The Locked Room

by Maj Sjowall

  The special squad sat speechless.

  The National Police Commissioner was the first to speak.

  “Nothing of this must get out.”

  Naturally. Nothing was ever allowed to get out.

  Superintendent Malm said in a shrill voice: “Absolutely nothing of this must be allowed to come out.”

  Kollberg let out a guffaw.

  “How can this have happened?” Bulldozer Olsson asked. Even he seemed a trifle put out.

  “Well,” the film expert said, “there could be a technical explanation. The trigger may have gotten jammed and the camera started up a bit later than it should have. These are sensitive gadgets, you know.”

  “If I see so much as a single word in the press,” thundered the National Police Commissioner, “then …”

  “… then the Ministry’ll have to order another new carpet for someone’s office,” said Gunvald Larsson. “Maybe there’s a kind with a raspberry flavor.”

  “Fantastic get-up she was wearing,” snorted Kollberg.

  The National Police Commissioner dashed for the door. Superintendent Malm wagged out after him.

  Kollberg gasped for air.

  “What’s one to say about this?” said Bulldozer Olsson.

  “Though I say so myself,” Gunvald Larsson said modestly, “I think that film was real good.”

  10

  Kollberg had collected himself and was looking dubiously at the person who, for the time being, he had to regard as his boss.

  Bulldozer Olsson was the special squad’s main engine. He was in love with bank robberies, and after the past year’s avalanche of such events he’d blossomed out as never before. It was he who had all the energy and ideas. Week after week he could go on working eighteen hours a day, without once complaining, getting depressed, or even becoming noticeably tired. At times his exhausted colleagues wondered whether he wasn’t himself managing director of the Swedish Crime Co., that sinister organization which there was so much talk of. To Bulldozer Olsson police work was the most enjoyable and exciting thing imaginable.

  This, no doubt, was because he was not a policeman.

  He was a district attorney, who was in charge of preliminary investigations into a wholly impenetrable skein of armed bank robberies. One of these was already half-solved, and a few more-or-less guilty persons were being held in custody, and some had even been charged. But now things had got to such a pass that new holdups were occurring several times a week, and everybody realized that many of them were in some way and to some extent connected, though just how nobody could say.

  Furthermore, banks were not the only targets. There had been an enormous increase in assaults on private persons. Every hour of the day and night people were being struck down in the city’s streets and squares, in their own boutiques, in the subway, or in their homes, indeed, everywhere and anywhere. But the bank robberies were deemed by far the most serious. To violate society’s banks was to commit an outrage against its very foundations.

  The existing social system was obviously hardly viable and only with the best of will could be described as functioning at all. Even this could not be said of the police. During the last two years Stockholm alone had had to shelve 220,000 criminal investigations; and even of the most serious crimes—only a small fraction of the total—only a quarter were ever cleared up.

  This being the state of affairs, there was little that those who bore ultimate responsibility could do except shake their heads and look thoughtful. For a long while everyone had been blaming everyone else; and now there was no longer anyone to blame. The only constructive suggestion put forward recently had been that people should be prevented from drinking beer. Since Sweden is a country where beer consumption is rather low anyway, it can be seen just how unrealistic was the so-called thinking of many representatives of the country’s highest authorities.

  One thing, however, was plain. The police had largely only themselves to blame. After the 1965 nationalization, the entire force now came under a single hat, and from the outset it had been obvious that this hat was sitting on the wrong head.

  For a long time now many analysts and researchers had been asking themselves what the philosophy might be that was guiding activities at National Police Headquarters. A question which, of course, went unanswered. In accordance with his doctrine that nothing must ever be allowed to leak out, the National Police Commissioner, on principle, never gave answers to anything. On the other hand, he was only too fond of speechifying—speeches which, even as samples of sheer rhetoric, were totally uninteresting.

  Some years ago someone in the police force had discovered a way of manipulating crime statistics. The methods used, though simple, were not immediately transparent, and without being directly mendacious were nevertheless utterly misleading. It had all started with demands for a more militant and homogeneous police force, for greater technical resources in general, and for more firearms in particular. To get this it had been necessary to exaggerate the hazards that policemen faced. Since verbiage had not proved politically effective enough, recourse had then been made to another method: namely, the manipulation of statistics.

  At this juncture the political demonstrations during the second half of the sixties had opened up magnificent possibilities. Demonstrators pleading for peace had been suppressed by violence. Hardly ever armed with anything but their banners and their convictions, they had been met by tear gas, water cannons, and rubber nightsticks. Few were the nonviolent demonstrations that had not ended in tumult and chaos. Those individuals who had tried to defend themselves had been mauled about, arrested, and prosecuted for “assaulting the police” or “resisting arrest.” All this information had been fed into the statistics. The method had worked perfectly. Each time a few hundred policemen were sent out to “control” a demonstration, the figures for alleged assaults against the police had rocketed.

  The uniformed police had been encouraged “not to pull their punches,” as the expression went, orders with which many a patrolman had been only too delighted, in all possible situations, to comply. Tap a drunk with a nightstick and the chances of his hitting back are always fairly high.

  A simple lesson, which anyone could learn.

  These tactics had worked. Now the Swedish police were armed to the teeth. All of a sudden, situations that formerly could have been cleared up by a single man equipped with a lead pencil and a pinch of common sense required a busload of patrolmen equipped with automatics and bullet-proof vests.

  The long-term result, however, was something no one had quite foreseen. Violence breeds not only antipathy and hatred but also insecurity and fear.

  In the end things had come to such a pass that people were going about being scared of each other and Stockholm had become a city containing tens of thousands of terrified individuals. And frightened people are dangerous people.

  Many of the six hundred patrolmen who suddenly no longer existed had in fact resigned because they were scared—yes, even though they were armed to the teeth and for the most part just sat locked inside their cars.

  Many, of course, had fled from Stockholm for other reasons, either because they’d come to dislike the place in general, or because they were disgusted with the treatment they were now obliged to mete out.

  The regime had backfired. As for its deepest motives, they remained shrouded in darkness—a darkness, however, in which some people detected a tint of Nazi brown.

  Examples of similar manipulations abounded, and some bore witness to fargone cynicism. A year ago there had been a drive against people passing bad checks. People were overdrawing their accounts, and some money had ended up in the wrong pockets. The figures for unsolved petty fraud were regarded as discreditable, and called for radical measures. The National Police Board objected to checks being accepted as legal tender. Everyone knew what this would mean: people would have to carry a lot of cash with them, and this would give the green light to muggers on the city’s streets and squares. Which was precis
ely what had happened. Fraudulent checks, of course, disappeared, and the police could boast of a questionable success. The fact that numerous citizens were daily being beaten up was of minor importance.

  It was all part and parcel of the rising tide of violence, to which the only answer was ever more numerous and still better armed police.

  But where were all these policemen to come from?

  The official crime figures for the first six months had been a great triumph. They showed a drop of two percent, although as everybody knew there had really been a massive increase. The explanation was simple. Nonexistent policemen cannot expose crimes. And every overdrawn bank account had been counted as a crime in itself.

  When the political police had been forbidden to bug people’s telephones, the theorists of the National Police Board had hastened to their aid. Through scare propaganda and gross exaggeration Parliament had been prevailed on to pass a law permitting phones to be bugged in the struggle against narcotics. Whereupon the anticommunists had calmly continued their eavesdropping, and the narcotics trade had flourished as never before.

  No, it was no fun, thought Lennart Kollberg, being a policeman. What could a man do as he witnessed the gradual decay of his own organization? As he heard the rats of fascism pattering about behind the wainscoting? All his adult life he had loyally served this organization.

  What to do? Say what you think and get the sack? Unpleasant. There must be some more constructive line of action. And, of course, there were other police officers besides himself who saw things in the same light. But which, and how many?

  No such problems afflicted Bulldozer Olsson. Life, to him, was one big jolly game, and most things as clear as crystal. “But there’s one thing I don’t get,” he said.

  “Really?” said Gunvald Larsson. “What?”

  “What happened to that car? The roadblocks functioned as they ought to, didn’t they?”

  “So it appears.”

  “So there should have been men on all the bridges within five minutes.”

  The South Side of Stockholm is an island, with six points of access. The special squad had long ago devised detailed schemes by which each of the Stockholm downtown districts could quickly be sealed off.

  “Sure,” said Gunvald Larsson. “I’ve checked with the Metropolitan Police. For once everything seems to have clicked.”

  “What kind of a car was it?” Kollberg asked. As yet he hadn’t had time to catch up on all the details.

  “A Renault 16, light gray or beige, ‘A’-registered, and with two threes in its number.”

  “Naturally they’d given it a false license plate,” Gunvald Larsson put in.

  “Obviously. But I’ve yet to hear of someone being able to respray a car between Maria Square and Slussen. And if they switched cars …”

  “Yes?”

  “Then where did the first one get to?”

  Bulldozer Olsson paced the room, thumping the palms of his hands against his forehead. He was a man in his forties, chubby, well under average height, with a slightly florid complexion. His movements were as animated as his intellect. Now he was addressing himself: “They park the car in a garage near a subway station or a bus stop, then one of the guys beats it with the dough; the other one gives the car a new license plate. Then he beats it too. On Saturday the car guy comes back and does the respraying. And yesterday morning the car was ready to be driven off. But …”

  “But what?” asked Kollberg.

  “But I had our people check every single Renault leaving the South Side right up to 1 A.M. last night.”

  “So either it had time to get away, or else it’s still here,” said Kollberg.

  Gunvald Larsson said nothing at all. Instead he scrutinized Bulldozer Olsson’s attire and felt an intense antipathy. A crumpled light blue suit, a piggy-pink shirt, and a wide flowery tie. Black socks and pointed brown shoes with stitching—notably unbrushed.

  “And what do you mean by the car guy?”

  “They never fix the cars themselves. They always hire a special guy, who leaves them in some prearranged spot and gets them afterwards. Often he comes from some completely different town, Malmö or Göteborg, for example. They’re always very careful about the getaway cars.”

  Kollberg, looking even more pensive, said: “They? Who’s they?”

  “Malmström and Mohrén, of course.”

  “And who are Malmström and Mohrén?”

  Bulldozer Olsson gazed at him, dumbfounded. But then his gaze cleared. “Ah yes, of course. You’re new to the squad, aren’t you? Malmström and Mohrén are two of our smartest bank robbers. It’s four months now since they got out. And this is their fourth job since. They beat it from Kumla Prison at the end of February.”

  “But Kumla’s supposed to be escape-proof,” Kollberg said.

  “Malmström and Mohrén didn’t escape. They just failed to return from weekend parole. As far as we can see, they didn’t do any jobs until the end of April—before which they must certainly have gone on vacation to the Canaries or Gambia. Probably a fourteen-day round trip.”

  “And then?”

  “Then they equipped themselves. Weapons and so forth. They usually do that in Spain or Italy.”

  “But it was a woman who raided that bank last Friday, wasn’t it?” Kollberg remarked.

  “Disguised,” said Bulldozer Olsson didactically. “Disguised in a blond wig and falsies. But I’m dead sure it was Malmström and Mohrén who did it. Who else would have had the nerve, or been smart enough to make such a sudden move? This is a special job, don’t you see, hellish intriguing really. Frightfully exciting. Actually it’s like …”

  “… playing a game of postal chess with a champ,” said Gunvald Larsson. “But champ or not, both Malmström and Mohrén are as big as oxes, and that’s something you can’t talk yourself out of. Each weighs 209 pounds, wears size twelve shoes, and has hands like hams. Mohrén is forty-six inches around the chest—that’s five more than Anita Ekberg in her prime. I find it difficult to imagine him fitted out in a dress, wearing falsies.”

  “Wasn’t the woman wearing pants anyway?” asked Kollberg. “And rather on the small side?”

  “Naturally they sent in someone else,” Bulldozer Olsson said placidly. “One of their usual tricks.” Running over to one of the desks he grabbed a slip of paper. “How much dough have they gotten hold of?” he asked himself. “Fifty thousand in Borås, forty in Gubbängen, twenty-six in Märsta, and now ninety. That makes over two hundred thousand! So they’ll soon be ready.”

  “Ready?” Kollberg asked. “Ready for what?”

  “Their big haul. Big with a capital ‘H.’ All these other jobs are just to get some finance. But any time now it’ll be the big bang.” Seemingly beside himself with enthusiasm, he practically flew around the room. “But where, gentlemen? Where? Let me see, let me see. We must think. If I were Werner Roos now, what move would I make? How would I attack his king? How would you do it? And when?”

  “Who the hell’s Werner Roos?” Kollberg inquired again.

  “He’s an airline purser,” said Gunvald Larsson.

  “First and foremost he’s a criminal,” Bulldozer Olsson shouted. “In his own way Werner Roos is a genius. He’s the one who plots out everything down to the last detail. Without him Malmström and Mohrén would be mere nonentities. It’s he who does all the thinking. Without him plenty of others would be out of work. And he’s the biggest skunk of the lot! He’s a sort of professor of—”

  “Don’t shout so damn loud,” said Gunvald Larsson. “You’re not in the district court.”

  “We’ll get him,” Bulldozer Olsson said, as if he’d just hit on some genial idea. “We’ll grab him now, right away.”

  “And release him tomorrow,” said Gunvald Larsson.

  “Never mind. It’ll be a surprise. Catch him off his guard.”

  “You think so? It’ll be the fifth time this year.”

  “No matter,” said Bulldozer Olsson, making
for the door.

  Actually Bulldozer Olsson’s first name was Sten. But this was something everyone, except possibly his wife, had long ago forgotten. She, on the other hand, had very likely forgotten what he looked like.

  “There seem to be a lot of things I don’t understand,” Kollberg complained.

  “Where Roos is concerned, Bulldozer’s probably right,” Gunvald Larsson said. “He’s a smart devil who’s always got an alibi. Fantastic alibis. Whenever anything happens he’s always away in Singapore or San Francisco or Tokyo.”

  “But how does Bulldozer know these Malmström and Mohrén guys are behind this particular job?”

  “Some sort of sixth sense, I guess.”

  Gunvald Larsson shrugged and said: “But where’s the sense in it? Here are Malmström and Mohrén, known to be a couple of gangsters, who, though they never confess, have been inside any number of times. And now, when at last they’re behind lock and key in Kumla, they’re granted weekend parole!”

  “Well, we can’t really keep people locked up in one room with a TV set for all eternity, can we?”

  “No,” said Gunvald Larsson. “That’s true enough.”

  For a while they sat silent. Both men were thinking the same thing: how it had cost the state millions to build Kumla Prison and equip it with every conceivable refinement designed to insulate social misfits from society. Foreigners with experience in penal institutions from far and wide had said that Kumla’s internment department was probably the most inhuman and personality-deadening in the whole world. Lack of lice in the mattresses or worms in the food is no substitute for human contact.

  “As for this murder on Hornsgatan …” Kollberg began.

  “That wasn’t murder. Probably just an accident. She fired by mistake, maybe didn’t even realize the gun was loaded.”

  “Sure it was a girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about all this talk of Malmström and Mohrén, then?”

  “Well, it’s just possible they sent in a girl.…”

  “Weren’t there any fingerprints? As far as I know, she wasn’t even wearing gloves.”