by Maj Sjowall
“What about if you saw them from above?” Åsa Torell asked.
Kollberg looked at her in astonishment. Birgersson’s face darkened slightly.
“Well, I never got much practice in that. I mightn’t have been so good at that.”
He pondered for a while. Kollberg shrugged resignedly.
“But you can get a lot of pleasure out of a simple occupation like that,” Birgersson went on. “And excitement. Sometimes I saw very rare cars like a Lagonda or Zim or EMW. That cheered me up.”
“And you told Inspector Stenström about this?”
“Yes, I’d never told anyone else.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said he thought it was interesting.”
“I see. And this is what you brought me here to say? At nine thirty in the evening? On Christmas Eve?”
Birgersson looked hurt.
“Yes,” he replied. “You did say I was to tell you anything I remembered …”
“Yes, sure,” Kollberg said wearily. “Thank you.”
He stood up.
“But I haven’t told you the most important yet,” the man murmured. “It was something that interested Inspector Stenström very much. It occurred to me since we’d been talking about a Morris.”
Kollberg sat down again.
“Yes? What?”
“Well, it had its problems, this hobby, if I may call it that. It was very hard to distinguish certain models when it was dark or if they were a long way off. For instance, Moskvitch and Opel Kadett or DKW and IFA.”
He paused, and then said emphatically, “Very, very hard. Just small details.”
“What has this to do with Stenström and your Morris 8?”
“No, not my Morris,” Birgersson replied. “What interested the Inspector so much was when I told him that the hardest of all was to see the difference between a Morris Minor and a Renault CV-4 from in front. Not from the side or the back, that was easy. But from straight in front or obliquely in front —that was very difficult indeed. Though I learned in time and seldom made a mistake. It did happen, of course.”
“Wait a moment,” Kollberg said. “Did you say Morris Minor and Renault CV-4?”
“Yes. And I remember that Inspector Stenström gave quite a jump when I told him. All the time I was talking he had just sat there nodding, and I didn’t think he was listening. But when I said that he was terribly interested. Asked me about it several times.”
“From in front, you said?”
“Yes. He asked that too, several times. From in front or obliquely in front. Very difficult.”
When they were sitting in the car again, Åsa Torell asked, “What’s this all about?”
“I don’t quite know yet. But it might mean quite a lot.”
“About the man who killed Åke?”
“Don’t know. At any rate it explains why he wrote down the name of that car in his book.”
“I’ve also remembered something,” she said. “Something Åke said a couple of weeks before he was killed. He said that as soon as he could take two days off he’d go down to Småland and investigate something. To Eksjö, I think. Does that tell you anything?”
“Not a thing,” Kollberg replied.
The city lay deserted. The only signs of life were two ambulances, a police car, and a few Santa Clauses staggering about, delayed in the exercise of their profession and handicapped by far too many glasses in far too many hospitable homes. After a while Kollberg said, “Gun told me you’re leaving us in the new year.”
“Yes. I’ve exchanged the apartment for a smaller one at Kungsholms Strand. I’m selling the furniture, lock stock and barrel, and buying new stuff. I’m going to get a new job, too.”
“Where?”
“I haven’t quite decided. But I’ve been thinking it over.”
She was silent for a few seconds. Then she said, “What about the police force? Are there any vacancies?”
“I’ll say there are.” Kollberg replied absently.
Then he started and said, “What! Are you serious?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I am serious.”
Åsa Torell concentrated on her driving. She frowned and peered out into the whirling snow.
When they got back to Palandergatan, Bodil had fallen asleep, and Gun was curled up in an armchair reading. There were tears in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“That goddam dinner,” she said. “It’s ruined.”
“Not at all. With your appearance and my appetite you could put a dead cat on the table and make me overjoyed.”
“And that hopeless Martin called up. Half an hour ago.”
“O.K.,” Kollberg said jovially. “I’ll give him a buzz while you’re getting the grub.”
He took off his jacket and tie and went to the phone.
“Hello. Beck.”
“Who’s doing all that howling?” Kollberg asked suspiciously.
“The laughing policeman.”
“What?”
“A phonograph record.”
“Oh yes, now I recognize it. An old music hall tune. Charles Penrose, isn’t it? Goes back to before the First World War.”
A roar of laughter was heard in the background.
“It makes no difference,” Martin Beck said joylessly. “I called you because Melander called me.”
“What did he want?”
“He said that at last he had remembered where he had seen the name Nils Erik Göransson.”
“Where?”
“In the investigation concerning Teresa Camarão.”
Kollberg unlaced his shoes. Thought for a moment. Then said, “Then you can tell him from me that he’s wrong for once. I’ve just read the whole pile, every damn word. And I’m not so dumb that I wouldn’t have noticed a thing like that.”
“Have you the papers at home?”
“No. They’re at Västberga. But I’m sure. Dead sure.”
“O.K. I believe you. What did you do at Långholmen?”
“Got some information. Too vague and complicated for me to explain now, but if it’s right—”
“Yes?”
“Then you can use every single sheet of the Teresa investigation as toilet paper. Merry Christmas.”
He put down the phone.
“Are you going out again?” his wife asked suspiciously.
“Yes. But not until Wednesday. Where’s the akvavit?”
29
It took a lot to depress Melander, but on the morning of the twenty-seventh he looked so miserable and puzzled that even Gunvald Larsson brought himself to ask, “What’s with you?”
“It’s just that I don’t usually make a mistake.”
“There’s always a first time,” Rönn said consolingly.
“Yes. But I don’t understand, all the same.”
Martin Beck had knocked on the door and before anyone had time to react he was in the room, standing there tall and grave, coughing slightly.
“What is it you don’t understand?”
“About Göransson. That I could make a mistake.”
“I’ve just been out at Västberga,” said Martin Beck. “And I know something that might cheer you up.”
“What is that?”
“There’s a page missing from the Teresa investigation. Page 1244, to be exact.”
At three o’clock in the afternoon Kollberg was standing outside an automobile firm in Södertälje. He had already got through a lot this day. For one thing, he had made sure that the three witnesses, who had observed a car at Stadshagen sportsground sixteen and a half years earlier, must have seen the vehicle from in front or possibly from obliquely in front. For another, he had supervised some photographic work, and rolled up in his inside pocket he had a dark-toned, slightly retouched advertising picture of a Morris Minor 1950 model. Of the three witnesses two were dead, the police sergeant and the mechanic. But the real expert, the workshop foreman, was still hale and hearty. And he worked here in Söd
ertälje. He was not a foreman anymore but something grander and sat in an office with glass walls, talking on the phone. When the call was finished Kollberg went in to him, without knocking and without in any way saying who he was. He merely laid the photograph on the desk in front of the man and said, “What make of car is this?”
“A Renault CV-4. An old job.”
“Are you sure?”
“Bet your life, I’m sure. I’m never wrong.”
“Positive?”
The man glanced again at the picture.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s a CV-4. Old model.”
“Thanks,” Kollberg said, reaching for the photograph.
The man gave him a puzzled look and said, “Wait a sec. Are you trying to trick me?”
He examined the picture thoroughly. After a good fifteen seconds he said slowly, “No. This isn’t a Renault. It’s a Morris. A Morris Minor model ’50 or ’51. And there’s something wrong with the picture.”
“Yes,” Kollberg said. “It has been touched up and made to look as if it were taken in a bad light and in the rain, for instance on a summer evening.”
The man stared at him.
“Look here, who are you anyway?”
“Police,” Kollberg replied.
“I might have known it,” the man said. “There was a policeman here early last fall who …”
Shortly before five thirty the same afternoon Martin Beck had assembled his immediate colleagues for a briefing at investigation headquarters. Nordin and Månsson had returned from Christmas leave, and the force was complete. The only one missing was Hammar, who had gone away for the vacation. He knew how little had happened during forty-four intensive days of investigation and thought it unlikely that there would be any new development between Christmas and New Year’s, a time when both hunters and hunted mostly sit at home belching and wondering how to make ends meet until January.
“Oh, so a page was missing,” Melander said with satisfaction. “Who can have taken it?”
Martin Beck and Kollberg exchanged a quick glance.
“Does anyone consider himself a specialist in house-searching?” Martin Beck asked.
“I’m good at searching,” Månsson said listlessly from his seat over by the window. “If there’s anything to be found, I’ll find it.”
“Good,” Martin Beck said. “I want you to comb through Åke Stenström’s apartment on Tjärhovsgatan.”
“What shall I look for?”
“A page out of a police report,” Kollberg said. “It should be numbered 1244 and it’s possible that the name Nils Erik Göransson occurs in the text.”
“Tomorrow,” Månsson said. “It’s always easier in daylight.”
“O.K., that’s fine,” Martin Beck said.
“I’ll give you the keys in the morning,” Kollberg informed him.
He already had them in his pocket but wanted to remove one or two traces of Stenström’s photography before Månsson set to work.
At two o’clock the next afternoon the phone on Martin Beck’s desk rang.
“Greetings. It’s Per.”
“Per who?”
“Månsson.”
“Oh, it’s you. Well?”
“I’m in Stenström’s apartment. The sheet of paper isn’t here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure?”
Månsson sounded deeply offended.
“Of course, I’m goddam sure. But are you sure he’s the one who took that page?”
“We think so, anyway.”
“Oh well, I’d better go on looking somewhere else.”
Martin Beck massaged his scalp.
“What do you mean by somewhere else?” he asked.
But Månsson had already put the phone down.
“There must be a copy in the central files, for Christ’s sake,” Gunvald Larsson growled.
“Yes,” Martin Beck said, pressing a button on the telephone and dialing an inter-office number.
In the room next door, Kollberg and Melander were discussing the situation.
“I’ve been looking through your list.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Yes, a lot. But I don’t know whether it’s of any use.”
“I’ll soon tell you.”
“Several of those guys are recidivists. For example, Karl Andersson, Vilhelm Rosberg and Bengt Wahlberg. Thieves all three. Sentenced dozens of times. They’re too old to work now.”
“Go on.”
“Johan Gran was a fence then and no doubt still is. That waiter business is sheer bluff. He did time only a year ago. And this Valter Eriksson—do you know how he became a widower?”
“No.”
“He killed his wife with a kitchen chair during a drunken brawl. Was convicted of manslaughter and got five years.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“There are other troublemakers besides him in this collection. Both Ove Eriksson and Bengt Fredriksson have been sentenced for assault and battery. Fredriksson no less than six times. A couple of the charges should have been for attempted manslaughter, if you ask me. And the junk dealer, Jan Carlsson, is a shady figure. He has never been caught, but it was a close shave a couple of times. I remember Björn Forsberg, too. He was up to quite a few crooked dealings at one time and was fairly well known in the underworld in the last half of the forties. Then he turned over a new leaf and made a nice career for himself. Married a wealthy woman and became a respected businessman. He has only one old sentence for swindling from 1947. Hans Wennström also has a first-rate list of crimes, everything from shoplifting to safecracking. Boy, what a title.”
“Former assistant fishmonger,” Kollberg said, looking at the list.
“I think he had a stall in the marketplace at Sundbyberg twenty-five years ago. Well, he’s another one of the real old-timers. Ingvar Bengtsson calls himself a journalist nowadays. He was one of the pioneers in check forging. He was a pimp too, come to that. Bo Frostensson is a third-rate actor and a notorious junkie.”
“Didn’t this girl ever take it into her head to sleep with any decent guys?” Kollberg said plaintively.
“Oh yes, sure. You have several on this list. For example, Rune Bengtsson, Lennart Lindgren, Kurt Olsson and Ragnar Viklund. Upper class, the whole bunch. Not a shadow on them.”
Kollberg had a good grasp of the investigation.
“No,” he said. “They were married too, all four of them. Had a hell of a time, I expect, explaining this to their wives.”
“On that point the police were pretty discreet. When it comes to these youngsters, who were about twenty or even younger, there was nothing much wrong with them. Out of six of that age on your list there’s only one, actually, that hasn’t made the grade. Kenneth Karlsson, he’s been picked up once or twice. Reform school and so on. Though that’s some time ago and nothing very serious. Do you want me to start rooting seriously in these people’s past?”
“Yes, please. You can weed out the old ’uns, for instance those who are over sixty now. Likewise the youngest, from thirty-eight downward.”
“That makes eight plus seven. Fifteen. That leaves fourteen. The field is shrinking.”
“What field?”
“Hm,” said Melander. “All these men, of course, have an alibi for the Teresa murder.”
“Bet your goddam life they have,” Kollberg said. “At least for the time when the body was placed at Stadshagen.”
The search for copies of the report of the Teresa investigation had been started on December 28, but New Year’s Eve and 1968 arrived before it showed any result.
Not until the morning of January 5 was there a dusty pile of papers lying on Martin Beck’s desk. He didn’t need to be a detective to see that it had come from the innermost recesses of the files and that several years had passed since it had last been opened by human hand.
Martin Beck turned over quickly until he came to page 1244. The text was brief. Kollberg leaned over his shoulder and the
y read:
Interrogation of salesman Nils Erik Göransson, August 7, 1951.
Regarding himself, Göransson states that he was born in the Finnish parish in Stockholm on Oct. 4, 1929, son of electrician Algot Erik Göransson and Benita Göransson, née Rantanen. He is at present employed as salesman by the firm of Allimport, Holländaregatan 10, Stockholm.
Göransson owns to having known Teresa Camarão, who periodically moved in the same circles as he did, though not during the months immediately prior to her death. Göransson owns further that on two occasions he had intimate sexual relations (intercourse) with Teresa Camarão. On the first occasion in an apartment in Svartmansgatan here in town, when several other persons were also present. Of these he says he remembers only one Karl Åke Birger Svensson-Rask. On the second occasion the meeting took place in a cellar at Holländaregatan here in town. On this occasion too Svensson-Rask was present and he also had intimate sex relations (intercourse) with Mrs. Camarão. Göransson says he does not remember the exact dates but thinks the events must have taken place at an interval of several days at the end of November and/or beginning of December the previous year, i.e. 1950. Göransson says he knows nothing of Mrs. Camarão’s acquaintances otherwise.
From June 2–13 Göransson was in Eksjö, to which he drove in an automobile with registration number A 6310 for the purpose of the sale of clothes for the firm where he is employed. Göransson is the owner of automobile A 6310, a 1949 model Morris Minor. This statement read out and approved.
(Signed)
It can be added that the abovementioned Karl Åke Birger Svensson-Rask is identical with the man who first informed the police that Göransson had had intimate sexual relations (intercourse) with Mrs. Camarão. Göransson’s account of his visit to Eksjö is confirmed by the staff of the City Hotel at that place. Questioned in detail about Göransson’s movements on the evening of June 10, Sverker Johnsson, waiter at the said hotel, states that Göransson sat the whole evening in the hotel dining room, until this was closed at 11:30 P.M. Göransson was then the worse for liquor. Sverker Johnsson’s statements should be credited, the more so as they are confirmed by items on Göransson’s hotel bill.