The Terrorists (12 page)

“Oopsie!” she said, as she waved away the black-clad woman as one waves away a fly.

As the woman turned to go, Mrs. Petrus changed her mind and said, “No, wait a minute.” She looked at Martin Beck. “Would you like something to drink, Inspector? Coffee, tea, beer or perhaps a drink? I’ll have a sherry myself.”

“Thank you,” said Martin Beck. “A beer would taste good.”

“One beer and a large glass of sherry,” she said in commanding tones. “And, Mrs. Pettersson, perhaps you’d bring some of those Dutch cheese biscuits.”

Martin Beck considered the odd fact that Walter Petrus Pet-tersson’s widow had the same name as her maid, or whatever this fortunately rare occupational group was called nowadays. They must also have been about the same age.

He had already dug out some facts about Mrs. Petrus and knew, among other things, her last name had also been Pettersson before she married; that her Christian names were Kristina Elvira, though nowadays she called herself Chris; that she was
fifty-seven years old; and that she had been married to Petrus for twenty-eight years. In her youth she had worked in an office, and just before her marriage she had been a secretary in the firm that Petrus had been running at the time. Walter Petrus, film director, was a relatively new phenomenon; for many years he had been called Valter Pettersson and had dealt in inadequately renovated used cars, a lucrative but not particularly honest activity which harsher laws and stricter control of the trade had forced him to abandon.

Martin Beck was still standing in the middle of the room, looking at the woman in the deck chair. Sunburnt beneath her makeup, she had bleached hair and was wearing a black shantung blouse over well-tailored black linen slacks. She was very thin and her face looked harrowed and worn under the modern curly hairstyle.

He went up to her and she graciously held out a small wrinkled hand as he offered his condolences and apologized for having to intrude, phrases he seemed to have used hundreds of times in similar situations.

He did not really know what to do with himself—the deck chair stood by itself there in the corner. But finally she got up and went over to two enormous leather sofas placed in the middle of the room on either side of a long marble-topped table. She sat down in the corner of one sofa and Martin Beck sat down on the one opposite.

Outside the glass wall, which was equipped with sliding doors, there was a paved terrace and below that a swimming pool. Beyond the pool a large lawn sloped down toward a row of tall birches about fifty yards from the house. The lawn was thick and smooth and there were no trees, shrubs or flower beds here. Through the gauzy green of the birches he caught a glimpse of the blue surface of Great Värta.

“Yes, it’s a lovely view, isn’t it?” said Chris Petrus, following Martin Beck’s gaze. “It’s a pity we don’t have the lakeshore lot as well. Then I’d have the birches cut down to see the water better.”

“Birches are pretty too,” said Martin Beck.

Mrs. Pettersson came in and placed a tray on the table,
handed Martin Beck a beer and put a large glass of sherry and the bowl of cheese biscuits in front of Mrs. Petrus. Then she picked up the tray and left the room without a word.

Mrs. Petrus raised her glass and nodded to Martin Beck before drinking. Then she put down the glass and said, “We’ve always liked it so much here. When we bought the property six years ago, there was a dreadful old place here, but we had it demolished and built this house instead. One of Walter’s acquaintances who is an architect designed it for us.”

Martin Beck was sure the old place had been pleasanter to live in. What he had seen of the house so far seemed bare and inhospitable, and the ultramodern and certainly extremely costly décor seemed designed more for show than for comfort and warmth.

“Isn’t it cold in the winter with such large windows?” said Martin Beck conversationally.

“Oh, no, we’ve got infraheat in the ceiling and heating coils in the floor. On the terrace, too. And we’re not here very much in the winter. We go to warmer climes—Greece or Algarve or Africa.”

Martin Beck had a feeling that the woman in front of him had not yet realized that a change had occurred in her life. Or perhaps the change had not been so great. She had lost her husband, but not his money. Perhaps she had even wished for his death. Practically everything can be bought for money, even murder.

“What was the relationship between you and your husband like?” he asked.

She looked at him in astonishment, as if she had thought all along that he’d come to talk about the house and the view and trips abroad.

“It was very good,” she said. “We’d been married for twenty-eight years and we have three children. That alone is enough to keep a marriage together.”

“But it doesn’t necessarily mean the marriage was happy,” said Martin Beck. “Was it?”

“You get used to each other over the years, you overlook each other’s faults and you adapt,” she said. “Do you believe yourself
that there is such a thing as a really happy marriage? Ours was free of friction at least, and neither one of us ever considered divorce.”

“Did you know very much about your husband’s business?”

“Not a thing. The film company didn’t interest me in the slightest and I never interfered in my husband’s business affairs.”

“What did you think of the films your husband’s company produced?”

“I’ve never seen them. Of course, I know what kind of films they are, but I’m not prejudiced and refuse to express opinions. Wally worked hard and did his best to give me and the children a decent life. Our eldest son is twenty-six. He’s a naval officer and lives here when he’s in Stockholm, but he’s usually at sea or in Karlskrona. Pierre is twenty-two and has an artistic bent. He also wants to work in films, but times are bad and right now he’s traveling around making contacts and gathering impressions. He has his room upstairs and lives at home when he’s not abroad. I cabled his last address in Spain but haven’t heard from him yet, so I don’t even know if he has learned that his father is dead.”

She took a cigarette from a silver box on the table and lit it with a table lighter, also silver and of monstrous proportions.

“Then there’s Titti. She’s only nineteen, but she’s already doing very well as a photographer’s model. She lives here at home part of the time, and part of the time in her little den in the Old City. She isn’t home at the moment, or else you could meet her. She’s awfully pretty.”

“I’m sure she is,” said Martin Beck politely, thinking that if she was she must not take after her father.

“Even if you weren’t interested in your husband’s affairs, you must have met some of his business friends,” he went on.

Chris Petrus ran her fingers through her hair and said, “Yes, I did. We often had dinner parties here for all kinds of film people. And then there were all the parties and receptions Wally had to go to, though lately I hardly ever went with him.”

“Why not?”

Mrs. Petrus looked out the window. “I didn’t want to,” she
said. “There were always so many people I didn’t know, and lots of young people with whom I had nothing in common. And Wally didn’t think it was necessary for me to go. I have my own friends whom I prefer to be with.”

In other words Walter Petrus had not wanted his fifty-seven-year-old wife with him at parties where he could meet teen-age girls. He had been sixty-two, fat and ugly and impotent, and his reputation as a film producer had gradually grown shabbier and shabbier, although in some circles he still lived off a prize-winning production, generally known as ambitious and artistic. But the attraction of the film world for many young girls was so great that they were prepared for any sacrifice or degradation to enter it.

“I suppose you’ve had time to think about who might have killed your husband, Mrs. Petrus?” said Martin Beck.

“I can only imagine it was someone who was utterly insane. It’s terrible that he hasn’t been caught yet.”

“There was no one close to him who could have had any reason to—”

She interrupted him, for the first time apparently upset. “No one except an absolute maniac could have had any reason to do such a thing, and we have no lunatics among our friends. Whatever people thought of my husband, there was no one who hated him that much.”

“I didn’t mean to criticize your husband or your friends,” said Martin Beck. “I just wondered whether he might have been threatened or whether someone might possibly have felt he’d been badly treated—”

She interrupted him again. “Wally didn’t treat people badly. He was kind and did his best for all his employees. It was a tough and difficult world he worked in, and now and again you have to be ruthless to keep your head above water; he said that himself sometimes. But it’s simply absurd to think he could have treated anyone that badly.”

She emptied her sherry glass, lit another cigarette, and Martin Beck waited for her to calm down.

He looked out through the glass wall. A man in blue work clothes was walking across the lawn.

“Someone’s coming,” said Martin Beck.

Mrs. Petrus glanced at the man. “That’s Hellström, our gardener,” she said.

The man in blue overalls turned right by the swimming pool and vanished from their sight.

“Does anyone else work for you besides Mrs. Pettersson and the gardener?”

“No. Mrs. Pettersson looks after the housekeeping, and twice a week we have extra cleaning help. When we have dinner parties we hire staff, of course. And Hellström isn’t just our gardener; he looks after several gardens in the neighborhood. He doesn’t live here, either. He lives in a small house on the grounds next door.”

“Does he take care of the car, too?”

She nodded. “Wally hated driving, so Hellström had to be the chauffeur, too. Sometimes I’d be going into town at the same time as Wally, but I prefer to drive my own car, and Wally preferred the Bentley.”

“Didn’t your husband ever drive himself?”

She fingered her glass and looked toward the doorway. Then she got up and said, “I’m just going to call Mrs. Pettersson. The only thing wrong with this house is that there’s no bell to the kitchen.”

She went out and he heard her calling to Mrs. Pettersson to bring the sherry decanter. Then she came back and sat down on the sofa.

Martin Beck waited with his next question until Mrs. Pettersson had put the decanter on the table and gone. He took a sip of beer, which had begun to get warm and flat, and said, “Did you know that your husband had relationships with other women, Mrs. Petrus?”

She replied immediately, looking straight at him. “Naturally I knew about his relationship with the woman he was with when he was killed. She had been his mistress for a year or two. I don’t think he had any other relationships, one or two brief ones perhaps, but he was no longer a youngster. As I told you before, I’m not prejudiced and I let Wally live his life the way he wanted.”

“Have you ever met Maud Lundin?”

“No. And I don’t want to. Wally had a certain taste for cheap women, and I presume Mrs. Lundin is the type.”

“Have you yourself had relationships with other men?” asked Martin Beck.

She looked at him for a moment, then said, “I don’t think that has anything to do with it.”

“But it has, or else I wouldn’t have asked.”

“If you think that I’ve got a lover who killed Wally out of jealousy, then I can tell you you’re wrong. I have in fact had a lover for several years, but he and Wally were good friends and my husband accepted our relationship as long as it was conducted discreetly. I’m not going to give you his name.”

“Maybe that won’t be necessary,” said Martin Beck.

Chris Petrus ran the back of her hand across her forehead and closed her eyes. The gesture looked theatrical. He noticed that she had false eyelashes.

“Now I really must ask you to leave me in peace,” she said. “I really don’t enjoy sitting here discussing Wally’s and my private life with a perfect stranger.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s my job to try to find whoever killed your husband. So I have to ask indiscreet questions in order to get some idea of what could have caused his death.”

“You promised on the phone to keep it short,” she said plaintively.

“I won’t bother you with any more questions now,” said Martin Beck. “But I may have to come back. Or send one of my colleagues. In that case, I’ll call you first.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mrs. Petrus impatiently.

He got up and again she graciously extended her hand.

As he went out through the archway, this time without stumbling over the step, he heard the gurgling of the decanter as she poured herself another sherry.

Mrs. Pettersson must have been in the upper part of the house. He could hear her steps and the hum of the vacuum cleaner. Nor was there any sign of the gardener, and the garage doors were closed. As he went out through the gates, he saw that the gateposts were equipped with photocells, presumably
connected to some signaling system up in the house. That explained why Mrs. Pettersson had let him in without his having to ring the bell.

As he passed the house next door, he saw Hellström, the gardener, through the ironwork of the gate. He stopped and considered going in to speak to him, but the man, who had been bending over doing something on the lawn, straightened up and walked quickly away. With a swishing sound, a sprinkler began to throw a fine cascade of water over the rich green grass.

Martin Beck continued along the road in the direction of the station. He was thinking now about Rhea and how he would describe the Petrus family to her when they met. He knew exactly what she would say.

The day after the midsummer holiday, a young man walked into the police station in Märsta and handed the duty officer a long, narrow, heavy object wrapped in newspaper.

Nineteen days had gone by since the murder in Rotebro and the investigation had produced very few results. The technical examination had brought out nothing remarkable or interesting, not even a fingerprint which did not belong to Walter Petrus himself, or to Maud Lundin and her friends, or to other people who had legitimate reasons for being in the house. The only thing that might possibly have been linked to the killer was a blurred footprint outside the glass doors leading to the garden.