The Man on the Balcony

The block of flats where the dead girl had lived was obliquely opposite Vanadis Park, between Surbrunnsgatan and Frejgatan. The lift was out of order and he had to walk up the five flights. He stood still for a moment and got his breath before ringing the doorbell.

The woman opened the door almost at once. She was dressed in a brown cotton housecoat and sandals. Her fair hair was tousled, as if she had been pushing her fingers through it over and over again. When she saw Kollberg her face fell with disappointment, then her expression hovered between hope and fear.

Kollberg showed his identity card and she gave him a desperate, inquiring look.

‘May I come in?’

The woman opened the door wide and stepped back.

‘Haven't you found her?’ she said.

Kollberg walked in without answering. The flat seemed to consist of two rooms. The outer one contained a bed, bookshelves, desk, TV set, chest of drawers and two armchairs, one on each side of a low teak table. The bed was made, presumably no one had slept in it that night. On the blue bedspread was a suitcase, open, and beside it lay piles of neatly folded clothes. A couple of newly ironed cotton dresses hung over the lid of the suitcase. The door of the inner room was open; Kollberg caught sight of a blue-painted bookshelf with books and toys. On top sat a white teddy bear.

‘Do you mind if we sit down?’ Kollberg asked, and sat in one of the armchairs.

The woman remained standing and said:

‘What has happened? Have you found her?’

Kollberg saw the dread and the panic in her eyes and tried to keep quite calm.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Please sit down, Mrs Carlsson. Where is your husband?’

She sat in the armchair opposite Kollberg.

‘I have no husband. We're divorced. Where's Eva? What has happened?’

‘Mrs Carlsson, I'm terribly sorry to tell you this. Your daughter is dead.’

The woman stared at him.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’

Kollberg got up and went over to her.

‘Have you no one who can be with you? Your parents?’

The woman shook her head.

‘It's not true,’ she said.

Kollberg put his hand on her shoulder.

‘I'm terribly sorry, Mrs Carlsson,’ he said lamely.

‘But how? We were going to the country…’

‘We're not sure yet,’ Kollberg replied. ‘We think that she … that she's been the victim of…’

‘Killed? Murdered?’

Kollberg nodded.

The woman shut her eyes and sat stiff and still. Then she opened her eyes and shook her head.

‘Not Eva,’ she said. ‘It's not Eva. You haven't … you've made a mistake.’

‘No,’ Kollberg said. ‘I can't tell you how sorry I am, Mrs Carlsson. Isn't there anyone I can call? Someone I can ask to come here? Your parents or someone?’

‘No, no, not them. I don't want anyone here.’

‘Your ex-husband?’

‘He's living in Malmö, I think.’

Her face was ashen and her eyes were hollow. Kollberg saw that she had not yet grasped what had happened, that she had put up a mental barrier which would not allow the truth past it. He had seen the same reaction before and knew that when she could no longer resist, she would collapse.

‘Who is your doctor, Mrs Carlsson?’ Kollberg asked.

‘Doctor Ström. We were there on Wednesday. Eva had had a tummy ache for several days and as we were going to the country I thought I'd better…’

She broke off and looked at the doorway into the other room.

‘Eva's never sick as a rule. And she soon got over this tummy ache. The doctor thought it was a touch of gastric flu.’

She sat silent for a moment. Then she said, so softly that Kollberg could hardly catch the words:

‘She's all right again now.’

Kollberg looked at her, feeling desperate and idiotic. He did not know what to say or do. She was still sitting with her face turned towards the open door into her daughter's room. He was trying frantically to think of something to say when she suddenly got up and called her daughter's name in a loud, shrill voice. Then she ran into the other room. Kollberg followed her.

The room was bright and nicely furnished. In one corner stood a red-painted box full of toys and at the foot of the narrow bed was an old-fashioned doll's house. A pile of schoolbooks lay on the desk.

The woman was sitting on the edge of the bed, her elbows propped on her knees and face buried in her hands. She rocked to and fro and Kollberg could not hear whether she was crying or not.

He looked at her for a moment, then went out into the hall where he had seen the telephone. An address book lay beside it and in it, sure enough, he found Doctor Ström's number.

The doctor listened while Kollberg explained the situation and promised to come within five minutes.

Kollberg went back to the woman, who was sitting as he had left her. She was making no sound. He sat down beside her and waited. At first he wondered whether he dared touch her, but after a while he put his arm cautiously around her shoulders. She seemed unaware of his presence.

They sat like this until the silence was broken by the doctor's ring at the door.

8

Kollberg was sweating as he walked back through Vanadis Park. The cause was neither the steep incline, the humid heat after the rain, nor his tendency to corpulence. At any rate not entirely.

Like most of those who were to deal with this case, he was jaded before the investigation started. He thought of the repulsiveness of the crime itself and he thought of the people who had been so hard hit by its blind meaninglessness. He had been through all this before, how many times he couldn't even say offhand, and he knew exactly how horrible it could turn out to be. And how difficult.

He thought too of the swift gangsterization of this society, which in the last resort must be a product of himself and of the other people who lived in it and had a share in its creation. He thought of the rapid technical expansion that the police force had undergone merely during the last year; despite this, crime always seemed to be one step ahead. He thought of the new investigation methods and the computers, which could mean that this particular criminal might be caught within a few hours, and also what little consolation these excellent technical inventions had to offer the woman he had just left, for example. Or himself. Or the set-faced men who had now gathered around the little body in the bushes between the rocks and the red fence.

He had only seen the body for a few moments, and at a distance, and he didn't want to see it again if he could help it. This he knew to be an impossibility. The mental image of the child in the blue skirt and striped T-shirt was etched into his mind and would always remain there, together with all the others he could never get rid of. He thought of the wooden-soled sandals on the slope and of his own child, as yet unborn; of how this child would look in nine years’ time; of the horror and disgust that this crime would arouse, and what the front pages of the evening papers would look like.

The entire area around the gloomy, fortress-like water tower was roped off now, as well as the steep slope behind it, right down to the steps leading to Ingemarsgatan. He walked past the cars, stopped at the cordon and looked out over the empty playground with its sandpits and swings.

The knowledge that all this had happened before and was certain to happen again was a crushing burden. Since the last time they had got computers and more men and more cars. Since the last time the lighting in the parks had been improved and most of the bushes had been cleared away. Next time there would be still more cars and computers and even less shrubbery. Kollberg wiped his brow at the thought and the handkerchief was wet through.

The journalists and photographers were already there, but fortunately only a few of the inquisitive had as yet found their way here. The journalists and photographers, oddly enough, had become better with the years, partly thanks to the police. The inquisitive would never be any better.

The area around the water tower was strangely quiet, despite all the people. From afar, perhaps from the swimming pool or the playground at Sveavägen, cheerful shouts could be heard and children laughing.

Kollberg remained standing by the cordon. He said nothing, nor did anyone speak to him.

He knew that the homicide squad had been alerted, that the search was being stabilized, that men from the technical division were examining the scene of the crime, that the vice squad had been called in, that a central office was being organized to receive tips from the public, that a special inquiry squad was being prepared to go from door to door, that the coroner was ready and waiting, that every radio patrol car was on the watch, and that no resources would be spared, even his own.

Yet he allowed himself this moment of reflection. It was summer. People were swimming. Tourists were wandering about, map in hand. And in the shrubbery between the rocks and the red fence lay a dead child. It was horrible. And it might get worse.

Still another car, perhaps the ninth or tenth, hummed up the hill from Stefan's Church and stopped. Without actually turning his head, Kollberg saw Gunvald Larsson get out and come up to him.

‘How is it going?’

‘Don't know.’

‘The rain. It poured with rain all night. Probably…’

For once, Gunvald Larsson interrupted himself. After a moment he went on:

‘If they take any footprints they're probably mine. I was here last evening. Soon after ten.’

‘Oh.’

‘The mugger. He struck down an old lady. Not fifty yards from here.’

‘So I heard.’

‘She had just shut up her fruit and confectionery kiosk and was on her way home. With the entire day's takings in her handbag.’

‘Oh?’

‘Every single penny of it. People are crazy,’ Gunvald Larsson said.

He paused again. Nodded towards the rocks and the shrubbery and the red fence and said:

‘She must have been lying there then.’

‘Presumably.’

‘It had already started raining when we got here. And the civil patrol, ninth district, had been here three quarters of an hour before the robbery. They didn't see anything either. She must have been lying here then too.’

‘They were looking for the mugger,’ Kollberg said.

‘Yes. And when he got here they were in Lill-Jans Wood. This was the ninth time.’

‘What about the old woman?’

‘Ambulance case. Rushed to hospital. Shock, fractured jaw, four teeth knocked out, broken nose. All she saw of the man was that he had a red bandanna handkerchief over his face. Lousy description.’

Gunvald Larsson paused again and then said:

‘If I'd had the dog van…’

‘What?’

‘Your admirable pal Beck said that I should send out the dog van, when he was up last week. Maybe a dog would have found…’

He nodded again in the direction of the rocks, as though unwilling to put what he meant into words.

Kollberg didn't like Gunvald Larsson particularly, but this time he sympathized with him.

‘It's possible,’ Kollberg said.

‘Is it sex?’ Gunvald Larsson asked with some hesitation.

‘Presumably.’

‘In that case I don't suppose there's any connection.’

‘No, I don't suppose there is.’

Rönn came up to them from inside the cordon and Larsson said at once:

‘Is it sex?’

‘Yes,’ Rönn said. ‘Looks like it. Pretty certain.’

‘Then there's no connection.’

‘What with?’

‘The mugger.’

‘How are things going?’ Kollberg asked.

‘Badly,’ Rönn said. ‘Everything must have been washed away by the rain. She's soaked to the skin.’

‘Christ, it's sickening,’ Larsson said. ‘Two maniacs prowling around the same place at the same time, one worse than the other.’

He turned on his heel and went back to the car. The last they heard him say was:

‘Christ, what a bloody awful job. Who'd be a cop…’

Rönn watched him for a moment. Then he turned to Kollberg and said:

‘Would you mind coming for a moment, sir?’

Kollberg sighed heavily and swung his legs over the rope.

Martin Beck did not go back to Stockholm until Saturday afternoon, the day before he was due back on duty. Ahlberg saw him off at the station.

He changed trains at Hallsberg and bought the evening papers at the station bookstall. Folded them and tucked them into his raincoat pocket and didn't open them until he had settled down on the express from Gothenburg.

He glanced at the banner headlines and gave a start. The nightmare had begun.

A few hours later for him than for the others. But that was about all.

9

There are moments and situations that one would like to avoid at all costs but which cannot be put off. Police are probably faced with such situations more often than other people, and without a doubt they occur more often for some policemen than for others.

One of these situations is to question a woman called Karin Carlsson less than twenty-four hours after she has learned that her eight-year-old daughter has been strangled by a sex maniac. A lone woman who, despite injections and pills, is still suffering from shock and is so apathetic that she is still wearing the same brown cotton housecoat and the same sandals she had on when a corpulent policeman she had never seen before and would never see again had rung her doorbell the day before. Moments such as that immediately before the questioning begins.

A detective superintendent in the homicide squad knows that this questioning cannot be put off, still less avoided, because apart from this one witness there is not a single clue to go on. Because there is not yet a report on the autopsy and because the contents of that report are more or less already known.

Twenty-four hours earlier Martin Beck had been sitting in the stern of a rowboat taking up the nets that he and Ahlberg had put down early the same morning. Now he was standing in a room at investigation headquarters at Kungsholmsgatan with his right elbow propped on a filing cabinet, far too ill at ease even to sit down.

It had been thought suitable for this questioning to be conducted by a woman, a detective inspector of the vice squad. She was about forty-five and her name was Sylvia Granberg. In some ways the choice was a very good one. Sitting at the desk opposite the woman in the brown housecoat she looked as unmoved as the tape recorder she had just started.

When she switched off the apparatus forty minutes later she had undergone no apparent change, nor had she once faltered. Martin Beck noticed this again when, a little later, he played back the tape together with Kollberg and a couple of others.

GRANBERG: I know it's hard for you, Mrs Carlsson, but unfortunately there are certain questions we must put to you. WITNESS: Yes.

G: Your name is Karin Elisabet Carlsson?

W: Yes.

G: When were you born?

W: Sev … nineteenthir …

G: Can you try and keep your head turned towards the microphone when you answer?

W: Seventh of April 1937.

G: And your civil status?

W: What … I …

G: I mean are you single, married or divorced?

W: Divorced.

G: Since when?

W: Six years. Nearly seven.

G: And what is your ex-husband's name?

W: Sigvard Erik Bertil Carlsson.

G: Where does he live?

W: In Malmö … I mean he's registered there … I think.

G: Think? Don't you know?

MARTIN BECK: He's a seaman. We haven't been able to locate him yet.

G: Wasn't the husband liable for support of his daughter?

MB: Yes, of course, but he doesn't seem to have paid up for several years.

W: He … never really cared for Eva.

G: And your daughter's name was Eva Carlsson? No other first name?

W: No.

G: And she was born on the fifth of February 1959?

W: Yes.

G: Would you be good enough to tell us as exactly as possible what happened on Friday evening?

W: Happened … nothing happened. Eva … went out.

G: At what time?

W: Soon after seven. She'd been watching TV and we'd had our dinner.

G: What time was that?

W: At six o'clock. We always had dinner at six, when I got home. I work at a factory that makes lampshades … and I call for Eva at the afternoon nursery on the way home. She goes there herself after school … then we do the shopping on our way …

G: What did she have for dinner?

W: Meatballs … could I have a little water?

G: Of course. Here you are.

W: Thank you. Meatballs and mashed potatoes. And we had ice cream afterwards.

G: What did she drink?

W: Milk.

G: What did you do then?

W: We watched TV for a while … it was a children's programme.

G: And at seven o'clock or just after she went out?

W: Yes, it had stopped raining then. And the news had started on TV. She's not very interested in the news.

G: Did she go out alone?

W: Yes. Do you … you see it was quite light and the school holidays had begun. I told her she could stay out and play until eight. Do you think it … was careless of me?

G: Certainly not. By no means. Then you didn't see her again?

W: No … not until … no, I can't …

G: The identification? We needn't talk about that. When did you start getting worried?

W: I don't know. I was worried the whole time. I'm always worried when she's not at home. You see, she's all …

G: But when did you start looking for her?

W: Not until after half past eight. She's careless sometimes. Stays late with a playmate and forgets to look at the time. You know, children playing …

G: Yes. I see. When did you start searching?

W: About a quarter to nine. I knew she had two playmates the same age she used to go to. I called up the parents of one of them but got no answer.

MB: The family's away. Gone out to their summer cottage over the weekend.

W: I didn't know that. I don't think Eva did either.

G: What did you do then?

W: The other girl's parents have no telephone. So I went there.

G: What time?

W: I can't have got there until after nine, because the street door was locked and it took a while before I got in. I had to stand and wait until someone came. Eva had been there just after seven, but the other girl hadn't been allowed out. Her father said he thought it was too late for little girls to be out alone at that hour. (Pause)

W: Dear God if only I'd … But it was broad daylight and there were people everywhere. If only I hadn't…

G: Had your daughter left there at once?

W: Yes, she said she'd go to the playground.

G: Which playground do you think she meant?

W: The one in Vanadis Park, at Sveavägen. She always went there.

G: She can't have meant the other playground, the one up by the water tower?

W: I don't think so. She never went there. And certainly not alone.

G: Do you think she might have met some other playmates?

W: None that I know of. She always used to play with those two.

G: Well, when you didn't find her at this other place, what did you do then?

W: I … I went to the playground at Sveavägen. It was empty.

G: And then?

W: I didn't know what to do. I went home and waited. I stood in the window watching for her.

G: When did you call the police?

W: Not until later. At five or ten past ten I saw a police car stop by the park and then an ambulance came. It had started raining again by then. I put on my coat and ran there. I … I spoke to a policeman standing there, but he said it was an elderly woman who had hurt herself.

G: Did you go home again after that?

W: Yes. And I saw the light was on in the flat. I was so happy because I thought she had come home. But it was myself who had forgotten to put it out.

G: At what time did you call the police?

W: By half past ten I couldn't stand it any longer. I called up a friend, a woman I know at work. She lives at Hökarängen. She told me to call the police at once.

G: According to the information we have you called at ten minutes to eleven.

W: Yes. And then I went to the police station. The one in Surbrunnsgatan. They were awfully nice and kind. They asked me to tell them what Eva looks … looked like and what she had on. And I'd taken a snapshot with me so they could see what she looked like. They were so kind. The policeman who wrote everything down said that a lot of children got lost or stayed too long at the home of some playmate but that they all usually turned up safely after an hour or two. And …

G: Yes?

W: And he said that if anything had happened, an accident or something, they'd have known about it by that time.

G: What time did you get home again?

W: It was after twelve by then. I sat up waiting … all night. I waited for someone to ring. The police. They had my telephone number, you see, but no one called. I called them up once more anyway. But the man who answered said he had my number written down and that he'd call up at once if … (Pause)

W: But no one called. No one at all. Not in the morning either. And then a plainclothes policeman came and … and said … said that …

G: I don't think we need go on with this.

W: Oh, I see. No.

MB: Your daughter has been accosted by so-called molesters once or twice before, hasn't she?

W: Yes, last autumn. Twice. She thought she knew who it was. Someone who lived in the same block as Eivor, that's the friend who has no telephone.

MB: The one who lives in Hagagatan?

W: Yes. I reported it to the police. We were up here, in this building, and they got Eva to tell a lady all about it. They gave her a whole lot of pictures to look at too, in a big album.

G: There's a record of all that. We got the material out of the files.

MB: I know. But what I was going to ask is whether Eva was molested by this man later. After you reported him to the police?

W: No … not as far as I know. She didn't say anything … and she always tells me …

G: Well, that's about all, Mrs Carlsson.

W: Oh. I see.

MB: Forgive my asking, but where are you going now?

W: I don't know. Not home to …

G: I'll come down with you and we can talk about it. We'll think of something.

W: Thank you. You're very kind.

Kollberg switched off the tape recorder, stared gloomily at Martin Beck and said:

‘That bastard who molested her last autumn…’

‘Yes?’

‘It's the same one Rönn's busy with downstairs. We went and fetched him straight off at midday yesterday.’

‘And?’

‘So far it's merely a triumph for computer technique. He only grins and says it wasn't him.’

‘Which proves?’

‘Nothing, of course. He has no alibi either. Says he was at home asleep in his one-room flat at Hagagatan. Can't quite remember, he says.’

‘Can't remember?’

‘He's a complete alcoholic,’ Kollberg said. ‘At any rate we know that he sat drinking at the Röda Berget restaurant until he was chucked out at about six o'clock. It doesn't look too good for him.’

‘What did he do last time?’

‘Exposed himself. He's an ordinary exhibitionist, as far as I can make out. I have the tape of the interview with the girl here. Yet another triumph for technology.’

The door opened and Rönn came in.

‘Well?’ Kollberg asked.

‘Nothing so far. We'll have to let him come round a bit. Seems done in.’

‘So do you,’ Kollberg said.

He was right; Rönn looked unnaturally pale and his eyes were swollen and red-rimmed.

‘What do you think?’ Martin Beck asked.

‘I don't know what to think,’ Rönn replied. ‘I think I'm sickening for something.’