 'Facts seem to point to ...'
Hammar broke off and gave Martin Beck a searching look. 'What's wrong with you?' 'I've got a cold.'
Hammar went on staring at him. Kollberg followed his look and said, by way of diverting his attention, 'All we know is that someone shot nine people in a bus last night And that he followed the internationally familiar pattern of sensational mass murders by not leaving any traces and by not getting caught He might of course, have committed suicide, but in that case we know nothing about it We have two substantial clues. The bullets and the fired cartridges, which may possibly lead us to the weapon, and the man in the hospital, who might regain consciousness and tell us who fired the shots. As he was sitting at the rear of the bus he must have seen the murderer.'
'Hunh,' Hammar grunted.
'It's not very much, I grant you,' said Kollberg. 'Especially if this Schwerin dies or turns out to have lost his memory - he's seriously injured. We've no motive, for instance. And no witnesses that are any use.'
'They may turn up,' Hammar said. 'And the motive needn't be a problem. Mass murderers are psychopaths and the reasons for their actions are often an element in the pathological picture.'
'Oh,' Kollberg said. 'Melander's looking after the scientific relations. I expect he'll be along with a memorandum one of these days.'
'Our best chance ...' Hammar said, looking at the clock.
'Is the inside investigations,' Kollberg added.
'Exactly. In nine cases out of ten it leads to the murderer. Don't stay on here too long to no purpose. Better for you to be rested tomorrow. Good night'
He left the room, and there was silence. After a few seconds Kollberg sighed and said, 'What is wrong with you?' Martin Beck didn't answer. 'Stenström?'
Kollberg nodded to himself and said philosophically, 'To think of the dressing downs I've given him. Over the years. And then he goes and gets murdered.'
"This Månsson,' Martin Beck said. 'Do you
remember him?'
Kollberg nodded.
'The bloke with the toothpicks. I don't believe in roping in every available man like this. It would be for better if they let us get on with this by ourselves. You and I and Melander.'
'Well, Ahlberg's OK, at any rate.'
'Sure,' Kollberg replied. 'But how many murder investigations has he had down there in Motala during the last ten years?' 'One.'
'Exactly. Besides, I don't care for Hammar's habit of standing there and slinging cliches and truisms in our feces. "Psychopaths", "an element in the pathological picture", "up to full strength". Yuk.'
Another silence. Then Martin Beck looked at Kollberg and said, 'Well?'
'Well what?'
‘What was Stenström doing on that bus?' 'That's just it,' said Kollberg. 'What the devil was he doing there? That girl, maybe. The nurse.'
‘Would he go about armed if he was out with a girl?' 'He might. So as to seem tough.'
'He wasn't that kind,' Martin Beck said. 'You know that as well as I do.'
'Well, in any case, he often had his pistol on him. More often than you. And a hell of a lot more often than I.' 'Yes - when he was on duty.'
'I only met him when he was on duty,' Kollberg said drily. 'So did I. But it's a fact that he was one of the first to die in that horrible bus. Even so, he had time to undo two buttons of his overcoat and get out his pistol.'
'Which means that he had already unbuttoned his coat,' Kollberg said thoughtfully. 'One more thing.'
'Yes?'
'Hammar said something today at the reconstruction.'
'Yes,' Martin Beck murmured. 'He said something along the lines: "It doesn't hold water. A mentally deranged mass murderer doesn't plan so carefully.'"
'Do you think he was right?'
'Yes, in principle.'
'Which would mean?'
"That the man who did the shooting is no mentally deranged mass murderer. Or rather that he didn't do it merely to cause a sensation.'
Kollberg wiped the sweat off his brow with a folded handkerchief, regarded it thoughtfully and said, 'Mr Larsson said -' 'Gunvald?'
He and no other. Before going home to spray his armpits he said from the loftiness of his wisdom that he didn't understand a thing. He didn't understand, for instance, why the madman didn't take his own life or stay there to be arrested.'
'I think you underestimate Gunvald,' Martin Beck said.
'Do you?'
Kollberg gave an irritated shrug.
'Aingh. The whole thing is just nonsense. There's no doubt whatever that this is a mass murder. And that the murderer is mad. For all we know he may be sitting at home at this very moment in front of the TV, enjoying the effect Or else he might very well have committed suicide. The fact that Stenström was armed means nothing at all, since we don't know his habits. Presumably he was together with that nurse. Or he was on his way to a whore. Or to a pal of his. He may even have quarrelled with his girl or been given a telling off by his mother and sat sulking on a bus because it was too late to go to the cinema and he had nowhere else to go.'
'We can find that out, anyway,' Martin Beck said.
'Yes. Tomorrow. But there's one thing we can do this very moment. Before anyone else does it'
'Go through his desk out at Västberga,' Martin Beck said.
'Your power of deduction is admirable,' Kollberg declared.
He stuffed his tie into his trouser pocket and started climbing into his jacket.
The air was raw and misty, and the night frost lay like a shroud over trees and streets and rooftops. Kollberg had difficulty in seeing through the windscreen and muttered dismal curses when the car skidded on the bends. All the way out to the southern police headquarters they spoke only once.
'Do mass murderers usually have a hereditary criminal streak?' Kollberg wondered.
And Martin Beck answered, 'Yes, usually. But by no means always.'
The building out at Västberga was silent and deserted. They crossed the vestibule and went up the stairs, pressed the buttons of the numerical code on the round dial beside the glass doors on the third floor, and went on into Stenström's office.
Kollberg hesitated a moment, then sat down at the desk and tried the drawers. They were not locked.
The room was neat and tidy but quite impersonal. Stenström had not even had a photograph of his fiancee on the desk.
On the other hand, two photos of himself lay on the pen tray. Martin Beck knew why. For the first time in several years Stenström had been lucky enough to be off duty over Christmas and New Year. He had already booked seats on a charter flight to the Canary Islands. He had had the pictures taken because he had to get a new passport.
Lucky.
Thought Martin Beck, looking at the photos, which were very recent and better than those published on the front pages of the evening papers.
Stenström looked, if anything, younger than his twenty-nine years. He had a bright, frank expression and dark-brown hair, combed back. Here, as it usually did, it looked rather unruly.
At first he had been considered naive and mediocre by a number of colleagues, including Kollberg, whose sarcastic remarks and often condescending manner had been a continuous trial. But that was in the past Martin Beck remembered that once, while they were still housed in the old police premises out at Kristineberg, he had discussed this with Kollberg. He had said, 'Why are you always nagging the lad?'
And Kollberg had answered, 'In order to break down his put-on self-confidence. To give him a chance to build it up new. To help turn him into a good policeman one day. To teach him to knock at doors.'
It was conceivable that Kollberg had been right. At any rate, Stenström had improved with the years. And although he had never learned to knock at doors, he had developed into a good policeman - capable, hard-working and reasonably discerning. Outwardly, he had been an adornment to the force: a pleasant appearance, a winning manner, physically fit and a good athlete. He could almost have been used in recruiting advertisements, which was more than could be said of certain others. For instance, of Kollberg, with his arrogance and flabbiness and tendency to run to fat. Of the stoical Melander, whose appearance in no way challenged the hypothesis that the worst bores often made the best policemen. Or of the red-nosed and in all respects equally mediocre Rönn. Or of Gunvald Larsson, who could frighten anyone at all out of his wits with his colossal frame and staring eyes and who was proud of it, what is more.
Or of himself either, for that matter, the snuffling Martin Beck. He had looked in the mirror as recently as the evening before and seen a tall, sinister figure with a lean face, wide forehead, heavy jaws and mournful grey-blue eyes.
In addition, Stenström had had certain specialities which had been of great use to them all.
Martin Beck thought of all this while he regarded the objects that Kollberg systematically took out of the drawers and placed on the desk.
But now he was coldly appraising what he knew of the man whose name had been Åke Stenström. The feelings that had threatened to overwhelm him not long ago, while Hammar stood scattering truisms about him in the office at Kungsholmsgatan, were gone. The moment was past and would never recur.
Ever since Stenström had put his cap on the hatrack and sold his uniform to an old classmate from the police school, he had worked under Martin Beck. First at Kristineberg, at the then national homicide squad which had belonged to the municipal police and functioned chiefly as a kind of emergency corps, intended to assist hard-pressed local police in the provinces.
Later, at the turn of the year 1964-65, the police force in its entirety had been nationalized, and by degrees they had moved out here to Västberga.
In the course of the years Kollberg had been given various assignments, and Melander had been transferred at his own request, but Stenström had been there all the time. Martin Beck had known him for more than five years, and they had worked together with innumerable investigations. During this time Stenström had learned
what he knew about practical police work, and that was not a little. He had also matured, overcome most of his uncertainty and shyness, left home and in time moved in with a young woman, together with whom he said he wanted to spend the rest of his life. Shortly before this, his rather had died and his mother had moved back to Västmanland.
Martin Beck should, therefore, know most of what there was to know about him.
Oddly enough, he didn't know very much. True, he had all the important data and a general idea, presumably well-founded, of Stenström's character, his merits and Mings as a policeman, but over and above this there was little to add.
A nice guy. Ambitious, persevering, intelligent, ready to learn. On the other hand rather shy, still a trifle childish, anything but witty, not much sense of humour on the whole. But who had?
Perhaps he'd had a complex.
Because of Kollberg, who used to excel in literary quotations and complicated sophisms. Because of Gunvald Larsson, who once, in fifteen seconds, had kicked in a locked door and knocked a maniac axe-murderer senseless while Stenström stood two yards away wondering what ought to be done. Because of Melander, whose face never gave anything away and who never forgot anything he had once seen, read or heard.
Well, who wouldn't get a complex from that sort of thing?
Why did he know so litde? Because he had not been sufficiently observant? Or because there was nothing to know?
Martin Beck massaged his scalp with his fingertips and studied what Kollberg had laid on the desk.
There had been a pedantic trait in Stenström, for instance this fad that his watch must show the correct time to the very second, and it was also reflected in the meticulous tidiness on and in his desk.
Papers, papers and more papers. Copies of reports, notes, minutes of court proceedings, stencilled instructions and reprints of legal texts. All in neady arranged bundles.
The most personal things were a box of matches and an unopened pack of chewing gum. Since Stenström neither smoked nor was addicted to excessive chewing, he had presumably kept these objects so that he could offer some form of service to people who came there to be questioned or perhaps just to sit and chat.