The Abominable Man (23 page)

It took several minutes for the gunfire to die down and stop.

That anyone might have hit Åke Eriksson (if in fact that’s who it was) seemed utterly out of the question.

The temporary headquarters was an exceptionally cute little yellow wooden house with a black metal roof, an enclosed porch, and a tall hood on the chimney.

Twenty minutes after the unsuccessful airborne landing, most of the assembly were still in shock.

“He shot down the helicopter,” said Malm in disbelief and probably for the tenth time.

“Oh, so you’ve come to that conclusion too,” said Gunvald Larsson, who had just returned from his observation post.

“I’ll have to ask for military assistance,” said Malm.

“Oh I don’t think …” said Kollberg.

“Yes,” said Malm. “That’s our only chance.”

The only chance to dump the responsibility on someone else without too great a loss of prestige, thought Kollberg. What could the army do?

“What can the army do?” said Martin Beck.

“Bomb the building,” said Gunvald Larsson. “Barrage this part of town with artillery. Or …”

Martin Beck looked at him.

“Or what?”

“Call in the paratroops. Might not even have to use people. We could drop a dozen police dogs.”

“Sarcasm is extremely out of place at this particular moment,” said Martin Beck.

Gunvald Larsson didn’t reply. Rönn suddenly spoke up instead. For some reason he had chosen this moment to study his notes.

“Well, I see this happens to be Eriksson’s thirty-sixth birthday.”

“Hell of a funny way to celebrate,” said Gunvald Larsson. “But wait a minute. If we set up the police orchestra on the street and play ‘Happy Birthday to You,’ that might put him in a jolly mood. And then we could drop him a poison birthday cake with thirty-six candles.”

“Shut up, Gunvald,” said Martin Beck.

“We haven’t used the fire department,” said Malm.

“No,” said Kollberg. “But after all it wasn’t the fire department that killed his wife. He’s got damned good vision, and as soon as it dawns on him that there are disguised policemen among the firemen …”

He stopped.

“What does Eriksson’s wife have to do with this?” Malm asked.

“A good deal,” said Kollberg.

“Oh, that old story,” said Malm. “But there is something
to what you say. Maybe some relative could talk him into giving up. His girl friend, for example.”

“He doesn’t have one,” Rönn said.

“Okay, but anyway. Maybe his daughter or his parents.”

Kollberg shivered. It seemed more and more evident that the Superintendent had picked up his knowledge of police work at the movies.

Malm got up and walked out to the cars.

Kollberg looked long and searchingly at Martin Beck. But Martin Beck didn’t meet his gaze. He was standing by the wall in the old gate-keeper’s room and looked somehow sad and inaccessible.

Nor did the situation warrant any particular optimism.

There were now three people dead—Nyman, Kvant and Axelsson—and with the crash of the helicopter, the number of injured had risen to seven. Those were sinister statistics. Kollberg hadn’t had time to feel anything in particular while he was trying to save his own life outside the Eastman Institute, but now he was afraid. Afraid, partly, that further recklessness would cost the lives of still more policemen, but mostly that Eriksson would suddenly abandon the principle of shooting only at the police. Because at that instant the scope of the disaster would expand enormously. There were all too many people within his range, most of them in the hospital complex or in the apartments along Odengatan. And what could anyone do about it? If time really counted, there was only one way out. To somehow storm the roof. And what would that cost?

Kollberg wondered what Martin Beck was thinking. He wasn’t used to being left in the dark on that point, and it irritated him to be so now. But it didn’t last long,
because just then the Superintendent appeared in the doorway, and Martin Beck looked up at him.

“This is a one-man job,” he said.

“For who?”

“For me.”

“I can’t permit that,” said Malm at once.

“If you’ll excuse me, it’s my decision to make.”

“Just a minute,” said Kollberg. “What are you basing that conclusion on? Technical considerations? Or moral ones?”

Martin Beck looked at him but said nothing.

For Kollberg that was answer enough. Both.

And if Martin Beck had made the decision, Kollberg wasn’t the man to oppose it. They knew each other too well for that, and too long.

“How are you planning to do it?” said Gunvald Larsson.

“Get into one of the apartments below him and go out through a window toward the yard. The window under the balcony on the north. And go up with a grappling ladder.”

“Yes, that might work,” said Gunvald Larsson.

“Where do you want Eriksson?” Kollberg asked.

“Toward the street, and preferably on the upper roof, on top of the north penthouse.”

Kollberg wrinkled his forehead and put his left thumb against his upper lip.

“He probably won’t go there willingly,” said Gunvald Larsson. “Because he’d be vulnerable there. For a good shot.”

“Wait a minute,” Kollberg said. “If I’ve got the construction of that roof straight, the penthouses sit on the actual roof of the building like boxes. They’re a couple of yards in from the street, and between the penthouse roofs
and the outer edge there’s a slanting glass roof that slopes in. So there’s a hollow there.”

Martin Beck looked at him.

“Yes, that’s right,” Kollberg went on, “and I have the feeling he was lying right there when he shot at the car on Odengatan.”

“But at that point he wasn’t running the risk of getting shot at himself,” Gunvald Larsson objected. “But by this time a sharpshooter on top of the Bonnier Building or up in the church tower … no, wait, I guess not from the Bonnier Building.”

“And he hasn’t thought of the church tower,” Kollberg said. “For that matter, there isn’t anyone up there anyway.”

“No,” said Gunvald Larsson. “Stupidly enough.”

“Okay. Now to get him over there, or at least to get him up on the penthouse roof, we’ll have to do something to draw his attention.”

Kollberg furrowed his brow again and everyone else was quiet.

“That building is a little farther from the street than the ones on either side,” he said. “Roughly six feet. I figure if we do something right down in the corner, in the angle where the two buildings come together, and as close to them as possible, he’ll have to get up on the upper roof in order to see. He’d hardly dare just lean out over the rail on the lower level. We could have one of the fire trucks …”

“I don’t want any firemen involved,” said Martin Beck.

“We can use the police that are already in firemen’s uniforms. And if they stick close to the walls he can hardly get at them.”

“Unless he’s got some hand grenades,” said Gunvald Larsson pessimistically.

“And what will they do?” asked Martin Beck.

“Make noise,” Kollberg said. “That’s enough. I’ll take care of that detail. But you, on the other hand, you’ve got to be quiet as hell.”

Martin Beck nodded.

“Yes,” said Kollberg. “I guess you know that.”

Malm looked narrowly at Martin Beck.

“Am I to regard you as a volunteer?” he asked finally.

“Yes.”

“I have to say I admire you,” said Malm. “But frankly I don’t understand you.”

Martin Beck didn’t answer.

He entered the building on Dalagatan fifteen minutes later. He’d stuck close to the walls, with the interlinking light metal ladders under his arm.

At the same time, one of the fire trucks, siren wailing, swung around the corner from Observatoriegatan.

He was carrying the little shortwave radio in his coat pocket and his 7.65 mm Walther in its shoulder holster. He waved off one of the civilian-clad patrolmen who’d sneaked in by way of the furnace room and started slowly up the stairs.

When he reached the top he opened the apartment door with a master key that Kollberg had somehow produced, went in, hung his overcoat and jacket in the hall.

He automatically glanced around at the apartment, which was tastefully and pleasantly furnished, and wondered for a moment who lived there.

The deafening bellow of the fire engine went on through it all.

Martin Beck felt calm and relaxed. He opened the window at the back of the building and took his bearings. He was directly under the north balcony. He assembled the ladder, threaded it out through the window and
hooked it fast to the rail of the balcony ten feet farther up.

Then he stepped down from the window, walked back into the apartment and switched on his radio. He made contact with Rönn at once.

From his point on top of the Bonnier Building, five hundred yards to the southwest and over twenty stories above the ground, Einar Rönn stared across the hospital complex toward the building on Dalagatan. There were tears in his eyes from the fresh wind, but he could quite distinctly see the spot he was supposed to observe. The roof of the penthouse on the north.

“Nothing,” he said into the radio. “Still nothing.”

He heard the fire engine howling, and then he saw a shadow slither across the little sunlit piece of roof and he put his mouth to the radio.

“Yes. Now,” he said, rather excitedly. “Now he’s up there. On this side. He’s lying down.”

Twenty-five seconds later the siren stopped. For Rönn, half a kilometer away, the difference was slight. But only an instant later he again saw the patch of shadow on the roof over there far away, and he saw a figure rise to its feet and he said, “Martin! Come in!”

This time his voice was really excited. No one answered.

If Rönn had been a good shot, which he wasn’t, and if he’d had a rifle with a telescopic sight, which he didn’t, he would have had a chance of hitting the figure on the roof. If he’d had the nerve to shoot, which he doubted. By this time, the person he saw might actually be Martin Beck.

•   •   •

For Einar Rönn, it didn’t mean much that a fuse blew in the fire truck and the scream of the siren stopped.

For Martin Beck, it meant everything.

As soon as he got Rönn’s signal he put down the radio, twisted out through the window and climbed quickly up to the balcony. Directly in front of him he had the windowless rear of the penthouse and a narrow, rusty iron ladder.

When the protecting siren was cut off, he found himself on the way up this ladder with his pistol in his right hand.

In the wake of the massive, vibrating howl came what seemed like total silence.

The barrel of his pistol hit the right side of the iron ladder with a light echoing clang.

Martin Beck heaved himself up to the roof, had his head and shoulders already over the edge.

Six feet in front of him stood Åke Eriksson, his feet set wide on the roof, his target pistol aimed straight at Martin Beck’s chest.

He himself was still holding his Walther pointed up and to one side, caught in the middle of a movement.

What did he have time to think?

That it was too late.

That he recognized Eriksson more readily than he’d expected to—the blond moustache, the combed-back hair. The gas mask pushed around to the back of his neck.

That’s what he had time to see. Plus the oddly shaped Hammerli with its huge grip and the steel-blue material of the square barrel. The pistol staring at him with death’s small black eye.

He’d read that somewhere.

Most of all, that it was too late.

Eriksson shot. He saw the blue eyes just in that hundredth of a second.

And the flash from the muzzle.

The bullet struck him in the middle of the chest. Like a sledgehammer.

The little balcony was roughly six feet deep and ten feet long. A narrow iron ladder was firmly bolted to the inside wall, and led up to the black sheet-iron roof. On the two short walls there were closed doors into the building, while on the side toward the yard was a high railing of thick opaque glass plates, and above it an iron beam that ran between the outside corners of the two side walls. On the glazed brick tiles of the balcony floor stood a collapsible rack for beating carpets.

Martin Beck lay on his back on this sparse network of galvanized iron pipes. His head was bent back and his neck rested against the heavy pipe that constituted the frame of the carpet rack.

He slowly regained consciousness, opened his eyes and looked up into the clear blue sky. His vision began to swim and he closed his eyes again.

He remembered, or rather perhaps still felt, the terrible impact against his chest and how he had fallen. But he had no memory of landing. Had he plunged down into the yard, the whole height of the building? Could a man survive a fall like that?

Martin Beck tried to lift his head to look around, but when he tensed his muscles the pain was so piercing that
for a moment he passed out again. He didn’t repeat the attempt, but looked around from under half-closed lids as well as he could without moving his head. He could see the ladder and the black edge of the roof, and realized that his fall hadn’t been more than a couple of yards.

He closed his eyes. Then he tried to move his arms and legs one at a time, but the pain stabbed at him as soon as he moved a muscle anywhere. He realized he’d been hit by at least one shot in the chest, and he was mildly surprised to be alive. He was not, however, gripped by the dizzying joy that the people in novels seemed to feel in these situations. Nor, oddly enough, was he afraid.

He wondered how much time had passed since he’d been hit, and whether he’d been hit again after losing consciousness. Was the man still up there on the roof? He didn’t hear any shots.

Martin Beck had seen his face, at once the face of a child and of an old man. How was that possible? And his eyes—insane with fear or hate or desperation, or maybe just utterly vacant.

Martin Beck had somehow imagined that he understood this man, that a part of the fault was his own, that he must help, but the man on the roof was beyond all help. At some point during the last twenty-four hours he had taken the decisive step across the border into insanity, into a world where nothing existed except revenge, violence and hate.