Man On The Balcony (22 page)

'What were you doing last Tuesday?"

'The day before yesterday? I was at home. I was ill. Today's the first time I've been out in over two weeks."

'Who can prove it?" Martin Beck asked. "Was anyone with you when you were ill?"

'No, I was alone."

Martin Beck drummed on the car roof and looked at Kollberg. Kollberg opened the door on the other side, leaned into the car and said:

'May I ask what it was you said when you were over by Gröndal half an hour ago?"

'I beg your pardon?"

'You said something when you stood 'below Gröndal earlier today."

'Oh!" the man said. "Oh, that."

He smiled and said:

I am the sick lime-tree that withers while still young.

Dry leaves I scattered to the wind when on my

crown they hung.

Is that what you mean?"

The policeman in the leather jacket was gaping at the man.

'Fröding," Kollberg said.

'Yes," the man said. "Our great poet Fröding. He was living at Gröndal when he died. Not so old but out of his mind."

'What's your job?" Martin Beck asked.

'I'm a butcher," the man replied.

Martin Beck straightened up and looked at Kollberg over the car roof. Kollberg shrugged. Martin Beck lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Then he bent down and looked at the man.

'Okay," he said. "Let's start again. What's your name?"

The sun beat down on the car roof. The man in the back seat mopped his brow and said:

'Wilhelm Fristedt."

ONE MIGHT take Martin Beck for a greenhorn from the country and Kollberg for a sex murderer. One could put a false beard on Rönn and get someone to believe he was Santa Claus, and a confused witness might say that Gunvald Larsson was Chinese. One could no doubt dress up the assistant commissioner as a laborer and the commissioner as a tree. One could probably persuade someone that the minister for home affairs was a policeman. One could, like the Japanese during the Second World War and certain monomaniac photographers, disguise oneself as a bush and make pretense at not being found out One could hoodwink people about 'almost anything at all.

But nothing in this world could make people be mistaken about Kristiansson and Kvant

Kristiansson and Kvant were dressed in uniform caps and leather jackets with gilded buttons. Their belts were attached to straps diagonally across their chests and they carried pistols and truncheons. Their dress was due to the fact that they felt cold as soon as the temperature dropped below 70°.

They were both from the province of Skåne, in the far south.

Both were six foot two and had blue eyes. Both were broad-shouldered and fair-haired and weighed about 180 pounds. They drove a black Plymouth with white mudguards. It had a searchlight and radio mast a rotating orange flash light and two red lights on the roof. In addition, the word POLICE was painted in white block letters on four places: over the doors, on the hood and across the back. Kristiansson and Kvant were radio police. Before joining the force they had -both been regular sergeants in the South Skåne Infantry Regiment at Ystad. Both were married and each had two children. They had worked together for a long time and knew each other as well as only two men in a radio car can do. They! applied for transfer at the same time and got on badly with* everyone except each other.

Yet they were not really alike and they often got on each other's nerves. Kristiansson was gentle and conciliatory, Kvant hot-tempered and truculent. Kristiansson never mentioned his wife, Kvant talked of hardly anything else but his. By this tune Kristiansson knew everything about her; not only what she said and did, but the most intimate details regarding her body and general behavior.

They were regarded as complementing each other perfectly.

They had pulled in many thieves and thousands of drunks and they had put a stop to hundreds of apartment rows; Kvant had even started a few rows himself, since he took it for granted that people always got noisy and troublesome when they suddenly found two policemen standing in their hall.

They had never made a spectacular scoop of any kind or had then- names in the papers. Once, while serving in Malmö, they had driven a drunken journalist, who was murdered six months later, to the casualty department of the hospital. He had cut his wrists. This was the nearest they had ever come to fame.

The radio car was their second home, with its faint reek of liquor fumes left by all the drunks and with its atmosphere, hard to define, of stale intimacy.

Some people thought they were stuck-up because they spoke with a Skåne accent, and they themselves were annoyed when certain persons with no feeling for the sound and quality of the dialect tried to mimic them.

Kristiansson and Kvant did not even belong to the Stockholm police. They were radio police in Solna, outside the city boundary, and knew very little more about the park murders than what they had read in the papers and heard on the radio.

Soon after half past two on Thursday the twenty-second of June they were right in front of the military academy at Karlberg, with only twenty minutes of their shift to go.

Kristiansson, who was at the wheel, had just reversed the car on the old parade ground and was now driving westwards along Karlberg Strand.

'Stop a moment," Kvant said.

'Why?"

'I want to have a look at that boat."

After a while Kristiansson said with a yawn:

'Had a good look?"

'Yes."

They drove on slowly.

'The park murderer has been caught," Kristiansson said. "They've got him surrounded at Djurgården."

'So I heard," Kvant said.

'Good thing the kids are down in Skåne."

'Yes. Funny thing, you know…"

He broke off. Kristiansson said nothing.

'Funny thing," Kvant went on. "Before I married Siv I was always after the girls. One chick after the other, couldn't stop. Virile, as they say. In fact, I was goddam randy."

'Yes, I remember," Kristiansson said, yawning.

'But now—why, now I feel like an old horse that's been put out to graze. Fall dead asleep the minute I get into bed. And all I think of when I wake up is cornflakes and milk."

He made a short, pregnant pause and added:

'Must be old age creeping on."

Kristiansson and Kvant had just turned thirty.

'Yes," Kristiansson said

He drove past Karlberg bridge and was now only twenty-five yards from the city boundary. Had the park murderer not been surrounded at Djurgården he would probably have swung up to the right to Ekelundsvägen and had a look at what was left of the woods there after the new apartment houses had gone up. But there was no reason to now, and anyway he'd rather not see the National Police College twice in the same day if he could help it So he continued westwards along the winding road by the water.

They drove past Talludden and Kvant looked sourly at the teenagers hanging about outside the cafe and around the cars in the parking lot.

'By rights we ought to stop and take a look at their goddam rattletraps."

'That's the traffic boys' headache," Kristiansson said. "We're due back at the station in fifteen minutes."

They sat for a while in silence.

'Good thing they've pulled in that sex maniac," Kristiansson said.

'If only you could once say something I haven't heard twenty times already."

'It's not so easy."

'Siv was in a stinking temper this morning," Kvant said. "Did I tell you about that lump she thought she had on her left breast? The one she thought might be cancer?"

'Yes, you did."

'Oh. Well, anyway, I thought now she's been nagging so | long about that lump so I'll have a good feel myself. She was lying there like a dead fish when the alarm went off and of course I woke up before she did. So I…"

'Yes, you told me."

They had come to the end of Karlberg Strand, but instead of turning up towards the Sundbyberg road—which was the shortest way to the police station—Kristiansson drove straight on and along Huvudsta Allé, a road seldom used by anybody nowadays.

Later, many people were to ask him why he took that particular road, but that was a question he could not answer. He ] just took it, and that was that. In any case, Kvant did not; react. He had been a radio policeman far too long to ask useless questions. Instead, he said thoughtfully:

'No, I just can't make out what has got into her. Siv, I mean."

They passed Huvudsta Castle.

Not much of a castle, come to that, Kristiansson thought | for perhaps the five-hundredth time. At home in Skåne there are real castles. With counts and barons in them. Aloud he; said:

'Can you lend me twenty kronor?"

Kvant nodded. Kristiansson was chronically short of money.

They drove slowly on. To the right lay a newly built residential area with tall apartment houses, to the left was a narrow but densely wooded strip of land between the road and the Ulvsunda Lake.

'Stop a minute," Kvant said.

'Why?"

'Call of nature."

'We're nearly there."

'Can't be helped."

Kristiansson turned left and let the car glide slowly into one of the clearings. Then he stopped. Kvant got out and walked around the car, over to some low bushes, placed his legs wide apart and whistled as he pulled down the zipper of his fly. He looked over the bushes. Then he turned his head and saw a man standing only five or six yards away, evidently on the same business as himself.

'Sorry," Kvant said, turning politely the other way.

He adjusted his clothes and went towards the car. Kristiansson had opened the door and sat there looking out

While still two yards from the car Kvant stopped dead and said:

'But that man looked like… and behind was sitting…"

At the same time Kristiansson said:

'I say, that fellow there…"

Kvant swung around and strode towards the man by the bushes.

Kristiansson started to get out of the car.

The man was dressed in a beige-colored corduroy jacket, grubby white shirt, crumpled brown trousers and black shoes. He was of medium height, with a big nose and thin hair brushed straight back. And he had still not adjusted his clothes.

When Kvant was only two yards from him the man raised his right arm to his face and said:

'Don't hit me."

Kvant gave a start

'What!" he said.

Only that morning his wife had told him he was a clumsy great lout and no one could help noticing it, but still, this was the limit. Controlling himself he said:

'What are you doing here?"

'Nothing," the man said.

He gave a shy, awkward smile. Kvant eyed his clothes.

'Have you proof of identity?"

'Yes, I've my pension card in my pocket."

Kristiansson came up to them. The man looked at him and said:

'Don't hit me."

'Isn't your name Ingemund Fransson?" Kristiansson asked.

'Yes," the man replied.

'I think you'd better come with us," Kvant said, taking him by the arm.

The man willingly let himself be led over to the car.

'Get into the back seat," Kristiansson said.

'And do up your fly," Kvant ordered.

The man hesitated a moment. Then he smiled and obeyed. Kvant got into the back seat and sat beside him.

'Let's have a look at that pension card," Kvant said.

The man put his hand into his hip pocket and drew out the pension warrant.

Kvant looked at it and passed it to Kristiansson.

'Doesn't seem any doubt," Kristiansson said.

Kvant stared incredulously at the man and said:

'No, it's him all right."

Kristiansson went around the car, opened the door on the other side and started going through the man's jacket pockets.

Now, at close range, he saw that the man's cheeks were sunken and that his chin was covered with gray stubble that must have been several days old.

'Here," Kristiansson said, pulling something out of the inside pocket of the jacket.

It was a pair of little girls' pants, light-blue.

'Hm. That settles it, doesn't it?" Kvant said. "You've killed three little girls, haven't you? Eh?"

'Yes," the man said.

He smiled and shook his head.

'I had to," he said.

Kristiansson was still standing outside the car.

'How did you get them to go with you?" he asked.

'Oh, I've a way with children. Children always like me. I show them things. Flowers and so on." Kristiansson pondered for a moment. Then he said: "Where did you sleep last night?" "The northern cemetery," the man said.

'Have you slept there all the time?" Kvant asked.

'No, in other cemeteries too. I don't really remember."

'And in the daytime," Kristiansson said. "Where have you been in the daytime?"

'Oh, various places. In the churches a lot. It's so beautiful there. So quiet and still. You can sit there for hours…"

'But you made goddam sure you didn't go home, didn't you, eh?" Kvant said.

'I did go once. I had got something on my shoes. And…"

'Yes?"

'I had to change them and put on my old sneakers. Then of course I bought new shoes. Very expensive. Outrageously expensive, I don't mind saying."

Kristiansson and Kvant stared at him.

'And then I fetched my jacket."

'I see," said Kristiansson.

'It really gets quite chilly when you have to sleep out of doors at night," the man said conversationally.

They heard the sound of quick footsteps, and a young woman in a blue smock and wooden-soled shoes came running along. She caught sight of the radio car and stopped dead.

'Oh," she said, panting. "I suppose you haven't… My little girl… I can't find her… I turned my back for a few minutes and she was gone. You haven't seen her, have you? She is wearing a red dress…"

Kvant wound the window down to say something. Then he thought better of it and said politely:

'Yes, madam. She's sitting behind the bushes over there playing with a doll. She's all right. I saw her a few moments ago."

Kristiansson instinctively kept the light-blue pants behind his back and tried to smile at the woman. The result was horrible.