The Laughing Policeman (9 page)

The living room, which had two windows on to the street, had a pleasant, cosy atmosphere. Against one wall stood a huge bookcase with carved sides and top piece. Apart from it and a wing chair upholstered in leather, the furniture looked fairly new. A bright-red rya rug covered most of the floor, and the thin woollen curtains had exactly the same shade of red.

The room was irregular in shape, and from the far corner, a short passage led out into the kitchen. Through an open door in the corridor one could see into the other rooms. The kitchen and bedroom faced the courtyard at the back.

Åsa Torell sat in the leather armchair and tucked her feet under her. She pointed to two safari chairs, and Martin Beck and Kollberg sat down. The ashtray on the low table between them and the young woman was filled to overflowing with cigarette butts.

'I do hope you realize how sorry we are that we have to intrude like this,' Martin Beck said. 'But it was essential to talk to you as soon as possible.'

Åsa Torell did not answer at once. She picked up the cigarette that lay burning on the edge of the ashtray and drew on it deeply. Her hand was inclined to shake and she had dark rings under her eyes.

'Of course I do,' she said. 'It was just as well you came. I've been sitting in this chair ever since... well, since I heard that... I've been sitting here trying to realize that it's true.'

'Miss Torell,' Kollberg said. 'Haven't you anyone who can come here and be with you?'

She shook her head.

'No. And anyway, I don't want anyone here.'

'Your parents?'

Again she shook her head.

'Mum died last year. And Dad has been dead for twenty years.' Martin Beck leaned forward and gave her a searching look. 'Have you slept at all?' he asked.

'I don't know. The ones that were here yesterday gave me a couple of pills, so I expect I did sleep for a while. It doesn't matter.' I'll be all right'

Stubbing out the cigarette, she murmured, her eyes lowered, 'I'll just have to try and get used to the fact that he's dead. It may take time.'

Neither Martin Beck nor Kollberg could think of anything to say. Martin Beck suddenly noticed that the room was stuffy and the air thick with cigarette smoke. An oppressive silence weighed on them all. At last Kollberg cleared his throat and said gravely, 'Miss Torell, do you mind if we ask you one or two things about Stenst— about Åke?'

Åsa Torell raised her eyes slowly. Suddenly they twinkled and she smiled.

'You surely don't mean for me to call you Superintendent Beck and Inspector Kollberg? You must call me Åsa, because I'm going to say Martin and Lennart to you. You see, I know you both quite well in a way'

She gave them a mischievous look and added, "Through Åke. He and I saw quite a lot of each other. We've lived here for several years.'

Messrs Kollberg and Beck, undertakers, thought Martin Beck. Pull your socks up. The girl's OK.

‘We've heard about you, too,' Kollberg said in a lighter tone.

Åsa went over and opened a window. Then she took the ashtray out into the kitchen. Her smile was gone and her face had a set look. She came back with a new ashtray and curled up again on the chair.

‘Would you mind telling me just what happened,' she said. 'I wasn't told much yesterday and I'm not going to read the papers.' Martin Beck lit a Florida. 'OK,' he said.

She sat quite still, never taking her eyes off him while he related the course of events as far as they had been able to reconstruct it Only certain details did he omit. When he had finished Åsa said, 'Where was Åke going? Why was he on that bus at all?'

Kollberg glanced at Martin Beck and said, 'That's what we were hoping you would be able to tell us.'

Åsa Torell shook her head.

'I've no idea.'

'Do you know what he was doing earlier in the day?' Martin Beck asked.

She looked at him in surprise.

'Don't you know? He was working all day. Surely you ought to know what he was doing?'

Martin Beck hesitated a moment. Then he said, "The last time I saw him alive was on Friday. He was up for a while in the morning.'

She got up and paced about. Then she turned around.

'But he was working both on Saturday and on Monday. We left here together on Monday morning. Didn't you see Åke on Monday?' She stared at Kollberg, who shook his head.

'Did he say he was going out to Västberga?' Kollberg asked. 'Or to Kungsholmsgatan?'

Åsa thought for a moment

'No, he didn't say where he was going. That probably explains it He must have been working on something in town.'

'Did you say he worked on Saturday, too?' Martin Beck asked. She nodded.

'Yes, but not all day. We left here together in the morning, and I finished at one and came straight home. Åke got home not long after. He had done the shopping. On Sunday he was free. We spent the whole day together.'

She went back to the armchair and sat down, clasped her hands round her drawn-up knees and bit her lower lip.

'Didn't he tell you what he was working on?' Kollberg asked.

Åsa shook her head.

'Didn't he usually tell you?' Martin Beck asked.

'Oh, yes. We told each other everything. But not lately. He said nothing about this last job. I thought it was funny he didn't talk to me about it He always used to discuss the different cases, especially when it was something tricky and difficult. But perhaps he wasn't allowed -'

She broke off and raised her voice.

'Anyway, why are you asking me? You were his superiors. If you're trying to find out whether he told me any police secrets, then I can assure you he didn't He didn't say one word about his job during the last three weeks.'

'Perhaps it was because he didn't have anything special to tell you about,' Kollberg said soothingly. 'The last three weeks have been unusually uneventful and we've had very litde to do.'

Åsa looked hard at him.

'How can you say that? Åke, at any rate, had a lot to do. He was working practically night and day.'

Rönn looked at his watch and yawned.

He glanced at the stretcher trolley and the person who lay there, bandaged beyond description. Then he regarded the complex apparatus that was apparently necessary to keep the injured man alive, and the snooty middle-aged nurse who checked that everything was functioning as it should. At the moment she was deftly changing one of the rigged-up drip bottles. Her actions were quick and precise; they showed many years' training and admirable economy of movement

Rönn sighed and yawned again behind the mask.

The nurse spotted it at once and gave him a swift, disapproving glance.

He had spent far too many hours in this antiseptic isolation ward with its cold light and bare white walls, or roaming about the corridor outside the operating theatre.

Moreover, for most of the time he had been in the company of a man called Ullholm, whom he had never seen before but who nevertheless turned out to be a plainclothes detective.

Rönn was not one of the shining lights of the age and he didn't pretend to be particularly well informed. He was quite content with himself and with life in general, and thought that things were pretty good as they were. It was these qualities, in feet, that made him a useful and capable policeman. He had a simple, straightforward attitude to things and had no talent for creating problems and difficulties which did not exist.

He liked most people and most people liked him.

But even to someone with Rönn's uncomplicated outlook, this Ullholm stood out as a monster of nagging tedium and reactionary stupidity.

Ullholm was dissatisfied with everything, from his salary grade, which not surprisingly was too low, to the police commissioner, who hadn't the sense to take strong measures.

He was indignant that children were not taught manners at school and that discipline was too slack within the police force.

He was particularly virulent about three categories of citizens who had never caused Rönn any headaches or worry: foreigners, teenagers and socialists.

Ullholm thought it was a scandal that beat officers were allowed to have beards.

'A moustache at the very most,' he said. 'But even that is extremely questionable. You see what I mean, don't you?'

He considered that there had been no law and order in society since the thirties.

He put the greatly increasing crime and brutality down to the feet that the police were not given proper military training and no longer wore sabres.

The introduction of right-hand traffic was a scandalous blunder that had made the situation much worse in a community that was already undisciplined and morally corrupt

'Furthermore, it increases promiscuity,' he said. ‘You see what I mean, don't you?'

'Huh,' said Rönn.

'Promiscuity. All these turn-around areas and parking facilities along the main highways. You see what I mean, don't you?'

He was a man who knew most things and understood everything. Only on one occasion did he consider himself forced to ask Rönn for information. He began by saying, 'When you see all this laxity you long to get back to nature. I'd make for the mountains if it weren't that the whole of Lapland is lousy with Lapps. You see what I mean, don't you?'

'I'm married to a Lapp girl,' Rönn said.

Ullholm looked at him with a peculiar mixture of distaste and curiosity. Lowering his voice, he said, 'How interesting and extraordinary. Is it true that Lapp women have it crosswise?'

'No,' Rönn replied wearily. 'It is not true. It's just a wrong idea that many people have.'

Rönn wondered why the man hadn't long since been transferred to the lost-and-found office.

Ullholm droned on incessantly and concluded every declaration of principle with the words, 'You see what I mean, don't you?'

Rönn saw only two things.

First: what had actually happened at investigation headquarters when he had asked the innocent question, 'Who's on duty at the hospital?'

Kollberg had rooted indifferently among his papers and said, 'Someone called Ullholm.'

The only one to recognize the name was Gunvald Larsson, who exclaimed,'What! Who?'

'Ullholm,' Kollberg repeated.

'It must be stopped! We'll have to send along someone to look after him. Someone more or less sane.'

Rönn had turned out to be this more-or-less sane person. Still just as innocently, he had asked, 'Am I to relieve him?'

'Relieve him? No, that's impossible. He'll think then that he's been slighted. He'll write hundreds of petitions. Report the national police board to the civil ombudsman. Call up the minister of justice.'

And as Rönn was on the way out, Gunvald Larsson had given him a final instruction: 'Einar.' 'Yes?'

'And don't let him say one word to the witness until you've seen the death certificate.'

Second: that he must in some way dam up the spate of words. At last he did find a theoretical solution. Put into practice, it worked as follows:

Ullholm wound up a long declaration by saying, 'It goes quite without saying that as a private person and a conservative, a citizen in a free democratic country, I don't make the slightest discrimination among people on account of colour, race or opinion. But you just imagine a police force swarming with Jews and communists. You see what I mean, don't you?'

Whereupon Rönn cleared his throat modestly behind his mask and said, 'Yes. But as a matter of feet, I myself am one of those socialists, so ...'

'A communist?'

‘Yes. A communist.'

Ullholm wrapped himself in sepulchral silence and went over to the window.

He had been standing there now for two hours, grimly staring out at the treacherous world surrounding him.

Schwerin had been operated on three times; both the bullets had been removed from his body but none of the doctors looked particularly cheerful and the only answers Rönn had received to his discreet questions had been shrugs.

But about a quarter of an hour ago one of the surgeons had come into the isolation ward and said, 'If he is going to regain consciousness at all, it should be within the next half-hour.'

'Will he pull through?'

The doctor gave Rönn a long look and said, 'It seems unlikely. He has a good physique, of course, and his general condition is fairly satisfactory.'

Rönn looked down at the patient dejectedly, wondering just how a person should look before his general condition could be regarded as not so good or just plain bad.

He had carefully thought out two questions, which for safety's sake he had written down in his notebook.

The first one was:

Whodid the shooting?

And the second:

Whatdid he look like?

He had also made one or two other preparations: set up his portable transistor tape recorder on a chair at the head of the bed, plugged in the microphone and hung it over the chairback. Ullholm had not taken part in these, contenting himself with an occasional critical glance at Rönn from his place over by the window.

The clock showed twenty-six minutes past two when the nurse suddenly bent over the injured man and beckoned the two policemen with a swift, impatient gesture, at the same time putting out her other hand and pressing the bell.

Rönn hurried over and seized the microphone.

'I think he's waking up,' the nurse said.

The injured man's face seemed to undergo some sort of change. A quiver passed through his eyelids and nostrils.

‘Yes,' the nurse said. 'Now.'

Rönn held out the microphone.

‘Who did the shooting?' he asked.

No reaction. After a moment Rönn repeated the question.

'Who did the shooting?'

Now the man's lips moved and he said something. Rönn waited only two seconds before saying, 'What did he look like?'

The injured man reacted again and this time the answer was more articulated.

A doctor entered the room.

Rönn had just opened his mouth to repeat question number two when the man in the bed turned his head to the left. The lower jaw slipped down and a slimy, bloodstreaked pulp welled out of his mouth.

Rönn looked up at the doctor, who consulted his instruments and nodded gravely.