The Terrorists (31 page)

“No, why should I? Then you know what they answered, too?” She gazed at Martin Beck with a dark look.

“Yes,” he said. “Not especially encouraging or helpful. What did you do after you got their reply?”

Rebecka hunched her shoulders and looked down at her hands. She sat in silence for a while before answering. “Nothing. I didn’t know what to do. There was no one else to ask. I thought the most important person in the country would be able to do something, but when he didn’t bother …” She made a small, hopeless gesture with her hands and went on almost in a whisper. “Now it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore.”

She looked so small and lonely and abandoned as she sat there that Martin Beck felt like going over to her and stroking her smooth shiny hair or taking her in his arms and consoling her. Instead he said, “Where have you been living all fall? Before you went to stay with your friend?”

“Oh, here and there. For a while I lived in a summer cottage out in Waxholm. A friend let us live there while his parents were abroad. When they came back he didn’t dare let us stay, so he moved in with his girl and let us have his place. But a few days later his landlady started making a fuss, so we had to move again. Well, and then we stayed with different friends.”

“You never thought of turning to the social services?” asked
Martin Beck. “They might have helped you find somewhere to live.”

Rebecka shook her head. “I don’t believe that,” she said. “They would have put the childcare people onto me, and then they would have taken Camilla away from me. I don’t think you can trust any of the authorities in this country. They don’t care about ordinary people who aren’t famous or rich, and what they mean by helping isn’t what I call help. They just cheat you.”

She sounded bitter, and Martin Beck knew that it was no use arguing with her. Nor was there any reason to, as she was largely right. “Mmm,” was all he said.

The telephone rang. The switchboard reported that Mr. Braxén was not available either at his office or in court and there was no listing for his home phone.

Martin Beck presumed that Crasher made his home at his office and used only the one phone. Or perhaps he had an unlisted number. He asked the operator to continue to search for Braxén.

“It doesn’t really matter if you can’t get hold of him,” said Rebecka when Martin Beck put down the receiver. “He can’t help me this time, anyhow.”

“Oh, yes, he can,” said Martin Beck. “You mustn’t give up, Rebecka. Whatever happens, you must have a defense counsel, and Braxén is a good lawyer. The best you could have. But in the meantime maybe you could talk to me. Do you think you could tell me what happened?”

“But you know what happened.”

“Yes, but I mean what happened before. You must have thought about this for some time.”

“About killing him, you mean?”

“Yes.”

Rebecka was silent for a while, looking down at the floor. Then she raised her eyes, which were so full of despair that Martin Beck expected her to begin crying any minute.

“Jim’s dead,” she said tonelessly.

“How …?”

Martin Beck stopped when Rebecka bent down for her bag and began rummaging in it. He took his handkerchief, which was clean if somewhat rumpled, out of his jacket pocket and
handed it across the desk. She looked up at him with dry eyes and shook her head. He put back the handkerchief and waited until she found what she was looking for in her bag.

“He killed himself,” she said, putting an airmail envelope with red-white-and-blue edges in front of him on the desk. “You can read the letter from his mother.”

Martin Beck took the letter out of the envelope. It was typed and only one page long. The tone was dry and deliberate, and there was nothing in the writing to indicate that Jim’s mother felt either compassion for Rebecka or even grief for her son. In fact, the letter expressed no emotions whatsoever, and thus seemed cruel.

Jim had died in prison on the twenty-second of October, she wrote. He made a rope out of his blanket and hanged himself from the upper bunk in his cell. As far as she knew, he left no explanation, excuse or message for either his parents, Rebecka, or anyone else. She wanted to inform Rebecka, since she knew she was worried about Jim and had a child whose father “might be Jim.” Mrs. Cosgrave finished the letter by saying that Jim’s way of dying—not his death apparently, but his way of dying—had affected his father deeply and worsened his already weakened health.

Martin Beck folded the paper and put it back in the envelope. It was postmarked the eleventh of November.

“When did you get that?” he asked.

“Yesterday morning,” said Rebecka. “The only address she had was my friend’s where I lived last summer, and it had been lying there for several days before they found me.”

“It’s not an especially friendly letter.”

“No.”

Rebecka sat in silence, looking at the letter in front of her on the desk. “I didn’t think Jim’s mother was like that,” she said at last. “So hard. Jim used to talk about his parents and he seemed to like them an awful lot. Maybe his dad most, of course. She shrugged again and added, “Though parents don’t necessarily always like their children.”

Martin Beck realized she was alluding to her own parents, but he felt personally affected. He had a son himself, Rolf, who would soon be twenty, and the contact between them had always
been poor. Not until after his divorce, or perhaps not until he met Rhea, who had taught him to have the courage to be honest not only with others, but also with himself, had he dared admit that he did not really like Rolf. Now he looked at Rebecka’s bitter, stiff face and wondered what his lack of deeper feelings for his son had done to the boy’s own emotional life.

He pushed his thoughts about Rolf to one side and said to Rebecka, “Was it then that you decided? When you got the letter?”

She hesitated before answering. Martin Beck suspected that her hesitation was due more to a desire to be honest than to uncertainty. He thought he knew that much about her.

“Yes,” she said. “I decided then.”

“Where did you get the revolver?”

“I had it all the time. It was given to me a few years ago when my mother’s aunt died. She liked me, and I used to be with her a lot when I was little, so when she died I inherited a few of her things; that revolver was one of them. But I never gave it a thought until yesterday and didn’t even remember there were bullets for it. I’ve moved around so much that it’s been packed in a case all the time.”

“Have you ever fired it before?”

“No, never. I wasn’t even sure it worked. It’s pretty old, I think.”

“Yes,” said Martin Beck. “It’s at least eighty years old.”

Martin Beck was not especially interested in guns, and his knowledge of them was limited to what was absolutely necessary. If Kollberg had been there, he would have told them the gun was a Harrington and Richardson 32 single action, Remington model 1885. He would also have been able to identify the ammunition as unjacketed lead bullets in brass cases with short force-loading, manufactured in 1905.

“How did you keep from being discovered? The police blocked the whole of Riddarholm and checked everyone who went there.”

“I knew the Prime Minister was going to ride in a … a … what’s it called? I’ve forgotten.”

“Motorcade,” said Martin Beck. “A procession, or in this case, a row of cars.”

“Yes, with this American. So I read in the newspaper where they were going and what they were going to do, and the church seemed best. Last night, I went there and hid. I was there all night and all day today until they came. It wasn’t hard to hide and I had some yoghurt with me so I wouldn’t get thirsty or hungry. People came into the church, policemen maybe, but they didn’t see me.”

The clod squad, thought Martin Beck. Of course they didn’t see her.

“Is that all you’ve had to eat for almost twenty-four hours?” he asked. “Don’t you really want anything to eat now?”

“No, thanks. I’m not hungry. I don’t need much food. Most people in this country eat way too much. I’ve got sesame salt and dates in my bag if I need anything.”

“Okay, then, but tell me if there’s anything else you want.”

“Thank you,” said Rebecka politely.

“I don’t suppose you’ve slept much, either, over the last twenty-four hours.”

“No, not much. I slept for a while in the church last night. Not for long, an hour at the most. It was pretty cold.”

“We don’t need to talk much today,” said Martin Beck. “We can go on tomorrow when you’ve had a rest. If you like, I’ll get you something to make you sleep later.”

“I never take pills,” said Rebecka.

“The time must have gone slowly during all those hours inside the church. What did you do while you were waiting?”

“I was thinking. About Jim mostly. It’s hard to grasp that he’s dead. But in some way, I already knew that he would never endure being in prison. He couldn’t stand being shut in.”

“Jim was sentenced according to the laws of his country—”

“He was condemned here,” interrupted Rebecka, leaning forward in her chair. “When they tricked him into going home and assured him he wouldn’t be punished, then he was already condemned. Don’t say anything else, because I just won’t believe you.”

Martin Beck didn’t say anything. Rebecka sank back into her chair and tucked back a strand of hair that had fallen over her cheek. He waited for her to go on, not wishing to break her train of thought by asking questions or making knowing remarks.
After a while, she began again, more slowly.

“I said before I’d decided to shoot the Prime Minister when I heard that Jim was dead. That’s true, but I think I’d really thought about it before. I’m not quite sure now.”

“But you said you’d never thought about how you owned a revolver until yesterday.”

Rebecka frowned. “That’s true. I didn’t think about that until yesterday.”

“If you thought about shooting him before, then you’d probably have remembered the revolver before, too.”

She nodded. “Yes, maybe,” she said. “I don’t know. All I know is now that Jim’s dead, nothing matters anymore. I don’t care what happens to me. The only thing that matters to me is Camilla. I love her, but I have no means of giving her anything but love. It’s terrible to live in a world where people just tell lies to each other. How can someone who’s a scoundrel and traitor be allowed to make decisions for a whole country? Because that’s what he was. A rotten traitor. Not that I think that whoever takes his place will be any better—I’m not that stupid. But I’d like to show them, all of them who sit there governing and deciding, that they can’t go on cheating people forever. I think lots of people know perfectly well they’re being cheated and betrayed, but most people are too scared or too comfortable to say anything. It doesn’t help to protest or complain, either, because the people in power don’t pay any attention. They don’t care about anything except their own importance, they don’t care about ordinary people. That’s why I shot him. So that maybe they’ll get scared and understand that people aren’t so feeble as they think. They don’t care if people need help and they don’t care if people complain and make a fuss when they don’t get help, but they do care about their own lives. I—”

The telephone rang, interrupting her, and Martin Beck regretted not having given orders that they should not be disturbed. It was probably extremely unusual for Rebecka to be so loquacious; when he had seen her before, she had been shy and quiet.

He picked up the receiver. The operator notified him that they were still looking for Braxén, so far without result.

Martin Beck replaced the receiver, and at that moment there
was a knock on the door and Hedobald Braxén came into the room.

“Good day,” he said briefly to Martin Beck and went straight over to Rebecka. “There you are then, Roberta. I heard on the radio that the Prime Minister had been shot, and by the description of the so-called perpetrator, I realized who it was and rushed right over.”

“Hello,” said Rebecka.

“We’ve been looking for you,” said Martin Beck.

“I’ve been with a client,” said Crasher. “A highly interesting man, incidentally. Immensely knowledgeable in a whole range of fascinating subjects. His father was a famous expert on Flemish weaving. That was where I heard the news on the radio.”

Braxen was wearing a long greenish-yellowish speckled overcoat stretched tightly across his imposing stomach. He struggled out of it and flung it on a chair. As he put his briefcase on the desk, he caught sight of the revolver. “Mmm,” he said. “Not bad. Hitting someone with that isn’t easy. I remember once, just before the war, I think, a similar weapon was mixed up in a case against twin brothers. If you’ve finished here, may I talk to Rebecka for a while?” Crasher rummaged in his briefcase and extracted an old brass cigar case, opened it and took out the chewed stump of a cigar.

Martin Beck got up from the chair behind his desk. “Here you are,” he said. “I’ll be back in a while.”

As he walked to the door, he heard Crasher say, “Well, Rebecka, my dear, this isn’t so good, but we’ll manage. Chin up. I remember a girl of your age in Kristianstad, it was, in the spring of 1946, the same year as …”

Martin Beck shut the door behind him with a sigh.

Martin Beck had judged correctly when he told the Commissioner that the chances of another attempt on the Senator’s life were minimal. One of ULAG’s principles was that they should strike swiftly, and then disappear without a trace. Repeating an unsuccessful operation immediately in order to achieve better results was considered a dangerous violation of this principle.

In the apartment in Kapellgatan, Levallois had already begun to pack up his equipment, reckoning his chances of getting out of the country to be pretty good as long as he moved quickly. As far as he was concerned, he only needed to get himself to Denmark to feel relatively secure. The Frenchman did not think very much about what had happened. He was not that kind of person.

The situation was quite different for Reinhard Heydt, because the police had his description and would be watching for him.