The Laughing Policeman (22 page)

'Hm. And at that moment...' Kollberg said.

'Precisely. At that moment the entire investigation was as dead as a doornail. It was completed. Wound up. The only thing wrong with it was that Teresa Camarão had been murdered and it was not known who had done it. The last twitch of life in the Teresa investigation was in 1952, when the Danish, Norwegian and Finnish police informed us that the damn car could not have come from any of those countries. At the same time the Swedish customs confirmed that it could not have come from anywhere else abroad. As you probably remember, there were not so many cars at that time, and it involved an awful lot of red tape if you wanted to get a motor vehicle across a frontier.'

'Yes, I remember. And these witnesses ...'

'The two in the car were friends from work. One was foreman at a garage and the other a car mechanic. The third witness was also very well informed in the matter of cars. By profession he was - guess.'

'Manager of the Renault factories?'

'No. Police sergeant Specialist in traffic questions. Carlberg his name was - he's dead now. But not even this point was overlooked - we had started trying out witness psychology even then. These three men were made to undergo a series of tests. One at a time they were asked to identify silhouettes of different types of cars, projected on slides. All three recognized every current model, and the foreman even knew the most exotic makes, like Hispano-Suiza and Pegaso. They couldn't even trick him when they drew a car that didn't exist. He said "the front is a Fiat 500, and the back is from a Dyna Panhard."'

'What did the guys in charge of the investigation think? Privately?' Kollberg asked.

'The inside talk was something like this: The murderer is to be found among all the papers, it's one of the countless men who have slept with Teresa Camarão and who, in a fit of whatever it is that comes over sex maniacs, has strangled her. The investigation has collapsed because someone had bungled over the check-up on all these Renault cars. So let's check them once again. And once again. Then they thought, quite rightly, that after all that time the scent had grown cold. They still thought that at some point or other the run-down of the cars had slipped up and that it was too late to do anything about it. I'm sure that Ek, for instance, who was in on it, thinks so to this day. And on the whole I agree. I can't see any explanation.'

Kollberg sat silent for a while. Then he said, 'What happened to Teresa on that day you mentioned? In May 1949?'

Martin Beck studied the papers and said, 'She received a kind of shock, which led to a psychological phenomenon and a mental and physical state which is comparatively rare but by no means unique. Teresa Camarão had grown up in an upper-middle-class family. Her parents were Catholics like herself. She was a virgin when she married at the age of twenty. She lived for four years together with her husband in a typical Swedish manner, although both were foreigners, and in the environment that was, and is, typical of the comfortable upper middle class. She was reserved, sensible and had a quiet disposition. Her husband considered the marriage a happy one. She was, a doctor says here, a pure product of these two environments, strict Catholic upper class and strict Swedish bourgeoisie, with all the moral taboos inherent in each, to say nothing of the combined result On 15 May 1949, her husband was away on a job in the north. She went to a lecture with a woman friend. There they met a man whom the friend had known for years. He accompanied them back to the Camarãos' apartment on Torsgatan, where the friend was to spend the night, as she too was a grass widow. They had tea and then sat talking about the lecture over a glass of wine. This guy was feeling a bit down because he had been out with a girl - whom incidentally he married not long afterward. He was at a loose end. He thought Teresa was attractive, which she was, and started making a pass at her. The woman friend, who knew that Teresa was the most moral person imaginable, went off to bed - she slept on a sofa in the hall, within earshot. The guy said about a dozen times to Teresa that they should go to bed, but she kept saying no. At last he simply lifted her out of the chair, carried her into the bedroom, undressed her and made love to her. As far as is known, Teresa Camarão had never before shown herself naked to anybody, not even to women. Teresa Camarão had never had an orgasm. That night she had about twenty. Next morning the guy said "so long", and off he went. She kept calling him up ten times a day for the next week, and after that he never heard from her again. He made it up with his girl and married her, and got on very well. There are a dozen different interrogations with him in this pile. He was really grilled, but he had an alibi and did not have a car; moreover, he was a good, decent guy who was happily married and was never unfaithful to his wife.'

'And Teresa started running about like a bitch in heat?'

'Yes. Literally. She left home, her husband would have nothing more to do with her, and she was dropped by all her friends and acquaintances. For two years she lived for short periods with a score of different men and had sexual relations with ten times as many.

She was a nymphomaniac ready for anything. At first she did it for nothing, but towards the end she did accept money occasionally. Of course, she never met anyone who could put up with her for any length of time. She had no women friends. She tumbled right down the social ladder. Within less than six months the only people she mixed with were those who belonged to what we then called the underworld. She also started drinking. The vice squad knew of her but could never quite keep up with her. They were going to pick her up for vagrancy, but before they could do anything she was dead.'

Pointing to the bundle of reports, Martin Beck went on.

'Among all these papers are a lot of interrogations with men who fell prey to her. They say she never left them alone and was impossible to satisfy. Most of them got scared to death the very first time, especially those who were married and were just out for a bit of fun on the side. She knew a large number of shady characters and semi-gangsters, thieves and con men and black market swindlers and the like. Well, you remember the clientele from that time.'

'What happened to her husband?'

'Not unnaturally, he considered himself scandalized. He changed his name and became a Swedish citizen. Met a girl of good family from Stocksund, remarried, had two children and lived happily ever after in a house of his own on Lindingö. His alibi was as watertight as Captain Cassel's raft.'

'As what?'

'The only thing you know nothing about is boats,' Martin Beck said. 'If you look through that folder you'll understand where Stenström got some of his ideas.'

Kollberg looked inside it.

'Jesus Christ! That's the hairiest little broad I've ever seen. Who took these pictures?'

'A man interested in photography who had a perfect alibi and who had nothing to do with a Renault car. But unlike Stenström, he sold his pictures at a fat profit As you remember, we didn't have the same profusion of advanced pornography then as we have now.'

They sat silent for a while. At last Kollberg said, 'What possible connection can this have with the fact that Stenström and eight other people are shot dead on a bus sixteen years later?'

'None at all,' Martin Beck replied. 'We're simply on our way back to the mentally deranged sensation murderer.'

'Why did he say nothing -'Kollberg began, and broke off.

'Exactly,' Martin Beck said. 'All that is explained now. Stenström was going through unsolved cases. As he was very ambitious and still rather naive he picked the most hopeless one he could find. If he solved the Teresa murder it would be a fantastic detective feat And he said nothing to us because he knew that some of us would laugh at him. When he told Hammar he didn't want to tackle anything too old, he had already decided on this. When Teresa Camarão lay in the morgue Stenström was twelve and probably didn't even read the newspapers. He considered he could look at it in quite an unbiased way. He combed right through this investigation.'

'And what did he find?'

'Nothing. Because there's nothing to find. There's not one loose thread.'

'How do you know?'

Martin Beck looked gravely at Kollberg and said, 'I know because I did exactly the same thing eleven years ago. I didn't find anything either. And I didn't have any Åsa Torell to carry out sexual-psychological experiments on. The minute you told me that about her, I knew what he had been working on. But I forgot that you didn't know as much about Teresa Camarão as I did. Come to that, I should have realized it when we found those pictures in his drawer.'

'So he was trying out a kind of psychological method?'

'Yes. That's all there is left. Find a person who resembles Teresa in some respect and see how she reacts. There's a certain amount of sense in it, especially if you already happen to have such a person at home. The investigation as such has no gaps. Otherwise ...'

‘What?'

'I was going to say that otherwise we'd have to turn to a clairvoyant But some bright guy has already done that It's there somewhere in the file.'

'But this doesn't tell us what he was doing on the bus.'

'No. It doesn't tell us a damn thing.'

'I'll check a couple of things anyway,' Kollberg said.

‘Yes, do,' Martin Beck said.

Kollberg sought out Henrique Camarão, who now called himself Hendrik Caam, a corpulent, middle-aged man who sighed and stole an unhappy glance at his blonde upper-class wife and a thirteen-year-old son with velvet jacket and Beatles hair-do, and said, 'Am I never to be left in peace? Only last summer there was a young detective here and ...'

Kollberg also checked Caam's alibi for the evening of 13 November. It was faultless.

He also tracked down the man who had taken the pictures of Teresa eighteen years earlier, and found a toothless old alcoholic in a cell in the long-term wing of the central prison. The man, who had been a burglar, screwed up his mouth and said, 'Teresie. I'll say I remember her. She had nipples the size of beer-bottle tops. Funny thing, there was another cop here a few months ago and...'

Kollberg read every word of the report. It took him exactly a week. On the evening of Tuesday, 18 December 1967, he read the last page. Then he looked at his wife, who had been asleep for some hours; her head, with its dark ruffled hair, was burrowed into the pillow. She was lying on her stomach with her right knee drawn up and the quilt had slipped down to her waist. He heard the sofa creak in the living room as Åsa Torell got up and tiptoed out to the kitchen for a drink of water. She still slept badly.

There's no missing part in this, Kollberg thought No loose ends. All the same, tomorrow I'll make a list of all the people who were interrogated or who are known to have been with Teresa Camarão. Then we'll see who's still left and what they're doing now.

A month had passed since the sixty-seven shots were fired in the bus on Norra Stationsgatan, and the ninefold murderer was still at large.

The police board, the press and the general public were not the only ones who showed their impatience. There was yet another category who were particularly anxious for the police to find the guilty man as soon as possible. This category comprised what is popularly known as the underworld.

Most of the people who usually busied themselves with crime had been forced into inactivity during the last month. So long as the police were on the alert, it was best to lie low. There was not a thief, junkie, dealer, mugger, bootlegger or pimp in the whole of Stockholm who didn't hope that the mass murderer would soon be seized so that the police could once more devote their time to Vietnam demonstrators and parking offenders and they themselves could get back to work.

One result of this was that for once they made common cause with the police, and most of them had no objections to helping in the hunt

Rönn's work in his search for the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle called Nils Erik Göransson was also made much easier by this willingness. He was quite well aware of the motives behind the unusual good will shown to him, but he was nonetheless grateful for it.

He had spent the last few nights contacting people who had known Göransson. He had found them in squats, restaurants, bars, billiard halls and common boarding houses. Not all were willing to give information, but many did.

On the evening of 13 December, on a barge moored at Söder Mälarstrand, he met a girl who promised to put him in touch the next evening with Sune Björk, the man who had let Göransson share his flat for a week or two.

The next day was a Thursday and Rönn, who had snatched only a few hours in bed during the last few days, spent half the day sleeping. He got up at one o'clock and helped his wife to pack. He had persuaded her to go up to her parents at Arjeplog over the Christmas holidays, as he suspected that he himself would not have much spare time for celebrating Christmas this year.

Having seen his wife off on the train, he drove home again and sat down at the kitchen table with paper and pen. He laid Nordin's report and his own notebook in front of him, put on his glasses and began to write.

Nils Erik Göransson.

Born in the Finnish parish, Stockholm, 4.10.1929.

Parents: Algot Erik Göransson, electrician, and Benita Rantanen.

Parents divorced 1935, mother moved to Helsinki and father given custody of the child.

G. lived with father at Sundbyberg till 1945.

Went to school for 7 years, thereafter 2 years at trade school learning house-painting.

1947 moved to Gothenburg, where he worked as painter's apprentice. Married Gudrun Maria Svensson in Gothenburg 1.12.1948. Divorced 13.5.1949.

From June 1949 to March 1950 deckhand on boats of the Svea Steamship Company. Baltic coastal trade. Moved in the summer of 1950 to Stockholm. Employed by the painting firm of Amandus Gustavsson until November 1950, when he was dismissed for being drunk at work. From then on he seems to have gone downhill. He got odd jobs, as night porter, errand boy, porter, warehouseman etc., but probably made a living mainly out of petty thieving and other minor crimes. Was never apprehended, however, as suspected of any crime but on several occasions was charged with being drunk and disorderly. For a time he called himself by his mother's maiden name, Rantanen. Father died 1958 and between 1958 and 1964 he lived in father's apartment at Sundbyberg. Evicted 1964 because he was three months in arrears with rent.