Man On The Balcony (6 page)

SURE ENOUGH, the man's name was Eriksson. He was a warehouse laborer and it didn't take an expert to see that he was an alcoholic. He was sixty years old, tall, bald and emaciated. His whole body twitched and shook.

Kollberg and Martin Beck questioned him for two hours, which were equally wretched for all concerned.

The man admitted the same disgusting details over and over again. At intervals he sniffled and sobbed, calling heaven to witness that he had gone straight home from the restaurant on Friday afternoon. At any rate he couldn't remember anything else.

After two hours he confessed that he had stolen two hundred kronor in July 1964 and a cycle when he was eighteen. He then did nothing but snivel. He was a human wreck, an outcast from the dubious fellowship that surrounded him, and utterly alone.

Kollberg and Martin Beck regarded him gloomily and sent him back to the cell.

At the same time other men from the division, and from the fifth district, tried to find someone in the apartment house at Hagagatan who could either confirm or confute his alibi They were not successful.

The autopsy report available about four o'clock that afternoon was still preliminary. It spoke of strangulation, finger marks on the neck and sexual assault. Out-and-out rape had not been established.

Otherwise the report contained negative information. There was no indication that the girl had had a chance to resist. No scrapings of skin had been found under the nails and no bruises on arms and hands, though there were some on the lower abdomen, as if caused by blows of a fist

The technical division had examined her clothes, and had nothing unusual to report. Her pants, however, were missing. They couldn't be found anywhere. They had been white cotton, size 6, and a well-known make.

In the evening the men detailed to go around from door to door had handed out five hundred stenciled questionnaires. Only one reply of any interest had been received. An eighteen-year-old girl by the name of Majken Jansson, who lived in the apartment house at Sveavägen 103 and was the daughter of a businessman, said that she and a boyfriend her own age had spent about twenty minutes in Vanadis Park sometime between eight and nine. She wasn't sure of the exact time. They had seen nothing and heard nothing.

Asked what they had been doing in Vanadis Park, she had replied that they had been at a family dinner party and had just gone out to get a breath of air.

'A breath of air," Melander said thoughtfully.

'Between the legs, no doubt," Gunvald Larsson said.

Larsson had been in the regular navy and was still in the reserve. Now and then he gave vent to his below-decks humor.

Hour after hour dragged past. The investigation machinery went grinding on. The time was already past one o'clock on the night between Sunday and Monday when Martin Beck came home to Bagarmossen. Everyone was asleep. He took a can of beer out of the icebox and made a cheese sandwich. Then he drank the beer and threw the sandwich into the garbage bag.

After he had got into bed he lay for a while thinking of the alcoholic warehouse laborer called Eriksson, who three years ago had stolen two hundred kronor from a workmate's coat.

Kollberg couldn't get to sleep. He lay in the dark staring at the ceiling. He too thought of the man called Eriksson whose name had been in the vice squad's register. He also considered the fact that if the man who had committed the murder in Vanadis Park was not in the register, then computer technology was about as much good to them as it had been to the American police in their hunt for the Boston strangle!. In other words, none at all. The Boston strangler had killed thirteen people, all lone women, in two years without leaving a single clue.

Now and then he looked at his wife. She was asleep, but twitched every time the baby in her body kicked.

IT WAS MONDAY afternoon, fifty-four hours after the dead girl had been found in Vanadis Park.

The police had appealed to the public for help through the press, radio and television, and over three hundred tips had already come in. Each item of information was registered and examined by a special working group, after which the results were studied in detail.

The vice squad combed its registers, the forensic laboratory dealt with the meager material from the scene of the crime, the computers worked at high pressure, men from the assault squad went around the neighborhood knocking on doors, suspects and possible witnesses were questioned, and as yet all this activity had led nowhere. The murderer was unknown and still at large.

The papers were piling up on Martin Beck's desk. Since early morning he had been working on the never-ceasing stream of reports and interrogation statements. The telephone had never stopped ringing, but in order to get a breathing space he had now asked Kollberg to take his calls during the next hour or so. Gunvald Larsson and Melander were spared all these telephone calls; they sat behind closed doors sifting material.

Martin Beck had had only a few hours' sleep during the night and he had skipped lunch so as to have time for a press conference, which had yielded the journalists very little.

He yawned and looked at the time, astonished that it was already a quarter past three. Gathering up a bundle of papers that belonged to Melander's department, he knocked at the door and went in to Melander and Larsson.

Melander did not look up when he entered the room. They had worked together for so long that he knew Martin Beck's knock. Gunvald Larsson glared at the bundle of papers in Martin Beck's hand and said:

'Good God, have you brought still more? We're swamped with work already."

Martin Beck shrugged and put the papers down at Melander's elbow.

'I was going to order some coffee," he said. "Like some?"

Melander shook his head without looking up.

'Good idea," Gunvald Larsson said.

Martin Beck went out, shut the door behind him and collided with Kollberg, who had come rushing up. Martin Beck saw the frantic expression on Kollberg's round face and asked:

'What's up with you?"

Kollberg gripped his arm and said, so fast that the words tumbled over each other:

'Martin, it has happened again! He has done it again! In Tanto Park."

They drove across the West Bridge with sirens full on, and on the radio they heard that all available squad cars had been directed to Tanto Park to cordon it off. All that Martin Beck and Kollberg had been told before leaving headquarters was that a girl had been found dead near the open-air theater, that the circumstances were similar to the murder in Vanadis Park and that the body had been found so soon after the crime that there was a chance the murderer had not yet got very far.

As they drove past the Zinkensdamm athletic field they saw a couple of black-and-white cars turn into Wollmar Yxkullsgatan. One or two more were standing in Ringvägen and inside the park.

They pulled up outside the row of old wooden houses in Sköldgatan. The road into the park was blocked by a car with a radio aerial. On the footpath they saw a uniformed police officer stop some children who were on their way up the hill.

Martin Beck strode swiftly towards the officer, leaving

Kollberg to follow as best he could. The policeman saluted and pointed up into the park. Martin Beck strode on without slacking his pace. The park was very hummocky and not until he had passed the theater and climbed' the slope did he see some men standing in a semicircle with their backs to him. They were in a hollow about thirty yards from the road. Farther away, where the road forked, a uniformed policeman was on guard to keep inquisitive people away.

As he went down the slope Kollberg caught up with him. They could hear the policemen down there talking, but they fell silent as Beck and Kollberg approached. The men saluted and stepped aside. Martin Beck heard Kollberg panting.

The girl was lying on her back in the grass with both arms bent over her head. The left leg was bent and the knee drawn up so high to the side that the thigh lay at right angles to the body. The right leg lay stretched out obliquely from the trunk. Her face was turned upwards, with half-closed eyes and open mouth. Blood had trickled down from the nostrils. A skipping rope of yellow transparent plastic was wound tightly around her neck in several coils. She was wearing a yellow sleeveless cotton dress buttoned right down the front. The three bottom buttons had been torn off. She had no pants. On her feet were white socks and red sandals. She looked about ten years old. She was dead.

Martin Beck saw all this during the few seconds he was able to keep his eyes on her. Then he turned and looked towards the road. Two of the men from the technical division were running down the slope. They were dressed in gray-blue coveralls and one of them was carrying a large gray metal box. The second man had a coil of rope in one hand and a black bag in the other. As they got nearer the man with the rope called:

'That bastard who has left his car in the middle of the road will have to move it so that we can drive up."

Then, glancing at the dead girl, he ran down to the road fork and began cordoning off the area with the rope.

A radio policeman in a leather jacket was standing beside the road speaking, into a walkie-talkie while a plainclothes man stood beside him listening. Martin Beck recognized the plainclothes man. His name was Manning and he belonged to the protection squad in second district.

Manning caught sight of Martin Beck and Kollberg, said a few words to the radio policeman and then came up to them.

'It seems as if the whole area is cordoned off now," he said. "As far as possible."

'How long since she was found?" Martin Beck asked.

Manning looked at his wrist watch.

'It's twenty-five minutes since the first car got here," he said.

'And you've no description to go on?" Kollberg asked.

'No, unfortunately."

'Who found her?" Martin Beck asked.

'A couple of small boys. They gave the alarm to a radio car that was driving along Ringvägen. She was still warm when they got here. Doesn't seem to be long since it happened."

Martin Beck looked around him. The technical division car was driving down the slope, closely followed by the doctor's.

From the hollow where the dead child's body lay nothing could be seen of the allotment gardens that began behind a mound about fifty yards to the west. Above the treetops the upper stories of one of the apartment houses in Tantogatan were visible, but the railroad that divided the street from the park was hidden by the greenery.

'He couldn't have chosen a better spot in the whole of Stockholm," Martin Beck said.

'A worse one, you mean," Kollberg said.

He was right. Even if the man guilty of the little girl's death was still within the area, he had a pretty good chance of escaping. The park is the biggest in the inner part of the city. Next to Tanto Park itself there are allotment gardens and cottages, and below them, on the shore of Arstaviken, is a straggling line of small boatyards, storehouses, workshops, scrapyards and ramshackle wooden huts. Between Wollmar Yxkullsgatan, which cuts through the area from Ringvägen to the water, and Hornsgatan lies the Högalid Institution for alcoholics, consisting of several large, irregularly placed buildings. Round about are several more storehouses and wooden sheds. Between the institution and the Zinkensdamm athletic field is yet another colony of allotment gardens. A viaduct over the railroad connects the south side of the park with Tantogatan, where five gigantic apartment houses have been built on the rocks nearest the water. Farther up, at the corner of Ringvägen, is the Tanto workingmen's hostel, consisting of a line of low, sprawling wooden huts.

Martin Beck sized up the situation as almost hopeless. He did not see how they could possibly catch the murderer here and now. For one thing, they didn't even have his description; for another, he was sure to have made a clear getaway by this time. Thirdly, the alcoholics* home and the working-men's hostel could supply them with so many suspicious individuals that it would take days to question them.

The next hour confirmed his doubts. When the doctor had finished his preliminary examination he could merely say that the girl had been strangled and probably raped, and that death had occurred quite recently. The dog van had arrived soon after Martin Beck and Kollberg, but the only scent the dogs picked up led straight out of the park towards Wollmar Yxkullsgatan. The plainclothes policemen in the protection squad were questioning possible witnesses, as yet without result. A number of people had been in the park and the allotment gardens, but no one had seen or heard anything that could be connected with the murder.

The time was ten minutes to five and on the sidewalk of Ringvägen a group of people stood staring inquisitively at the apparently aimless work of the police. Reporters and photographers had arrived in a stream; some of them had already returned to their editorial offices to supply readers with juicy descriptions of the second murder of a little girl in Stockholm within the space of three days, committed by a maniac who was still at large.

Martin Beck caught sight of Kollberg's round behind in the open door of a radio car that was parked on the gravel nearest Ringvägen. He broke away from a cluster of journalists and went up to Kollberg, who was leaning into the car and speaking on the radio. He waited until Kollberg had finished speaking and then pinched his behind. Kollberg backed out of the car and straightened up.

'Oh, it's you. I thought it was one of the dogs."

'Do you know if anyone has told the girl's parents?" Martin Beck asked.

'Yes," Kollberg replied. "We're spared that."

'I thought I'd go and talk to the boys who found her. They live over there in Tantogatan."

'Okay," Kollberg said. "Ill stay here."

'Fine. Be seeing you," Martin Beck said.

The boys lived in one of the big bow-shaped apartment houses in Tantogatan and Martin Beck found them both at home. They were suffering from shock after their awful experience, but at the same time could not hide the fact that they found it all very exciting.