The Laughing Policeman

by Maj Sjowall

  Nordin was trying to establish a connection between Göransson, the mass murder and the garage in Hägersten.

  Ek had made such a technical study of the red doubledecker bus that nowadays it was practically impossible to talk to him about anything except electric circuits and windshield-wiper controls.

  Månsson had taken over Gunvald Larsson’s diffuse ideas that Mohammed Boussie must have played some sort of leading role because he was Algerian; he had systematically interrogated the entire Arab colony in Stockholm.

  Martin Beck himself could think only of Stenström, what he had been working on, whether he had been shadowing someone and whether this someone had shot him. The argument seemed far from convincing. Would a comparatively experienced policeman really let himself get shot by the man he was shadowing? On a bus?

  Rönn could not tear his thoughts away from what Schwerin had said at the hospital during the few seconds before he died.

  On this very Friday afternoon he had a talk with the sound expert at the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation who had tried to analyze what was said on the tape.

  The man had taken his time, but now he seemed ready with his report.

  “Not very copious material to work with,” he said. “But I’ve come to certain conclusions. Like to hear them?”

  “Yes, please,” Rönn said.

  He transferred the receiver to his left hand and reached for the notepad.

  “You’re from the North yourself, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s not the questions that are interesting, but the answers. First of all I’ve tried to eliminate all the background noise like whirring and dripping and so on.”

  Rönn waited with his pen at the ready.

  “As regards the first answer, referring to the question as to who did the shooting, one can clearly distinguish four consonants—d, n, r, and κ.”

  “Yes,” Rönn said.

  “A closer analysis reveals certain vowels and diphthongs between and after these consonants. For example, an e or an i sound between d and n.”

  “Dinrk,” Rönn said.

  “Yes, that’s more or less how it sounds to an untrained ear,” the expert said. “Furthermore, I think I can hear the man say a very faint oo after the consonant k.”

  “Dinrk oo,” Rönn said.

  “Something like that, yes. Though not such a marked oo.”

  The expert paused. Then he went on reflectively, “This man was in pretty bad shape, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he was probably in pain.”

  “Very likely,” Rönn agreed.

  “Well,” the expert said lightly, “that could explain why he said oo.”

  Rönn nodded and made notes. Poked at the tip of his nose with the pen. Listened.

  “However, I’m convinced that these sounds form a sentence, composed of several words.”

  “And how does the sentence go?” Rönn asked, putting pen to paper.

  “Very hard to say. Very hard indeed. For example ‘dinner reckon’ or ‘dinner record, oo.’ ”

  “ ‘Dinner record, oo’?” Rönn asked in astonishment.

  “Well, just as an example, of course. As to the second reply—”

  “ ‘Koleson’?”

  “Oh, you thought it sounded like that? Interesting. Well, I didn’t. I’ve reached the conclusion that there’s an I before the k, and that he says two words: ‘like,’ repeating the last word of the question, and ‘oleson.’ ”

  “ ‘Oleson’? And what does that mean?”

  “Well, it might be a name …”

  “ ‘Like Oleson’?”

  “Yes, exactly. You have the same thick I in the word ‘Oleson’ too. Perhaps a similar dialect.”

  The sound technician was silent for a few seconds. Then he went on: “That’s about the lot then. I’ll send over a written report, of course, together with the bill. But I thought I’d better call up in case it was urgent.”

  “Thanks very much,” Rönn said.

  Putting the receiver down, he regarded his notes thoughtfully.

  After careful consideration he decided not to take the matter up with the investigation chiefs. At any rate not at present.

  Although the time was only a quarter to three in the afternoon, it was already pitch-dark when Kollberg arrived at Långholmen. He felt cold and miserable, and the prison surroundings didn’t exactly cheer him up. The bare visitors’ room was shabby and bleak, and he paced gloomily up and down while waiting for the prisoner he had come to see. The man, whose name was Birgersson and who had killed his wife, had undergone a thorough mental examination at the clinic of forensic psychiatry. In due course, he would be exempted from punishment and transferred to some institution.

  After about fifteen minutes the door opened and a prison guard in a dark-blue uniform admitted a small, thin-haired man of about sixty. The man stopped just inside the door, smiled and bowed politely. Kollberg went up to him. They shook hands.

  “Kollberg.”

  “Birgersson.”

  The man was pleasant and easy to talk to.

  “Inspector Stenström? Oh yes indeed, I remember him. Such a nice man. Please give him my kind regards.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Dead? I can’t believe it … He was just a boy. How did it happen?”

  “That’s just what I want to talk to you about.”

  Kollberg explained in detail why he had come.

  “I’ve played back the whole tape and listened carefully to every word. But I presume that the tape recorder was not going when you sat talking over coffee and so on.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you did talk then, too?”

  “Oh yes. Most of the time, anyway.”

  “What about?”

  “Well, everything really.”

  “Can you recall anything that Stenström seemed specially interested in?”

  The man thought hard and shook his head.

  “We just talked about things in general. On this and that. But something special? What would that have been?”

  “That’s exactly what I don’t know.”

  Kollberg took out the notebook he had brought from Åsa’s apartment and showed it to Birgersson.

  “Does this convey anything to you? Why has he written ‘Morris’?”

  The man’s face lit up at once.

  “We must have been talking about cars. I had a Morris 8, the big model, you know. And I think I mentioned it on one occasion.”

  “I see. Well, if you happen to think of anything else, please call me up at once. At any time.”

  “It was old and didn’t look much, my Morris, but it went well. My … wife was ashamed of it. Said she was ashamed to be seen in such an old rattletrap when all the neighbors had new cars—”

  He blinked rapidly and broke off.

  Kollberg quickly wound up the conversation. When the guard had led the prisoner away a young doctor in a white coat entered the room.

  “Well, what did you think of Birgersson?” he asked.

  “He seemed nice enough.”

  “Yes,” the doctor said. “He’s O.K. All he needed was to be rid of that bitch he was married to.”

  Kollberg looked hard at him, put his papers into his pocket and left.

  The time was eleven thirty on Saturday evening and Gunvald Larsson felt cold in spite of his heavy winter coat, his fur cap, ski pants and ski boots. He was standing in the doorway of Tegnérgatan 53, as still as only a policeman can stand. He was not there by chance, and it was not easy to see him in the dark. He had already been there for four hours and this was not the first evening, but the tenth or eleventh.

  He had decided to go home as soon as the light went out in certain windows he was watching. Shortly before midnight a gray Mercedes with foreign license plates stopped outside the door of the apartment house nearly opposite across the street. A man got out, opened the trunk and lifted out a suitcase. Then he
crossed the sidewalk, unlocked the door and went inside. Two minutes later a light was switched on behind lowered Venetian blinds in two windows on the ground floor.

  Gunvald Larsson strode swiftly across the street. He had already tried out a suitable key to the street door two weeks ago. Once inside the entrance hall, he took off his overcoat, folded it neatly and hung it over the handrail of the marble staircase, placing his fur cap on top. Unbuttoned his jacket and gripped the pistol that he wore clipped to his waistband.

  He had known for a long time that the door opened inward. Looked at it for five seconds and thought: If I break in without a valid reason, I’m overstepping my authority, and I’ll probably be suspended or sacked.

  Then he kicked in the door.

  Ture Assarsson and the man who had alighted from the foreign car were standing one on either side of the desk. To use a hackneyed phrase, they looked thunderstruck. They had just opened the suitcase and it was lying between them.

  Gunvald Larsson waved them aside with the pistol, following up the train of thought he had begun out in the hall: But it doesn’t matter because I can always go to sea again.

  Gunvald Larsson lifted the receiver off and dialed 90000. With his left hand and without lowering his service pistol. He said nothing. The other two said nothing either. There was not much to say.

  The suitcase contained 250,000 of a brand of dope tablets called Ritalina. On the black market they were worth about one million Swedish kronor.

  Gunvald Larsson got home to his apartment at Bollmora at three o’clock on Sunday morning. He was a bachelor and lived alone. As usual he spent twenty minutes in the bathroom before putting on his pajamas and getting into bed. He picked up the novel by Övre Richter-Frich that he was reading, but after only a minute he put it down and reached for the telephone.

  The phone was a white Ericofon. Turning it upside down, he dialed Martin Beck’s number.

  Gunvald Larsson made it a rule never to think of his work when he was at home, and he could not recall ever before having made an official call after he had gone to bed.

  Martin Beck answered after only the second ring.

  “Hi. Did you hear about Assarsson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Something has just occurred to me.”

  “What?”

  “That we might have been making a mistake. Stenström was of course shadowing Gösta Assarsson. And the murderer killed two birds with one stone—Assarsson and the man who was shadowing him.”

  “Yes,” Martin Beck agreed. “There may be something in what you say.”

  Gunvald Larsson was wrong. Nevertheless, he had just put the investigation on to the right track.

  24

  For three evenings in succession Ulf Nordin trudged about town trying to make contact with Stockholm’s underworld, going in and out of the beerhalls, coffeehouses, restaurants and dance halls that Blonde Malin had given as Göransson’s haunts.

  Sometimes he took the car, and on Friday evening he sat in the car staring out over Mariatorget without seeing anything of more interest than two other men sitting in a car and staring. He didn’t recognize them but gathered they belonged to the district’s patrol of plainclothesmen or drug squad.

  These expeditions did not provide one new fact about the man whose name had been Nils Erik Göransson. In the daytime, however, he managed to supplement Blonde Malin’s information by consulting the census bureau, parish registers, seamen’s employment exchanges and the man’s ex-wife, who lived in Borås and said she had almost forgotten her former husband. She had not seen him for nearly twenty years.

  On Saturday morning he reported his lean findings to Martin Beck. Then he sat down and wrote a long, melancholy and yearning letter to his wife in Sundsvall, now and then casting a guilty look at Rönn and Kollberg, who were both hard at work at their typewriters.

  He had not had time to finish the letter before Martin Beck entered the room.

  “What idiot sent you out into town,” he said fretfully.

  Nordin quickly slipped a copy of a report over the letter. He had just written “… and Martin Beck gets more peculiar and grumpy every day.”

  Pulling the paper out of the typewriter, Kollberg said, “You.”

  “What? I did?”

  “Yes, you did. Last Wednesday after Blonde Malin had been here.”

  Martin Beck looked disbelievingly at Kollberg.

  “Funny, I don’t remember that. It’s idiotic all the same to send out a northerner who can hardly find his way to Stureplan on a job like that.”

  Nordin looked offended, but had to admit to himself that Martin Beck was right.

  “Rönn,” Martin Beck said. “You’d better find out where Göransson hung out, whom he was with and what he did. And try and get hold of that guy Björk, the one he lived with.”

  “O.K.,” Rönn said.

  He was busy making a list of possible interpretations of Schwerin’s last words. At the top he had written: Dinner record. At the bottom was the latest version: Didn’t reckon.

  Each was busier than ever with his own particular job.

  Martin Beck got up at six thirty on Monday morning after a practically sleepless night. He felt slightly sick and his condition was not improved by his drinking cocoa in the kitchen with his daughter. There was no sign of any other member of the family. His wife slept like a top in the mornings, and the boy had evidently taken after her; he was nearly always late for school. But Ingrid rose at six thirty and shut the front door behind her at a quarter to eight. Invariably. Inga used to say that you could set the clock by her.

  Inga had a weakness for clichés. You could make a collection of the expressions she used in daily speech and sell it as a phrasebook for budding journalists. A kind of pony. Call it, of course, If You Can Talk, You Can Write. Thought Martin Beck.

  “What are you thinking about, Daddy?” Ingrid asked.

  “Nothing,” he said automatically.

  “I haven’t seen you laugh since last spring.”

  Martin Beck raised his eyes from the Christmas brownies dancing in a long line across the oilcloth tablespread, looked at his daughter and tried to smile. Ingrid was a good girl, but that wasn’t much to laugh at either. She left the table and went to get her books. By the time he had put on his hat and coat and galoshes she was standing with her hand on the doorhandle, waiting for him. He took the Lebanese leather bag from her. It was the worse for wear and had gaudy FNL labels stuck all over it.

  This, too, was routine. Nine years ago he had carried Ingrid’s bag on her first day at school, and he still did so. On that occasion he had taken her hand. A very small hand, which had been warm and moist and trembling with excitement and anticipation. When had he given up taking her hand? He couldn’t remember.

  “On Christmas Eve you’re going to laugh, anyway,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. When you get my Christmas present.”

  She frowned and said, “Anything else is out of the question.”

  “What would you like yourself, by the way?”

  “A horse.”

  “Where would you keep it?”

  “I don’t know. I’d like one all the same.”

  “Do you know what a horse costs?”

  “Yes, unfortunately.”

  They parted.

  At Kungsholmsgatan Gunvald Larsson was waiting, and an investigation which didn’t even deserve to be called a guessing game. Hammar had been kind enough to point this out only two days ago.

  “How is Ture Assarsson’s alibi?” Gunvald Larsson asked.

  “Ture Assarsson’s alibi is one of the most watertight in the history of crime,” Martin Beck replied. “At the time in question he was at the City Hotel in Södertälje making an after-dinner speech to twenty-five persons.”

  “Hmm,” Gunvald Larsson muttered darkly.

  “What’s more, if I may say so, it’s not very logical to imagine that Gösta Assarsson would not notice his own brother g
etting on the bus with a submachine gun under his coat.”

  “Yes, the coat,” said Gunvald Larsson. “It must have been pretty wide if he could have an M 37 under it. If he wasn’t carrying it in a case, that is.”

  “You’re right, there,” Martin Beck said.

  “It does sometimes happen that I’m right.”

  “Lucky for you,” Martin Beck retorted. “If you’d been wrong the night before last we’d have been sitting pretty now, I don’t think.”

  Pointing his cigarette at the other man he said, “You’re going to get it one of these days, Gunvald.”

  “I doubt it.”

  And Gunvald Larsson stumped out of the room. In the doorway he met Kollberg, who stepped aside quickly, stole a glance at the broad back and said, “What’s wrong with the walking battering ram? Sore?”

  Martin Beck nodded. Kollberg went over to the window and looked out.

  “Jesus Christ,” he growled.

  “Is Åsa still staying with you?”

  “Yes,” Kollberg replied. “And don’t say, ‘Have you got yourself a harem?’ because Mr. Larsson has already asked that.”

  Martin Beck sneezed.

  “Bless you,” Kollberg said. “I very nearly tossed him out of the window.”

  Kollberg was about the only one who could have done it, Martin Beck thought. Aloud he said, “Thanks.”

  “What are you thanking me for?”

  “For saying ‘bless you.’ ”

  “Oh yes. Not many people nowadays have the courtesy to say thank you. I had a case once. A press photographer who beat his wife black and blue and then flung her out in the snow naked because she hadn’t thanked him when he said ‘bless you.’ On New Year’s Eve. He was drunk, of course.”

  He stood silent for a while, then said doubtfully, “I doubt if I can get anything more out of her. Åsa, I mean.”

  “Well, never mind, we know what Stenström was working on,” Martin Beck said.

  Kollberg gaped at him. “Do we?”

  “Sure. The Teresa murder. Clear as daylight.”

  “The Teresa murder?”

  “Yes. Hadn’t you realized that?”

  “No,” Kollberg said. “I hadn’t. And I’ve thought back over everything from the last ten years. Why didn’t you say anything?”