The Man on the Balcony

‘Ahlberg, but…’

‘Exactly. I also know that you've taken five vacation days that were due to you. In other words you're going to Motala in order to sit and tipple at the City Hotel with Ahlberg. Am I right?’

‘Well…’

‘Good luck,’ Kollberg said genially. ‘Behave yourself.’

‘Thanks.’

Martin Beck hung up and the man standing behind him elbowed his way roughly past him. Beck shrugged and went out into the main hall of the station.

Kollberg was right up to a point. This in itself didn't matter in the least, but it was vexing all the same to be seen through so easily. Both he and Kollberg had met Ahlberg in connection with a murder case three summers earlier. The investigation had been long and difficult and in the course of it they had become good friends. Otherwise Ahlberg would hardly have asked the national police board for help and he himself would not have wasted half a day's work on the case.

The station clock showed that the two telephone calls had taken exactly four minutes; there was still a quarter of an hour before the train left. As usual the big hall was swarming with people of all kinds.

Suitcase in hand, he stood there glumly, a man of medium height with a lean face, a broad forehead and a strong jaw. Most of those who saw him probably took him for a bewildered provincial who suddenly found himself in the rush and bustle of the big city.

‘Hi, mister,’ someone said in a hoarse whisper.

He turned to look at the person who had accosted him. A girl in her early teens was standing beside him; she had lank fair hair and was wearing a short batik dress. She was barefoot and dirty and looked the same age as his own daughter. In her cupped right hand she was holding a strip of four photographs, which she let him catch a glimpse of.

It was very easy to trace these pictures. The girl had gone into one of the automatic photo machines, knelt on the stool, pulled her dress up to her armpits and fed her coins into the slot.

The curtains of these photo cubicles had been shortened to knee height, but it didn't seem to have helped much. He glanced at the pictures; young girls these days developed earlier than they used to, he thought. And the little slobs never thought of wearing anything underneath either. All the same, the photos had not come out very well.

‘Twenty-five kronor?’ the child said hopefully.

Martin Beck looked around in annoyance and caught sight of two policemen in uniform on the other side of the hall. He went over to them. One of them recognized him and saluted.

‘Can't you keep the kids here in order?’ Martin Beck said angrily.

‘We do our best, sir.’

The policeman who answered was the same one who had saluted, a young man with blue eyes and a fair, well-trimmed beard.

Martin Beck said nothing but turned and walked towards the glass doors leading out to the platforms. The girl in the batik dress was now standing farther down the hall, looking furtively at the pictures, wondering if there was something wrong with her appearance.

Before long some idiot was sure to buy her photographs.

Then off she would go to Humlegården or Mariatorget and buy purple hearts or marijuana with the money. Or perhaps LSD.

The policeman who recognized him had had a beard. Twenty-four years earlier, when he himself joined the force, policemen had not worn beards.

By the way, why hadn't the other policeman saluted, the one without a beard? Because he hadn't recognized him?

Twenty-four years ago policemen had saluted anyone who came up to them even if he were not a superintendent. Or had they?

In those days girls of fourteen and fifteen had not photographed themselves naked in photo machines and tried to sell the pictures to detective superintendents in order to get money for a fix.

Anyway, he was not a bit pleased with the new title he had got at the beginning of the year. He was not pleased with his new office at southern police headquarters out in the noisy industrial area at Västberga. He was not pleased with his suspicious wife and with the fact that someone like Gunvald Larsson could be made a detective inspector.

Martin Beck sat by the window in his first-class compartment, pondering all this.

The train glided out of the station and past the City Hall. He caught sight of the old white steamer Mariefred, that still plied to Gripsholm, and the publishing house of Norstedt, before the train was swallowed up in the tunnel to the south. When it emerged into daylight again he saw the green expanse of Tantolunden -the park that he was soon going to have nightmares about – and heard the wheels echo on the railway bridge.

By the time the train stopped at Södertälje he was in a better mood. He bought a bottle of mineral water and a stale cheese sandwich from the metal handcart that now replaced the restaurant car on most of the express trains.

4

‘Well,’ Ahlberg said, ‘that's how it happened. It was rather chilly that night and he had one of those old-fashioned electric heaters that he stood beside the bed. Then he kicked off the blanket in his sleep and it fell down over the heater and caught fire.’

Martin Beck nodded.

‘It seems quite plausible,’ Ahlberg said. ‘The technical investigation was completed today. I tried to phone you but you had already left.’

They were standing on the site of the fire at Borenshult and between the trees they could glimpse the lake and the flight of locks where they had found a dead woman three years earlier. All that remained of the burned-down house were the foundation and the base of the chimney. The fire brigade had, however, managed to save a small outhouse.

‘There were some stolen goods there,’ Ahlberg said. ‘He was a fence, this fellow Larsson. But he'd been sentenced before, so we weren't surprised. We'll send out a list of the things.’

Martin Beck nodded again, then said:

‘I checked up on his brother in Stockholm. He died last spring. Stroke. He was a fence too.’

‘Seems to have run in the family,’ Ahlberg said.

‘The brother never got caught but Melander remembered him.’

‘Oh yes, Melander … he's like the elephant, he never forgets. You don't work together any more, do you?’

Only sometimes. He's at headquarters in Kungsholmsgatan. Kollberg too, as from today. It's crazy, the way they keep moving us about.’

They turned their backs on the scene of the fire and went back to the car in silence.

A quarter of an hour later Ahlberg drew up in front of the police station, a low yellow-brick building at the corner of Prästgatan and Kungsgatan, just near the main square and the statue of Baltzar von Platen. Half-turning to Martin Beck he said:

‘Now that you're here with nothing to do you might as well stay for a couple of days.’

Martin Beck nodded.

‘We can go out with the motorboat,’ Ahlberg said.

That evening they dined at the City Hotel on the local speciality from Lake Vättern, a delicious salmon trout. They also had a few drinks.

On Saturday they took the motorboat out on the lake. On Sunday too. On Monday Martin Beck borrowed the motorboat. And again on Tuesday. On Wednesday he went to Vadstena and had a look at the castle.

The hotel he was staying at in Motala was modern and comfortable. He got on well with Ahlberg. He read a novel by Kurt Salomonson called The Man Outside. He was enjoying himself.

He deserved it. He had worked very hard during the winter and the spring had been awful. The hope that it would be a quiet summer still remained.

5

The mugger had nothing against the weather.

It had started to rain early in the afternoon. At first heavily, then in a steady drizzle which had stopped about seven o'clock. But the sky was still overcast and oppressive and the rain was obviously going to start again soon. It was now nine o'clock and dusk was spreading under the trees. Half an hour or so still remained before lighting-up time.

The mugger had taken off his thin plastic raincoat and laid it beside him on the park bench. He was wearing tennis shoes, khaki trousers and a neat grey nylon pullover with a monogram on the breast pocket. A large red bandanna handkerchief was tied loosely around his neck. He had been in the park or its immediate vicinity for over two hours, observing people closely and calculatingly. On two occasions he had studied the passers-by with special interest and each time it had been not one person but two. The first couple had been a young man and a girl; both were younger than himself, the girl was dressed in sandals and a short black-and-white summer dress, the boy wore a smart blazer and light-grey trousers. They had made their way to the shady paths in the most secluded corner of the park. There they had stopped and embraced. The girl had stood with her back to a tree and after only a few seconds the boy had thrust his right hand up under her skirt and inside the elastic band of her panties and started digging with his fingers between her legs. ‘Someone might come,’ she said mechanically, but she had immediately moved her feet apart. The next second she had closed her eyes and started to twist her hips rhythmically, at the same time scratching the back of the boy's well-trimmed neck with the fingers of her left hand. What she had done with her right hand he had not been able to see, although he had been so close to them that he had caught a glimpse of the white lace panties.

He had walked on the grass, following them with silent steps, and stood crouched behind the bushes less than a dozen yards away. He had carefully weighed the pros and cons. An attack appealed to his sense of humour, but on the other hand the girl had no handbag and also he might not be able to stop her from screaming, which in its turn might impede the practice of his profession. Besides, the boy looked stronger and broader across the shoulders than he had first thought, and anyway it wasn't at all certain that he had any money in his wallet. An attack seemed unwise, so he had crept away as silently as he had come. He was no Peeping Tom, he had more important things to do; in any case, he presumed there wasn't much more to see. Before long the young couple had left the park, now suitably far apart. They had crossed the street and entered a block of flats, the outside of which indicated stable middle-class respectability. In the doorway the girl had straightened her panties and bra and drawn a moistened fingertip along her eyebrows. The boy had combed his hair.

At half past eight his attention focused on the next two people. A red Volvo had stopped in front of the ironmongers at the street corner. Two men were in the front seat. One of them got out and went into the park. He was bareheaded and wore a beige-coloured raincoat. A few minutes later the second man had got out and gone into the park another way; he was wearing a cap and tweed jacket but had no overcoat. After about fifteen minutes they had returned to the car, from different directions and at an interval of some minutes. He had stood with his back to them, looking into the window of the ironmongers, and he had overheard clearly what they said.

‘Well?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What do we do now?’

‘Lill-Jans Wood?’

‘In this weather?’

‘Well…’

‘Okay. But then we have coffee.’

‘Okay.’

They had banged the car doors and driven off.

And now it was nearly nine o'clock and he sat on the bench waiting.

He caught sight of her as soon as she entered the park and knew at once which path she would take. A dumpy, middle-aged woman with overcoat, umbrella and large handbag. Looked promising. Maybe she kept a fruit and tobacco kiosk. He got up and put on the plastic raincoat, cut across the lawn and crouched down behind the bushes. She came on along the path, was almost abreast of him now – in five seconds, perhaps ten. With his left hand he drew the bandanna handkerchief up over his nose and thrust the fingers of his right hand into the brass knuckles. She was only a few yards away now. He moved swiftly and his footsteps on the wet grass were almost silent.

But only almost. He was still a yard behind the woman when she turned around, saw him and opened her mouth to scream. Unreflectingly he struck her across the mouth as hard as he could. He heard a crunch. The woman dropped her umbrella and staggered, then fell to her knees, clutching her handbag with both hands as if she had a baby to protect.

He struck her again, and her nose crunched under the brass knuckles. She fell back, her legs doubled under her, and didn't utter a sound. She was streaming with blood and seemed hardly conscious, but all the same he took a handful of sand from the path and strewed it over her eyes. At the same instant that he tore open the handbag her head flopped to one side, her jaw fell open, and she started to vomit.

Handbag, purse, a wrist watch. Not so bad.

The mugger was already on his way out of the park. As if she'd been protecting a baby, he thought. It could have been such a nice neat job. The silly old bitch.

A quarter of an hour later he was home. The time was half past nine on the evening of 9 June 1967, a Friday. Twenty minutes later it started to rain.

6

It rained all night but on Saturday morning the sun was shining again, hidden only now and then by the fluffy white clouds that floated across the clear blue sky. It was 10 June, the summer holidays had begun, and on Friday evening long lines of cars had crawled out of town on their way to country cottages, boat jetties and camping sites. But the city was still full of people who, as the weekend promised to be fine, would have to make do with the makeshift country life offered by parks and open-air swimming pools.

The time was a quarter past nine and a line was already waiting outside the pay window of the Vanadis Baths. Sun-thirsty Stockholmers, craving a swim, streamed up the paths leading from Sveavägen.

Two seedy figures crossed Frejgatan against the red light. One was dressed in jeans and a pullover, the other in black trousers and a brown jacket which bulged suspiciously over the left-hand breast pocket. They walked slowly, peering bleary-eyed against the sun. The man with the bulge in his jacket staggered and nearly bumped into a cyclist, an athletic man of sixty or so in a light-grey summer suit, with a pair of wet swimming trunks on the baggage carrier. The cyclist wobbled and had to put one foot to the ground.

‘Clumsy idiots!’ he shouted, as he rode pompously away.

‘Stupid old fool,’ the man with the jacket said. ‘Looks like a damned millionaire. Why, he might have knocked me down. I might have fallen and broken the bottle.’

He stopped indignantly on the pavement and the mere thought of how near he had been to disaster made him shudder and raise his hand to the bottle in his jacket.

‘And do you think he'd have paid for it? Not likely. Sitting pretty, he is, in a swanky apartment at Norr Mälarstrand with his fridge full of champagne, but the sonofabitch wouldn't think of paying for some poor bloke's bottle of booze that he'd broken. Dirty bastard!’

‘But he didn't break it,’ his friend objected quietly.

The second man was much younger; he took his irate companion by the arm and piloted him into the park. They climbed the slope, not towards the pool like the others but on past the gates. Then they turned off on to the path leading from Stefan's Church to the top of the hill. It was a steep pull and they were soon out of breath. Halfway up the younger man said:

‘Sometimes you can find a few coins in the grass behind the tower. If they've been playing poker there the night before. We might scrape enough together for another half-bottle before the off licence closes…’

It was Saturday and the off licences shut at one o'clock.

‘Not a hope. It was raining yesterday.’

‘So it was,’ the younger man said with a sigh.

The path skirted the fence of the bathing enclosure, which was teeming with bathers, some of them tanned so dark that they looked like Negroes, some of them real Negroes, but most of them pale after a long winter without even a week in the Canary Islands.

‘Hey, wait a minute,’ the younger man said. ‘Let's have a look at the girls.’

The older man walked on, saying over his shoulder:

‘Hell, no. Come on, I'm as thirsty as a camel.’

They went on up towards the water tower at the top of the park. Having rounded the gloomy building, they saw to their relief that they had the ground behind the tower to themselves. The older man sat down in the grass, took out the bottle and started unscrewing the cap. The younger man had continued to the top of the slope on the other side, where a red-painted wooden fence sagged.

‘Jocke!’ he shouted. ‘Let's sit here instead. In case anyone comes.’

Jocke got up, wheezing, and bottle in hand followed the other man, who had started down the slope.

‘Here's a good spot,’ the younger man called, ‘by these bush…’

He stopped dead and bent forward.

‘Christ!’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Jesus Christ!’

Jocke came up behind him, saw the girl on the ground, turned aside and vomited.

She was lying with the top part of her body half hidden under a bush. Her legs, wide apart, were stretched out on the damp sand. The face, turned to one side, was bluish and the mouth was open. Her right arm was bent over her head and her left hand lay against her hip, palm upwards.

The fair, longish hair had fallen across her cheek. She was barefoot and dressed in a skirt and a striped cotton T-shirt that had slipped up, leaving her waist bare.

She had been about nine years old.

There was no doubt that she was dead.

The time was five minutes to ten when Jocke and his mate appeared at the ninth district police station in Surbrunnsgatan. They gave a rambling and nervous account of what they had seen in Vanadis Park to a police inspector called Granlund, who was duty officer. Ten minutes later Granlund and four policemen were on the spot.

Only twelve hours had passed since two of the four policemen had been called to an adjacent part of the park, where yet another brutal robbery had taken place. As nearly an hour had passed between the assault and the time it was reported, everyone had taken it for granted that the assailant had made himself scarce. They had therefore not examined the area closely and couldn't say whether the girl's body had been there at that time or not.

The five policemen established the fact that the girl was dead and that as far as they could tell she had been strangled. That was about all they could do for the moment.

While waiting for the detectives and the men from the technical department their main duty was to see that no busybodies came prying about.

Granlund, casting his eye over the scene of the crime, saw that the men from headquarters were not going to have an easy job. It had obviously rained heavily for some time after the body had been put there. On the other hand he thought he knew who the girl was, and the knowledge didn't make him too happy.

At eleven o'clock the previous evening an anxious mother had come to the police station and begged them to search for her daughter. The girl was eight and a half years old. She had gone out to play at about seven, and had not been heard of since. The ninth district had alerted headquarters and all men on patrol had been given the girl's description. The accident wards of all hospitals had been checked.

The description, unfortunately, seemed to fit.

As far as Granlund knew, the missing girl had not been found. Also, she lived in Sveavägen near Vanadis Park. There seemed no room for doubt.

He thought of the girl's parents waiting at home in suspense, and inwardly he prayed that he would not have to be the one who told them the truth.

When the detectives at last arrived Granlund felt as if he had been standing an eternity in the sunshine near the child's little body.

As soon as the experts began their work he left them to it and walked back to the police station, the image of the dead girl branded on his retina.

7

When Kollberg and Rönn reached the scene of the crime in Vanadis Park the area behind the water tower was properly roped off. The photographer had finished his work and the doctor was busy with his first routine examination of the body.

The ground was still damp and the only footprints near the body were fresh and had almost certainly been made by the men who had found the body. The girl's sandals were lying farther down the slope near the red fence.

When the doctor had finished Kollberg went up to him and said, ‘Well?’

‘Strangled,’ the doctor said. ‘Rape of some sort. Maybe.’

He shrugged.

‘When?’

‘Last evening some time. Find out when she last ate and what…’

‘I know. Do you think it happened here?’

‘I see no signs that it didn't.’

‘No,’ Kollberg said. ‘Why the hell did it have to rain like that.’

‘Huh,’ the doctor said, walking off towards his car.

Kollberg stayed for another half hour, then took a car from the ninth district to the station at Surbrunnsgatan.

The superintendent was at his desk reading a report when Kollberg entered. He greeted him and put the report aside. Pointed to a chair. Kollberg sat down and said:

‘Nasty business.’

‘Yes,’ the superintendent said. ‘Have you found anything?’

‘Not as far as I know. I think the rain has ruined everything.’

‘When do you think it happened? We had an assault case up there last evening. I was just looking at the report.’

‘I don't know,’ Kollberg said. ‘We'll see when we can move her.’

‘Do you think it can be the same guy? That she saw him do it, or something?’

‘If she has been raped it's hardly the same one. A mugger who is also a sex murderer … it's a bit much,’ Kollberg said vaguely.

‘Raped? Did the doctor say so?’

‘He thought it possible.’

Kollberg sighed and rubbed his chin.

‘The boys who drove me here said you know who she is.’

‘Yes,’ the superintendent said. ‘It seems like it. Granlund was in just now and identified her from a photo her mother brought in here last night.’

The superintendent opened a file, took out a snapshot and gave it to Kollberg. The girl who now lay dead in Vanadis Park was leaning against a tree and laughing up at the sun. Kollberg nodded and handed the photo back.

‘Do the parents know that…’

‘No,’ the superintendent said.

He tore a sheet off the note pad in front of him and gave it to Kollberg.

‘Mrs Karin Carlsson, Sveavägen 83,’ Kollberg read aloud.

‘The girl's name was Eva,’ the superintendent said. ‘Someone had better … you had better go there. Now. Before she finds out in a more unpleasant way.’

‘It's quite unpleasant enough as it is,’ Kollberg sighed.

The superintendent regarded him gravely but said nothing.

‘Anyway, I thought this was your district,’ Kollberg said. But he stood up and continued:

‘Okay, okay, I'll go. Someone has to do it.’

In the doorway he turned and said:

‘No wonder we're short of men in the force. You have to be crazy to become a cop.’

As he had left his car by Stefan's Church he decided to walk to Sveavägen. Besides, he wanted to take his time before meeting the girl's parents.

The sun was shining and all traces of the night's rain had already dried up. Kollberg felt slightly sick at the thought of the task ahead of him. It was disagreeable, to say the least. He had been forced into similar tasks before, but now, in the case of a child, the ordeal was worse than ever. If only Martin had been here, he thought; he's much better at this sort of thing than I am. Then he remembered how depressed Martin Beck had always seemed in situations like this, and followed up the train of thought: hah, it's just as hard for everyone, whoever has to do it.