MAJ SJÖWALL

AND PER WAHLÖÖ

The Terrorists

Translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate

Copyright

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.

Fourth Estate

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

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This ebook first published by Harper Perennial in 2009

This Fourth 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 © Random House Inc 1975

Copyright introduction © Dennis Lehane 2010

Cover photograph © Shutterstock

PS Section © Richard Shephard 2007

PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

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

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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007243006

Ebook Edition © APRIL 2009 ISBN: 9780007323418

Version: 2017-07-25

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

Keep Reading

About the Authors

Also by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

As one might expect from a novel entitled The Terrorists, terrorism abounds in Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo’s final Martin Beck police procedural. But the chaotic forms that terror takes are not simply that of the political assassinations that bookend the narrative (the first in Latin America, the second in Stockholm). Sjowall and Wahloo are after a much more expansive query of the very definition of terrorism. And so Martin Beck and his Murder Squad of disparate, contentious police officers don’t just engage an impending act of violent insurrection on the streets of Stockholm. They must also solve the murder of a wealthy pornographer and contend with the destruction of an eighteen-year-old naïf, Rebecka Lind, by the teeth of the social welfare system. All the while, their greatest enemy is not bullets or bombs, it’s the bureaucratic apparatus that exalts and rewards its own haplessness.

As this novel – the tenth in the series – is Martin Beck’s swan song, it’s worth noting that in the annals of realistic fictional policemen, Beck stands a full head above most. He carries plenty of psychic scars and admits to a depressive personality, but he’s not gloom laden to the point of masochistic self-pity that so often masquerades as a hard-boiled hero’s tragic worldview. Beck is a dogged worker bee entering his later middle-aged years with a healthy romantic life and no illusions about his place in the larger scheme of things. However exceptional, he is a civil servant. A great cop, yes, but in Sjowall and Wahloo’s vision, a great cop is little more than a great functionary in a hopelessly flawed system. Beck’s talents include ‘his good memory, his obstinacy, which was occasionally mule-like … his capacity for logical thought … [and finding] the time for everything that had anything to do with a case, even if this meant following up small details that later turned out to be of no significance.’ This is what makes a great cop – not the gun, not outsized emotion, not a need to tilt at windmills and otherwise rage against machines. That’s the writer’s job. The cop’s job is to persevere, to examine the evidence, collate the data, push the papers, and work the case to its end. Because what stands in the way of that approach – wholesale bureaucratic incompetence – is a constant in Sjowall and Wahloo’s Sweden of 1975. Any man who can push a vision of the truth, however colorless, however minuscule, through the thornbush of total systematic inefficiency, is a hero. And Martin Beck is that man. So much so that the icy, hypercompetent terrorist, Reinhard Heydt, finds it ‘incomprehensible that such a person would exist in a country like Sweden.’

Ah, yes, ‘a country like Sweden.’ One wonders how Sjowall and Wahloo managed to live there through the writing of the ten Martin Beck novels, so negative is their depiction of not just the failed welfare state but the physical landscape as well, a shameless myth of blonde goddesses and mineral springs that in reality gives birth every morning to a ‘dismal, dirty, gray and depressing dawn.’ It’s a late November world, compressed by a dark, swollen sky that hovers roughly four inches above your head until May. The courts don’t work, the schools produce little but rot, and the ruling class skims the cream off the top and turns its back as the poor fight over the coffee grounds.

Nowhere are the inequities of the system more heartbreakingly personified than in Rebecka Lind. Rebecka understands society so little that she walks into a bank and asks a teller for money because she’s heard banks give loans to those in need. She is not only turned down, she is arrested, and so begins her journey into the farcical justice system that Martin Beck works for. Rebecka, who ‘is not interested in politics other than that she finds society as such incomprehensible and its leaders either criminal or insane,’ is the novel’s holy fool and sacrificial lamb, cast adrift by a society that proclaims to care for her then preys upon her as soon as her isolation leads to financial need. Over the course of the novel, Rebecka will cross paths with Martin Beck and his girlfriend, Rhea, as well as with Walter Petrus, the soon-to-be-bludgeoned pornographer. The corpulent, impotent Petrus casts pubescent girls in skin flicks so low-budget sex, from film to film, takes place ‘on the same old couch, which occasionally changed covers.’ Petrus first hooks his ingénues on narcotics. Once they need the drugs and are willing to do anything to get their next fix, he reveals to them that ‘anything’ will involve having sex on film. While Rebecka Lind escapes his grasp (only to end up in the system’s callous grip), several children do not. The reader doesn’t need a map to spy the connections Sjowall and Wahloo draw between the type of terrorism in which Petrus traffics and that of both the ULAG assassins and the state.

The target of Reinhard Heydt and his band of multi-ethnic assassins is an unnamed, reactionary U.S. Senator who ‘had advised President Truman to drop the first atom bombs … and taken an active part in the “solutions” in Thailand, Korea, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.’ A man who helped push the button that bombed Hiroshima might have some moral wiggle room, but not if he did the same to Nagasaki or advocated the bombing of civilian irrigation systems in Cambodia, actions which, if they aren’t representative of state-sponsored terrorism, then nothing is.

The assassins hardly come off as a romantic band of freedom-fighting anarchists. They are cold, vicious, and no more dedicated to any real cause or any universal truth than the U.S. Senator. Like him, the only truth they seem to represent is that might equals right. They believe in the primacy of homicide in bending the will of the people to the point where the people realize their will is irrelevant. Their terrorism – like Petrus’s, like the Senator’s, like the Swedish PM’s – is all the more scary because it is so colorless, so passionless, so instinctually banal. The ferocity of destructive acts in the novel is terrifying precisely because those who wield it feel no ferocity. They feel nothing. Those who do feel – Rebecka Lind, the father of one of Petrus’s victims, Beck’s ex-partner, Kollberg – get run over or choose to step off the highway for good.

So what is the solution? By ending the book – and the series – on the word Marx, Sjowall and Wahloo seem to be making their case for communism. But it feels no more a well-conceived solution than, say, Sarah Palin thirty-four years later, crowing about the free market as a solution to all capitalism’s ills. Luckily Sjowall and Wahloo the novelists are savvier than Sjowall and Wahloo the polemicists. They write of modern violence with clarity so fluid, it achieves a kind of musical grace. The opening assassination in Latin America is a model of perfectly chosen detail and near-comic narrative distance. Much later, the Senator’s motorcade winding through Stockholm is rendered with crisp, elegant prose and tension so thick the reader could crack a tooth. The stunning murder of a local politician evokes Oswald, Ruby, and Sirhan Sirhan in a single sentence without ever mentioning any of them. And Reinhard Heydt’s stalking of Martin Beck is as perversely playful and traumatic as anything Hitchcock or Highsmith ever devised.

Midway through the novel, Rhea says to Beck, ‘You’re terrific, Martin. But you’ve got a hell of a job. What sort of people are they you get for murder and other horrors? Like the last one – some poor working slob who tried to hit back at the capitalist bastard who had destroyed his life.’ It’s a damning indictment, one that Kollberg repeats at the novel’s end when he tells Beck he’s got ‘the wrong job. At the wrong time. In the wrong part of the world. In the wrong system.’

That system has soiled all who touch it. The innocents are destroyed. So are many of their exploiters. In the soul-carnage that erupts in the wake of the novel’s events, few people – good or bad – are left unscathed. Only the system itself, in all its grime and stupidity, grinds on, inviolate, with the smart, dogged, melancholic Martin Beck bearing its standard.

Dennis Lehane

1

The National Commissioner of Police smiled.

He usually reserved his smile, boyish and charming, for the press and television and only seldom bestowed it on such members of the inner circle as Superintendent Stig Malm, of the National Police Administration, Eric Möller, chief of Security Police, and Martin Beck, chief of the National Murder Squad.

Only one of the three men smiled back. Stig Malm had beautiful white teeth and liked smiling to show them off. Over the years he had quite unconsciously acquired a whole register of smiles. The one he was using now could only be described as ingratiating and fawning.

The chief of the Security Police suppressed a yawn and Martin Beck blew his nose.

It was only half-past seven in the morning, the National Commissioner's favourite time for calling sudden meetings, which in no way meant that he was in the habit of arriving at the station at that time. He often did not appear until late in the morning and even then he was usually inaccessible even to his closest colleagues. ‘My office is my castle’ might well have been inscribed on the door, and indeed it was an impenetrable fortress, guarded by a well-groomed secretary, quite rightly called ‘The Dragon’.

This morning he was showing his breezy and benign side. He had even had a Thermos of coffee and real china cups brought in, instead of the usual plastic mugs.

Stig Malm got up and poured out the coffee.

Martin Beck knew that before he sat down again he would first pinch the crease in his trousers and then carefully run his hand across his well-cut wavy hair.

Stig Malm was his immediate superior and Martin Beck had no respect for him whatsoever. His self-satisfied coquettishness and insinuating officiousness towards senior potentates were characteristics that Martin Beck had ceased to be annoyed by and nowadays found simply foolish. What did irritate him, on the other hand, and often constituted an obstacle to his work, was the man's rigidity and lack of self-criticism, a lack just as total and destructive as his ignorance of everything to do with practical police work. That he had risen to such a high position was due to ambition, political opportunism and a certain amount of administrative ability.

The chief of the Security Police put four lumps of sugar into his coffee, stirred it with a spoon and slurped as he drank.

Malm drank his without sugar, careful as he was of his trim figure.

Martin Beck was not feeling well and did not want coffee this early in the morning.

The National Commissioner took both sugar and cream and crooked his little finger as he raised his cup. He emptied it in one gulp and pushed it away from him, simultaneously pulling towards him a green file that had been lying on the corner of the polished conference table.

‘There,’ he said, smiling again. ‘Coffee first and then on with the day's work.’

Martin Beck looked gloomily at his untouched cup of coffee and longed for a glass of cold milk.

‘How are you feeling, Martin?’ said the Commissioner, with feigned sympathy in his voice. ‘You don't look well. You're not planning to be ill again, are you? You know we can't afford to be without you.’

Martin was not planning to be ill. He already was ill. He had been drinking wine with his twenty-two-year-old daughter and her boyfriend until half-past three in the morning and knew that he looked awful as a result. But he had no desire to discuss his self-inflicted indisposition with his superior, and moreover he didn't think that the ‘again’ was really fair. He had been away from his work with the flu and a high temperature for three days at the beginning of March and it was now the seventh of May.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I'm fine. A bit of a cold, that's all.’

‘You really don't look good,’ said Stig Malm. There was not even feigned sympathy in his voice, only reproach. ‘You really don't.’

He looked piercingly at Martin Beck, who feeling his irritation rising said, ‘Thanks for your concern, but I'm fine. I assume we're not here to discuss my appearance or the state of my health.’

‘Quite right,’ said the Commissioner. ‘Let's get down to business.’

He opened the green file. Judging by the contents – three or four sheets of paper at the most – there was some hope that today's meeting would not drag on for too long.

On top lay a typed letter with the mark of a large green rubber stamp beneath the scrawled signature and a letterhead that Martin Beck could not make out from where he was sitting.

‘As you will remember, we have discussed our to some extent imperfect experience when it comes to the security measures to be taken during state visits and in similar delicate situations – occasions when one can expect demonstrations of a particularly aggressive nature and well- and less-well-planned attempts at assassination,’ the Commissioner began, falling automatically into the pompous style that usually characterized his public appearances.

Stig Malm mumbled in agreement, Martin Beck said nothing, but Eric Möller objected.

‘Well, we're not that inexperienced, are we? Khrushchev's visit went off fine, except maybe for that red-painted pig someone let loose in front of Logård steps. So did Kosygin's, organizationally as well as security-wise. And the Environmental Conference, to take a maybe slightly different example.’

‘Yes, of course, but this time we're faced with a more difficult problem. What I'm referring to is the visit by this senator from the United States at the end of November. It could turn out to be a hot potato, if I may use that expression. We've never been confronted with the problem of VIPs from the States before, but now we are. The date's been set and I've already received certain instructions. Our preparations must be made well ahead of time and be extremely thorough. We have to be prepared for anything.’

The National Commissioner was no longer smiling. ‘We'll probably have to be prepared for something more violent than egg-throwing this time,’ he added grimly. ‘You should bear that in mind, Eric.’

‘We can take preventive measures,’ said Möller.

The Commissioner shrugged. ‘To some extent, yes,’ he said. ‘But we can't eliminate and look up and intern everyone who might make trouble. You know that as well as I do. I've got my orders to go by and you'll be getting yours.’

And I've got mine, thought Martin Beck gloomily. He was still trying to read the letterhead on the letter in the green file. He thought he could discern the word ‘police’ or possibly ‘policia’. His eyes ached and his tongue felt as rough and dry as sandpaper. Reluctantly he sipped at the bitter coffee.

‘But all that will come later,’ said the Commissioner. ‘What I want to discuss today is this letter.’ He tapped the paper in the open file with his forefinger. ‘It is in every way relevant to the problem at hand,’ he said. He gave the letter to Stig Malm, to pass around the table before he continued.

‘It is, as you see, an invitation, in response to our request to be allowed to send an observer during an impending state visit. As the visiting president is not particularly popular in the host country, they will be taking all possible measures to protect him. As in many other Latin American countries, they have had to deal with a number of assassination attempts – of both native and foreign politicians. Consequently, they have considerable experience, and I would think that their police force and security services are the best qualified in that area. I'm convinced that we could learn much by studying their methods and procedures.’

Martin Beck glanced through the letter, which was written in English in very formal and courteous terms. The president's visit was to take place on the fifth of June, hardly a month away, and the representative of the Swedish police was welcome to arrive two weeks earlier, so that he could study the most important phases of the preparatory work. The signature was elegant and totally illegible, but elucidated in typescript. The name was Spanish, long, and appeared in some way to be noble and distinguished.

When the letter had been returned to the green file, the Commissioner said, ‘The problem is, who shall we send?’

Stig Malm thoughtfully raised his eyes to the ceiling, but said nothing.

Martin Beck feared that he himself might be suggested. Five years earlier, before he had broken out of his unhappy marriage, he would have been delighted to undertake an assignment that would take him away from home for a while. But now, the last thing he wanted to do was to go abroad, and he hastened to say, ‘This is more of a Security Services job, isn't it?’

‘I can't go,’ said Möller. ‘In the first place, I can't be absent from the department – we've got some reorganizational problems in Section A that will take some time to clear up. In the second place, we're already experts on these matters and it would be more useful if someone went who was unfamiliar with security questions. Someone from the Criminal Investigation Bureau, or maybe someone from the regular police. Whoever goes will pass on what he learns to the rest of us when he gets back, so everyone will benefit anyway.’

The Commissioner nodded. ‘Yes, there's something in what you say, Eric,’ he said. ‘And, as you point out, we can't spare you at the moment. Nor you, Martin.’

Martin Beck inwardly sighed with relief.

‘In addition, I cannot speak Spanish,’ said the chief of Security Police.

‘Who the hell can?’ said Malm, smiling. He was aware of the fact that the Commissioner had not mastered the Castilian language, either.

‘I know someone who can,’ said Martin Beck.

Malm raised his eyebrows. ‘Who? Someone in Criminal Investigation?’

‘Yes, Gunvald Larsson.’

Malm raised his eyebrows yet another millimetre, then smiled incredulously and said, ‘But we can't send him, can we now?’

‘Why not?’ said Martin Beck. ‘I think he'd be a good man to send.’

He noticed that he sounded slightly angry. He did not usually speak up for Gunvald Larsson, but Malm's tone of voice had annoyed him and he was so used to disagreeing with Malm that he opposed him almost automatically.

‘He's a bungler and totally unrepresentative of the force,’ said Malm.

‘Does he really speak Spanish?’ asked the Commissioner doubtfully. ‘Where did he learn it?’

‘He was in a lot of Spanish-speaking countries when he was a sailor,’ said Martin Beck. ‘The city we're talking about is a large port, so he's almost certainly been there before. He speaks English, French and German, too, all fluently. And a little Russian. Look in his file and you'll see.’

‘He's a bungler all the same,’ insisted Stig Malm.

The Commissioner looked thoughtful. ‘I'll look at his qualifications,’ he said. ‘I thought of him myself, as a matter of fact. It's true he has a tendency to behave somewhat boorishly, and he's much too undisciplined. But he's undeniably one of our best inspectors, even if he does find it difficult to obey orders and stick to regulations.’

He turned to the chief of the Security Police. ‘What do you say, Eric? Do you think he'd be suitable?’

‘Well, I don't like him much, but generally speaking I've no objections.’

Malm looked unhappy. ‘I think it would be extremely inappropriate to send him,’ he said. ‘He would disgrace the Swedish force. He behaves like a boor and uses language more suited to a docker than a former ship's officer.’

‘Perhaps not when he's speaking Spanish,’ said Martin Beck. ‘Anyway, even if he does express himself a little crudely sometimes, at least he chooses his moments.’

That was not strictly true. Martin Beck had recently heard Gunvald Larsson call Malm ‘that magnificent arsehole’ in the man's presence, but fortunately Malm had not realized that the epithet was intended for him.

The Commissioner did not seem to take much notice of Malm's objections. ‘It's perhaps not a bad idea,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I don't think his tendency to uncivilized behaviour will be much of a problem in this case. He can behave well if he wants to. He has a better background than most. He comes from a wealthy and cultured family, he's had the best possible education and an upbringing that has taught him how to behave correctly in all possible circumstances. That shows, even if he does his best to conceal it.’

‘You can say that again,’ mumbled Malm.

Martin Beck sensed that Stig Malm would very much have liked the assignment and that he was annoyed at not even being asked. He also thought it would be good to be rid of Gunvald Larsson for a while, as he was not much liked by his colleagues and had an unusual capacity for causing rows and complications.

The Commissioner did not seem wholly unconvinced even by his own reasoning, and Martin Beck said encouragingly, ‘I think we should send Gunvald. He has all the qualifications needed for the job.’

‘I've noticed that he's careful of his appearance,’ said the Commissioner. ‘His way of dressing shows good taste and a feeling for quality. That undoubtedly makes an impression.’

‘Exactly,’ said Martin Beck. ‘It's an important detail.’ He was conscious of the fact that his own clothing could hardly be called tasteful. His trousers were creased and baggy, the collar of his polo shirt was wide and limp from many washings, his tweed jacket was worn and missing a button.

‘The Violent Crimes Squad is well-staffed and ought to be able to manage without Larsson for a few weeks,’ said the Commissioner. ‘Or does anyone have any other suggestion?’

They all shook their heads. Even Malm appeared to have perceived the advantage of having Gunvald Larsson at a safe distance for a while, and Eric Möller yawned again, apparently pleased that the meeting was drawing to a close.

The National Commissioner rose to his feet and closed the file. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then we are agreed. I shall personally inform Larsson of our decision.’

Gunvald Larsson received the information without much enthusiasm, nor was he especially flattered by the assignment. His self-esteem was pronounced and imperturbable, but he was not entirely unaware that some of his colleagues would heave a sigh of relief when he left, and regret only that he was not leaving for good. He was aware that his friends on the force could be easily counted. As far as he knew, there was only one. He also knew that he was regarded as insubordinate and troublesome, and that his job often hung by a thread.

This fact did not disturb him in the slightest. Any other policeman of his rank and salary grade would at least have felt some anxiety over the constant threat of being suspended or actually dismissed, but Gunvald Larsson had never spent a sleepless night over the prospect. Unmarried and childless, he had no dependants, and he had long since broken off all communication with his family, whose snobbish upper-class existence he despised. He did not worry much about his future. During his years as a policeman, he had often weighed the possibility of returning to his old profession. Now he was nearly fifty and he realized that he would probably never again go to sea.

As the day of his departure approached, Gunvald Larsson discovered that he was genuinely pleased about the assignment, which, while regarded as important, could hardly be expected to be especially difficult. It involved at least two weeks' change in his daily routine, and he began to look forward to the journey as if to a holiday.

On the evening before his departure, Gunvald Larsson was standing in his bedroom in Bollmora, clad in nothing but underpants, looking at his reflection in the long mirror on the inside of his wardrobe door. He was delighted with the pattern on the underpants, yellow moose against a blue background, and he owned five more pairs. Half a dozen of the same kind, though green with red moose, were already packed in the large pigskin case that lay open on his bed.

Gunvald Larsson was six feet tall, a powerful and muscular man with large hands and feet. He had just showered and routinely stepped on to the bathroom scales, which registered sixteen stone. During the last four years, or perhaps it was five, he had put on about a stone and a half, and he looked with displeasure at the roll of fat above the elastic of his underpants.

He pulled in his stomach and it occurred to him that he ought to visit the station gym more often. Or begin swimming when the pool was completed.

Except for the spare tyre, though, he was really quite pleased with his appearance.

He was forty-nine years old, but his hair was thick and abundant and his hairline had not crept back and made his forehead higher. It was low, with two marked lines across it. His hair was cut short and so fair that the grey in it didn't show. Now that it was wet and newly combed, it lay smooth and shiny across his broad skull, but when it had dried it would rise and look bristly and untidy. His eyebrows were bushy and of the same fair colour as his hair, and his nose was large and well formed, with wide nostrils. His pale china-blue eyes looked small in that rugged face and were a trifle too close together, which sometimes, when they were empty of expression, made him look deceptively stupid. When he was angry – and that was often – a furious crease appeared between his eyes, and his light-blue eyes could strike terror into the most hardened criminals, as well as into the hearts of subordinates.

The only person who had never been on the receiving end of Gunvald Larsson's fury was Einar Rönn, a colleague in the Stockholm Violent Crimes Squad and his only friend. Rönn was a placid and taciturn northerner with a perpetually running red nose, which dominated his face to such a degree that one hardly noticed the other details of his appearance. He carried about within him an inextinguishable longing for his home district around Arjeplog in Lapland.

As Gunvald Larsson and Rönn served in the same department, they saw each other nearly every day, but they also spent a good deal of their spare time together. When possible, they took their annual leave at the same time and went to Arjeplog, where they mostly devoted themselves to fishing. None of their colleagues was able to understand this friendship between two such different personalities, and many wondered how Rönn, with stoic calm and few words, could turn a raging Gunvald Larsson into a meek and mild lamb.

Now Gunvald Larsson inspected the row of suits in his well-filled closet. He was well acquainted with the climate of the country he was to visit, and he remembered several suffocatingly hot spring weeks in that port many years before. If he was to endure the heat he would have to be lightly clothed, and he had only two suits that were sufficiently cool. For safety's sake, he tried them on and discovered to his dismay that he couldn't get the first on and that the trousers of the second would only just fasten if he made an effort and inhaled deeply. They were also tight across the thighs. At least he could button the jacket without difficulty, but it was tight across the shoulders and either it would limit his freedom of movement or the seams would split.

He hung the useless suit back in the wardrobe and laid the other one across the lid of his case. It would have to do. He had had it made for him four years earlier, from thin Egyptian cotton, nougat-coloured with narrow white stripes.

He completed his packing with three pairs of khaki trousers, a shantung jacket and the suit that was too tight. In the pocket on the inside of the lid, he put one of his favourite novels. Then he closed the lid, fastened the brass buckles on the wide straps, locked the case and took it into the hall.

He cared about his own EMW too much to let it stand in the airport parking lot, so Einar Rönn was to pick him up in his car the next morning and drive him to Stockholm's Arlanda Airport. Like most Swedish airports, Arlanda was a dismal and misplaced establishment and succeeded excellently in giving expectant visitors an even more distorted view of Sweden than the country deserved.

Gunvald Larsson threw the blue-and-yellow moose underpants into the hamper in the bathroom, put on his pyjamas and went to bed. He did not suffer from travel fever and fell asleep almost immediately.

2

The security expert did not reach even to the middle of Gunvald Larsson's upper arm, but he was very neat and elegant in his light-blue suit with its flared and beautifully pressed trousers. With the suit, he wore a pink shirt, shiny torpedo-toed black shoes and a lilac tie. His hair was almost black, his skin light brown and his eyes olive-coloured. The only discordant note was the pistol holster bulging under his left armpit. The security expert's name was Francisco Bajamonde Cassavetes y Larrinaga; he came from an extremely distinguished family.

Francisco Bajamonde Cassavetes y Larrinaga spread the security plan out on the balustrade, but Gunvald Larsson was looking instead at his own suit; it had taken the police tailor seven days to make it, and the result was excellent, as this was a country where the level of the art of tailoring was still high. Their only difference of opinion had been over the space for a shoulder holster, which the tailor had taken for granted. But Gunvald Larsson never used a shoulder holster. He carried his pistol in a clip in his belt. Here abroad, of course, he was not armed, but he would be using the suit in Stockholm. There had been a brief dispute and naturally he had had his way. What else? With deep satisfaction he glanced down at his well-tailored legs, sighed contentedly and looked around at his surroundings.

They were standing on the eighth floor of the hotel, a spot chosen with great care. The motorcade would pass below the balcony and stop at the provincial palace a block away. Gunvald Larsson glanced politely at the plan, but without much enthusiasm, as by now he knew it all by heart. He knew that the harbour had been closed to all traffic that morning and the civilian airport had been closed since the presidential plane had landed.

Straight ahead lay the harbour and the azure-blue sea. Several large passenger liners and cargo boats were anchored at its outer edges. The only ships moving were a warship, a frigate and a few police boats in the inner harbour. Below them lay the paseo, edged with palms and acacias. Across the street was a rank of taxis, and beyond that a row of colourful horse-drawn cabs. All these had been thoroughly checked.

Every person in the area, apart from the military and civilian police forming an arm's-length barrier along each side of the paseo, had passed through metal detectors of the kind with which most larger airports were now equipped.

The civilian police wore green uniforms, while the military police wore blue-grey. The civilian police wore boots, the military police high-top shoes.

Gunvald Larsson suppressed a sigh. He had done a dummy run along this stretch at the rehearsal that morning. Everything had been in its place except the President himself.

The motorcade was made up as follows. First, a motorcycle party of fifteen specially trained security police. After that, an equal number of motorcycle police from the regular force, followed by two cars loaded with security men. Then came the presidential car, a black Cadillac with bulletproof blue glass. (During the dummy run, Gunvald Larsson had sat in the back seat as a stand-in, unquestionably an honour.) Next came an open car full of security men, on the American model. And finally, more motorcycle police, followed by the radio reporters' bus and cars full of other authorized journalists. In addition, civilian security men were spread along the road from the airport.

All the street lamps were decorated with pictures of the President. The route was fairly long, indeed very long, and Gunvald Larsson had had time to become quite bored with that bull-necked head, puffy face and black enamel steel-framed glasses.

That was the ground protection. The airspace was dominated by army helicopters at three levels, with three choppers in each group. In addition, a division of Starfighters was sweeping back and forth, guarding the upper airspace.

The entire operation was organized with such perfection that unpleasant surprises ought to be fairly unthinkable.

The heat at this time of the afternoon was, to put it mildly, oppressive. Gunvald Larsson was sweating, but not excessively. He could not imagine that anything could go wrong. Preparations had been singularly detailed and thorough, and planning had been going on for several months. A special group had been assigned to look for faults in the planning, and a number of corrections had been made. Add to this the fact that every attempted assassination in this country – and there had been quite a few – had failed. The National Commissioner had probably been right when he said that they were the world's greatest experts in their field.

At a quarter to three in the afternoon, Francisco Bajamonde Cassavetes y Larrinaga glanced at his watch and said, ‘Twenty-one minutes to go, I presume.’

There had been no need for a Spanish-speaking delegate. The security man spoke the Queen's English as used in the most sophisticated clubs of Belgravia.

Gunvald Larsson looked at his own chronograph and nodded. At that moment, to be more precise, it was exactly thirteen minutes and thirty-five seconds to three on Wednesday the fifth of June, nineteen hundred and seventy-four.

Outside the harbour entrance, the frigate was turning to sound the welcoming salute, which was its only real assignment. High above the paseo the eight fighter planes drew white zigzag lines in the bright blue sky.

Gunvald Larsson looked around. Down the paseo was a huge brick bullring with curved arcades plastered in red and white. In the other direction they were just turning on the multicoloured sprays of a tall fountain; there had been a severe drought all year and the fountains – this was not the only one – were only set going on especially grand occasions.

Now they could hear the drone of helicopters and the sirens on the motorcycles. Gunvald Larsson checked the time. The motorcade seemed to be ahead of schedule. Then his china-blue gaze swept the harbour and noted that all the police boats were now in action. The harbour installations themselves were much the same as when he had been at sea, only the ships were completely different. Supertankers, container ships, huge ferries on which cars were more important than passengers – they were all unfamiliar to him from his own years at sea.

Gunvald Larsson was not alone in his observation that the order of events was ahead of the prescribed schedule. Cassavetes y Larrinaga spoke swiftly but calmly into his radio, smiled at his fair-haired guest and looked out over the sparkling fountains, where the first motorbike formation of specially trained security police was already appearing between the lines of green-uniformed police officers.

Gunvald Larsson shifted his gaze. Immediately below them a cigar-smoking security man was strolling along the middle of the street keeping an eye on the police marksmen posted on the surrounding roofs. Behind the line of policemen was the row of taxicabs with blue lines along their sides, and in front of them an open yellow-and-black horse-drawn carriage. The man on the box was also dressed in yellow and black, and the horse had yellow-and-black plumes in the band round its forehead.

Behind all this were the palms and acacias and a few lines of curious people. A handful of them carried the only sign approved by the authorities, a picture of that bull-necked head, puffy face and black enamel steel-framed glasses. The President was not a particularly popular visitor.

The motorcade was moving very quickly. The first of the Security Service cars was already below the balcony. The security expert smiled at Gunvald Larsson, nodded assuringly and began to fold up his papers.

At that moment, the ground opened, almost directly beneath the bulletproof Cadillac.

The pressure waves flung both men backwards, but if Gunvald Larsson was nothing else, he was strong. He grabbed the balustrade with both hands and looked upward.

The roadway had opened like a volcano from which smoking pillars of fire were rising to a height of a hundred and fifty feet. Atop the flaming pillars were diverse objects. The most prominent were the rear section of the bulletproof Cadillac, an overturned black cab with a blue line along its side, half a horse with black-and-yellow plumes in the band round its forehead, a leg in a black boot and green uniform material, and an arm with a long cigar between the fingers.

Gunvald Larsson ducked as a mass of flammable and nonflammable objects began to rain down on him. He was just thinking about his new suit when something struck him in the chest with great force and hurled him backwards on to the marble tiles of the balcony.

The roar of the explosion finally faded away, and there were sounds of cries, desperate calls for help, someone weeping and another person screaming hysterical curses, before all human sounds were drowned by the sirens of ambulances and the wail of a fire engine.

Gunvald Larsson got to his feet, found himself not seriously hurt and looked about to see what it was that had knocked him down. The object lay at his feet. It had a bull neck and a puffy face, and strangely enough, the black enamel steel-framed glasses were still on.

The security expert scrambled to his feet, clearly unhurt, even if some of his elegance had been dissipated. He stared incredulously at the head and crossed himself.

Gunvald Larsson looked down at his suit. It was ruined. ‘Goddammit,’ he said.

Then he looked at the head lying at his feet. ‘Maybe I ought to take it home,’ he said to himself. ‘As a souvenir.’

Francisco Bajamonde Cassavetes y Larrinaga looked questioningly at his guest. ‘Catastrophe,’ he said.

‘Yes, you could say that,’ said Gunvald Larsson.

Francisco Bajamonde Cassavetes y Larrinaga looked so unhappy that Gunvald Larsson felt duty-bound to add, ‘But no one could really blame you. And anyhow, he had an unusually ugly head.’

3

The same day that Gunvald Larsson had his strange experience on the balcony with the lovely view, an eighteen-year-old girl named Rebecka Lind was being tried in Stockholm city court on a charge of armed robbery of a bank.

The public prosecutor in her case was Bulldozer Olsson, who for some years had been the judiciary's expert in armed robberies, which were spreading across the land like a plague. He was, as a result, an extremely harried man with so little time to spend at home that it had taken him three weeks, for instance, to discover that his wife had left him for good and been replaced by a laconic message on his pillow. This had not made all that much difference, as with his usual swiftness of action he had found himself another within three days. His new life partner was one of his secretaries who admired him unreservedly and devotedly, and certainly his suits appeared to be slightly less rumpled from that day on.

On this day he arrived breathlessly, two minutes before the trial was to begin. He was a corpulent but light-footed little man with a joyous countenance and lively movements. He always wore bright pink shirts, and his ties were in such indescribably bad taste that they had driven Gunvald Larsson almost insane when he had worked in Bulldozer's special group.

He looked round the bare and ill-heated anteroom of the court and discovered a group of five people, among them his own witnesses, and a person whose presence surprised him enormously. It was, in fact, the chief of the Murder Squad.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ he said to Martin Beck.

‘I've been called as a witness.’

‘By whom?’

‘The defence.’

‘The defence? What does that mean?’

‘Braxén, counsel for the defence,’ said Martin Beck. ‘He drew this case, apparently.’

‘Crasher,’ said Bulldozer, clearly upset. ‘I've already had three meetings and two arrests today, and now I'll have to sit and listen to Crasher for the rest of the afternoon, I suppose. Do you know anything about this case?’

‘Not much, but Braxén's argument convinced me I ought to come. And I don't have anything special on at the moment.’

‘You people in the Murder Squad don't know what real work is,’ said Bulldozer Olsson. ‘I've got thirty-nine cases on the books and just as many on ice. You should work with me for a while, then you'd find out.’

Bulldozer Olsson won all his cases, with very few exceptions indeed. This, to put it delicately, was not especially flattering to the judiciary.

‘But you'll have an amusing afternoon,’ said Olsson. ‘Crasher'll give you a good show, for sure.’

Their discussion was interrupted by the case being called, and those involved, with one important exception, filed into the courtroom, a singularly dismal sector of the principal city courthouse. The windows were large and majestic, which in no way excused but possibly explained why they clearly had not been cleaned for a very long time.

The judge, assistant judge and seven jurymen on a platform behind a long connecting pulpit were staring with dignity out into the courtroom.

The accused was brought in through a small side door, a girl with shoulder-length fair hair, a sulky mouth and distant brown eyes. She was wearing a long, pale-green embroidered dress of some light, thin material and had black clogs on her feet.

The court was seated.

The judge turned to the girl, who was sitting to the left of the bench, and said, ‘The accused in the case is Rebecka Lind. Are you Rebecka Lind?’

‘Yes.’

‘May I ask you to speak a little louder?’

‘Yes.’

‘You were born on the third of January, nineteen hundred and fifty-six?’

‘Yes.’

‘I must ask the accused to speak louder.’ He said this as if it had to be said ritualistically, which was true, as the acoustics in the courtroom were singularly poor.

‘Counsel for the defence Hedobald Braxén appears to have been delayed,’ he went on. ‘In the meantime, we can summon the witnesses. Counsel for the prosecution has called two witnesses – Kerstin Franzén, bank cashier, and Kenneth Kvastmo, police constable. The defence has called the following: Martin Beck, chief inspector, Murder Squad; Karl Kristiansson, police constable; Rumford Bondesson, bank director; and Hedy-Marie Wirén, home economics teacher. Counsel for the defence has also called Walter Petrus, business executive, to testify, but he has declared himself unable to attend and has also declared that he has nothing whatsoever to do with the case.’

One of the jurymen sniggered.

‘The witnesses may now leave the court.’

The two policemen – as always on these occasions wearing uniform trousers and black shoes plus dreary blazers – Martin Beck, the bank director, the home economics teacher and the bank cashier all trooped out into the foyer. Only the accused, her guard and one spectator remained in the courtroom.

Bulldozer studied his papers busily for about two minutes, then looked curiously at the spectator, a woman Bulldozer reckoned to be about thirty-five. She was sitting on one of the benches with a shorthand pad open in front of her. She was of below average height and had dead-straight blonde hair, not especially long. Her clothes consisted of faded jeans, a shirt of indefinite colour and strap sandals. She had broad, sunburnt feet with straight toes, flat breasts with large nipples that could be seen quite clearly through her shirt. The most remarkable thing about her was her small, angular face with its strong nose and piercing blue gaze, which she directed in turn on those present. Her gaze rested especially long on the accused and Bulldozer Olsson; in the latter case so piercingly that the public prosecutor rose to pour himself a glass of water and moved into a position behind her. She at once turned and caught his eye.

Sexually she was not his type, if he even had a type, but he was intensely curious about who she could be. Viewed from behind, he could see that she was compactly built, without being in the least plump.

If he had asked Martin Beck, who was standing around in a corner of the foyer, he might have learned something. For instance, that she was not thirty-five but thirty-nine, that she had a considerable background in sociology, and that at present she was working for social services. Martin Beck knew a great deal about her in fact, but had very little information he wished to proffer, as most of it was of a personal nature. Possibly he would have said, if anyone had asked him, that her name was Rhea Nielsen.

Twenty-two minutes after the prescribed time, the doors were thrown open and Crasher appeared. He was carrying a smouldering cigar in one hand and his papers in the other. He studied the documents phlegmatically and the judge had to clear his throat meaningfully three times before he absently handed the cigar to the court official to remove from the courtroom.

‘Mr Braxén has now arrived,’ said the judge acidly. ‘May we ask whether there is any further objection to starting the case?’

Bulldozer shook his head and said, ‘No, certainly not. Not as far as I'm concerned.’

Braxén rose and walked to the middle of the floor. He was considerably older than anyone else in the room, a man of authority with an impressive stomach. He was also remarkably badly and unfashionably dressed, and a none too squeamish cat could have made a good meal from the food stains on his waistcoat. After a long silence, during which he fixed Bulldozer with a peculiar look, he said, ‘Apart from the fact that this little girl should never have been brought to court, I have no judicial objections. Speaking purely technically.’

‘Would the counsel for the prosecution now introduce the case,’ said the judge.

Bulldozer leaped up from his chair and with his head down began plodding round the table on which his papers lay.

‘I maintain that Rebecka Lind on Wednesday the twenty-second of May this year committed armed robbery of the PK Bank's branch in Midsommarkransen, and thereafter was guilty of assaulting an official in that she resisted the policemen who came to take her into custody.’

‘And what does the accused say?’

‘The accused pleads not guilty,’ said Braxén. ‘And so it is my duty to deny all of this … drivel.’

He turned to Bulldozer again and said in melancholy tones: ‘What does it feel like to persecute innocent people? Rebecka is as innocent as the carrots in the ground.’

Everyone appeared to ponder this novel image. Finally the judge said, ‘It is for the Court to decide that, is it not?’

‘Unfortunately,’ said Crasher.

‘What is meant by that remark?’ said the judge, with a certain sharpness. ‘Would Mr Olsson please now state his case?’

Bulldozer looked at the spectator, who, however, returned his gaze so directly and demandingly that after a brief glance at Braxén, he let his gaze wander over the judge, the assistant judge and the jury, after which he fixed it on the accused. Rebecka Lind's own gaze seemed to be fixed in space, far from crazy bureaucrats and all other possible good and evil.

Bulldozer clasped his hands behind his back and began walking back and forth. ‘Well, Rebecka,’ he said in a friendly way, ‘what has happened to you is unfortunately something that happens to many young people today. Together we will try to help you … I suppose I may use your first name?’

The girl did not seem to have heard the question, if it was one.

‘Technically speaking, this is an open-and-shut case, about which there can be little discussion. As was evident at the arraignment –’

Braxén had appeared to be sunk in his thoughts, but now he suddenly jerked a large cigar out of his inside pocket, pointed it at Bulldozer's chest and cried, ‘I object! Neither I nor any other lawyer was present at the arraignment. Was this girl Camilla Lund even informed of her right to counsel?’

‘Rebecka Lind,’ said the assistant judge.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Crasher impatiently. ‘That makes her arrest illegal.’

‘Not at all,’ said Bulldozer. ‘Rebecka was asked and she said it didn't matter. It didn't, either. As I will shortly show, the case was crystal clear.’

‘The very arraignment was illegal,’ said Crasher conclusively. ‘I would like my objection to be entered in the record.’

‘So, Rebecka,’ continued Bulldozer, with that winning smile that was one of his main assets. ‘Let us now, clearly and truthfully, try to clarify the actual course of events, what happened to you on the twenty-second of May and why it happened. You robbed a bank, certainly out of desperation and thoughtlessness, and then assaulted a policeman.’

‘I object to counsel's choice of words,’ said Crasher. ‘I object to counsel for the prosecution's attitude towards both myself and this girl.’

Bulldozer for once appeared put out. But he soon collected himself and, in as good form as ever, gesticulating and smiling, pursued his case to its conclusion, despite the fact that Braxén interrupted him no fewer than forty-two times, often with totally incomprehensible objections.

Briefly, the case was as follows: Shortly before two o'clock on the twenty-second of May, Rebecka Lind had walked into the PK Bank's branch in Midsommarkransen and gone up to one of the cashiers. She had been carrying a large shoulder bag, which she placed on the counter. She then demanded money. The cashier noticed that she was armed with a large knife and set off the police alarm with her foot as she began to fill the bag with bundles of notes, amounting to a sum of five thousand Swedish kronor. Before Rebecka Lind had time to leave the bank with her booty, the first of the radio patrol cars arrived. Two policemen with guns drawn went into the bank and disarmed the robber, at which a certain tumult arose, during which the notes were scattered over the floor. The police arrested the robber, and the prisoner offered violent resistance, inflicting on the policemen damage to their uniforms. They drove her to the station on Kungsholm. The robber, who turned out to be eighteen-year-old Rebecka Lind, was taken first to the Criminal Division duty office and was then transferred to the special department concerned with bank robberies. She was immediately charged with suspected armed robbery of a bank and assault of a policeman, and the following day was formally arraigned at a singularly brief transaction before the Stockholm assize court.

Bulldozer admitted that certain judicial formalities had not been observed in connection with the arraignment, but pointed out that, technically speaking, these were of no importance. Rebecka Lind had herself been quite uninterested in her defence, and she had also immediately confessed that she had gone to the bank to get money.

Everyone began to glance at the clock, but Bulldozer Olsson did not approve of adjournments and promptly called his first witness, Kerstin Franzén, the bank cashier. Her testimony was short and confirmed in all respects what had already been said.

Bulldozer asked: ‘When did you realize that this was a holdup?’

‘As soon as she threw her bag on the counter and demanded money. And then I saw the knife. It looked awfully dangerous. A kind of dagger.’

‘Why did you hand over the money?’

‘We've had instructions not to offer resistance in situations like this, but to do what the robber says.’

This was true. The banks did not wish to run the risk of paying out life insurance and expensive damages to employees who were injured.

A clap of thunder seemed to shake the venerable courtroom. In fact it was Hedobald Braxén belching. This did not happen all that seldom and was one of the many reasons for his nickname.

‘Has the defence any questions?’

Crasher shook his head. He was busy writing something down on a piece of paper.

Bulldozer called his next witness.

Kenneth Kvastmo stepped up and laboriously repeated the oath. His testimony began with the usual litany: occupation police constable, born in Arvika in nineteen hundred and forty-two; first served in patrol cars in Solna and later in Stockholm.

Bulldozer said, foolishly, ‘Tell us in your own words.’

‘What?’

‘What happened, of course.’

‘Yes,’ said Kvastmo. ‘She was standing there, the murderess. Well, she didn't manage to murder nobody, of course. Karl didn't do nothing, as usual, of course, so I threw myself on her like a panther.’

The image was unfortunate. Kvastmo was a large, shapeless man with a fat bottom, a bull neck and fleshy features.

‘I got hold of her right hand just as she was trying to pull out the knife, and then I told her she was under arrest and then I just arrested her. I had to carry her out to the car and in the back seat she resisted arrest violently and then it turns out she was assaulting an officer of the law because one of my shoulder flaps almost come off and my wife was furious when she had to sew it on because there was something on TV she was going to watch and also a button had almost came off my uniform and she didn't have no blue thread, Anna-Greta, my wife, I mean. And when we was done in the bank, then Karl drove us to the station. There wasn't nothing else after that except she called me a pig, but that's not really insulting a policeman. A pig don't cause no disrespect or contempt of the force, I mean neither to the individual officer which in this case was me, or to the force as a whole, does it? She's the one, over there, that said it.’ He pointed to Rebecka Lind.

While the policeman was revealing his narrative abilities, Bulldozer was watching the woman spectator, who had been busily taking notes and was now sitting with her elbows on her thighs, her chin in her hands, as she attentively watched both Braxén and Rebecka in turn. Her face looked troubled, or rather expressed profound unease. She bent down and scratched an ankle with one hand as she chewed a nail on the other hand. Now she was looking at Braxén again and her half-closed blue eyes expressed a mixture of resignation and hesitant hope.

Hedobald Braxén appeared to be only just physically present, and there was no indication whatsoever that he had heard a word of the evidence.

‘No questions,’ he said.

Bulldozer Olsson was satisfied. The case was open-and-shut, exactly as he had said from the start. The only fault was that it had taken so long. Now when the judge suggested an hour's adjournment, he nodded his approval enthusiastically and rushed towards the door with short, bouncing steps.

Martin Beck and Rhea Nielsen used the break to go to the Amarante. After open sandwiches and beer, they finished off with coffee and brandy. Martin Beck had had several boring hours. He had gone up to the station for a spell with Rönn and Strömgren, but that had not been particularly rewarding. He had never liked Strömgren and his relationship with Rönn was complicated. The simple truth was that he no longer had any friends left at the station on Kungsholmsgatan; both there and at the National Police Administration there were a number of people who admired him, others who detested him and a third group, the largest, who quite simply envied him. Out at Västberga, too, he had no friends since Lennart Kollberg had left. Benny Skacke had applied for the job and got it, on Martin Beck's recommendation. Their relationship was fairly good, but from that to genuine warmth was a long step. Sometimes he just sat and stared into space, wishing Kollberg were back; to be perfectly honest – and he found that easy nowadays – he mourned for him the way you mourn for a child or a lost love.

He sat chatting for a while in Rönn's room, but not only was Rönn indifferent company, he also had a lot to do.

‘Wonder how things are with Gunvald,’ said Rönn. ‘I wouldn't mind trading places with him. Bullfights and palm trees and expense-account dinners, boy oh boy!’

Rönn specialized in giving Martin Beck a guilty conscience. Why couldn't he have been offered that trip, he who certainly needed more encouragement than anyone else?

It was impossible to tell Rönn the truth – that he had actually been discriminated against simply because they considered it impossible to send out a runny-nosed northerner, a man with a notably unrepresentative appearance who could only with the greatest goodwill be said to speak passable English.

But Rönn was a good detective. He had been nothing much to start with, but now he was undoubtedly one of the section's greatest assets.

As usual, Martin Beck tried but failed to find something encouraging to say, and shortly he left.

Now he was sitting with Rhea, and that in truth was quite a different matter. The only trouble was that she seemed sad.

‘This trial,’ she said. ‘Christ, it's depressing! And the people who decide things! The prosecutor is just a buffoon. And the way he stared at me, as if he'd never seen a woman before.’

‘Bulldozer,’ said Martin Beck. ‘He's seen lots of women and besides he's not your type.’

‘And the defence lawyer doesn't even know his client's name! That girl hasn't a hope in heaven.’

‘It's not over yet. Bulldozer wins almost all his cases, but if he does lose one occasionally, it's always to Braxén. Do you remember that Swärd business?’

‘Do I remember!’ said Rhea. She laughed hoarsely. ‘When you came and stayed at my place the first time. The locked room and all that. Two years ago almost. How could I not remember?’

She looked happy, and nothing could have made him happier. They had had good times since then, full of talk, jealousy, friendly quarrels and, not least, good spells of sex, trust and companionship. Although he was over fifty and thought he had experienced most things, he had still opened up with her. Hopefully, she shared his feelings about the relationship, but on that point he was more uncertain. She was physically stronger and the more free-thinking of the two of them, presumably also more intelligent, or at any rate quicker-thinking. She had plenty of bad points, among others that she was often cross and irritable, but he loved them. Perhaps that expression was stupid or far too romantic, but he could find no better one.

He looked at her and became aware that he had stopped being jealous. Her large nipples were thrusting out beneath the material, her shirt was carelessly buttoned, she had taken off her sandals and was rubbing her naked feet against each other under the table. Now and again she bent down and scratched her ankles. But she was herself and not his; perhaps that was the best thing about her.

Her face became troubled at this moment, the irregular features set in an expression of anxiety and distaste. ‘I don't understand much about the law,’ she said, with little truth, ‘but this case appears lost. Can't you say something to change it when you testify?’

‘Hardly. I don't even know what he wants out of me.’

‘The other defence witnesses seem useless. A bank director and a home economics teacher and a policeman. Were any of them even there?’

‘Yes, Kristiansson. He was driving the patrol car.’

‘Is he as dumb as the other cop?’

‘Yes.’

‘And I don't suppose the case can be won on the closing argument – the defence's, I mean?’

Martin Beck smiled. He should have known she would get this seriously involved.

‘No, it doesn't seem likely. But are you sure the defence ought to win and that Rebecka isn't guilty?’

‘The investigation is a load of rubbish. The whole case ought to be turned back over to the police – nothing's been properly investigated. I hate the police on that score alone. They hand over cases to the prosecutor's office that aren't even half completed. And then the prosecutor struts around like a turkey cock on a rubbish tip and the people who are supposed to judge are only sitting there because they're politically useless and no good for anything else.’

In many ways she was right. The jury were scraped from the bottom of the political party barrels, they were often friends of the prosecutor, or let themselves be dominated by strong-willed judges who fundamentally despised them.

‘It may sound odd, I know,’ said Martin Beck, ‘but I think you underestimate Braxén.’

On the short walk back to the courthouse, Rhea suddenly took his hand. That seldom happened and always meant that she was worried or in a state of great emotional tension. Her hand was like everything else about her, strong and reliable.

Bulldozer came into the foyer at the same time as they did, one minute before the court was to reconvene. ‘That bank robbery on Vasagatan is all cleared up,’ he said breathlessly. ‘But we've got two new ones instead, and one of them …’

His gaze fell on Kvastmo and he set off without even finishing the sentence. ‘You can go home,’ he told Kvastmo. ‘Or back on duty. I would take it as a personal favour.’

This was Bulldozer's way of bawling someone out.

‘What?’ said Kvastmo.

‘You can go back on duty,’ said Bulldozer. ‘Every man is needed at his post.’

‘My evidence took care of that gangster chick, didn't it?’ said Kvastmo.

‘Yes,’ said Bulldozer. ‘It was brilliant.’

Kvastmo left to carry on his struggle against the gangster community in other arenas.

The court reconvened and the case continued.

Braxén called his first witness, Rumford Bondesson, bank director. After the formalities, Braxén suddenly pointed at the witness with his unlit cigar and said inquisitorially, ‘Have you ever met Rebecka Lind?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘About a month ago. The young lady came to the head office of the bank. She was dressed in the same clothes as now, but she was carrying an infant in some kind of harness on her chest.’

‘And you received her?’

‘Yes. I had a few moments to spare, as it happened, and I am also interested in modern young people.’

‘Especially the female kind?’

‘Yes. I don't mind admitting it.’

‘How old are you, Mr Bondesson?’

‘Fifty-nine.’

‘What did Rebecka Lind want?’

‘To borrow money. Clearly she had no idea whatsoever about the simplest financial matters. Someone had told her that banks lend money, so she went to the nearest big bank and asked to speak to the manager.’

‘And what did you reply?’

‘That banks were commercial enterprises which didn't lend money without interest and security. She replied that she had a goat and three cats.’

‘Why did she want to borrow money?’

‘To go to America. Just where in America she didn't know, and neither did she know what she was going to do when she got there. But she had an address, she said.’

‘What else did she say?’

‘She asked if there was a bank that was not so commercial, that was owned by the people and to which ordinary people could go when they needed money. I replied, mostly in fun, that the Credit Bank, or the PK Bank as it is called nowadays, was at least officially owned by the state, and so by the people. She appeared to be satisfied with that answer.’

Crasher went up to the witness, jabbed the cigar against his chest and asked, ‘Was anything else said?’

Mr Bondesson did not reply, and finally the judge said, ‘You're under oath, Mr Bondesson. But you do not have to answer questions which reveal criminal activities on your part.’

‘Yes,’ said Bondesson, with obvious reluctance. ‘Young girls are interested in me and I in them. I offered to solve her short-term problems.’

He looked around and caught an annihilating look from Rhea Nielsen and the glint of a bald head from Bulldozer Olsson, who was deep in his papers.

‘And what did Rebecka Lind say to that?’

‘I don't remember. Nothing came of it.’

Crasher had returned to his table. He rummaged around in his papers and said, ‘At the police interrogation, Rebecka said that she had made the following remarks: “I loathe dirty old men” and “I think you're disgusting.”’ Crasher repeated in a loud voice: ‘Dirty old men.’ With a gesture of his cigar, he implied that as far as he was concerned the interrogation was over.

‘I do not understand at all what this has to do with the case,’ said Bulldozer without even looking up.

The witness stepped down with an injured air.

Then it was Martin Beck's turn. The formalities were as usual, but Bulldozer was now more attentive and followed the defence's questions with obvious interest.

‘Yesterday,’ said Crasher when the preliminaries were over, ‘I received word that a certain Filip Trofast Mauritzon had been refused the right to appeal to the High Court. As you may remember, Chief Inspector Beck, Mauritzon was convicted over eighteen months ago of murder in connection with armed robbery of a bank. The prosecutor in the case was my perhaps not-all-that-learned friend, Sten Robert Olsson, who at that time went under the title of Royal Prosecutor. I myself had the thankless and for my profession often morally burdensome task of defending Mauritzon, who undoubtedly was what we call in everyday speech a “criminal”. I would now like to ask one single question: Do you, Chief Inspector Beck, consider that Mauritzon was guilty of the bank robbery and the murder connected with it, and that the investigation presented by present counsel for the prosecution, Mr Olsson, was satisfactory from a police viewpoint?’

‘No,’ said Martin Beck.

Although Bulldozer's cheeks had suddenly taken on a pink hue which matched his shirt and enhanced even further his monstrous tie with its golden mermaids and hula-hula dancers, he smiled happily and said, ‘I, too, would like to ask a question. Did you, Chief Inspector Beck, take any part in the investigation of the murder at the bank?’

‘No,’ said Martin Beck.

Bulldozer slapped his hands together in front of his face and nodded in a self-satisfied way.

Martin Beck stepped down and went to sit beside Rhea. He rumpled her blonde hair, which won him a cross look. ‘I thought there'd be more than that,’ she said.

‘I didn't,’ said Martin Beck.

Watching them, Bulldozer Olsson's eyes were almost insane with curiosity. Crasher, however, appeared quite unaware of the situation. With his limping walk he had moved over to the window behind Bulldozer. In the dust on the pane he wrote the word IDIOT.

Then he said, ‘As my next witness I call Police Constable Karl Kristiansson.’

Kristiansson was shown in. He was an uncertain man who had lately come to the conclusion that the police force constituted a class system of its own, in which superiors behaved as they did, not to exploit anyone, but quite simply to make the lives of their subordinates hell.

After a long wait, Crasher turned around and began to walk back and forth across the room. Bulldozer did the same, but at quite a different pace, so that they looked like two somewhat peculiar sentries on duty. Finally, with a colossal sigh, Crasher began the interrogation.

‘According to my information, you've been a policeman for fifteen years.’

‘Yes.’

‘Your superior officers consider you lazy, unintelligent, but honest and generally as suitable – or unsuitable – as your other colleagues on the Stockholm Police Force.’

‘Objection! Objection!’ cried Bulldozer. ‘Counsel is insulting the witness.’

‘Am I?’ said Crasher. ‘If I were to say that the counsel for the prosecution, like a zeppelin, is one of the country's, yes even the world's most interesting and eloquent gasbags, there'd be nothing insulting about that, would there? Now I'm not saying that about the counsel for the prosecution, and as far as the witness is concerned, I am merely pointing out that he is an experienced policeman, as capable and intelligent as the other policemen who adorn our city. I'm just trying to bring out his excellent qualifications and good judgement.’

Rhea Nielsen laughed out loud. Martin Beck placed his right hand over her left one. She laughed even more loudly. The judge pointed out that spectators were expected to keep quiet, then turned to look irritably at the two lawyers. Bulldozer gazed so intently at Rhea that he almost missed the beginning of the interrogation.

Crasher, on the other hand, showed no reaction. He asked, ‘Were you first into the bank?’

‘No.’

‘Did you seize this girl, Rebecka Olsson?’

‘No.’

‘Rebecka Lind, I mean,’ said Crasher, after a few sniggers.

‘No.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I grabbed the other one.’

‘Were there two girls present at the robbery?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

Kristiansson pondered a moment. ‘So she wouldn't fall.’

‘How old was this other girl?’

‘About four months.’

‘And so it was Kvastmo who seized Rebecka Lind?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think you might say that he employed violence or excessive force in doing so?’

‘I don't understand what counsel for the defence is trying to get at,’ said Bulldozer banteringly.

‘I mean that Kvastmo, whom we all saw earlier today …’

Crasher rummaged for a long time among his papers. ‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘Kvastmo weighs over fourteen stone. He is, among other things, a specialist in karate and wrestling. He is regarded by his superiors as a keen and zealous man. Inspector Norman Hanson, who submitted the evidence, says however that Kvastmo is all too often overzealous on duty and that many of those taken into custody complain that Kvastmo used violence against them. The evidence also says that Kenneth Kvastmo has received various reprimands and that his ability to express himself leaves much to be desired.’

Crasher put down the document and said, ‘Would the witness now answer the question as to whether Kvastmo used violence.’

‘Yes,’ said Kristiansson. ‘You could say that.’ Experience had taught him not to lie where duty was concerned, at least not too much or too often. Also, he disliked Kvastmo.

‘And you took custody of the child?’

‘Yes, I had to. She was carrying it in a sort of harness, and when Kvastmo was taking the knife away from her, she almost dropped the child.’

‘Did Rebecka offer any resistance?’

‘No. When I took the kid, she just said, “Careful you don't drop her!”’

‘That all seems clear enough,’ said Crasher. ‘I will return to the possible continued use of force later. Instead, I should now like to ask you about another matter –’

‘Yes,’ said Kristiansson.

‘Since no one from the special unit concerned with protecting the banks' money visited the scene of the crime,’ said Crasher and stopped short with an imperious look at the prosecutor.

‘We work day and night,’ said Bulldozer, ‘and this was considered an insignificant case, one of many.’

‘Which means that the initial interrogations were conducted by whatever police happened to be present,’ said Crasher. ‘Who spoke to the cashier?’

‘Me,’ said Kristiansson.

‘And what did she say?’

‘She said the girl came up to the counter with the kid in a harness and put her shoulder bag on the marble slab. The cashier saw the knife right away, so she started stuffing notes in the bag.’

‘Did Rebecka take out the knife?’

‘No, she had it in her belt. Around in the back.’

‘Then how could the cashier have seen it?’

‘I don't know. Yes, of course, she saw it afterwards when Rebecka turned around, and then she screamed, “A knife, a knife, she's got a knife!”’

‘Was it a sheath knife or a stiletto?’

‘No, it looked like a small kitchen knife. Like the kind you have at home.’

‘What did Rebecka say to the cashier?’

‘Nothing. At least, not right away. Then they said she laughed and said, “I didn't know it was so easy to borrow money.” And then she said, “I suppose I have to leave a receipt or something.”’

‘The money appears to have been scattered all over the floor,’ said Crasher. ‘How did that come about?’

‘Well, Kvastmo was standing there holding on to the girl while we waited for reinforcements. And then the cashier started counting the money to see if any was missing. And then Kenneth started shouting, “Stop, that's illegal.”’

‘And then?’

‘Then he yelled, “Karl, don't let anyone touch the loot.” I was carrying the kid so I only got hold of one of the handles and dumped it on the floor by accident. It was mostly small denominations, so they flew all over the place. Well, then along came another patrol car. We gave the child to them, and then took the prisoner to the station on Kungsholm. I drove and Kenneth sat in the back seat with the girl.’

‘Was there trouble in the back seat?’

‘Yes, a little. At first she cried and wanted to know what we'd done with her kid. Then she cried even louder and then Kvastmo was trying to put handcuffs on her.’

‘Did you say anything?’

‘Yes, I said I was sure she didn't need them. Kvastmo was twice as big as her and anyway she wasn't offering any resistance.’

‘Did you say anything else in the car?’

Kristiansson sat in silence for several minutes. Crasher waited silently.

Kristiansson gazed at his uniform-clad legs, looked guiltily around and said, ‘I said, “Don't hit her, Kenneth.”’

The rest was simple. Crasher rose and went over to Kristiansson. ‘Does Kenneth Kvastmo usually hit the people he arrests?’

‘It has happened.’

‘Did you see Kvastmo's shoulder flap and the almost torn-off button?’

‘Yes. He mentioned it. Said his wife didn't keep his things in order.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘The day before.’

‘The prosecution's witness,’ said Crasher gently.

Bulldozer caught Kristiansson's eye and held it. How many cases had been wrecked by stupid policemen? And how many had been saved?

‘No questions,’ said Bulldozer lightly. Then, as if in passing, ‘The prosecution withdraws the charge of assaulting a police officer.’

What happened next was that Braxén requested a recess, during which he lit his first cigar and then made the long trek to the men's room. He came back after a while and stood talking to Rhea Nielsen.

‘What sort of women do you run around with?’ Bulldozer Olsson asked Martin Beck. ‘First she laughs at me while the court's in session and now she stands there chatting with Crasher. Everyone knows Crasher's breath can knock an orang-utan unconscious at fifty yards.’

‘Good women,’ answered Martin Beck. ‘Or rather, one good woman.’

‘Oh, so you've married again? Me, too. It gives life a little more zip.’

Rhea came over to them. ‘Rhea,’ said Martin Beck, ‘this is the senior public prosecutor, Mr Olsson.’

‘So I gather.’

‘Everyone calls him Bulldozer,’ said Martin Beck. He turned to Olsson. ‘I think your case is going badly.’

‘Yes, one half has collapsed,’ said Bulldozer. ‘But the rest of it'll stick. Bet me a bottle of whisky?’

At that moment the case was called again and Bulldozer Olsson rushed into the courtroom.

The defence called its next witness, Hedy-Marie Wirén, a suntanned woman of about fifty.

Crasher sorted his papers, finally finding the right one, and said, ‘Rebecka did not do well in school. She left at sixteen with grades far too low to enable her to go on to high school. But did she do equally poorly in all subjects?’

‘She was good at my subject,’ said the witness. ‘One of the best pupils I've ever had. Rebecka had a lot of ideas of her own, especially when it came to vegetables and natural foods. She was aware that our present diet is objectionable, that most of the food sold in supermarkets is in one way or another poisoned. Rebecka realized at a very early age the importance of a healthy way of life. She grew her own vegetables and was always prepared to gather what nature had to offer. That was why she always carried a gardening knife in her belt. I have talked a great deal to Rebecka.’

‘About biodynamic turnips?’ Crasher yawned.

‘Among other things. But what I would like to say is that Rebecka is a sound child. Her academic education is perhaps limited, but that was a conscious decision on her part. She does not wish to burden her mind with a mass of inessentials. The only thing that really interests her is how the natural environment can be saved from total destruction. She is not interested in politics other than that she finds society as such incomprehensible and its leaders either criminal or insane.’

‘No more questions,’ said Crasher. At this stage he appeared bored, interested in nothing but going home.

‘I'm interested in that knife,’ said Bulldozer, suddenly jumping up from his place. He went over to the table in front of the judge and picked up the knife.

‘It's an ordinary gardening knife,’ said Hedy-Marie Wirén. ‘The same kind she's always had. As anyone can see, the handle is worn and the tool well used.’

‘Nonetheless, it can be said to be a dangerous weapon,’ said Bulldozer.

‘I don't agree at all. I wouldn't even attempt to kill a sparrow with that knife. Rebecka also has a totally negative attitude towards violence. She doesn't understand why it occurs and she herself would never dream of giving anyone so much as a slap.’

‘Nevertheless, I maintain that this is a dangerous weapon,’ said Bulldozer, waving the gardening knife about.

He did not, however, seem altogether convinced, and although he was smiling at the witness, he was forced to summon up all his benignity to accept her next comment with his famous good humour.

‘That means that you are either malevolent or else simply stupid,’ said the witness. ‘Do you smoke? Or drink?’

‘No more questions,’ said Bulldozer.

‘The interrogation is now over,’ said the judge. ‘Does anyone wish to ask any questions before the character appraisals and the closing arguments?’

Braxén, limping and smacking his lips, approached the bench.

‘Character appraisals are seldom more than routine essays, written to allow the writer to earn his fifty kronor, or whatever it is. So I would like – and I hope other responsible people will join me – to ask Rebecka Lind herself some questions.’

He turned to the accused for the first time. ‘What is the name of the King of Sweden?’

Even Bulldozer looked surprised.

‘I don't know,’ said Rebecka Lind. ‘Do I have to know that?’

‘No,’ said Crasher. ‘You don't. Do you know the name of the Prime Minister?’

‘No. Who is that?’

‘He is the head of the government and the leading politician of the country.’

‘Then he's a bad man,’ said Rebecka Lind. ‘I know that Sweden has built an atomic power station in Barsebåck in Skåne, and it's only twenty-five kilometres from the centre of Copenhagen. They say the government is to blame for the destruction of the environment.’

‘Rebecka,’ said Bulldozer Olsson in a friendly way, ‘how do you know about things like atomic power when you don't even know the name of the Prime Minister?’

‘My friends talk about that sort of thing, but they aren't interested in politics.’

Crasher let everyone think that over. Then he said, ‘Before you went to see this bank director, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, presumably for eternity, had you ever been inside a bank before?’

‘No, never.’

‘Why not?’

‘What for? Banks are for the rich. I and my friends never go into such places.’

‘And nevertheless you did go there,’ said Crasher. ‘Why?’

‘Because I needed money. One of my friends said that you could borrow money from a bank. Then when that horrible bank manager said that there were banks owned by the people, I thought maybe I could get some money there.’

‘So when you went to the PK Bank, you really thought you could borrow some money from them?’

‘Yes, but I was surprised it was so easy. I never even had time to say how much I needed.’

Bulldozer, who had now realized what line the defence was taking, hurried to intervene. ‘Rebecka,’ he said, a smile covering his face, ‘there are some things I simply don't understand. How is it possible, with all today's mass media, that a person can avoid learning the simplest facts about society?’

‘Your society isn't mine,’ said Rebecka Lind.

‘You're wrong, Rebecka,’ said Bulldozer. ‘We live together in this country and we have mutual responsibility for what is good or bad. But I would like to know how a person can avoid hearing what is said on the radio and television and entirely miss what is written in the newspapers.’

‘I have neither radio nor TV and the only things I read in the papers are the horoscopes.’

‘But you went to school for nine years, didn't you?’

‘They just tried to teach us a lot of nonsense. I didn't listen.’

‘But money,’ said Bulldozer, ‘money is something everyone's interested in.’

‘Not me.’

‘Where did you get the money to live on?’

‘Welfare. But I needed very little. Until now.’

The judge then read out the character appraisal which was not quite so lacking in interest as Braxén had predicted.

Rebecka Lind was born on 3 January 1956, and grew up in a lower middle class home. Her father was an office manager in a small building firm. Their home circumstances had been good, but Rebecka had very early on rebelled against her parents, and this antagonism had culminated when she was sixteen years old. She had been remarkably uninterested in school and had left after Year 11. Her teachers considered her fund of knowledge to be frighteningly inadequate. Although she did not lack intelligence, her attitudes were strange and divorced from reality. She had not been able to find work and showed no interest in doing so. When she was sixteen years old, life at home had become difficult and she moved out. Questioned by the investigator, the father said that this had been best for them all, as the parents had other children who were less of a disappointment to them.

At first she lived in a country cottage, which she had on more or less permanent loan from an acquaintance and which she kept after she managed to acquire a bedsit in a slum to the south of Stockholm. At the beginning of 1973 she met an American deserter named Jim Cosgrave and moved in with him. Rebecka soon became pregnant, which was her own wish, and in January 1974 she gave birth to a daughter, Camilla. Cosgrave had wanted to work but could find no job because he was long-haired and a foreigner. The only work he had during his years in Sweden was as a dishwasher for two weeks one summer on one of the ferries to Finland. Moreover, he longed to return to the United States. He had job experience and considered that he would have little difficulty in arranging things for himself and his family once he got home.

At the beginning of February, Cosgrave made contact with the United States Embassy and declared himself prepared to return voluntarily, provided he was given certain guarantees. They were anxious to get him home and promised him that his punishment would be mere formality.

Cosgrave flew back to the States on 12 February. Rebecka had reckoned on being able to follow in March, when her boyfriend's parents had promised to help with money, but the months had gone by and no word had come from Cosgrave. She went to the welfare office and was told that because Cosgrave was a foreign citizen, they could do nothing. That was when Rebecka decided to go to the United States on her own, to find out what had happened. To get money, she turned to a bank, with known results.

The character appraisal was mainly positive. It pointed out that Rebecka had been an excellent mother and that she had never sunk to vice or shown criminal tendencies. She was incorruptibly truthful, but had an unrealistic attitude towards the world and often showed signs of exaggerated gullibility. Cosgrave was also appraised briefly. According to his acquaintances, he was a purposeful young man who had not attempted to evade his responsibilities and who had implicitly believed in a future for himself and his family in the United States.

Bulldozer Olsson now rose to give his summation.

Rhea observed him through half-closed eyes. Apart from his hopeless clothes, he was a man who radiated enormous self-confidence and an intense interest in what he was doing. He had seen through Crasher's line of defence, but he was not going to let his actions be influenced by it. Instead, he expressed himself simply and briefly and stuck to his previous line of argument. He puffed out his chest – in fact mostly stomach – looked down at his unpolished brown shoes and began in a silky voice.

‘I wish to limit my summation to a repetition of proven facts. Rebecka Lind went into the PK Bank, armed with a knife and equipped with a capacious shoulder bag in which she intended to put her booty. Long experience with bank robberies of the simpler variety – in fact there have been hundreds during this last year – convinces me that Rebecka was behaving according to a pattern although her lack of experience caused her to be immediately apprehended. I personally feel sorry for the accused, who while so young has allowed herself to be beguiled into committing such a serious crime. All the same, my regard for the law obliges me to demand unconditional imprisonment. The evidence that has been produced in this court is incontestable. No amount of argument can undo it.’

Bulldozer fingered his tie, then concluded: ‘I therefore submit my case for the approval of the court.’

‘Is counsel for the defence prepared for his summation?’ asked the judge.

Crasher was apparently not in the least prepared. He shuffled his papers together unsorted, regarded his unlit cigar for a moment, then put it into his pocket. He looked round the courtroom, staring curiously at each person in turn, as if he had never seen any of them before. Then he rose and limped back and forth in front of the judge.

Finally he said, ‘As I have already pointed out, this young lady who has been placed on the accused's bench, or perhaps I should say chair, is innocent, and a speech in her defence is largely unnecessary. Nevertheless, I shall say a few words.’

Everyone wondered nervously what Crasher might mean by ‘a few words’.

Crasher unbuttoned his jacket, belched with relief, thrust out his stomach and said, ‘As counsel for the prosecution has pointed out, a great many bank robberies occur in this country. The wide publicity they are given, as well as the often spectacular attempts of the police to stop them, have not only made the public prosecutor a famous man but have also caused a general hysteria.’

Crasher paused and stood for a moment with his eyes on the floor, presumably trying to concentrate, then resumed.

‘Rebecka Lind has not had much help or joy from society. Neither school, nor her own parents, nor the older generation in general have on the whole offered her support or encouragement. That she has not bothered to involve herself in the present system of government cannot be blamed on her. When, in contrast to many other young people, she tries to get work, she is told that there is none. I am tempted here to go into the reasons why there is no work for the younger generation, but I shall abstain.

‘At any rate, when she finally finds herself in a difficult situation, she turns to a bank. She has not the slightest idea of how a bank works, and is led to the mistaken conclusion that the PK Bank is less capitalistic, or that it is actually owned by the people.

‘When the bank cashier catches sight of Rebecka, she at once thinks the girl has come to rob the bank, partly because she cannot understand what such a person would be doing in a bank, and partly because she is inflamed by the innumerable directives that have been heaped on bank employees recently. She at once sounds the alarm and begins to put money into the bag the girl has placed on the counter. What happens then? Well, instead of one of the public prosecutor's famous detectives, who have no time to bother with such futile little cases, along come two uniformed policemen in a patrol car. While one of them, according to his own words, leaps on the girl like a panther, the other manages to scatter the money all over the floor. Beyond this contribution, he also questions the cashier. From this interrogation it appears that Rebecka did not threaten the bank staff at all and that she did not demand money. The whole matter can then be called a misunderstanding. The girl behaved naïvely, but, as you know, that is no crime.’

Crasher limped over to his table, studied his papers, and with his back to the judge and jury said, ‘I ask that Rebecka Lind be released and that the charge against her be declared void. No other plea is possible, because anyone with any sense must see that she is not guilty and that there can be no question of any other verdict.’

The court's deliberations were quite brief. The result was announced in less than half an hour.

Rebecka Lind was declared free and immediately released. On the other hand, the charges were not declared void, which meant that the prosecution could appeal the verdict. Five of the jury had voted for release and two against. The judge had recommended conviction.

As they left the courtroom, Bulldozer Olsson came up to Martin Beck and Rhea and said, ‘You see? If you'd been a bit quicker, you'd have won that bottle of whisky.’

‘Are you going to appeal?’

‘No. Do you think I've nothing better to do than sit in the High Court for a whole day arguing the toss with Crasher? In a case like this?’ He rushed away.

Crasher also came up to them, limping worse than ever. ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said. ‘Not many people would have done that.’

‘I thought I understood your train of thought,’ said Martin Beck.

‘That's what's wrong,’ said Braxén. ‘Lots of people understand one's train of thought, but hardly anyone will come and support it.’

Crasher looked thoughtfully at Rhea as he snipped off the top of his cigar.

‘I had an interesting and profitable conversation with Miss … Mrs … this lady during the recess.’

‘Nielsen's her name,’ said Martin Beck. ‘Rhea Nielsen.’

‘Thank you,’ said Crasher with a certain warmth. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I don't lose a lot of cases just because of this name business. Anyhow, Mrs Nilsson should have gone in for law. She analysed the whole case in ten minutes and summarized it in a way that would have taken the public prosecutor several months, if he were bright enough to manage it at all.’

‘Mmm,’ said Martin Beck. ‘If Bulldozer wanted to appeal, he would be unlikely to lose in a higher court.’

‘Well,’ said Crasher, ‘you have to reckon with your opponent's psyche. If Bulldozer loses in the first instance, he doesn't appeal.’

‘Why not?’ said Rhea.

‘He would lose his image as a man who is so busy that he really has no time for anything. And if all prosecutors were as successful as Bulldozer usually is, then half the population of the country would be in prison.’

Rhea grimaced.

‘Thanks again,’ said Crasher and limped away.

Martin Beck watched him go with some thoughtfulness, then turned to Rhea. ‘Where do you want to go?’

‘Home.’

‘Your place or mine?’

‘Yours. It's beginning to be a long time ago.’

To be precise, long ago was four days.

4

Martin Beck lived in Köpmangatan in the Old City, as close to the centre of Stockholm as one could get. The building was well maintained – it even had a lift – and all but a few incorrigible snobs with villas and grand gardens and swimming pools in Saltjöbaden or Djursholm would have called it an ideal apartment. He had been in luck when he found the place, and the most extraordinary thing was that he didn't get it through cheating or bribery and corruption – in other words, the way police generally acquired privileges. This stroke of luck had in turn given him the strength to break up an unhappy marriage of eighteen years.

Then his luck ran out again. He was shot in the chest by a madman on a roof and a year later, when he was finally out of the hospital, he had truly been out in the cold, bored with work and horrified at the thought of spending the rest of his working life in a swivel chair in a carpeted office with originals by established painters on the walls.

But now that risk had been minimized. The upper echelons of the police force appeared convinced that even if he wasn't actually crazy, he was certainly impossible to work with. So Martin Beck had become head of the National Murder Squad and would remain so until that antediluvian but singularly efficient organization was abolished.

Ironically, that very efficiency had engendered some criticism of the Squad. Some said that the Squad's extraordinary success rate was due to the fact that it had too good a staff for its relatively few cases.

In addition, there were also people in high places who disliked Martin Beck personally. One of these had even let it be known that, by various unjust means, Martin Beck had persuaded Lennart Kollberg, who had been one of the best policemen in the country, to resign from the force to become a part-time revolver sorter at the Army Museum, compelling his poor wife to take on the burden of being the family breadwinner.

Martin Beck seldom became really angry, but when he heard this gibe, he came close to going up to the person in question and slugging him on the jaw. The fact was that everyone had gained from Kollberg's resignation. Kollberg himself not only escaped from a distasteful job but also managed to see his family more often, and his wife and children very much preferred seeing more of him. Another beneficiary was Benny Skacke, who took Kollberg's place and thus could hope to collect more credits towards his great purpose in life, that of becoming chief of police. And last but by no means least to benefit were certain members of the National Police Administration who, even if they were forced to admit that Kollberg was a good policeman, never could get over the fact that he was ‘troublesome’ and ‘caused complications’. When you came down to it, there was only one person who missed Kollberg, and that was Martin Beck.

When he had come out of hospital more than two years earlier, he also had problems of a more personal nature. He had felt lonely and isolated in a way he had never felt before. The case he had been given as occupational therapy had been unique in that it seemed to come straight from the world of detective stories. It concerned a locked room, and the investigation had been mystifying and the solution unsatisfactory. He had often had the feeling that it was he himself who was seated in the locked room, instead of a rather uninteresting corpse.

He had found the murderer, although Bulldozer Olsson at the subsequent trial had chosen to have the accused charged with murder in connection with a bank robbery, of which the man in question was entirely innocent – the case that Braxén had referred to earlier in the day. Martin Beck had found things a bit difficult with Bulldozer since then, as the whole affair had been so deliberately manipulated, but their relations weren't all that bad. Martin Beck was not resentful and he liked talking to Bulldozer, even if it did amuse him to put a spoke in the public prosecutor's wheel as he had done earlier that day.

But luck had come his way again – in the shape of Rhea Nielsen. When he met her, it took him only ten minutes to realize he was extremely interested, and she had made little effort to hide her interest in him. Perhaps most meaningful to him, at least at first, was that he had made contact with not only a human being who had at once understood what he meant, but also one whose own intentions and unspoken questions had been quite clear, without misunderstandings or complications.

So it had begun. They had met often, but only at her place. She owned an apartment building in Tulegatan and ran it, more and more dejectedly during the last year, as a kind of collective.

Several weeks had gone by before she had come to the Köpmangatan apartment. She had cooked dinner that evening, because good food was one of her interests. The evening had also revealed that she had certain other interests, and that their interests on that point were more or less mutual.

It had been a good evening. For Martin Beck, perhaps the most successful ever.

They had had breakfast together in the morning, Martin Beck preparing it as he watched her dress. He had seen her naked several times before, but he had a strong feeling that it would be many years before he had looked his fill. Rhea Nielsen was strong and well built. It could be said that she was rather stocky, but also that she had an unusually functional and harmonious body – just as it could be said that her features were as irregular as they were strong and individual. What he liked most of all were five widely disparate things: her uncompromising blue eyes, her flat round breasts, her large light-brown nipples, the fair patch of hair at her loins, and her feet.

Rhea had laughed hoarsely. ‘Go on looking,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it's damned good to be looked at.’ She pulled on her panties.

Soon afterwards they were breakfasting on tea and toast and marmalade. She looked thoughtful, and Martin Beck knew why. He was troubled himself.

A few minutes later, she left, saying, ‘Thanks for one hell of a nice night.’

‘Thanks yourself.’

‘I'll call you,’ said Rhea. ‘If you think too long's gone by, then call me.’ She looked thoughtful and troubled again, then thrust her feet into her red clogs and said abruptly, ‘So long then. And thanks again.’

Martin Beck was free that day. After Rhea had gone, he took a shower, put on his bathrobe and lay down on the bed. He still felt troubled. He got up and looked at himself in the mirror. It had to be admitted that he did not look forty-nine, but it also had to be admitted that he was. As far as he could see, his features hadn't altered markedly for a number of years. He was trim and tall, a man with slightly yellow skin and a broad jaw. His hair showed no signs of going grey. No receding at the temples, either.

Or was that all an illusion? Just because he wanted it to be that way?

He went back to the bed, lay down on his back and clasped his hands behind his head.

He had had the best hours of his life. At the same time, he had created a problem that appeared insoluble. It was damned good sleeping with Rhea. But what was she really like? He was not sure he wanted to put it into words, but maybe he should. What was it someone had said once in the house on Tulegatan? Half girl and half ruffian?

Stupid, but it fitted somehow.

What had it been like last night?

The best in his life. Sexually. But he hadn't had a great deal of experience in that field.

What was she like? He would have to answer. Before he got to the central question.

She had thought it was fun. She had laughed sometimes. And sometimes he had thought she was crying.

So far so good, but then his thoughts took a different turn.

It won't work.

There's too much against it.

I'm thirteen years older. We're both divorced.

We have children, and even if mine are grown up, Rolf nineteen and Ingrid soon twenty-three, hers are still pretty young.

When I'm sixty and ready to retire she'll be only forty-seven.

It won't work.

Martin Beck did not call her. The days went by, and over a week had passed since that night, when his own telephone shrilled at half-past seven in the morning.

‘Hi,’ said Rhea.

‘Hi. Thanks for last week.’

‘Same to you. Are you busy?’

‘Not at all.’

‘God, the police must be busy,’ said Rhea. ‘When do you work, by the way?’

‘My department is having a quiet time at the present. But go into town and you'll find a different story.’

‘Thanks, I know what the streets are like.’

She paused briefly, coughed hoarsely, then said, ‘Is it talking time?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Okay. I'll put in an appearance whenever you say. It'd be best at your place.’

‘Maybe we could go out and eat afterwards,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Yes,’ she said hesitantly, ‘we could. Can you eat out in clogs these days?’

‘Sure.’

‘I'll be there at seven then.’

It was an important conversation for them both, despite the brevity. Their thoughts seemed always to run along roughly the same tracks, and there was no reason to suppose they had not done so this time. More than likely they had come to similar conclusions in a matter that was of undeniable significance.

Rhea came at exactly seven o'clock. She kicked off her red clogs and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

‘Why didn't you call me?’ she asked.

Martin Beck did not answer.

‘Because you'd finished thinking,’ she said. ‘And weren't pleased with the result?’

‘Roughly.’

‘Roughly?’

‘Exactly,’ he said.

‘So we can't move in together or marry or have any more children or any other stupid thing. Then everything would become too complicated and muddled and a good relationship would have considerable chances of going to hell. Chewed to pieces and worn through.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You're probably right. However much I'd like to deny it.’

She gazed straight at him with her strange, peering, clear blue eyes and said, ‘Do you want to deny it very much?’

‘Yes, but I won't.’

For a moment she seemed to lose control. She walked over to the window, struck aside the curtain and said something in such a muffled voice that he could not catch the words. A few seconds later she said, still without turning her head, ‘I said I love you. I love you now, and I'll probably go on loving you for quite a long time.’

Martin Beck felt bewildered. Then he went over and put his arms around her. Soon afterwards she raised her face from his chest and said, ‘What I mean is, I'm staking a claim and will go on doing so as long as both of us do. Does that make sense?’

‘Yes,’ said Martin Beck. ‘Shall we go and eat now?’

Though they seldom went out to eat, they had gone to an expensive restaurant where the headwaiter had looked at Rhea's clogs with distaste. Afterwards they had walked home and lain in the same bed, which neither of them had planned on.

Since then almost two years had gone by and Rhea Nielsen had been to Köpmangatan innumerable times. Naturally she had to some extent left her mark on the apartment, especially in the kitchen, which was wholly unrecognizable. She had also stuck a poster of Mao Tse-Tung above the bed. Martin Beck never expressed opinions on political matters and said nothing this time, either. But Rhea had said, ‘If anyone wanted to do an “At Home With …” article, you'd probably have to take it down. If you were too cowardly to leave it up.’

Martin Beck had not answered, but the thought of the tremendous dismay the poster would cause in certain circles decided him at once to leave it there.

When they went into Martin Beck's apartment on the fifth of June, 1974, Rhea began at once to take off her sandals.

‘These damned straps rub,’ she said. ‘But they'll be all right in a week or two.’ She flung the sandals aside. ‘What a relief,’ she said. ‘You did a good job today. How many policemen would have agreed to testify and answer those questions?’

Martin Beck continued to say nothing.

‘Not one,’ said Rhea. ‘And what you said turned the whole case. I could tell right away.’ She studied her feet and said, ‘Pretty sandals, but they rub like hell. It's nice to get them off.’

‘Take everything else off if you like it,’ said Martin Beck. He had known this woman long enough to know exactly how the situation might develop. Either she would immediately fling off all her clothes, or she would start talking about something completely different.

Rhea glanced at him. Sometimes her eyes looked luminous, he thought. She opened her mouth to say something and at once closed it again. Instead she flung off her shirt and jeans, and before Martin Beck had time to unbutton his jacket, her clothes were lying on the floor and she herself lay naked on the bed.

‘God, how slowly you undress,’ she said, with a snort. Her mood had suddenly changed. This showed too in that she lay flat on her back almost throughout, her legs wide apart and straight up, the way she thought was the most fun, which was not to say that she always or even usually thought it was the best way.

They came simultaneously and that had to be that for the day.

Rhea rummaged in the wardrobe and extracted a long lilac woollen jumper, which was clearly her favourite piece of clothing and which she had found as difficult to leave behind at Tulegatan as her personal integrity. Before she had even put it on, she began to talk about food.

‘A hot sandwich or maybe three, or five, how does that sound? I've bought all sorts of goodies, ham and pâté, the best Jarlsberg cheese you've ever tasted.’

‘I believe you,’ said Martin Beck. He was standing over by the window, listening to the wolf howls of police cars, which could be heard very clearly, although in fact he lived in a very secluded spot.

‘It'll be ready in five minutes,’ said Rhea.

It was the same every time they slept together. She at once became extremely hungry. Sometimes it was so urgent that she rushed stark-naked out to the kitchen to start cooking. Her preference for hot food didn't make things easier.

Martin Beck had no such problems – on the contrary. True, his stomach trouble seemed to have left him as soon as he left his wife. Whether the trouble had been due to her erratic cooking or whether it had had psychosomatic origins was not easy to say. But he could still easily satisfy his caloric needs – especially when on duty or when Rhea was not within reach – with a couple of cheese sandwiches and a glass or two of milk.

But Rhea's hot open sandwiches were very difficult to resist. Martin Beck ate three of them and drank two bottles of Hof. Rhea devoured seven, drank half a bottle of red wine and was still hungry enough fifteen minutes later to go foraging in the refrigerator for more.

‘Are you staying over?’ Martin Beck asked.

‘Yes, please,’ she said. ‘It seems to be that sort of day.’

‘What sort of day?’

‘The sort of day that suits us, of course.’

‘Oh, that sort of day.’

‘We could celebrate Swedish Flag Day, for instance. And the King's name day. We'll have to think up something original when we wake up.’

‘Oh, I expect that can be arranged.’

Rhea curled up in the armchair. Most people would probably have thought she looked comical in her strange position and that mysterious long jumper. But Martin Beck did not think so. After a while it looked as if she had fallen asleep, but at that moment she said, ‘Now I remember what it was I was going to say just as you raped me.’

‘Yes? What was it?’

‘That girl, Rebecka Lind, what'll happen to her?’

‘Nothing. They released her.’

‘Sometimes you really do say stupid things. I know they released her. The question is what might happen to her psychologically. Can she look after herself?’

‘Oh, I think so. She isn't as apathetic and passive as a lot of her contemporaries. And as far as the trial –’

‘Yes, the trial. What did she learn from it? Presumably that it's possible to be arrested and maybe sent to prison without ever having done anything.’ Rhea frowned. ‘I'm worried about that girl. It's difficult to manage on your own in a society you don't understand at all, when the system is alien to you.’

‘From what I could gather that American boy is okay and really does want to take care of her.’

‘Maybe he just can't,’ said Rhea, shaking her head.

Martin Beck looked silently at her for a while, then said, ‘I'd like to disagree with you, but the fact is I was worried myself when I saw that girl. Another fact is that unfortunately we can't do much to help her. Of course we could help her privately, with money, but I don't think she'd accept that kind of help and anyway I don't have any money to give away.’

Rhea scratched the back of her neck for a while. ‘You're right,’ she said. ‘I think she's the type who wouldn't accept charity. She'll never even go willingly to the welfare office. Perhaps she'll try to get herself a job, but she'll never find one.’ She yawned. ‘I haven't the energy to think any more,’ she said. ‘But one thing seems clear. Rebecka Lind will never become a noted citizen in the land.’

She was wrong there, and soon afterwards fell asleep.

Martin Beck went out to the kitchen, did the dishes and put things away. He was still there when Rhea woke up and he heard her switch on the TV. She had decided not to have a set of her own, presumably for the sake of the children, but she occasionally liked to watch his. He heard her call something, put down what he was doing and went into the room.

‘There's a special news bulletin,’ she said.

He had missed the actual beginning, but there was no doubt about the subject matter. The newscaster's voice sounded dignified and serious.

‘… the assassination occurred before the arrival at the palace. An explosive charge of very great force was detonated beneath the street just as the motorcade was passing. The President and the others in the bulletproof car were killed immediately and their bodies badly mutilated. The car itself was thrown over a nearby building. A number of other people were killed by the explosion, among them several security men and civilians in the area. The chief of the city police announced that sixteen people had definitely been killed, but the final number may be considerably higher. He also emphasized that security measures for the state visit had been the most comprehensive ever undertaken in the history of the country. In a broadcast from France immediately after the assassination, it was said that an international terrorist group called ULAG had accepted responsibility for the act.’

The newsreader lifted his telephone receiver and listened for a few seconds, then said, ‘We now have a film transmitted by satellite and made by an American television company covering this state visit that has come to such a tragic end.’

The broadcast was of poor quality, but nevertheless so revolting that it should never have been shown.

At first there were a few pictures of the arrival of the President's plane and the noble gentleman himself, rather foolishly waving at the reception committee. Then he unenthusiastically inspected the honour guard and greeted his hosts with a smile plastered on his face. There followed a few pictures of the motorcade. The security measures seemed singularly reassuring.

Then came the climax of the broadcast. The television company appeared to have had a cameraman very strategically, or perhaps fortunately, placed. If the man had been fifty yards nearer, he would probably no longer be alive. If on the other hand he had been fifty yards further away, he would probably not have had any pictures to show. Everything happened very quickly; first an enormous pillar of smoke, cars, animals and people all thrown high into the air, bodies torn apart, swallowed up in a cloud of smoke that looked almost like the mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb. Then the cameraman panned around the surroundings, which were very beautiful; a fountain playing, a wide palm-lined street. And then came the terrible paroxysms beside a heap of metal that might once have been a car, and something which a short time before had probably been a living human being.

Throughout the film the reporter kept up a ceaseless commentary in that eager, exalted tone that only American news reporters seem to achieve. It was as if he had – with enormous pleasure – just witnessed the end of the world.

‘Oh, God,’ said Rhea, burying her face in the chair cushion. ‘What a damned awful world we live in.’

But for Martin Beck it was going to be slightly more difficult.

The Swedish newsreader reappeared and said, ‘We have just learned that the Swedish police had a special observer at the site of the assassination, Inspector Gunvald Larsson, from the Violent Crimes Squad in Stockholm.’

The screen was filled with a still picture of Gunvald Larsson looking mentally deficient, his name, as usual, misspelled.

‘Unfortunately there is no news at the moment of what has happened to Inspector Larsson. The next newscast will be the regularly scheduled news on the radio.’

‘Dammit,’ said Martin Beck. ‘Dammit to hell.’

‘What's the matter?’ asked Rhea.

‘Gunvald. He's always right there when the shit hits the fan.’

‘I thought you didn't like him.’

‘But I do. Even if I don't say so very often.’

‘You should say what you think,’ said Rhea. ‘Come on, let's go to bed.’

Twenty minutes later he had fallen asleep with his cheek against her shoulder.

Her shoulder soon grew numb, and then her arm. She didn't move, but just lay awake in the dark, liking him.

5

The last commuter train of the night from Stockholm's Central Station stopped at Rotebro and dropped a single passenger.

The man, wearing a dark blue denim suit and black trainers, walked briskly along the platform and down the steps, but as he left the bright lights of the station behind him, he slowed down. He continued unhurriedly through the older villa section of the suburb, past the fences, low walls and well-cut hedges that surrounded the gardens. The air was chilly, but still and full of scents.

It was the darkest part of the night, but it was only two weeks to the summer solstice and the June sky arched deep blue above his head.

The houses on either side of the road lay dark and silent, the only sound that of the man's rubber soles against the pavement.

During the train journey, he had been uneasy and nervous, but now he was feeling calm and relaxed, his thoughts wandering their own ways. A poem by Elmer Diktonius came to his mind, its cadence matching his steps.

Walk carefully along the road

But never count your steps,

For fear will kill them.

From time to time he had tried to compose poetry himself, with indifferent results, but he liked reading poetry and had learned by heart many poems written by his favourite poets.

As he walked he kept his hand firmly clenched around the solid iron bar, over a foot long, that he was carrying thrust up the right sleeve of his denim jacket.

When the man had crossed Holmbodavägen and was approaching a street of terraced houses, his movements grew more cautious and his stance more alert. Up to now he had met no one and he was hoping his luck would hold for the short stretch remaining before he reached his goal. He felt more exposed here, the gardens were behind the houses, and the vegetation in the narrow strip between the fronts of houses and the pavement consisted of flower beds, bushes and hedges that were too low to offer any protection.

The houses along one side of the road were painted yellow, those opposite red. This appeared to be the only difference; their exteriors were otherwise identical, two-storey houses of wood, with mansard roofs. Between the houses were garages or tool-sheds, squeezed in as if to link the houses together as well as to separate them.

The man was on his way to the furthest row of houses, beyond which the buildings ceased and fields and meadows took over. He slipped swiftly and silently up to the garage next to one of the houses on the corner, as his eyes swept the terraces and the road. There was no one to be seen.

The garage had no doors, and there was no car inside, only a woman's bicycle leaning against the wall just inside the entrance, and opposite that a dustbin. Furthest in, by the far wall, were two large rectangular wooden crates standing on end. He had been worried that someone might have moved them away. The hiding place had been decided on beforehand and he would have found it difficult to find another one as good.

The space between the packing cases and the wall was narrow,but wide enough for him to squeeze into. He wriggled in behind the crates, which were solidly constructed of rough pine and about the same size as coffins. When he had assured himself that he was completely hidden he drew the iron bar out of his sleeve. He lay face down on the damp, cold cement floor, his face buried in the crook of his arm. In his right hand was the iron bar, still warm from the heat of his body. Now he had only to wait as the summer night outside gradually grew lighter.

He was awakened by the twittering of birds. Getting to his knees, he looked at his watch. Almost half-past four. The sun was just rising; he had four more hours to wait.

Just before six, sounds began to come from inside the house. They were faint and indefinite and the man behind the wooden crate felt like pressing his ear to the wall, but dared not as he would then be visible from the road. Through a narrow slit between the two crates he could see a bit of the road and the house opposite. A car passed, and shortly afterwards he heard an engine start up nearby and then saw another car go by.

At half-past six he heard steps approaching on the other side of the wall; it sounded like someone in clogs. The thumping faded away and came back several times, and finally he heard a deep female voice saying quite clearly, ‘Bye, then. I'm going. Will you call me this evening?’

He could not make out the reply, but heard the front door open and close. He stood quite still with his eye to the crack.

The woman in clogs came into the garage. He could not see her, but heard a small click as she unlocked the bicycle and then the crunch of her steps on the gravel path leading out to the road. The only thing he saw as she cycled past was that her trousers were white and her hair long and dark.

He scanned the house across the road. The blinds were down in the only window that was within his field of vision. He clamped the iron bar under his jacket with his left arm and moved three steps away from the protection of the crates, put one ear against the wall and listened, his eye on the road outside. At first he could hear nothing, but he soon caught the sound of steps vanishing up some stairs.

The road was empty. Far away he heard a dog bark and the distant grumble of a diesel engine, but in the immediate vicinity everything was quiet and still. He pulled on his gloves, which had been rolled up inside his jacket pockets, slipped quickly along the garage wall, stepped around the corner and pressed down the handle of the front porch door.

As he had expected, it was unlocked.

He held the door ajar, heard footsteps up on the next floor, established with a swift glance that the road was still empty, and slipped inside.

The tiles of the porch were a step lower than the parquet flooring of the hall, and he stood there looking to the right, through the hall and into the large living room. He was already familiar with the layout of the house. There were three doors to the right, the middle one open – that was the kitchen. The bathroom lay behind the door to the left in the hall. Then the stairs to the upper floor. Beyond them was the part of the living room hidden from him facing the garden at the back of the house.

To his left hung a row of outdoor clothes, and on the tile floor beneath them were rubber boots and some sandals and shoes. Straight ahead of him, immediately opposite the door from the porch, was yet another door. He opened it, went in and shut it soundlessly behind him.

He found himself in a kind of combined storage and utility room. The boiler for the central heating was there. Washing machine, dryer and pump stood along one wall beyond the heating unit. Along the other wall were two large cupboards and a workbench. He glanced into the cupboards. In one hung a ski suit, a sheepskin coat and other clothing seldom used, or put away for the summer. The other held a few rolls of wallpaper and a large tin of white paint.

The sounds from above had ceased. The man held the iron bar in his right hand as he opened the door a crack and listened.

Suddenly steps could be heard coming down the stairs and he hurried to close the door, but remained standing there with his ear to the wooden door-panel. The steps could not be heard so clearly down here, probably because the person out there was either barefooted or in his stocking feet.

There was a clatter in the kitchen, as if a saucepan had fallen to the floor.

Silence.

Then steps approached and the man tightened his grip on the iron bar. But he relaxed it again when he heard the bathroom door open and then the rush of water in the toilet. He opened the door a crack again and peered out. Over the sound of rushing water, he heard the peculiar sounds that arise when someone tries to sing while brushing his teeth. This was followed by gargling, throat clearing and spitting. Then the song started up again, clearer now and with shrill power. He recognized the song despite the fact that the rendering of it was horribly out of tune and that he had not heard it sung for at least twenty-five years. ‘The Girl in Marseille’ he thought it was called.

‘… but then one dark night, in the Mediterranean moonlight, I lay dead in an alley, down by the old harbour …’ came from the bathroom as someone turned on the shower.

He stepped out and on tiptoe crept up to the half-open bathroom door. The noise of the shower did not drown the song, which was now mixed with snorts and puffings and blowings.

The man stood with the iron bar in his hand and looked into the bathroom. He looked at the reddening shiny back with two rolls of fat hanging between the round cushions over the shoulder blades and the place where the waist should have been. He looked at the sagging buttocks, trembling over dimpled thighs, and the bulging veins at the back of the knees and knobbly calves. He looked at the fat neck and the skull, which shone pink between thin strands of black hair. And as he looked and took the few steps towards the man standing in the bath, he was filled with loathing and disgust. He raised his weapon, and with the force of all his hatred, split the man's skull with one blow.

The fat man's feet slid backwards on the slippery enamel and he fell face down, his head thumping against the edge of the bath before his body came to rest with a smacking sound under the shower.

The killer leaned over to turn off the taps and saw how blood and brain tissue had mixed with the water and were swirling down the drain, which was half blocked by the dead man's big toe. Revolted, he grabbed a towel and wiped the weapon, threw the towel over the corpse's head and thrust the iron bar up the wet sleeve of his jacket. Then he closed the bathroom door and went into the living room, opening the glass doors into the garden, where the lawn bordered on the broad fields surrounding the area.

He had to walk a long stretch across open fields to reach the edge of the woods on the other side. A beaten path ran diagonally across the field and he began to follow it. Further on, the ground was cultivated and green with sprouting seed. He did not turn around, but out of the corner of his left eye he sensed the long rows of houses with their angled roofs and shining windows in the pointed gables. Every window was an eye staring coldly at him.

As he approached the first group of trees on a small rocky slope surrounded by thick bushes, he turned off the path. Before he pushed his way through the prickly blackthorn bushes to vanish among the trees, he let the iron bar slide out of his sleeve and vanish into the tangled undergrowth.

* * *

Martin Beck was sitting alone at home, leafing through an issue of Longitude as he listened to one of Rhea's records. Rhea and he did not really have the same tastes in music, but they both liked Nannie Porres and often played her records.

It was a quarter to eight in the evening and he had considered going to bed early. Rhea was at a meeting of the parent-teacher association of her children's school, and anyway they had already celebrated Swedish Flag Day in a satisfactory manner that morning.

The telephone rang in the middle of ‘I Thought About You’, and as he knew it could hardly be Rhea, he was in no hurry to answer it. It turned out to be Chief Inspector Pärsson in Märsta district, known to some people as Märsta-Pärsta. Martin Beck considered the nickname infantile and always thought of him as Pärsson in Märsta.

‘I called the duty officer first,’ Pärsson said, ‘and he thought it'd be okay to call you at home. We've got a case out here in Rotebro which is clearly murder. The man's had his skull bashed in with a powerful blow to the back of his head.’

‘Where and when was he found?’

‘In a terraced house on Tennisvägen. The woman who lives in the house and appears to be his mistress came home at about five and found him dead in the bath. He was alive when she left the house at half-past six in the morning, she says.’

‘How long have you been there?’

‘She called us at five thirty-five,’ said Pärsson. ‘We got here almost exactly two hours ago.’

He paused for a moment and then went on. ‘I imagine it's a case we could manage on our own, but I thought I'd better inform you as soon as possible. It's difficult at this stage to decide just how complicated the investigation will be. The weapon hasn't been found.’

‘So you want us to come in on it?’ said Martin Beck.

‘If I hadn't known that you weren't actually working on a case at the moment, I wouldn't have bothered you at this stage. But I wanted your advice, and I'm told you usually like to come on a case when it's reasonably fresh.’

Pärsson sounded slightly uncertain. He admired all high-ranking officers, and Martin Beck could be considered one of those, but most of all he respected his professional skill.

‘Of course,’ said Martin Beck. ‘You're quite right. I'm glad you called me up so soon.’

It was true. Often the police in country areas waited too long before calling in the Murder Squad, either because they overestimated their own resources and skills or misjudged the scope of the investigation, or because they themselves wanted to rap the experts in Stockholm over the knuckles and have the honour of solving a murder. When they finally had to admit their limitations and Martin Beck and his men went to the place, they were often faced with a situation in which all the clues had been destroyed, all reports were illegible, witnesses had lost their memories, and the culprit had already established residence in Tahiti or had died of old age.

‘When can you come?’ said Pärsson, noticeably relieved.

‘I'll get started right away. I'll just call Koll—… Skacke, and see if he can drive me out.’

Martin Beck thought of calling Kollberg in situations like this out of habit. He supposed it was because his subconscious would not accept the fact that they were no longer working together. During the first few months after Kollberg resigned, he had actually called him several times in emergencies.

Benny Skacke was at home and as usual sounded eager and enthusiastic. He lived in southern Stockholm with his wife Monica and their one-year-old daughter. He promised to be at Köpmangatan within seven minutes, and Martin Beck went down to the street to wait for him. Exactly seven minutes later Skacke arrived in his black Saab.

On the way out to Rotebro he said, ‘You heard about Gunvald, didn't you? That he got hit in the stomach by the President's head?’

Martin Beck had heard and said, ‘He was lucky to get away with just that.’

Benny Skacke drove for a while in silence, then said, ‘I was thinking about Gunvald's clothes. He's always so careful about them and always gets them ruined. He must have gotten absolutely covered with blood.’

‘Must have,’ said Martin Beck. ‘But he got out of it alive, so he's still ahead of the game.’

‘Ahead is right!’ said Skacke with a snort of laughter.

Benny Skacke was thirty-five and during the last six years had often worked with Martin Beck. He reckoned he had gained all his basic knowledge of criminal work by observing and studying the work of Lennart Kollberg and Martin Beck. He had also noted the special rapport that existed between the two men and had been amazed how easily they read each other's thoughts. He realized that such rapport would never arise between himself and Martin Beck, and he was aware that in Martin Beck's eyes he was a poor substitute for Kollberg. This insight often made him unsure of himself in Martin Beck's company.

For his part, Martin Beck understood very well how Skacke felt and did his best to encourage him and show that he appreciated his efforts. He had watched Skacke mature during the years he had known him and he knew Skacke worked hard, not only to do well in his career but also to become a really good policeman. He regularly spent his free time building up his physique and practising on the firing range, and he studied constantly – law, sociology and psychology – and he also kept himself well informed on what was happening within the force, both technically and organizationally.

Skacke was also a good driver and had a better knowledge of Stockholm and all its new suburbs than any taxi driver. He had no difficulty finding the address in Rotebro and stopped at the end of the row of parked cars on Tennisvägen.

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