by Maj Sjowall
Åsa looked hard at him.
“How can you say that? Åke, at any rate, had a lot to do. He was working practically night and day.”
14
Rönn looked at his watch and yawned.
He glanced at the wheeled stretcher and the person who lay there, bandaged beyond description. Then he regarded the complex apparatus that was apparently necessary to keep the injured man alive, and the snooty middle-aged nurse who checked that everything was functioning as it should. At the moment she was deftly changing one of the rigged-up dropping bottles. Her actions were quick and precise; they showed many years’ training and admirable economy of movement.
Rönn sighed and yawned again behind the mask.
The nurse spotted it at once and gave him a swift, disapproving glance.
He had spent far too many hours in this antiseptic isolation ward with its cold light and bare white walls, or roaming about the corridor outside the operating theater.
Moreover, for most of the time he had been in the company of a man called Ullholm, whom he had never seen before but who nevertheless turned out to be a plainclothes detective.
Rönn was not one of the shining lights of the age and he didn’t pretend to be particularly well informed. He was quite content with himself and with life in general, and thought that things were pretty good as they were. It was these qualities, in fact, that made him a useful and capable policeman. He had a simple, straightforward attitude to things and had no talent for creating problems and difficulties which did not exist.
He liked most people and most people liked him.
But even to someone with Rönn’s uncomplicated outlook, this Ullholm stood out as a monster of nagging tedium and reactionary stupidity.
Ullholm was dissatisfied with everything, from his salary grade, which not surprisingly was too low, to the police commissioner, who hadn’t the sense to take strong measures.
He was indignant that children were not taught manners at school and that discipline was too slack within the police force.
He was particularly virulent about three categories of citizens who had never caused Rönn any headaches or worry: foreigners, teenagers and socialists.
Ullholm thought it was a scandal that police patrolmen were allowed to have beards.
“A mustache at the very most,” he said. “But even that is extremely questionable. You see what I mean, don’t you?”
He considered that there had been no law and order in society since the thirties.
He put the greatly increasing crime and brutality down to the fact that the police were not given proper military training and no longer wore sabers.
The introduction of right-hand traffic was a scandalous blunder that had made the situation much worse in a community that was already undisciplined and morally corrupt.
“Furthermore, it increases promiscuity,” he said. “You see what I mean, don’t you?”
“Huh,” said Rönn.
“Promiscuity. All these turn-around areas and parking facilities along the main highways. You see what I mean, don’t you?”
He was a man who knew most things and understood everything. Only on one occasion did he consider himself forced to ask Rönn for information. He began by saying, “When you see all this laxity you long to get back to nature. I’d make for the mountains if it weren’t that the whole of Lapland is lousy with Lapps. You see what I mean, don’t you?”
“I’m married to a Lapp girl,” Rönn said.
Ullholm looked at him with a peculiar mixture of distaste and curiosity. Lowering his voice, he said, “How interesting and extraordinary. Is it true that Lapp women have it crosswise?”
“No,” Rönn replied wearily. “It is not true. It’s just a wrong idea that many people have.”
Rönn wondered why the man hadn’t long ago been transferred to the lost-and-found office.
Ullholm droned on incessantly and concluded every declaration of principle with the words, “You see what I mean, don’t you?”
Rönn saw only two things.
First: what had actually happened at investigation headquarters when he had asked the innocent question, “Who’s on duty at the hospital?”
Kollberg had rooted indifferently among his papers and said, “Someone called Ullholm.”
The only one to recognize the name was Gunvald Larsson, who exclaimed, “What! Who?”
“Ullholm,” Kollberg repeated.
“It must be stopped! We’ll have to send along someone to look after him. Someone more or less sane.”
Rönn had turned out to be this more or less sane person. Still just as innocently, he had asked, “Am I to relieve him?”
“Relieve him? No, that’s impossible. He’ll think then that he’s been slighted. Will write hundreds of petitions. Report the national police board to the civil ombudsman. Call up the minister of justice.”
And as Rönn was on the way out, Gunvald Larsson had given him a last instruction: “Einar!”
“Yes?”
“And don’t let him say one word to the witness until you’ve seen the death certificate.”
Second: that he must in some way dam up the spate of words. At last he did find a theoretical solution. Put into practice, it worked as follows:
Ullholm wound up a long declaration by saying, “It goes quite without saying that as a private person and a conservative, a citizen in a free democratic country, I don’t make the slightest discrimination among people on account of color, race or opinions. But you just imagine a police force swarming with Jews and communists. You see what I mean, don’t you?”
Whereupon Rönn cleared his throat modestly behind his mask and said, “Yes. But as a matter of fact, I myself am one of those socialists, so …”
“A communist!?”
“Yes. A communist.”
Ullholm wrapped himself in sepulchral silence and went over to the window.
He had been standing there now for two hours, grimly staring out at the treacherous world surrounding him.
Schwerin had been operated on three times; both the bullets had been removed from his body but none of the doctors looked particularly cheerful and the only answers Rönn had received to his discreet questions had been shrugs.
But about a quarter of an hour ago one of the surgeons had come into the isolation ward and said, “If he is going to regain consciousness at all, it should be within the next half-hour.”
“Will he pull through?”
The doctor gave Rönn a long look and said, “It seems unlikely. He has a good physique, of course, and his general condition is fairly satisfactory.”
Rönn looked down at the patient dejectedly, wondering just how a person should look before his general condition could be regarded as not so good or just plain bad.
He had carefully thought out two questions, which for safety’s sake he had written down in his notebook.
The first one was:
Who did the shooting?
And the second:
What did he look like?
He had also made one or two other preparations: set up his portable transistor tape recorder on a chair at the head of the bed, plugged in the microphone and hung it over the chair-back. Ullholm had not taken part in these, contenting himself with an occasional critical glance at Rönn from his place over by the window.
The clock showed twenty-six minutes past two when the nurse suddenly bent over the injured man and beckoned the two policemen with a swift, impatient gesture, at the same time putting out her other hand and pressing the bell.
Rönn hurried over and seized the microphone.
“I think he’s waking up,” the nurse said.
The injured man’s face seemed to undergo some sort of change. A quiver passed through his eyelids and nostrils.
“Yes,” the nurse said. “Now.”
Rönn held out the microphone.
“Who did the shooting?” he asked.
No reaction. After a moment Rönn repeated the question.
&
nbsp; “Who did the shooting?”
Now the man’s lips moved and he said something. Rönn waited only two seconds before saying, “What did he look like?”
The injured man reacted again and this time the answer was more articulated.
A doctor entered the room.
Rönn had just opened his mouth to repeat question number two when the man in the bed turned his head to the left. The lower jaw slipped down and a slimy, bloodstreaked pulp welled out of his mouth.
Rönn looked up at the doctor, who consulted his instruments and nodded gravely.
Ullholm came up to Rönn and snapped, “Is that really all you can get out of this questioning?”
Then he said in a loud, bullying voice, “Now listen to me, my good man, this is Detective Inspector Ullholm speaking—”
“He’s dead,” Rönn said quietly.
Ullholm stared at him and uttered one word: “Bungler.”
Rönn pulled out the microphone plug and took the tape recorder over to the window. Turned the spool back cautiously with his forefinger and pressed the playback button.
“Who did the shooting?”
“Dnrk.”
“What did he look like?”
“Koleson.”
“What do you make of this?” he asked.
Ullholm glared at Rönn for at least ten seconds. Then he said, “Make of it? I’m going to report you for breach of duty. It can’t be helped. You see what I mean, don’t you?”
He turned on his heel and strode energetically from the room. Rönn looked sadly after him.
15
An icy gust of wind whipped a shower of needle-sharp grains of snow against Martin Beck as he opened the main door of police headquarters, making him gasp for breath. He lowered his head to the wind and hurriedly buttoned his overcoat. The same morning he had at last capitulated to Inga’s nagging, to the freezing temperature and to his cold, and put on his winter coat. Pulling the woolen scarf higher round his neck, he started walking toward the center of town.
When he had crossed Agnegatan he stopped, at a loss, trying to figure out what bus to take. He had not yet learned all the new routes since the trolleys had been taken off in conjunction with the change-over to right-hand traffic in September.
A car pulled up beside him. Gunvald Larsson wound the side window down and called, “Jump in.”
Martin Beck gratefully settled himself into the front seat.
“Ugh, what horrible weather. You hardly have time to notice there’s been a summer when the winter starts all over again. Where are you off to?”
“Västmannagatan,” Gunvald Larsson replied. “I’m going up to have a talk with that daughter of the old girl in the bus.”
“Good,” said Martin Beck. “You can let me off outside Sabbatsberg Hospital.”
They drove across Kungsbron and past the old market hall. Minute grains of snow swirled up against the windshield.
“This sort of snow is utterly useless,” Gunvald Larsson said. “It doesn’t even lie. Just flies about blocking the view.”
Unlike Martin Beck, Gunvald Larsson liked cars and was considered a very good driver.
They followed Vasagatan to Norra Bantorget and outside Norra Latin secondary school they overtook a doubledecker bus on route 47.
“Ugh!” Martin Beck exclaimed. “From now on we’ll feel ill at the very sight of one of those buses.”
Gunvald Larsson cast a quick glance at it.
“Not the same kind,” he said. “That one’s a German bus. Büssing.”
After a minute or so he said, “Are you coming with me to see Assarsson’s wife? The guy with the condoms. I’m to be there at three o’clock.”
“I don’t know,” Martin Beck said.
“I thought as you’re in the vicinity. It’s only one block away from Sabbatsberg. Then I can drive you back afterward.”
“Perhaps. It depends when I finish with that nurse.”
At the corner of Dalagatan and Tegnérgatan they were stopped by a man in a yellow protective helmet and with a red flag in his hand. Inside the grounds of Sabbatsberg Hospital work was going on with the extensive rebuilding; the old buildings were to be torn down and new ones were already shooting up. At present they were blasting away the high rocks toward Dalagatan. As the noise of the explosion was still echoing between the housewalls, Gunvald Larsson said, “Why don’t they blow the whole of Stockholm to bits in one go instead of doing it piecemeal? They ought to do what Ronald Reagan or whatever-his-name-is said about Vietnam: Asphalt it and paint on yellow stripes and make parking lots of the goddam thing. It could hardly be worse than when the town planners get their way.”
Martin Beck got out of the car in front of the entrance to the part of the hospital nearest the Eastman Institute and containing the maternity ward and the women’s clinic.
The turn-around area in front of the doors was empty, but as he came nearer he saw a woman in a sheepskin coat peering out at him through the glass doors. She came out and said, “Superintendent Beck? I’m Monika Granholm.”
She seized his hand in an iron grip and squeezed it passionately. He almost seemed to hear the bones of his hand crunch and he hoped that she didn’t exert the same strength when handling the newborn babies.
She was almost as tall as Martin Beck and considerably larger. Her complexion was fresh and rosy, her teeth white and strong, the light-brown hair was thick and wavy and the irises in her big beautiful eyes had the same color as her hair. Everything about her radiated health and strength.
The dead girl in the bus had been small and delicate and must have looked very fragile beside this roommate.
They went out toward Dalagatan.
“Do you mind if we go to the Wasahof just across the street?” Monika Granholm asked. “I must have something inside me before I can talk.”
The lunch hour was over and there were several vacant tables in the restaurant. Martin Beck chose a window table, but Monika Granholm preferred to sit farther inside.
“I don’t want anyone from the hospital to see us,” she said. “You’ve no idea how they gossip.”
She confirmed this by regaling Martin Beck with choice tidbits of the gossip while she set to work heartily on a mountainous helping of meat balls and mashed potatoes. Martin Beck watched her enviously under lowered lids. As usual he was not hungry, only slightly sick, and he drank coffee in order to make his condition a little worse. He let her finish eating and was about to lead the conversation around to her dead colleague when she pushed her plate away and said, “That’s better. Now you can fire away with your questions, and I’ll try to answer as well as I can. May I just ask one question first?”
“Of course,” Martin Beck replied, offering her a Florida from the pack.
She shook her head.
“I don’t smoke, thanks. Have you caught that madman yet?”
“No,” Martin Beck said. “Not yet.”
“People are awfully het up, you know. One of the girls from the maternity ward doesn’t dare take the bus to work any more. She’s afraid the maniac will suddenly be standing there with his submachine gun. She’s taken a taxi to and from the hospital ever since it happened. You must see that you catch him.”
She looked exhortingly at Martin Beck.
“We’re doing our best,” he said.
She nodded.
“Good,” she said.
“Thank you,” Martin Beck replied gravely.
“What is it you want to know about Britt?”
“How well did you know her? How long had you two been sharing an apartment?”
“I knew her better than anyone, I should think. We’ve been roommates for three years, ever since she started here at Sabb. She was the world’s best pal and a very capable nurse. Although she was delicate she worked hard. The perfect nurse. Never spared herself.”
She took the coffee pot and filled Martin Beck’s cup.
“Thank you,” he said. “Didn’t she have a boyfriend?”
“Oh yes, an awfully nice fellow. I don’t think they were formally engaged, but she had already given me to understand she’d soon be moving. I’ve an idea they were going to get married in the new year. He already has an apartment.”
“Had they known each other long?”
She bit her thumbnail and thought hard.
“Ten months at least. He’s a doctor. Well, they say girls take up nursing just for the chance of marrying doctors, but it wasn’t so with Britt anyway. She was awfully shy, and scared of men, if anything. Then she went on the sicklist last winter, she was anemic and generally run-down, and she had to go for a checkup pretty often. That’s how she met Bertil. It was love at first sight. She used to say it was his love that made her well, not his treatment.”
Martin Beck sighed resignedly.
“What’s wrong with that?” she asked suspiciously.
“Nothing at all. Did she know many men?”
Monika Granholm smiled and shook her head.
“Only the ones she met at the hospital. She was very reserved. I don’t think she’d ever been with a man until she met this Bertil.”
She drew patterns on the table with her finger. Then she frowned and looked at Martin Beck.
“Is it her love life you’re interested in? What’s that got to do with it?”
Martin Beck took his wallet out of his breast pocket and laid it in front of him on the table.
“Beside Britt Danielsson in the bus sat a man. That man was a policeman and his name was Åke Stenström. We have reason to suspect that he and Miss Danielsson knew one another and were together on the bus. What we’re interested to know is this: Did Miss Danielsson ever mention the name of Åke Stenström?”
He took Stenström’s photograph out of the wallet and put it in front of Monika Granholm.
“Have you ever seen this man?”
She looked at the photo and shook her head. Then she picked it up and studied it more closely.
“Yes,” she said. “In the papers. Though this picture’s better.”
Handing back the photograph she said, “Britt didn’t know that man. I can almost swear to that. And it’s quite out of the question that she would have allowed anyone but her fiancé to see her home. She just wasn’t that type.”