Cop Killer (15 page)

'Am I under arrest now?' Bengtsson said.

'Not quite. We'll drive in to my place and have a little chat. They'll be up from Trelleborg in about half an hour to pick you up and take you down there. Technically, we might say you're in custody, but it's not that formal. We'll go with you to Trelleborg. They'll book you down there. And then nothing will happen for a while.'

Folke Bengtsson seemed a little apathetic as they left his house. He locked the door and gave the key to Allwright 'Will you keep this for me? In case I'm gone for a while? You'll need it anyway, to take care of the fish.' Allwright put the key in his pocket.

It was dark by now, and they climbed into the patrol car in a veritable crossfire of flashbulbs.

They were all three silent as they drove into town.

Allwright picked up some coffee and hot Danish pastry from the cafeteria next to the Co-op. He himself drank tea as usual.

Kollberg had gone back to his chess problem. He didn't even so much as glance at Folke Bengtsson when they came into the room.

Nor did Martin Beck say anything. They had been placed in a situation none of them wanted, and their freedom of choice in dealing with the case had been radically limited.

Allwright, however, had little bent for silence and sombre meditation. He pushed a plastic mug of coffee over to their prisoner.

'Help yourself, Folke. Up here you can still consider yourself a freeman; He laughed.

'More or less. If you try to escape, I guess we'd have to stop you.'

Kollberg grunted. He had a very clear memory of an occasion when Folke Bengtsson had tried to escape.

And it had been Lennart Kollberg, former paratrooper and hand-to-hand combat specialist, who had had to stop him.

'I wish I were home,' he said suddenly.

He said it spontaneously, without really knowing what he meant.

It was true that he missed his wife and children, as it was also true that Folke Bengtsson and this whole case were things he wanted nothing to do with. But on a deeper level, his dissatisfaction was with life in general.

His house in Stockholm, a stone's throw from the metro, was not much to miss. And he certainly didn't miss his daily confrontations with policemen and people in revolt against the law. Sometimes it seemed to him that the only normal thing in his life was his wife and the children. Otherwise, the world seemed filled with policemen and criminals. And at this point in his life, his feelings towards the one category were as negative as towards the other.

It's not right, he thought Life cannot be like a gangster film, with only two kinds of people.

The telephone rang. Allwright answered it

'No, no one had confessed anything... Yes, we have taken a man into custody. That's all I can tell you.'

He hung up and checked the time on his big silver watch.

‘We don't have much time now, Folke,' he said. 'If you know anything about Sigbrit Mård, why don't you tell us now? It would make everything a hell of a lot simpler.'

'I really don't know anything,' said Folke Bengtsson.

Martin Beck looked at him. I don't know anything. Bengtsson hadn't changed. They would have to question him hour after hour, day after day, and he would admit nothing except when they had absolute proof. Maybe not even then.

'Except that I don't like her. No, I don't.'

'That answer is not going to make your lawyer too happy,' Allwright. said.

He patted the dog lying at his feet

'I'm damned if I'd want to defend you, Folke,' he said.

The telephone managed to ring one more time before the detectives from Trelleborg arrived to make the formal arrest

'It's your friend in Stockholm,' said Allwright with his hand over the mouthpiece.

Martin Beck took the receiver.

'Everything's going nicely, I understand,' Malm said.

'You think so?'

'Don't be so misanthropic. You've really grown odd since you missed your promotion.'

How stupid can you be? thought Martin Beck.

'But that isn't why I called,' said Malm acidly. 'There's another thing that seems peculiar. We've had some comments on it from higher up.'

'What's that?'

'The papers report that you're showing favouritism for a man who is actually a murderer and who's now working as a reporter. A character named Gunnarsson.'

'His name is Boman,' said Martin Beck. 'And I just happen to know him from years ago.'

'"Convicted of strangling a man, recently released, and now some sort of auxiliary to the National Murder Squad," is what it says here. I have the story in front of me. I don't suppose I have to tell you how bloody bad we think that looks.'

Everything about Malm was ridiculous, even his expletives.

'And I don't suppose I have to tell you that I don't care what you think,' said Martin Beck.

'No matter what I say, you take it badly,' said Malm plaintively.

'Goodbye.'

They spent the rest of the evening in Trelleborg, which was pretty much a waste of time. ' Martin Beck said he would question the suspect later. Folke Bengtsson was officially booked. The next morning, the police began digging up his garden.

There were no watchful reporters on hand when Martin Beck and Kollberg stepped out on to the steps of the inn early Thursday morning. It was only a little after eight o'clock, and the sun had barely had time to drag itself over the horizon. The air was cold and raw, and the cobblestones on the square still glittered with hoarfrost

They climbed into Kollberg's car and drove down the road towards Domme. Kollberg drove carefully, with an occasional glance into the rear-view mirror. Theirs was the only car on the road.

Allwright had given them a key to Sigbrit Mård's house. He himself had had a locksmith let him in, but once inside he confiscated an extra key that was hanging on a nail in the kitchen.

They drove in silence. Neither one of them was especially talkative in the mornings, and on top of that, Kollberg was unhappy at having missed his breakfast

When they turned off and drove past Folke Bengtsson's house, there was already a Trelleborg police van parked in his yard. It had apparently just arrived. The rear doors were open, and two men in rubber boots and blue-grey overalls were unloading picks and shovels.

A third was standing in the middle of the yard scratching the back of his head as he surveyed the situation.

After another couple of hundred yards, Kollberg stopped the car, and Martin Beck got out and opened the gate to Sigbrit Mård's land. Kollberg parked in front of the door to the garage, which was built against the side wall of the house.

Before going in, they looked around outside. The yard in front was all gravel, with the exception of a circle of grass and rose bushes directly in line with the door, and a strip of topsoil about three feet wide that ran along the front wall of the house. It was stripped and bare; presumably flowers would be planted there for the spring.

Her piece of land was not especially large. Behind the house it consisted primarily of a large lawn with a couple of apple trees, some berry bushes, and, in one corner, a little kitchen garden inside a hedge. On the gravel walk between the kitchen steps and the cellar hatchway stood a lightweight metal rack for drying clothes.

Several pink clothespins were hanging from the lines.

Martin Beck and Kollberg walked back around to the front. It was not a very pretty house - yellow brick on a concrete foundation, with a red tile roof and green trim. Like a box, without embellishment or unnecessary decoration.

Three concrete steps and a green metal railing led up to the front door. Martin Beck opened it with the key Allwright had given him.

They came into a hall with a stone floor. There was a little bureau with curved, gilded legs and a slab of white marble against one wall, and above it hung a mirror in a gold frame, flanked by two crystal sconces. On either side of the bureau there were stools with embroidered cushions.

The living room had two windows feeing the road and one on the side wall above the roof of the garage.

Martin Beck looked around the room and realized what Bertil

Mård had meant when he said his wife was some kind of snob. The room was not furnished for comfort; it was furnished to make an elegant impression.

The floor was covered with oriental rugs that might have been genuine, a crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, the sofa and chairs were upholstered with wine-red plush, and the low oval coffee table was made of polished hardwood.

The walls were decorated sparingly. A few small, dark oil paintings, a couple of hand-painted china plates, and a large mirror in a broad, carved frame.

There was a mahogany cabinet with glass doors containing a collection of knick-knacks and souvenirs that Bertil Mård had presumably brought back from his travels.

Kollberg went out to the kitchen and banged around slamming drawers and cupboards for a while before rejoining Martin Beck, who stood in front of the mahogany cabinet studying the objects inside.

'She keeps a damn tidy house,' Kollberg said. 'Almost meticulous. Clean and neat and everything in its place.'

Martin Beck didn't answer. He was lost in admiration for the lines of a full-rigged ship cleaving the waves of a blue plaster of Paris sea in a large-bellied, small-mouthed quart bottle. Behind it was a tray made of the luminescent blue and green wings of butterflies.

As a boy, he had owned a butterfly tray of that same kind, given to him by some relative just back from a trip to South America.

To him it had represented adventure: foreign ports, primitive jungles and great rivers, mystical places beyond the seven seas, all the distant lands he would definitely explore just as soon as he grew up. For a brief moment, he remembered those dreams and expectations with a sudden clarity that made him feel almost like a traitor to the boy he had once been.

He shook himself and turned his back on the cabinet and his memories.

'A funny living room,' Kollberg said. 'How so?'

'There isn't a single book, no radio, no record player, not even a TV.'

'There was an aerial on the roof,' said Martin Beck. 'She must keep the set in some other room.'

'Herrgott did say she usually works nights,' Kollberg said. 'But she must spend the evening at home once in a while. What do you suppose she does here all by herself?'

Martin Beck shrugged his shoulders.

'Come on, let's have a look at the rest of the house,' he said.

There was a small dining room between the kitchen and the living room. It was conventionally furnished with a round, white lacquered table and four chairs, plus four more chairs against the wall. Two sideboards and a corner cupboard full of glass and porcelain. White lace curtains and potted plants on the window-sill.

They walked through the kitchen and back out into the hall, opened a couple of doors and glanced into a closet and a lavatory. Then they went into the bedroom.

Like the living room, it faced the front of the house, but it was smaller and had only one window.

Through this window they could see the gate they'd forgotten to close and a bit of the road leading off towards Folke Bengtsson's house.

Behind the bedroom there was a spacious bathroom, from which another door led to a room with a window that faced the garden at the rear of the house. It was here, clearly, that Sigbrit Mård spent her free evenings.

' In one corner stood a television set and, in front of it, a comfortable easy chair and a little table with an ashtray, a couple of magazines, and a brass cigarette box. Against one wall was a bookcase containing a fairly unimpressive library.

About thirty paperbacks, a dozen hardbound book-club volumes, a black school bible, a world adas, and several cookbooks.

The remainder of the bookcase was occupied by several piles of magazines, a sewing basket, a transistor radio, some ceramic bowls, and a pair of pewter candlesticks.

The room also contained a secretaire, an armchair, a couch with a lot of pillows, and a low table in front of it. There was a sewing machine on a table in front of the window.

Kollberg opened a drawer in the table. Inside were a couple of fashion magazines and some tissue paper pattern pieces. The other drawer contained stationery, envelopes, a couple of ballpoint pens, and a deck of cards.

Then he turned to the drawers and compartments in the secretaire, which were filled with letters, receipts, and various other documents, all carefully sorted into folders with clearly printed labels:

Martin Beck went back to the bedroom. He stood for a long time staring out of the window towards Folke Bengtsson's house, which was almost completely hidden by the trees. All he could see was a little bit of the roof and the chimney. Behind him, he heard Kollberg go out in the kitchen and, a moment later, clump heavily down the cellar stairs.

The bedroom was as neat as the rest of the house.

Besides the bed and the night table, there was a chest of drawers, a dressing table, a low easy chair and hassock, a couple of straight-backed chairs, and a rustic trunk.

On the floor beside the easy chair was a basket of varicoloured balls of yarn and the beginnings of a piece of knitting.

Martin Beck turned away from the window and caught sight of himself in a mirror that covered the space between the bathroom door and the closet. He seldom looked at himself in the mirror, especially not full length, and he couldn't help noticing that he really looked pretty dishevelled.

His Levi's were wrinkled, his shoes weren't shined, and his blue Dacron jacket was starting to look worn and faded.

He left the mirror and started searching the room systematically. He began with the dressing table.

It was extremely well stocked with bottles, jars, and tubes of various kinds. Sigbrit Mård obviously spent a lot of time on her looks, and her supply of cosmetic preparations was impressive. In addition, there was a red leather jewel box containing a great many bracelets, rings, brooches, earrings, and amulets. There were necklaces, pendants, and strings of beads hanging on a couple of wooden pegs beside the dressing-table mirror.