The Fire Engine that Disappeared

by Maj Sjowall

  “He was a car sprayer too,” said Kollberg. “People like that are useful when you’re handling stolen cars.”

  Martin Beck nodded.

  “This Olofsson,” said Rönn. “Can’t we get hold of him?”

  “No, he’s still not been traced,” said Martin Beck. “It’s highly possible that Malm was telling the truth during his interrogation when he said that Olofsson had gone abroad. He’ll appear no doubt.”

  Kollberg thumped his fist irritably on the arm of his chair.

  “I just don’t understand that Larsson fellow,” he said, glancing sideways at Rönn. “I mean, how can he maintain he didn’t know why he was watching Malm?”

  “He didn’t need to know, did he?” Rönn asked. “Don’t start knocking Gunvald again now.”

  “For Christ’s sake, he must have known that he had to keep his eyes open for Olofsson. Otherwise there wasn’t much point in tailing Malm.”

  “Yes,” said Rönn tranquilly. “You’ll have to ask him when he’s better, won’t you?”

  “Huh,” said Kollberg.

  He stretched himself so that the seams of his jacket creaked.

  “Oh, well,” he said. “That car business is not our headache, anyhow. And thank God for that.”

  7

  On Monday afternoon, it looked as if Benny Skacke, for the first time in his life in his capacity as a member of the Homicide Squad, would have to solve a murder on his own.

  Or at least a case of manslaughter.

  He was sitting in his office at the South police station, busy with a task set for him by Kollberg before going to Kungsholmsgatan. That is, he was listening for the telephone and was sorting reports into different files. This sorting process was slow, for he read carefully through every report before filing it. Benny Skacke was ambitious and painfully conscious of the fact that even if he had learned everything there was to learn about investigation into murder at the police training college, he had not really had any opportunity of putting his knowledge into practice. In expectation of a chance of showing his hidden talents in this field, he tried in every way to acquire a share in his older colleagues’ experiences. One of his methods was to listen in on their conversations as often as possible, something which was already driving Kollberg crazy. Another was to read old reports, which he was in the act of doing when the telephone rang.

  It was a man in the reception department in the same building.

  “I’ve a person here who says he wants to report a crime,” he said, somewhat nonplussed. “Shall I send him up, or—”

  “Yes, do that,” said Assistant Inspector Skacke immediately.

  He replaced the receiver and went out into the corridor to let in his visitor. Meanwhile he wondered what the man in reception had been about to say when he was interrupted. Or? Perhaps—“or shall I tell him to go to the proper police?” Skacke was a sensitive young man.

  His visitor came slowly and unsteadily up the stairs. Benny Skacke opened the glass doors for him and involuntarily fell back a step at the acrid smell of sweat, urine and stale liquor. He went ahead of the man into his office and offered him the chair in front of his desk. The man did not sit down at once, but remained standing until Skacke himself had sat down.

  Skacke studied the man in the chair. He looked between fifty and fifty-five, was scarcely more than 4 feet 5 inches and very thin, weighing not more than about 100 pounds. He had thin, ash-blond hair and faded blue eyes. His cheeks and nose were covered with red veins. His hands were trembling and a muscle in his left eye was twitching. His brown suit was spotted and shiny and the machine-knitted vest under his jacket had been darned with wool of another color. The man smelled of liquor but did not appear to be drunk.

  “Well, you want to report something? What’s it about?”

  The man looked down at his hands. He was nervously rolling a cigarette butt between his fingers.

  “Do smoke if you want to,” said Skacke, pushing a box of matches across the desk.

  The man picked up the box, lighted his butt, coughed dryly and hoarsely and raised his eyes.

  “I’ve killed the missis,” he said.

  Benny Skacke stretched out his hand for his notepad and said in a voice which he considered calm and authoritative.

  “Oh, yes. Where?”

  He wished that Martin Beck or Kollberg had been there.

  “On the head.”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. Where is she now?”

  “Oh. At home. Number 11 Dansbanevägen.”

  “What’s your name?” asked Skacke.

  “Gottfridsson.”

  Benny Skacke wrote the name down on the pad and leaned forward with his forearms resting on the desk.

  “Can you tell me how it happened, Mr. Gottfridsson?”

  The man called Gottfridsson chewed his lower lip.

  “Well,” he said. “Well, I went home and she began nagging and going on so. I was tired and couldn’t be bothered to answer back so I told her to shut up, but she just went on and on at me. Then I saw red and took her by the throat and she began to kick and yell and so I bashed her over the head several times. Then she fell down and after a while I got scared and tried to bring her round but she just lay there on the floor.”

  “Didn’t you call a doctor?”

  The man shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “I thought she was already dead so there wasn’t no point in getting a doctor.”

  He sat in silence for a moment. Then he said:

  “I didn’t mean her no harm. I just got annoyed. She shouldn’t have gone on so.”

  Benny Skacke rose and fetched his coat from the hanger by the door. He was not sure what he ought to do with the man. As he pulled on his coat, he said:

  “Why did you come here instead of going to the district police station? It’s quite near.”

  Gottfridsson got up and shrugged his shoulders.

  “I thought … I thought a thing like this … murder and all that, so …”

  Benny Skacke opened the door into the corridor.

  “You’d better come with me, Mr. Gottfridsson.”

  It took only a few minutes to get to the block where Gottfridsson lived. The man sat in silence, his hands shaking violently. He went ahead up the stairs and Skacke took the key away from him and opened the front door.

  They went into a small, dark hall with three doors, all shut. Skacke looked inquiringly at Gottfridsson.

  “In there,” said the man, pointing to the left-hand door.

  Skacke took three steps across the floor and opened the door.

  The room was empty.

  The furniture was shabby and dusty, but seemed to be in its right place and there was no sign of a struggle of any sort. Skacke turned around and looked at Gottfridsson, who was still standing by the outer door.

  “There’s no one here,” he said.

  Gottfridsson stared at him. He raised his hand and pointed as he slowly came into the doorway.

  “But,” he said. “She was lying there.”

  He looked around in confusion. Then he walked straight across the hall and opened the kitchen door. The kitchen was also empty.

  The third door led to the bathroom and there was nothing remarkable there either.

  Gottfridsson ran his hand through his thinning hair.

  “What?” he said. “I saw her lying there.”

  “Yes,” said Skacke. “Perhaps you did. But she obviously wasn’t dead. How did you come to that conclusion, anyhow?”

  “I could see,” said Gottfridsson. “She wasn’t moving and she wasn’t breathing. And she was cold. Like a corpse.”

  “Perhaps she just seemed dead.”

  It occurred to Skacke that perhaps the man was pulling his leg and had invented the whole story. Perhaps he had no wife at all. Also, both the death of his presumed wife, and her resurrection and disappearance appeared to leave the man singularly unmoved. He eyed the floor where the dead woman, according to Gottfridsson, had lain. T
here was no trace of either blood or anything in particular.

  “Well,” said Skacke. “She’s not here now. Perhaps we should ask the neighbors.”

  Gottfridsson tried to dissuade him.

  “No, don’t do that. We’re not on very good terms. Anyhow, they’re not at home at this time of day.”

  He went into the kitchen and sat down on a wooden chair.

  “Where the devil is the woman,” he said.

  At that moment, the outer door opened. The woman who came into the hall was short and plump. She was wearing a coverall apron and a cardigan, and had tied a checked scarf around her head. She was carrying a string bag in one hand.

  Skacke could not immediately find anything to say. Neither did the woman say anything. She walked swiftly past him into the kitchen.

  “Oh, yes, so you dared come back, did you, you clod?”

  Gottfridsson stared at her and opened his mouth to say something. His wife dumped the string bag on the kitchen table with a bang and said:

  “And who’s that creature? Now, it’s no good you bringing your boozing pals here, you know that. You boozers can go somewhere else.”

  “Excuse me,” said Skacke uncertainly. “Your husband thought you’d had an accident and—”

  “Accident,” she snorted. “Accident, my foot.”

  She swung around and looked at Skacke with hostility.

  “I just thought I’d scare him a bit. Coming home like that and beginning to fight after being out boozing several days. There has to be a limit.”

  The woman took off her scarf. She had an insignificant bruise on her jaw, but otherwise there did not appear to be anything wrong with her.

  “How do you feel?” said Skacke. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

  “Poof!” she said. “But when he knocked me down, I thought I’d just lie there and pretend to have fainted.”

  She turned to the man.

  “You were a bit scared, weren’t you?”

  Gottfridsson glanced embarrassedly at Skacke and mumbled something.

  “Who are you, anyhow?” asked the woman.

  Skacke met Gottfridsson’s eyes and said curtly: “Police.”

  “Police!” cried Mrs. Gottfridsson.

  She put her hands on her hips and leaned over her husband, who was cowering on the kitchen chair, a miserable expression on his face.

  “Have you gone crazy?” she cried. “Bringing the fuzz here! What was that for, may I ask?”

  She straightened up and looked angrily at Skacke.

  “And you. What sort of policeman are you? Pushing your way in here onto innocent people. Aren’t you supposed to show your badge at least before you come barging in on honest folk?”

  Skacke hurriedly got out his identity card.

  “An assistant, eh?”

  “Assistant Inspector,” said Skacke bleakly.

  “What did you think you’d find here, then, eh? I’ve not done nothing wrong and neither has my husband either.”

  She placed herself beside Gottfridsson and protectively laid her hand on his shoulder.

  “Has he got a warrant or anything, that he can come tramping like this into our home?” she asked. “Has he shown you anything, Ludde?”

  Gottfridsson shook his head but said nothing. Skacke took a step forward and opened his mouth, but was immediately interrupted by Mrs. Gottfridsson.

  “Well, just you be off with you, then. I’ve half a mind to report you for breaking-and-entering. Off you go now, before I get angry.”

  Skacke looked at the man, who was stubbornly staring down at the floor. Then he shrugged his shoulders, turned his back on the pair and returned somewhat shaken to the South police station.

  Martin Beck and Kollberg had not yet returned from Kungsholmsgatan. They were still in Melander’s office and had again played back the tape on the Malm case, this time for Hammar, who had looked in during the afternoon to ask whether they had got anywhere.

  The smoke from Martin Beck’s cigarettes and Hammar’s cigar lay like fog over the room, and Kollberg had added to the air pollution by lighting a bonfire of dead matches and empty cigarette cartons in the ashtray. Rönn worsened the situation even more by opening the window and letting in the most polluted city air in the whole of northern Europe. Martin Beck coughed and said:

  “If we’re going to consider the arson theory at all, then everything is made much more difficult by all the witnesses being in the hospital and not available for questioning.”

  “Yes,” said Rönn.

  “I don’t think it was arson, now,” said Hammar. “But we mustn’t draw any hasty conclusions until Melander has finished at the site of the fire and the labs have had their say.”

  The telephone rang. Kollberg stretched out his hand for the receiver and simultaneously put an empty matchbook onto the glowing heap in the ashtray. He listened for about half a minute.

  “What?” he said, with unfeined surprise, and the others immediately reacted.

  He stared absently at Martin Beck and said:

  “I’ve a hell of a surprise for you gentlemen. Göran Malm was not killed in the fire.”

  “What do you mean?” said Hammar. “Wasn’t he in the house?”

  “Oh, yes, he was practically burned into the mattress. That was the autopsy man himself. He says that Malm was stone dead before the fire even started.”

  8

  The head nurse in Gunvald Larsson’s ward sounded stern and unshakable.

  “I can’t help that,” she said. “I don’t mind how important it is. The most important thing is that Mr. Larsson gets better and he won’t if you keep phoning and upsetting him. He must have absolute quiet, and that’s doctor’s orders. I said the same thing to Mr. Kollerberg, who called just now and was very rude. There’s no point in phoning until tomorrow at the earliest. Goodbye.”

  Martin Beck was left with the receiver in his hand. Then he shrugged his shoulders and replaced it.

  He was sitting in his office in the South police station. It was half-past eight in the morning, Tuesday, and neither Kollberg nor Skacke had put in an appearance yet. Kollberg appeared to be on the go already anyhow, and so might appear at any moment.

  Martin Beck lifted the receiver again, dialed the number of the Maria police station and asked for Zachrisson. He was not there, but was coming on duty at one o’clock.

  Martin Beck opened a new pack of Floridas, lit one and stared out of the window. It was not exactly a scintillating panorama that lay spread out before his eyes. A dismal industrial area and a motorway, of which all lanes leading into the city center were crammed with shining vehicles jerking along at a snail’s pace. Martin Beck loathed cars and only in cases of extreme necessity put himself behind the wheel of one. He did not like the temporary police station in Västberga and was looking forward to the day when the extension to the old police station in Kungsholm was finished and all the scattered departments would again be contained under one roof.

  Martin Beck turned his back on the lugubrious view, clasped his hands behind his neck and stared at the ceiling as he pondered.

  When, how and why had Göran Malm died and what was the connection between his death and the fire? One handy theory was that someone had first killed Malm and then set fire to the place to hide any traces. But in that case, how had any possible murderer succeeded in getting into the house without being seen by Gunvald Larsson or Zachrisson?

  Martin Beck heard Skacke walk past outside the door with swift purposeful strides and a moment later Kollberg also appeared. He crashed his fist on Martin Beck’s door, thrust his head inside, said hello and then vanished again. When he came back, he had taken off his overcoat and jacket and loosened his tie. He sat down in the visitor’s chair and said:

  “I tried to have a chat with Gunvald Larsson on the phone, but it didn’t work at all.”

  “I know,” said Martin Beck. “I tried too.”

  “On the other hand, I have spoken to that Zachrisson,” said Kollberg. �
�I called him at home this morning. Gunvald Larsson went to Sköldgatan at about half-past ten and Zachrisson left just after that. He says that the last sign of life he saw from Malm’s apartment was the light going out at a quarter to eight. He also said that apart from Roth’s three guests, he saw no one go either out or in through the front entrance all the evening. But one doesn’t really know whether he was keeping his eyes open all the time. He could have stood there dozing.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” said Martin Beck. “But it seems pretty incredible that anyone should have had the luck to get both into the house and then out again without being seen.”

  Kollberg sighed and rubbed his chin.

  “No—that does undoubtedly seem pretty unbelievable,” he said. “What do we do now?”

  Martin Beck sneezed three times and Kollberg blessed him each time. Martin Beck thanked him politely.

  “As far as I’m concerned I’m going to go and talk to the pathologist,” he said.

  Someone knocked on the door and Skacke came in and stood in the middle of the floor.

  “Well, what do you want?” said Kollberg.

  “Nothing,” said Skacke. “I just thought I’d find out if there was anything new on the fire.”

  When neither Martin Beck nor Kollberg replied, he went on hesitantly:

  “I mean, if I could do anything …”

  “Have you eaten?” said Kollberg.

  “No,” said Skacke.

  “In that case, you can get us some coffee for a start,” said Kollberg. “Three mazarin cupcakes for me. What d’you want, Martin?”

  Martin Beck got up and buttoned up his jacket.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I’m going out to the Forensic Institute right now.”

  He put the pack of Floridas and the matches into his pocket and telephoned for a taxi.

  The pathologist who had carried out the autopsy was a white-haired professor of about seventy. He had been a police doctor since Martin Beck’s early days as a patrolman, and Martin Beck had also had him as a lecturer at police college. Since then, they had worked together on a large number of cases and Martin Beck had great respect for the man’s experience and knowledge.