The Laughing Policeman (8 page)

'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...'

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 AKESTENSTRÖM 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