The Abominable Man (15 page)

In any case she certainly knew her ranks.

“Well, I’d like to go back to that phone call.”

“From Captain Hult?”

“Yes, right. You said that wasn’t the first time you’d spoken to him.”

“No.”

“Did you recognize his voice?”

“Of course not.”

“Why ‘of course’?”

“Because then I wouldn’t have had to ask who it was.”

Mother! Well that’s the way it goes. He should have let Rönn make the call after all.

“Didn’t you think of that, Inspector?” she asked.

“No, as a matter of fact I didn’t.”

Most people would have blushed or hemmed and hawed. Not Martin Beck. He went on undaunted.

“So it could have been anyone at all?”

“Doesn’t it seem odd that just anyone at all would call up and say his name was Palmon Harald Hult?”

“I mean it could have been someone other than Hult.”

“Who?”

Good question, he thought.

“Could you tell if it was an older or a younger man?”

“No.”

“Can you describe the voice at all?”

“Well … it was distinct. Maybe a little gruff.”

Yes, that was an excellent description of Hult’s voice. Gruff and distinct. But there were a lot of policemen who talked that way, particularly the ones with a military background. And not only policemen of course.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to ask Captain Hult?” the woman said.

Martin Beck declined to comment. Instead he headed into deeper water.

“Being a policeman almost always involves making a few enemies.”

“Yes, you said so before. The second time we talked. Are you aware, Inspector, that this is our fifth conversation in less than twelve hours?”

“I’m sorry. You said you didn’t know your husband had any enemies.”

“That’s right.”

“But of course you knew he had certain professional problems.”

It sounded as if she had laughed.

“Now I really don’t understand what you mean.”

Yes, she had actually laughed.

“What I mean,” said Martin Beck mercilessly, “is that many people seemed to think your husband was a bad policeman and outright derelict in his duty.”

That hit home. Gravity was restored.

“Are you joking, Inspector?”

“No,” he said, a little more gently. “I’m not joking. Your husband incurred a lot of complaints.”

“For what?”

“Brutality.”

She drew a sharp breath.

“That’s utterly absurd,” she said. “You must be confusing him with someone else.”

“I don’t believe so.”

“But Stig was the gentlest person I ever met. For example, we’ve always had a dog. Dogs, I mean. Four of them, one after the other. Stig loved them, and he was endlessly patient, even before they were housebroken. He’d work with them for weeks without losing his temper.”

“Really?”

“And he never so much as lifted his hand to the children, especially when they were little.”

Martin Beck had often raised his hand to his children, especially when they were little.

“So he never said anything about his troubles on the job.”

“No. I’ve already told you he practically never mentioned his job. What’s more, I don’t believe that talk for a moment. There simply must be some mistake.”

“But he must have had certain opinions? In general I mean?”

“Yes, he thought society was suffering a moral breakdown. Because of the government.”

Well, that was a view you could hardly blame him for. The trouble was that Stig Nyman belonged to a little minority that would undoubtedly make everything even worse if they got the chance.

“Was there anything else?” Mrs. Nyman asked. “I really have a great deal to do.”

“No, not right now anyway. I’m very sorry I’ve had to trouble you.”

“It’s quite all right.”

She didn’t sound convinced.

“The only thing might be if we have to ask you to identify the voice.”

“Captain Hult’s?”

“Yes, do you think you’d recognize it now?”

“Very likely. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

Martin Beck pushed away the telephone. Strömgren came in with still more papers. Rönn stood by the window looking out, his glasses pushed down to the tip of his nose.

“Yes indeed,” he said tranquilly.

Another quarter heard from.

“What branch of the service was Hult in?”

“The cavalry,” Rönn said.

A bully’s paradise.

“And Eriksson?”

“He was in the artillery.”

There was silence for fifteen seconds.

“Is it the bayonet you’re thinking of?” Rönn said at last.

“Yes.”

“Yes, I thought so.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just that anyone can buy one of those things for five crowns. From army surplus.”

Martin Beck said nothing.

He’d never been awfully impressed with Rönn, but it had never occurred to him that the feeling might be mutual.

There was a tapping on the door.

Melander.

Probably the only man in the world who would tap on his own door.

Lennart Kollberg was uneasy about the time factor. He had a feeling something dramatic ought to happen, but so far nothing had interrupted the routine. The body was gone and the floor had been washed. The bloody bedclothes had been removed. The bed had been rolled away in one direction and the night table in another. All the personal belongings had been put in plastic bags, which had then been placed in a sack. This now lay in the corridor waiting for someone to collect it. The lab
men were gone and not even a chalk outline on the floor recalled the existence of the late Stig Nyman. That method was old-fashioned and rarely used any more. The only ones who missed it seemed to be the newspaper photographers.

As a matter of fact the only thing left in the room was the visitor’s chair, and Kollberg sat on that himself, and thought.

What does a person do after killing someone? He knew from experience that there were a lot of answers to that question.

Kollberg had killed a man himself one time. What had he done afterwards? He’d thought about it long and hard, for years in fact, and in the end he’d turned in his service revolver, with the license and everything, and said he never wanted to carry arms again. That had all happened several years ago and he had a vague memory that the last time he’d carried a pistol was in Motala in the summer of 1964, during the notorious Roseanna case. But he still sometimes caught himself thinking of that unhappy occasion. Like when he looked at himself in the mirror. That person there has killed a man.

During his years on the force he’d stood face to face with more murderers than he cared to think about. And he was aware of the fact that a person’s behavior after committing a violent act has infinite variations. Some people throw up, some people eat a hearty meal, and some people kill themselves. Others panic and run, to no place in particular, just run, and still others quite simply go home and go to bed.

Trying to make guesses on that point was not only difficult, it was also professionally unsound, since it could lead the investigation down the wrong track.

Nevertheless, there was something about the circumstances
surrounding Nyman’s murder that made him ask himself what the man with the bayonet had done afterwards, and what he was doing right now.

What circumstances? In part the purely external violence, which must be an expression of an inner violence at least as great and thus destined to further expression.

But was it really that simple? Kollberg remembered the way he’d felt when Nyman was teaching him to be a paratrooper. At first he’d felt weak and sick and couldn’t eat, but it wasn’t long before he’d climb out of his pile of steaming offal, throw off his protective clothes, shower and head straight for the canteen. And wolf down coffee and pastry. So even things like that could get to be routine.

Another circumstance that influenced Kollberg’s thinking was the way Martin Beck had acted. Kollberg was a very sensitive man, not least of all in regard to his boss. He knew Martin Beck inside and out and had no trouble picking up the nuances in his behavior. Today Martin Beck had seemed uneasy, maybe downright frightened, and that was a thing that happened rarely and never without cause.

So now he sat here with his question. What had the murderer done after the murder?

Gunvald Larsson, never reluctant to guess and take chances, had had an immediate answer.

“He probably went straight home and shot himself,” he’d said.

It was doubtless a possibility worth considering. And maybe it was as simple as that. Gunvald Larsson was often right, but it happened at least as often that he guessed wrong.

Kollberg was prepared to admit that that was only human, but absolutely nothing more. He had always
considered Gunvald Larsson’s qualifications as a policeman highly doubtful.

And it was just this dubious person who now interrupted Kollberg’s speculations by marching into the room together with a corpulent bald-headed man in his sixties. The man looked frustrated, but most people did in the company of Gunvald Larsson.

“This is Lennart Kollberg,” Gunvald Larsson said.

Kollberg stood up and looked questioningly at the stranger, and Gunvald Larsson completed his laconic introduction.

“This is Nyman’s medico.”

They shook hands.

“Kollberg.”

“Blomberg.”

And Gunvald Larsson started throwing out meaningless questions.

“What’s your first name?”

“Carl-Axel.”

“How long have you been Nyman’s doctor?”

“Over twenty years.”

“What was he suffering from?”

“Well, it may be a little involved for a layman …”

“Go right ahead.”

“It’s actually pretty complicated even for a doctor.”

“Oh?”

“The fact is I’ve just come from looking at the X-rays. Seventy of them.”

“And?”

“The diagnosis is largely positive. Good news.”

“What?”

Gunvald Larsson was so taken aback he looked almost dangerous, and the doctor hurriedly went on.

“Well, I mean if he were still alive, of course. Very good news.”

“Which is to say?”

“That he could have been cured.”

Blomberg thought for a moment and then modified his statement.

“Well, at least restored to relative good health.”

“What was wrong with him?”

“As I said, we’ve now determined that. Stig had a medium-sized cyst on the jejunum.”

“On the what?”

“The small intestine. And a small tumor in the liver.”

“And what does that mean?”

“That he could have been restored to a state of relative good health, as I said. The cyst was operable. It could have been removed. It was not of a malignant nature.”

“What’s ‘malignant’?”

“Cancer. It kills you.”

Gunvald Larsson seemed noticeably encouraged.

“That isn’t so hard to understand,” he said.

“As you gentlemen may know, however, we cannot operate on the liver. But the tumor was very small, and Stig ought to have been able to live for several more years.”

Doctor Blomberg nodded in affirmation of himself.

“Stig is physically strong. His general condition is excellent.”

“What?”

“Was, I mean. Good blood pressure and a strong heart. Excellent general condition.”

Gunvald Larsson seemed to have had enough.

The physician made motions as if to go.

“One moment, Doctor,” Kollberg said.

“Yes?”

“You were Inspector Nyman’s doctor for a long time and knew him well?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“What kind of a person was Nyman?”

“Yes, aside from his general condition,” said Gunvald Larsson.

“I’m not a psychiatrist,” said Blomberg and shook his head. “I prefer to stick to internal medicine.”

But Kollberg wasn’t ready to give up quite yet.

“Still you must have had some opinion about him.”

“Stig Nyman was a complex human being, as we all are,” said the doctor cryptically.

“Is that all you have to say?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

“Good-bye,” said Gunvald Larsson.

And there the interview ended.

When the internist had gone, Gunvald Larsson turned to one of his more irritating habits. He pulled systematically at each of his long fingers, one after the other, until the knuckles cracked. In several cases he had to pull two or three times. This was particularly true of his right index finger, which didn’t crack until the eighth attempt.

Kollberg followed the procedure with resigned aversion.

“Larsson?” he said at last.

“Yes, what?”

“Why do you do that?”

“That’s my business,” said Gunvald Larsson.

Kollberg went on trying to guess riddles.

“Larsson,” he said after a while, “can you think yourself into the position of this man who killed Nyman, and the way he reasoned? Afterwards?”

“How do you know it was a man?”

“Very few women know how to handle that kind of a weapon, and still fewer wear a size twelve shoe. Well, can you? Think yourself into his situation?”

Gunvald Larsson looked at him with steady clear-blue eyes.

“No, I can’t. How the hell could I?”

He lifted his head, brushed the blond hair out of his eyes, and listened.

“What the hell’s all that noise?” he said.

Shouts and excited voices could be heard somewhere nearby. Kollberg and Gunvald Larsson immediately left the room and went outside. One of the police department’s black and white VW busses stood by the foot of the steps, and about fifty feet farther off there were five young patrolmen and an older uniformed police officer in the process of pushing back a crowd of civilians.

The patrolmen had linked hands and their commander was waving his rubber nightstick threateningly above his gray crew cut.

Among the crowd were some press photographers, a few female hospital orderlies in white coats, a cabdriver in his uniform, and a number of other people of various ages. The usual collection of thrill-seekers. Several of them were protesting loudly, and one of the younger ones picked up an object from the ground. An empty beer can. He threw it at the policemen and missed.