by Maj Sjowall
He knocked on the door of the pathologist’s office at the Forensic Institute in Solna, heard the rattle of a typewriter inside and opened the door without waiting for a reply. The professor was sitting typing over by the window with his back to the door. He finished what he was doing, and pulled the paper out of the machine before turning around and seeing Martin Beck.
“Hi,” he said. “I was just sitting here writing a preliminary report for you. How’re things?”
Martin Beck unbuttoned his coat and sank into the visitor’s chair.
“So-so,” he said. “This fire is somewhat mystifying. And I’ve got a cold. But not quite ready for an autopsy.”
The professor looked searchingly at him and said:
“You ought to go to a doctor. It’s all wrong that you keep getting these colds all the time.”
“Oh, doctors,” said Martin Beck. “With due respect to your honored colleagues, but they haven’t yet learned to cure common colds.”
He took out his handkerchief and emphatically blew his nose.
“Well, now, let’s have it,” he said. “It’s Malm I’m interested in first and foremost.”
The professor took off his glasses and put them down on the desk in front of him.
“D’you want to see him?” he said.
“Preferably not,” said Martin Beck. “I’ll be quite happy with what you can tell me.”
“I must say he doesn’t look like much,” said the pathologist. “Neither do the other two. What is it you want to know?”
“How he died.”
The professor took out his handkerchief and began to clean his glasses.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” he said. “I’ve already told you most all of it. I’ve been able to establish that he was dead when the fire started. He was lying on his bed, obviously fully dressed, when the fire broke out.”
“Could death have been caused by violence?” asked Martin Beck.
The pathologist shook his head.
“Unlikely,” he said.
“Weren’t there any wounds or injuries on the body?”
“Yes, naturally. A number. The heat was very intense and he was lying in the fencing position. His head was full of cracks, but they had occurred after death. There were also some bruises and contusions, presumably from falling beams and other objects, and his skull had burst from inside from the heat.”
Martin Beck nodded. He had seen fire victims before and knew how easy it was for a layman to think that injuries had occurred before death.
“How did you come to the conclusion that he was dead before the fire began?” he said.
“First, there was no sign that the circulation was functioning when the body was first exposed to the fire. Then there was no trace whatsoever of either soot or smoke in his lungs and bronchial passages. Both the other two had flakes of soot in their respiratory organs and also clear blood clots in the membranes. As far as they are concerned, there is no doubt that they did not die until after the outbreak of the fire.”
Martin Beck rose and went across to the window. He looked down onto the road outside where the highway department’s yellow vehicles were spreading road salt over the almost wholly melted gray slush. He sighed, lit a cigarette and turned his back on the window.
“Have you good reason to believe that he was killed in some way?” asked the professor.
Martin Beck shrugged.
“I find it difficult to believe that he died of natural causes just before the house burned down,” he said.
“His internal organs were quite healthy,” said the pathologist. “The only unusual thing about him was that the carbon monoxide count in his blood was a bit high, when one considers he hadn’t breathed in any smoke.”
Martin Beck stayed on for another half-hour before returning to the city. As he got off the bus at Norra Bantorget and breathed in the polluted air at the bus terminal, he thought that presumably there was not a single city dweller who did not suffer from chronic carbon monoxide poisoning.
He pondered for a while on the significance of what the pathologist had said about the carbon monoxide count in the dead man’s blood, but then dismissed the matter. Then he walked on down toward the subway’s even more poisonous layers of air.
9
On the afternoon of Wednesday, the thirteenth of March, Gunvald Larsson was for the first time given permission to get out of bed at South Hospital. With some difficulty, he squeezed into the dressing gown the hospital had produced and with a displeased frown regarded his reflection in the mirror. The dressing gown was several sizes too small and its color had faded into obscurity. Then he looked down at his feet. They were inserted into a pair of black wooden-soled shoes, which either had been made for Goliath or had been intended as a sign to hang outside some clog-maker’s.
His change lay in a pigeonhole in his bedside table, so he hunted out a few coins and headed straight for the nearest patients’ telephone, dialed the police station’s number, absentmindedly pulling at the sleeve of the objectionable garment. It wouldn’t move an inch.
“Yes,” said Rönn. “Well, it’s you, is it? How are you?”
“Fine. How the hell did I land up here?”
“I took you. You were quite nutty.”
“The last thing I remember was sitting looking at a picture of Zachrisson in the paper.”
“Well,” said Rönn. “That was five days ago. How are your hands?”
Gunvald Larsson looked at his right hand and flexed his fingers experimentally. The hand was very large and covered with long fair hairs.
“Seems okay,” he said. “Only a few small bandages.”
“Well, that’s a good thing.”
“Must you begin every sentence with ‘Well,’ ” said Gunvald Larsson, irritably.
Rönn did not reply to that.
“Well, Einar?”
“Well, what is it?” said Rönn, with a slight laugh.
“What are you laughing at?”
“Nothing. What d’you want?”
“At the back on the left of the middle drawer of my desk, there’s a purse of black leather. Inside are my spare keys. Drive out to Bollmora and fetch my white dressing gown and white slippers, will you? The dressing gown is hanging in the wardrobe and the slippers are in the hall, just inside the door.”
“Well, I think I might do that.”
“On the chest-of-drawers in my bedroom, there’s an N.K. shopping bag with some pajamas in it. Get that too, will you?”
“Do you want these things at once?”
“Yes. The fools here won’t let me out until the day after tomorrow at the earliest, and they’ve given me a grayish-brown, grayish-blue thing which is ten sizes too small and a pair of clodhoppers that look like coffins. How’re things otherwise?”
“Well, not so bad. Quite quiet.”
“What’re Beck and Kollberg doing?”
“They’re not here. They’ve retreated to Västberga.”
“Fine. How’s the case going?”
“Which case?”
“The fire, of course.”
“That’s closed.”
“What d’you mean?” shouted Gunvald Larsson. “What the hell are you saying? Closed?”
“Yes, it was an accident.”
“Accident?”
“Yes, more or less … you see, the investigation on the site was finished this morning and—”
“What the devil do you mean? Are you drunk?”
Gunvald Larsson was talking so loudly that the ward nurse came sailing down the corridor.
“No, you see, that creature Malm—”
“Mr. Larsson,” said the nurse, warningly. “This will not do.”
“Shut up,” said Gunvald, out of habit.
The nurse was about fifty, a slightly plump lady with a determined chin. She looked icily at her patient and said sharply:
“Replace the receiver immediately. It is evident that you have been allowed to get up much too soon, Mr. L
arsson. I shall speak to the doctor immediately.”
“Well, I’ll come as soon as I can,” said Rönn on the telephone. “I’ll bring the reports with me so that you can see for yourself.”
“Off back to bed now, Mr. Larsson,” said the nurse.
Gunvald Larsson opened his mouth to say something, but stopped.
“So long, then,” said Rönn.
“So long,” said Gunvald Larsson, gently.
“Off back to bed, I said,” said the nurse. “Didn’t you hear what I said, Mr. Larsson?”
She did not take her eyes off him until he had closed the door of his room.
Gunvald Larsson stamped angrily over to the window. It faced north and he could see almost all of the Södermalm district. When he focused sharply, he could even see the top of the soot-covered chimney which remained on the site of the fire.
“What the hell is all this about?” he said to himself.
And shortly after that:
“They must have gone mad, Rönn and the whole lot of them.”
Steps approached in the corridor.
Gunvald hurriedly got into bed and tried to look well behaved and innocent.
A perverse project.
A mile and a half away, Rönn put down the telephone receiver and, beaming, tapped his red nose with his right forefinger, as if trying to stop himself bursting out laughing. Melander, who was sitting opposite him banging away on his ancient typewriter, looked up, took his pipe out of his mouth and said:
“What’s so funny?”
“Gunvald,” said Rönn, gurgling with suppressed laughter. “He’s getting better now. You should have heard his voice when he was talking about the clothes they’ve given him. And then a nurse came along and began to bawl him out.”
“What did he think about Malm and all that?”
“He was furious. Ranted and raved.”
“Are you going up to see him?”
“Well, I expect so.”
Melander pushed a clipped-together report across the desk and said:
“Take this with you, then … then he’ll be pleased.”
Rönn sat in silence for a moment. Then he said:
“Will you chip in with ten kronor for some flowers?”
Melander pretended not to hear.
“Five then,” said Rönn, a minute or so later.
Melander busied himself with his pipe.
“Five,” said Rönn, obstinately.
Without the slightest change of expression, Melander got out his wallet, studied the contents, holding it so that Rönn could not see inside the bill compartment. Finally, he said:
“Can you change a ten-kronor bill?”
“I expect so.”
Melander looked blankly at Rönn. Then he took out a five-kronor bill and placed it on top of the report file. Rönn pocketed the money, picked up the papers and walked toward the door.
“Einar,” said Melander.
“Well?”
“Where are you going to buy the flowers?”
“Don’t know.”
“Don’t go to the stall outside the hospital. You just get swindled there.”
Rönn left. Melander looked at his watch and wrote:
Case closed. No further measures necessary. Stockholm, Wednesday, 13th March, 1968, 14:30 hours.
He pulled the paper out of the typewriter, took out his fountain pen and completed the report with his totally illegible signature. It was small and cramped and Kollberg used to say it looked like three dead midges from the previous summer. Then he put the report in the letter basket for duplicating, straightened out a paperclip, took out another pipe and began scratching inside it.
Melander was very thorough with his reports. He worked on them in his own way and made quite sure that everything was put down on paper. It was part of his system. It was easier to remember details if one had once and for all formulated them clearly and lucidly. He never forgot anything that he had seen in writing. Generally speaking, he never forgot anything else either.
The fire in Sköldgatan had occupied him for exactly five days, from Friday afternoon until two minutes ago. As he had been under no obligation to work on Saturday and Sunday, he was now looking forward to four consecutive days off. Hammar had already agreed, as long as nothing unforeseen occurred. Was it too early to go out to their summer cottage on Värmdö? Hardly. He could begin to paint indoors while his wife covered the kitchen shelves with shelving-paper. The cottage was the apple of his eye. He had inherited it from his father, who had also been a policeman, a sergeant in Nacka to be more precise, and the only trouble was that he himself did not have any children to leave it to in his turn. On the other hand, his childlessness was entirely voluntary, a decision he and his wife had come to partly for convenience and partly after careful financial planning. At the time, it had been impossible to foresee that police pay would rise so rapidly, and in addition he had always been conscious of the risk involved in the profession he had chosen, and he acted accordingly.
He finished cleaning out his pipe, filled it and lit it. Then he got up and went to the toilet. He hoped that the telephone would not ring while he was still within earshot.
As an examiner of crime sites, Fredrik Melander perhaps had at this stage more routine work to do than any other still active policeman in the country. He was forty-eight years old and had received his early training from men like Harry Söderman and Otto Wendel. During his years with the Homicide Squad in the old County Police, and later with the Stockholm Homicide Squad, to which he had applied after the centralization of police forces in 1965, he had seen hundreds of crimes and sites of every imaginable kind. The overwhelming majority had been extremely distasteful. But Melander was not primarily a man to fall victim of his emotions. He had the capacity to keep a chilly distance from his work, for which many of his colleagues envied him but of which he himself was quite unconscious.
So what he had seen in Sköldgatan had neither disturbed his psyche nor to any noticeable degree affected him emotionally.
The work at the site of the fire had demanded patience and system. It had been primarily a matter of finding out how many people had died. They had found three bodies, which were identified as the corpses of Kristina Modig, Kenneth Roth and Göran Malm. All three were severely burned. Malm partly charred. His body was found last, after they had worked their way down to the bottom layer of the remains of the fire. The Modig girl was lying in the west part of the house, which had been least damaged, comparatively speaking. Both the men were found in the totally destroyed eastern part, where the fire had appeared to have started. Kristina Modig was barely fourteen, still going to school. Kenneth Roth was twenty-seven and Göran Malm forty-two. Both the latter had criminal records and neither appeared to be in regular employment. Most of this had been known beforehand.
The second stage of the investigation aimed at finding the answers to two questions: What were the causes of death, and How had the fire arisen?
The answer to the first question lay with the pathologist at the Forensic Institute. The question of the cause of the fire was Melander’s headache, apart from the fact that he had never had a headache.
At his disposal he had several experts from the fire department and the Forensic laboratories, who did not produce much joy for him at first. Their main contribution to the investigation was to frown heavily and acquire puzzled expressions.
Melander had several hundred photographs taken. As each dead person was found and exposed, Kristina Modig the day after the fire, Kenneth Roth on Sunday and Göran Malm not until Monday afternoon, he had them photographed from every imaginable angle and then he sent the remains away for the autopsy.
They were not especially tidy corpses, but as the fire had not lasted very long and the human body consists of 90 per cent liquid, they were far from cremated, so the medical experts had quite a lot to work with.
The first reports did not contain any surprises either.
Kristina Modig had died of carb
on monoxide poisoning. She had been wearing a nightgown and had been lying in bed. Everything pointed to the fact that she had died in her sleep. Particles of soot had been found in her respiratory organs and bronchial passages.
The circumstances for Kenneth Roth were the same, apart from the fact that he was not dressed and had been conscious at the time. During his attempts to save himself, he had been very severely burned. He too had breathed in the suffocating smoke and had soot in his throat, bronchial tubes and lungs.
But this was not the case with Göran Malm.
There were other, more striking differences, too. Malm had indeed died lying in his bed, but as far as could be made out, he had been fully dressed. Much pointed to the fact that he had not only been wearing underclothes, trousers and jacket, but also socks, shoes and an overcoat. The body was severely charred and was lying in the so-called fencing position, a phenomenon caused by the muscles contracting after death because of the heat. Everything pointed to the fact that the fire had started in his apartment, but nothing to the fact that he had been conscious of it or made any attempt to save himself.
As far as the cause of the fire was concerned, Melander had already had a private theory when he had spoken to Martin Beck and Kollberg on Friday afternoon. It would not, however, have occurred to him to mention it. The fire had begun with some sort of explosion and then spread very swiftly and violently. Deep down, Melander believed the explosion had been caused by an ember fire, a glowing fire without flames, which had perhaps gone on for hours before the temperature had risen to such an extent that the windows had blown out. At that stage, Göran Malm may well have already been dead for several hours and most of the contents of the apartment melted down or charred, as well as the surfaces of the floors, ceilings and walls. The extreme violence of the “explosion” which Gunvald Larsson thought he had seen would in that case have been due to the fire blazing up to full strength all over the apartment simultaneously with the first window blowing out and oxygenated air from outside streaming in. Then, naturally, there might be secondary explosions of gas pipes, explosives or inflammable liquids such as gasoline or spirits. A fire of this kind could be caused by practically anything, a dropped cigarette, a spark from a stove, a forgotten iron, a toaster, some fault in the electric wiring; there were hundreds of possibilities and most of them seemed quite plausible. But there was one hitch in this reasoning, however, and it was for this reason perhaps that Melander kept his thoughts to himself. If the fire had gone on for so long that both the contents of the apartment and Malm personally had become charred, then the heat should have been noticeable in the apartment above, in which four people had been at the time. On the other hand, there was nothing to contradict the supposition that those people had been asleep or under the influence of drink or drugs. And to question them was not his affair. Whichever way it was looked at, there were still many obscure points.
