by Maj Sjowall
“And why did he come so regularly?”
“He had a kind of timetable which he had to stick to. Every time he was here he came from abroad, usually via Malmö. Sometimes he might come by air or on one of the ferries from the Continent. And then he stayed a couple of days. He came here to meet someone … he simply had time to fill up once a month.”
“What did Olofsson do?”
“He called himself a businessman. And he was in some ways. Thieves are businessmen too, aren’t they? For the first six months that I knew him, he said nothing about what he did or where he came from. But then he began to talk. It seemed to come out then. He was the kind of person who simply couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He boasted. I’m not an inquisitive person and I think it was just the fact that I never questioned him which made him shoot his mouth off. Finally, as I said nothing, he got to the bursting point. Shall I go into all that about … God, it’s hot …”
Månsson turned his toothpick over with his tongue, unashamedly scratched himself in the crotch and said:
“There’s a brief interruption here. Technical fault.”
After thirty seconds’ dead silence, the woman’s voice came back:
“Yes, Bertil was a poor bastard. He had a peasant’s shrewdness but generally speaking he was stupid and boastful. I understood him to be a person who couldn’t take success. He was that kind of person—the most insignificant success went to his head. For instance, if he earned a little money or found out something that he thought no one else knew. He always had tremendous plans, prattling on about the big break that was coming his way and so on. Besides, he overestimated his own intelligence that way, and by no means modestly either. When he once realized that I more or less understood what he did and what sort of businessman he was, he grew inclined to make himself out to be a real big-shot gangster and began talking about million kronor deals and killing people with bicycle chains and that sort of thing. In actual fact, he wasn’t all that successful, as I said.”
“If we try to consolidate what he did and presume that …”
Månsson left the words hanging in the air and a few seconds elapsed before she replied …
“I think I know exactly what he was up to. He and two other men worked at getting hold of stolen cars in Stockholm. Some they stole themselves and the rest they bought off other thieves for some piddling sum. Then they fixed those cars so that no one would recognize them and drove them to the Continent, mostly to Poland, I think. The person who received the cars didn’t pay them in money, but with something else. Mostly jewelry or loose stones, diamonds and so on. I know that, because Bertil even gave me one, last autumn, when he thought he was going to become a millionaire and was splurging a bit. But this business wasn’t their idea at all. They were just underlings. The firm’s Stockholm branch, he used to say, the fool. That was why he had to come here to Copenhagen once a month. He was to hand over the valuables he got for the cars to someone who gave him money instead. The guy who came with the money was a messenger too. He came from Paris or Madrid, or somewhere like that. I don’t really know much about that side of it, because I never met him. Even Olofsson had that much sense. He never let me even see the guy with the money and he never told anyone where he lived. He was darned keen on that, keeping me out of that part of the affair. I think it was a sort of reserve outlet for him. He’d got himself somewhere to live which no one knew about except him. I never introduced Bertil to anyone, in fact, and I didn’t let a single person in when he was here. In Copenhagen, into my apartment, I mean. No one, not even the pol—”
The voice was cut off.
“That recorder’s a bit tricky,” said Månsson, unmoved. “I borrowed it off the Danes.”
When the woman came back on the tape, her voice sounded different, but it was not easy to say in what way.
“Where was I? Yes, not even the police would have had a chance of finding me if Bertil hadn’t dragged me over to Malmö a few times. He was forced to go there to meet his partner, as he called him, some poor guy called Girre or something. Malm, his name was, I think. He drove the cars too, from Stockholm or Ystad or Trelleborg and then over the border. In between times he worked in a garage somewhere and resprayed the cars and fixed them up with false license plates. So I went to Malmö four or five times, mostly because I was curious. Anyhow, it was just as deadly each time. They sat in some room and drank and boasted and played whist with different so-called business friends and I just sat there yawning in a corner. The reason why Bertil had to go there, as far as I could make out, was that Malm was broke and had to have money to get back to Stockholm. And that he was stupid enough to drag me with him was because he wanted to shoot his mouth off a little discreetly to his buddies. Do you think …”
Another break. Månsson yawned and changed toothpicks.
“To show that he had a broad, my God! Now, Bertil wasn’t the type of … man who needed girls. As girls, I mean. Malm was the only one of those three at the so-called Stockholm branch. The third man I never met. He was called Sigge. It was he who organized the false papers, I think.”
Sigge. Ernst Sigurd Karlsson, thought Martin Beck.
A short pause, not mechanical this time. The woman appeared to be thinking and nothing was heard from Månsson, neither on the tape nor in reality.
“Now you must understand that this is just what I myself thought. But I’m sure it’s right. Bertil could not keep his mouth shut and it was impossible to misunderstand much of what he and Malm talked about together. Well, ever since some time last summer, Olofsson began to become more and more bigheaded every time I saw him. He began to talk about the so-called head office making enormous profits. He went on about it every time he had been there. Said that the Stockholm branch and most of all he himself did all the work and took all the risks, while the head office took most of the profits. But he himself didn’t even know where this much talked-of head office was. If he and those other two guys took over the business and ran the Stockholm branch themselves, then they’d earn a helluva lot of money, he said. I think all that went to his head in the end. And in December he did something unbelievably stupid …”
“What?” asked Gunvald Larsson, astonishingly enough, just like a seven-year-old at a children’s film matinee.
“… As far as I could make out, he followed the guy who brought him money. Where to I don’t know, Paris perhaps, or Rome. I think he’d already found out where this courier used to fly to, and that immediately after their meetings he took the first plane back to wherever it was, and then Bertil waited for the courier and followed him to see where he went. When he came here on the fifth of January this year, anyhow, he was extremely coarse and said that he had investigated the situation and was to go to France, yes, of course, he did in fact say France that time. But perhaps he was lying. He could lie too, if he wanted to. Well, anyhow, he was to go to the Continent and find out exactly what the situation was, he said. He also said that he and Malm and the third man were now in a position to set conditions and he was reckoning on at least tripling their income very soon. I think he really did take that trip, because the next time he came here he was awfully twitchy and nervous. He said that head office had agreed to send up a negotiator. When he talked, it was always in those sort of terms, as if it really were some ordinary business affair. Strangely enough, he did this to me too, although he knew that I understood what it was all about. On the sixth of February, he came here. He went out at least ten times that day to find out if the negotiator had come to his hotel. I haven’t got a telephone, you see. He implied that it was to be a decisive meeting and that Malm was sitting waiting for news in Malmö. At about three the next day, that was Wednesday, I remember, he went out for the third time that day. And he never came back. Full stop. The end.”
“Hm. Perhaps we should discuss your relationship to him too.”
The woman replied without a trace of hesitation.
“Yes. We had an agreement. I use drugs insofar as I smoke hash some
times, and regularly use Spanish phenedrine tablets when I work, Simpatina and Centramina. Excellent, both of them, and completely harmless. Now owing to this darned frenzy about drugs, those tablets are hard to get hold of and the price has doubled five or ten times. I simply can’t afford them. When I met Bertil Olofsson quite by chance down in Nyhavn, I asked him if he had any to sell, just as I asked practically everyone I came into contact with. It turned out that he had access to what I wanted and I had something he needed, a place to stay which no one knew about, two nights a month. I hesitated, because he wasn’t all that great shakes. But then it turned out that he didn’t care a fig for girls and that settled the matter. We made an agreement. He stayed that night, or sometimes a little longer, at my place. Every month. And every time he came I got my monthly supply. Then he disappeared and I haven’t had any tablets since. They’re too expensive to buy on the black market, as I told you, and the result is my work gets worse and slower. From that point of view, it was a pity they killed him.”
Månsson stretched out his hand and switched off the tape recorder.
“Uhuh,” he said. “That’s it, then.”
“What the hell was all that?” said Kollberg. “Sounded rather like a radio play.”
“Extremely skillful interrogation,” said Hammar. “How did you get her to talk so freely?”
“Oh, no difficulty,” said Månsson modestly.
“Please, may I ask something,” said Melander, pointing at the tape recorder with the stem of his pipe. “Why didn’t that woman go to the police of her own accord?”
“Her papers aren’t entirely in order,” said Månsson. “Nothing serious. The Danes don’t bother about it. And also she really didn’t care a bloody fig for Olofsson.”
“Brilliant interrogation,” said Hammar.
“That’s really only a summary,” said Månsson.
“Here, can one rely on that dame?” Gunvald Larsson asked.
“Absolutely,” said Månsson. “And what’s more important …”
He fell silent and waited until all the others had done so too.
“What’s more important is that we now have evidence to show that Olofsson went from his temporary living-quarters with … in Copenhagen at three o’clock on Wednesday the seventh of February. He went to meet someone. And this someone most likely took him across Öresund presumably on the excuse of meeting Malm, killed him and put him in an old car and pushed the whole contraption into the harbor.”
“Yes,” said Martin Beck. “That leads automatically to the question of how Olofsson got to Industrihamnen.”
“Exactly. We now know that the Prefect was not drivable and that the engine hadn’t run for years. We also know that people saw it standing about out there for one or more days, but as there are scrap cars all over the place, no one gave it another thought. The crate was thus in place.”
“And who had arranged it?”
“I think we know roughly who arranged it,” said Månsson. “Who in actual fact put the car there is harder to say. It could have been Malm, quite simply. He was in Malmö at the time and could be contacted by phone.”
“Well, how did Olofsson get to the harbor?” asked Hammar, impatiently.
“By car,” said Martin Beck, more or less to himself.
“Exactly,” said Månsson. “If he met the guy who killed him in Copenhagen, that means they must have gone together from Copenhagen to Malmö, and that you do by boat, unless you’re crazy or a long-distance swimmer.”
“Or a transit passenger by air,” said Kollberg.
“Yes, but that seems unlikely. As it’s illegal to transport corpses on those boats, then Olofsson must have been alive during the crossing. And also to have gone on a boat that carries cars. As far as we can make out, the person who killed Olofsson must have had a car at his disposal and it is likely that he had it with him from Copenhagen.”
“No, I don’t follow this,” said Gunvald Larsson. “Why must he have had a car?”
“Wait a minute,” said Månsson. “I’ll try to get through this quickly. It’s actually all quite clear. Both of them, Olofsson and the man who killed him, went from Copenhagen to Malmö that evening, the seventh of February, I mean. What I was trying to tell you was how I found out about it.”
“How you found out?” said Gunvald Larsson.
Månsson threw him a tired look and said:
“If he didn’t kill Olofsson either in Copenhagen or on the boat, then he must have done it here in Malmö. Where in Malmö? Presumably out at Industrihamnen. How did he get to Industrihamnen? By car, because there’s no other way to get there, for Christ’s sake. Which car? Well, the car he had brought over from Denmark. Why? Because if he’d been stupid enough to take a taxi or some other car in Malmö, then we’d have found out about it.”
Calm was restored. Everyone stared in silence at Månsson. He slowed down the tempo somewhat.
“This made me take two measures. First, I had two men check the ferries which ran in the afternoon and evening of the seventh of February. It turns out that indeed a steward on the train ferry Malmöhus recognizes Olofsson from a photograph and also can give quite a good description of the person who was with Olofsson. With this witness as a starting point, my two boys then find two supporting witnesses, one another steward and the other a seaman who was responsible for the arrangement of automobiles and railway cars on the vehicle deck. So we know with absolute certainty that Olofsson went from the free port of Copenhagen to Malmö on the train ferry on the evening of the seventh of February this year. On its last trip, the ferry left Copenhagen at a quarter to ten and got into Malmö at quarter past eleven. It does that every day, anyway, and has done so for many years. We also know that Olofsson was with a man whose description you’ll hear shortly.”
Månsson slowly changed toothpicks. He looked at Gunvald Larsson and said:
“We also know that they both traveled first class, that they sat in the smoking room and drank beer and ate two sandwiches containing cold beef and cheese, which agrees with the little that remains of the contents of Olofsson’s stomach.”
“That’s obviously what he died of,” mumbled Kollberg. “Swedish Railway’s sandwiches.”
Hammar threw him a murderous look.
“We even know which table they sat at. Furthermore, we know that they were in a Danish-registered Ford Taunus. Further investigations showed exactly which car it was, and that it was light blue.”
“How …?” said Martin Beck, and then fell silent. “Of course,” he said. “A rented car.”
“Exactly. The man who was with Olofsson did not bother to drive from God knows where to Copenhagen. Naturally he flew and rented a car when he got to Kastrup; at the car-rental firm he said his name was Cravanne and he produced a French driving-license and a French passport. He returned the car on the eighth and thanked them very much. Then he flew from there. Where to and under what name, we do not know. On the other hand, I think I know where he stayed, namely at a scruffy little hotel in Nyhavn. There, however, he produced a Lebanese passport and said his name was Riffi. If it’s the same man. I’m not quite sure, as I mentioned. A person with that name, anyhow, was there from the sixth to the eighth. People in Nyhavn don’t like the police.”
“And the conclusion,” said Martin Beck, “is that this person came to Copenhagen to do away with Olofsson. They met on the seventh, went to Malmö in the evening and … you said you’d investigated something else, didn’t you?”
“Had it investigated,” said Månsson lazily. “Yes, another look at the car, the Prefect, I mean, to find out how it got into the water. You know, it’s always good to know what you’re looking for. Then you find it more easily.”
“What?” said Melander.
“The marks. A moment ago I said that the Prefect couldn’t move under its own steam. How did it get into the water then? Well, the gear was put into neutral, then the car was pushed out into the water by another car, at quite a speed. Otherwise it wouldn’t
have landed so far out from the wharf. From behind, bumper to bumper, so to speak. The marks are there. There are corresponding marks on the other car, too.”
“But who drove the Prefect to that miserable harbor, whatever it’s called?” asked Gunvald Larsson.
“It must have been towed there. From some scrapyard. Personally I think it was Malm. He was staying at his usual place on the west side of Malmö, having already gone there on the fourth of February.”
“But then it might as well have been Malm who …” said Hammar, and then he fell silent.
“Nix,” said Månsson. “Malm had more sense of self-preservation than Olofsson. He left Malmö at top speed on the morning of the seventh and scuttled up here to Stockholm. That’s proved. My belief is that Malm had orders to get a car that could not be identified to a definite place. By telephone from Copenhagen from that Cravanne or Riffi. Malm did so, but realized at the same time that they had gone too far and the game was up. By the way, someone who spoke bad Swedish was looking for Malm on the telephone at midday on the seventh. The people at the hotel then said he’d gone. Do you want to hear the description now? I’ve taped a summary here to get everything in.”
He changed tapes and pressed the starting switch.
“Cravanne or Riffi looks between thirty-five and forty years old. He is at least five foot eight and at most five foot ten, rather above average in weight for that height, because of his squat and powerful build. He is not fat, however. His hair is black, as well as his eyebrows, and his eyes dark brown. He has good white teeth. His forehead is rather low, and hairline and eyebrows make two parallel lines. His nose is rather hooked and he might have a scar or a scratch on one nostril which has perhaps gone by now. He has a habit of running his forefinger over the place where the scar or scratch is. He is well and soberly dressed, suit, black shoes, white shirt, tie, and his behavior is quiet and polite. His voice has a deep note and he speaks at least three languages: French, which is presumably his native language, English very well but with a French accent, and Swedish quite well but with an accent.”
