The Locked Room (10 page)

'Then I can inform you, Mr Roos, that the job was carried out at closing time by someone who, disguised as a woman, first appro¬priated ninety thousand kronor in cash, then shot down a man who was a client of the bank, and then fled from the scene in a Renault. This shooting business of course places the crime in quite another category, as you, Mr Roos, will appreciate.'

'What I don't understand is how I am supposed to have had anything to do with all this,' Roos said irritably.

'Mr Roos, when did you last meet our friends Malmström and Mohrén?' Bulldozer enquired.

'I told you that last time, didn't I? I haven't seen them since.'

'And you've no idea of their whereabouts?'

'None. All I know about them is what you've just been telling me. I've not seen them since before they were put away in Kumla.'

Bulldozer gave Werner Roos a straight look, then wrote some¬thing down on a pad in front of him, closed it, and got up.

'Oh well,' he said nonchalantly. 'That shouldn't be so hard to find out' He went over to the window and lowered the blinds against the afternoon sun, which had begun to shine into the room.

Werner Roos waited until he had sat down again. Then he said: 'This much I can say, anyway. If there was any shooting involved, then Malmström and Mohrén weren't mixed up in it. They're not that stupid.'

'It's possible Malmström and Mohrén wouldn't start shooting; but that doesn't rule out their being mixed up in it - like sitting outside in the getaway car, for example. Eh?'

Roos shrugged his shoulders and glared at the floor, his chin buried firmly in the collar of his sweater.

'Moreover, it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that they used a companion, a female companion maybe,' Bulldozer went on enthusiastically. 'It's a possibility we must take into account, yes. Wasn't it Malmström's fiancee who was in on that job they were put away for last time?' He snapped his fingers in the air. 'Gunilla Bergström, yes! She got one and a half years, so we know where we have her,' he said.

Roos glanced at him without raising his head.

'She hasn't escaped yet,' Bulldozer explained parenthetically. 'But there are plenty of other girls, and obviously these gentlemen have nothing against female accomplices. Or what do you say, Mr Roos?'

Again Werner Roos shrugged his shoulders, straightening his back. 'Hmm, what should I say?' he said indifferently. 'After all, it's no concern of mine.'

'No, of course not,' said Bulldozer, nodding thoughtfully, his eyes on Roos. Then he leaned forward and laid the palms of his hands before him on the desk top. 'So you maintain you haven't met Malmström and Mohrén or even heard from them in the last six months?'

'Yes, I do,' said Werner Roos. 'As I've said before, I'm not respon¬sible for anything they may be up to. We've known each other since secondary school, we never denied that. Since then we've gone around together from time to time, that's something else I've never tried to conceal. But that doesn't mean we bump into each other every quarter of an hour or that they tell me where they're going or what they're up to. I'm the first to be sorry if they've gone off the rails, but as to any criminal activities, I've nothing to do with them. And as I've said before, I'd be glad to help them back on to the straight and narrow path. But anyway, it's a long time since I ran into them.'

'You do realize, Mr Roos, that what you're saying could become extremely incriminating and that you may also find yourself in a highly suspect position if it turns out that you've been in touch with these two?'

'I can't see why.'

Bulldozer smiled at him amiably. 'Oh yes, I'm sure you can!' He banged his palms down on the desk and got up. 'Now I've some other matters to see to,' he said.'We'll have to interrupt our talk and resume it a little later. If you'll excuse me, Mr Roos?' Bulldozer walked briskly out of the room, throwing a glance at Werner Roos before closing the door behind him.

Roos had struck him as being very troubled and disconcerted. Bulldozer rubbed his hands together in delight as he hurried off down the corridor.

After the door had closed behind Bulldozer Olsson, Werner Roos got up, drifted over to the window, and peered out through the Venetian blinds, whistling slowly and melodiously to himself. Then he glanced at his Rolex, frowned, quickly went over to Bulldozer's chair, and sat down. Drawing the telephone towards him, he lifted the receiver and dialled a number. While he was waiting he opened the drawers of the desk and looked through them one by one.

Someone answered and Roos said: 'Hi, kid, it's me. Look, can we meet a little later this evening, instead? I've got to have a talk with a guy, and it may take a couple of hours'

Roos took a pen marked 'state property' out of a drawer and picked his other ear with it as he listened. 'Fine,' he said, 'and then we'll go out and eat. I'm hungry as hell.' He scrutinized the pen, tossed it back, and shut the drawer. 'No, I'm in the bar now. It's a kind of hotel; but the grub's lousy here, so I'll wait and eat when we meet Seven, okay? Good, then I'll pick you up at seven. So long for now.'

Roos put down the receiver, got up, thrust his hands in his trouser pockets, and started to saunter around the room - whistling.

Bulldozer went in to Gunvald Larsson. 'I've got Roos here now,' he said.

‘Well, where was he last Friday, then? Was he in Kuala Lumpur or Singapore?'

'In Lisbon,' Bulldozer said delightedly. 'He's certainly got himself the perfect cover job for a gangster. Who else could come up with such fantastic alibis?'

'What else did he have to say?'

'Nothing. He knows nothing at all. Anyway nothing about the bank robbery, and he hasn't met Malmström and Mohrén for ages. He's slippery as an eel, crafty as a crayfish, and flies as fast as a horse can trot'

'In other words he's a travelling menagerie,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'Well, what are you going to do with him?'

Bulldozer sat down in the chair in front of Gunvald Larsson. 'I intend to let him go,' he said. 'And I intend to have him shad¬owed. Can you get someone to shadow Roos, someone he won't recognize?'

'Where's he got to be shadowed to? Honolulu? In that case I'll volunteer myself.'

'I'm serious,' said Bulldozer.

Gunvald Larsson sighed. 'I guess I'll have to arrange it,' he said. 'When's he to begin?'

'Now,' said Bulldozer. 'I'll let Roos go at once. He's off duty until Thursday afternoon, and before then he'll have shown us where Malmström and Mohrén are hiding out, just so long as we don't let him out of our sight'

'Thursday afternoon,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'Then we'll need at least two men who can relieve each other.'

'And they'll have to be damned good at shadowing,' said Bulldozer. 'He mustn't notice anything, or all will be lost'

'Give me fifteen minutes,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'I'll call you when it's all fixed.'

When Werner Roos climbed into a cab on Kungsholmsgatan twenty minutes later, Detective Sergeant Rune Ek was sitting at the wheel of a grey Volvo.

Rune Ek was a corpulent man in his fifties. He had white hair, glasses, and ulcers, and his doctor had just put him on a strict diet This was why he didn't get much out of the four hours he spent at a table for one in the Opera Cellar restaurant though Werner Roos and his red-haired lady friend apparently denied themselves nothing, whether dry or liquid, at their window table on the veranda.

Ek passed the long, light summer night in an elder grove out at Hässelby, furtively watching the redhead's breasts, which were to be observed intermittently bobbing up and down on the waves of Lake Malaren, as Werner Roos, like a latter-day Tarzan, did the crawl.

Later, as the morning sun shone down between the treetops, Ek continued this activity among some bushes outside a Hässelby bungalow. Having ascertained that the newly bathed couple were alone in the house, he devoted the following half hour to picking ticks out of his hair and clothes.

When, some hours later, Rune Ek was relieved, Werner Roos still hadn't put in an appearance. As far as anyone could see, it might take several hours before he dragged himself out of the redhead's arms in order, it was to be hoped, to look up his friends Malmström and Mohrén.

Anyone who had been in a position to compare the bank robbery squad to the robbers themselves would have found that in many ways they were evenly matched. The squad had enormous technical resources at its disposal, but its opponents possessed a large amount of working capital and also held the initiative.

Very likely Malmström and Mohrén would have made good policemen if anyone could have induced them to devote themselves to so dubious a career. Their physical qualities were formidable, nor was there much wrong with their intelligence.

Neither had ever occupied himself with anything except crime, and now, aged thirty-three and thirty-five respectively, they could rightly be described as able professional criminals. But since only a narrow group of citizens regarded the robbery business as respectable, they had adopted other professions on the side. On passports, driving licences, and other means of identification they described themselves as 'engineer' or 'executive', well-chosen labels in a country that literally swarms with engineers and executives. All their documents were made up in totally different names. The documents were forgeries, but with a particularly convincing appearance, both at first and second sight. Their passports, for

example, had already passed a series of tests, both at Swedish and foreign border crossings.

Personally, both Malmström and Mohrén seemed if possible even more trustworthy. They made a pleasant, straightforward impression and seemed healthy and vigorous. Four months of freedom had to some extent modified their appearance; both were now deeply tanned. Malmström had grown a beard, and Mohrén wore not only a moustache but also side-whiskers.

The suntan did not derive from any ordinary tourist trap like Majorca or the Canary Islands but from a three-week so-called photo safari in East Africa. This had been pure recreation. Later they'd made a couple of business trips, one to Italy to complete their equipment and the other to Frankfurt to hire a couple of efficient aides.

Back in Sweden they had carried out a few modest bank robberies as well as knocking off two cheque-cashing establish¬ments, which, for fiscal reasons of a technical nature, had not dared to contact the police.

The gross income from this activity was considerable, but they had incurred major expenses and were looking forward to consid¬erably more expenses in the near future.

A large investment, however, yields large dividends. So much they had learned from Sweden's half-socialist, half-capitalist economy, and the least one can say about Malmström's and Mohrén's goals was that they were extremely ambitious.

Malmström and Mohrén were working on an idea - an idea that was by no means new, but that did not diminish its appeal in any way. They were going to do one more job and then retire. At long last they were going to stage their really big coup.

By and large their preparations were complete. All problems of finance had been solved, and the plan was as good as set As yet they didn't know when or where; but they did know the most important thing: how. Their goal was in sight.

Though far from being criminals of the first order, Malmström and Mohrén were, as has been said, rather good at their job. The big-time criminal doesn't get caught. The big-time criminal doesn't rob banks. He sits in an office and presses buttons. He takes no risks. He doesn't disturb society's sacred cows. Instead he devotes himself to some kind of legalized extortion, preying on private individuals.

Big-time .criminals profit from everything - from poisoning nature and whole populations and then pretending to repair their ravages by inappropriate medicines; from purposely turning whole districts of cities into slums in order to pull them down and then rebuild others in their place. The new slums, of course, turn out to be far more deleterious to people's health than the old ones had been. But above all they don't get caught.

Malmström and Mohrén, on the other hand, had an almost pathetic knack for getting caught. But they now believed that they knew the reason for this: they had operated on too small a scale.

'Do you know what I was thinking about when I was taking a shower?' Malmström said. Emerging from the bathroom, he care¬fully spread a towel on the floor in front of him; he was wearing two others - one wound around his hips and the other draped over his shoulders. Malmström had a mania for cleanliness. This was already the fourth shower he'd taken today.

'Sure,' said Mohrén. 'Chicks.'

'How could you guess?'

Mohrén was sitting by the window, looking intently out over Stockholm. He was dressed in shorts and a thin white shirt and was holding up a pair of naval binoculars to his eyes.

The apartment where they were living was in one of the large mansion blocks on Danvik Cliffs, and the view was by no means bad.

'Work and chicks don't mix,' Mohrén said. 'You've seen how that turns out, haven't you?'

'I don't mix things, ever,' Malmström said, offended. 'Aren't I even allowed to think nowadays, huh?'

'Sure,' said Mohrén magnanimously. 'Just carry right on thinking; if you're up to it.' He let his binoculars follow a white steamboat which was coming in towards the Stream.

‘Yes, it's the Norrskär ' he said. 'Amazing that she's still on the job.'

'Who's still on what job?'

'No one you're interested in. Which ones were you thinking about?'

'Those birds in Nairobi. Some sexpots, eh? I've always said there's something special about Negroes.'

'Negroes?' Mohrén corrected him. 'Negresses, in this case. Absolutely not Negroes.'

Malmström sprayed himself scrupulously under his arms and in certain other places.

'If you say so,' he said.

'Anyway there's nothing special about Negresses,' Mohrén said. 'If you happened to get that impression it was just because you were suffering from sex-starvation.'

'The devil I was!' Malmström disagreed. 'By the way, did yours have a lot of hair on her cunt?'