MAJ SJÖWALL

AND PER WAHLÖÖ

Cop Killer

Translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal

Copyright

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

This ebook first published by Harper Perennial in 2009

This 4th Estate edition published in 2016

This translation first published by Random House Inc, New York, in 1975

Originally published in Sweden by P. A. Norstedt & Söner Forlag

Copyright text © Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo 1975

Copyright introduction © Alexander and Alexandra Ahndoril 2011

Cover photograph © Shutterstock

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors' imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007439195

EPub Edition © 1975 ISBN: 9780007323425

Version: 2016-03-30

From the reviews of the Martin Beck series:

‘First class’

Daily Telegraph

‘One of the most authentic, gripping and profound collections of police procedural ever accomplished’

MICHAEL CONNELLY

‘Hauntingly effective storytelling’

New York Times

‘There's just no question about it: the reigning King and Queen of mystery fiction are Maj Sjöwall and her husband Per Wahlöö’

The National Observer

‘Sjöwall/Wahlöö are the best writers of police procedural in the world’

Birmingham Post

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

About the Authors

Also by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

It’s dark and snow whirls from the rooftops in a Sweden where everything is perfect. As white as a thick layer of fresh snow on forest and land.

The snow-covered landscape here is an amazing sight, but we Swedish have always been a curious and strangely suspicious people. We want to know what’s hiding under the snow. We need to find out what’s underneath society’s pristine surface.

This need was probably the starting point for the Swedish crime fiction tradition; it all began with a healthy distrust. Because people here have always known that the brightness of summer is followed by winter, that the light is followed by the terrible darkness. And nothing is as it seems – the ice on the lake looks inviting but might be treacherous.

Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo were both Marxists and they began writing crime novels because they had a burning desire to investigate and influence society. When they debuted in 1965 with Roseanna, the status of Swedish crime fiction was no higher than that of the comic strip.

The crime novel was clever, a bit academic and almost always bone-dry. It had been heavily influenced by British detective stories and their aristocratic heroes – gentlemen who solved puzzles with ice-cold logic.

Sjowall and Wahloo tore down the old curtains in the windows and invited in the dirty contemporary. Their style was closer to the American tradition, but they filled their stories with warnings of society’s dangerous conservatism, political corruption and human greed. In this way, they allied themselves with the people, the common man.

And – perhaps the most brilliant thing about their entire project – they were using a commercial genre to expose society’s hypocrisy and injustice. No one had done anything like this before and their tone had a rawness that made us gasp.

Sjowall and Wahloo made crime fiction a permanent part of our daily lives. It was a great and much needed change, and their novels became almost a movement.

But they might not have changed society as much as they changed the Swedish crime writing tradition. Even now, every Swedish crime writer has to pass Sjowall and Wahloo. They stand like two sentries guarding the genre.

But with a new tradition comes new rules and prohibitions, and the crime novel was soon formularized again. In the decades after Sjowall and Wahloo, a number of imitations had become trapped in that cage. The subversive social criticism sounded more and more mechanical and turned into a kind of alibi. Crime novels were suddenly expected to apologize for the entertaining side of the genre.

We grew up with Sjowall and Wahloo – they were powerful parents. But Lars Kepler is a wayward child, and he had to rebel, to break out and escape from the cage, along with his big brother Stieg Larsson.

Sjowall and Wahloo did not apologize and neither do we. We just love exciting thrillers. We want to combine the old tradition with a filmic pace. For us, this genre presents an opportunity to examine our own fears, to face them and weave them into great stories.

What a writing process is actually like in practice is always difficult to explain. We learn that Sjowall and Wahloo wrote alternate chapters. For them, it was the most creative method, pushing each other forward. Our method is completely different. We write like two people playing the piano together, four-handed. We don’t even write alternate sentences; we do everything together, like one person.

Writing is a way to discuss mankind, our shortcomings and our innate heroism, and for us, the crime genre is an optimistic genre. Only here can you make the world as it should be for a few wonderful hours – the violence ends and the perpetrators are stopped.

Sjowall and Wahloo books were a part of our childhood summers. We would both run to the library for these desirable books and read them during the long, bright summer nights. They were a leap into a whole new world. From childhood stories and into a raw, realistic tradition.

It is no coincidence that their books are mostly set in the summer. The world is bright and beautiful just like Swedish society, but we know that heavy darkness is approaching at a tremendous pace, just as we all know that violence is hiding under the surface.

So many years have passed since first reading their books but it’s a pleasure to meet them again. The storytelling is effective; the suspense is still there. Of course some things have dated; it is not entirely possible to ignore the simplistic rhetoric and the problematic portrayals of women. But on the whole, this dual authorship is unique.

In Cop Killer we find a motive that is as timeless as it is familiar: Death and the Maiden. The book begins with a woman waiting for a bus when a car stops and offers her a ride. As a reader, you know that she shouldn’t step into the car. As it’s Sjowall and Wahloo, the woman is neither young, nor a virgin, but is promiscuous. Her murder is woven together with the manhunt for a young man who steals the wrong car. Sjowall and Wahloo manage to do it again. They knock the world out faster than anyone can pronounce their names.

Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril

a.k.a. Lars Kepler

1

She reached the bus stop well ahead of the bus, which would not be along for half an hour yet. Thirty minutes of a person's life is not an especially long time. Besides, she was used to waiting and was always early. She thought about what she would make for dinner, and a little about what she looked like – her usual idle thoughts.

By the time the bus came, she would no longer have any thoughts at all. She had only twenty-seven minutes left to live.

It was a pretty day, clear and gusty, with a touch of early autumn chill in the wind, but her hair was too well lacquered to be affected by the weather.

What did she look like?

Standing there by the side of the road this way, she might have been in her forties, a rather tall, sturdy woman with straight legs and broad hips and a little secret fat that she was very much afraid might show. She dressed mostly according to fashion, often at the expense of comfort, and on this blustery autumn day she was wearing a bright green 1930s coat, nylon stockings, and thin brown patent leather boots with platform soles. She was carrying a small square handbag with a large brass clasp slung over her left shoulder. This too was brown, as were her suede gloves, Her blonde hair had been well sprayed, and she was carefully made up.

She didn't notice him until he stopped. He leaned over and threw open the passenger door.

‘Want a lift?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said, a little flurried. ‘Of course. I didn't think…’

‘What didn't you think?’

‘Well, I didn't expect to get a ride. I was going to take the bus.’

‘I knew you'd be here,’ he said. ‘And it's not out of my way, as it happens. Jump in, now, look alive.’

Look alive. How many seconds did it take her to climb in and sit down beside the driver? Look alive. He drove fast, and they were quickly out of town.

She was sitting with her handbag in her lap, slightly tense, flustered perhaps, or at least somewhat surprised. Whether happily or unhappily it was impossible to say. She didn't know herself.

She looked at him from the side, but the man's attention seemed wholly concentrated on the driving.

He swung off the main road to the right, but then turned again almost immediately. The same procedure was repeated, and the road grew steadily worse. It was questionable whether it could be called a road any more or not.

‘What are you going to do?’ she said, with a frightened little giggle.

‘You'll find out.’

‘Where?’

‘Here,’ he said and braked to a stop.

Ahead of him he could see his own wheeltracks in the moss. They were not many hours old.

‘Over there,’ he said with a nod. ‘Behind the woodpile. That's a good place.’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘I never kid about things like that.’

He seemed hurt or upset by the question.

‘But my coat,’ she said.

‘Leave it here.’

‘But …’

‘There's a blanket.’

He climbed out, walked around, and held the door for her.

She accepted his help and took off the coat. Folded it neatly and placed it on the seat beside her handbag.

‘There.’

He seemed calm and collected, but he didn't take her hand as he walked slowly towards the woodpile. She followed along behind.

It was warm and sunny behind the woodpile and sheltered from the wind. The air was filled with the buzzing of flies and the fresh smell of greenery. It was still almost summer, and this summer had been the warmest in the meteorological institute's history.

It wasn't actually an ordinary woodpile but rather a stack of beech logs, cut in sections and piled about six feet high.

‘Take off your blouse.’

‘Yes,’ she said shyly.

He waited patiently while she undid the buttons.

Then he helped her off with the blouse, gingerly, without touching her body.

She was left standing with the garment in one hand, not knowing what to do with it.

He took it from her and placed it carefully over the edge of the pile of logs. An earwig zigzagged across the fabric.

She stood before him in her skirt, her breasts heavy in the skincoloured bra, her eyes on the ground, her back against the even surface of sawed timber.

The moment had come to act, and he did so with such speed and suddenness that she never had time to grasp what was happening. Her reactions had never been especially quick.

He grabbed the waistband at her navel with both hands and ripped open her skirt and her tights in a single violent motion. He was strong, and the fabric gave instantly, with a rasping snarl like the sound of old canvas being torn. The skirt fell to her calves, and he jerked her tights and panties down to her knees, then pulled up the left cup of her bra so that her breast flopped down, loose and heavy.

Only then did she raise her head and look into his eyes. Eyes that were filled with disgust, loathing, and savage delight.

The idea of screaming never had time to take shape in her mind. For that matter, it would have been pointless. The place had been chosen with care.

He raised his arms straight out and up, closed his powerful suntanned fingers around her throat, and strangled her.

The back of her head was pressed against the pile of logs, and she thought: My hair.

That was her last thought.

He held his grip on her throat a little longer than necessary.

Then he let go with his right hand and, holding her body upright with his left, he struck her as hard as he could in the groin with his right fist.

She fell to the ground and lay among the musk-madder and last year's leaves. She was essentially naked.

A rattling sound came from her throat. He knew this was normal and that she was already dead.

Death is never very pretty. In addition, she had never been pretty during her lifetime, not even when she was young.

Lying there in the forest undergrowth, she was, at best, pathetic.

He waited a minute or so until his breathing had returned to normal and his heart had stopped racing.

And then he was himself again, calm and rational.

Beyond the pile of logs was a tangle of fallen branches from the big autumn storm of 1968, and beyond that, a dense planting of spruce trees about the height of a man.

He lifted her under the arms and was disgusted by the feel of the sticky, damp stubble in her armpits against the palms of his hands.

It took some time to drag her through the almost impassable terrain of sprawling tree trunks and uptorn roots, but he saw no need to hurry. Several yards into the spruce thicket there was a marshy depression filled with muddy yellow water. He shoved her into it and tramped her limp body down into the ooze. But first he looked at her for a moment. She was still tanned from the sunny summer, but the skin on her left breast was pale and flecked with light-brown spots. As pale as death, one might say.

He walked back to get the green coat and wondered for a moment what he should do with her handbag. Then he took the blouse from the timber pile, wrapped it around the handbag, and carried everything back to the muddy pool. The colour of the coat was rather striking, so he picked a suitable stick and pushed the coat, the blouse, and the handbag as deep as he could down into the mud.

He spent the next quarter of an hour collecting spruce branches and chunks of moss. He covered the pool so thoroughly that no casual passerby would ever notice the mudhole existed.

He studied the result for a few minutes and made several corrections before he was satisfied.

Then he shrugged his shoulders and went back to where he was parked. He took a clean cotton rag from the floor and cleaned off his rubber boots. When he was done, he threw the rag on the ground. It lay there wet and muddy and clearly visible, but it didn't matter. A cotton rag can be anywhere. It proves nothing and can't be linked to anything in particular.

Then he turned the car around and drove away.

As he drove, it occurred to him that everything had gone well, and that she had got precisely what she deserved.

2

A car stood parked outside a block of flats on Råsundavägen in Solna. It was a black Chrysler with white wings and the word POLICE in big, white, block letters on the doors, bonnet, and boot. Someone who had wanted to describe the vehicle's occupants even more exactly had used tape on the black-on-white licence plate to cover the lower loop of the B in the first three letters, BIG.

The headlights and interior lights were turned off, but the glow from the streetlights glistened dully on shiny uniform buttons and white shoulder belts in the front seat.

Even though it was only 8.30 on a pretty, starlit, not especially chilly October evening, the long street was from time to time utterly deserted. There were lights in the windows of the blocks of flats on either side, and from some of them came the cold blue glow of a TV screen.

An occasional passerby glanced curiously at the police car but lost interest quickly when its presence did not seem to be connected with any noticeable activity. The only thing to be seen was two ordinary policemen sitting lazily in their vehicle.

The men inside the car would not have objected to a little activity either. They had been sitting there over an hour, and all that time their attention had been fixed on a doorway across the street and on a lit window on the first floor to the right of the doorway. But they knew how to wait. They had had lots of experience.

It might have occurred to anyone taking a closer look that these two men didn't really look like ordinary police constables. There was nothing wrong with their uniforms, which were entirely regulation and included shoulder belts and truncheons and pistols in holsters. What was wrong was that the driver, a corpulent man with a jovial mien and alert eyes, and his companion, thinner and slouching a bit, with one shoulder against the side window, both looked to be about fifty years old. As a rule, patrol cars are manned by young men in good physical condition, and where exceptions to this rule occur, the older man is usually paired with a younger companion.

A patrol car crew whose combined ages exceeded one hundred years, as in this case, had to be regarded as a unique phenomenon. But there was an explanation.

The men in the black-and-white Chrysler were merely masquerading as patrolmen. And concealed behind this clever disguise were none other than the chief of the National Murder Squad, Martin Beck, and his closest colleague, Lennart Kollberg.

The disguise had been Kollberg's idea, and was based on his knowledge of the man they were out to try and capture. The man's name was Lindberg, known as The Breadman, and he was a thief. Burglary was his speciality, but he also committed an occasional armed robbery and had even tried his hand at fraud, with less fortunate results. He had spent many years of his life behind bars but was a free man at the moment, having completed his most recent sentence. A freedom that would be short-lived if Martin Beck and Kollberg were successful.

Three weeks earlier, The Breadman had stepped into a jeweller's in the centre of Uppsala, drawn a revolver, and forced the owner to hand over gems, watches, and cash to a combined value of nearly 200,000 kronor. Up to this point, that was all comparatively well and good, and The Breadman could have taken his haul and vanished, except for the fact that a sales assistant suddenly appeared from the inner reaches of the shop, and The Breadman panicked and let fly a bullet that struck the woman in the forehead and killed her on the spot. The Breadman managed to make his escape, and two hours later, when the Stockholm police went to look for him at his girlfriend's flat at Midsommarkransen, they found him in bed. His fiancée maintained that he had a cold and had not left the house in twenty-four hours, and a search produced nothing in the form of rings, jewels, watches, or money. The Breadman was taken in for questioning and confronted with the owner of the shop, who was reluctant to make a positive identification because the robber had worn a mask. But the police felt no such reluctance. In the first place, they could assume that The Breadman was broke after his long stay in prison, in addition to which an informer had told them that The Breadman had mentioned a job he was planning ‘in another city’, and in the second place, there was a witness who, two days before the crime, had seen The Breadman strolling down the street where the jeweller's was located, presumably to reconnoitre. The Breadman denied ever having been in Uppsala and finally had to be released for lack of evidence.

For three weeks now, the police had had The Breadman under constant surveillance, convinced that sooner or later he would visit the place where he had hidden the loot from the holdup. But The Breadman seemed to realize he was being shadowed. On a couple of occasions he had even waved to the plainclothes officers who were watching him, and his single purpose seemed to be to keep them occupied. He clearly had no money. At least he spent none, since his girlfriend had a job and provided him with food and shelter over and above the routine assistance he picked up at the social security office once a week.

In the end, Martin Beck decided to attend to the matter himself, and Kollberg hit on the brilliant idea of dressing themselves up as beat constables. Since The Breadman could spot the most plainly clothed plainclothes officer at a great distance but had always taken a contemptuous and nonchalant attitude towards uniformed personnel, the uniform, in this case, ought to be the best disguise. Such was Kollberg's reasoning, and Martin Beck, with some reservations, agreed with him.

Neither one of them had hoped for any immediate result of this new tactic, and they were pleasantly surprised when The Breadman jumped into a taxi as soon as he realized he was no longer being watched and had himself brought to this address on Råsundavägen. The very fact that he had taken a cab seemed to indicate a certain purposefulness, and they were convinced that something was up. If they could collar him with the stolen goods and maybe even the murder weapon in his possession, that would definitely link him to the crime, and the case would be closed as far as they were concerned.

The Breadman had now been in the building for an hour and a half. They had had a glimpse of him in the window to the right of the doorway an hour earlier, but nothing had happened since then.

Kollberg was starting to get hungry. He was often hungry, and he often talked about losing weight. Every now and then he would go on some new diet, but he generally gave up pretty quickly. He was at least three stone overweight, but he worked out regularly and was in good physical condition. When occasion demanded, he was astonishingly quick and lithe for the size of his body and his age, which was nearly fifty.

‘It's a hell of a long time since I had anything in my belly,’ Kollberg said.

Martin Beck didn't answer. He wasn't hungry, but he had a sudden longing for a cigarette. He had pretty much stopped smoking two years before, after a serious gunshot wound in the chest.

‘A man my size really needs a little more than one hard-boiled egg a day,’ Kollberg went on.

If you didn't eat so much you wouldn't be that size and you wouldn't need to eat so much, Martin Beck thought, but he said nothing. Kollberg was his best friend, and it was a touchy subject. He didn't want to hurt his feelings and he knew Kollberg was in an especially bad mood whenever he was hungry. He also knew that Kollberg had urged his wife to keep him on a reducing diet that consisted exclusively of hard-boiled eggs. The diet was not a great success, however, since breakfast was the only meal he ate at home. He ate his other meals out, or at the police canteen, and they did not consist of hard-boiled eggs – Martin Beck could vouch for that.

Kollberg nodded in the direction of a brightly lit pastry shop half a block away.

‘I don't suppose you'd …’

Martin Beck opened the door on the kerb side and put out one foot.

‘Okay. What do you want? Danish?’

‘Yes, and a mazarin,’ Kollberg said.

Martin Beck came back with a bag of pastries, and they sat quietly and watched the building where The Breadman was while Kollberg ate, dribbling crumbs all over his uniform. When he was finished eating, he pushed the seat back one more notch and loosened his shoulder belt.

‘What have you got in that holster?’ Martin Beck asked.

Kollberg unbuttoned the holster and handed him the weapon. It was a toy pistol of Italian manufacture, well made and massive and almost as heavy as Martin Beck's own Walther, but incapable of firing anything but caps.

‘Nice,’ said Martin Beck. ‘Wish I'd had one like that when I was a kid.’

It was common knowledge on the force that Lennart Kollberg refused to carry arms. Most people were under the impression that his refusal was based on some kind of pacifist principles and that he wanted to set a good example, since he was the police department's most enthusiastic advocate of eliminating weapons altogether under normal circumstances.

And all of that was true, but it was only half the truth. Martin Beck was one of the few people who knew of the primary reason for Kollberg's stand.

Lennart Kollberg had once shot and killed a man. It had happened more than twenty years before, but Kollberg had never been able to forget, and it was a good many years now since he had carried a weapon, even on critical and dangerous assignments.

The incident took place in August 1952, while Kollberg was attached to the second Söder division in Stockholm. Late one evening, there was an alarm from Långholm Prison, where three armed men had attempted to free a prisoner and had shot and wounded one of the guards. By the time the emergency squad with Kollberg reached the prison, the men had smashed their car into a railing up on Väster Bridge while trying to get away, and one of the men had been captured. The other two had managed to escape by running into Långholm Park on the other side of the bridge abutment. Both of them were thought to be armed, and since Kollberg was considered a good shot, he was included in the group that was sent into the park to try and surround the men.

With his pistol in hand, he had climbed down towards the water and then followed the shore away from the glow of the lights up on the bridge, listening and peering into the darkness. After a while, he stopped on a smooth granite outcropping that projected out into the bay and bent over and dipped one hand in the water, which felt warm and soft. When he straightened up again, a shot rang out, and he felt the bullet graze the sleeve of his coat before it hit the water several yards behind him. The man who fired it had been somewhere in the darkness among the bushes on the slope above him. Kollberg immediately threw himself flat on his face and squirmed into the protective vegetation along the shore. Then he started to crawl up towards a boulder that loomed over the spot where he thought the shot had come from. And sure enough, when he reached the huge rock he could see the man outlined against the light, open water of the bay. He was only fifty or sixty feet away. He was turned halfway towards Kollberg, holding his pistol ready in his raised hand and moving his head slowly from side to side. Beside him was the steep slope down into Riddar Bay.

Kollberg aimed carefully for the man's right hand. Just as his finger squeezed off the shot, someone suddenly appeared behind his target and threw himself towards the man's arm and Kollberg's bullet and then just as suddenly vanished again down the hillside.

Kollberg did not immediately realize what had happened. The man started running, and Kollberg shot again and this time hit him in the knee. Then he walked over and looked down the hill.

Down at the edge of the water lay the man he had killed. A young policeman from his own division. They had often been on duty together and always got along unusually well.

The story was hushed up, and Kollberg's name was never even mentioned in connection with it. Officially, the young policeman died of an accidental bullet wound, a wild shot from nowhere, while pursuing a dangerous criminal. Kollberg's chief gave him a little lecture in which he warned him against brooding and self-reproach and closed by pointing out that Charles XII himself had once shot to death his head groom and close friend through carelessness and inadvertence and that consequently it was the sort of accident that could happen to the best of men. And that was supposed to be the end of it. But Kollberg never really recovered from the shock, and for many years now, as a result, he always carried a cap pistol whenever he needed to appear to be armed.

Neither Kollberg nor Martin Beck thought about any of this as they sat in the patrol car waiting for The Breadman to show himself.

Kollberg yawned and squirmed in his seat. It was uncomfortable sitting behind the wheel, and the uniform he had on was too tight. He couldn't remember the last time he'd worn one, but it was definitely a long time ago. He had borrowed the one he was wearing, and even though it was small, it was not nearly as tight as his own old uniform would have been, which was hanging on a hook in a cupboard at home.

He glanced at Martin Beck, who had sunk deeper into the seat and was staring out through the windscreen.

Neither one of them said anything. They had known each other for a long time; they had been together on the job and off for many years and had no need to talk just for the sake of talking. They had spent innumerable evenings this same way – in a car on some dark street, waiting.

Since he became chief of the National Murder Squad, Martin Beck did not actually need to do much trailing and surveillance – he had a staff to attend to that. But he often did it anyway, even though that kind of assignment was usually deadly dull. He didn't want to lose touch with this side of the job simply because he'd been made chief and had to spend more and more of his time dealing with all the troublesome demands made by a growing bureaucracy. Even if the one did not, unfortunately, preclude the other, he preferred sitting and yawning in a patrol car with Kollberg to sitting and trying not to yawn in a meeting with the National Police Commissioner.

Martin Beck liked neither the bureaucracy, the meetings, nor the Commissioner. But he liked Kollberg very much and had a hard time picturing this job without him. For a long time now, Kollberg had been expressing an occasional desire to leave the police force, but recently he had seemed more and more determined to carry out this impulse. Martin Beck wanted neither to encourage nor discourage him. He knew that Kollberg's feeling of solidarity with the police force had come to be virtually non-existent and that his conscience bothered him more and more. He also knew it would be very hard for him to get a satisfying and roughly equivalent job. In a time of high unemployment, when young people in particular, but even university graduates and well-trained professionals of every description, were going without work, the prospects for a fifty-year-old former policeman were not especially bright. For purely selfish reasons, he wanted Kollberg to stay on, of course, but Martin Beck was not a particularly selfish person, and the thought of trying to influence Kollberg's decision had never crossed his mind.

Kollberg yawned again.

‘Lack of oxygen,’ he said and rolled down the window. ‘We were lucky to have been constables back in the days when cops still used their feet to walk on and not just to kick people with. You can get claustrophobia sitting in here like this.’

Martin Beck nodded. He too disliked the feeling of being shut in.

Both Martin Beck and Kollberg had begun their careers as policemen in Stockholm in the mid-forties. Martin Beck had worn down the pavements in Norrmalm, and Kollberg had trudged the narrow alleyways of the Old City. They hadn't known one another in those days, but their memories from that time were by and large the same.

It got to be 9.30. The pastry shop closed, and the lights started going out in many of the windows down the street. The lights were still on in the flat where The Breadman was visiting.

Suddenly the door opened across the street, and The Breadman stepped out on to the pavement. He had his hands in the pockets of his coat and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

Kollberg put his hands on the steering wheel and Martin Beck sat up in his seat.

The Breadman stood quietly outside the doorway, calmly smoking his cigarette.

‘He doesn't have any bag with him,’ Kollberg said.

‘He might have it in his pockets,’ Martin Beck said. ‘Or else he's sold it. We'll have to check on who he was visiting.’

Several minutes passed. Nothing happened. The Breadman gazed up at the starry sky and seemed to be enjoying the evening air.

‘He's waiting for a taxi,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Seems to be taking a hell of a long time,’ Kollberg said.

The Breadman took a final drag on his cigarette and flicked it out into the street. Then he turned up his coat collar, stuck his hands back into his pockets, and started across the street towards the police car.

‘He's coming over here,’ Martin Beck said. ‘Damn. What do we do? Take him in?’

‘Yes,’ Kollberg said.

The Breadman walked slowly over to the car, leaned down, looked at Kollberg through the side window and started to laugh. Then he walked around behind the boot and up on to the pavement. He opened the door to the front seat where Martin Beck was sitting, leaned over, and let out a roar of laughter.

Martin Beck and Kollberg sat quietly and let him laugh, for the simple reason that they didn't know what else to do.

The Breadman finally recovered somewhat from his paroxysms.

‘Well, now,’ he said, ‘have you finally been demoted? Or is this some kind of fancy-dress party?’

Martin Beck sighed and climbed out of the car. He opened the door to the back seat.

‘In you go, Lindberg,’ he said. ‘We'll give you a lift to Västberga.’

‘Good enough,’ said The Breadman good-naturedly. ‘That's closer to home.’

On the way in to Södra police station, The Breadman told them he'd been visiting his brother in Råsunda, which was quickly confirmed by a patrol car despatched to the spot. There were no weapons, money, or stolen goods in the flat. The Breadman himself was carrying twenty-seven kronor.

At a quarter to twelve they had to release him, and Martin Beck and Kollberg could start to think about going home.

‘I never would have thought you guys had such a sense of humour,’ said The Breadman before he left. ‘First this bit with the costumes – now that was fun. But the part I liked best was seeing PIG written on the back of your car. I couldn't have done better myself.’

They themselves were only moderately amused, but his hearty laughter reached them from a long way down the stairs. He sounded almost like the Laughing Policeman.

In point of fact, it didn't matter much. They would catch him soon enough. The Breadman was the type who always gets caught.

And for their own part, they would soon have other things to think about.

3

The airport was a national disgrace and lived up to its reputation. The actual flight from Arlanda Airport in Stockholm had taken only fifty minutes, but now the plane had been circling over the southernmost part of the country for an hour and a half.

‘Fog,’ was the laconic explanation.

And that was exactly what might have been expected, for the airfield had been built – once the inhabitants were displaced – in one of the foggiest spots in Sweden. And as if that weren't enough, it lay in the middle of a well-known migratory bird route and at a very uncomfortable distance from the city.

In addition, it had destroyed a natural wilderness that should have been protected by law. The damage was extensive and irreparable and constituted an act of gross ecological malfeasance, typical of the anti-humanitarian cynicism that had become increasingly characteristic of what the government called A More Compassionate Society. This expression, in turn, represented a cynicism so boundless that the common man had difficulty grasping it.

The pilot finally grew tired and brought the plane down fog or no fog, and a handful of pale, sweating passengers filed sparsely into the terminal building.

Inside, the very colour scheme – grey and saffron yellow – seemed to underline the odour of incompetence and corruption.

Martin Beck had several unpleasant hours to look back upon. He had always loathed flying, and the new planes didn't make it any better. The jet had been a DC-9. It had begun by climbing precipitously to an altitude that was incomprehensible to the average earthbound human being. Then it had raced across the countryside at an abstract speed, only to conclude in a monotonous holding pattern. The liquid in the paper mugs was said to be coffee and produced immediate nausea. The air in the cabin was noxious and sticky, and his few fellow passengers were harried technocrats and businessmen who glanced constantly at their watches and shuffled nervously through the papers in their attaché cases.

The arrivals hall could not even be called uncomfortable. It was monstrous, a design catastrophe that would make a dusty bus station miles from anywhere seem lively and convivial by comparison. There was a hot-dog stand that served an inedible, nutrition-free parody of food, a newsstand with a display of condoms and smutty magazines, some empty conveyor belts for luggage, and a number of chairs that might have been designed during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Add a dozen yawning policemen and bored customs officials, all of them undoubtedly there against their will, and one taxicab, whose driver had fallen asleep with the latest issue of a pornographic magazine spread across the steering wheel.

Martin Beck waited an unreasonably long time for his small suitcase, picked it off the belt and stepped out into the autumn fog.

A passenger stepped into the cab, and it drove off.

No one inside the arrivals hall had said anything or indicated in any way that they recognized him. They had seemed apathetic, almost as if they had lost the power of speech, or, in any case, lost all interest in using it.

The chief of the National Murder Squad had arrived, but no one seemed to appreciate the importance of that event. Not even the greenest of cub reporters could be bothered to drag them-selves out here to enrich their lives with card games, over-boiled wieners, and petrochemical soft drinks. Anyway, the so-called celebrities never showed up here.

There were two orange buses standing in front of the terminal. Plastic signs showed their destinations: Lund and Malmö. The drivers were smoking in silence.

The night was mild, and the air was humid. Misty halos surrounded the electric lights.

The buses drove off, one of them empty, the other with a single passenger. The other travellers hurried towards the long-term parking area.

Martin Beck's palms were still sweaty. He went back inside and searched out a men's room. The flushing mechanism was broken. There was a half-eaten hot dog and an empty vodka bottle in the urinal. Strands of hair clung to the greasy ring of dirt in the sink. The paper towel dispenser was empty.

This was Sturup Airport, Malmö. So new it still wasn't complete.

He doubted there was any point in completing it. In a way, it was perfect already – epitomizing the fiasco as it did.

Martin Beck dried his hands with his handkerchief. He went back outside and stood in the darkness for a moment feeling lonely.

He hadn't exactly expected the police band lined up in the arrivals hall, or the local chief of police out on horseback to receive him.

But perhaps he had expected something more than nothing at all.

He dug in his pocket for change and considered searching for a pay phone that did not have the cord to its receiver cut or its coin slot stuffed with chewing gum.

Lights cut through the fog. A black-and-white patrol car came sneaking along the ramp and swung in towards the door of the huge saffron-yellow box.

It was moving slowly, and when it drew even with the solitary traveller it came to a stop. The side window was rolled down, and a red-haired individual with skimpy police sideburns stared at him coldly.

Martin Beck said nothing.

After a minute or so the man raised his hand and beckoned to him with his finger. Martin Beck walked over to the car.

‘What are you hanging around here for?’

‘Waiting for transport.’

‘Waiting for transport! You don't say!’

‘Perhaps you can help me.’

The constable looked dumbfounded.

‘Help you? What do you mean?’

‘I've been delayed. I thought maybe I could use your radio.’

‘Who do you think you are?’

Without taking his eyes off Martin Beck, he threw several remarks back over his shoulder.

‘Did you hear that? He says he thought maybe he could use our radio. I reckon he thinks we're some kind of pimp service or something. Did you hear him?’

‘I heard,’ said the other policeman wearily.

‘Can you identify yourself?’ said the first policeman.

Martin Beck put his hand to his back pocket, but changed his mind. He let his arm drop.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I'd really rather not.’

He turned on his heel and walked back to his bag.

‘Did you hear that?’ the policeman said. ‘He says he'd rather not. He thinks he's pretty tough. Do you think he's tough?’

The sarcasm was so heavy that the words fell to the ground like bricks.

‘Oh, forget it,’ said the man who was driving. ‘Let's not have any more trouble tonight, okay?’

The redhead stared hard at Martin Beck for a long time. Then there was a mumbled conversation, and the car began to roll away. Sixty feet off it stopped again so the policemen could observe him in the rear-view mirror.

Martin Beck looked in a different direction and sighed heavily.

As he stood there at this moment, he could have been taken for anyone at all.

During the last year he had managed to get rid of some of his police mannerisms. He no longer invariably clasped his hands behind his back, for example, and he could now stand in one place for a short time without rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet.

Although he had put on a little weight, he was still, at fifty-one, a tall, fit, well-built man, with a slight stoop. He also dressed more comfortably than he had, though there was no laboured youthfulness in his choice of clothes – sandals, Levi's, turtleneck, and a blue Dacron jacket. On the other hand, it might be considered unconventional for a detective superintendent of police.

For the two officers in the patrol car it was obviously difficult to swallow. They were still pondering the situation when a tomato-coloured Opel Ascona swung up in front of the terminal building and braked to a stop. A man climbed out and walked around the car.

‘Allwright?’ he said.

‘Beck.’

‘People generally get a chuckle out of that.’

‘A chuckle?’

‘You know, they laugh at the way I say Allwright.’

‘I see.’

Laughter did not come quite that easily to Martin Beck.

‘And you'll have to admit it is a silly name for a policeman. Herrgott Allwright. So I usually introduce myself that way, like it was a question. Allwright? It sort of flusters people.’

He stowed the suitcase in the boot of his car.

‘I'm late,’ he said. ‘No one knew where the plane was going to come down. I took a chance it would be Copenhagen, as usual. So I was already in Limhamn when I got the word it had landed here. Sorry.’

He peered enquiringly at Martin Beck, as if trying to determine whether his exalted guest was out of sorts.

Martin Beck shrugged his shoulders.

‘It doesn't matter,’ he said. ‘I'm not in any hurry.’

Allwright threw a glance at the patrol car, which remained in position with its engine idling.

‘This isn't my district,’ he said with a grin. ‘They're from Malmö. We'd better go before we get arrested.’

The man obviously had a ready laugh, which, moreover, was soft and infectious.

But still Martin Beck wouldn't smile. Partly because there wasn't all that much to smile at, and partly because he was trying to form an opinion of the other man – sketch out a sort of preliminary description.

Allwright was a short, bow-legged man – short, that is, for the police service. With his green rubber boots, his greyish-brown twill suit, and the sun-bleached safari hat on the back of his head, he looked like a farmer, or, at any rate, like a man with his own territory. His face was sunburned and weatherbitten, and there were laugh lines around the corners of his lively brown eyes. And yet he was representative of a certain category of rural policeman. A type of man who didn't fit in with the new conformist style and was therefore on his way to dying out, but was not yet completely extinct.

He was probably older than Martin Beck, but he had the advantage of working in calmer and healthier surroundings, which is not to say that they were calm and healthy, by any means.

‘I've been here almost twenty-five years. But this is a first for me. The National Murder Squad, from Stockholm, on a case like this.’

Allwright shook his head.

‘I'm sure everything will work out fine,’ said Martin Beck. ‘Or else…’

He finished the sentence silently to himself: Or else it won't work out at all.

‘Exactly,’ Allwright said. ‘You people from the Murder Squad understand this kind of case.’

Martin Beck wondered if that was the polite plural, or if he were really referring to both of them. Lennart Kollberg was on his way from Stockholm by car and could be expected the next day. He had been Martin Beck's right-hand man for many years.

‘The story's going to leak out pretty soon,’ Allwright said. ‘I saw a couple of characters in town today – reporters, I think.’

He shook his head again.

‘We're not used to this sort of thing. All this attention.’

‘Someone has disappeared,’ said Martin Beck. ‘There's nothing so unusual about that.’

‘No, but that's not the crux of the matter. Not at all. Do you want to hear about it?’

‘Not right now, thanks. If you won't take it amiss.’

‘I never take anything amiss. Not my style.’

He laughed again, but stopped himself and added, soberly, ‘But then I'm not in charge of the investigation.’

‘Maybe she'll turn up. That's usually the way.’

Allwright shook his head for the third time.

‘I don't think so,’ he said. ‘In case my opinion makes any difference. Anyway, it's an open-and-shut case. Everyone says so. They're probably right. All this nonsense with the…I mean, excuse me, but calling in the Murder Squad and all that is just because of the unusual circumstances.’

‘Who says so?’

‘The chief. The boss.’

‘The Chief of Police in Trelleborg?’

‘That's the man. But you're right, let's let it go for now. This is the new airport road we're on. And now we're coming out on the motorway from Malmö to Ystad. Also brand new. You see the lights off to the right?’

‘Yes.’

‘That's Svedala. Still part of Malmö Division. It's one hell of a district for sheer size.’

They had emerged from the fog belt, which was apparently confined to the immediate vicinity of the airport. The sky was full of stars. Martin Beck had rolled down the side window and was breathing in the smells from outside. Petrol and diesel oil, but also a fertile mixture of humus and manure. It seemed heavy and saturated. Nourishing. Allwright drove only a few hundred yards along the motorway. Then he turned off to the right, and the country air grew richer.

There was one special smell.

‘Stalks and beet pulp,’ Allwright said. ‘Reminds me of when I was a lad.’

On the motorway there had been passenger cars and enormous container lorries thundering along in a steady stream, but here they seemed to be alone. The night lay dark and velvety on the rolling plain.

It was clear that Allwright had driven this same stretch of road hundreds of times before and literally knew every curve. He held a steady speed and hardly even needed to look at the road.

He lit a cigarette and offered the pack.

‘No, thank you,’ said Martin Beck.

He had smoked no more than five cigarettes over the last two years.

‘If I understood correctly, you wanted to stay at the inn,’ Allwright said.

‘Yes, that would be fine.’

‘Anyway, I've arranged for a room there.’

‘Good.’

The lights of a small town appeared ahead of them.

‘We have arrived, as it were,’ said Allwright. ‘This is Anderslöv.’

The streets were empty, but well lit.

‘No nightlife here,’ Allwright said. ‘Quiet and peaceful. Nice. I've lived here all my life and never had a thing to complain about. Before now.’

It looked awfully damned dead, Martin Beck thought. But maybe that's the way it was supposed to look.

Allwright slowed down and pointed to a low, yellow-brick building.

‘Police station,’ he said. ‘Of course it's closed at the moment. But I can open up if you like.’

‘Not for my sake.’

‘The inn's right around the corner. The garden we just drove by belongs to it. But the restaurant isn't open at this hour. If you want, we can go to my place and have a sandwich and a beer.’

Martin Beck wasn't hungry. The flight down had taken away his appetite. He declined politely. And then he said:

‘Is it a long way to the beach?’

The other man didn't seem to be surprised by the question. Perhaps Allwright was not a man to be easily surprised.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I wouldn't say that.’

‘How long would it take to drive there?’

‘About fifteen minutes. Tops.’

‘Would you mind?’

‘Not a bit.’

Allwright swung the car on to what looked to be the high street.

‘This is the town's big attraction,’ he said. ‘The Main Road. Main with a capital M. Formerly the main road from Malmö to Ystad. When we turn off to the right, you will be south of the Main Road. And then you'll really be in Skåne.’

The side road was winding, but Allwright drove it with the same easy confidence. They passed farms and white churches.

Ten minutes later they could smell the sea. A few minutes more and they were at the beach.

‘Do you want me to stop?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘If you want to go wading, I've got an extra pair of wellies in the boot,’ Allwright said, and chuckled.

‘Thanks, I'd like to.’

Martin Beck pulled on the boots. They were a little too tight, but he wasn't planning any lengthy excursions.

‘Where are we now, exactly?’

‘In Böste. Those lights to the right are Trelleborg. The light-house on the left is Smygehuk. Further than that you can't get.’

Smygehuk was Sweden's southernmost point.

To judge by the lights and the reflection in the sky, Trelleborg must be a large city. A big brightly lit passenger ship was headed for the harbour – probably the train ferry from Sassnitz in East Germany.

The Baltic was heaving listlessly against the shore. The water disappeared down into the fine-grained sand with a soft hiss.

Martin Beck stepped on the swaying rampart of seaweed and then took a couple of steps out into the water. It felt pleasantly cool through the leg of the boot.

He bent forward, cupped his hands and filled them. Rinsed his face and drew the cold water in through his nose. It tasted fresh and salty.

The air was damp. It smelled of seaweed, fish, and tar.

Several yards away he could see nets hung up to dry and the outlines of a fishing boat.

What was it Kollberg always said?

The best part of Murder was that it got you out of the city now and then.

Martin Beck lifted his head and listened. All he could hear was the sea.

After a while he walked back to the car. Allwright was leaning against the bonnet, smoking. Martin Beck nodded.

He would study the case in the morning.

He didn't expect much of it. These things were usually just routine. The same old stories over and over again, usually tragic and depressing.

The breeze from the sea was mild and cool.

A freighter ploughed by along the dark horizon. Westward. He could see the green starboard lantern and some lights amidships.

He longed to be aboard.

4

Martin Beck was wide awake as soon as he opened his eyes. The room was spartan but pleasant. There were two beds, and a window facing north. The beds were parallel, three feet apart. His suitcase lay on one of them and he on the other. On the floor was the book of which he had read half a page and two picture captions before he fell asleep. It was a book in the series ‘Famous Passenger Liners of the Past’, and its title was The Turboelectric Quadruplescrew Liner: Normandie.

He looked at the clock. Seven-thirty. Scattered sounds came from outside – cars and voices. Somewhere in the building a toilet flushed. Something was different. He identified it right away. He had been sleeping in pyjamas, which he now only did when he was travelling.

Martin Beck got up, walked over to the window, and looked out. The weather looked fine. The sun was shining on the lawn behind the inn.

He washed and dressed quickly and went downstairs. For a moment he considered having breakfast, but he dismissed the thought. He had never liked eating in the morning, especially not as a child when his mother had forced cocoa and three sandwiches down his throat before he left home. He had often thrown up on his way to school.

Instead of breakfast, he located a one-krona piece in his trouser pocket and stuffed it into the slot machine that stood to the right of the entrance. Pulled the handle, got three cherries, and pocketed his winnings. Then he left the building, walked diagonally across the cobblestone square, past the state alcohol shop, which wasn't open yet, rounded two corners, and found himself at the police station. The volunteer fire department was apparently housed next door, for a fire engine had been backed up in front of the building. He practically had to crawl under the revolving ladder stage in order to get by. A man in greasy overalls was fixing something on the fire engine.

‘Hi, how are ya?’ he said cheerfully, and in defiance of all rules of Swedish formality.

Martin Beck was startled. This was clearly an unconventional town.

‘Hi,’ he said.

The police station door was locked, and taped to the glass was a piece of cardboard on which someone had written in ballpoint pen:

Office Hours

Weekdays 8.30 a.m. – 12 noon 1.00 p.m. – 2.30 p.m.

Thursdays also 6 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Closed Saturdays

Sundays were not mentioned. Crime had probably been discontinued on Sundays, perhaps even forbidden.

Martin Beck stared at the sign thoughtfully. To anyone coming from Stockholm, it was hard to imagine things could ever be like this.

Maybe he ought to have some breakfast after all.

‘Herrgott will be right back,’ said the man in overalls. ‘He went out with the dog ten minutes ago.’

Martin Beck nodded.

‘Are you the famous detective?’

It was a difficult question, and he didn't answer right away.

The man went on working with something on the fire engine.

‘No offence,’ he said, without turning his head. ‘But I heard there was supposed to be some famous cop at the inn. And then I didn't recognize you.’

‘Yes, I suppose that must be me,’ said Martin Beck uncertainly.

‘So that means Folke's going to jail.’

‘What makes you think so?’

‘Oh, everyone knows that.’

‘Really?’

‘It's too bad. His smoked herring were damned good.’

The man brought the conversation to a close by crawling in under the fire engine and disappearing.

If this was the general opinion, then clearly Allwright had not exaggerated.

Martin Beck stayed where he was, rubbing the edge of his scalp thoughtfully.

A minute or two later Herrgott Allwright appeared on the other side of the fire engine. He had the same lion-hunter's hat on the back of his head, and was otherwise dressed in a chequered flannel shirt, uniform trousers, and light suede shoes. A large grey dog strained at its leash. They edged under the ladder, and the dog rose up on its hind legs, put its front paws on Martin Beck's chest, and began to lick his face.

‘Down, Timmy!’ Allwright said. ‘Down, I said! What a dog!’

It was a heavy dog, and Martin Beck reeled back two steps.

‘Down, Timmy!’ Allwright said.

The dog dropped to the ground and turned around three times. Then it sat down reluctantly, looked at its master, and pricked up its ears.

‘Probably the world's worst police dog. But he has an excuse. No training. No obedience. But since I'm a policeman, that does make him a police dog. In a way.’

Allwright laughed, without much cause, as far as Martin Beck could see.

‘When HSC were here I took him to the game.’

‘HSC?’

‘Helsingborg Sports Club. Football team. You're not a football fan, are you?’

‘Not really.’

‘Well, he got away from me, of course, and ran out on the field. Took the ball away from one of the Anderslöv players. Almost caused a riot. And I got a telling off from the referee. It's the most dramatic thing that's happened around here for years. Until now, of course. What was I supposed to do? Arrest the referee? From a purely legal point of view, I have no idea what the status of a football referee might be.’

He laughed again.

‘I walk out on the field and collar the ref. “Allwright?” I say. “Police Inspector. Come along with me, please – interfering with an officer in the performance of his duties.” It wouldn't wash. So I just stood there like an idiot.’

Allwright laughed, and Martin Beck couldn't help asking him why.

‘Well, I was thinking – what if Timmy had scored a goal? What would have happened then?’

Martin Beck was completely lost for words.

‘Oh, hi there,’ Allwright said.

‘Morning, Herrgott,’ said a sepulchral voice from underneath the fire engine.

‘Say, Jöns, do you have to park that crate right in front of police headquarters?’

‘You're not even open yet,’ said Jöns.

His voice sounded muffled.

‘But I'm about to.’

Allwright rattled his keys, and the dog jumped to its feet.

Allwright opened the door and threw a quick glance at Martin Beck.

‘Welcome,’ he said, ‘to the Anderslöv local station house, Trelleborg Division. This is actually the village hall. Social security office, police station, library. I live upstairs. It's all brand new and spic and span, as they say. Terrific jail. Got to use it twice last year. Here's my office. Come on in.’

It was a pleasant room, with a desk and two easy chairs for visitors. The large windows looked out on a kind of patio. The dog lay down under the desk.

Behind the desk were shelves full of large volumes. The Swedish Statutes, mostly, but a lot of other books as well.

‘They've been on the phone from Trelleborg already,’ Allwright said. ‘The Superintendent. The Police Commissioner too. Seemed disappointed you were staying here.’

He sat down at his desk and shook out a cigarette.

Martin Beck took a seat in one of the easy chairs.

Allwright crossed his legs and poked at his hat, which he'd put down on the desk.

‘They'll be driving up today, for sure. At least the Superintendent will. Unless we drag ourselves down to Trelleborg.’

‘I think I'd prefer to stay here.’

‘Okay.’

He shuffled among the papers on his desk.

‘Here's the report. Want to look?’

Martin Beck thought for a moment.

‘Can you give it to me verbally?’ he said.

‘Love to.’

Martin Beck felt comfortable. He liked Allwright. Everything was going to work out fine.

‘How many people do you have here?’

‘Five. One secretary. Nice girl. Three constables, when there aren't any vacancies. One patrol car. By the way, have you had any breakfast?’

‘No.’

‘Want some?’

‘Yes.’

He was actually starting to feel a little hungry.

‘Good,’ said Allwright. ‘Now how shall we do this? Let's go up to my place. Britta will come and open up at eight-thirty. If anything special happens, she'll call up and let us know. I've got coffee and tea and bread and butter and cheese and marmalade and eggs. I don't know what all. You want coffee?’

‘I'd rather have tea.’

‘I drink tea myself. So I'll take the report with me, and we'll go on upstairs. Okay?’

The flat upstairs was pleasant and full of character, neatly arranged, but not for family life. It was immediately apparent that whoever lived there was a bachelor, with a bachelor's habits, and had been for some time, perhaps his whole life. There were two hunting rifles and an old police sabre hanging on the wall. Allwright's service pistol, a Walther 7.65, lay disassembled on a piece of oilcloth on what was presumably the dining-room table.

Guns were clearly one of his hobbies.

‘I like to shoot,’ he said.

He laughed.

‘But not at people,’ he added. ‘I never have shot a person. In fact, I've never even aimed at anyone. For that matter, I never carry it on me. I've got a revolver, too, a competition model. But that's locked in the vault downstairs.’

‘Are you good?’

‘Oh, you know. Win once in a while. That is to say, rarely. I've got the badge, of course.’

That could mean only one thing. The gold badge. Which only elite shots ever won.

For his own part, Martin Beck was a lousy shot. There had never been any question of a gold badge. Or any other kind. On the other hand, he had aimed at people, and shot at them, too. But never killed anyone. There was always a silver lining.

‘I could clear off the table,’ said Allwright without any particular enthusiasm. ‘I mostly just eat in the kitchen.’

‘So do I,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Are you a bachelor too?’

‘More or less.’

‘I see.’

Allwright didn't seem interested.

Martin Beck was divorced and had two grown children – a daughter who was twenty-two and a son of eighteen.

‘More or less’ meant that for the past year he'd had a woman living with him pretty regularly. Her name was Rhea Nielsen, and he was probably in love with her. Having her around had changed his home – for the better, it seemed to him.

But that was no concern of Allwright's, who seemed to be utterly indifferent to how the chief of the National Murder Squad had arranged his private life.

The kitchen was practical and efficient, with all the modern conveniences. Allwright put a pot of water on the hob, took four eggs from the refrigerator, and made tea in the coffee pot – that is, he heated water in it and put the teabags in the cups. An effective method, though not one to satisfy the connoisseur.

With a feeling that he ought to be doing something useful, Martin Beck put two pieces of sliced bread in the electric toaster.

‘They make some really good bread around here,’ Allwright said. ‘But I usually just buy Co-op. I like the Co-op.’

Martin Beck did not like the Co-op, but he didn't say so.

‘It's so close,’ Allwright said. ‘Everything's close around here. I've got an idea that Anderslöv has the highest commercial concentration in Sweden. Or pretty near anyway.’

They ate. Washed the dishes. Went back to the living room.

Allwright took the folded report out of his back pocket.

‘Papers,’ he said. ‘I'm sick of paper. This has turned into a paper job – nothing but applications and licences and copies and crap. In the old days, being a policeman here was dangerous. Twice a year, at beet season. There'd be all sorts of people here. Some of them used to drink and fight like you wouldn't believe. And sometimes you'd have to go in and break it up. And that meant being quick with your fists, if you wanted to save your looks. It was tough, but it was fun too, in a way. Now it's different. Automated, mechanical.’

He paused.

‘But that isn't what I was going to talk about. For that matter, I don't need the report. The facts are pretty damned simple. The woman in question is named Sigbrit Mård. She's thirty-eight years old and works in a pastry shop in Trelleborg. Divorced, no children, lives alone in a little house in Domme. That's out on the road towards Malmö.’

Allwright looked at Martin Beck. His expression was grim, but still full of humour.

‘Towards Malmö,’ he repeated. ‘That is to say, west of here on Route 101.’

‘You don't have much faith in my sense of direction,’ said Martin Beck.

‘You wouldn't be the first person to get lost on the Skåne plains,’ Allwright said. ‘Speaking of which…’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, the last time I was in Stockholm – and I hope to heaven it was the last time – I was looking for the National Police Administration and wandered into Communist Party Headquarters instead. Ran into the head of the Party himself on the stairs and wondered what the hell he was doing at the NPA. But he was very nice. Took me where I wanted to go. Walked his bicycle the whole way.’

Martin Beck laughed.

Allwright took the opportunity of joining in.

‘But that wasn't all. The next day I thought I'd go up and say hello to your Commissioner. The old one, the one who used to be in Malmö. I don't know the new one, thank God. So I went to the City Hall, and some sort of guard tried to give me a tour of the Blue Gallery. When I finally managed to tell him what I wanted, he sent me over to Scheelegatan and I wandered into the courthouse. The guard wanted to know which room my case was coming up in and what I was on trial for. By the time I finally got to the police building on Agnegatan, Lüning had gone for the day. So that took care of that. I took the night train home. Had a wonderful time all the way south. Three hundred and fifty miles. What a difference.’

He looked thoughtful.

‘Stockholm,’ he said. ‘What a miserable city. But then, of course, you like it.’

‘Lived there all my life,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Malmö's better,’ Allwright said. ‘Though not much. I wouldn't want to work there, unless they made me Commissioner or something. But let's not even talk about Stockholm.’

He laughed loudly.

‘Sigbrit Mård,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Sigbrit had the day off that day. And she'd left her car to be fixed, so she took the bus to Anderslöv. Ran some errands. Went to the bank and the post office. And then disappeared. She didn't take the bus. The driver knows her, and he knows she wasn't on board. No one's seen her since. That was the seventeenth of October. It was about one o'clock when she left the post office. Her car, a VW, is still at the garage. There's nothing there. I went over it myself. And we took some samples and sent them to the lab in Helsingborg. All negative. Not a clue, as it were.’

‘Do you know her? Personally?’

‘Yes, sure. Until this back-to-nature fad got started, I knew every soul in the district. It's not so easy any more. People live in old abandoned houses and dilapidated outbuildings. They don't register in the township, and when you drive out there, often as not they've already moved. And someone else has moved in. The only thing left is the goat and the macrobiotic vegetable garden.’

‘But Sigbrit Mård is different?’

‘Yes, indeed. She's one of the ordinary types. She's lived here for twenty years. She comes from Trelleborg, originally. She seems like a stable sort of person. Always held down a job, and all that. Highly normal. Maybe a little frustrated.’

He lit a cigarette, after inspecting it thoughtfully.

‘But then, that's normal in this country,’ he went on. ‘For example, I smoke too much. That's probably frustration too.’

‘So she could simply have run away.’

Allwright bent down and scratched the dog behind the ears.

‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘That's a possibility. But I don't believe it. This isn't the sort of place you can run away from just like that, without anyone's noticing. And people don't leave their homes completely intact. I went over the house with the detectives from Trelleborg. Everything was still there, all her papers and personal property. Jewellery and all that sort of thing. The coffee pot and her cup were still on the table. It looked as if she'd gone out for a while and expected to be right back.’

‘Then what do you believe?’

This time Allwright's answer was even longer in coming. He held his cigarette in his left hand and let the dog chew playfully on his right. Every trace of laughter was gone from his face.

‘I believe she's dead,’ he said.

And that was all he said on the subject.

From a distance came the sound of heavy traffic thundering along the main road.

Allwright looked up.

‘Most of the big lorries still take this road from Malmö to Ystad,’ he said. ‘Even though the new Route 11 is a lot faster. Lorry drivers are creatures of habit.’

‘And this business with Bengtsson?’ said Martin Beck.

‘You ought to know more about him than I do.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. We got him for a sex murder almost ten years ago. After a lot of ifs and buts. He was an odd man. But what happened to him afterwards, I don't know.’

‘I know,’ Allwright said. ‘Everyone in town here knows. They declared him sane, and he spent seven and a half years in prison. Eventually he moved down here and bought a little house. He had some money, apparently, because he also got hold of a boat and an old estate car. He makes a living smoking fish. Catches some of it himself and buys some of it from people who do a little fishing on the side – non-union. It's not popular with the professional fishermen, but it's not actually illegal, either. At least not as far as I can see. Then he drives around and sells smoked herring and fresh eggs, mostly to a few steady customers. The people around here have accepted Folke as a decent person. He's never done anyone any harm. Doesn't talk much and keeps mostly to himself. Retiring type. The times I've run into him, it always seems as if he wanted to apologize for simply existing. But …’

‘Yes?’

‘But everybody knows he's a murderer. Tried and convicted. It was apparently a pretty ugly murder, too. Some harmless foreign woman.’

‘Roseanna McGraw was her name. And it really was revolting. Sick. But he was sexually provoked. The way he saw it. And we had to provoke him again in order to catch him. Myself, I can't imagine how he ever passed the psychiatric examination.’

‘Oh, come on,’ said Allwright, laugh lines spreading around his eyes like a spider web. ‘I've been in Stockholm too. The cram course in legal psychiatry. In fifty per cent of the cases the doctors are crazier than the patients.’

‘As far as I could gather, Folke Bengtsson was definitely disturbed. A combination of sadism, puritanism, and misogyny. Does he know Sigbrit Mård?’

‘Know?’ said Allwright. ‘His house isn't two hundred yards from hers. They're each other's closest neighbours. She's one of his regular customers. But that's not the worst of it.’

‘Really?’

‘The key point is that he was in the post office at the same time she was. There are witnesses who saw them talking to each other. He had his car parked in the square. He was standing behind her in line and left the place about five minutes after she did.’

There was a moment's silence.

‘You know Folke Bengtsson,’ Allwright said.

‘Yes.’

‘And would he be capable…?’

‘Yes,’ said Martin Beck.

5

‘To be perfectly honest, and I always am, Sigbrit's dead, and things look pretty damned bad for Folke,’ Allwright said. ‘I don't believe in coincidence.’

‘You said something about her husband?’

‘Yes, that's right. He's a ship's captain, but he drinks too much. Six years ago he got some mysterious liver disease, and they sent him home from Ecuador. They didn't fire him, but the doctors wouldn't give him a clean bill of health, so he couldn't ship out again. He came out here to live, and went on drinking, and then pretty soon they separated. Now he lives in Malmö.’

‘Do you have any contact with him?’

‘Yes. Unfortunately. Close physical contact, you might say. If you wanted to put it nicely. The fact is, she was the one who wanted the divorce. He was against it. Dead against it. But she got her way. They'd been married for a long time, but he'd been away at sea mostly. Came home once a year or so, and apparently that worked fine. But then when they tried to live together all the time, it was a complete disaster.’

‘And now?’

‘Now every time he gets well and truly plastered he comes out here to “talk it over”. But there's nothing to talk about, and he usually winds up giving her a real alarming.’

‘A what?’

Allwright laughed.

‘An alarming,’ he said. ‘Local dialect. What do you call it in Stockholm? He warms her hide for her. “Domestic disturbance” in police jargon. What a lousy expression – “domestic disturbance”. Anyway, I've had to go out there twice. The first time, I talked some sense into him. But the second time wasn't so easy. I had to hit him and bring him in to our fancy jail. Sigbrit looked pretty miserable that time. Big black eyes, and some ugly marks on her throat.’

Allwright poked at his lion-hunting hat.

‘I know Bertil Mård. He goes on binges, but I don't think he's as bad as he seems. And I think he loves Sigbrit. And so, of course, he's jealous. Though I don't think he has any real cause. I don't know anything about her sex life, supposing she has one. And if she does have one I ought to know about it. Around here, everyone pretty much knows everything about everybody. But I probably know most.’

‘What does Mård say himself?’

‘They questioned him in Malmö. He has a sort of alibi for the seventeenth. Claims he was in Copenhagen that day. Rode over on the train ferry, the Malmöhus, but…’

‘Do you know who questioned him?’

‘Yes. A Chief Inspector Månsson.’

Martin Beck had known Per Månsson for years and had great confidence in him. He cleared his throat.

‘In other words, things don't look so good for Mård either.’

Allwright scratched the dog for a while before answering.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But he's in a hell of a lot better shape than Folke Bengtsson.’

‘If, in fact, anything has happened.’

‘She's disappeared. That's enough for me. No one who knows her can think of any reasonable explanation.’

‘What does she look like, by the way?’

‘What she looks like right now is something I'd rather not think about,’ said Allwright.

‘Aren't you jumping to a conclusion?’

‘Sure I am. But I'm only telling you what I think. Normally she looks like this.’

He put his hand in his back pocket and took out two photographs – a passport photo and a folded colour enlargement.

He glanced at the pictures before handing them over.

‘They're both good,’ he commented. ‘I'd say she was of normal appearance. She looks the way most people look. Pretty attractive, of course.’

Martin Beck studied them for a long time. He doubted that Allwright was capable of seeing them with his eyes, which, of course, for that matter, was a technical impossibility.

Sigbrit Mård was not pretty attractive. She was a rather plain and ungainly woman. But she undoubtedly did her best to improve her looks, which often produces unfortunate results. Her features were irregular, narrow, and sharp, and her face was hopelessly careworn. Unlike most such pictures these days, the passport photo had not been taken with a Polaroid or in an automatic booth. It was a typical studio portrait. She had taken great pains with her make-up and her hairdo, and the photographer had no doubt given her a whole page of proofs to choose among. The other one was an amateur photograph, but not a machine-made copy. It had been enlarged and retouched by hand, a full-length portrait. She was standing on a pier, and in the background was a white passenger liner with two funnels. She was gazing up at the sun unnaturally, holding a pose that she presumably thought did her justice. She was wearing a thin green sleeveless blouse and a blue pleated skirt. She was barelegged and had a large orange and yellow summer handbag over her right shoulder. On her feet she was wearing sandals with platform soles. She was holding her right foot slightly forward, the heel off the ground.

‘That one's recent,’ Allwright said. ‘Taken last summer.’

‘Who took it?’

‘A girlfriend. They went on a trip together.’

‘To Rügen apparently. That's the train ferry Sassnitz in the background, isn't it?’

Allwright seemed vastly impressed.

‘Now how on earth did you know that?’ he said. ‘I've had duty in passport control when they were shorthanded, and even I can't tell those boats apart. But you're right. That is the Sassnitz, and they made an excursion to Rügen. You can go have a look at the chalk cliffs and stare at the Communists and that sort of thing. They're very ordinary looking. A lot of people are disappointed. The one-day cruise only costs a few kronor.’

‘Where did you get this picture?’

‘I took it out of her house when we went through it. She had it taped up on the wall. I suppose she thought it was pretty good.’

He put his head on one side and peered at the photograph.

‘By golly, it is pretty good. That's just what she looks like. Nice gal.’

‘Haven't you ever been married?’ Martin Beck asked suddenly.

Allwright was delighted.

‘Are you going to start questioning me?’ he said, laughing. ‘Now that's what I call thorough.’

‘Sorry,’ said Martin Beck. ‘Stupid thing to say. An irrelevant question.’

That was a lie. The question was not irrelevant.

‘But I don't mind answering it. I went with a lass from down in Abbekås one time. We were engaged. But I'll be damned, she was like a flesh-eating plant. After three months I'd had plenty, and after six months she still hadn't had enough. Since then I've stuck to dogs. Take it from someone who knows. A man doesn't need a wife. Once you get used to it, it's a huge relief. I feel it every morning when I wake up. She's made life miserable for three men. Of course, she's a grandmother several times over by now.’

He sat silently for a moment.

‘It does seem a little sad not having any children,’ he said then. ‘At times. But other times I feel just the opposite. Even if conditions are pretty good right here, still there's something wrong with society as a whole. I wouldn't have wanted to try and raise kids here. The question is whether it can be done at all.’

Martin Beck was silent. His own contribution to child-rearing had consisted mostly of keeping his mouth shut and letting his children grow up more or less naturally. The result had been only a partial success. He had a daughter who had become a fine, independent human being, and who seemed to like him. On the other hand, he had a son he had never understood. To be perfectly frank, he didn't like him much, and the boy, who was just eighteen, had never treated him with anything but mistrust, deception, and, in recent years, open contempt.

The boy's name was Rolf. Most of their attempts at conversation ended with the line, ‘Jesus Christ, Dad, there's just no point in talking to you, you never get what I mean anyway.’ Or: ‘If I were fifty years older, maybe we'd have a chance, but this isn't the nineteenth century any more, you know.’ Or: ‘If only you weren't a fucking cop!’

Allwright had been busy with the dog. Now he looked up.

‘May I ask you a question?’ he said with a little smile.

‘Sure.’

‘Why did you want to know if I'd ever been married?’

‘It was just a stupid question.’

For the second time since they met, the other man looked completely serious. And a little hurt.

‘That's not true. I know it's not true. And I think I know why you asked.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you think I don't understand women?’

Martin Beck put down the photographs. Since meeting Rhea, he found he had much less trouble being honest.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You're right.’

‘Good,’ said Allwright, lighting a new cigarette absent-mindedly. ‘Good enough. Thanks. You may very well be right. I'm a man who's had no women in his private life. Outside of my mother, of course, and the fishergirl from Abbekås. And I've always regarded women as regular people, essentially no different from me and men in general. So if there are any subtle differences, then it's possible they've passed me by. Since I know I'm ignorant on the subject, I've read a number of books and articles and things on women's lib, but most of it is nonsense. And the part that isn't nonsense is so obvious a Hottentot could understand it. Equal pay for equal work, for example, and sex discrimination.’

‘Why a Hottentot?’

Allwright laughed so loud the dog jumped up and started licking his face.

‘There was a guy on the town council who claimed the Hottentots were the only culture that in two thousand years never managed to invent the wheel. Bullshit, of course. I hardly have to tell you which party he represented.’

Martin Beck didn't want to know. Nor did he want to know what political persuasion Allwright represented. Whenever people started talking politics he always went as silent as a clam.

And he was still sitting there in clamlike silence when, thirty seconds later, the phone rang.

Allwright picked up the receiver.

‘Allwright?’ he said.

Whoever it was apparently made some amusing remark.

‘Yes, I am, sort of.’

And then, with a certain hesitation:

‘Yes, he's sitting right here.’

Martin Beck took the receiver.

‘Beck.’

‘Hi, this is Ragnarsson. We've made about a hundred calls trying to locate you. What's up?’

One of the drawbacks of being chief of the National Murder Squad was that the large newspapers had people who kept an eye on where you went and why. In order to do that, they needed paid informers inside the police department, which was irritating, but couldn't be helped. The National Police Commissioner was especially irritated, but he was also scared to death that it would get out. Nothing was ever supposed to get out.

Ragnarsson was a newspaperman, one of the better and more decent ones, which by no means meant that his paper was one of the better and more decent papers.

‘Are you still there?’ Ragnarsson said.

‘Someone has disappeared,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Disappeared? People disappear every day, and they don't call you in. What's more, I heard Kollberg is on his way down there. There's something fishy about all this.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

‘We're sending down a couple of men. You might as well be prepared. That's all I wanted to tell you. I didn't want to do anything behind your back, you know that. You can trust me. So long.’

‘So long.’

Martin Beck rubbed the edge of his scalp. He trusted Ragnarsson, but not his reporters, and least of all his newspaper.

Allwright was looking thoughtful.

‘Journalist?’

‘Yes.’

‘From Stockholm?’

‘Yes.’

‘That blows it wide open then.’

‘Definitely.’

‘We've got local correspondents here too. They know all about it. But they're obliging. A kind of loyalty. The Trelleborgs Allehanda is fine. But then there are the Malmö papers. Kvällsposten, that's the worst. And now we'll have Aftonbladet and Expressen.’

‘Yes, I'm afraid so.’

‘Balls!’

Balls was a mild, everyday expression in Skåne.

Further north, it sounded very bad.

Maybe Allwright didn't know that. Or maybe he didn't care.

Martin Beck liked Allwright very much.

A sort of obvious, natural friendship. Things were going to work out fine.

‘What do we do now?’

‘Up to you,’ said Martin Beck. ‘You're the expert.’

‘Anderslöv district. Yes, I ought to be. Shall I give you an orientation? By car? But let's not take the patrol car. Mine's better.’

‘The tomato-coloured one?’

‘Right. Everyone knows it, of course. But I feel more comfortable in it. Shall we go?’

‘Whatever you say.’

They talked about three things in the car.

The first was something Allwright hadn't mentioned before, for some reason.

‘There's the post office over there, and now we're coming to the bus stop. The last time Sigbrit was seen she was standing right about here.’

He slowed down and stopped.

‘We've got a witness who saw something else too.’

‘What?’

‘Folke Bengtsson. He came driving along in his estate car, and when he passed Sigbrit he slowed down and stopped. Seems natural enough. He'd picked up his car and was headed home. They knew each other, lived next door. He knows she's waiting for the bus, and he gives her a lift.’

‘What sort of a witness?’

Allwright drummed his fingers on the wheel.

‘An older woman from town here. Her name is Signe Persson. When she heard Sigbrit had disappeared, she came in and told us she'd been walking down the other side of the street and noticed Sigbrit, and just then Bengtsson drove up from the other direction. He put on his brakes and stopped. Now it happens Britta was alone at the station when she came in, so she told her she ought to come back and talk to me. And she came back the next day, and I talked to her. She told me pretty much the same story. That she'd seen Sigbrit and that Folke stopped his car. So then I asked her if she had actually seen the car stop and Sigbrit get into it.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘She said she didn't want to turn around and look because she didn't want to seem nosy. Which is a silly answer, since this old lady is probably the nosiest woman in the county. But when I coaxed her a little she did say she turned her head soon afterwards, and neither Sigbrit nor the car were anywhere to be seen. So we chatted a little about one thing and another, and after a while she said she wasn't sure. Said she didn't want to talk about people behind their backs. But then the next day she ran into one of my men at the Co-op and stated definitely that she'd seen Bengtsson stop and that Sigbrit got into the car. If she sticks to that, then Folke Bengtsson is definitely linked to the disappearance.’

‘What does Bengtsson say?’

‘Don't know. I haven't talked to him. Two detectives from Trelleborg were out there, but he wasn't at home. Then they decided to call you in and more or less ordered me not to do anything. Didn't want me to anticipate events, as it were. Bide my time and wait for the experts. I haven't even written up a report about my talk with Signe Persson. Do you think that sounds slipshod?’

Martin Beck didn't answer.

‘I think it's pretty slipshod,’ said Allwright with a little laugh. ‘But I'm a little wary of Signe Persson. She was mixed up in the worst case I ever had. Must be five years ago. She claimed a neighbour had poisoned her cat. Made a formal complaint, so we had to investigate. Then the other old lady made a complaint against Signe Persson, because the cat had killed her budgie. We dug up the cat and sent it to Helsingborg. They couldn't find any poison. So then Signe claimed the other woman had bought two cigars at the tobacconist's and boiled them. She'd read in some magazine that if you boil cigars long enough you get nicotine crystals, which are deadly poisonous and don't leave any trace. The neighbour actually had bought two cigars, but she said they were just to offer guests and her brother had smoked them. I asked her how the cat had managed to kill the budgie, since it was always in its cage. And she claimed Signe got the damned cat to scare the budgie to death, because the bird could talk and had uttered some dreadful truths. Signe said it was quite true that the budgie had called her a whore on no fewer than five occasions. There was a police cadet here at the time who was a real go-getter, and he investigated this theory about the cigars and decided it was theoretically possible, and that if the victim was a habitual smoker then poisoning couldn't be proved. So when Signe Persson came in for the tenth or twelfth time I asked her if her cat had been a heavy smoker. After that she wouldn't even say hello to me for several years. We closed the case, and the cadet stayed home boiling cigars until they gave him the sack. Then he settled down in Eslöv and became an inventor.’

‘What did he invent?’

‘The only thing I heard about was that he applied for a patent for a potty with a luminous rim and for a nicotine detector that meowed if you dipped it in poisoned cabbage soup. That didn't work out, so he tried to rebuild it into a mechanical cat that ran on batteries.’

Allwright looked at his watch.

‘So that was point of interest number one. The bus stop. Plus the story of our witness Signe Persson and of a man who had his life ruined by a cigar-smoking cat. I must say, the thought of a case where Signe figures as the key witness does not make me happy. We'd better move on. The bus will be here pretty soon.’

He put the car in gear and looked in the rear-view mirror.

‘We've got someone behind us,’ he said. ‘A green Fiat with two men in it. They've been sitting back there ever since we stopped. Shall we show them around a little?’

‘Okay by me.’

‘Interesting to be shadowed,’ Allwright said. ‘New experience for me.’

He was driving at less than twenty miles an hour, but the other car made no attempt to pass.

‘Those buildings up there to the right, that's Domme. That's where Sigbrit Mård and Folke Bengtsson live. Do you want to drive up?’

‘Not right now. Has anyone done a proper crime lab job up there?’

‘At Sigbrit's? No, I can't say we have. We were there and had a look around, and I took that picture off the wall above her bed. And I suppose we left some fingerprints here and there.’

‘If she were dead …’

Martin Beck stopped himself. It was a fairly stupid question.

‘And if I had killed her, what would I do with the body? I've thought about that myself. But there are just too many possibilities. Lots of marl pits and tumbledown old houses. And shacks and sheds. A long coastline on the Baltic, empty summer cottages. Woods and acres of storm debris and thickets and ditches and every other damned thing.’

‘Woods?’

‘Yes, up by Börringe Lake. The police used to have a pistol match up there every year in a clearing on the east shore. Since the storm in sixty-eight, it's such a mess up there you couldn't get in with a tank. It'll take a hundred years to get rid of the debris. Besides…By the way, there's a map in the glove compartment.’

Martin Beck took out the map and unfolded it.

‘We're in Alstad now, on Route 101 heading for Malmö. You can get your bearings from that.’

‘Are you planning to drive this slowly all the way?’

‘No. Jesus! Pure absentmindedness. Just wanted to be sure we didn't lose those hotshots behind us.’

Allwright swung off to the right. The green car followed.

‘Now we've left the Anderslöv police district,’ he said. ‘But we'll be right back in it.’

‘What were you going to say a minute ago? Besides…what?’

‘Oh yes. Besides, it's the general belief that Sigbrit Mård was picked up by someone in a car. There's even a witness who says so. If you look at the map you'll see there are three major roads through the district. The old Main Road, which we just left; Route 10, which follows the coast from Trelleborg to Ystad and then goes on all the way to Simrishamn, and, in addition, a section of the new European Route 14, which connects with the ferry from Poland in Ystad and then runs on through Malmö and God knows where all. And on top of that we've got a network of back roads that probably doesn't have its equal anywhere else in the country.’

‘So I see,’ said Martin Beck.

True to form, he was beginning to get carsick.

It did not, however, prevent him from studying the landscape they were travelling through. He had never been in this part of the country before and didn't know much more about it than what he remembered from old Edvard Persson movies. The plains of Skåne have a soft, rolling beauty. This was more than a populous rural idyll, it was a singular piece of countryside with a kind of inherent harmony.

He suddenly remembered a disconnected sentence from the general chorus of complaints about conditions in the country. ‘Sweden's a rotten country, but it's a very pretty rotten country.’ Someone had said that or written it, but he couldn't remember who.

Allwright went on talking.

‘The Anderslöv district is a bit unusual. When we're not pushing paper, we're mostly concerned with traffic. For example, we put fifty thousand miles a year on the patrol car. We've got about a thousand people in town and maybe ten thousand in the whole district. But we've got over fifteen miles of beach, and in the summer the population grows to over thirty thousand. So you can imagine how many buildings are standing empty at this time of year. Now so far I'm talking about people we know, and pretty much know where we can find them. But I'd estimate there's another five to six thousand people we don't have any check on at all, people who live in old houses or caravans and then move away and other people take their place.’

Martin Beck turned to look at an unusually pretty whitewashed church. Allwright followed his gaze.

‘Dalköpinge,’ he said. ‘If you're interested in picturesque churches, I can supply at least thirty of them. In the whole district, of course.’

They came to the coast road and turned east. The sea was calm and greyish-blue. Freighters stood along the horizon.

‘What I mean is, if Sigbrit's dead, there are several hundred places she might be. And if someone gave her a ride, Folke or someone else, then there's a pretty good chance she's not in this district at all. In that case, the possibilities are in the thousands.’

He looked out over the coastal landscape and said, ‘Magnificent, isn't it?’

He was clearly a man who was proud of his home.

And not without reason, Martin Beck thought.

They passed Smygehuk.

The green Fiat was following them faithfully.

‘Smygehamn,’ Allwright said. ‘In my day it was called East Torp.’

The villages lay close together. Beddingestrand. Skateholm. Fishing villages, partially converted to seaside resorts, but still pretty. No high-rises and no fancy hotels.

‘Skateholm,’ Allwright said. ‘This is where my territory ends. Now we're coming into the Ystad Division. I'll take you to Abbekås. This is Dybeck. Swampy and miserable. Worst part of the whole coast. Maybe she's out there in the mud. Okay, this is Abbekås.’

Allwright drove slowly through the village.

‘Yes, this is where she lived,’ he said. ‘The woman who got me to give up women. Do you want to have a look at the harbour?’

Martin Beck didn't bother to answer.

There was a little harbour with some benches for telling fish stories and a few old men in Vega caps. Three fishing boats. Stacks of herring boxes, and some nets hung up to dry.

They got out and sat down on separate bollards. Gulls screamed above the breakwater.

The green Fiat had stopped sixty feet away. The two men stayed in the front seat.

‘Do you know them?’ said Martin Beck.

‘No,’ said Allwright. ‘They're just boys. If they want anything, they can come over here and talk. Must be damned dull just sitting there staring.’

Martin Beck said nothing. He got older and older himself, while the reporters got younger and younger. Their relations grew worse and worse every year. Besides, the police weren't popular any more, assuming they ever had been. Personally, Martin Beck didn't feel he had to be ashamed of his job, but he knew a lot of men who were, and still more who really ought to be.

‘What was all that about me and women?’ Allwright asked.

‘It occurred to me that we know very little about Sigbrit Mård. We know what she looks like and where she works, and we know she has never made trouble. We know she's divorced and doesn't have any children. And that's about all. Have you considered the fact that she's at an age when a lot of women feel frustrated, especially if they don't have any children or family or any special interests? When they're approaching menopause and starting to feel old? They feel like their lives have gone wrong, their sex lives in particular, and they often do dumb things. They're attracted to younger men, they get involved in stupid affairs. And they often get taken, financially or emotionally.’

‘Thanks for the lecture,’ Allwright said.

He picked up a board from the ground and threw it in the water. The dog splashed in immediately to retrieve it.

‘Terrific,’ Allwright said. ‘Now he'll make an even worse mess in the back seat. And so you think maybe Sigbrit had a secret sex life or something.’

‘I think it's possible. I mean we have to look into her private life. As much as we can. I mean maybe, after all, there is a chance, just maybe, that she's simply run off with some man who's seven or eight years younger. Just run away from everything in order to be happy for a while. Even if it's only two weeks or a couple of months.’

‘Get herself good and laid,’ Allwright said.

‘Or get a chance to talk to someone she thinks she can relate to.’

Allwright put his head on one side and grinned.

‘That's one theory,’ he said. ‘But I don't believe it.’

‘Because it doesn't fit.’

‘Right. It doesn't fit at all. Do you have a plan? Or is that a presumptuous question?’

‘I'm planning to wait until Lennart gets here. And then I think it's time for an informal chat with Folke Bengtsson and Bertil Mård.’

‘I'd be happy to come along.’

‘I don't doubt it.’

Allwright laughed. Then he stood up, walked over to the green car, and rapped on the side window. The driver, a young man with a red beard, rolled it down and looked at him questioningly.

‘We're going back to Anderslöv now,’ Allwright said. ‘I'll be driving through Källstorp to pick up some eggs from my brother. But you can save your paper some money if you take the road through Skivarp.’

The Fiat followed them and supervised the egg pickup.

‘They clearly don't trust the police,’ Allwright said.

Otherwise nothing much happened that day, which was Friday, 2 November.

Martin Beck made his obligatory visit to Trelleborg and met the Commissioner and the Superintendent who was head of the criminal division. He envied the police chief his office, because it had a view of the harbour.

No one had anything to say about the case.

Sigbrit Mård had been missing for seventeen days, and all anyone knew was the gossip doing the rounds in Anderslöv.

On the other hand, gossip is often well-founded.

Where there's smoke there's fire.

That evening, he got a call from Kollberg, who said he hated driving and was planning to spend the night in Växjö.

‘And how are things in Anderstorp?’ he said.

‘The name is Anderslöv.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘And it's very pleasant here, but the reporters are after us already.’

‘Put your uniform on, you'll get more respect.’

‘None of your wisecracks!’ said Martin Beck.

Then he called Rhea, but there was no answer.

He tried again an hour later and once more just before he went to bed.

This time she was home.

‘I've been trying to get you all evening,’ he said.

‘Really?’

‘What have you been up to?’

‘None of your business,’ she said cheerfully. ‘How's it going?’

‘I don't know for sure. There's a woman who's disappeared.’

‘People can't just disappear. You ought to know that – you're a detective.’

‘I think I love you.’

‘I know you do,’ she said happily. ‘I went to the cinema, and then I went to Butler's for something to eat.’

‘Good night.’

‘Was that all you wanted?’

‘No, but it can wait.’

‘Sleep well, darling,’ she said, and hung up.

Martin Beck hummed as he brushed his teeth. If anyone had been there to hear it, it would probably have sounded odd.

The next day was a holiday. All Saints' Day. He could always spoil it for someone. Månsson in Malmö for example.

6

‘I've met a lot of gorillas in my day,’ Per Månsson said. ‘But Bertil Mård is one of the worst.’

They were sitting on Månsson's balcony overlooking Regementsgatan, enjoying a lovely day.

Martin Beck had taken the bus to Malmö, mostly for the fun of it and so he could say that he had actually travelled the stretch that Sigbrit Mård apparently had not.

He had also tried to question the bus driver, to no avail, since the man was a substitute and had not been driving on the day in question.

Månsson was a large, leisurely man, who took life easy and was seldom guilty of an overstatement. But now he said:

‘The man struck me as a bully.’

‘Lots of sea captains go a bit funny,’ said Martin Beck. ‘They're often very lonely men, and if they're the overbearing type they tend to get tough and autocratic. They turn into gorillas, as you said. The only person they'll talk to is their chief.’

‘Their chief?’

‘The Chief Engineer.’

‘Oh.’

‘A lot of them drink too much and tyrannize their crews. Or else they pretend they don't even exist. Won't even speak to their mates.’

‘You know a lot about ships.’

‘Yes, it's my hobby. I had a case once on a ship. Murder. In the Indian Ocean. On a freighter. One of the most interesting cases I ever had.’

‘Well, I know the skipper of the Malmöhus. He's a decent fellow.’

‘Passenger ships are usually a different matter. The owners put on a different kind of officer. After all, the captains have to socialize with the passengers. On the big ships, they have a captain's table.’

‘What's that?’

‘The captain's own table in the dining room. For entertaining prominent first-class passengers.’

‘I see.’

‘But Mård sailed on tramp steamers. And there's a certain difference.’

‘Yes, he was pretty damned arrogant,’ Månsson said. ‘Yelled at me and cursed his missus. Nasty son of a bitch. He thought he was something special. Rude and arrogant. I'm pretty easygoing, but I damned near lost my temper. That takes some doing.’

‘How does he make a living?’

‘He's got a brewpub in Limhamn. You know the story. He drank his liver to pieces in Ecuador or Venezuela. They had him in the hospital out there for a while. Then the shipping company flew him home. They wouldn't give him a clean bill of health, so he couldn't ship out again. He moved home to his wife in Anderslöv, but that didn't work out at all. He hit the bottle and beat her. She wanted out. He didn't. But she got her divorce, no sweat.’

‘Allwright says he's got an alibi for the seventeenth.’

‘Yes, sort of. He took the train ferry over to Copenhagen to go on a bender. But it's a rotten alibi. Seems to me. Claims he sat in the forward saloon. The ferry sails at a quarter to twelve these days – it used to sail at noon. He says he was alone in the saloon, and the waiter was hung over. And there was one crewman standing in there playing the slot machine. I often take that boat myself. The waiter, whose name is Sture, is always hung over, with bags under his eyes. And that same crewman is generally standing there stuffing one-krona pieces in the slot machine.’

Månsson took a noisy sip of his drink. He always drank the same thing, a mixture of gin and grapefruit soda. It is a Finland-Swedish speciality, called Gripenberger after some obscure officer and nobleman.

The weather was nice in Malmö. The city seemed almost inhabitable.

‘I think you ought to talk to Bertil Mård yourself,’ Månsson said.

Martin Beck nodded.

‘The witness on the ferry identified him,’ Månsson said. ‘He's got the kind of looks you don't forget. The only trouble is that all those things happen every day. The ferry leaves here at the same hour, usually with the same passengers. You can't count on the crew remembering someone a couple of weeks later, and you can't be sure they'd have the right day. Talk to him yourself and see what you think.’

‘But you have already questioned him?’

‘Yes, and I wasn't specially convinced.’

‘Does he have a car?’

‘Yes. He lives on the West Side, a stone's throw from here if you've got a hell of a good arm. Mäster Johansgatan 23. Takes him half an hour to drive to Anderslöv. Roughly.’

‘What makes you point that out?’

‘Well, he seems to have made the trip now and then.’

Martin Beck let the question drop.

It was 3 November, a Saturday, and still almost summer. It was also a holiday – All Saints' Day – but Martin Beck was planning to disturb Captain Mård's tranquillity in spite of it. The chances were he wasn't a religious man.

There had been no word from Kollberg. Perhaps he had found Växjö fascinating and decided to stay over for a day. But in what way fascinating? Perhaps someone had seduced him with illegal fresh crayfish. Of course, frozen crayfish were now available, but Kollberg was not easily deceived. Least of all in the matter of crayfish.

Rhea had called that morning and cheered him up. As always. In one year she had changed his life and given him more satisfaction than twenty years of marriage to a person he had actually loved once, a person who had presented him with two children and many a joyful moment. Just count them. For that matter, ‘presented’ was a lousy word. They had been in it together, hadn't they? Well maybe so, but he had never had that feeling.

With Rhea Nielsen, everything was different. They had a free and open relationship, of course. Perhaps a little too free and open, it seemed to him every once in a while. But first and foremost, there was a sense of community that stretched far beyond his love for this curiously perfect woman. Together with her, he had begun to mix with people in a manner that had never been possible for him before. Her building in Stockholm was quite different from the average apartment building. You might almost call it a commune, though with none of the negative connotations – often warranted but just as often imaginary – of that discredited term. People in communes smoked pot and screwed around like rabbits. The rest of the time they talked a lot of bullshit and ate macrobiotic food, and none of them worked and they all lived on welfare. The commune members considered themselves the victims of an evil social system. They often took LSD and thought they could fly, or drove a stiletto into their best friend's belly for the enrichment of the experience, or else they killed themselves.

It wasn't so very long since he had thought that way himself, at least in part and at times. And certainly there was a grain of truth there, or rather a whole wheatfield.

Martin Beck's position gave him the doubtful pleasure of reading confidential reports. Most of them were political, and he threw them directly into the Out basket for secret papers, to be passed on to the next bureaucrat with clearance. But he usually read the ones that seemed to have some connection with his own job. Suicide, for example, was a subject that had begun to interest him more and more. And secret memoranda on the subject cropped up with increasing regularity. The point of departure was always the same: Sweden led the world by a margin that seemed to grow larger from one report to the next, but, as with so many other things, the National Commissioner had decreed that nothing must get out. On the other hand, the explanation varied. Other countries cheated on their statistics. For a long time it had been popular to single out the Catholic countries, but then the Archbishop and some religious bigwigs within the police department had begun to complain, so then countries with a socialist form of government had had to take their place. But Swedish intelligence had immediately made difficulties, on the grounds that they could no longer use priests as spies. Since the secret activities of the Security Police fell into the category of things that always, inevitably, got out, a sigh of relief was heaved at National Police Administration Headquarters. Rumour had it that the National Commissioner himself had expressed certain misgivings at the suggestion that Swedish priests, some of whom were outright card-carrying Reds, would be able to spy on Swedish Communists or bring so formidable an opponent as the Soviet Union to its knees.

But as usual, all of this was unconfirmed rumour. Out must nothing get, as they sometimes put it – for a joke, or at least for the sake of putting it some different way. But the faithful would tolerate no deviation. ‘Nothing must get out’ was the proper expression.

And that was that.

The gist of the latest suicide manifesto was as follows: Since most people neither shoot themselves nor jump off Väster Bridge but get good and drunk instead and then swallow a bottle of sleeping pills, they could be written off as cases of accidental poisoning and completely eliminated from the statistics, which would thus suddenly become amazingly auspicious.

Martin Beck thought about these things a lot.

Månsson poured some more grape juice in his Gripenberger.

He had not spoken for some time, and to judge by his clothing he wasn't planning to go anywhere.

He was wearing a nightshirt, flannel trousers, and terry-cloth slippers, plus a bathrobe that seemed to be part of the ensemble.

‘The wife will be here in a little while,’ he said. ‘Usually shows up around three o'clock.’

Månsson had apparently gone back to his life as five-sevenths bachelor, in that he spent five days of the week alone and the weekends with his wife.

They had separate apartments.

‘It's a good system,’ he said. ‘It's true, I did have a girlfriend in Copenhagen for a year or so. And she was terrific, but it got to be too much of a good thing. I'm not as young as I used to be.’

Martin Beck thought for a moment about what the other man had said.

True, Månsson was older than he was, but not by more than a couple of years.

‘But she was damned good for me as long as it lasted. Her name was Nadja. I don't know if you ever met her.’

‘No,’ Martin Beck said.

He suddenly wanted to change the subject.

‘By the way, how's Benny Skacke doing?’

‘Not bad. He's an inspector now, and married to his physiotherapist. They had a little girl last spring. She was born on a Sunday, a little ahead of schedule, and he was in Minnesberg playing football when it happened. He claims all the important things in his life happen while he's playing football. God knows what he means.’

Martin Beck knew quite well what Skacke was referring to, but he didn't say anything.

‘In any case, he's a good policeman,’ Månsson said. 'And there's getting to be a shortage of those. Unfortunately, I get the feeling he's not happy here. He can't get used to this city, somehow. He's been here almost five years, but I think he's still homesick for Stockholm.

‘Of all godforsaken places,’ he added philosophically and emptied his glass.

Then he looked demonstratively at his watch.

‘I suppose I'd better be going now,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Yes,’ Månsson said. ‘I was about to say that was a good idea if you wanted to catch Mård sober. But that's not the real reason.’

‘Oh?’

‘No. If you stay another fifteen minutes you'll meet my wife. And in that case, I'd have to get dressed. She's sort of conventional, and she'd never stand for the idea of my sitting around with prominent police chiefs in this getup. Shall I call you a cab?’

‘I'd rather walk.’

He'd been in Malmö many times before, and he knew his way around, at least in the inner city.

Besides, it was a pretty day, and he wanted to organize his thoughts before he talked to Bertil Mård.

He was conscious of the fact that Månsson had furnished him with a presupposition.

This was clearly going to be a case where presuppositions played an important part.

Presuppositions were never good. Letting them affect your judgement was as dangerous as ignoring them. You always had to remember that a supposition could be right even if it was preconceived.

Martin Beck was eager to form his own opinion of Mård. He knew they would soon be face to face.

The brewpub was closed for the holiday, and Månsson had gone to the trouble of assigning a police recruit to watch the house on Mäster Johansgatan and had instructed him to raise the alarm if Mård left home.

7

The police recruit would have been a great success on TV doing a parody of someone trying not to look as if he were watching a house. In addition, the house was very small, and the buildings on either side had been torn down. He was standing across the street with his hands behind his back, gazing out into empty space but casting continuous sidelong glances at the door behind which the object of his attentions was supposed to lurk.

Martin Beck stopped some distance off and watched. A minute or so went by and then the recruit walked slowly across the street and inspected the door in detail. And poked at the name-plate. Then he ambled back to his post with studied nonchalance and then spun around to be sure nothing improper had occurred behind his back. Like so many other policemen out on confidential or delicate assignments, he was wearing black shoes, dark blue socks, the trousers to his uniform, a light blue shirt, and a dark blue tie. To this he had added a yellow stocking cap, a leather jacket with big shiny buttons and red and yellow embroidery on the sleeves, and, around his neck, a scarf in colours that even Martin Beck recognized as being those of the Malmö Football Club – white and sky blue. His jacket bulged on the right side as if he had a bottle of spirits in his pocket.

When Martin Beck walked up to him he jumped as if bitten by a snake and immediately raised his hand to the nonexistent peak of his cap and delivered his report.

‘No one has left the building, Inspector.’

Martin Beck stood silently for a moment in his amazement at being recognized. Then he reached out and took a corner of the scarf between thumb and forefinger.

‘Did your mother knit this for you?’

‘No, sir,’ said the young man, blushing. ‘She didn't. It was my little sister's boyfriend. His name is Enok Jansson, sir, and he's a terrific knitter, although he actually works at the post office and everything. He can even knit while he's watching TV.’

‘What if Mård's gone out the back way?’

The recruit blushed still harder.

‘What?’ he said. ‘But that's impossible.’

‘It is?’

‘Well, sir, I can't stand in front of the house and behind it at the same time, after all. It can't be done. You…Sir, you're not going to report me for this?’

Martin Beck shook his head. He crossed the street, wondering where the police force managed to find all these odd young men.

‘It's the right house, anyway,’ the boy said, following him. ‘I went over three times to check it out. It says Mård on the door.’

‘And it didn't change?’

‘No, sir. Shall I go in with you? I mean, I have a gun and everything if we need it. And I've got my radio stuffed in my shirt – so no one could see it, I mean.’

‘Goodbye,’ said Martin Beck, putting his finger on the bell.

Bertil Mård opened the door almost before the bell had had a chance to ring.

He too was wearing the trousers to a uniform, black ones, plus a vest and wooden clogs. The stink of last night's booze surrounded him like a wall, but it was mixed with the odour of aftershave, and in one of his huge hands he was holding a bottle of Florida Water and an open straight razor, which he waved in the direction of the recruit.

‘Who the hell is this damn clown,’ he yelled, ‘who's been standing here staring at the house for two hours?’

‘That's insulting an officer of the law,’ the recruit said cockily.

‘I lay eyes on you one more time, you little plainclothes bastard, and I'll cut your ears off,’ Mård bellowed.

‘And that's threatening an officer …’

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