The Laughing Policeman

by Maj Sjowall

  “I quote,” Hammar said. “ ‘ “This is the crime of the century,” says tough C.I.D. man Gunvald Larsson of the Stockholm homicide squad, and goes on: “It was the most ghastly sight I’ve ever seen in my life.” ’ Two exclamation marks.”

  Gunvald Larsson heaved himself back in the chair and frowned.

  “You’re in good company,” said Hammar. “The minister of justice has also excelled himself. ‘The tidal wave of lawlessness and the mentality of violence must be stopped. The police have cast in all resources of men and materials in order to apprehend the culprit without delay.’ ”

  He looked around him and said, “So these are the resources.”

  Martin Beck blew his nose.

  “ ‘The direct investigation force already comprises more than a hundred of the country’s most skilled criminal experts,’ Hammar went on. ‘The biggest squad ever known in this country’s history of crime.’ ”

  Kollberg sighed and scratched his head.

  “Politicians,” Hammar mumbled to himself.

  Tossing the newspapers on to the desk, he said, “Where’s Melander?”

  “Talking to the psychologists,” Kollberg said.

  “And Rönn?”

  “At the hospital.”

  “Any news from there yet?”

  Martin Beck shook his head.

  “They’re still operating,” he said.

  “Well,” Hammar said. “The reconstruction.”

  Kollberg looked through his papers.

  “The bus left Bellmansro about ten o’clock,” he said.

  “About?”

  “Yes. The whole timetable had been thrown off by the commotion on Strandvägen. The buses were stuck in traffic jams or police cordons, and as there were already big delays the drivers had been told to ignore the departure times and turn straight round at the last stops.”

  “By radio?”

  “Yes. This instruction had already been sent out to the drivers on route 47 by shortly after nine o’clock. On Stockholm Transport’s own wavelength.”

  “Go on.”

  “We assume that there are people who rode part of the way on the bus on this particular run. But so far we haven’t traced any such witnesses.”

  “They’ll turn up,” said Hammar.

  He pointed to the newspapers and added, “After this.”

  “Stenström’s watch had stopped at eleven, three and thirty-seven,” Kollberg went on in a monotone. “There is reason to presume that the shots were fired at precisely that time.”

  “The first or the last?” Hammar asked.

  “The first,” Martin Beck said.

  Turning to the sketch on the wall, he put his right forefinger on the X he had just drawn.

  “We assume that the gunman stood just here,” he said. “In the open space by the exit doors.”

  “On what do you base that assumption?”

  “The trajectories. The position of the fired cases in relation to the bodies.”

  “Right. Go on.”

  “We also assume that the murderer fired three bursts. The first forward, from left to right, thereby shooting all persons sitting in the front of the bus—those marked here on the sketch as numbers one, two, three, eight and nine. Number one stands for the driver and number two for Stenström.”

  “And then?”

  “Then he turned around, probably to the right, and fired the next burst at the four persons at the rear of the bus, still from left to right, killing numbers five, six and seven. And wounding number four—Schwerin, that is. Schwerin was lying on his back at the rear of the aisle. We take this to mean that he had been sitting on the longitudinal seat on the left side of the bus and that he had time to stand up. He would therefore have been hit last.”

  “And the third burst?”

  “Was fired forward,” Martin Beck said. “This time from right to left.”

  “And the weapon must be a submachine gun?”

  “Yes,” Kollberg replied. “In all probability. If it’s the ordinary army type—”

  “One moment,” Hammar interrupted. “How long should this have taken? To shoot forward, swing right around, shoot backward, point the weapon forward again and empty the magazine?”

  “As we still don’t know what kind of weapon he used—” Kollberg began, but Gunvald Larsson cut him off.

  “About ten seconds.”

  “How did he get out of the bus?” Hammar asked.

  Martin Beck nodded to Ek and said, “Your department.”

  Ek passed his fingers through his silvery hair, cleared his throat and said, “The door that was open was the rear entrance door. In all likelihood the murderer left the bus that way. In order to open it he must first move straight forward along the aisle to the driver’s seat, then stretch his arm over or past the driver and push a switch.”

  He took out his glasses, polished them with his handkerchief and went over to the wall.

  “I’ve had two instruction sketches blown up here,” he said. “One showing the instrument panel in its entirety, the other showing the actual lever for the front doors. On the first sketch the switch for the door circuits is marked with number 15 and the door lever with number 18. The lever is therefore to the left of the wheel, in front of and obliquely below the side window. The lever itself, as you see from the second sketch, has five different positions.”

  “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 doors 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.”

  Hamma
r 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 persons 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 subway. She said that several passengers had got off at the same time as she, 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 patrolman 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 goddam 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 O.K.,” Kollberg said listlessly.

  “That’s all I know,” Hammar said. “Someone from Sundsvall, too, I think. Don’t know who.”

  “I see,” said Martin Beck.

  “Unless you solve it before then, of course,” 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 can, of course, have committed suicide, but in that case we know nothing about it. We have two substantial clues. The bullets and the fired cases, 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 any 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 investigation,” 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 how I’ve bawled that kid out. Over the years. And then he goes and gets murdered.”

  “This Månsson,” Martin Beck said. “Do you remember him?” Kollberg nodded.

  “The guy with the toothpicks. I don’t believe in roping in every available man like this. It would be far better if they let us get on with this by ourselves. You and I and Melander.”

  “Well, Ahlberg’s O.K., 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 clichés and truisms in our faces. ‘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 helluva sight 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 to this effect: ‘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 mental
ly 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 quarreled with his girl or been bawled out by his mother and sat sulking on a bus because it was too late to go to the movies 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 pants 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 windshield 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.