by Maj Sjowall
At half-past one on Tuesday, Melander returned to the site of the fire after a frugal lunch outside a hotdog stand on Ringvägen, to find a motorcycle orderly there waiting for him with a brown envelope in his hand. The envelope contained a brief message from Kollberg.
Preliminary telephone report from autopsy on Malm. Death from carbon monoxide poisoning before the fire started. No trace of soot in lungs or respiratory passages.
Melander read through the note three times. Then he raised his eyebrows slightly and calmly began to fill his pipe. He knew what he had to look for. And where the activity should be carried out.
It was not long before he found what he was looking for.
With endless caution, everything that five days earlier had been in Göran Malm’s apartment kitchen had now been exposed. Among these, they had found a small old-fashioned iron gas stove, with two burners and four feet. It had stood on a linoleum-covered drainboard, but when the latter had been burned away, the gas stove had fallen through the wooden board. The floorboards and the crossbeams had also been destroyed and the remains of the half-melted gas stove lay in a hollow about 30 inches below the original floor level. The gas stove was severely distorted, but the taps to both rings were of brass and had suffered rather less than the rest. Both taps were turned off; they were of the type that locked with a spigot in a notch in the collar so that they should not be turned on by mistake, for instance by an involuntary blow or by some piece of clothing catching in them. The stove had been connected to the mains by a rubber tube. Of this practically nothing remained, but there was enough left so that it could be established that it had been red and about half an inch in diameter. It had been fastened to a mouthpiece, which in its turn was fastened to the pipe itself. As a safety measure, this mouthpiece was equipped with a quarter-inch guard through which the tube was threaded, and behind the guard there ought to have been an open clamp of galvanized metal held together with the aid of a nut and bolt. The reason for this arrangement was so that the rubber tube was not accidentally torn away from the mouthpiece. As a further safeguard, there was a main tap adjusted to the mouthpiece between the clamp and the guard. This tap was open and the clamp, which should hold the rubber tube to the guard, was not in its place. Its absence had no natural explanation, for even if the actual rubber had been destroyed by the heat, the clamp, or at least the remains of it, should still be around the mouthpiece, for technically speaking it could not be pushed over the guard, provided the bolt had not been loosened.
It took Melander and his men nearly three hours to find the clamp. It was indeed of galvanized metal and lay exactly 7 feet 3 inches away from the mouthpiece of the gas pipe. It was not very distorted and both the nut and the bolt were in place. The bolt, however, was hanging on the last two threads, which indicated that someone had unscrewed the bolt so that the clamp was sufficiently open to come free of the guard. Beside the guard, they found an object which at first sight appeared to be a crooked nail, but on closer examination turned out to be a screwdriver with its handle burned off.
Melander now turned his attention in another direction.
Inside the apartment, there had been two sources of heating, a tiled stove and a small iron stove, and in both cases the flues had been shut.
The hall door had been totally destroyed, as well as the door frame, but the lock remained. The key was on the inside, the bit in fact melted into the mechanism, but still a clear witness to the fact that the door had been locked from the inside, and in addition double-locked.
When they had got that far, it began to grow dark and Melander, with considerably revised theories, headed for his own minutely well-ordered apartment in Polhemsgatan, where dinner would be waiting for him, followed by peaceful hours in front of the television, and to crown everything, ten hours’ dream-free sleep. As he stepped over the threshold, he saw that his wife had already laid the kitchen table and the food was ready. Baked beans and fried Falu sausages. His slippers were in their place by the armchair in front of the television set and the bed seemed to be standing there waiting for its lord and master.
Not so bad, thought Melander.
His wife was a parsimonious, ugly, coarsely built woman, 5 feet 10 inches tall, with flat feet and large pendulous breasts. She was five years younger than he and was called Saga. He thought that she was very beautiful and had thought so for more than twenty-two years. In actual fact, she had not changed much during that time, weighing now, as then, 160 pounds naked and taking size 12 shoes, and her nipples were still small and pink and cylindrical, like a rubber on the end of a new pencil.
When they had gone to bed and turned out the light, he took her hand and said:
“Darling.”
“Yes, Fredrik?”
“That fire was an accident.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, pretty well.”
“How nice. I love you.”
Then they went to sleep.
Next morning, Melander studied the windows in Göran Malm’s apartment. Naturally, the panes themselves had gone, as had the frames, but the window-catches remained among the ashes, bits of tile, splinters of glass and other rubbish. Some of them were still hanging from several charred windowposts. All of them had been properly fastened from the inside. Most of the house’s eastern gable had been blown out and shattered to pieces by the explosion, but fragments of that wall were not quite so charred as the rest of the building.
He found two more objects.
First, a piece of the wooden frame of Malm’s gable window. Along the whole of the edge was a sticky yellowish-gray coating. He had no doubt whatsoever that this was the remains of masking tape.
Second, a ventilator which had been let into the gable wall. The ventilator was plugged with cotton and the remains of a towel.
With that the case was clear. Göran Malm had committed suicide. He had locked the door and shut all the windows, closed the flues and plugged the ventilators. He had also plugged the cracks in the windows with masking tape. So that it should be as swift and painless as possible, he had loosened the clamp holding the gas pipe to the mouthpiece and pulled off the rubber tube. Then he had opened the main tap and gone and lain down on his bed. The gas had rushed out swiftly through the relatively wide pipe, he had become unconscious within a few minutes and died within less than a quarter of an hour. The carbon monoxide in his blood was caused then by gas poisoning, and in all likelihood he had already been dead a couple of hours when the fire started. During all that time, gas had been streaming out of the main pipe. The apartment had been transformed into a veritable bomb, the least spark sufficient to cause the desolating gas explosion and set the house alight.
Melander’s last measure on the site was to examine the battered gas meter and check the clock’s position, thus acquiring further evidence that his theory was correct.
Then he drove to Kungsholmsgatan and produced his results.
The facts were indisputable.
Hammar was delighted and did not even try to hide it.
Kollberg thought, “I told you so” and then said so, after which he immediately made preparations to return to the relative calm of Västberga.
Martin Beck looked thoughtful, but accepted the facts and nodded in confirmation.
Rönn sighed with relief.
The investigation was declared complete and the case closed.
Melander himself was content.
Technically speaking there was only one unanswered question, he thought. But there were hundreds of imaginable answers to that, and to sort them out until the right one appeared was not only unnecessary but also almost impossible.
As he left the toilet, he heard the telephone ringing somewhere near, probably in his own office, but he ignored it. Instead he went into the cloakroom to fetch his overcoat, and thus began his well-earned four-day holiday.
Ten minutes later, the red-haired Madeleine Olsen died. Twenty-four years old and after five and a half days of hellish suffering.
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10
Gunvald Larsson was not backward in asking the unanswered question which Melander had had in his thoughts.
He was now draped in his own dressing gown and for the first time was wearing his new pajamas. His feet were thrust into his white slippers.
He was standing by the window, trying to avoid looking at the flowers that Rönn had brought with him, an abominably composed bouquet of carnations, tulips and a mass of greenstuff as filler.
“Yes, yes,” he said angrily, waving the papers he had received from Rönn. “Even a child could understand that.”
“Well,” said Rönn.
He was sitting in the visitor’s chair, now and again glancing with modest pride at his flower arrangement.
“But even if the apartment was as full of gas as a May Day balloon, then something must have damned well ignited it, right?”
“Well …”
“Well, what?”
“Well, almost anything can cause an explosion in a gas-filled room.”
“Almost anything?”
“Yes, the slightest spark is enough.”
“But the spark itself has damned well got to come from somewhere, hasn’t it?”
“I had a case with a gas explosion once. A guy who had turned on the gas taps and committed suicide. Then along came a tramp and rang the doorbell and the spark from the battery sent the house sky-high.”
“But in this case it so happens that no tramp did come along and ring Malm’s doorbell.”
“Well, but there are perhaps hundreds of explanations.”
“There can’t be. There’s only one explanation, and no one has bothered to find it out.”
“It’s impossible to find it. Everything is destroyed. Just think, a short circuit in a switch or a cable that’s badly insulated is enough to make a spark.”
Gunvald Larsson said nothing.
“And during the fire, the whole electrical system was shot to hell,” said Rönn. “Every fuse blew. No one can prove that one fuse went earlier than the others, for instance.”
Gunvald Larsson still said nothing.
“An electric alarm clock or a radio or a TV set,” Rönn went on. “Or a spark suddenly falling out of either of the stoves.”
“But the flues were closed?”
“A spark might fall all the same,” said Rönn stubbornly. “In the chimney flue, for instance.”
Gunvald Larsson frowned with displeasure and stared fixedly out over the bare trees and wintry roofs.
“Why should Malm kill himself anyhow?” he asked suddenly.
“He was down and out. Had no money and knew the police were after him. That he wasn’t remanded in custody didn’t mean that he was safe. He’d have probably been taken in again as soon as Olofsson appeared.”
“Hm,” said Gunvald Larsson, reluctantly. “Yes, that’s true.”
“His domestic circumstances were terrible too,” said Rönn. “Alone and an alcoholic. A criminal record. Divorced twice. Had kids, but hadn’t paid their maintenence for years. Was just about to be sent to a work camp for alcohol offenses.”
“Uhuh.”
“And then he had some sort of illness. Had been in the bin several times.”
“Do you mean he was a bit nutty?”
“He was manic-depressive. Had severe depressions when he drank or was faced with any kind of reverse.”
“Yes, that’s enough. That’s enough.”
“Well, he had tried to kill himself before,” went on Rönn relentlessly. “At least twice.”
“But that still doesn’t explain where the spark came from.”
Rönn shrugged. There was a moment’s silence.
“A few minutes before the bang, I saw something,” said Gunvald Larsson, thoughtfully.
“What?”
“Someone struck a match or lit a lighter on the floor above. Above Malm’s apartment.”
“But the explosion occurred in Malm’s place, not up there,” said Rönn.
He polished his nose with a folded handkerchief.
“Don’t do that,” said Gunvald Larsson, without looking at him. “You just make it redder than ever.”
“Sorry,” said Rönn.
He put away his handkerchief, thought for a moment and then said:
“Though the house was old and badly built. Melander says that there ought to have been some gas in the apartment above too, even if the concentration wasn’t fatal.”
Gunvald Larsson turned round and glared at Rönn.
“Who interrogated the survivors?”
“No one.”
“No one?”
“No. They had nothing to do with Malm. Anyhow, there’s nothing that points to it.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well …”
“Where are they all now?”
“They’re still in the hospital. Here, I think. Except the children. They were taken care of by the children’s department.”
“And they’re going to survive? The adults, I mean?”
“Yes, except that Madeleine Olsen. She hasn’t much chance, but the last I heard was that she hadn’t died yet.”
“Then the others could be questioned?”
“Not now. The case is closed.”
“Do you yourself believe this business about it being an accident?”
Rönn looked down at his hands. At long last he nodded.
“Yes. There’s no other explanation. Everything is corroborated.”
“Yes. Except about that spark.”
“Well, that’s true. But it’s impossible to prove anything about that.”
Gunvald Larsson pulled a fair hair out of one of his nostrils and gazed at it thoughtfully. Then he went across to the bed and sat on it, folded the papers Rönn had brought with him and slung them onto the bedside table, as if in that way he was also closing the case on his own behalf.
“Are you being discharged the day after tomorrow?”
“Seems so.”
“Then you’ll have another week off, I presume?”
“Presumably,” said Gunvald Larsson absently.
Rönn looked at his watch.
“Well, I’d better be off. My boy’s got a birthday tomorrow and I’ve got to buy him a present.”
“What are you going to get him?” asked Gunvald Larsson, without interest.
“A fire engine,” said Rönn.
The other man stared at him as if he had said something extremely obscene.
“He wants one,” Rönn went on, unmoved. “It’s no bigger than that, and it costs thirty-two kronor.”
He raised two fingers to show the size of the fire engine.
“Oh, yes,” said Gunvald Larsson.
“Well—er—so long, then.”
Gunvald Larsson nodded. Not until Rönn had his hand on the door handle did he say anything.
“Einar?”
“Yes?”
“Those flowers—did you pick them yourself? Off some grave or other?”
Rönn gave him a hurt look and left.
Gunvald lay down on his back, clasped his huge hands behind his head and gazed up at the ceiling.
The next day was Thursday, the fourteenth of March to be more exact, and there was no visible sign whatsoever that it was spring, which according to the almanac was arriving. On the contrary, the wind was colder and more biting than ever and out at the South police station, squalls of fine-grained frozen snow rattled against the windowpanes. Kollberg was sitting gulping coffee out of a paper cup and stuffing himself with sweet rolls, scattering crumbs all over Martin Beck’s desk. Martin Beck himself was drinking tea, in the vain hope that it would be better for his stomach. It was half-past three in the afternoon and Kollberg had devoted the greater part of the day to grumbling at Skacke. In between times, when the object of his displeasure was out of earshot, he had laughed until he had got a cramp in his stomach.
There was a careful knock on the door and Skacke came in. He threw a timid glance at Kollb
erg and carefully put a piece of paper down on Martin Beck’s desk.
“What’s that?” said Kollberg. “Another case of feigned death?”
“A copy of a report from the Forensic laboratories,” said Skacke, almost inaudibly, and retreated toward the door.
“Tell us, Benny,” said Kollberg, an innocent expression on his face. “How did you come by the idea of becoming a policeman?”
Skacke stopped hesitantly and shifted his weight onto his other foot.
“That’s fine,” said Martin Beck, ostentatiously picking up the paper. “Thanks. You can go now.”
When the door had closed, he looked at Kollberg and said:
“Haven’t you been at him enough for one day?”
“Well,” said Kollberg genially, “I can always continue tomorrow. What’s that?”
Martin Beck glanced through the text.
“From Hjelm,” he said. “He’s analyzed a number of tests and objects from the fire in Sköldgatan. To ascertain any possible connection with the origin of the fire, he says. Negative results.”
He sighed and put the paper down.
“That Olsen girl died yesterday,” he said.
“Yes, I saw it in the papers,” said Kollberg, without interest. “By the way, do you know why that nit became a policeman?”
Martin Beck said nothing.
“I know,” said Kollberg. “It’s down in his records. He says he wants to use the profession as a springboard in his career. He’s aiming at becoming Chief of Police.”
