The Terrorists (11 page)

“About once a week. Sometimes twice. He usually came here, but sometimes we went out to eat and dance.”

“Did his wife know about your relationship?”

“Yes. But she didn’t mind as long as he didn’t divorce her.”

“Did he plan to?”

“Sometimes. Earlier. But I think he thought things were all right the way they were.”

“And what about you? Did you think things were all right?”

“I probably wouldn’t have said no if he’d asked me to marry him, but on the whole I thought things were all right. He was kind and generous.”

“Have you any idea who could have killed him?”

Maud Lundin shook her head. “Not the slightest,” she said. “It seems crazy. I can’t really believe it’s happened.”

She was silent for a while and he looked at her. She seemed strangely unmoved.

“Is he still down there?” she asked finally.

“No, not any more.”

“Can I stay the night here, then?”

“No, we haven’t completed the investigation yet.”

She looked at him darkly and shrugged her shoulders. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I can sleep in town.”

“How did he seem when you left him this morning?” asked Martin Beck.

“Like always. There was nothing special. I usually leave before him—he doesn’t like rushing in the mornings. Sometimes we went to town together. He always took a cab when he was here, but I usually ride my bike to the station and take the train.”

“Why did he take a cab? He had a car, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t like driving. He’s got a Bentley, but mostly other people drove him.”

“What other people?”

“His wife, or someone from the office. Sometimes the man who does his gardening.”

“How many employees are there in his office?”

“Only three. A man who looks after the accounts, a secretary, and someone who sees to the contracts and sales and so on. He hires extra people when he’s producing a film, according to what’s needed.”

“What sort of films did he produce?”

“Well, I don’t quite know how to describe them. To be honest, they were pornographic films. But very artistic ones. He made an ambitious film once, with good actors and all that. It was based on a famous novel, and I think it got a prize at a festival, too. But he didn’t make much money on it.”

“But now he was earning a lot of money on his films?”

“Yes, a lot. He bought this house for me. And you should see his house in Djursholm. A real villa, with a huge garden and swimming pool and everything.”

Martin Beck began to understand what kind of person Walter Petrus had been, but he was not really sure about the woman beside him.

“Did you love him?” he asked.

Maud Lundin gave him an amused look. “Frankly, no, I didn’t. But he was kind to me. Spoiled me and didn’t interfere with what I did when we weren’t together.”

She sat silent for a moment, then said, “He wasn’t exactly handsome. Nor a particularly good lover. He had difficulty with
his potency, if you know what I mean. I was married for eight years to a man who really was a man. He was killed in a car crash five years ago.”

“So you had other men, apart from Petrus.”

“Yes, now and then. When I met someone I liked.”

“And he wasn’t ever jealous?”

“No, but he wanted me to tell him what it was like with the others. In detail. He liked that. I made most of it up to keep him happy.”

Martin Beck looked at Maud Lundin. She was sitting very erect and met his gaze calmly.

“Could you say that you were really only with him for his money?” he said.

“Yes, you could say that. But I don’t regard myself as a whore, even if maybe you do. My need for money is great. I like things that money can buy. And it isn’t easy for a woman of forty with no particular education to get money any other way than through a man. If I’m a whore, then so are most married women.”

Martin Beck got up. “Thank you for talking to me, and for being so honest.”

“You needn’t thank me for that. I’m always honest. May I go to my friend now? I’m tired.”

“Of course. Just tell Inspector Pärsson where we can get in touch with you first, all right?”

Maud Lundin got up and picked up a small white leather bag that had been lying at the end of the bed. Martin Beck watched her leave the room. She held herself very erect and seemed calm and collected. Her long, powerful body was well built and strong, and she must have been a whole head taller than the fat little film director.

He thought about what she had said about money and what you could get with it. Walter Petrus had gotten a pretty good woman with his.

The definitive medical report fixed Walter Petrus’s death as having occurred between six and nine in the morning. There was no reason to doubt Maud Lundin’s statement that he had been alive when she left home at half-past six. Neither Åsa Torell nor Martin Beck thought she had anything to do with the murder.

The fact that the front door had been unlocked had made it easy for someone to get into the house and surprise Petrus as he stood in the shower, but how the killer got there without being seen was more of a puzzle. Either he had come by car, which seemed the most likely, or by train, but it was strange that no one living nearby had noticed him. In an area where everyone knew one another, or at least knew their nearest neighbors and their cars, the chances of being seen ought to have been greatest during just that period between half-past six and nine in the morning. That was everyone’s most active time—the men were on their way to work, the children were walking to school and the housewives were at home starting their cleaning or gardening.

Nevertheless, though the knocking on nearby doors went on for several days, until practically every inhabitant in that part of Rotebro had been questioned, it was established that no one had noticed anyone or anything that could be linked with the murder. Pärsson and his “men,” in fact mostly Åsa Torell, had begun working on the theory that the killer lived in the neighborhood, but they had not yet come across anyone who either knew Petrus or could have had a motive for killing him.

Martin Beck and Benny Skacke devoted their time to trying to clarify Walter Petrus’s private life, professional activities and financial circumstances. The last of these was particularly difficult to shed any light on. Petrus appeared to have been involved in tax evasion on a major scale. His films were sold abroad, and
he could be presumed to have fat accounts in Swiss banks. There was no doubt that he had juggled his accounts and tax declarations, or that he had used skilled legal advisers. Martin Beck knew nothing about the intricacies of such financial finagling and he was only too happy to let the experts in that field try to clarify the picture.

Petrus Films, Inc., had its office on Nybrogatan. The office, which had once been a residential apartment, had been lovingly renovated and consisted of six rooms and a kitchen. The three employees had an office each, and their modern office furniture looked strangely out of place surrounded by tiled stoves, oak panels and plasterwork ceilings. Walter Petrus himself had presided from behind an enormous desk of jacaranda wood in a large, beautiful corner room with high windows. There was also a screening room with seats for ten people, and another room which appeared to be used as an archive and storeroom.

Martin Beck and Skacke spent a couple of mornings in the screening room trying to assess the results of Walter Petrus’s cinematic activities. They watched one film from beginning to end, plus extracts from seven others, each one more appalling than the last. Skacke wriggled with embarrassment at first, but after a while started yawning. The films were all technically very bad, and for Maud Lundin to have called them “artistic” was not just an exaggeration but a downright lie. In this particular case she had not been honest, thought Martin Beck, unless she entirely lacked judgment.

The actors, if such a term could be used to describe the collection of obvious amateurs appearing on the screen, were for the most part naked. When any of them did wear clothes, it was only in order to remove them as quickly as possible.

Three teenage girls kept reappearing in all the films—sometimes separately and sometimes all together. One of them seemed painfully embarrassed and glanced uncertainly into the lens every now and then as she wiggled her tongue and rolled her eyes and twisted her body like an eel to the obvious instructions of someone behind the camera. The young men were all blond—with the exception of one who was black—and well-built. The props were minimal, most of the action taking place on the same old couch, which occasionally changed covers.

Only one of the films appeared to involve any kind of plot, and that was the one Maud Lundin had referred to—
Love in the Midnight Sun
. It had obviously been filmed in the islands outside Stockholm and began with the main character, a girl of fifteen or so, paddling out to an island in a canoe to celebrate midsummer in a traditional Swedish way. She had with her a picnic basket containing a bottle of aquavit, glasses, plates and some silver, a white linen tablecloth, a head of lettuce and a loaf of bread.

After carrying the basket and a fishing rod ashore, she immediately took her clothes off, slowly and with strange writhing movements, her mouth open and her eyes downcast. Then she sat down at the water’s edge with her legs apart and began masturbating with the handle of the fishing rod. After tossing her head and letting out a few groans, she adroitly cast the line and immediately landed an enormous dead salmon. Delighted with her catch, she jumped around the rocks for a while, stretching her legs, wriggling her hips and thrusting out her breasts. She quickly built a gigantic bonfire of driftwood which happened to be lying about in a convenient heap on the shore, and placed the fish on a spit over the fire. Then she laid the tablecloth and poured aquavit into what looked like a champagne glass.

Just as she was swallowing the drink, a naked blond youth appeared out of the sea. She invited him to join her in her meal, and between drinks—which they took from the same glass—they ate the salmon, which by now was smoked and thinly sliced. Night had fallen, although the sun was still high in the sky, and the young couple carried out a kind of ritual dance around the smoking bonfire. Then they wandered hand in hand toward the island’s green meadows, found a convenient haystack and indulged in fifteen minutes of intercourse in twenty different positions. In the final scene, the two young people wandered out into the glittering sun-drenched sea.

The end.

The sales manager of Petrus Films, Inc., suggested that they might like to look at some additional films of the same type, such as
Lust and Love in Sweden
or
Three Nights with Swedish Eva
, but Martin Beck and Skacke had had enough and politely refused
the invitation. They were told that
Love in the Midnight Sun
was the firm’s biggest hit and had been sold to eight countries. The girl who starred in it was now in one of these countries, he could not remember which, Italy perhaps, to further her career. Mr. Petrus had arranged an engagement for one of the other girls with a German company, the sales manager told them, so the girls had probably been richly rewarded over and above the thousand kronor that was the usual fee for the star part in a film.

Martin Beck left Skacke to continue rummaging in Petrus Films, Inc.’s dirty laundry and decided that it was time to go and visit the bereaved family. He had called the house in Djursholm on Friday, but had only been allowed to speak to the family doctor, who had said briefly and authoritatively that Mrs. Petrus was not in a state to receive visitors, least of all policemen. The doctor gave him to understand that it was most callous and unfeeling of him not to leave the poor widow in peace at least over the weekend.

Now the weekend was over, it was Monday the tenth of July, and when Martin Beck came out onto Nybrogatan, the sun was shining. The summer was just beginning, holiday time had come, and the sidewalks were crowded with people in varying states of frenzy. He walked down the street toward Östermalm Square and when he got to the Seventh Precinct’s new station, he went inside and up the stairs to borrow a telephone.

A woman answered at the Petrus house. She asked him to wait, returned after a long while and said that Mrs. Petrus was prepared to receive him on condition that his visit be kept short.

He promised not to stay long, then he called a cab.

The house in Djursholm was surrounded by a large parklike garden and the driveway to the house was lined with tall poplars. The high wrought-iron gates were open and the cabdriver asked if he was to drive in, but Martin Beck told him to stop outside the gates and he paid and got out.

As Martin Beck walked up the drive, he studied the villa and its surroundings. The hedge along the road was thick and high and carefully and artistically trimmed. Once inside the hedge, the drive divided and continued to the right toward a large garage. The enormous garden looked very well kept, the lawns
had sharp edges where narrow gravel paths twisted among shrubs and flower beds, and to judge from the height of the poplars and the age of the fruit trees the whole thing must have been laid out many years before.

In that setting there was every reason to expect an ancient house of the type that was common in such wealthy areas, but the house Martin Beck was approaching along the newly raked gravel path was a modern two-story architectonic creation with a flat roof and gigantic windows.

A middle-aged woman in a black dress and white apron opened the door before he even had a chance to put his finger to the bell. She walked ahead of him in silence through a large hall, past a broad staircase, through two more rooms, and then stopped in a wide archway opening into a sunny room, the end wall of which was entirely glass.

The floor of light plastic-treated pine was sunken and Martin Beck did not see the step, so he stumbled into the room where Walter Petrus’s widow was waiting for him, lying in a deck chair in the corner by the glass wall. On the terrace outside were several similar chairs lined up as if on the sun deck of an ocean liner.