The Fire Engine that Disappeared

by Maj Sjowall

  Martin Beck tried to give her money now and again and at regular intervals he offered to pay the bill at the home, but she was proud and obstinate and wished to be independent.

  When the coffee had boiled, he brought the pot over and let his mother pour it. She had always been solicitous toward her son and when he had been a boy she had never even allowed him to help with the dishes or make his own bed. He had not realized how misdirected her thoughtfulness had been until he had discovered how clumsy he was when it came to the simplest domestic chore.

  Martin Beck watched his mother with amusement as she popped a sugar lump into her mouth before taking a sip of the coffee. He had never seen her drinking coffee “on the lump” before. She caught his eye and she said:

  “Ah well, you can take a few liberties when you’re as old as I am.”

  She put down her cup and leaned back, her thin freckled hands loosely clasped in her lap.

  “Well,” she said. “Tell me how things are with my grandchildren.”

  Nowadays, Martin Beck was always careful to express himself in nothing but positive terms when he talked to his mother about his children, as she considered her grandchildren cleverer, more brilliant and more beautiful than any other children. She often complained that he did not appreciate their merits and she had even accused him of being an unsympathetic and harsh father. He himself thought he was able to regard his children in a quite sober light and he presumed they were much like any other children. His contact with sixteen-year-old Ingrid was best, a lively, intelligent girl who found things easy at school and was a good mixer. Rolf would soon be thirteen and was more of a problem. He was lazy and introverted, totally uninterested in anything to do with school and did not seem to have any other special interests or talents either. Martin Beck was concerned about his son’s inertia, but hoped it was just his age and that the boy would overcome his lethargy. As he could not find anything positive to say about Rolf at the moment and as his mother would not have believed him if he had told her the truth, he avoided the subject. When he had told her about Ingrid’s latest progress at school, his mother said quite unexpectedly:

  “Rolf’s not going into the police force when he leaves school, is he?”

  “I don’t think so. Anyhow, he’s hardly thirteen. It’s a little soon to begin worrying about that sort of thing.”

  “Because if he wants to, you must stop him,” she said. “I’ve never understood why you were so stubborn about becoming a policeman. Nowadays it must be an even more awful profession than it was when you first began. Why did you join the police force, anyway, Martin?”

  Martin Beck stared at her in astonishment. It was true she had been against his choice of profession at the time, twenty-four years ago, but it surprised him that she brought the subject up now. He had become a Chief Inspector in the Homicide Squad less than a year ago and his conditions of work were completely different from those that had existed when he had been a young patrolman.

  He leaned forward and patted her hand.

  “I am all right now, Mother,” he said. “Nowadays, I mostly sit at a desk. But of course, I’ve often asked myself the same question.”

  It was true. He had often asked himself why he had become a policeman.

  Naturally he could have replied that at the time, during the war years, it was a good way of avoiding military service. After a two-year deferment because of bad lungs, he had been declared fit and no longer exempt, which was quite an important reason. In 1944 conscientious objectors were not tolerated. Many of those who had evaded military service in the way he had, had since changed occupation, but he himself had been promoted over the years to Chief Inspector. That ought to mean that he was a good policeman, but he was not so sure. There were several instances of senior posts in the police being held by less good policemen. He was not even certain he wanted to be a good policeman, if that involved being a dutiful person who never deviated one iota from the regulations. He remembered something Lennart Kollberg had once said a long time ago. “There are lots of good cops around. Dumb guys who are good cops. Inflexible, limited, tough, self-satisfied types who are all good cops. It would be better if there were a few more good guys who were cops.”

  His mother came out with him, and they walked together in the park a bit. The slushy snow made it difficult to walk and the icy wind rattled round the branches of the tall bare trees. After they had slipped about for ten minutes, he accompanied her back to the porch and kissed her on the cheek. He turned around on his way down the slope and saw her standing there waving by the entrance. Small and shrunken and gray.

  He took the subway back to the South police station in Västberga Allé.

  On the way to his office, he glanced into Kollberg’s room. Kollberg was an Inspector as well as Martin Beck’s assistant and best friend. The room was empty. He glanced at his wristwatch. It was half-past one. It was Thursday. It required no profound thoughts to know where Kollberg was. For a brief moment Martin Beck even considered joining him down there with his pea soup, but then he thought of his stomach and desisted. It was already disturbed by the far too numerous cups of coffee his mother had pressed on him.

  On his blotter there was a brief message about the man who had committed suicide that same morning.

  His name was Ernst Sigurd Karlsson and he was forty-six years old. He was unmarried and his nearest relative was an elderly aunt in Borås. He had been absent from his work in an insurance company since Monday. Influenza. According to his colleagues at work, he was a loner and as far as they knew he had no close friends. His neighbors said he was quiet and inoffensive, came and went at definite times and seldom had visitors. Tests on his handwriting showed that it had indeed been he who had written Martin Beck’s name on the telephone pad. That he had committed suicide was perfectly evident.

  There was nothing else to say about the case. Ernst Sigurd Karlsson had taken his own life, and as suicide is not a crime in Sweden, the police could not do very much more. All the questions had been answered. Except one. Whoever had written out the report had also asked this question: Had Chief Inspector Beck had any connection with the man in question and could he possibly add anything?

  Martin Beck could not.

  He had never before heard of Ernst Sigurd Karlsson.

  2

  As Gunvald Larsson left his office at the police station in Kungsholmsgatan, it was half-past ten at night and he had no plans whatsoever for becoming a hero; insofar as it was no great deed to go home to Bollmora, shower, put on his pajamas and go to bed. Gunvald Larsson thought about his pajamas with pleasure. They were new, bought that same day, and most of his colleagues would not have believed their ears if they had heard what they had cost. On his way home, he was to carry out a minor duty which would hardly set him back more than five minutes, if that. As he thought about his pajamas, he struggled into his Bulgarian sheepskin coat, put out the light, slammed the door and left. The decrepit elevator which went up to their department went wrong as usual and he had to stamp twice on the floor before it could be persuaded to get going. Gunvald Larsson was a large man, 6 feet 2 inches in his stockings, weighing over 200 pounds, and it was noticeable when he stamped his feet.

  It was cold and windy outside, with gusts of dry, swirling snow, but he had only a few steps to get to the car and did not need to worry about the weather.

  Gunvald Larsson drove across Väster bridge, glancing indifferently to his left. He saw the City Hall with the yellow light thrown onto the three golden crowns on the spire at the top of the tower, and thousands upon thousands of other lights which he could not identify. From the bridge, he continued straight to Hornsplan, turned left onto Hornsgatan and then turned right by the Zinkensdamm subway station. He drove only about 500 yards southward along Ringvägen, then braked and stopped.

  There are as good as no buildings there, despite the fact that it is still in central Stockholm. On the west side of the street, Tantolunden, a hilly park, spreads out, and to the east there
is a rocky knoll, a parking lot and a gas station. It is called Sköldgatan and is not really a street at all, but rather, a bit of road which for some incomprehensible reason has remained since, with doubtful zeal, the planners devastated this city district, as well as most of the others, depriving them of their original value and obliterating their special character.

  Sköldgatan is a winding bit of road, less than 300 yards long, which connects Ringvägen with Rosenlundsgatan and is largely used by a few taxi drivers or occasional lost police cars. In the summer, it is something of an oasis with its luxuriant roadside foliage, and despite the heavy traffic on Ringvägen and the trains thundering along the line only 50 yards away, the older generation of the district’s unhappy children, with bottles of wine, bits of sausage and greasy packs of cards, can operate relatively undisturbed in the undergrowth. No one is to be found voluntarily there in the winter.

  On this particular evening, the seventh of March, 1968, however, a man was standing freezing among the bare bushes on the south side of the road. His attention was not entirely what it ought to have been and was only partly directed toward the one dwelling house in the street, an old wooden, two-story building. A short while earlier, the lights had been on in two of the windows on the second floor and the sounds of music, shouting and occasional peals of laughter had been heard, but now all the lights in the house were out and the only thing to be heard was the wind and the hum of the traffic far away. The man in the bushes was not standing there of his own free will. He was a policeman and his name was Zachrisson and he was wishing heartily that he was elsewhere.

  Gunvald Larsson got out of his car, put up his coat collar and pulled his fur cap down over his ears. Then he strode straight across the wide road, past the gas station, and slogged on through the slushy snow. The highway authorities clearly did not think it worth their while wasting road salt on this useless bit of roadway. The house lay about 75 yards farther on, slightly above road level and at a sharp angle to it. He stopped in front of it, looked round and said quietly:

  “Zachrisson?”

  The man in the bushes shook himself and came up to him.

  “Bad news,” said Gunvald Larsson. “You’ve got two more hours. Isaksson is off sick.”

  “Hell!” said Zachrisson.

  Gunvald Larsson surveyed the scene. Then he made a disgruntled grimace and said:

  “It’d be better if you stood up on the slope.”

  “Yes, if I want to freeze my ass off,” said Zachrisson misanthropically.

  “If you want a decent view. Has anything happened?”

  The other man shook his head.

  “Not a damned thing,” he said. “They had some sort of party up there a while back. Now it looks as if they’re lying up there sleeping it off.”

  “And Malm?”

  “Him too. It’s three hours since he put his light out.”

  “Has he been alone all the time?”

  “Yes, seems so.”

  “Seems? Has anyone left the house?”

  “I haven’t seen anyone.”

  “What have you seen, then?”

  “Three people have gone in since I came. A guy and two dames. They came in a taxi. I think they were in on that party.”

  “Think?” said Gunvald Larsson inquiringly.

  “Well, what the hell is one to think. I haven’t got …”

  The man’s teeth were chattering so that he had difficulty in speaking. Gunvald Larsson inspected him critically and said:

  “What haven’t you got?”

  “X-ray eyes,” said Zachrisson dismally.

  Gunvald Larsson was inclined to severity and had little understanding for human weaknesses. As an officer, he was anything but popular and many people were afraid of him. If Zachrisson had known him better, he would never have dared behave as he had, that is, naturally; but not even Gunvald Larsson could wholly ignore the fact that the man was exhausted and cold, and his condition and ability to observe would hardly improve over the next few hours. He realized what ought to be done but did not plan to drop the matter for that reason. He grunted irritably and said:

  “Are you cold?”

  Zachrisson gave a hollow laugh and tried to scrape the icicles off his eyelashes.

  “Cold?” he said with dull irony. “I feel like the three men in the burning fiery furnace.”

  “You’re not here to be funny,” said Gunvald Larsson. “You’re here to do your job.”

  “Yes, sorry, but—”

  “And one part of that job is keeping warm and properly dressed and moving your flat feet occasionally. Otherwise, you may be left standing there like a goddamn snowman when something happens. And then perhaps it won’t be so funny … afterward.”

  Zachrisson began to suspect something. He shivered awkwardly and said apologetically:

  “Yes, of course, that’s okay, but—”

  “It’s not at all okay,” said Gunvald Larsson angrily. “I happen to have to take the responsibility for this assignment and I prefer not to be messed about by some bungler in the ordinary force.”

  Zachrisson was only twenty-three years old and an ordinary policeman. At the moment he belonged to the Protection Section in the Second District. Gunvald Larsson was twenty years older and an Inspector in the Stockholm Homicide Squad. When Zachrisson opened his mouth to reply, Gunvald Larsson raised his large right hand and said harshly:

  “No more jaw, thanks. Get off to the station in Rosenlundsgatan and have a cup of coffee or something. In precisely half an hour, you’re to be back here, fresh and alert, so you’d better get a move on.”

  Zachrisson went. Gunvald Larsson looked at his wristwatch, sighed and said to himself, “Greenhorn.”

  Then he turned right around, walked through the bushes and began climbing up the slope, muttering and swearing under his breath because the thick rubber soles of his Italian winter shoes could not get a grip on the icy stones.

  Zachrisson had been right in that the knoll did not offer any shelter whatsoever against the mercilessly biting north wind, and he himself had been right when he had said that this was the best observation point. The house lay directly in front and slightly below him. He could not help observing anything that happened in the building and its immediate surroundings. The windows were all wholly or partly covered with frosted ice and no lights were showing behind them. The only sign of life was the smoke from the chimney, which hardly had time to be colored by the cold before it was torn to shreds by the wind and rushed away in great cottonwool blobs up into the starless sky.

  The man on the knoll automatically moved his feet from side to side and flexed his fingers inside his sheepskin-lined gloves. Before becoming a policeman, Gunvald Larsson had been a sailor, first as an ordinary seaman in the navy, later on cargo ships in the North Atlantic, and many wintry watches on open bridges had taught him the art of keeping warm. He was also an expert on this sort of assignment, though nowadays he preferred to and usually did only organize them. After he had stood on the knoll for a while, he was able to make out a flickering light behind the window farthest to the right on the second floor, as if someone had struck a match to light a cigarette or look at the time, for instance. He glanced automatically at his own watch. It was four minutes past eleven. Sixteen minutes since Zachrisson had left his post. By this time, he was presumably sitting in the canteen at Maria police station, filling himself with coffee and grumbling to the off-duty uniformed policemen, a short-lived pleasure, for in seven minutes the man would have to be on the march back again. If he did not want to be in for the bawling out of the century, thought Gunvald Larsson grimly.

  Then he thought for a few minutes about the number of people who might be in the house at that particular moment. There were four apartments in the old building, two on the first floor and two on the second floor. Up on the left lived an unmarried woman in her thirties, with three children, all with different fathers. That was more or less all he knew about the lady and that was enough. Below her,
to the left on the first floor, lived a married couple, old people. They were about seventy and had lived there for almost half a century, in contrast to the upper apartments, which changed tenants rapidly. The husband drank and, in spite of his venerable age, he was a regular customer in the cells at Maria police station. To the right on the second floor lived a man who was also well known, but for more criminal reasons than just Saturday-night boozing. He was twenty-seven and already had six different sentences of varying lengths behind him. His crimes varied from drunken driving, breaking and entering, to assault. His name was Roth and it was he who had thrown a party for his one male and two female buddies. Now they had turned off the record-player and the light, either to sleep or else to continue the festivities in some other way. And it was in his apartment that someone had struck a match.

  Below this apartment, at the bottom right, lived the person whom Gunvald Larsson was watching. He knew what this person’s name was and what he looked like. On the other hand, oddly enough, he had no idea why the man had to be watched.

  It had come about in this way: Gunvald Larsson was what the newspapers in exalted moments refer to as a murder-scout, and as at this particular moment there was no special murderer to scout for, he had been loaned to another department to be responsible for this assignment, on top of his own duties. He had been allocated a scratch collection of four men and given simple directions: Ensure that the man in question does not disappear and that nothing happens to him and note whom he meets.

  He had not even bothered to ask what it was all about. Drugs, presumably. Everything seemed to be about drugs these days.

  Now the watch had gone on for ten days and the only thing that had happened to the man in question was a tart and two half-bottles of liquor.

  Gunvald Larsson looked at his watch. Nine minutes past eleven. Eight minutes left.