The Laughing Policeman (19 page)

'And what have you found?'

'Nothing much. He wasn't in the habit of hiding things. Besides, he was very tidy. He had an extra notebook, of course. It's over there on the desk.'

Kollberg got up and fetched the notebook. It was of the same type as the one Stenström had had in his pocket

'There's hardly anything in that book,' Åsa Torell said.

She pulled the ski sock off her right foot and scratched herself under the instep.

Her foot was thin and slender and gracefully arched, with long straight toes. Kollberg looked at it. Then he looked inside the notebook. She was right. There was almost nothing in it The first page was covered with jottings about the poor wretch of a man called Birgersson who had killed his wife.

At the top of the second page was a single word. A name. Morris.

Åsa Torell looked at the pad and shrugged.

'A car’ she said.

'Or a literary agent in New York,' Kollberg replied.

She was standing by the table. Her eye caught the much-discussed photographs. Suddenly she slammed her hand down on the table and shouted, 'If at least I'd got pregnant!'

Then she lowered her voice.

'He said we had plenty of time. That we'd wait until he was promoted.'

Kollberg moved hesitantly towards the hall. 'Plenty of time,' she mumbled. And then: 'What's to become of me?' Turning around, he said, "This won't do, Åsa. Come.' Whirling around, she snarled at him, 'Come? Where? To bed? Oh, sure.'

Kollberg looked at her.

Nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand would have seen a pale, thin, undeveloped girl who held herself badly, who had a delicate body, thin nicotine-stained fingers and a ravaged face. Unkempt and dressed in baggy, stained clothes and with one foot covered by a skiing sock many sizes too large.

Lennart Kollberg saw a physically and mentally complex young woman with blazing eyes and a promising width between her thighs, provocative and interesting and worth getting to know.

Had Stenström also seen this, or had he been one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine and merely had a stroke of luck?

Luck.

'I didn't mean that,' Kollberg said. 'Come home with me. We have plenty of room. You've been alone long enough.' She was hardly in the car before she started to cry.

A cutting wind greeted Nordin as he emerged from the underground at the corner of Sveavägen and Rådmansgatan. It was blowing from behind him and he walked briskly south along Sveavägen. When he turned into Tegnérgatan he was sheltered and slowed his steps. About twenty yards from the street corner lay a cafe He stopped outside the window and peered in.

Behind the counter sat a red-haired woman in a pistachio-green uniform, talking on the phone. The café was otherwise empty.

Nordin walked on, crossed Luntmakargatan and regarded an oil painting that was hanging inside the glass door of a secondhand bookshop. While he stood puzzling as to whether the artist had meant the picture to represent two elks, two reindeer or perhaps an elk and a reindeer, he heard a voice behind him.

'AberMensch, bist Du doch ganz verrückt?’

Nordin turned around and saw two men crossing the street Not until they reached the pavement on the other side did he see the café. When Nordin entered, the two men were on their way down a curving staircase beyond the counter. He followed them.

The place was full of young people and the music and the buzz of voices were deafening. He looked around for a vacant table, but there didn't seem to be one. For a moment he wondered whether he ought to take off his hat and coat, but decided not to risk it. You couldn't trust anyone in Stockholm, he was convinced of that.

Nordin studied the female guests. There were several blondes in the room but none who fitted the description of Blonde Malin.

German seemed to be the predominant language. Beside a thin brunette, who was obviously Swedish, there was a vacant chair. Nordin unbuttoned his coat and sat down. Put his hat in his lap, thinking that his coat of lodencloth and his Tyrolean hat probably made him look a good deal like one of the many Germans there.

He had to wait a quarter of an hour before the waitress came up to him. Meanwhile he looked about him. The brunette's girlfriend on the other side of the table eyed him guardedly from time to time.

He stirred his cup of coffee and stole a glance at the girl in the chair next to him. In the faint hope of being taken for a regular customer he took pains to utter the words in the Stockholm dialect when he turned to her and said, 'Do you know where Blonde Malin is this evening?'

The brunette stared at him. Then she smiled, bent over the table and said to her girlfriend, 'Eva, this guy from the north is asking after Blonde Malin. Do you know where she is?'

The friend looked at Nordin, then she called to someone at a table farther off. "There's a cop here who's asking where Blonde Malin is. Do any of you know?'

'No-o-o,' came a chorus from the other table.

As Nordin sipped his coffee he wondered gloomily how they could see he was a policeman. He couldn't make these Stockholmers out.

When he had mounted the stairs to the shop floor where the pastries were sold, the waitress who had brought his coffee came up to him.

'I heard you're looking for Blonde Malin,' she said. 'Are you really a policeman?'

Nordin hesitated. Then he nodded lugubriously.

'If you can run that tart in for something, I couldn't be more pleased. I think I know where she is. When she isn't here, she's usually at a café on Engelbrektsplan.'

Nordin thanked her and went out into the cold.

Blonde Malin was not at the other café either; all its regular customers seemed to have deserted it Nordin, reluctant to give in, went up to a woman who was sitting by herself and reading a thumbed and grubby magazine. She didn't know who Blonde Malin was, but suggested that he should look in at a wine bar on Kungsgatan.

Nordin trudged on along the odious Stockholm streets, wishing he were at home in Sundsvall again.

This time he was rewarded for his pains.

He shook his head at the cloakroom attendant who came forward to take his coat, stood in the doorway of the bar and looked around. He caught sight of her almost at once.

She was big-framed, but didn't seem fat Her fair hair, bleached by the look of it, was piled up on top of her head.

Nordin didn't doubt for a moment that this was Blonde Malin.

She was sitting on a wall-seat with a wineglass in front of her. Beside her sat a much older woman, whose long black hair, hanging in unruly curls to her shoulders, didn't make her look any younger. Sure to be a free whore, Nordin thought

He observed the two women for a while. They were not talking to each other. Blonde Malin was staring at the wineglass, which she twiddled between her fingers. The black-haired woman kept looking around the room, now and then flinging her long hair aside with a coquettish toss of the head.

Nordin turned to the cloakroom attendant.

'Excuse me, but do you know the name of that blonde lady sitting over by the wall?'

The man looked across the room.

'Lady!' he snorted. 'Her! No, I don't know her name, but I think they call her Malin. Fat Malin or something like that' Nordin gave him his hat and coat

The black-haired woman looked at him expectantly as he came up to their table.

'Pardon my intrusion,' Nordin said. 'I'd like a word with Miss Malin if she doesn't mind.'

Blonde Malin looked at him and sipped her wine.

‘What about?' she said.

'About a friend of yours,' Nordin said. 'Perhaps we could move to another table and have a quiet talk?'

Blonde Malin looked at her companion and he hastened to add, 'If your friend doesn't mind, of course.'

The black-haired woman filled her glass from the carafe on the table and got up.

'Don't let me disturb you,' she said huffily.

Blonde Malin said nothing.

'I'll go and sit with Tora,' the woman said. 'So long, Malin.' She picked up her glass and went over to a table farther down the room.

Nordin drew out a chair and sat down. Blonde Malin looked at him expectantly.

'I'm Detective Inspector Ulf Nordin,' he said. 'It's possible that you can help us with something.'

'Oh yeah?' Blonde Malin said. 'And what would that be? You said it was about a friend of mine.'

'Yes,' Nordin replied. 'We'd like some information about a man you know.'

Blonde Malin looked at Ulf Nordin contemptuously. 'I'm not grassing on anybody,' she said. Nordin took out a pack of cigarettes and offered it to her. She took one and he lit it for her.

'It's not a question of being a grass,' he said. 'A few weeks ago you rode with two men in a white Volvo Amazon to a garage in Hägersten. The garage is on Klubbacken and is owned by a Swiss named Horst. The man who drove the car was a Spaniard. Do you remember that occasion?'

'Supposing I do,' Blonde Malin said. 'What of it? Nisse and I only went with this Paco so Nisse could show him the way to the garage. Anyway, he's gone back to Spain now.'

'Paco?'

'Yes.'

She drained her glass and poured out the rest of the wine in the carafe.

'May I offer you something?' Nordin asked. 'A little more wine?' She nodded and Nordin beckoned to the waitress. He ordered half a carafe of wine and a stein of beer. 'Who's Nisse?' he asked

'The guy with me in the car, of course. You said so yourself just now.'

'Yes, but what's his other name besides Nisse? What does he do?' 'His name's Göransson. Nils Erik Göransson. I don't know what he does. I ain't seen him for a couple of weeks.' 'Why?' Nordin asked. 'Eh?'

‘Why haven't you seen him for a couple of weeks? Didn't you meet quite often before that?'

'We ain't married, are we? We're not even going steady. We just went together sometimes. Maybe he's met some girl. How do I know. I haven't seen him for a while at any rate.'

The waitress brought the wine and Nordin's beer. Blonde Malin immediately filled her glass.

'Do you know where he lives?' Nordin asked.

'Nisse? No, he sort of didn't have anywhere to live. He lived with me for a time and then with a mate on the South Side, but I don't think he's there now. I don't know, really. And even if I did, I'm not too sure I'd tell a cop. I'm not going to inform on anybody.'

Nordin took a draught of beer and looked amiably at the large, fair girl opposite him.

'You don't have to, Miss — Pardon me, but what's your name besides Malin?'

'My name ain't Malin at all,' she said. 'My name's Magdalena Rosén. People call me Blonde Malin because I'm so blonde.' She stroked her hair.

'What do you want Nisse for, anyway? Has he done something? I ain't going to sit here answering a lot of questions if I don't know what it's all about'

'No, of course not I'll tell you what it is you can help us with,' Ulf Nordin said.

He finished his beer and wiped his mouth.

'May I ask just one more question?' he said.

She nodded.

'How was Nisse usually dressed?'

She frowned and thought for a moment.

'Most of the time he wore a suit,' she said. 'One of them light beige ones with covered buttons. And shirt and shoes and underpants, like all other guys.'

• 'Didn't he have an overcoat?'
  

'Well, I'd hardly call it an overcoat One of them thin black things - nylon, you know. Why?'

She looked inquiringly at Nordin.

'Well, Miss Rosen, it's possible that he is dead.'

'Dead? Nisse? But... why... why do you say it's possible? How do you know he's dead?'

Ulf Nordin took out his handkerchief and wiped his neck. It was very warm in the bar and his whole body felt sticky.

'The thing is,' he said, 'we've a man out at the morgue we haven't been able to identify. There's reason to suspect that the dead man is Nils Erik Göransson.'

'How's he supposed to have died?' Blonde Malin asked suspiciously.

'He was one of the passengers on that bus that you've no doubt read about He was shot in the head and must have been killed outright Since you're the only person we've traced who knew Göransson well, we'd be grateful if you'd come out to the morgue tomorrow and see if it's him.'

She stared at Nordin in horror.

'Me? Come out to the morgue? Not on your life!'

The time was nine o'clock on Wednesday morning when Nordin and Blonde Malin got out of a taxi outside the institute for forensic medicine on Tomtebodavägen. Martin Beck had been waiting for them for a quarter of an hour and together they entered the morgue.

Blonde Malin was pale under her carelessly applied make-up. Her face was bloated and her fair hair was not arranged as neatly as it had been the evening before.

Nordin had had to wait in her hall while she got ready. When at last they came out into the street, he noted that she showed up considerably more to her advantage in the dimness of the bar than in the bleary morning light

The staff of the morgue were prepared and the superintendent showed them into the cold-storage room.

A cloth had been laid over the corpse's bullet-shattered face, but the hair had been left free.

Blonde Malin gripped Nordin's arm and whispered, 'Jesus Christ'

Nordin laid his arm around her broad back and led her closer.

'Take a good look,' he said quietly. 'See if you recognize him.'

She put her hand to her mouth and looked at the naked body.

'What's wrong with his face?' she asked. 'Can't I see his face?'

'You can be glad you're spared it,' Martin Beck said. ‘You should be able to recognize him just the same.'

Blonde Malin nodded. Then she took her hand away from her mouth and nodded again.

'Yes,' she said. 'Yes, that's Nisse. Them scars and... yes, it's him all right'

'Thank you, Miss Rosén,' Martin Beck said. 'Now what about a cup of coffee with us at police headquarters?'

Blonde Malin, pale and quiet, sat beside Nordin in the back of the taxi. Now and then she mumbled, 'Jesus Christ, how awful.'

Martin Beck and Ulf Nordin treated her to coffee and sweet rolls and after a while Kollberg and Melander and Rönn joined them.