by Maj Sjowall
“Doesn’t sound very likely,” he said, without looking up. “I find it hard to imagine that a wretch like Malm would be capable of committing a crime of that caliber. Morally, he perhaps had no scruples, but this would entail his managing the technical details too.”
“Excellent, Fredrik. There’s nothing wrong with your logic. Well, what conclusions do we draw from all that?”
Melander said nothing.
“What are the glaringly logical consequences?” Kollberg asked stubbornly.
“That both Olofsson and Malm were gotten rid of,” said Melander, with a certain reluctance.
“By whom?”
“We don’t know.”
“No, that’s true indeed. But one thing we can damned well work out.”
“Yes,” said Melander. “You’re probably right.”
“Professional job,” said Martin Beck to himself.
“Precisely,” said Kollberg. “A pro. Only pros use things like stones inside socks and that darned bomb.”
“Agreed,” said Melander.
“And because of that we’re sitting here scratching our heads, eyes popping, as if we’d seen a miracle. Because we’ve never dealt with anyone else but amateurs. And we’ve been doing that for so long that we’re more or less amateurs ourselves, too.”
“Ninety-eight per cent of all crimes are amateur ones. Even in the United States.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“No,” said Melander. “But it’s an explanation.”
“Wait a moment,” said Martin Beck. “That fits in with other points too. Ever since Gunvald wrote his memorandum or whatever we should call it, I’ve been wondering about something.”
“Yes,” said Kollberg. “Why did the person who put that incendiary in Malm’s bed then go and call the fire department?”
Thirty seconds later he answered his own question.
“Because he was a professional. A professional criminal. It was his job to finish off Malm, and he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in seeing ten people getting knocked off too.”
“Hm,” said Melander. “There’s some sense in that argument. I’ve read that professionals are often less bloodthirsty than amateurs.”
“I’ve read the same thing,” said Kollberg. “Yesterday. If we look at the other side of the coin and take a typical amateur like our one-time honored colleague Hedin, the cop who killed nine people in Skåne seventeen years ago, then he was not burdened with any such considerations. He set fire to an entire old people’s home just because he thought his fiancée was the end.”
“But he was insane,” said Martin Beck.
“All amateurs who kill people are mentally sick, if only at the actual moment when the crime is committed. But pros are not the same.”
“But there aren’t any professional murderers in Sweden now,” said Melander thoughtfully.
Kollberg gave him a searching look and said:
“What is there to say that this guy is Swedish?”
“If he’s a foreigner, then that fits in with what Gunvald has produced,” said Martin Beck.
“First and foremost, it fits in with our guesses,” said Kollberg. “And while we’re at it, we might as well go on guessing. Do you think, for instance, that whoever mined Malm’s bed and cracked open Olofsson’s skull is in Sweden at this moment? Do you think he even stayed here until the next day?”
“No,” said Melander. “Why should he do that?”
“Of course, there’s no evidence that we’re talking about the same murderer,” said Kollberg thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Melander. “One small point.”
“Yes,” said Martin Beck. “There is one thing which makes that assumption likely. Both to be able to carry out the murder in Malmö and cause the fire in Sköldgatan demanded a certain local knowledge.”
“Hm,” said Kollberg, pushing out his lips. “Someone who had been here in Sweden before.”
“Someone who speaks the language passably,” said Melander.
“Someone who knows quite a bit about Stockholm and Malmö.”
That was Kollberg.
“But who at the same time knows sufficiently little to make the mistake of giving the alarm to the fire station in Sundbyberg instead of Stockholm.”
That was Martin Beck.
“Whoever, by the way, thought up the idea of calling the house in Sköldgatan 37 Ringvägen?” Kollberg asked suddenly. “I mean apart from the highway department people and occasional policemen. Among the administrative staff, I mean.”
“Someone who has had the address written down for him instead of having it pointed out for him on a map,” said Melander, lighting his pipe.
“A person with a limited knowledge of the city streets,” said Martin Beck.
“A foreigner,” said Kollberg. “A foreign pro. In both cases, he uses a weapon never before used in Sweden. Hjelm maintains that that detonator mechanism was invented in France and in its time was common in Algeria. If a Swedish gangster suddenly wanted to kill Olofsson, he’d do it with a piece of pipe or a bicycle chain.”
“The trick with the stone inside a sock was used during the war,” said Martin Beck. “By spies and agents and such like. People who were sent over to liquidate collaborators and others considered to be displeasing. By people who didn’t dare take the risk of being searched and found with a knife or a gun.”
“There were cases like that in Norway,” said Melander.
Kollberg scratched his fair head.
“Yes, that’s all very well,” he said. “But there must be some motive.”
“Most certainly,” said Martin Beck. “The connection between Malm and Olofsson is in fact strengthened. Why are people got rid of by professional killers?”
“Because they’re uncomfortable,” said Melander. “One can guess at the relationship between Olofsson and Malm. They were presumably the car thieves. Anyhow they dealt with the stolen cars.”
“A stolen car is often not worth much to the thief,” said Martin Beck. “He sells it very cheaply, at whatever price he can get.”
“And Olofsson and Malm resprayed the cars and found false number plates and papers. Then they drove them across the border.
To some country where they either sold them themselves or simply handed them over to someone else.”
“The latter sounds the most likely, doesn’t it?” said Kollberg.
He shook his head irritably and continued:
“Together with someone else, or several other people, they were managing the Swedish end of a large enterprise which was concerned with a lot of other things. But they made some kind of blunder and the firm decided to get rid of them.”
“Yes, something in that line,” said Melander.
Kollberg shook himself gloomily and said:
“And what do you think people here are going to say when we put forward that sort of theory? Who the hell would believe anything like that?”
No one replied to his question and, perhaps thirty seconds later, he pulled a telephone toward him, dialed a number, waited, and said:
“Einar? I’m in Melander’s room. Could you come in for a moment?”
Less than thirty seconds later, Rönn appeared in the doorway. Kollberg looked solemnly at him and said:
“We’ve come to the conclusion that Malm and Olofsson worked for an international crime syndicate, some kind of Mafia. We also think that this gang got tired of them and sent a hired assassin from abroad to finish them off.”
Rönn stared from one man to the next. At long last, he said:
“Who thought up all that nonsense? That sort of thing only happens in films and books. Or are you pulling my leg?”
Kollberg shrugged his shoulders eloquently.
24
Benny Skacke had marked the eight telephone booths on the city map of Sundbyberg with black crosses. Then with the help of a pair of compasses he had drawn a circle around every cross. Although some of the booths lay inside central Sundbyberg
and several of the circles overlapped one another, the encircled sections covered an area of more than a half-mile square. Gunvald Larsson had not had much hope of any results or any form of success when he had sent Skacke out to try within this thickly populated area of the city to find any trace of the man who had called up the fire station on the seventh of March. That the man had called from one of the eight booths was no more than a guess, and even if this showed itself to be correct, the problem of finding a person about whom nothing was known beyond that he spoke Swedish with a foreign accent, still remained.
Skacke, however, took on his assignment with great enthusiasm and after receiving some reluctant assistance from the police in Solna-Sundbyberg for the first weeks, was now alone on the job. His work consisted of visiting tenants in every building within the encircled areas, and even for a young man with well-trained leg muscles, this was somewhat fatiguing. But Skacke was obstinate, and although Gunvald Larsson and Martin Beck had long since given up hope of any results and no longer even bothered to ask him how things were going, he went on knocking at doors in Sundbyberg whenever he had a moment to spare. He literally fell into bed at night and for the last few weeks had neglected his training program and his law studies. He had also neglected Monica, which was worse.
Skacke had met Monica eight months earlier, when they were both taking part in a swimming meet. Since then they had met more and more often and although they had never actually spoken about marriage directly, it was understood that they would move in together as soon as they could find a passable apartment. Skacke lodged with a landlady, and Monica, who was twenty and training to be a physiotherapist, still lived at her parents’ home.
When Monica phoned him on the evening of the sixteenth of May and for the seventh time that week in vain asked to see him, she was, to say the least, somewhat annoyed.
“Do you have to do all the jobs in that darned police force,” she said crossly. “Or aren’t there any other policemen except you?”
It was the first time that that question had been put to Benny Skacke, but presumably would not be the last. Most of his superiors, not least Martin Beck, often heard their wives asking the same question and they had long since ceased attempting to reply. But Benny Skacke did not know that. Consequently, he said:
“Of course there are. I’m determined to find this guy who called from a phone booth in Sundbyberg, but unfortunately I can’t do that and nothing else. But tomorrow anyhow, I’ll be knocking on doors all day and I’d thought I’d start early, so I’ve simply got to get to bed early tonight.”
He heard Monica draw in her breath to say something, and added swiftly:
“Don’t be angry with me, darling. Of course, I want to see you, but I must stick at my work if I’m to get anywhere.”
Monica was not placated and finally slammed down the receiver after threatening to go out with a physical training instructor called Rulle. Skacke knew this in his opinion nauseous creature only too well. He was not only considered unusually good-looking, but also had shown himself to be superior to Skacke in most branches of sport, including swimming. Football was in fact the only sport at which Skacke could say with any certainty that he excelled, and he often dreamed of the day when he would be able to entice the gentleman in question out onto the football field, however it could be arranged. He grew so agitated at the thought of Monica with that smug slob that he had to drink two glasses of milk to calm himself down before calling her up again.
Just as he put his hand on the receiver, the telephone rang again. It was Monica, wonder of wonders, full of regrets and begging his forgiveness, and after they had talked for more than an hour, they decided to meet in Sundbyberg the following day and have a late lunch there after Monica had finished at school.
On Friday morning, Skacke went directly to his beloved Sundbyberg to continue his Operation Door-knocking. Every day, he had crossed out on his map the areas he had covered and had also made a list of the apartments where no one had been at home when he had rung. The Office for Aliens had given him another list, covering the non-Scandinavian citizens registered under addresses in Sundbyberg. He had set off before seven o’clock in order to get to some of the addresses on the list of those not yet interviewed, before people had gone to work.
By nine o’clock, he had reduced the number of names on the list by half, but that was the only result he had succeeded in achieving.
Benny Skacke walked through Sundbyberg toward the residential quarter he had chosen to visit that day. He went into a park which sloped up toward a group of tall buildings on the top of a hillside. The park did not appear artificial, but was more like a piece of untouched countryside, which with rare generosity had been allowed to remain when the area had been planned. The grass on either side of the path was fresh and green and farther on between the pine trees on a forested slope, gray blocks of granite and moss-covered stones protruded from the pine-needle-strewn ground. The path on which he was walking was neither asphalted nor sanded, but had been trampled there by human feet, winding its way through birch trees and oaks. Sunlight sifted down through the light foliage and threw shimmering spots of gold onto the dry hard earth of the path and the worn roots of the trees. Skacke slowed his pace and suddenly noticed the smell of pine needles and sun-warmed soil, but only for a brief moment. The next time he drew air in through his nostrils, he could smell nothing but gasoline fumes and the rancid odor of frying-oil from a grill down on the street.
Skacke was thinking about Monica. They were to meet at three o’clock and he was looking forward to seeing her. It had seldom happened that a whole week had gone by between their meetings.
In the first building, there was someone at home in all the apartments except two. No one knew any foreigner who might have lived there at the beginning of March or had ever heard of any alarm call to the fire department. In the next building, there were two foreigners, but one was a Finn and spoke somewhat incomprehensible Swedish and not with the accent Doris Mårtensson had described. The other was an Italian, who had been safely at home in Milan on the seventh of March. Without being asked to, he had got out his passport and shown the date-stamps. Had either of these people acquaintances who were foreigners? Yes, they had lots of friends who were foreigners, and so what?
Yes, one might well ask.
By the time Skacke had cleared the buildings farther up the slope, it was nearly twelve o’clock and he was hungry. He went into a café on the ground floor of one of the high blocks and ordered cocoa and an open-faced cheese sandwich. The place was empty except for Skacke and the waitress. After she had served him, she returned to her place at the counter and stared in a bored way out of the window. Outside was a large square of the type usually found between high buildings in most suburbs on the outskirts of Stockholm, and which is seldom called a square but a shopping center, preferably a piazza, presumably a pathetic attempt by the city planners to give these dismal stone deserts some kind of Mediterranean flavor.
The door opened and a man stepped cautiously inside. He was wearing a blue velvet skullcap on his head and was carrying an empty nylon string bag. He walked slowly across the floor and gave Skacke a crafty look beneath his frowning eyebrows. When he caught sight of the waitress, his brown eyes began to glitter and spreading out his arms he said in lilting Finnish-Swedish:
“Ah, my God, Miss, I’ve such a terrible hangover today. What’s that excellent new soft drink I usually buy?”
“Tom Collins,” said the girl.
“Yes, I must have eight cans at once, my dear. But they must be cold. Cold as a Tibetan mountain waterfall.”
He handed the bag over to her and she vanished into the back quarters. The man in the skullcap rummaged in his wallet with a troubled expression. Skacke heard a refrigerator door shut and the waitress came back with the net bag full of cans of soft drink.
“I suppose I can’t have credit?” asked the man.
“Yes, that’ll be all right,” said the girl. “You live here, sir,
so …
“Yes, that’ll be quite all right,” she repeated, as if bewitched.
The man put his wallet away and took the bag.
“Well, that’s excellent then. So perhaps it’s not such a terrible day after all.”
He moved toward the door. Then he turned round and said:
“You’re an angel, Miss. I’ll bring the money on Monday. Goodbye.”
Skacke pushed his cup away and took the map out of his inside pocket. It was beginning to look rather well-used now and he had had to tape it together at the folds. He crossed out the area around the square. Then he looked at the time and reckoned he would be able to do the buildings down on the other side of the slope before meeting Monica. Then he would have covered a large connected portion of the town, as he had already done the older buildings along the main street down the slope. The buildings on the slope were modern but not so tall as those on the hill.
By twenty past two, Skacke had worked his way through all the buildings except the corner one at the bottom of the slope. At that corner was one of the telephone booths in which the notice giving the local fire station number still remained.
In the entrance of this building, a man was standing drinking beer. He thrust the bottle under Skacke’s nose and said something which at first was incomprehensible. Then he realized that the man was a Norwegian and saying that he was celebrating the seventeenth of May. Skacke showed the man his identity card and informed him in a stern and authoritative voice that it was forbidden to consume intoxicating liquors on the street. The man looked at Skacke in alarm and Skacke said:
“As you’re not Swedish, I shall allow mercy to go before justice this time. Give me the bottle and scram.”
The man gave him the half-empty bottle and Skacke poured the remainder of the beer down the drain in the gutter. Then he walked across the road and dropped the bottle into the wastepaper basket. When he turned around, he saw the Norwegian disappearing around the corner with a vacant glance at him over his shoulder.
Skacke took the elevator to the top floor and rang the bells of the three doors there in turn. No one came and he wrote the three names down on his list for another visit. Then he went down to the next floor.
