Martin Beck: The Locked Room Part 4

'Not by her face anyway. And probably not if I saw her in different clothes, in a dress for example.'

Ronn sipped his beer thoughtfully. Then he said: 'Are you absolutely certain it was a woman?'

The other looked at him in surprise. Then he frowned and said hesitatingly: 'Yes, at least I took it for granted it was a chick. But now you mention it I'm not so sure. It was mostly a general impression I got, one usually has a feeling who's a guy and who's a chick, even if nowadays it can be hard to tell 'em apart. I can't actually swear it was a girl. I didn't have time to see what sort of b.r.e.a.s.t.s she had.'

He fell silent and peered at Ronn through the cigarette smoke. 'No, you're right about that,' he said slowly. 'It didn't have to be a girl; it could very well have been a guy. Moreover, that would be more plausible. You don't often hear of girls who rob banks and shoot people.'

'You mean, then, it could just as easily have been a man?' Ronn asked.

'Yes, now that you mention it. In fact it must have been a guy.' 'Well, but the other two? Can you describe them? And the car?' Sjogren took a last drag at his cigarette, then threw the b.u.t.t into the fireplace, where a large number of cigarette ends and dead matches lay already.

'The car was a Renault 16, I know that for sure,' he said. 'It was light grey or beige, I don't know what the colour's called; but it's almost white. I don't remember all the number, but it was an "A" registration and I've a mental image of two threes in the number. There could have been three, of course, but two at least, and I think they stood one after the other, somewhere in the middle of the row of figures.'

'Are you sure it was an "A"-reg?' Ronn asked. 'Not "AA" or "AB", for example?'

'No, just "A". I remember that clearly. I've a h.e.l.l of a good visual memory.'

'Yes, it's very good,' Ronn said. 'If all eyewitnesses had one like yours, life would be much simpler.'

'Oh yes,' said Sjogren, I Am a Camera. Have you read it? By Isherwood.'

'No,' said Ronn. He'd seen the film, though he didn't say so. He'd seen it because he admired Julie Harris. But he neither knew who Isherwood was nor even that the film was based on a novel.

'But you must have seen the film?' said Sjdgren. 'That's how it is with all the good books around. People see the film and don't take the trouble to read the book. Now this film was d.a.m.n good, though it had a stupid tide. How about Wild Nights in Berlin, eh?'

'Oh,' said Ronn, who was sure it was called I Am a Camera when he'd seen it. 'Yes, it does sound rather stupid.'

It was getting dark, and Sten Sjogren got up and lit the floor lamp behind Rpnn's armchair. When he sat down again, Ronn said: 'Well, suppose we go on. You were going to describe the men in the car.'

'Yes, though when I caught sight of them there was only one of them sitting in it'

'Oh?'

'The other was standing on the pavement, waiting with the rear door ajar. He was a big guy, a good bit taller than me and powerfully built. Not fat, but heavy and powerful looking. He could easily have been my age, roughly between thirty and thirty-five, and had lots of frizzy hair - almost like Harpo Marx, but darker - mouse-coloured. He wore black trousers, which looked very tight with those flared legs, and a s.h.i.+ny black s.h.i.+rt The s.h.i.+rt was unb.u.t.toned quite far down the chest, and I think he had some sort of silver thing on a chain around his neck. His face was pretty sunburned or, to be more precise, red. When the chick - if it was a chick - came running along, he opened the rear door for her to jump in and then slammed it shut, sat down in front, and the car sped off at a terrific pace.' 'In which direction?' Ronn asked.

'It swung right across the street and headed up towards the Maria Square.'

'Oh,' Ronn said. 'I see. And the other man?'

'He was sitting behind the wheel, so I didn't see him too well. But he looked younger, can't have been much over twenty. And he was thin and pale, that much I did see. He was wearing a white T-s.h.i.+rt, and his arms were really scrawny. His hair was black, quite long, and seemed dirty. Greasy and straggly. He had sungla.s.ses on, yes, and now I remember he had a wide black watch strap on his left wrist'

Sjogren leaned back in his chair, beer gla.s.s in hand.

'Well, now I think I've told you all I can recall,' he said. 'Or do you reckon I've forgotten something?'

'I don't know,' Ronn said. 'If you should happen to remember anything else, I hope you'll call me. Will you be at home these next few days?'

'Yes, unfortunately,' Sjogren said. 'In feet I'm on holiday but haven't any money to travel anywhere with. So I suppose I'll just have to hang around here.'

Ronn emptied hiis gla.s.s, got up. 'Good,' he said. 'It's very possible we'll be needing your help again a little later on.'

Sjogren, too, got up and followed Ronn down the stairs. 'You mean I'll have to go through it all again?' he said. 'Wouldn't it be best to tape it once and for all?' He opened his front door and Ronn stepped outside.

'What I was thinking was that you might be needed to identify these characters when we catch up with them. It's also possible we may be asking you to come to CID and take a look at some pictures.' They shook hands, and Ronn went on: 'Well, we'll see. We may not have to trouble you further. Thanks for the beer.'

'Oh, that was nothing. If I can be of any help, I'd be pleased to oblige.'

As Ronn drove off, Sten Sjogren waved amicably from his steps.

9.

Police dogs apart, professional sleuths are rarely more than human. Even during the most important and serious investigations they can evince typically human reactions. The tension when some unique and conclusive item of evidence is to be studied, for example, can often become unbearable.

In all this, the special bank robbery squad was no exception. Like their eminent and self-invited guests, they were holding their breath. All eyes in the half-dark room were fixed on the rectangular screen where the bank's film of the Hornsgatan robbery was shortly to be shown. With their own eyes they were not only about to see an armed bank robbery and a murder, but also the person who had committed it and to whom the alert and inventive evening press had already attributed every peculiar trait, dubbing her 'the s.e.x-bomb murderer' and 'the blonde gunwoman in sungla.s.ses' - epithets which only revealed how journalists, lacking any imagination of their own, find inspiration elsewhere. The reality of the case - armed robbery and murder - was too ba.n.a.l for them.

The last s.e.x queen to be caught robbing a bank had been a flat-footed, pimply lady of about forty-five. According to reliable sources, she had weighed almost fourteen stone and had more double chins than there are pages in a book. But not even the false teeth she lost in front of the court gave the lie, in the press's opinion, to its own lyrical description of her appearance. And a horde of uncritical readers were to remain convinced through all eternity that she was a winsome, starry-eyed creature who should have entered the Miss Universe contest Always it had been like this. When women draw attention to themselves by committing a flagrant crime, the evening papers always make them sound as if they've come straight out of Inger Malmroos's school for models.

The pictures of the robbery had only just become available. This was because the ca.s.sette, as usual, had been faulty, and the photo lab had had to take extreme care not to damage the exposed negative. In the end, however, they had managed to pry it loose from the spool and develop it without even fraying its edges. For once the exposure, at least, seemed to have been correct and the results were being predicted as technically perfect.

'What's it to be?' Gunvald Larsson quipped. 'A Donald Duck?'

'The Pink Panther's funnier,' said Kollberg.

'Some guys, of course,' Gunvald Larsson said, 'are hoping for the n.a.z.i rallies at Nuremberg.'

They were both sitting in the front row and spoke in loud voices, but behind them prevailed only a deep silence. All the potentates present, notably the National Police Commissioner and Superintendent Malm from the National Police Board, held their tongues. Kollberg wondered what they were thinking.

Weighing up their chances, no doubt, of making life h.e.l.l for refractory subordinates. Perhaps their thoughts were even harking back to the days when there'd really been some order in things, when Heydrich had been elected president of the International Police a.s.sociation by acclamation. Or perhaps they were thinking how much better the situation had been only a year ago, even, before anyone had dared to doubt the wisdom of once again entrusting all police training to military reactionaries.

The only one who sn.i.g.g.e.red was Bulldozer Olsson.

Formerly Kollberg and Gunvald Larsson had had very little to do with each other. But in recent years certain common experiences had to some extent changed the situation. Not to the point where they could be called friends or where the notion of a.s.sociating outside their work would ever have occurred to them; but ever more frequently they found they were on the same wavelength. And here, in the special squad, they unquestionably had to stick together.

The technical preparations were over. The room was vibrating with suppressed excitement.

'Well, now well see,' Bulldozer Olsson said enthusiastically. 'If the pictures are as good as they say they are, we'll put them on television tonight, and that'll give us the whole gang in a little box.'

'Longlegs is pa.s.sable, too,' Gunvald Larsson said.

'Or Swedish s.e.x,' said Kollberg. 'Fancy - I've never seen a blue movie. You know, Louise, Seventeen, Strips, all that sort of stuff.'

'Quiet over there!' snapped the National Police Commissioner.

The film began. The focus was perfect. None of those present had ever seen anything like such excellent results. Usually the thieves only resembled vague blobs or poached eggs; but this time the image was perfect The camera had been artfully placed to show the cas.h.i.+er's desk from behind, and thanks to a new type of hypersensitive film they could see with perfect clarity the person standing on the other side of the counter.

At first there was n.o.body there. But only half a minute later a person had come into the field of vision, then stopped and looked around - first to the right then to the left. Whereafter the person in question stared straight into the lens, as if purposely to give a full-face view.

Even the clothes showed up clearly; a suede jacket and a well-cut s.h.i.+rt with long, soft points to the collar.

The face itself was forceful and grim, the blonde hair was combed back, and the fair eyebrows were s.h.a.ggy. The eyes wore an air of discontent. Then the figure raised a large hairy hand and, extracting a hair from one nostril, scrutinized it at length.

At once they all saw who it was. Gunvald Larsson. Then the lights went up. The special squad sat speechless.

The National Police Commissioner was the first to speak. 'Nothing of this must get out.' Naturally. Nothing was ever allowed to get out Superintendent Malm said in a shrill voice: 'Absolutely nothing of this must be allowed to come out.' Kollberg let out a guffaw.

'How can this have happened?' Bulldozer Olsson asked. Even he seemed a trifle put out 'Well,' the film expert said, 'there could be a technical explanation. The trigger may have got jammed and the camera started up a bit later than it should have. These are sensitive gadgets, you know.'

'If I see so much as a single word in the press,' thundered the National Police Commissioner, 'then...'

'... then the Ministrll have to order another new carpet for someone's office,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'Maybe there's a kind with a raspberry flavour.'

'Fantastic get-up she was wearing,' snorted Kollberg.

The National Police Commissioner dashed for the door. Superintendent Malm trotted out after him.

Kollberg gasped for air.

'What's one to say about this?' said Bulldozer Olsson. 'Though I say so myself,' Gunvald Larsson said modesdy, 'I think that film was really rather good.'

10.

Kollberg had collected himself and was looking dubiously at the person who, for the time being, he had to regard as his boss.

Bulldozer Olsson was the special squad's main engine. He was in love with bank robberies, and after the past year's avalanche of such events he'd blossomed as never before. It was he who had all the energy and ideas. Week after week he could go on working eighteen hours a day, without once complaining, getting depressed, or even becoming noticeably tired. At times his exhausted colleagues wondered whether he wasn't himself managing director of the Swedish Crime Co., that sinister organization which there was so much talk of. To Bulldozer Olsson police work was the most enjoyable and exciting thing imaginable.

This, no doubt, was because he was not a policeman.

He was a district attorney who was in charge of preliminary investigations into a wholly impenetrable skein of armed bank robberies. One of these was already half-solved, and a few more-or-less guilty individuals were being held in custody, and some had even been charged. But now things had reached such a pa.s.s that new holdups were occurring several times a week, and everybody realized that many of them were in some way and to some extent connected, though just how n.o.body could say.

Furthermore, banks were not the only targets. There had been an enormous increase in a.s.saults on members of the public. Every hour of the day and night people were being struck down in the city's streets and squares, in their own boutiques, in the metro, or in their homes, indeed, everywhere and anywhere. But the bank robberies were deemed by far the most serious. To violate society's banks was to commit an outrage against its very foundations.

The existing social system was obviously hardly viable and only with the best of will could be described as functioning at all. Even this could not be said of the police. During the last two years Stockholm alone had had to shelve 220,000 criminal investigations; and even of the most serious crimes - only a small fraction of the total - only a quarter were ever cleared up.

This being the state of affairs, there was little that those who bore ultimate responsibility could do except shake their heads and look thoughtful. For a long while everyone had been blaming everyone else; and now there was no longer anyone to blame. The only constructive suggestion put forward recently had been that people should be prevented from drinking beer. Since Sweden is a country where beer consumption is rather low anyway, it can be seen just how unrealistic was the so-called thinking of many representatives of the country's highest authorities.

One thing, however, was plain. The police had largely only themselves to blame. After the 1965 nationalization, the entire force now came under a single hat, and from the outset it had been obvious that this hat was sitting on the wrong head.

For a long time now many a.n.a.lysts and researchers had been asking themselves what the philosophy might be that was guiding activities at National Police Headquarters. A question which, of course, went unanswered. In accordance with his doctrine that nothing must ever be allowed to leak out, the National Police Commissioner, on principle, never gave answers to anything.

On the other hand, he was only too fond of speechifying -speeches which, even as samples of sheer rhetoric, were totally uninteresting.

Some years ago someone in the police force had discovered a way of manipulating crime statistics. The methods used, though simple, were not immediately obvious, and without being directly mendacious were nevertheless utterly misleading. It had all started with demands for a more militant and h.o.m.ogeneous police force, for greater technical resources in general, and for more firearms in particular. To get this it had been necessary to exaggerate the hazards that policemen faced. Since verbiage had not proved politically effective enough, it had been necessary to resort to another method: namely, the manipulation of statistics.

At this juncture the political demonstrations during the second half of the sixties had opened up magnificent possibilities. Demonstrators pleading for peace had been suppressed by violence. Hardly ever armed with anything but their banners and their convictions, they had been met by tear gas, water cannons, and rubber batons. Few were the non-violent demonstrations that had not ended in tumult and chaos. Those individuals who had tried to defend themselves had been mauled, arrested, and prosecuted for 'a.s.saulting the police' or 'resisting arrest'. All this information had been fed into the statistics. The method had worked perfectly. Each time a few hundred policemen were sent out to 'control' a demonstration, the figures for alleged a.s.saults against the police had rocketed. The uniformed police had been encouraged 'not to pull their punches', as the expression went, an order which many a constable had been only too delighted to follow whenever possible. Tap a drunk with a baton and the chances of his. .h.i.tting back are always fairly high.

A simple lesson, which anyone could learn.

These tactics had worked. Now the Swedish police were armed to the teeth. All of a sudden, situations that formerly could have been cleared up by a single man equipped with a lead pencil and a pinch of common sense required a busload of police officers equipped with automatics and bullet-proof vests.

The long-term result, however, was something no one had quite foreseen. Violence breeds not only antipathy and hatred but also insecurity and fear.

In the end things had come to such a pa.s.s that people were going about being scared of each other and Stockholm had become a city containing tens of thousands of terrified individuals. And frightened people are dangerous people.

Many of the six hundred officers who suddenly no longer existed had in fact resigned because they were scared - yes, even though they were armed to the teeth and for the most part just sat locked inside their cars.

Many, of course, had fled from Stockholm for other reasons, either because they'd come to dislike the place in general, or because they were disgusted with the treatment they were now obliged to mete out The regime had backfired. As for its deepest motives, they remained shrouded in darkness - a darkness, however, in which some people detected a tint of n.a.z.i brown.

Examples of similar manipulations abounded, and some bore witness to outright cynicism. A year ago there had been a drive against people pa.s.sing bad cheques. People were overdrawing their accounts, and some money had ended up in the wrong pockets. The figures for unsolved petty fraud were regarded as discreditable, and called for radical measures. The National Police Board objected to cheques being accepted as legal tender. Everyone knew what this would mean, people would have to carry a lot of cash with them, and this would give the green light to muggers on the city's streets and squares. Which was precisely what had happened. Fraudulent cheques, of course, disappeared, and the police could boast of a questionable success. The fact that numerous citizens were daily being beaten up was of minor importance.

It was all part and parcel of the rising tide of violence, to which the only answer was ever more numerous and still better armed police.

But where were all these policemen to come from?

The official crime figures for the first six months had been a great triumph. They showed a drop of two per cent, although, as everybody knew, there had really been a ma.s.sive increase. The explanation was simple. Non-existent policemen cannot expose crimes. And every overdrawn bank account had been counted as a crime in itself.

When the political police had been forbidden to bug people's telephones, the theorists of the National Police Board had hastened to their aid. Through scare propaganda and gross exaggeration Parliament had been prevailed on to pa.s.s a law permitting phones to be bugged in the struggle against drugs. Whereupon the anticommunists had calmly continued their eavesdropping, and the drugs trade had flourished as never before.

No, it was no fun, thought Lennart Kollberg, being a policeman. What could a man do as he witnessed the gradual decay of his own organization? As he heard the rats of fascism pattering about behind the skirting boards? All his adult life he had loyally served this organization.

What to do? Say what you think and get the sack? Unpleasant There must be some more constructive line of action. And, of course, there were other police officers besides himself who saw things in the same light. But which, and how many?

No such problems afflicted Bulldozer Olsson. Life, to him, was one big jolly game, and most things as clear as crystal. 'But there's one thing I don't get,' he said.

'Really?' said Gunvald Larsson. 'What?'

'What happened to that car? The roadblocks functioned as they ought to, didn't they?'

'So it appears.'

'So there should have been men on all the bridges within five minutes.'

The south of Stockholm is an island, with six points of access. The special squad had long ago devised detailed schemes by which each of the central Stockholm districts could quickly be sealed off.

'Sure,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'I've checked with the Metropolitan Police. For once everything seems to have clicked.'

'What kind of a car was it?' Kollberg asked. As yet he hadn't had time to catch up on all the, details.