The Laughing Policeman (10 page)

Ullholm came up to Rönn and snapped, 'Is that really all you can get out of this questioning?'

Then he said in a loud, bullying voice, 'Now listen to me, my good man, this is Detective Inspector Ullholm speaking -'

'He's dead,' Rönn said quietly.

Ullholm stared at him and uttered one word: 'Bungler.'

Rönn pulled out the microphone plug and took the tape recorder over to the window. Turned the spool back cautiously with his forefinger and pressed the playback button.

'Whodid the shooting?’

'Dnrk'

'Whatdid he look like?’

'Koleson!

'What do you make of this?' he asked.

Ullholm glared at Rönn for at least ten seconds. Then he said, 'Make of it? I'm going to report you for breach of duty. It can't be helped. You see what I mean, don't you?'

He turned on his heel and strode energetically from the room. Rönn looked sadly after him.

An icy gust of wind whipped a shower of needle-sharp grains of snow against Martin Beck as he opened the main door of police headquarters, making him gasp for breath. He lowered his head to the wind and hurriedly buttoned his overcoat The same morning he had at last capitulated to Inga's nagging, to the freezing temperature and to his cold, and put on his winter coat Pulling the woollen scarf higher round his neck, he started walking towards the centre of town.

When he had crossed Agnegatan he stopped, at a loss, trying to decide what bus to take. He had not yet learned all the new routes since the trams had been taken off in conjunction with the change-over to right-hand traffic in September.

A car pulled up beside him. Gunvald Larsson wound the side window down and called, 'Jump in.'

Martin Beck gratefully settled himself into the front seat.

'Ugh, what horrible weather. You hardly have time to notice there's been a summer before winter starts all over again. Where are you off to?'

'Vastmannagatan,' Gunvald Larsson replied. 'I'm going up to have a talk with the daughter of the old girl in the bus.'

'Good,' said Martin Beck. 'You can let me off outside Sabbatsberg Hospital'

They drove across Kungsbron and past the old market hall. Minute grains of snow swirled up against the windscreen.

'This sort of snow is utterly useless,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'It doesn't even lie. Just flies about blocking the view.'

Unlike Martin Beck, Gunvald Larsson liked cars and was considered a very good driver.

They followed Vasagatan to Norra Bantorget and outside Norra Latin secondary school they overtook a doubledecker bus on route 47.

'Ugh!' Martin Beck exclaimed. 'From now on we'll feel ill at the very sight of one of those buses.'

Gunvald Larsson cast a quick glance at it

'Not the same kind,' he said. 'That one's a German bus. Bussing.'

After a minute or so he said, 'Are you coming with me to see Assarsson's wife? The guy with the condoms. I'm to be there at three o'clock.'

'I don't know,' Martin Beck said.

'I thought as you're in the vicinity. It's only one block away from Sabbatsberg. Then I can drive you back afterwards.'

'Perhaps. It depends when I finish with that nurse.'

At the corner of Dalagatan and Tegnérgatan they were stopped by a man in a yellow protective helmet and with a red flag in his hand. Inside the grounds of Sabbatsberg Hospital extensive rebuilding was going on; the old buildings were to be torn down and new ones were already shooting up. At present they were blasting away the high rocks toward Dalagatan. As the noise of the explosion was still echoing between the house walls, Gunvald Larsson said, 'Why don't they blow the whole of Stockholm to bits in one go instead of doing it piecemeal? They ought to do what Ronald Reagan or whatever-his-name-is said about Vietnam: cover it with Tarmac and paint on yellow stripes and make car parks of the goddamned place. It could hardly be worse than when the town planners get their way.'

Martin Beck got out of the car in front of the entrance to the part of the hospital nearest the Eastman Institute where the maternity ward and the women's clinic were located.

The turn-around area in front of the doors was empty, but as he came nearer he saw a woman in a sheepskin coat peering out at him through the glass doors. She came out and said, 'Superintendent Beck? I'm Monika Granholm.'

She seized his hand in an iron grip and squeezed it passionately. He almost seemed to hear the bones of his hand crunch and he hoped that she didn't exert the same strength when handling the newborn babies.

She was almost as tall as Martin Beck and considerably larger. Her complexion was fresh and rosy, her teeth white and strong, the light-brown hair was thick and wavy and the irises in her big beautiful eyes had the same colour as her hair. Everything about her radiated health and strength.

The dead girl in the bus had been small and delicate and must have looked very fragile beside this roommate.

They went out towards Dalagatan.

'Do you mind if we go to the Wasahof just across the street?' Monika Granholm asked. 'I must have something inside me before I can talk.'

The lunch hour was over and there were several vacant tables in the restaurant. Martin Beck chose a window table, but Monika Granholm preferred to sit farther inside.

'I don't want anyone from the hospital to see us,' she said. 'You've no idea how they gossip.'

She confirmed this by regaling Martin Beck with choice tidbits of the gossip while she set to work heartily on a mountainous helping of meatballs and mashed potatoes. Martin Beck watched her enviously under lowered lids. As usual he was not hungry, only slightly sick, and he drank coffee in order to make his condition a little worse. He let her finish eating and was about to steer the conversation on to her dead colleague when she pushed her plate away and said, 'That's better. Now you can fire away with your questions, and I'll try to answer as well as I can. May I just ask one question first?'

'Of course,' Martin Beck replied, offering her a Florida from the pack.

She shook her head.

'I don't smoke, thanks. Have you caught that madman yet?' 'No,' Martin Beck said. 'Not yet'

'People are awfully het up, you know. One of the girls from the maternity ward doesn't dare take the bus to work any more. She's afraid the maniac will suddenly be standing there with his submachine gun. She's taken a taxi to and from the hospital ever since it happened. You must see that you catch him.'

She looked exhortingly at Martin Beck.

'We're doing our best,' he said.

She nodded.

'Good,' she said.

'Thank you,' Martin Beck replied gravely. 'What is it you want to know about Britt?' 'How well did you know her? How long had you two been flatmates?'

'I knew her better than anyone, I should think. We've been roommates for three years, ever since she started here at Sabb. She was the world's best friend and a very capable nurse. Although she was delicate she worked hard. The perfect nurse. Never spared herself.'

She took the coffee pot and filled Martin Beck's cup.

'Thank you,' he said. 'Didn't she have a boyfriend?'

'Oh yes, an awfully nice fellow. I don't think they were formally engaged, but she had already given me to understand she'd soon be moving. I've an idea they were going to get married in the new year. He already has a flat'

'Had they known each other long?'

She bit her thumbnail and thought hard.

'Ten months at least He's a doctor. Well, they say girls take up nursing just for the chance of marrying doctors, but it wasn't so with Britt anyway. She was awfully shy, and scared of men, if anything. Then she went on the sicklist last winter, she was anaemic and generally run-down, and she had to go for frequent checkups. That's how she met Bertil. It was love at first sight She used to say it was his love that made her well, not his treatment'

Martin Beck sighed resignedly.

'What's wrong with that?' she asked suspiciously.

'Nothing at all. Did she know many men?'

Monika Granholm smiled and shook her head.

'Only the ones she met at the hospital. She was very reserved. I don't think she'd ever been with a man until she met this Bertil.'

She drew patterns on the table with her finger. Then she frowned and looked at Martin Beck.

'Is it her love life you're interested in? What's that got to do with it?'

Martin Beck took his wallet out of his breast pocket and laid it in front of him on the table.

'Beside Britt Danielsson in the bus sat a man. That man was a policeman and his name was Åke Stenström. We have reason to suspect that he and Miss Danielsson knew one another and were together on the bus. What we're interested to know is this: Did Miss Danielsson ever mention the name Åke Stenström?'

He took Stenström's photograph out of the wallet and put it in front of Monika Granholm.

'Have you ever seen this man?'

She looked at the photo and shook her head. Then she picked it up and studied it more closely.

‘Yes,' she said. 'In the papers. Though this picture's better.'

Handing back the photograph she said, 'Britt didn't know that man. I can almost swear to that And it's quite out of the question that she would have allowed anyone but her fiance" to see her home. She just wasn't that type.'

Martin Beck put the wallet back in his pocket

"They may have been friends and -She shook her head vigorously.

'Britt was very proper, very shy and, as I said, almost afraid of men. Besides, she was head over heels in love with Bertil and would never have looked at another fellow. Neither as a friend nor anything else. What's more, I was the only person on earth she confided in, except Bertil of course. She told me everything. I'm sorry, Superintendent, but this must be a mistake.'

Opening her handbag, she took out her purse.

'I must get back to my babies. I have seventeen at the moment'

She started poking in her purse but Martin Beck put out his hand and checked her.

'This is on the national government,' he said.

When they were standing outside the hospital gates Monika Granholm said, 'It is possible they might have known each other, been childhood playmates or schoolmates and met by chance. But that's all I can think of. Britt lived in Eslöv until she was twenty. Where did this policeman come from?'

'Hallstahammar,' Martin Beck replied. 'What is this doctor's name besides Bertil?'

'Persson.'

'And where does he live?' 'Gillerbacken 22, Bandhagen.'

He held out his hand with some hesitation and for safety's sake kept his glove on.

'My regards to the national government and thanks for the lunch,' Monika Granholm said, and strode off briskly down the slope.

Gunvald Larsson's car was parked outside Tegnérgatan 40. Martin Beck looked at his watch and pushed open the street door.

The time was twenty minutes past three, which meant that Gunvald Larsson, who was always punctual, had already been with Mrs Assarsson for twenty minutes. By this time he had probably found out the main events of her husband's life ever since he started school; Gunvald Larsson's interrogation technique was to begin at the beginning and uncover eveiything step by step. While the method could be effective, often it was merely tiresome and wasted time.

The door of the flat was opened by a middle-aged man wearing a dark suit with a silver-white tie. Martin Beck introduced himself and showed his official badge. The man held out his hand.

'I'm Ture Assarsson, brother of the... of the dead man. Please come in, your colleague is already here.'

He waited while Martin Beck hung up his overcoat and then led the way through a pair of tall double doors.

'Marta, my dear, this is Superintendent Beck,' he said.

The living room was large and rather dark. In a low, oat-coloured sofa, which was over three yards long, sat a lean woman in a black jersey coat and skirt, with a glass in her hand. Putting the glass down on a black marble table in front of the sofa, she held out her hand with gracefully bent wrist, as though expecting him to kiss it Martin Beck took her dangling fingers clumsily and mumbled, 'My condolences, Mrs Assarsson.'

On the other side of the marble table stood a group of three low, pink easy chairs, and in one of them sat Gunvald Larsson, looking peculiar. Only when Martin Beck, after a condescending gesture from Mrs Assarsson, sat down himself did he realize Gunvald Larsson's problem.

As the construction of the chair really permitted only an outstretched horizontal position, and it would look odd with a reclining interrogator, Gunvald Larsson had more or less folded himself double. He was red in the face from the discomfort and glared at Martin Beck between his knees, which stuck up like two alpine peaks in front of him.

Martin Beck twisted his legs first to the left, then to the right, then he tried to cross them and wedge them under the chair, but it was too low. At last he adopted the same position as Gunvald Larsson.

Meanwhile the widow had drained her glass and held it out to her brother-in-law to be refilled. He gave her a searching look and then went and fetched a carafe and a clean glass from a sideboard.

'You'll have a glass of sherry, won't you, Superintendent' he said.

And before Martin Beck had time to protest the man had filled the glass and placed it on the table in front of him.

I was just asking Mrs Assarsson if she knew why her husband was on that bus on Monday night' Gunvald Larsson said

'And I gave the same reply to you as I did to the person who had the bad taste to question me about my husband only seconds after I had been informed of his death. That I don't know.'

She raised her glass to Martin Beck and drained it in one gulp. Martin Beck made an attempt to reach his sherry glass but missed by about a foot and fell back into the chair.

'Do you know where your husband was earlier in the evening?' he asked.

Putting down her glass, she took an orange-coloured cigarette with a gold tip out of a green glass box on the table. She fumbled with the cigarette and tapped it several times on the lid of the box before allowing her brother-in-law to light it for her. Martin Beck noticed that she was not quite sober.