The Laughing Policeman

MAJ SJOWALL (1935-) and PER WAHLOO (1926-1975) were husband and wife. They were both committed Marxists and, between 1965 and 1975, they collaborated on ten mysteries featuring Martin Beck, including The Terrorists, The Fire Engine That Disappeared and The Locked Room. Four of the books have been made into films, most famously The Laughing Policeman, which starred Walter Matthau.

From the reviews of the Martin Beck series:

'First class' Daily Telegraph

'One of the most authentic, gripping and profound collections of police procedural ever accomplished

MICHAEL CONNELLY

'Hauntingly effective storytelling'

New York Times

'There's just no question about it: the reigning King and Queen of mystery fiction are Maj Sjöwall and her husband

Per Wahloo'

The National Observer

'Sjöwall/Wahloo are the best writers of police procedural in

the world'

Birmingham Post

Also by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahloo

Roseanna

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke

The Man on the Balcony

The Fire Engine That Disappeared Murder at the Savoy

The Abominable Man

The Locked Room

Cop Killller

The Terrorists

MAJ SJOWALL AND PER WAHLOO

The Laughing Policeman

Translated from the Swedish by Alan Blair

INTRODUCTION

The Laughing Policeman is the only Swedish novel ever to have been made into a Hollywood movie. The film appeared in 1973, five years after the book's Swedish publication, and starred Walter Matthau, transposing the story to San Francisco. It's not hard to see what attracted Hollywood's attention. In an austerely realistic setting, Sjöwall and Wahloo begin their story with a tour de force. A bus crashes in a quiet Stockholm street On board are the driver and eight passengers. All of them are dead, except for one critically injured passenger. They have all been shot. One of the dead is Åke Stenström, a young police detective. He was off-duty but carrying a pistol. What was he doing on the bus? Was his presence there a coincidence? He was sitting next to a young nurse: did he know her? Was he having an affair with her? (Absurdly, the filmmakers dispel much of the mystery in advance by beginning not with the bus crash but with the events leading up to it, answering questions in the opening sequence that, in the book, are only answered late in the story.)

The first clues are equally tantalizing. When Sjöwall and Wahloo's regular detective, Martin Beck, searches Stenström's desk, he finds an envelope containing nude photographs of the dead man's girlfriend. Why did Stenström take them? 'To look at,'

Martin Beck comments. But why did he keep them on his desk and not at home? The injured passenger regains consciousness for a few seconds and gives the following interview, recorded by one of the detectives:

'Who did the shooting?’

' Dnrk '

'What did he look like?' 'Koleson:

Then he dies. The police listen to the tape over and over again. Are they meaningless syllables?

These are all, in their very different way, the sort of enigmas that Agatha Christie might have conceived, and there is no doubt that Sjöwall and Wahloo took pleasure in the conventions of classic crime fiction. They even based a later book on that most artificial of forms, the 'locked room mystery' (in The Locked Room, 1973). But the Golden Age detective stories of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr had a semi-mythical setting in which the mystery is everything. Christie's Murder on the Orient Express is plainly based on the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, but the author has no interest in motivation or social context beyond what is necessary for the plot. For Hercule Poirot, a murder scene has the abstract interest of a crossword puzzle or a chess problem.

For the Swedish couple, however, the contrivances of detective fiction must always be grounded in reality. The discovery of the bus occurs only in chapter two of The Laughing Policeman - for this book was published in 1968 and chapter one describes, brilliantly and amusingly, an anti-Vietnam War demonstration outside the American embassy in central Stockholm. It is often pointed out that Sjöwall and Wahloo were Marxists, and, while the Martin Beck novels are far from being works of agitprop, they are embedded in history. A relevant quotation might be from the famous opening of Marx's essay, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: 'Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances of their own choosing...'

It is these circumstances - unpredictable, messy, confusing -that define the fiction of Sjöwall and Wahloo. When Beck arrives at the bus, the incompetent police officers have already tramped all over the scene, obscuring evidence. Even the more competent policemen are for from being detached investigators. They bring their own problems and experiences into the investigation. Some are simply biased or politically reactionary. Others are from the provinces, in the north and the south, uncomfortable in the rough cosmopolitanism of Stockholm. Stenström's sexual explorations, as expressed in his photographs, infect Kollberg and his own relationship. One thinks of Ingmar Bergman's priests, distracted from their pastoral duties by their own spiritual problems. Sjöwall and Wahldoo's policemen are plagued by doubts about what it is to be policemen and what they are for: 'There's a latent hatred of police in all classes of society,' says one of them. 'And it needs only an impulse to trigger it off.'

Above all there is Martin Beck, the prototype of the brilliant tormented detective: Thomas Harris's Will Graham, Ian Rankin's John Rebus, Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander, and many others, owe their existence to him. Beck's malaise is all the more effective for being only partially articulated. There is almost a surfeit of causes: his weariness after years as a detective, his failures as a family man and, suffusing everything in all the books, a sense that something has gone profoundly wrong in social democratic Sweden, as if the crimes he faces are superficial symptoms of a much deeper historical crisis.

As a simple feat of storytelling, the arranging of events and the marshalling of clues, this is a marvellously accomplished piece, but it all occurs in a vividly evoked setting. This narrative doesn't exist in a capsule. There are always tendrils extending in other directions, suggesting a world elsewhere. Nor is this mere decoration. It is a part of the meaning of the book. The victims on the bus - the driver (a man from northern Sweden), a nurse, a widow, an Algerian immigrant worker, a philandering businessman with a pocketful of cash - form a snapshot of a society in transition, a society of secrets and hypocrisies and punctured myths. The investigation is an exercise in disenchantment, of poking beneath the surfaces of Swedish complacency and discovering what's beneath, and it's invariably something corrupt or depraved, whether racism, commercial exploitation or sexual perversion.

If there is any aspect of the book that has dated, it may be aspects of its sour portrayal of Swedish sexuality. Apart from Bergman films and Volvos, Sweden in the late sixties was most notorious or famous for its supposed sexual freedom. This was always more complicated and compromised than the legend suggested, and Sjöwall and Wahloo were certainly having none of it In a corrupt society, they suggest, sex cannot remain uncorrupted, and this novel features not just one but two "nymphomaniacs' - a term and a diagnosis that most of us probably now feel is itself a part of the sexual confusion and oppression that Sjöwall and Wahloo were attempting to expose.

But this is just a cavil. It's hard to think of any other thriller writers (apart from Simenon, perhaps) who can capture so much of a society in a couple of hundred pages and yet still hold true to the excitements of the thriller form. Because despite it all, despite politics that are as far from the reactionary Christie as it is possible to get, Sjöwall and Wahloo never lost their pleasure in the machinery of the whodunnit The book even, delightfully, has a superb twist on the very final page and unlike many twists it doesn't undercut what you've read before but deepens it, adds poignancy and darkness.

And, speaking as another married couple who write thrillers, we don't know which of them wrote what we can't see the joins, and we don't care.

Sean and Nicci French

₁

On the evening of 13 November it was pouring in Stockholm. Martin Beck and Kollberg sat over a game of chess in the latter's flat not far from the underground station of Skärmarbrink in the southern suburbs. Both were off duty insomuch as nothing special had happened during the last few days.

Martin Beck was bad at chess but played all the same. Kollberg had a daughter who was just over two months old. On this particular evening he was forced to baby-sit, and Martin Beck on the other hand had no wish to go home before it was absolutely necessary. The weather was abominable. Driving curtains of rain swept over the rooftops, pattering against the windows, and the streets lay almost deserted; the few people to be seen evidently had urgent reasons to be out on such a night

Outside the American embassy on Strandvägen and along the streets leading to it, 412 policemen were struggling with about twice as many demonstrators. The police were equipped with tear-gas bombs, pistols, whips, truncheons, cars, motorcycles, shortwave radios, battery megaphones, riot dogs and hysterical horses. The demonstrators were armed with a letter and cardboard signs, which grew more and more sodden in the pelting rain. It was difficult to regard them as a homogeneous group, for the crowd comprised every possible kind of person, from thirteen-year-old schoolgirls in jeans and duffel coats and dead-serious political students to agitators and professional trouble-makers, and at least one eighty-five-year-old woman artist with a beret and a blue silk umbrella. Some strong common motive had induced them to defy both the rain and whatever else was in store. The police, on the other hand, by no means comprised the force's elite. They had been mustered from every available precinct in town, but every policeman who knew a doctor or was good at dodging had managed to escape this unpleasant assignment There remained those who knew what they were doing and liked it, and those who were considered cocky and who were far too young and inexperienced to try and get out of it; besides, they hadn't a clue as to what they were doing or why they were doing it. The horses reared up, chewing their bits, and the police fingered their holsters and made charge after charge with their truncheons. A small girl was bearing a sign with the memorable text: DO YOUR DUTY! KEEP FUCKING AND MAKE MORE POLICE! Three thirteen-stone patrolmen flung themselves at her, tore the sign to pieces and dragged her into a squad car, where they twisted her arms and pawed her breasts. She had turned thirteen on this very day and had not yet developed any.

Altogether more than fifty persons were seized. Many were bleeding. Some were celebrities, who were not above writing to the papers or complaining on the radio and television. At the sight of them, the sergeants on duty at the local police station had a fit of the shivers and showed them the door with apologetic smiles and stiff bows. Others were less well treated during the inevitable questioning. A mounted policeman had been hit on the head by an empty bottle and someone must have thrown it

The operation was in the charge of a high-ranking police officer trained at a military school He was considered an expert on keeping order and he regarded with satisfaction the utter chaos he had managed to achieve.

In the apartment at Skärmarbrink, Kollberg gathered up the chessmen, jumbled them into the wooden box and shut the sliding lid with a smack. His wife had come home from her evening course and gone straight to bed.

'You'll never learn this,' Kollberg said plaintively.

'They say you need a special gift for it,' Martin Beck replied gloomily. 'Chess sense I think it's called.'

Kollberg changed the subject

'I bet there's a right to-do at Strandvägen this evening,' he said. 'I expect so. What's it all about?'

'They were going to hand a letter over to the ambassador,' Kollberg said. 'A letter. Why don't they post it?' 'It wouldn't cause so much fuss.'

'No, but all the same, it's so stupid it makes you ashamed.' Yes,' Martin Beck agreed.

He had put on his hat and coat and was about to go. Kollberg got up quickly.

'I'll come with you,' he said. 'Whatever for?' 'Oh, to stroll around a little.' 'In this weather?'

'I like rain,' Kollberg said, climbing into his dark-blue poplin coat

'Isn't it enough for me to have a cold?' Martin Beck said.

Martin Beck and Kollberg were policemen. They belonged to the homicide squad. For the moment they had nothing special to do and could, with relatively clear consciences, consider themselves free.

Downtown no policemen were to be seen in the streets. The old lady outside the central station waited in vain for a beat officer to come up to her, salute, and smilingly help her across the street A person who had just smashed the glass of a showcase with a brick had no need to worry that the rising and falling wail from a patrol car would suddenly interrupt his doings.

The police were busy.

A week earlier the police commissioner had said in a public statement that many of the regular duties of the police would have to be neglected because they were obliged to protect the American ambassador against letters and other things from people who disliked Lyndon Johnson and the war in Vietnam.

Detective Inspector Lennart Kollberg didn't like Lyndon Johnson and the war in Vietnam either, but he did like strolling about the city when it was raining.

At eleven o'clock in the evening it was still raining and the demonstration could be regarded as broken up.

At the same time eight murders and one attempted murder were committed in Stockholm.

₂

Rain, he thought, looking out of the window dejectedly. November darkness and rain, cold and pelting. A forerunner of the approaching winter. Soon it would start to snow.

Nothing in town was very attractive just now, especially not this street with its bare trees and large, shabby blocks of flats. A bleak esplanade, misdirected and wrongly planned from the outset It led nowhere in particular and never had, it was just there, a dreary reminder of some grandiose city plan, begun long ago but never finished. There were no well-lit shop windows and no people on the pavements. Only big, leafless trees and street lamps, whose cold white light was reflected by puddles and wet car roofs.

He had trudged about so long in the rain that his hair and the legs of his trousers were sopping wet, and now he felt the moisture along his shins and right down his neck to the shoulder blades, cold and trickling.

He undid the two top buttons of his raincoat, stuck his right hand inside his jacket and fingered the butt of the pistol. It, too, felt cold and clammy.

At the touch, an involuntary shudder passed through the man in the dark-blue poplin raincoat and he tried to think of something else. For instance of the hotel balcony at Andraitz, where he had spent his holiday five months earlier. Of the heavy, motionless heat and of the bright sunshine over the quayside and the fishing boats and of the limitless, deep-blue sky above the mountain ridge on the other side of the bay.

Then he thought that it was probably raining there too at this

time of year and that there was no central heating in the houses,

only open fireplaces.

And that he was no longer in the same street as before and would soon be forced out into the rain again.

He heard someone behind him on the stairs and knew that it was the person who had got on outside Åhléns department store on Klarabergsgatan in the centre of the city twelve stops before.

Rain, he thought I don't like it. In fact I hate it I wonder when I'll be promoted. What am I doing here anyway and why aren't I at home in bed with ...

And that was the last he thought

The bus was a red doubledecker with cream-coloured top and grey roof. It was a Leyland Atlantean model, built in England, but constructed for the Swedish right-hand traffic, introduced two months before. On this particular evening it was plying on route 47 in Stockholm, between Bellmansro at Djurgården and Karlberg, and vice versa. Now it was heading north-west and approaching the terminus on Norra Stationsgatan, situated only a few yards from the city limits between Stockholm and Solna.

Solna is a suburb of Stockholm and functions as an independent municipal administrative unit, even if the boundary between the two cities can only be seen as a dotted line on the map.

It was big, this red bus; over 36 feet long and nearly 15 feet high. It weighed more than 15 tons. The headlights were on and it looked warm and cosy with its misty windows as it droned along deserted Karlbergsvagen between the lines of leafless trees. Then it turned right into Norrbackagatan and the sound of the engine was fainter on the long slope down to Norra Stationsgatan. The rain beat against the roof and windows, and the wheels flung up hissing cascades of water as it glided downward, heavily and implacably.

The hill ended where the street did. The bus was to turn at an angle of 30 degrees, on to Norra Stationsgatan, and then it had only some 300 yards left to the end of the line.

The only person to observe the vehicle at this moment was a man who stood flattened against a house wall over 150 yards farther up Norrbackagatan. He was a burglar who was about to smash a window. He noticed the bus because he wanted it out of the way and had waited for it to pass.

He saw it slow down at the corner and begin to turn left with its side lights blinking. Then it was out of sight. The rain pelted down harder than ever. The man raised his hand and smashed the pane.

What he did not see was that the turn was never completed.

The red doubledecker bus seemed to stop for a moment in the middle of the turn. Then it drove straight across the street, climbed the sidewalk and burrowed halfway through the wire fence separating Norra Stationsgatan from the desolate freight depot on the other side.

Then it pulled up.

The engine died but the headlights were still on, and so was the lighting inside.

The misty windows went on gleaming cosily in the dark and cold.

And the rain lashed against the metal roof. The time was three minutes past eleven on the evening of 13 November, 1967. In Stockholm.

₃

Kristiansson and Kvant were radio patrol policemen in Solna.

During their not-very-eventful careers they had picked up thousands of drunks and dozens of thieves, and once they had presumably saved the life of a six-year-old girl by seizing a notorious sex maniac who was just about to assault and murder her. This had happened less than five months ago, and although it was a fluke it constituted a feat which they intended to live on for a long time.

On this particular evening they had not picked up anything at all, apart from a glass of beer each; as this was perhaps against the rules, it had better be ignored.

Just before ten thirty they got a call on the radio and drove to an address at Kapellgatan in the suburb of Huvudsta, where someone had found a lifeless figure lying on the front steps. It took them only three minutes to drive there.

Sure enough, sprawling in front of the street door lay a human being in frayed black trousers, down-at-heel shoes and a shabby pepper-and-salt overcoat. In the lit hallway inside stood an elderly woman in slippers and dressing gown. She was evidently the one who had complained. She gesticulated at them through the glass door, then opened it a few inches, stuck her arm through the crack and pointed demandingly to the motionless form.

'A-ha, and what's all this?' Kristiansson said. Kvant bent down and sniffed.

'Out cold,' he said with deeply-felt distaste. 'Give us a hand, Kalle.'

'Wait a second,' Kristiansson said. 'Eh?'

'Do you know this man, madam?' Kristiansson asked more or less politely.

'I should say I do.' ‘Where does he live?'

The woman pointed to a door three yards farther inside the hall. 'There,' she said. 'He fell asleep while he was trying to unlock the door.'

'Oh yes, he has the keys in his hand,' Kristiansson said, scratching his head. 'Does he live alone?'

'Who could live with an old bastard like that?' the lady said.

'What are you going to do?' Kvant asked suspiciously.

Kristiansson didn't answer. Bending down, he took the keys from the sleeper's hand. Then he jerked the drunk to his feet with a grip that denoted many years' practice, pushed open the front door with his knee and dragged the man towards the flat The woman stood on one side and Kvant remained on the outer steps. Both watched the scene with passive disapproval.

Kristiansson unlocked the door, switched on the light in the room and pulled off the man's wet overcoat The drunk lurched, collapsed on to the bed and said, 'Thanksh, Miss.'

Then he turned over on his side and fell asleep. Kristiansson laid the keys on a kitchen chair beside the bed, put out the light, shut the door and went back to the car.

'Good night, madam,' he said.

The woman stared at him with pursed lips, tossed her head and disappeared.

Kristiansson did not act like this from love of his fellow humans, but because he was lazy.

None knew this better than Kvant. While they were still serving as ordinary beat officers on the beat in Malmö, he had many a time seen Kristiansson lead drunks along the street and even across bridges in order to get them into the next precinct

Kvant sat at the wheel. He switched on the ignition and said sourly, 'Siv oftentimes says I'm lazy. She should see you’

Siv was Kvant's wife and also his dearest and often sole subject of conversation.

'Why should I get puked on for nothing?' Kristiansson said philosophically.

Kristiansson and Kvant were similar in build and appearance. Both were 6 feet 1 inch tall, fair, broad-shouldered and blue-eyed. But they had widely different temperaments and didn't always see eye to eye. This was one of the questions upon which they were not in agreement.

Kvant was incorruptible. He never compromised over things he saw, but on the other hand he was an expert at seeing as little as possible.

He drove slowly, in glum silence, following a twisting route from Huvudsta that led past the Police Training College, then through an area of communal garden plots, past the railway museum, the National Bacteriological Laboratory, the School for the Blind, and then zigzagging through the extensive university district with its various institutions, finally emerging via the railway administration buildings on to Tomtebodavågen.

It was a brilliantly thought-out course, leading through areas which were almost guaranteed to be empty of people. They met not a single car the whole way and saw only two living creatures, first a cat and then another cat.

When they reached the end of Tomtebodavågen, Kvant stopped the car with the radiator one yard from the Stockholm city limit and let the engine idle while he considered how to arrange the rest of their shift

I wonder if you've got the cheek to turn around and drive back the same way. Kristiansson thought. Aloud he said, 'Can you lend me 10 kronor?'

Kvant nodded, took his wallet out of his breast pocket and handed the note to his colleague without even a glance at him. At the same instant he made a quick decision. If he crossed the city limits and followed Norra Stationsgatan for some five hundred yards in a north-easterly direction they would only need to be in Stockholm for two minutes. Then he could turn in to Eugeniävagen, drive across the hospital area and continue through Haga Park and along by the Northern Cemetery, finishing up finally at police headquarters. By that time their shift would be over and the chance of seeing anyone on the way should be infinitesimal.

The car drove into Stockholm and turned left onto Norra Stationsgatan.

Kristiansson tucked the 10 kronor into his pocket and yawned. Then he peered out into the pouring rain and said, 'Over there, running this way's a bastard.'

Kristiansson and Kvant were from Skane, in the far South, and their sense of word order left much to be desired.

'He has a dog, too,' Kristiansson said. 'And he's waving at us.'

'It's not my table,' Kvant said.

The man with the dog, an absurdly small dog which he practically dragged after him through the puddles, rushed out into the road and planted himself right in front of the car.

'God damn!' Kvant swore, jamming on the brakes.

He wound the side window down and roared, 'What do you mean by running out into the road like that?'

'There's ... there's a bus over there,' the man gasped out, pointing along the street.

'So what?' Kvant said rudely. 'And how can you treat the dog like that? A poor dumb animal?'

'There's ... there's been an accident.'

'All right, we'll look into it,' Kvant said impatiently. 'Move aside.'

He drove on.

'And don't do that again!' he shouted over his shoulder.

Kristiansson stared through the rain.

'Yes,' he said resignedly. 'A bus has driven off the road. One of those doubledeckers.'

'And the lights are on,' Kvant said. 'And the door in front is open. Hop out and take a look, Kalle.'

He pulled up at an angle behind the bus. Kristiansson opened the door, straightened his shoulder belt automatically and said to himself, 'A-ha, and what's all this?'

Like Kvant, he was dressed in boots and leather jacket with shiny buttons and carried a truncheon and pistol at his belt.

Kvant remained sitting in the car, watching Kristiansson, who moved leisurely towards the open front door of the bus.

Kvant saw him grasp the rail and lazily heave himself up on to the step to peer into the bus. Then he gave a start and crouched down quickly, while his right hand flew to the pistol holster.

Kvant reacted swiftly. It took him only a second to switch on the red lamps, the searchlight and the orange flashing light of the patrol car.

Kristiansson was still crouching down beside the bus when Kvant flung open the car door and rushed out into the downpour. All the same, Kvant had drawn and cocked his 7.65 mm Walther and had even cast a glance at his watch.

It showed exactly thirteen minutes past eleven.

₄

The first senior policeman to arrive at Norra Stationsgatan was Gunvald Larsson.

He had been sitting at his desk at police headquarters at Kungsholmen, thumbing through a dull and wordy report, very listlessly and for about the umpteenth time, while he wondered why on earth people didn't go home.

In the category of 'people' he included the police commissioner, a deputy commissioner and several different superintendents and inspectors who, on account of the happily concluded riots, were trotting about the staircases and corridors. As soon as .these persons thought fit to call it a day and take themselves off, he would do so himself, as fast as possible.

The phone rang. He grunted and picked up the receiver. 'Hello. Larsson.'

'Radio Central here. A Solna radio patrol has found a whole bus full of dead bodies on Norra Stationsgatan.'

Gunvald Larsson glanced at the electric wall clock, which showed eighteen minutes past eleven, and said, 'How can a Solna radio patrol find a bus full of dead bodies in Stockholm?'

Gunvald Larsson was a detective inspector in the Stockholm homicide squad. He had a rigid disposition and was not one of the most popular members of the force.

But he never wasted any time and so he was the first one there.

He braked the car, turned up his coat collar and stepped out into the rain. He saw a red doubledecker bus standing right across the pavement; the front part had broken through a high wire fence. He also saw a black Plymouth with white mudguard, and the word POLICE in white block letters across the doors. It had its emergency lights on and in the cone of the searchlight stood two uniformed patrolmen with pistols in their hands. Both looked unnaturally pale. One of them had vomited down the front of his leather jacket and was wiping himself in embarrassment with a sodden handkerchief.

'What's the trouble?' Gunvald Larsson asked.

'There ... there are a lot of corpses in there,' said one of the policemen. .

'Yes,' said the other. 'Yes, that's right. There are. And a lot of cartridges.'

'And a man who shows signs of life.' 'And a policeman.'

'A policeman?' Gunvald Larsson asked. 'Yes. A CID man.'

‘We recognize him. He works at Västberga. On the homicide squad.'

'But we don't know his name. He has a blue raincoat. And he's dead.'

The two radio police both talked at once, uncertainly and quietly.

They were anything but small, but beside Gunvald Larsson they did not look very impressive.

Gunvald Larsson was 6 feet 5 inches tall and weighed nearly sixteen stone. His shoulders were as broad as those of a professional heavyweight boxer and he had huge, hairy hands. His fair hair, brushed back, was already dripping wet

The sound of many wailing sirens cut through the splashing of the rain. They seemed to be coming from all directions. Gunvald Larsson pricked up his ears and said, 'Is this Solna?'

'Right on the city limits,' Kvant replied slyly.

Gunvald Larsson cast an expressionless blue glance from Kristiansson to Kvant Then he strode over to the bus.

'It looks like ... like a shambles in there,' Kristiansson said.

Gunvald Larsson didn't touch the bus. He stuck his head in through the open door and looked around.

'Yes,' he said calmly. 'So it does.'

₅

Martin Beck stopped in the doorway of his flat in Bagarmossen. He took off his raincoat and shook the water off it on the landing before hanging it up and closing the door.

It was dark in the hall but he didn't bother to switch on the light. He saw a ray of light under the door of his daughter's room and he heard the radio or record player going inside. He knocked and went in.

The girl's name was Ingrid and she was sixteen. She had matured somewhat of late, and Martin Beck got on with her much better than before. She was calm, matter-of-fact and fairly intelligent, and he liked talking to her. She was in the sixth year of the comprehensive school and had no difficulty with her schoolwork, without on that account being what in his day had been called a swot

She was lying on her back in bed, reading. The record player on the bedside table was going. Not pop music but something classical, Beethoven, he guessed.

'Hello,' he said. 'Not asleep yet?'

He stopped, almost paralysed by the utter futility of his words. For a moment he thought of all the trivialities that had been spoken between these walls during the last ten years.

Ingrid put down her book and shut off the record player. 'Hi, Dad. What did you say?He shook his head.

'Lord, how wet your legs are,' the girl said. 'Is it raining so hard?'

'Cats and dogs. Are Mum and Rolf asleep?' 'I think so. Mum bundled Rolf off to bed right after dinner. . She said he had a cold.'

Martin Beck sat down on the bed. 'Didn't he have?'

‘Well, I thought he looked well enough. But he went to bed without any fuss. Probably in order to get off school tomorrow.'

'You seem to be hard at work, anyway. What are you studying?'

'French. We've a test tomorrow. Like to quiz me?'

'Wouldn't be much use. French isn't my strong point Go to sleep now instead.'

He stood up and the girl snuggled down obediently under the quilt He tucked her in and before he shut the door behind him he heard her whisper, 'Keep your fingers crossed tomorrow.'

'Good night'

He went into the kitchen in the dark and stood for a while by the window. The rain seemed to be less heavy now, but it may have been because the kitchen window was sheltered from the wind. Martin Beck wondered what had happened during the demonstration against the American embassy and whether the papers tomorrow would describe the police's behaviour as clumsy and inept or as brutal and provocative. In any case the opinions would be critical. Since he was loyal to the force and had been so for as long as he could remember, Martin Beck admitted only to himself that the criticism was often justified, even if it was a bit one-sided. He thought of what Ingrid had said one evening a few weeks ago. Many of her schoolmates were politically active, taking part in meetings and demonstrations, and most of them strongly disliked the police. As a child, she had said, she could boast and be proud of the fact that her father was a policeman, but now she preferred to keep quiet about it Not that she was ashamed, but she was often drawn into discussions in which she was expected to stand up for the entire police force. Silly, of course, but there it was.

Martin Beck went into the living room, listened at the door of his wife's bedroom and heard her light snoring. Cautiously he let down the sofa bed, switched on the wall lamp and drew the curtains. He had bought the sofa recently and moved out of the common bedroom, on the pretext that he didn't want to disturb his wife when he came home late at night She had protested, pointing out that sometimes he worked all night and therefore must sleep in the daytime, and she didn't want him lying there making a mess of the living room. He had promised on these occasions to lie and make a mess in the bedroom; she wasn't in there much in the daytime anyway. Now he had been sleeping in the living room for the past month and liked it

His wife's name was Inga.

Relations between them had worsened with the years, and it was a relief not to have to share a bed with her. This feeling sometimes gave him a bad conscience, but after seventeen years of marriage there didn't seem to be much he could do about it, and he had long since given up worrying over whose fault it might be.

Martin Beck stifled a coughing attack, took off his wet trousers and hung them over a chair near the radiator. As he sat on the sofa pulling off his socks it crossed his mind that Kollberg's nocturnal walks in the rain might be due to the fact that his marriage, too, was slipping into boredom and routine.

Already? Kollberg had only been married for eighteen months.

Before the first sock was off he had dismissed the thought Lennart and Gun were happy together, not a doubt of that Besides, what business was it of his?

He got up and walked naked across the room to the bookshelf. He looked over the books for a long time before choosing one. It was written by the old English diplomat Sir Eugene Millington-Drake and was about the Graf Spee and the Battle of La Plata. He had bought it secondhand about a year ago but hadn't yet taken the time to read it. He crawled down into bed, coughed guiltily, opened the book and found he had no cigarettes. One of the advantages of the sofa bed was that he could now smoke in bed without complications.

He got up again, took a damp and flattened pack of Floridas out of his raincoat pocket, laid out the cigarettes to dry on the bedside table and lit the one that seemed most likely to burn. He had the cigarette between his teeth and one leg in bed when the telephone rang.

The telephone was out in the hall. Six months ago he had ordered an extra extension to be installed in the living room, but knowing the normal working speed of the Telephone Service, he imagined he'd be lucky if he had to wait only another six months before the extension was installed.

He strode quickly across the floor and lifted the receiver before the second ring had finished.

'Beck.'

'Superintendent Beck?'

He didn't recognize the voice at the other end. 'Yes, speaking.'

'This is Radio Central. Several passengers have been found shot dead in a bus on route 47 near the end of the line on Norra Stationsgatan. You're asked to go there at once.'

Martin Beck's first thought was that he was a victim of a practical joke or that some antagonist was trying to trick him to go out into the rain just to give him trouble.

'Who gave you the message?' he asked.

'Hansson from the Fifth. Superintendent Hammar has already been notified.'

'How many dead?'

'They're not sure yet Six at least'

'Anyone arrested?' 'Not as far as I know.'

Martin Beck thought I'll pick up Kollberg on the way. Hope there's a taxi. And said, 'OK, I'll come at once.' 'Oh, Superintendent...' 'Yes?'

'One of the dead ... he seems to be one of your men.'

Martin Beck gripped the receiver hard.

‘Who?'

'I don't know. They didn't say a name.'

Martin Beck flung down the receiver and leaned his head against the wall. Lennart! It must be him. What the hell was he doing out in the rain? What the hell was he doing on a 47 bus? No, not Kollberg, it must be a mistake.

He picked up the phone and dialled Kollberg's number. He heard a ring at the other end. Two. Three. Four. Five.

'Kollberg.'

It was Gun's sleepy voice. Martin Beck tried to sound calm and natural.

'Hello. Is Lennart there?'

He thought he heard the bed creak as she sat up, and it was an eternity before she answered.

'No, not in bed at any rate. I thought he was with you. Or rather that you were here.'

'He left when I did. To take a walk. Are you sure he's not at home?'

'He may be in the kitchen. Hang on and I'll have a look.' It was another eternity before she came back. 'No, Martin, he's not at home.' Now her voice was anxious. 'Wherever can he be?' she said. 'In this weather?' 'I expect he's just out getting a breath of air. I just got home, so he can't have been out long. Don't worry.' 'Shall I ask him to call you when he comes?'

She sounded reassured.

'No, it's not important Sleep well. So long.'

He put down the receiver. Suddenly he felt so cold that his teeth were chattering. He picked up the receiver again and stood with it in his hand, thinking that he must call someone and find out exactly what had happened. Then he decided that the best way was to get to the place himself as fast as he could. He dialled the number of the nearest taxi rank and got a reply immediately.

Martin Beck had been a policeman for twenty-three years. During that time several of his colleagues had been killed in the course of duty. It had hit him hard every time it happened, and somewhere at the back of his mind was also the realization that police work was getting more and more risky and that next time it might be his own turn. But when it came to Kollberg, his feelings were not merely those of a colleague. Over the years they had become more and more dependent on each other in their work. They were a good complement to one another and they had learned to understand each other's thoughts and feelings without wasting words. When Kollberg got married eighteen months ago and moved to Skärmarbrink they had also come closer together geographically and had taken to meeting in their spare time.

Quite recently Kollberg had said, in one of his rare moments of depression, 'If you weren't there, God only knows whether I'd stay on the force.'

Martin Beck thought of this as he pulled on his wet raincoat and ran down the stairs to the waiting taxi.

₆

Despite the rain and the late hour a cluster of people had collected outside the cordon towards Karlbergsvägen. They stared curiously at Martin Beck as he got out of the taxi. A young constable in a black raincape made a violent movement to check him, but another policeman grabbed his arm and saluted.

A small man in a light-coloured trench coat and cap placed himself in Martin Beck's way and said, 'My condolences, Superintendent. I just heard a rumour that one of your -'

Martin Beck gave the man a look that made him swallow the rest of the sentence.

He knew the man in the cap only too well and disliked him intensely. The man was a freelance journalist and called himself a crime reporter. His speciality was reporting murders and his accounts were full of sensational, repulsive and usually erroneous details. In fact only the very worst weeklies published them.

The man slunk off and Martin Beck swung his legs over the rope. He saw that a similar cordon had been made a little farther up towards Torsplan. The roped-off area was swarming with black-and-white cars and unidentifiable figures in shiny raincoats. The ground around the red doubledecker was loose and squelchy.

The bus was lit up inside and the headlights were on, but thecones of light did not reach far in the heavy rain. The ambulance from the State Forensic Laboratory stood at the rear of the bus with its radiator pointing to Karlsbergsvägen. The medico-legal expert's car was also on the scene. Behind the broken wire fence some men were busy setting up floodlights. All these details showed that something far out of the ordinary had happened.

Martin Beck glanced up at the dismal blocks of flats on the other side of the street Figures were silhouetted in several of the lit windows, and behind rain-streaked panes, like blurred white patches, he saw faces pressed against the glass. A bare-legged woman in boots and with a raincoat over her nightdress came out of an entrance obliquely opposite the scene of the accident. She got halfway across the street before being stopped by a policeman, who took her by the arm and led her back to the doorway. The constable strode along and she half ran beside him while the wet white nightdress twisted itself around her legs.

Martin Beck could not see the doors of the bus but he saw people moving about inside, and presumed that men from the forensic laboratory were already at work. He couldn't see any of his colleagues from the homicide squad, either, but guessed that they were somewhere on the other side of the vehicle.

Involuntarily he slowed his steps. He thought of what he was soon to see and clenched his hands in his coat pockets as he gave the forensic technicians' grey vehicle a wide berth.

In the glow from the doubledecker's open middle doors stood Hammar, who had been his boss for many years and was now a chief superintendent. He was talking to someone who was evidently inside the bus. He broke off and turned to Martin Beck.

'There you are. I was beginning to think they'd forgotten to call you.'

Martin Beck made no answer but went over to the doors and looked in.

He felt his stomach muscles knotting. It was worse than he had expected.

The cold bright light made every detail stand out with the sharpness of an etching. The whole bus seemed to be full of twisted, lifeless bodies covered with blood.

He would have liked to have turned and walked away and not had to look, but his face did not betray his feelings. Instead, he forced himself to make a systematic mental note of all the details. The men from the laboratory were working silently and methodically. One of them looked at Martin Beck and slowly shook his head.

Martin Beck regarded the bodies one by one. He didn't recognize any of them. At least not in their present state.

'The one up there,' he said suddenly, 'has he ...'

He turned to Hammar and broke off short.

Behind Hammar, Kollberg appeared out of the dark, bareheaded and with his hair stuck to his forehead.

Martin Beck stared at him.

'Hi,' said Kollberg. 'I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you. I was about to tell them to call you again.'

He stopped in front of Martin Beck and gave him a searching look.

Then he gave a swift, nauseated glance at the interior of the bus and went on, ‘You need a cup of coffee. I'll get one for you.' Martin Beck shook his head. 'Yes,' Kollberg said.

He squished off Martin Beck stared after him, then went over to the front doors and looked in. Hammar followed with heavy steps.

The bus driver lay slumped over the wheel. He had evidently been shot through the head. Martin Beck regarded what had been the man's face and was vaguely surprised that he didn't feel any nausea. He turned to Hammar, who was staring expressionlessly out into the rain.

'What on earth was he doing here?' Hammar said tonelessly. 'On this bus?'

And at that instant Martin Beck knew to whom the man on the phone had been referring.

Nearest the window behind the stairs leading to the top deck sat Åke Stenström, detective sub-inspector on the homicide squad and one of Martin Beck's youngest colleagues.

'Sat' was perhaps not the right word. Stenström's dark-blue poplin raincoat was soaked with blood and he sprawled in his seat, his right shoulder against the back of a young woman who was sitting next to him, bent double.

He was dead. Like the young woman and the six other people in the bus.

In his right hand he held his service pistol.

₇

The rain kept on all night and although the sun, according to the almanac, rose at twenty minutes to eight the time was nearer nine before it was strong enough to penetrate the clouds and disseminate an uncertain, hazy light

Across the pavement on Norra Stationsgatan stood the red doubledecker bus just as it had stopped ten hours previously.

But that was the only thing that was the same. By now about fifty men were inside the extensive cordons, and outside them the crowd of curious onlookers got bigger and bigger. Many had been standing there ever since midnight, and all they had seen was police and ambulance men and wailing emergency vehicles of every conceivable kind. It had been a night of sirens, with a constant stream of cars roaring along the wet streets, apparently going nowhere and for no reason.

Nobody knew anything for sure, but there were two words that were whispered from person to person and soon spread in concentric circles through the crowd and the surrounding houses and city, finally taking more definite shape and being flung out across the country as a whole. By now the words had reached for beyond the frontiers.

Mass murder.

Mass murder in Stockholm.

Mass murder in a bus in Stockholm.

Everybody thought they knew this much at least

Very little more was known at police headquarters on Kungsholmsgatan. It wasn't even known for certain who was in charge of the investigation. The confusion was complete. Telephones rang incessantly, people came and went, floors were dirtied and the men who dirtied them were irritable and clammy with sweat and rain.

'Who's working on the list of names?' Martin Beck asked.

'Rönn, I should think,' said Kollberg without turning round. He was busy taping a plan to the wall. The sketch was over three yards long and more than half a yard wide and was awkward to handle.

'Can't someone give me a hand?' he said. 'Sure,' said Melander calmly, putting down his pipe and standing up.

Fredrik Melander was a tall, lean man of grave appearance and methodical disposition. He was forty-eight years old and a detective inspector on the homicide squad. Kollberg had worked together with him for many years. He had forgotten how many. Melander, on the other hand, had not He was known never to forget anything.

Two telephones rang.

'Hello. This is Superintendent Beck. Who? No, he's not here. Shall I ask him to call? Oh, I see.'

He put the phone down and reached for the other one. An almost white-haired man of about fifty opened the door cautiously and stopped doubtfully on the threshold.

'Well, Ek, what do you want?' Martin Beck asked as he lifted the receiver.

'About the bus ...' the white-haired man said.

'When will I be home? I haven't the vaguest idea,' said Martin Beck into the telephone.

'Hell,' Kollberg exclaimed as the strip of tape got tangled up between his fat fingers.

'Take it easy’ Melander said.

Martin Beck turned back to the man in the doorway.

'Well, what about the bus?'

Ek shut the door behind him and studied his notes.

'It's built by the Leyland factories in England,' he said. 'It's an Atlantean model, but here it's called Type H35. It holds seventy-five seated passengers. The odd thing is -'

The door was flung open. Gunvald Larsson stared incredulously into his untidy office. His light raincoat was sopping wet, like his trousers and his fair hair. His shoes were muddy.

'What a bloody mess in here,' he grumbled.

'What was the odd thing about the bus?' Melander asked.

'Well, that particular type isn't used on route 47.'

'Isn't it?'

'Not as a rule, I mean. They usually put German buses on, made by Bussing. They're also doubledeckers. This was just an exception.'

'A brilliant clue,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'The madman who did this only murders people in English buses. Is that what you mean?'

Ek looked at him resignedly. Gunvald Larsson shook himself and said, 'By the way, what's the horde of apes doing down in the vestibule? Who are they?'

'Journalists,' Ek said. 'Someone ought to talk to them.'

'Not me,' Kollberg said promptly.

'Isn't Hammar or the Commissioner or the Attorney General or some other higher-up going to issue a communique?' Gunvald Larsson said.

'It probably hasn't been worded yet,' said Martin Beck. 'Ek is right. Someone ought to talk to them.' 'Not me,' Kollberg repeated.

Then he wheeled round, almost triumphantly, as if he had had a brainwave.

'Gunvald,' he said. 'You were the one who got there first You can hold the press conference.'

Gunvald Larsson stared into the room and pushed a wet tuft of hair off his forehead with the back of his big hairy right hand. Martin Beck said nothing, not even bothering to look towards the door.

'OK,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'Get them herded in somewhere. I'll talk to them. There's just one thing I must know first'

'What?'Martin Beck asked.

'Has anyone told Stenström's mother?'

Dead silence fell, as though the words had robbed everyone in the room of the power of speech, including Gunvald Larsson himself. The man on the threshold looked from one to the other.

At last Melander turned his head and said, 'Yes. She's been told.'

'Good,' Gunvald Larsson said, and banged the door.

'Good,' said Martin Beck to himself, drumming the top of the desk with his fingertips.

'Was that wise?' Kollberg asked.

'What?'

'Letting Gunvald ... Don't you think we'll get enough abuse in the press as it is?'

Martin Beck looked at him but said nothing. Kollberg shrugged. 'Oh well,' he said. 'It doesn't matter.'

Melander went back to the desk, picked up his pipe and lit it.

'No,' he said. 'It couldn't matter less.'

He and Kollberg had got the sketch up now. An enlarged drawing of the lower deck of the bus. Some figures were sketched in. They were numbered from one to nine.

'Where's Rönn with that list?' Martin Beck mumbled.

'Another thing about the bus -' Ek said obstinately.

And the telephones rang.

₈

The office where the first improvised confrontation with the press took place was decidedly ill-suited to the purpose. It contained nothing but a table, a few cupboards and four chairs, and when Gunvald Larsson entered the room, it was already stuffy with cigarette smoke and the smell of wet overcoats.

He stopped just inside the door, looked round at the assembled journalists and photographers and said tonelessly, 'Well, what do you want to know?'

They all began to talk at once. Gunvald Larsson held up his hand and said, 'One at a time, please. You, there, can start Then we'll go from left to right'

Thereafter the press conference proceeded as follows:

QUESTION: When was the bus found?

ANSWER: About ten minutes past eleven last night

Q: By whom?

A: A man in the street who then stopped a radio patrol car.

Q: How many were in the bus?

A: Eight

Q: Were they all dead?

A: Yes.

Q: How had they died?

A: It's too soon yet to say.

Q: Was their death caused by external violence?

A: Probably.

Q: What do you mean by probably?

A: Exactly what I say.

Q: Were there any signs of shooting?

A: Yes.

Q: SO all these people had been shot dead?

A: Probably.

Q: SO it's really a question of mass murder?

A: Yes.

Q: Have you found the murder weapon? A: NO.

Q: Have the police detained anyone yet? A: NO.

Q: Are there any traces or clues that point to one particular

person? A: NO.

Q: Were the murders committed by one and the same person?

A: Don't know.

Q: Is there anything to indicate that more than one person killed these eight people?

A: NO.

Q: HOW could one single person kill eight people in a bus before anyone had time to resist?

A: Don't know.

Q: Were the shots fired by someone inside the bus or did they come from outside?

A: They did not come from outside.

Q: HOW do you know?

A: The windowpanes that were damaged had been fired at from inside.

Q: What kind of weapon had the murderer used?

A: Don't know.

Q: It must surely have been a machine gun or a submachine gun?

A: NO comment.

Q: Was the bus standing still when the murders were committed or was it moving? A: Don't know.

Q: Doesn't the position in which the bus was found indicate that the shooting took place while it was in movement and that it then mounted the pavement?

A: Yes.

Q: Did the police dogs get a scent?

A: It was raining.

Q: It was a doubledecker bus, wasn't it?

A: Yes.

Q: Where were the bodies found? On the upper or lower deck?

A: On the lower one.

Q: All eight?

A: Yes.

Q: Have the victims been identified?

A: No.

Q: Has any of them been identified?

A: Yes.

Q: Who? The driver?

A: NO. A policeman.

Q: A policeman? Can we have his name?

A: Yes. Detective Sub-inspector Åke Stenström.

Q: Stenström? From the homicide squad? A: Yes.

A couple of the reporters tried to push towards the door, but Gunvald Larsson again put up his hand.

'No running back and forth, if you don't mind,' he said. 'Any more questions?'

Q: Was Inspector Strenström one of the passengers in the bus?

A: He wasn't driving at any rate.

Q: DO you consider he was there just by chance?

A: Don't know.

Q: The question was put to you personally. Do you consider it a mere chance that one of the victims is a man from the CID?

A: I have not come here to answer personal questions.

Q: Was Inspector Stenström working on any special investigation when this happened?

A: Don't know.

Q: Was he on duty last night?

A: NO.

Q: He was off duty?

A: Yes.

Q: Then he must have been there by chance. Can you name any of the other victims? A: NO.

Q: This is the first time a real mass murder has occurred in Sweden. On the other hand there have been several similar crimes abroad in recent years. Do you think that this maniacal act was inspired by what happened in America, for instance? '

A: Don't know.

Q: IS it the opinion of the police that the murderer is a madman who wants to draw sensational attention to himself?

A: That is one theory.

Q: Yes, but it doesn't answer my question. Are the police working on the lines of that theory?

A: All dues and suggestions are being followed.

Q: HOW many of the victims are women?

A: TWO.

Q: SO six of the victims are men?

A: Yes.

Q: Including the bus driver and Inspector Stenström?

A: Yes.

Q: Just a minute, now. We've been told that one of the people in the bus survived and was taken away in an ambulance that arrived on the scene before the police had had time to cordon off the area.

A: Oh?

Q: Is this true?

A: Next question.

Q: Apparently you were one of the first policemen to arrive on the scene?

A: Yes.

Q: What time did you get there?

A: At eleven twenty-five.

Q: What did it look like inside the bus just then?

A: What do you think?

Q: Can you say it was the most ghastly sight you've ever seen in your life?

Gunvald Larsson stared vacantly at the questioner, who was quite a young man with round, steel-rimmed glasses and a somewhat unkempt red beard. At last he said, 'No. I can't'

The reply caused some bewilderment. One of the woman journalists frowned and said lamely and incredulously, 'What do you mean by that?'

'Exactly what I say.'

Before joining the police force Gunvald Larsson had been a regular seaman in the navy. In August 1943, he had been one of those to go through the submarine Ulven, which had struck a mine and had been salvaged after having lain on the seabed for three months. Several of the thirty-three killed had been on the same courses with him. After the war, one of his duties had been to help with the extradition of the Baltic collaborators from the camp at Ränneslätt. He had also seen the arrival of thousands of victims who had been repatriated from the German concentration camps. Most of these had been women and many of them had not survived.

However, he saw no reason to explain himself to this youthful assembly but said laconically, 'Any more questions?'

'Have the police been in touch with any witnesses of the actual event?'

'No.'

'In other words, a mass murder has been committed in the middle of Stockholm. Eight people have been killed, and that's all the police have to say?'

'Yes.'

With that, the press conference was concluded.

₉

It was some time before anyone noticed that Rönn had come in with the list. Martin Beck, Kollberg, Melander and Gunvald Larsson stood leaning over one of the tables, which was littered with photographs from the scene of the crime, when Rönn suddenly stood next to them and said, 'It's ready now, the list.'

He was born and raised in Arjeplog and although he had lived in Stockholm for more than twenty years he had still kept his north-Swedish dialect

He laid the list on a corner of the table, drew up a chair and sat down.

'Don't go around frightening people,' Kollberg said.

It had been silent in the room for so long that he had started at the sound of Rönn's voice.

'Well, let's see,' Gunvald Larsson said impatiently, reaching for the list

He looked at it for a while. Then he handed it back to Rönn.

'That's about the most cramped writing I've ever seen. Can you really read that yourself? Haven't you typed out any copies?'

'Yes,' Rönn replied. 'I have. You'll get them in a minute.' 'OK,' said Kollberg. 'Let's hear.'

Rönn put on his glasses and cleared his throat He glanced through his notes.

'Of the eight dead, four lived in the vicinity of the terminus,' he began. 'The survivor also lived there.'

'Take them in order if you can,' Martin Beck said.

‘Well, first of all there's the driver. He was hit by two shots in the back of the neck and one in the back of the head and must have been killed outright'

Martin Beck had no need to look at the photograph that Rönn extracted from the pile on the table. He remembered all too well how the man in the driver's seat had looked.

'The driver's name was Gustav Bengtsson. He was forty-eight, married, two children, lived at Inedalsgatan 5. His family has been notified. It was his last run for the day and when he had let off the passengers at the last stop he would have driven the bus to the Hornsberg depot at Lindhagensgatan. The money in his fare purse was untouched and in his wallet he had 120 kronor.'

He glanced at the others over his glasses.

'There's no more about him for the moment'

'Go on,' Melander said.

'I'll take them in the same order as on the sketch. The next is Åke Stenström. Five shots in the back. One in the right shoulder from the side, might have been a ricochet He was twenty-nine and lived -'

Gunvald Larsson interrupted him.

‘You can skip that We know where he lived.'

'I didn't,' Rönn said.

'Go on,' said Melander.

Rönn cleared his throat

'He lived on Tjärhovsgatan together with his fiancee ...' Gunvald Larsson interrupted him again. "They were not engaged. I asked him not long ago.' Martin Beck cast an irritated glance at Gunvald Larsson and nodded to Rönn to continue.

'Together with Åsa Torell, twenty-four. She works at a travel agency.'

He gave Gunvald Larsson a quick look and said, 'In sin. I don't know whether she's been told.'

Melander took his pipe out of his mouth and said, 'She has been told.'

None of the five men around the table looked at the pictures of Stenström's mutilated body. They had already seen them and preferred not to see them again.

'In his right hand he held his service pistol. It was cocked but he had not fired a shot In his pockets he had a wallet containing 37 kronor, identification card, a snapshot of Åsa Torell, a letter from his mother and some receipts. Also, driving licence, notebook, pens and bunch of keys. It will all be sent up to us when the boys at the lab are through with it Can I go on?'

‘Yes, please,' said Kollberg.

'The girl in the seat next to Stenström was called Britt Danielsson. She was twenty-eight, unmarried and worked at Sabbatsberg Hospital. She was a registered nurse.'

'I wonder whether they were together,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'Perhaps he was having a bit of fun on the side.'

Rönn looked at him disapprovingly.

‘We'd better find out' Kollberg said.

'She shared a room at Karlbergsvägen 87 with another nurse from Sabbatsberg. According to her roommate, Monika Granholm by name, Britt Danielsson was coming straight from the hospital. She was hit by one shot. In the temple. She was the only one-in the bus to be struck by only one bullet. She had thirty-eight different things in her handbag. Shall I enumerate them?'

'Christ no,' said Gunvald Larsson.

'Number four on the list and on the sketch is Alfons Schwerin, the survivor. He was lying on his back on the floor between the two longitudinal seats at the rear. You already know his injuries. He was hit in the abdomen and one bullet lodged in the region of the heart. He lives alone at Norra Stationsgatan 117. He is forty-three and employed by the highway department of the city council. How is he, by the way?'

'Still in a coma,' Martin Beck said. 'The doctors say there's just a chance he'll regain consciousness. But if he does they don't know whether he'll be able to talk or even to remember anything.'

'Can't you talk with a bullet in your belly?' Gunvald Larsson asked.

'Shock,' said Martin Beck.

He pushed back his chair and stretched himself. Then he lit a cigarette and stood in front of the sketch.

‘What about this one in the corner?' he said. 'Number eight?'

He pointed to the seat at the very back of the bus in the right-hand corner. Rönn consulted his notes.

'He got eight bullets in him. In the chest and abdomen. He was an Arab and his name was Mohammed Boussie, Algerian subject, thirty-six, no relations in Sweden. He lived at a kind of boarding house on Norra Stationsgatan. Was obviously on his way home from work at the Zig-Zag, that grill restaurant on Vasagatan. There's nothing more to say about him at the moment'

'Arabia,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'Isn't that where there's usually an awful lot of shooting?'

'Your political knowledge is devastating,' Kollberg said. 'You should apply for a transfer to Sepo.'

'Its correct name is the Security Department of the National Police Board,' said Gunvald Larsson.

Rönn got up, fished one or two pictures out of the pile and lined them up on the table.

'This guy we haven't been able to identify,' he said. 'Number six. He was sitting on the outside seat immediately behind the middle doors and was hit by six shots. In his pockets he had the striking surface of a matchbox, a packet of Bill cigarettes, a bus ticket and 1,823 kroner in cash. That was all.'

'A lot of money,' Melander said thoughtfully.

They leaned over the table and studied the pictures of the unknown man. He had slithered down in the seat and lay sprawled against the back with arms hanging and his left leg stuck out in the aisle. The front of his coat was soaked in blood. He had no face.

'Hell, it would have to be him’ Gunvald Larsson said. 'His own mother wouldn't recognize him.'

Martin Beck had resumed his study of the sketch on the wall. Holding his left hand in front of his face he said, 'I'm not so sure there weren't two of them after all.'

The others looked at him.

'Two what?'Gunvald Larsson asked.

"Two gunmen. Look at all the passengers, they never moved from their seats. Except the one who's still alive and he might have tumbled off afterwards.'

'Two madmen?' Gunvald Larsson said sceptically. 'At the same time?'

Kollberg went and stood beside Martin Beck.

'You mean that someone should have had time to react if there had been only one? Hm, maybe. But he simply mowed them down.

It happened rather fast, and when you think they were all caught napping ...'

'Shall we go on with the list? We'll find that out as soon as we know whether there was one weapon or two.'

'Sure,' said Martin Beck. 'Go on, Einar.'

'Number seven is a foreman called Johan Källström. He was sitting beside the man who has not yet been identified. He was fifty-two, married and lived at Karlbergsvägen 89. According to his wife he was coming from the workshop on Sibyllegatan, where he'd been working overtime. Nothing startling about him.'

'Nothing except that he got a bellyful of lead on the way home from work,' said Gunvald Larsson.

'By the window immediately in front of the middle doors we have Gösta Assarsson, number eight. Forty-two. Half his head was shot away. He lived at Tegnergatan 40, where he also had his office and his business, an export and import firm that he ran together with his brother. His wife didn't known why he was on the bus. According to her, he should have been at a club meeting on Narvavägen.'

'A-ha,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'Out carousing.'

'Yes, there are signs that point to that In his briefcase he had a bottle of whisky. Johnnie Walker, Black Label.'

'A-ha,' said Kollberg, who was an epicure.

'In addition he was well supplied with condoms,' said Rönn. 'He had seven in an inside pocket. Plus a chequebook and over 800 kronor in cash.'

'Why seven?' Gunvald Larsson asked.

The door opened and Ek stuck his head in.

'Hammar says you're all to be in his office in fifteen minutes. Briefing. Quarter to eleven, that's to say.'

He disappeared.

'OK, let's go on,' Martin Beck said. ‘Where were we?'

"The guy with the seven johnnies,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'Is there anything more to be said about him?' Martin Beck asked.

Rönn glanced at the sheet of paper covered with his scribbling. 'I don't think so.'

'Go on, then,' said Martin Beck, sitting down at Gunvald Larsson's desk.

'Two seats in front of Assarsson sat number nine, Mrs Hildur Johansson, sixty-eight, widow, living at Norra Stationsgatan 119. Shot in the shoulder and through the neck. She has a married daughter on Västmannagatan and was on her way home from there after baby-sitting.'

Rönn folded the piece of paper and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

'That's the lot,' he said.

Gunvald Larsson sighed and arranged the pictures in nine neat stacks.

Melander put his pipe down, mumbled something and went out to the toilet.

Kollberg tilted his chair and said, 'And what do we learn from all this? That on quite an ordinary evening on quite an ordinary bus, nine quite ordinary people get mowed down with a submachine gun for no apparent reason. Apart from this guy who hasn't been identified, I can't see anything odd about any of these people.'

'Yes, one,' Martin Beck said. 'Stenström. What was he doing on that bus?'

Nobody answered.

An hour later Hammar put exactly the same question to Martin Beck.

Hammar had summoned the special investigation group that from now on was to work entirely on the bus murders. The group consisted of seventeen experienced CID men, with Hammar in charge. Martin Beck and Kollberg also led the investigation.

All available facts had been studied, the situation had been analysed and assignments allotted. When the briefing was over and all except Martin Beck and Kollberg had left the room, Hammar said, 'What was Stenström doing on that bus?'

'Don't know,' Martin Beck replied.

'And nobody seems to know what he was working on of late. Do either of you know?'

Kollberg threw up his hands and shrugged.

'Haven't the vaguest idea. Over and above daily routine, that is. Presumably nothing.'

'We haven't had so much recently,' Martin Beck said. 'So he has had quite a bit of time off. He had put in an enormous amount of overtime before, so it was only fair.'

Hammar drummed his fingers against the edge of the desk and wrinkled his brow in thought. Then he said, 'Who was it that informed his fiancee?' 'Melander,' said Kollberg.

'I think someone ought to have a talk with her as soon as possible,' Hammar said. 'She must at all events know what he was up to.'

He paused, then added, 'Unless he ...' He fell silent

'What?'Martin Beck asked.

'Unless he was going with that nurse on the bus, you mean,' Kollberg said.

Hammar said nothing.

'Or was out on another similar errand,' Kollberg said. Hammar nodded. 'Find out,' he said.

₁₀

Outside police headquarters on Kungsholmsgatan stood two people who definitely wished they had been somewhere else. They were dressed in police caps and leather jackets with gilded buttons, they had shoulder belts diagonally across their chests and carried pistols and truncheons at their waists. Their names were Kristiansson and Kvant.

A well-dressed, elderly woman came up to them and asked, 'Excuse me, but how do I get to Hjärnegatan?'

'I don't know, madam,' Kvant said. 'Ask a policeman. There's one standing over there.'

The woman gaped at him.

'We're strangers here ourselves,' Kristiansson put in quickly, by way of explanation.

The woman was still staring after them as they mounted the steps.

'What do you think they want us for?' Kristiansson asked anxiously.

'To give evidence, of course,' Kvant replied. 'We made the discovery, didn't we?'

'Yes,' Kristiansson said. 'We did, but -'

'No "buts", now, Kalle. Into the lift with you.'

On the third floor they met Kollberg. He nodded to them, gloomily and absently. Then he opened a door and said, 'Gunvald, those two guys from Solna are here now.'

'Tell them to wait,' said a voice from inside the office.

'Wait,' Kollberg said, and disappeared.

When they had waited for twenty minutes Kvant shook himself and said, 'What the hell's the idea. We're supposed to be off duty, and I've promised Siv to mind the kids while she goes to the doctor.'

'So you said,' Kristiansson said dejectedly.

'She says she feels something funny in her cu—'

'Yeah, you said that too,' Kristiansson murmured.

'Now she'll probably be in a terrible temper again,' Kvant said. 'I can't make the woman out these days. And she's starting to look such a fright Has Kerstin also got broad in the beam like that?'

Kristiansson didn't answer.

Kerstin was his wife and he disliked discussing her.

Kvant didn't seem to care.

Five minutes later Gunvald Larsson opened the door and said curtly, 'Come in.'

They went in and sat down. Gunvald Larsson eyed them critically.

'Sit down, by all means.' 'We have already,' Kristiansson said fatuously. Kvant silenced him with an impatient gesture. He began to scent trouble.

Gunvald Larsson stood silent for a moment Then he placed himself behind the desk, sighed heavily and said, 'How long have you both been on the force?'

'Eight years,' said Kvant

Gunvald Larsson picked up a sheet of paper from the desk and studied it

'Can you read?' he asked.

'Oh yes,' said Kristiansson, before Kvant could stop him.

‘Read, then.'

Gunvald Larsson pushed the sheet across the desk. 'Do you understand what's written there? Or do I have to explain it?'

Kristiansson shook his head.

'I'll explain gladly,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'That is a preliminary report from the investigation at the scene of the crime. It shows that two individuals with size eleven shoes have left behind them about one hundred footprints all over that damn bus, both on the upper and lower deck. Who do you think these two individuals can be?'

No answer.

'To explain further, I can add that I spoke to an expert at the lab not long ago, and he said that the scene of the crime looked as if a herd of hippopotamuses had been trotting about there for hours. This expert considers it incredible that a herd of human beings, consisting of only two individuals, should be able to wipe out almost every trace so completely and in such a short time.'

Kvant began to lose his temper, and stared stonily at the man behind the desk.

'Now it so happens that hippopotamuses and other animals don't usually go about armed,' Gunvald Larsson went on in honeyed tones. 'Nevertheless, someone fired a shot inside the bus with a 7.65 mm Walther - to be exact, up through the front stairs. The bullet ricocheted against the roof and was found embedded in the padding of one of the seats on the upper deck. Who do you think can have fired that shot?'

'We did,' Kristiansson said. 'That's to say, I did.'

'Oh, really? And what were you firing at?'

Kristiansson scratched his neck unhappily.

'Nothing,' he said.

'It was a warning shot,' Kvant said.

'Intended for whom?'

'We thought the murderer might still be in the bus and was hiding on the top deck,' Kristiansson said. 'And was he?' 'No,' said Kvant

'How do you know? What did you do after that cannonade?'

'We went up and had a look,' Kristiansson said.

'There was nobody there,' said Kvant

Gunvald Larsson glared at them for at least half a minute. Then he slammed the flat of his hand on the desk and roared, 'So both of you went up! How the hell could you be so damn stupid?'

'We each went up a different way,' Kvant said defensively. 'I went up the back stairs and Kalle took the front stairs.'

'So that whoever was up there couldn't escape,' said Kristiansson, trying to make things better.

'But Jesus Christ there wasn't anyone up there! All you managed to do was to ruin every single footprint there was in the whole damn bus! To say nothing of outside! And why did you go tramping about among the bodies? Was it to make even more of a gory mess inside there?'

'To see if anyone was still alive,' Kristiansson said.

He turned pale and swallowed.

'Now don't start throwing up again, Kalle,' Kvant said reprovingly.

The door opened and Martin Beck came in. Kristiansson stood up at once, and after a moment Kvant followed his example.

Martin Beck nodded to them and looked inquiringly at Gunvald Larsson.

'Are you the one who is shouting? It doesn't help much, bawling out these boys.'

'Yes it does,' Gunvald Larsson retorted. 'It's constructive.' 'Constructive?'

'Exactly. These two idiots ...'

He broke off and reconsidered his vocabulary.

'These two colleagues are the only witnesses we have. Listen now, you two! What time did you arrive on the scene?'

'Thirteen minutes past eleven,' Kvant said. 'I took the time on my chronograph.'

'And I sat in exactly the same spot where I'm sitting now,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'I received the call at eighteen minutes past eleven. If we allow a wide margin and say that you fumbled with the radio for half a minute and that it took fifteen seconds for the Radio Central to contact me, that still leaves more than four minutes. What were you doing during that time?' ‘Well...' said Kvant.

'You ran about like poisoned rats, trampling in blood and brains and moving bodies and doing God knows what For four minutes.'

'I really can't see what's constructive -' Martin Beck began, but Gunvald Larsson cut him off.

‘Wait a minute. Apart from the fact that these nitwits spent four minutes ruining the scene of the crime, they did get there at thirteen minutes past eleven. And they didn't go of their own accord but were told by the man who first discovered the bus. Is that right?'

‘Yes,' said Kvant

'The old boy with the dog,' said Kristiansson.

'Exactly. They were notifed by a person whose name they didn't even bother to find out and whom we probably would never have identified if he hadn't been nice enough to come here today. When did you first catch sight of this man with the dog?'

‘Well...' said Kvant

'About two minutes before we got to the bus,' said Kristiansson, looking down at his boots.

'Exactly. Because according to his statement they wasted at least a minute sitting in the car and shouting at him rudely. About dogs and things. Am I right?'

‘Yes,' mumbled Kristiansson.

'When you received the information the time was therefore

- approximately ten or eleven minutes past How far from the bus was this man when he stopped you?'

'About three hundred yards,' said Kvant

'That's a fact, that's a fact,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'And since this man was seventy years old and also had a sick dachshund to drag along...'

'Sick?' said Kvant in surprise.

'Exactly,' Gunvald Larsson replied. 'The damn dog had a slipped disc and was almost lame in the hind legs.'

'I'm at last beginning to see what you mean,' said Martin Beck.

'Mm-m. I had the man do a trial run on the same stretch today. Dog and all. Made him do it three times, then the dog gave up.'

'But that's cruelty to animals,' Kvant said indignantly.

Martin Beck cast a surprised and interested glance at him.

'At any rate the pair of them couldn't cover the distance in under three minutes, however hard they tried. Which means that the man must have caught sight of the stationary bus at seven minutes past eleven at the latest And we know almost for sure that the massacre took place between three and four minutes earlier.'

'How do you know that?' Kristiansson and Kvant said in chorus.

'None of your business,' Gunvald Larsson retorted.

'Inspector Strenström's watch,' said Martin Beck. 'One of the bullets passed straight through his chest and landed up in his right wrist. It broke off the stem of his wrist watch, an Omega Speedmaster, which according to the expert made the watch stop at the same instant The hands showed three minutes and thirty-seven seconds past eleven.'

Gunvald Larsson glowered at him.

‘We knew Inspector Stenström, and he was meticulous about time,' Martin Beck said sadly. 'He was what watchmakers sometimes call a second hunter. That is, his watch always showed the exact time. Go on, Gunvald.'

'This man with the dog came walking along Norrbackagatan from the direction of Karlbergsvägen. He was in fact overtaken by the bus just where the street begins. It took him about five minutes to trudge down Norrbackagatan. The bus did the same stretch in about forty-five seconds. He met nobody on the way. When he got to the corner he saw the bus standing on the other side of the street'

'So what,' said Kvant

'Shut up,' said Gunvald Larsson.

Kvant made a violent movement and opened his mouth, but glanced at Martin Beck and shut it again.

'He did not see that the windows had been shattered, which, by the way, these two wonderboys didn't notice either when they eventually managed to crawl along. But he did see that the front door was open. He thought there had been an accident and hurried to get help. Calculating, quite correctly, that it would be quicker for him to reach the last bus stop than to go back up the hill along Norrbackagatan, he started off along Norra Stationsgatan in a south-westerly direction.'

'Why?' said Martin Beck.

'Because he thought there'd be another bus waiting at the end of the line. As it happened, there wasn't Instead, unfortunately, he met a police patrol car.'

Gunvald Larsson cast an annihilating china-blue glance at Kristiansson and Kvant

'A patrol car from Solna that came creeping out of its district like something that comes out when you lift up a rock. Well, how long had you been skulking with the engine idling and the front wheels on the city limits?'

'Three minutes,' said Kvant.

'Four or five, more like it,' said Kristiansson.

Kvant gave him a withering look.

'And did you see anyone coming that way?'

'No,' said Kristiansson. 'Not until that man with the dog.'

'Which proves that the murderer cannot have made off to the south-west along Norra Stationsgatan, nor south up Norrbackagatan. If we take it that he did not hop over into the freight depot, there's only one possibility left. Norra Stationsgatan in the opposite direction.'

'How do... we know that he didn't head into the station yard?' Kristiansson asked.

'Because that was the only spot where you two hadn't trampled down everything in sight You forgot to climb over the fence and mess around there, too.'

'OK, Gunvald, you've made your point, now,' Martin Beck said. 'Good. But as usual it took a hell of a time to get down to brass tacks'

This remark encouraged Kristiansson and Kvant to exchange a look of relief and secret understanding. But Gunvald Larsson cracked out, 'If you two had had any sense in your thick skulls you would have got into the car, caught the murderer and nabbed him.'

'Or have been butchered ourselves,' Kristiansson retorted misanthropically.

'When I grab that guy I'm damn well going to shove you two in front of me,' Gunvald Larsson said savagely.

Kvant stole a glance at the wall clock and said, 'Can we go now? My wife -'

'Yes,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'You can go to hell!' Avoiding Martin Beck's reproachful look, he said, 'Why didn't they think?'

'Some people need longer than others to develop their train of thought,' Martin Beck said amiably. 'Not only detectives.'

₁₁

'Now we must think,' Gunvald Larsson said briskly, banging the door. 'There's a briefing with Hammar at three o'clock sharp. In ten minutes.'

Martin Beck, sitting with the telephone receiver to his ear, threw him an irritated glance, and Kollberg looked up from his papers and muttered gloomily, 'As if we didn't know. Try thinking yourself on an empty stomach and see how easy it is.'

Having to go without a meal was one of the few things that could put Kollberg in a bad mood. By this time he had gone without at least three meals and was therefore particularly glum. Moreover, he thought he could tell from Gunvald Larsson's satisfied expression that the latter had just been out and had something to eat, and the thought didn't make him any happier.

'Where have you been?' he asked suspiciously.

Gunvald Larsson didn't answer. Kollberg followed him with his eyes as he went over and sat down behind his desk.

Martin Beck put down the phone.

'What's biting you?' he said.

Then he got up, took his notes and went over to Kollberg. 'It was from the lab,' he said. 'They've counted sixty-eight fired cartridges.''What calibre?' Kollberg asked.

'As we thought. Nine millimetres. Nothing to say that sixty-seven of them didn't come from the same weapon.' 'And the sixty-eighth?' 'Walther 7.65.'

'The shot fired at the roof by that Kristiansson,' Kollberg declared. 'Yes.'

'It means there was probably only one madman after all,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'Yes,' said Martin Beck.

Going over to the sketch, he drew an X inside the widest of the middle doors.

'Yes,' Kollberg said. 'That's where he must have stood.' 'Which would explain ...' 'What?' Gunvald Larsson asked. Martin Beck didn't answer.

'What were you going to say?' Kollberg asked. 'Which would explain ... ?'

'Why Stenström didn't have time to shoot,' Martin Beck said. The others looked at him wonderingly.

'Hungh-h,' said Gunvald Larsson.

'Yes, yes, you're right, both of you,' Martin Beck said doubtfully and massaged the root of his nose between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

Hammar flung open the door and entered the room, followed by Ek and a man from the office of the public prosecutor.

'Reconstruction,' he said abruptly. 'Stop all telephone calls. Are you ready?'

Martin Beck looked at him mournfully. It had been Stenström's habit to enter the room in exactly the same way, unexpectedly and without knocking. Almost always. It had been extremely irritating.

'What have you got there?' Gunvald Larsson asked. 'The evening papers?'

‘Yes,' Harnmar replied. 'Very encouraging.'

He held the papers up and gave them a hostile glare. The headlines were big and black but the text contained very little information.

'I quote,' Hammar said. ""This is the crime of the century,' says tough CID 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 drawn on 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 assumed that there are people who rode part of the way on the bus on this particular run. But so for 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 cartridges 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 those sitting in the front of the bus - 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 individuals 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 door 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.'

Hammar 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 people 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 underground. She said that several passengers had got off at the same time as her, 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 constable 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 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 OK,' Kollberg said listlessly.

'That's all I know,' Hammar said. 'Someone from Sundersvall, too, I think. Don't know who.'

'I see,' said Martin Beck.

'Unless you solve it before then,' 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 might of course, have committed suicide, but in that case we know nothing about it We have two substantial clues. The bullets and the fired cartridges, 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 a 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 investigations,' 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 of the dressing downs I've given him. Over the years. And then he goes and gets murdered.'

"This Månsson,' Martin Beck said. 'Do you remember him?'

Kollberg nodded.

'The bloke with the toothpicks. I don't believe in roping in every available man like this. It would be for better if they let us get on with this by ourselves. You and I and Melander.'

'Well, Ahlberg's OK, 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 cliches and truisms in our feces. "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 hell of a lot 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 along the lines: "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 mentally 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 quarrelled with his girl or been given a telling off by his mother and sat sulking on a bus because it was too late to go to the cinema 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 trouser 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 windscreen 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.

Kollberg hesitated a moment, then sat down at the desk and tried the drawers. They were not locked.

The room was neat and tidy but quite impersonal. Stenström had not even had a photograph of his fiancee on the desk.

On the other hand, two photos of himself lay on the pen tray. Martin Beck knew why. For the first time in several years Stenström had been lucky enough to be off duty over Christmas and New Year. He had already booked seats on a charter flight to the Canary Islands. He had had the pictures taken because he had to get a new passport.

Lucky.

Thought Martin Beck, looking at the photos, which were very recent and better than those published on the front pages of the evening papers.

Stenström looked, if anything, younger than his twenty-nine years. He had a bright, frank expression and dark-brown hair, combed back. Here, as it usually did, it looked rather unruly.

At first he had been considered naive and mediocre by a number of colleagues, including Kollberg, whose sarcastic remarks and often condescending manner had been a continuous trial. But that was in the past Martin Beck remembered that once, while they were still housed in the old police premises out at Kristineberg, he had discussed this with Kollberg. He had said, 'Why are you always nagging the lad?'

And Kollberg had answered, 'In order to break down his put-on self-confidence. To give him a chance to build it up new. To help turn him into a good policeman one day. To teach him to knock at doors.'

It was conceivable that Kollberg had been right. At any rate, Stenström had improved with the years. And although he had never learned to knock at doors, he had developed into a good policeman - capable, hard-working and reasonably discerning. Outwardly, he had been an adornment to the force: a pleasant appearance, a winning manner, physically fit and a good athlete. He could almost have been used in recruiting advertisements, which was more than could be said of certain others. For instance, of Kollberg, with his arrogance and flabbiness and tendency to run to fat. Of the stoical Melander, whose appearance in no way challenged the hypothesis that the worst bores often made the best policemen. Or of the red-nosed and in all respects equally mediocre Rönn. Or of Gunvald Larsson, who could frighten anyone at all out of his wits with his colossal frame and staring eyes and who was proud of it, what is more.

Or of himself either, for that matter, the snuffling Martin Beck. He had looked in the mirror as recently as the evening before and seen a tall, sinister figure with a lean face, wide forehead, heavy jaws and mournful grey-blue eyes.

In addition, Stenström had had certain specialities which had been of great use to them all.

Martin Beck thought of all this while he regarded the objects that Kollberg systematically took out of the drawers and placed on the desk.

But now he was coldly appraising what he knew of the man whose name had been Åke Stenström. The feelings that had threatened to overwhelm him not long ago, while Hammar stood scattering truisms about him in the office at Kungsholmsgatan, were gone. The moment was past and would never recur.

Ever since Stenström had put his cap on the hatrack and sold his uniform to an old classmate from the police school, he had worked under Martin Beck. First at Kristineberg, at the then national homicide squad which had belonged to the municipal police and functioned chiefly as a kind of emergency corps, intended to assist hard-pressed local police in the provinces.

Later, at the turn of the year 1964-65, the police force in its entirety had been nationalized, and by degrees they had moved out here to Västberga.

In the course of the years Kollberg had been given various assignments, and Melander had been transferred at his own request, but Stenström had been there all the time. Martin Beck had known him for more than five years, and they had worked together with innumerable investigations. During this time Stenström had learned what he knew about practical police work, and that was not a little. He had also matured, overcome most of his uncertainty and shyness, left home and in time moved in with a young woman, together with whom he said he wanted to spend the rest of his life. Shortly before this, his rather had died and his mother had moved back to Västmanland.

Martin Beck should, therefore, know most of what there was to know about him.

Oddly enough, he didn't know very much. True, he had all the important data and a general idea, presumably well-founded, of Stenström's character, his merits and Mings as a policeman, but over and above this there was little to add.

A nice guy. Ambitious, persevering, intelligent, ready to learn. On the other hand rather shy, still a trifle childish, anything but witty, not much sense of humour on the whole. But who had?

Perhaps he'd had a complex.

Because of Kollberg, who used to excel in literary quotations and complicated sophisms. Because of Gunvald Larsson, who once, in fifteen seconds, had kicked in a locked door and knocked a maniac axe-murderer senseless while Stenström stood two yards away wondering what ought to be done. Because of Melander, whose face never gave anything away and who never forgot anything he had once seen, read or heard.

Well, who wouldn't get a complex from that sort of thing?

Why did he know so litde? Because he had not been sufficiently observant? Or because there was nothing to know?

Martin Beck massaged his scalp with his fingertips and studied what Kollberg had laid on the desk.

There had been a pedantic trait in Stenström, for instance this fad that his watch must show the correct time to the very second, and it was also reflected in the meticulous tidiness on and in his desk.

Papers, papers and more papers. Copies of reports, notes, minutes of court proceedings, stencilled instructions and reprints of legal texts. All in neady arranged bundles.

The most personal things were a box of matches and an unopened pack of chewing gum. Since Stenström neither smoked nor was addicted to excessive chewing, he had presumably kept these objects so that he could offer some form of service to people who came there to be questioned or perhaps just to sit and chat.

Kollberg sighed deeply and said, 'If I had been the one sitting in that bus, you and Stenström would have been rummaging through my drawers just now. It would have given you a hell of a lot more trouble than this. You'd probably have made finds that would have blackened my memory.'

Martin Beck could well imagine what Kollberg's drawers looked like but refrained from comment.

'This couldn't blacken anyone's memory,' Kollberg said.

Again Martin Beck made no reply. They went through the papers in silence, quickly and thoroughly. There was nothing that they could not immediately identify or place in its natural context. All notes and all documents were connected with investigations that Stenström had been working on and that they knew all about

At last there was only one thing left. A brown envelope in quarto size. It was sealed and rather fat

'What do you think this can be?' Kollberg said.

'Open it and see.'

Kollberg turned the envelope all ways. 'He seems to have sealed it up very carefully. Look at these strips of tape.'

He shrugged, took the paper knife from the pen tray and resolutely slit open the envelope.

'Hm-m,' Kollberg said. 'I didn't know that Stenström was a photographer.'

He glanced through the sheaf of photographs and then spread them out in front of him.

'And I would never have thought he had interests like this.'

'It's his fiancee,' said Martin Beck tonelessly.

'Yes, but all the same, I would never have dreamed he had such far-out tastes.'

Martin Beck looked at the photographs, dutifully and with the unpleasant feeling he always had when he was more or less forced to intrude on anything to do with other people's private lives. This reaction was spontaneous and innate, and not even after twenty-three years as a policeman had he learned to master it.

Kollberg was not troubled by any such scruples. Moreover, he was a sensualist.

'By God, she's quite a dish,' he said appreciatively and with great emphasis.

He went on studying the pictures.

'She can stand on her hands too,' he said. 'I wouldn't have imagined that she looked like that.'

'But you've seen her before.'

'Yes, dressed. This is an entirely different matter.'

Kollberg was right, but Martin Beck preferred to say no more.

His only comment was, 'And tomorrow you'll be seeing her again.'

'Yes,' Kollberg replied. 'And I'm not looking forward to it.'

Gathering up the photographs, he put them back into the envelope. Then he said, 'We'd better be getting home. I'll give you a lift.'

They put out the light and left. In the car Martin Beck said, 'By the way, how did you come to be at Norra Stationsgatan last night? Gun didn't know where you were when I called up and you were on the scene long before I was.'

'It was pure chance. After leaving you I walked towards town. On Skanstull Bridge two guys in a patrol car recognized me. They had just got the alarm on the radio and they drove me straight in. I was one of the first there.'

They sat in silence for a long time. Then Kollberg said in a puzzled tone, 'What do you think he wanted those pictures for?'

'To look at,' Martin Beck replied.

'Of course. But still...'

₁₃

Before Martin Beck left the flat on Wednesday morning he called up Kollberg. Their conversation was brief and to the point. 'Kollberg.'

'Hi. It's Martin. I'm leaving now.' 'OK.'

When the train glided into the underground station at Skärmarbrink, Kollberg was waiting on the platform. They had made it a habit always to get into the last carriage and in this way they often had each other's company into town even when they hadn't arranged it.

They got off at Medborgarplatsen and came up on to Folkungagatan. The time was twenty minutes past nine and a watery sun filtered through the grey sky. They turned up their coat collars against the icy wind and started walking east along Folkungagatan.

As they turned the corner into Östgötagatan Kollberg said, 'Have you heard how the wounded man is? Schwerin?'

‘Yes, I called up the hospital this morning. The operations have succeeded insomuch as he's alive. But he's still unconscious and the doctors can't say anything about the outcome until he wakes up.'

'Is he going to wake up?' Martin Beck shrugged. 'They don't know. I certainly hope so.' 'I wonder how long it will be before the newspapers sniff him out.'

'At Karolinska they promised to keep their mouths shut/ Martin Beck said.

'Yes, but you know what journalists are. Like leeches.' They turned on to Tjarhovsgatan and walked along to number 18.

They found the name TORELL on the list of tenants in the entrance, but above the door plate two flights up was a white card with the name AKE STENSTRÖM drawn in India ink.

The girl who opened the door was small; automatically Martin Beck estimated her height at 5 feet 3 inches.

'Come in and take your coats off,' she said, closing the door behind them.

The voice was low and rather hoarse.

Åsa Torell was dressed in narrow black slacks and a cornflower-blue rib-knit polo sweater. On her feet she had thick grey skiing socks which were several sizes too large and had presumably been Stenström's. She had brown eyes and dark hair cut very short. Her face was angular and could be called neither sweet nor pretty; if anything, quaint and piquant. She was slight of build, with slim shoulders and hips and small breasts.

She stood quiet and expectant while Martin Beck and Kollberg put their hats beside Stenström's old cap on the rack and took off their overcoats. Then she led the way into the flat

The living room, which had two windows on to the street, had a pleasant, cosy atmosphere. Against one wall stood a huge bookcase with carved sides and top piece. Apart from it and a wing chair upholstered in leather, the furniture looked fairly new. A bright-red rya rug covered most of the floor, and the thin woollen curtains had exactly the same shade of red.

The room was irregular in shape, and from the far corner, a short passage led out into the kitchen. Through an open door in the corridor one could see into the other rooms. The kitchen and bedroom faced the courtyard at the back.

Åsa Torell sat in the leather armchair and tucked her feet under her. She pointed to two safari chairs, and Martin Beck and Kollberg sat down. The ashtray on the low table between them and the young woman was filled to overflowing with cigarette butts.

'I do hope you realize how sorry we are that we have to intrude like this,' Martin Beck said. 'But it was essential to talk to you as soon as possible.'

Åsa Torell did not answer at once. She picked up the cigarette that lay burning on the edge of the ashtray and drew on it deeply. Her hand was inclined to shake and she had dark rings under her eyes.

'Of course I do,' she said. 'It was just as well you came. I've been sitting in this chair ever since... well, since I heard that... I've been sitting here trying to realize that it's true.'

'Miss Torell,' Kollberg said. 'Haven't you anyone who can come here and be with you?'

She shook her head.

'No. And anyway, I don't want anyone here.'

'Your parents?'

Again she shook her head.

'Mum died last year. And Dad has been dead for twenty years.' Martin Beck leaned forward and gave her a searching look. 'Have you slept at all?' he asked.

'I don't know. The ones that were here yesterday gave me a couple of pills, so I expect I did sleep for a while. It doesn't matter.' I'll be all right'

Stubbing out the cigarette, she murmured, her eyes lowered, 'I'll just have to try and get used to the fact that he's dead. It may take time.'

Neither Martin Beck nor Kollberg could think of anything to say. Martin Beck suddenly noticed that the room was stuffy and the air thick with cigarette smoke. An oppressive silence weighed on them all. At last Kollberg cleared his throat and said gravely, 'Miss Torell, do you mind if we ask you one or two things about Stenst— about Åke?'

Åsa Torell raised her eyes slowly. Suddenly they twinkled and she smiled.

'You surely don't mean for me to call you Superintendent Beck and Inspector Kollberg? You must call me Åsa, because I'm going to say Martin and Lennart to you. You see, I know you both quite well in a way'

She gave them a mischievous look and added, "Through Åke. He and I saw quite a lot of each other. We've lived here for several years.'

Messrs Kollberg and Beck, undertakers, thought Martin Beck. Pull your socks up. The girl's OK.

‘We've heard about you, too,' Kollberg said in a lighter tone.

Åsa went over and opened a window. Then she took the ashtray out into the kitchen. Her smile was gone and her face had a set look. She came back with a new ashtray and curled up again on the chair.

‘Would you mind telling me just what happened,' she said. 'I wasn't told much yesterday and I'm not going to read the papers.' Martin Beck lit a Florida. 'OK,' he said.

She sat quite still, never taking her eyes off him while he related the course of events as far as they had been able to reconstruct it Only certain details did he omit. When he had finished Åsa said, 'Where was Åke going? Why was he on that bus at all?'

Kollberg glanced at Martin Beck and said, 'That's what we were hoping you would be able to tell us.'

Åsa Torell shook her head.

'I've no idea.'

'Do you know what he was doing earlier in the day?' Martin Beck asked.

She looked at him in surprise.

'Don't you know? He was working all day. Surely you ought to know what he was doing?'

Martin Beck hesitated a moment. Then he said, "The last time I saw him alive was on Friday. He was up for a while in the morning.'

She got up and paced about. Then she turned around.

'But he was working both on Saturday and on Monday. We left here together on Monday morning. Didn't you see Åke on Monday?' She stared at Kollberg, who shook his head.

'Did he say he was going out to Västberga?' Kollberg asked. 'Or to Kungsholmsgatan?'

Åsa thought for a moment

'No, he didn't say where he was going. That probably explains it He must have been working on something in town.'

'Did you say he worked on Saturday, too?' Martin Beck asked. She nodded.

'Yes, but not all day. We left here together in the morning, and I finished at one and came straight home. Åke got home not long after. He had done the shopping. On Sunday he was free. We spent the whole day together.'

She went back to the armchair and sat down, clasped her hands round her drawn-up knees and bit her lower lip.

'Didn't he tell you what he was working on?' Kollberg asked.

Åsa shook her head.

'Didn't he usually tell you?' Martin Beck asked.

'Oh, yes. We told each other everything. But not lately. He said nothing about this last job. I thought it was funny he didn't talk to me about it He always used to discuss the different cases, especially when it was something tricky and difficult. But perhaps he wasn't allowed -'

She broke off and raised her voice.

'Anyway, why are you asking me? You were his superiors. If you're trying to find out whether he told me any police secrets, then I can assure you he didn't He didn't say one word about his job during the last three weeks.'

'Perhaps it was because he didn't have anything special to tell you about,' Kollberg said soothingly. 'The last three weeks have been unusually uneventful and we've had very litde to do.'

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 stretcher trolley 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 drip 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 theatre.

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 feet, 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 beat officers were allowed to have beards.

'A moustache 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 feet that the police were not given proper military training and no longer wore sabres.

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 since 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. He'll 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 final 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 colour, race or opinion. 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 feet, 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 chairback. 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.

'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 woollen scarf higher round his neck, he started walking towards the centre of town.

When he had crossed Agnegatan he stopped, at a loss, trying to decide what bus to take. He had not yet learned all the new routes since the trams 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 before winter starts all over again. Where are you off to?'

'Vastmannagatan,' Gunvald Larsson replied. 'I'm going up to have a talk with the 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 windscreen.

'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. Bussing.'

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 afterwards.'

'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 extensive rebuilding was going on; 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 house walls, 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: cover it with Tarmac and paint on yellow stripes and make car parks of the goddamned place. 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 where the maternity ward and the women's clinic were located.

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 colour 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 towards 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 meatballs 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 steer the conversation on 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 flatmates?'

'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 friend 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 a flat'

'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 anaemic and generally run-down, and she had to go for frequent checkups. 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 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 fiance" to see her home. She just wasn't that type.'

Martin Beck put the wallet back in his pocket

"They may have been friends and -She shook her head vigorously.

'Britt was very proper, very shy and, as I said, almost afraid of men. Besides, she was head over heels in love with Bertil and would never have looked at another fellow. Neither as a friend nor anything else. What's more, I was the only person on earth she confided in, except Bertil of course. She told me everything. I'm sorry, Superintendent, but this must be a mistake.'

Opening her handbag, she took out her purse.

'I must get back to my babies. I have seventeen at the moment'

She started poking in her purse but Martin Beck put out his hand and checked her.

'This is on the national government,' he said.

When they were standing outside the hospital gates Monika Granholm said, 'It is possible they might have known each other, been childhood playmates or schoolmates and met by chance. But that's all I can think of. Britt lived in Eslöv until she was twenty. Where did this policeman come from?'

'Hallstahammar,' Martin Beck replied. 'What is this doctor's name besides Bertil?'

'Persson.'

'And where does he live?' 'Gillerbacken 22, Bandhagen.'

He held out his hand with some hesitation and for safety's sake kept his glove on.

'My regards to the national government and thanks for the lunch,' Monika Granholm said, and strode off briskly down the slope.

₁₆

Gunvald Larsson's car was parked outside Tegnérgatan 40. Martin Beck looked at his watch and pushed open the street door.

The time was twenty minutes past three, which meant that Gunvald Larsson, who was always punctual, had already been with Mrs Assarsson for twenty minutes. By this time he had probably found out the main events of her husband's life ever since he started school; Gunvald Larsson's interrogation technique was to begin at the beginning and uncover eveiything step by step. While the method could be effective, often it was merely tiresome and wasted time.

The door of the flat was opened by a middle-aged man wearing a dark suit with a silver-white tie. Martin Beck introduced himself and showed his official badge. The man held out his hand.

'I'm Ture Assarsson, brother of the... of the dead man. Please come in, your colleague is already here.'

He waited while Martin Beck hung up his overcoat and then led the way through a pair of tall double doors.

'Marta, my dear, this is Superintendent Beck,' he said.

The living room was large and rather dark. In a low, oat-coloured sofa, which was over three yards long, sat a lean woman in a black jersey coat and skirt, with a glass in her hand. Putting the glass down on a black marble table in front of the sofa, she held out her hand with gracefully bent wrist, as though expecting him to kiss it Martin Beck took her dangling fingers clumsily and mumbled, 'My condolences, Mrs Assarsson.'

On the other side of the marble table stood a group of three low, pink easy chairs, and in one of them sat Gunvald Larsson, looking peculiar. Only when Martin Beck, after a condescending gesture from Mrs Assarsson, sat down himself did he realize Gunvald Larsson's problem.

As the construction of the chair really permitted only an outstretched horizontal position, and it would look odd with a reclining interrogator, Gunvald Larsson had more or less folded himself double. He was red in the face from the discomfort and glared at Martin Beck between his knees, which stuck up like two alpine peaks in front of him.

Martin Beck twisted his legs first to the left, then to the right, then he tried to cross them and wedge them under the chair, but it was too low. At last he adopted the same position as Gunvald Larsson.

Meanwhile the widow had drained her glass and held it out to her brother-in-law to be refilled. He gave her a searching look and then went and fetched a carafe and a clean glass from a sideboard.

'You'll have a glass of sherry, won't you, Superintendent' he said.

And before Martin Beck had time to protest the man had filled the glass and placed it on the table in front of him.

I was just asking Mrs Assarsson if she knew why her husband was on that bus on Monday night' Gunvald Larsson said

'And I gave the same reply to you as I did to the person who had the bad taste to question me about my husband only seconds after I had been informed of his death. That I don't know.'

She raised her glass to Martin Beck and drained it in one gulp. Martin Beck made an attempt to reach his sherry glass but missed by about a foot and fell back into the chair.

'Do you know where your husband was earlier in the evening?' he asked.

Putting down her glass, she took an orange-coloured cigarette with a gold tip out of a green glass box on the table. She fumbled with the cigarette and tapped it several times on the lid of the box before allowing her brother-in-law to light it for her. Martin Beck noticed that she was not quite sober.

'Yes, I do,' she said. 'He was at a meeting. We had dinner at six o'clock, then he changed and went out at about seven.'

Gunvald Larsson took a piece of paper and a ball-point pen out of his breast pocket and asked, as he dug at his ear with the pen, 'A meeting? Where and with whom?'

Assarsson looked at his sister-in-law and when she didn't answer he said, 'It was an organization of old school friends. They called themselves the Camels. It consisted of nine members, who had kept in touch ever since they were at the naval cadet school together. They used to meet at the home of a businessman called Sjöberg on Narvavägen.'

"The Camels?' Gunvald Larsson exclaimed incredulously.

'Yes,'Assarsson replied. "They used to greet each other by saying: "Hi, old camel," so they took to calling themselves the Camels.'

The widow looked critically at her brother-in-law.

'It's an idealistic association,' she said. 'It does a lot for charity.'

'Oh?' Gunvald Larsson said. 'Such as ... ?'

'It's a secret,' Mrs Assarsson replied. 'Not even we wives were allowed to know. Some societies do that Work sub rosa so to speak.'

Feeling Gunvald Larsson's eyes on him, Martin Beck said, 'Mrs Assarsson, do you know when your husband left Narvavägen?'

‘Well, I couldn't get to sleep, so I got up about two o'clock in the morning to take a little nightcap, and when I saw that Gosta hadn't come home I called up the Screw - that's what they call Mr Sjöberg - and the Screw said that Gösta had left about half-past ten.'

She stubbed out her cigarette.

‘Where do you think he was going on the 47 bus?' Martin Beck asked.

Assarsson gave him an anxious look.

'He was on his way to some business acquaintance, of course. My husband was very energetic and worked very hard with his firm - that's to say, Ture here is also part-owner, of course - and it wasn't at all unusual for him to have business dealings at night For instance, when people came up from the provinces and were only in Stockholm overnight and then, er ...'

She seemed to lose the thread. She picked up her empty glass and twiddled it between her fingers.

Gunvald Larsson was busy writing on his scrap of paper. Martin Beck stretched one leg and massaged his knee.

'Have you any children, Mrs Assarsson?' he asked.

Mrs Assarsson put her glass in front of her brother-in-law to be refilled, but he immediately took it to the sideboard without looking at her. She gave him a resentful look, stood up with an effort and brushed some cigarette ash off her skirt

'No, Superintendent Peck, I haven't Unfortunately my husband couldn't give me any children.'

She stared vacantly at a point beyond Martin Beck's left ear. He could see now that she was pretty well stewed. She blinked slowly a couple of times and then looked at him.

'Are your parents American, Superintendent Peck?' she asked.

'No,' Martin Beck replied.

Gunvald Larsson was still scribbling. Martin Beck craned his neck and looked at the piece-of paper. It was covered with camels.

'If Superintendents Peck and Larsson will excuse me, I must retire,' Mrs Assarsson said, walking unsteadily towards the door.

'Good-bye, it's been so nice,' she said vaguely, and closed the door behind her.

Gunvald Larsson put away his pen and the paper with the camels and struggled out of the chair.

'Whom did he sleep with?' he asked, without looking at Assarsson.

Assarsson glanced at the closed door.

'Eivor Olsson,' he replied. 'A girl at the office.'

₁₇

There was little to be said in favour of this repulsive Wednesday.

Not surprisingly, the evening papers had ferreted out the story of Schwerin, splashing it across the front pages and larding it with details and sarcastic gibes at the police.

The investigation was already at a deadlock. The police had smuggled away the only important witness. The police had lied to the press and the public.

If the press and the Great Detective the General Public were not given correct information, how could the police count on help?

The only thing the papers didn't say was that Schwerin had died, but that was probably only because they had been so early going to press.

They had also managed somehow to sniff out the dismal truth about the state in which the forensic laboratory technicians had found the scene of the crime.

Valuable time had been lost

Unhappily, too, the mass murder had coincided with a raid -decided on several weeks earlier - on kiosks and tobacco shops in an attempt to confiscate pornographic literature.

One of the newspapers was kind enough to point out in a prominent place that a maniac mass-murderer was running amok in town and that the public was panic-stricken.

And, it went on, while the scent grew cold a whole army of Swedish Keystone Cops were, plodding about looking at porno pictures, scratching their heads and trying to make out the ministry of justice's hazy instructions as to what could be considered offensive to public decency.

When Kollberg arrived at Kungsholmsgatan at about four o'clock in the afternoon, he had ice crystals in his hair and eyebrows, a grim expression on his face and the evening papers under his arm.

If we had as many snouts as local rags, we'd never have to lift a finger,' he said.

'It's a question of money,' Melander said.

'I know that. Does that make it any better?'

'No,' Melander said. 'But it's as simple as that'

He knocked out his pipe and returned to his papers.

'Have you finished talking to the psychologists?' Kollberg asked sourly.

'Yes,' Melander replied without looking up. 'The compendium is being typed out'

A new face was to be seen at investigation headquarters. One third of the promised reinforcements had arrived. Månsson from Malmö.

Månsson was almost as big as Gunvald Larsson but he showed a much more peaceable front to the world. He had driven up from Skåne during the night in his own car. Not in order to be able to collect the paltry mileage allowance for petrol, but because he correctly considered it might be an advantage to have at his disposal a car with an M licence plate from the Malmö area.

He was standing now by the window, gazing out and chewing at a toothpick.

'Is there anything I can do?' he asked.

'Yes. There are one or two we haven't had time to interrogate yet. Here, for instance. Mrs Ester Källström. She is the widow of one of the victims.'

'Johan Källström, the foreman?' 'Precisely. Karlbergsvägen 89.' 'Where's Karlbergsvägen?'

'There's a map on the wall over there,' Kollberg said wearily.

Månsson laid the chewed toothpick in Melander's ashtray, took a new one out of his breast pocket and looked at it apathetically. He studied the map for a while, then put on his overcoat In the doorway he turned and looked at Kollberg.

'By the way...'

'Yes, what is it?'

'Do you know of any shop where"you can buy flavoured toothpicks?'

'No, I really don't'

'Oh,' Månsson said dejectedly.

Then he added informatively, 'I'm told they do exist I'm trying to give up smoking.'

When the door had closed behind him Kollberg looked at Melander and said, 'I've only met that guy once before. In Malmö in the summer of last year. And he said exactly the same thing then.'

'About the toothpicks?' 'Yes.'

'Extraordinary.' 'What?'

'Not being able to find out about them after more than a year.' 'Oh, you're hopeless,' Kollberg exclaimed. 'Are you in a bad mood?' 'What the hell do you expect?' Kollberg snapped. "There's no point in losing your temper. It only makes things worse.'

'I like that coming from you. You haven't any temper to lose.' Melander didn't reply to this, and the conversation came to an end.

* * *

Despite all statements to the contrary, the Great Detective the General Public was hard at work during the afternoon.

Several hundred people called up or looked in personally to say they thought they had ridden on that very bus.

All these statements had to be ground through the investigation mill and for once this tedious work turned out to be not entirely wasted.

A man who had boarded a doubledecker bus at Djurgärdsbron at about ten o'clock on Monday evening said he was willing to swear that he had seen Stenström. He said this on the telephone and he was passed along to Melander, who immediately asked him to come up.

The man was about fifty. He seemed quite sure. 'So you saw Detective Inspector Stenström?' 'Yes.' 'Where?'

'When I got on at Djurgärdsbron. He was sitting on the left near the stairs behind the driver.'

Melander nodded to himself. No details had as yet leaked out to the press about where the victims had been sitting in relation to each other.

'Are you sure it was Stenström?'

‘Yes.'

'How do you know?'

'I recognized him. I've been a night watchman.'

'Yes,' Melander said. 'A couple of years ago you sat in the vestibule of the old police headquarters on Agnegatan. I remember you.'

'Why, so I did,' the man said in astonishment. 'But I don't recognize you.'

'I only saw you twice,' Melander replied. 'And we didn't speak to each other.'

'But I remember Stenström very well, because ...' He hesitated.

"Yes?' Melander prompted in a friendly tone. 'Because ... ?'

'Well, he looked so young, and he was wearing jeans and a sportshirt, so I thought he didn't belong there. I asked him to prove his identity. And ...'

‘Yes?'

'About a week later I made the same mistake. Very annoying.' 'Oh, well, it easily happens. When you saw him the night before last, did he recognize you?' 'No, definitely not' 'Was anyone sitting beside him?'

'No, the seat was empty. I remember particularly, because I thought I'd say hello to him and sit there. But then I felt sort of awkward.'

'Pity,' Melander said 'And you got off at Sergels torg?' 'Yes, I changed to the underground.' 'Was Stenström still there?'

'I think so. I hadn't seen him get off at any rate. Though of course I was sitting upstairs.'

'Would you like a cup of coffee?'

'Well, I don't mind if I do,' the man said.

'Would you be good enough to look at some pictures?' Melander asked. 'But I'm afraid they're not very pleasant.'

'No, I suppose not,' the man mumbled.

He looked through the pictures, turning pale and swallowing once or twice. But the only person he recognized was Stenström.

Not long afterwards Martin Beck, Gunvald Larsson and Rönn arrived practically at the same time.

'What?' said Kollberg. 'Has Schwerin ... ?'

'Yes,' Rönn said. 'He's dead.'

'And?'

'He said something.' 'What?'

'Don't know,' Rönn replied, placing the tape recorder on the desk. ‘ ‘ ‘

They stood around the desk listening.

'Who did the shooting?' 'Dnrk'

'What did he look like?'

'Koleson:

'Is that really all you can get out of this questioning? Now listen to me, my good man, this is Detective Inspector Ullholm speaking -'

‘He's dead:

'Jesus Christ,' Gunvald Larsson exclaimed. 'The very sound of that voice makes me want to throw up. He once reported me for breach of duty.'

'What had you done?' Rönn asked.

'Said "cunt" in the guardroom at Klara police station. A couple of the boys came in dragging a naked whore. She was loaded to the gills and was howling and had torn all her clothes off in the car. I tried to make them see that they should at least cover up her - well, wrap a blanket around her or something before carting her off to headquarters. Ullholm made out that I had caused mental injury to a girl who was not yet of age by using coarse and offensive language. He was the officer on duty. Then he applied for a transfer to Solna, to get closer to nature.'

'Nature?'

'Yes, his wife, I presume.' Martin Beck played back the tape.

'Who did the shooting?'

'Dnrk'

'What did he look like?'

'Koleson:

'Are the questions your own idea?' Gunvald Larsson asked.

'Yes,' Rönn replied modesdy.

'Fantastic.'

'He was only conscious for half a minute,' Rönn said in a hurt tone. 'Then he died.'

Martin Beck played back the tape once more.

They listened over and over again.

'What on earth is he saying?' Kollberg said.

He had not had time to shave and scratched at his stubble thoughtfully.

Martin Beck turned to Rönn.

'What do you think?' he said. ‘You were there.'

'Well,' Rönn said, 'I think he understands the questions and is trying to answer.'

'And?'

'That he answers the first question in the negative, for instance "I don't know".'

'How the hell do you make that out of "Dnrk"?' Gunvald Larsson asked in astonishment

Rönn reddened and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

‘Yes,' said Martin Beck, 'how do you reach that conclusion?'

‘Well, I just sort of got that impression’

'Hm,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'And then?'

'To the second question he answers quite plainly "Koleson".'

'So I hear,' Kollberg said. 'But what does he mean?'

Martin Beck massaged his scalp with his fingertips.

'Karlsson, perhaps,' he said, thinking hard.

'He says "Koleson",' Rönn maintained stubbornly.

'Yes,' said Kollberg. 'But there's no one with that name.'

'We'd better check,' Melander said. 'The name might exist. Meanwhile...'

'Yes?'

'Meanwhile I think we ought to send this tape to an expert for analysis. If our own boys can't get anything out of it we can contact the radio. Their sound technicians have all the facilities. They can separate the sounds on the tape and try out different speeds.'

‘Yes,' Martin Beck said. 'It's a good idea.'

'But for Christ's sake wipe out Ullholm first,' Gunvald Larsson growled, 'or we'll be the laughing stock of all Sweden.'

He looked around the room. 'Where's that joker Månsson?'

'Got lost, I expect,' Kollberg said. 'We'd better alert all the patrol cars.'

He sighed heavily.

Ek came in, a worried look on his face as he stroked his silver hair.

‘What is it?' Martin Beck asked.

'The newspapers are complaining they haven't been given a picture of that man who is still unidentified.'

‘You know yourself what that picture would look like,' Kollberg said.

'Sure, but -'

‘Wait a minute,' Melander said. ‘We can better the description. Between thirty-five and forty, height 5 feet 7 inches, weight eleven stone, shoe size 8½, brown eyes, dark-brown hair. Scar from an appendicitis operation. Brown hair on chest and stomach. Scar from some old injury on the ankle. Teeth ... No, it's no good.'

'I'll send it out,' Ek said and left the room.

They stood in silence for a while.

'Fredrik has got hold of something,' said Kollberg. 'That Stenström was already sitting in the bus when it got to Djurgardsbron. So he must have come from Djurgården.'

'What the hell was he doing there?' said Gunvald Larsson. 'In the evening? In that weather?'

'I've also got hold of something,' said Martin Beck. 'That apparency he didn't know that nurse at all.'

'Are you quite sure?' Kollberg asked.

'No.'

'He seems to have been alone at Djurgårdsbron,' Melander said. 'Rönn has also come up with something,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'What?'

'That Dnrk" means "I don't know". To say nothing of this guy Koleson.'

This was as far as they got on Wednesday, 15 November.

Outside, the snow was falling in large wet blobs. Darkness had already closed in.

Of course there was no one called Koleson. At least not in Sweden.

During Thursday they didn't get anywhere.

When Kollberg got home to his flat on Palandergatan on Thursday evening the time was already past eleven o'clock. His wife sat reading in the circle of light under the floor lamp. She was dressed in a short housecoat buttoned in front and sat curled up in the armchair with her bare legs drawn up under her.

'Hello,' said Kollberg. 'How is your Spanish course going?'

'To the dogs, of course. Absurd to imagine you can do anything at all when you're married to a policeman.'

Kollberg made no reply to this. Instead he got undressed and went into the bathroom. Shaved and took a long shower, hoping that some stupid neighbour wouldn't call up the police to send out a radio car, complaining of the water running so late. Then, putting on his bathrobe, he went into the living room and sat down opposite his wife. Regarded her thoughtfully.

'Haven't seen you for ages,' she said without raising her eyes. 'How are you all getting on?'

'Badly.'

'I am sorry. It seems odd that someone can shoot nine people dead in a bus in the middle of town just like that. And that the police can't think of anything cleverer than making a lot of ridiculous raids'

'Yes,' Kollberg said. 'It is odd.'

'Is there anyone else besides you who hasn't been home for thirty-six hours?' 'Probably.'

She went on reading. He sat in silence for some time, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, without taking his eyes off her.

'What are you goggling at?' she asked, still without looking up but with a note of mischief in her voice.

Kollberg didn't answer, and she appeared to be more deeply engrossed in her reading than ever. She had dark hair and brown eyes, her features were regular and her eyebrows thick. She was fourteen years younger than he was and had just turned twenty-nine, and he had always thought she was very pretty. At last he said,

'Gun?'

For the first time since he came home she looked at him, with a feint smile and a glint of shameless sensuality in her eyes. 'Yes?'

'Stand up.' 'Why, certainly.'

She turned down the upper right-hand corner of the page she had just read, shut the book and laid it on the arm of the chair. Stood up and let her arms hang loosely, her bare feet wide apart.

She looked at him steadily.

'Not at all nice.'

'Me?'

'No. Making dog-ears.'

'It's my book,' she said. 'Bought with my own money.'

'Strip,' he said.

Raising her right hand to her neckband, she undid the buttons, slowly and one by one. Still without taking her eyes off him she opened the thin cotton housecoat and let it fell to the floor behind her.

'Turn around,' said Kollberg.

She turned her back to him.

'You are beautiful.'

'Thank you. Am I to stand like this?'

'No. The front is better.'

'O-oh.'

She turned right round and looked at him with the same expression on her face as before.

'Can you stand on your hands?'

'I could, at any rate, before I met you. Since then I've had no cause to. Shall I try?' 'You needn't bother.' 'I can if you like.'

She walked across the room and stood on her hands, arching her body upward and putting her feet against the wall. No effort at all. Kollberg looked at her thoughtfully. 'Do you want me to stay like this?' she asked. 'No, it's not necessary.'

'I'll do it gladly if it amuses you. They say you faint after a time. Of course in that case you can cover me over with a cloth or something.'

'No, come down now.'

She put her feet gracefully to the floor and stood upright, looking at him over her shoulder.

'Supposing I wanted to take your photograph like that?' he said. ‘What would you say?'

‘What do you mean by like that? Naked?'

'Yes.'

'Standing on my hands?' 'Yes, that for instance.' ‘You don't even have a camera/ 'No, but that's neither here nor there.' 'Of course you can if you want to. You can do whatever you damn well like with me. I already told you that two years ago.' He didn't answer. She remained standing by the wall. 'What are you going to do with the pictures anyway?' "That's just the question.'

Turning around, she went up to him. Then she said, 'And now do you mind if I ask: What the hell is this all about? If it so happens that you want to make love to me, there's a comfortable bed in there, and if you can't be bothered going so far, this rya rug is also first-rate. Nice and soft. I made it myself.'

'Stenström had a bundle of pictures like that in the drawer of his desk.'

'At the office?' 'Yes.'

'Of whom?' 'His girl.' 'Åsa?' 'Yes.'

"That can't have been any great feast for the eyes.'

'I wouldn't say that,' Kollberg replied.

She looked at him and frowned.

'The question is, why?' he said.

'Does it matter?'

'I don't know. I can't explain it'

'Perhaps he just wanted to look at them.'

'That's what Martin said.'

'It seems much more sensible, of course, to go home and have a look now and again.'

'Of course, Martin isn't always so bright either. He's worried about us, for instance. You can tell by the look of him.'

'About us? Why?'

'Because I went out alone on Friday evening, I think.' 'He has a wife, hasn't he?'

'Something doesn't add up,' Kollberg said. 'With Stenström and these pictures.'

'Why? You know how men are. Was she attractive in the pictures?' 'Yes.'

'Very?'

'Yes.'

‘You know what I should say now.'

'Yes.'

'But I'm not going to say it'

'No. I know that, too.'

'So far as Stenström is concerned, he probably wanted to show them to his mates. To boast.'

'It doesn't add up. He wasn't like that' 'Why are you worrying about this?'

'Don't know. I suppose because there are no other clues left'

'Do you call this a clue? Do you think someone shot Stenström because of these pictures? In that case why should he kill eight more people?'

Kollberg looked at her intently.

'Exactly. That's a good question.'

Bending over, she kissed him lightly on the forehead

'Let's go to bed,' Kollberg said.

'A brilliant idea. I'll just make a bottle for Bodil first. It only takes thirty seconds. According to the directions on the package. I’ll see you in bed. Or on the floor or in the bathtub or wherever you damn well like.'

'The bed, thanks.'

She went out into the kitchen. Kollberg got up and turned off the floor lamp. 'Lennart?' 'Yes?'

'How old is Åsa?' 'Twenty-four.'

'Woman's sexual activity culminates between twenty-nine and thirty-two. Kinsey says so.' 'Oh? And man's?' 'At eighteen.'

He heard her whisking the babyfood in the saucepan. Then she called out, 'But with men it's more individual. If that's any consolation.'

Kollberg watched his wife through the half-open kitchen door. She was standing naked at the counter by the sink, stirring the saucepan. His wife was a long-legged girl of normal build and sensual nature. She was exactly what he wanted, but it had taken him over twenty years to mid her and another year to think it over.

At the moment her posture was impatient and she kept fidgetting with her feet

'Thirty seconds,' she muttered to herself. 'Damn liars.'

Kollberg smiled in the dark. He knew that soon he would be spared the thought of Stenström and the red doubledecker bus. For the first time in three days.

Martin Beck had not spent twenty years in search of his wife. He had met her seventeen years ago, made her pregnant on the spot and married in haste.

He had indeed repented at leisure, and now she was standing at the bedroom door, a living reminder of his mistake, in a crumpled nightdress and with red marks from the pillow on her face.

'You'll wake the whole house with your coughing and snuffling.'

'I'm sorry.'

'And why do you lie there smoking in the middle of the night?' she went on. ‘Your throat's bad enough as it is.'

Stubbing out the cigarette, he said, 'I'm sorry if I woke you up.'

'Oh, it doesn't matter. The main thing is that you don't go and get pneumonia again. You'd better stay at home tomorrow.'

'I can't very well.'

'Nonsense. If you're ill you shouldn't go to work. You're not the only policeman. Besides, you should be asleep, not lying reading those old reports. You'll never dear up that taxi murder anyhow. It's half-past one. Leave that old pile of papers alone and put the light out. Good night'

'Good night,' Martin Beck said mechanically to the closed bedroom door.

Frowning, he slowly put the stapled report down. It was quite wrong to call it an old pile of papers, as it was a copy of the postmortem reports handed to him just as he was going home the evening before. It was true, however, that a few months earlier he had lain awake at night going through the investigation into the murder of a taxi driver twelve years before.

He lay still for a while, staring up at the ceiling. When he heard his wife's light snoring from the bedroom, he got up swiftly and tiptoed out into the hall. Hesitated a moment with his hand on the telephone. Then he shrugged, lifted the receiver and dialled Kollberg's number.

'Kollberg,' Gun said breathlessly.

'Hi. Is Lennart there?'

'Yes. Closer than you'd think.'

'What is it?' Kollberg muttered.

'Am I disturbing you?'

‘You might say that. What the hell is it now?'

'Do you remember last summer, just after the park murders?'

'Yes, what?'

'We had nothing special to do then and Hammar said we were to look through old unsolved cases. Remember?'

'Of course I damn well remember. What about it?'

'I went through the taxi murder in Boras and you worked on that old boy at Östermalm who simply disappeared seven years ago.'

'Yes. Are you calling me just to say that?'

'No. What was Stenström working on? He had just got back from his vacation then.'

'I haven't the vaguest idea. I thought he told you.'

'No, he never mentioned it to me.'

'Then he must have told Hammar.'

‘Yes. Yes, of course. Yes, you're right. So long then. Sorry I woke you up.' 'Go to hell'

Martin Beck heard him slam the receiver down. He stood with the phone to his ear for a few seconds before putting it down and slouching back to the sofa bed.

He lay down again and put the light out Lay there in the dark feeling he had made a fool of himself.

₁₈

Contrary to all expectations, Friday morning brought a hopeful scrap of news.

Martin Beck received it by telephone and the others heard him say, 'What! Have you? Really?'

Everyone in the room dropped what he was doing and stared at him. Putting down the receiver he said, 'They're through with the ballistic investigation.'

'And?'

'They think they've identified the weapon.' 'Oh,' Kollberg said listlessly.

'A submachine gun,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'The army has thousands lying about in unguarded military depots. Might just as well deal them out free to the thieves and save themselves the trouble of putting on new padlocks once a week. As soon as I have half an hour to spare I'll drive into town and buy half a dozen.'

'It's not quite what you all think,' Martin Beck said, holding the slip of paper he had scribbled on. 'Model 37, Suomi type.'

'Really?' Melander asked.

'That old kind with the wooden butt,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'I haven't seen one like that since the forties.'

'Made in Finland or made here under licence?' Kollberg asked.

'Finnish,' Martin Beck said. 'The guy who called said they were almost sure. Old ammunition too. Made at Tikkakoski sewing-machine factory.'

'M-37,' Kollberg said. 'With 70-shot ammunition drum. Who's likely to have one today?'

'Nobody,' Gunvald Larsson replied. 'Today it's lying at the bottom of the harbour. A hundred feet down.'

'Presumably,' Martin Beck said. 'But who can have had one four days ago?'

'Some mad Finn,' Gunvald Larsson growled. 'Out with the Black Maria and round up all the crazy Finns in town. A hell of a nice job.'

'Shall we say anything of this to the papers?' Kollberg asked.

'No,' said Martin Beck. 'Not a whisper.'

They relapsed into silence. This was the first clue. How long would it take them to find the next?

The door was flung open and a young man came in and looked about him in curiosity. He had a brown envelope in his hand.

'Whom are you looking for?' Kollberg asked.

'Melander,' the youth said.

'Detective Inspector Melander,' Kollberg said reprimandingly. 'He's sitting over there.'

The young man went over and put the envelope on Melander's desk. As he was about to leave the room, Kollberg added, 'I didn't hear you knock.'

The youth checked himself, his hand on the door handle, but said nothing. There was silence in the room. Then Kollberg said, slowly and distinctly, as though explaining something to a child; 'Before entering a room, you knock at the door. Then you wait until you are told to come in. Then you open the door and enter. Is that dear?'

'Yes,' the young man mumbled, staring at Kollberg's feet

'Good,' Kollberg said, turning his back on him.

The young man slunk out of the door, dosing it silently behind him.

'Who was that?' Gunvald Larsson asked. Kollberg shrugged.

'Reminded me of Stenström actually,' Gunvald Larsson said.

Melander put down his pipe, opened the envelope and drew out some typewritten sheets bound in green covers. The booklet was about half an inch thick.

'What's that?' Martin Beck asked.

Melander glanced through it.

'The psychologists' compendium,' he replied. 'I've had it bound.'

'A-ha,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'And what brilliant theories have they come up with? That our poor mass murderer was once put off a bus during puberty because he couldn't pay his fare and that this experience left such deep scars in his sensitive ment—'

Martin Beck cut him short

'That is not amusing, Gunvald,' he snapped.

Kollberg gave him a surprised glance and turned to Melander. ‘Well, Fredrik, what have you got out of that little opus?'

Melander scratched at his pipe and emptied it on to a piece of paper, which he then folded up and threw into the wastepaper basket

'We have no Swedish precedents,' he said. 'Unless we go back as far as the Nordlund massacre on the steamer Prins Carl. So they've had to base their research on American surveys that have been made during the last few decades.'

He blew at his pipe to see if it was clear and then started to fill it as he went on. 'Unlike us, the American psychologists have no lack of material to work on. The compendium here mentions the Boston strangler; Speck, who murdered eight nurses in Chicago; Whitman, who killed sixteen people from a tower and wounded many more; Unruh, who rushed out on to a street in New Jersey and shot thirteen people dead in twelve minutes, and one or two more whom you've probably read about before.'

He riffled through the compendium.

'Mass murders seem to be an American speciality,' Gunvald Larsson said.

'Yes,' Melander agreed. 'And the compendium gives some plausible theories as to why it is so.'

'The glorification of violence,'said Kollberg. 'The career-centred society. The sale of firearms by mail order. The ruthless war in Vietnam.'

Melander sucked at his pipe to get it burning and nodded. 'Among other things,' he said.

'I read somewhere that out of every thousand Americans, one or two are potential mass murderers,' Kollberg said. 'Though don't ask me how they arrived at that conclusion.'

'Market research,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'It's another American speciality. They go around from house to house asking people if they could imagine themselves committing a mass murder. Two in a thousand say, "Oh yes, that would be nice."'

Martin Beck blew his nose and looked irritably at Gunvald Larsson with red eyes.

Melander leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs in front of him.

'What do your psychologists have to say about the mass murderer's character?' Kollberg asked.

Melander turned the pages to a certain passage and read out:

'”He is probably under thirty, often shy and reserved but regarded by those around him as well-behaved and diligent It is possible that he drinks alcohol, but it is more usual for him to be a teetotaller. He is likely to be small of stature or afflicted with disfigurement or some other physical deformity which sets him apart from ordinary people. He plays an insignificant part in the community and has grown up in straitened circumstances. In many cases his parents have been divorced or he is an orphan and has had an emotionally starved childhood. Often he has not previously committed any serious crime."'

Raising his eyes, he said, 'This is based on a compilation of facts that have emerged from interrogation and mental examinations of American mass murderers.'

'A mass murderer like this must be stark, raving mad, Gunvald Larsson said. 'Can't people see that before he rushes out and kills a bunch of people?'

"‘A person who is a psychopath can appear quite normal until the moment when something happens to trigger his abnormality. Psychopathy implies that one or more of this person's traits are abnormally developed, while in other respects he is quite normal - for instance as regards aptitude, working capacity, etc. And in fact, most of these people who have suddenly committed a mass murder, recklessly and apparently without any motive, are described by neighbours and friends as considerate, kind and polite, and the last people on earth one would expect to act in this manner. Several of these American cases have told that they have been aware of their disease for some time and have tried to suppress their destructive tendencies, until at last they gave way to them. A mass murderer can suffer from persecution mania or megalomania or have a morbid guilt complex. It is not unusual for him to explain his actions by saying simply that he wanted to become famous and see his name in big headlines. Almost always, a desire for revenge or self-assertion lies behind the crime. He feels belittled, misunderstood and badly treated. In almost every case he has great sexual problems.'"

When Melander finished reading there was silence in the room. Martin Beck stared out of the window. He was pale and hollow-eyed and stooped more than usual.

Kollberg sat on Gunvald Larsson's desk, linking his paper clips together into a long chain. Irritated, Gunvald Larsson pulled the box of clips towards him. Kollberg broke the silence.

'That man Whitman, who shot a lot of people from the university tower in Austin,' he said. 'I read a book about him yesterday, in which an Austrian psychology professor stated that Whitman's sexual problem really was that he wanted to have intercourse with his mother. Instead of boring into her with his penis, he wrote, he stuck a knife into her. I haven't Fredrik's memory, but the last sentence of the book went like this: "Then he climbed the erect tower - a distinct phallic symbol - and discharged his deathly seed like arrows of love overt Mother Earth.'"

Månsson entered the room, his everlasting toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

"What the blazes are you talking about?' he asked.

'Maybe the bus is some sort of sex symbol,' Gunvald Larsson said reflectingly. 'Horizontal, though.'

Månsson goggled at him.

Martin Beck got up, went over to Melander and picked up the green booklet

'I'll borrow this and read through it in peace and quiet,' he said. 'Without any witty comments.'

He walked towards the door but was stopped by Månsson, who took his toothpick out of his mouth and said, 'What am I to do now?'

'I don't know. Ask Kollberg,' Martin Beck said curtly and left the room.

'You can go and talk to that Arab's landlady,' Kollberg said.

He wrote the name and address on a piece of paper, which he gave to Månsson.

'What's bothering Martin?' Gunvald Larsson asked. 'Why's he so moody?'

Kollberg shrugged.

'I expect he has his reasons,' he said.

It took Månsson a good half hour to make his way through the Stockholm traffic to Norra Stationsgatan. As he parked the car opposite the terminus of route 47 the time was a few minutes past four and it was already dark.

There were two tenants called Karlsson in the building, but Månsson had no difficulty working out which was the right one.

On the door were eight cards, fastened with thumb tacks. Two of them were printed, the others were written in a variety of hands and all bore foreign names. The name Mohammed Boussie was not among them.

Månsson rang the bell and the door was opened by a swarthy man in wrinkled pants and white vest.

'May I speak to Mrs Karlsson?' Månsson said.

The man showed white teeth in a broad smile and flung out his arms.

'Mrs Karlsson not home,' he said in broken Swedish. 'Back soon.'

'Then I'll wait here,' Månsson said, stepping into the hall.

Unbuttoning his coat he looked at the smiling man.

'Did you know Mohammed Boussie who lived here?' he asked.

The smile was wiped off the man's face.

'Yes,' he said. 'It goddam terrible. Awful. He be my friend, Mohammed.'

'Are you an Arab too?' Månsson asked.

'No. Turk. You foreigner too?'

'No,' Månsson replied. 'Swedish.'

'Oh, I thought you had a little accent,' the Turk said.

As Månsson did have a broad Skane accent, it was not surprising that the Turk took him for a foreigner.

'I'm a policeman,' Månsson said, looking at the man sternly. 'I'd like to look around if you don't mind. Is there anyone else at home?'

'No, only me. I sick.'

Månsson looked about him. The hall was dark and narrow; it was furnished with a kitchen chair, a small table and an umbrella stand of metal. On the table lay a couple of newspapers and some letters with foreign stamps. In addition to the front door, there were five doors in the hall; two of these, smaller than the others, probably belonged to a toilet and a coat closet One of them was a double door; Månsson went over to it and opened one half.

'Mrs Karlsson's private room,' the man in the vest cried out in alarm. 'To go in, forbidden.'

Månsson glanced into the room, which was cluttered with furniture and evidently served as both bedroom and living room.

The next door led to the kitchen, which was large and had been modernized.

'Forbidden to go in kitchen,' said the lurk behind him. 'How many rooms are there?' Månsson asked. 'Mrs Karlsson's and the kitchen and the room for us,' said the man. 'And the toilet and closet.' Månsson frowned.

'Two rooms and kitchen, that is,' he said to himself.

'You look our room,' the Turk said, holding open the door.

The room measured about 23 feet by 16. It had two windows on to the street with flimsy, faded curtains. Along the walls stood beds of various types and between the windows was a narrow couch with the head to the wall.

Månsson counted six beds. Three of them were unmade. The room was littered with shoes, clothes, books and newspapers. The centre of the floor was occupied by a round, white-lacquered table, surrounded by five odd chairs. The remaining piece of furniture was a tall, dark-stained chest of drawers, which stood against the wall by one of the windows.

The room had two more doors. A bed was placed in front of one of them, which without doubt led to Mrs Karlsson's room and was locked. Inside the other was a small built-in wardrobe, stuffed with clothes and suitcases.

'Do six of you sleep here?' Månsson asked

'No, eight,' the Turk replied

Walking over to the bed in front of the door, he half drew out a trundle bed and pointed to one of the other beds.

'Two like this,' he said 'Mohammed had that one.'

‘Who are the other seven?' Månsson asked 'Turks like you?'

'No, we three Turks, two - one Arab, two Spanish men, one Finnish man, and the new one, he Greek.'

'Do you eat here too?'

The Turk glided swiftly across the room and moved the pillow on one of the beds. Månsson caught a glimpse of a pornographic magazine before it was hidden by the pillow.

'Excuse, please,' the Turk said. 'Here it is ... it is not so tidy. Do we eat here? No, cooking, forbidden. Forbidden to use kitchen, forbidden to have electric hot plate in room. We not allowed to cook, not allowed to make coffee.'

'How much rent do you pay?'

'We pay 350 kronor each,' said the Turk.

'A month?'

'Yes. All months 350 kronor.'

He nodded and scratched himself in the thick black growth resembling horsehair on his chest, visible above the low-necked vest.

'I earn lot of money,' he said. 'One hundred seventy kronor a week. I am lorry driver. Before, I work restaurant and not earn so good.'

'Do you know whether Mohammed Boussie had any relations?' Månsson asked. 'Parents or brothers and sisters?' The Turk shook his head.

'No, I not know. We were much pals, but Mohammed not say much. He very afraid.'

Månsson stood by the window looking at a knot of shivering people who stood waiting for the bus at the terminus.

He turned around.

'Afraid?'

'Not afraid. What do you say? Ah yes, shuy.' 'Shy, uh-huh,' Månsson said. 'Do you know how long he lived here?'

The Turk sat down on the couch between the windows and shook his head.

'No, I not know. I come here last month and Mohammed - he already live here.'

Månsson had broken into a sweat under his thick overcoat. The air seemed thick with the smell that had oozed from the room's eight inmates.

Månsson wished fervently that he were back in Malmö, in his nice tidy flat.

Fishing his last toothpick out of his pocket, he asked, 'When will Mrs Karlsson be back?' The Turk shrugged. 'I not know. Soon.'

Månsson stuck the toothpick in his mouth, sat down at the round table and waited.

After half an hour he tossed the chewed remains of the toothpick into the ashtray. Two more of Mrs Karlsson's lodgers had arrived, but there was still no sign of the landlady herself.

The newcomers were the two Spaniards, and since their knowledge of Swedish was scant and Månsson didn't know one word of Spanish, he soon gave up trying to question them. The only information he got was that their names were Ramón and Juan and that they worked as busboys at a grill bar.

The Turk had thrown himself on the couch and was leafing idly through a German magazine. The Spaniards talked animatedly while they changed their clothes for an evening out; their plans seemed to include a girl called Kerstin, whom they were evidently discussing.

Månsson kept looking at his watch. He had made up his mind not to wait a minute longer than half-past five.

At twenty-eight minutes past five Mrs Karlsson returned.

She placed Månsson in her best sofa, offered him a glass of port and burst into a jeremiad concerning her trials as a landlady.

'It's not at all nice, I can tell you, for a poor lone woman to have the house full of men,' she whined. 'And foreigners, what's more. But what is a poor hard-up widow to do?'

Månsson made a rough estimate. The hard-up widow raked in nearly 3,000 kronor a month in rent.

'That Mohammed,' she said, pursing her lips. 'He owed me a month's rent Perhaps you could arrange for me to get it? He had money in the bank all right'

To Månsson's question about her impression of Mohammed, she replied, 'Well, for an Arab he was quite nice, really. They're usually so dirty and unreliable, you know. But he was nice and quiet and seemed to behave himself all right - he didn't drink and I don't think he brought girls in. But as I said, he owes me a month's rent'

She appeared to be well informed about the private lives of her lodgers; sure enough, Ramón was going with a slut called Kerstin, but she could tell him little about Mohammed.

He had a married sister in Paris, who used to send him letters, but she couldn't read them because they were written in Arabic.

Mrs Karlsson fetched a bundle of letters and gave them to Månsson. The sister's name and address were written on the backs of the envelopes.

All Mohammed Boussie's worldly possessions had been packed into a canvas suitcase. Månsson took this with him as well.

Mrs Karlsson reminded him once more of the unpaid rent before shutting the door after him.

'My God, what an old bitch,' Månsson mumbled to himself as he went down the stairs to the street and his car.

₁₉

Monday. Snow. Wind. Bitter cold. 'Fine track snow’ Rönn said.

He was standing by the window, looking dreamily out over the street and the rooftops, which were only just visible in the floating white haze.

Gunvald Larsson glared at him suspiciously and said, 'Is that meant to be a joke?'

'No. I was just thinking how it felt when I was a boy.'

'Extremely constructive. You wouldn't care to do something a little more worthwhile? To help the investigation along?'

'Sure,' Rönn said. 'But...'

'But what?'

'That's just what I was going to say. But what?'

'Nine people have been murdered,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'And here you stand not knowing what to do with yourself. You're a detective, aren't you?'

'Yes.'

'Well then, detect, for Christ's sake.' 'Where?'

'I don't know. Do something.' 'What are you doing yourself?'

'Can't you see? I'm sitting here reading this psychological bilge that Melander and the doctors have concocted.' 'Why?'

'I don't know. How can I know everything?'

A week had passed since the bloodbath in the bus. The state of the investigation was unchanged and the lack of constructive ideas was making itself felt Even the spate of useless tips from the general public had begun to dry up.

The consumer society and its harassed citizens had other things to think about Although it was over a month to Christmas, the advertising orgy had begun and the buying hysteria spread as swiftly and ruthlessly as the Black Death along the festooned shopping streets. The epidemic swept all before it and there was no escape. It ate its way into houses and flats, poisoning and breaking down everything and everyone in its path. Children were already howling from exhaustion and fathers of families were plunged into debt until their next holiday. The gigantic legalized confidence trick claimed victims everywhere. The hospitals had a boom in cardiac infarctions, nervous breakdowns and burst stomach ulcers.