Cop Killer (16 page)

Martin Beck was no expert on precious stones and metals, but he knew enough to know that this was hardly a valuable collection of jewels. Most of them were inexpensive trinkets.

He looked in the closet, which was packed full of dresses, blouses, skirts, and suits, some of them in plastic bags to protect them from dust.

There were neat rows of shoes on the floor. On the shelf was a black fur cap, a sun hat of cotton batik, and a shoe box.

Martin Beck lifted down the shoe box, which was tied with twine. He undid the knot and opened the box.

It was full of letters and picture postcards, and he had only to glance through them to see that they were all written in the same hand and that they all had foreign stamps.

He looked at the post marks.

They were in obvious chronological order - at the bottom, a thick letter dated 1953, and on top a postcard from South Yemen that had been mailed six years ago.

Bertil Mård's collected letters home over fourteen years of marriage and an equal number at sea.

Martin Beck didn't bother to read them. For that matter, the handwriting was virtually illegible. He tied the string around the box and put it back on its shelf.

He heard Kollberg on the cellar stairs. He came into the bedroom a few moments later.

'Mosdy old junk down there. A few tools, an old bicycle, a wheelbarrow, stuff like that. Garden furniture. A laundry room and a fruit cellar. Did you find anything interesting?'

'There are letters from Bertil Mård in a shoe box in the closet Otherwise nothing.'

He walked over to the chest of drawers and began going through the contents. The top drawer was filled with underclothes, handkerchiefs, and nightgowns in neat piles. In the middle one were jumpers, cardigans, and pullovers, and the bottom drawer contained a couple of heavy jumpers, a little book with blue covers labelled Poetry in ornate gold letters, and a thick diary with a clasp and a little heart-shaped padlock.

There were also two photo albums lying under some folded silk scarves.

All these documents dated from Sigbrit Mård's adolescence. The poetry album contained the usual verses written in by girlfriends twenty-five years before.

Martin Beck opened it to the last page and read the verse he

had expected to find.

Here I am at the very end, last in the book but a first-rate friend.

Anne-Charlotte.

Kollberg picked the lock on the diary with a hairpin he found in a bowl on the dresser.

25 December, 1949. Dear diary, Last night you were given to me for Christmas, and from this day on I will confide all my innermost thoughts to you.

Kollberg read several pages.

A third of the book was filled with the same round childish handwriting, but by 13 March that same year, Sigbrit Mård had apparently grown tired of confiding in her diary.

The photo albums contained amateur snapshots of classmates and teachers, parents, siblings, and boyfriends. Way at the back of one of the albums were some loose photographs of a more recent date. A wedding picture - a young bridegroom, his hair plastered down with water, and an even younger bride with clear eyes and apple cheeks.

'Bertil Mård,' said Martin Beck.

'Hell of a big man even way back then,' Kollberg said.

There were also a couple of passport photos of Bertil Mård and several snapshots of Sigbrit apparently taken on the trip to Sassnitz.

They put everything back in the drawer and closed it.

Kollberg went into the bathroom.

Martin Beck heard him open the cabinet over the sink.

'A hell of a lot of make-up and curlers and stuff,' he said. 'But no pills or medicine. Only aspirin and Alka-Seltzer. Funny. Most people have tranquillizers or sleeping pills these days.'

Martin Beck walked over to the bedside table and pulled out the drawer.

There was no medicine there either, but there was, among other things, a pocket calendar.

Martin Beck picked it up and flipped through the pages.

It contained mostly memoranda of the hairdresser, laundry, dentist type. The last one was under 16 October: Car to garage. Otherwise there was nothing but her menstruation days, marked with a little cross, and the letter C, which recurred at regular intervals.

Martin Beck went through the book page by page. In January and February, the C appeared regularly every Thursday. The same in March, except that the second week it appeared on Friday as well, - and the last week in March on both Wednesday and Thursday. In April there was no C on Maundy Thursday, and in May there was none on Ascension Day, also a Thursday, but on the other hand it did appear on three consecutive Saturdays. In June and July there were no C's at all, but in August it showed up three and four times a week. In September and October, the monotony resumed, with a C every Thursday up to 11 October.

Martin Beck heard Kollberg return to the secretaire in the back room. He put the calendar in his pocket, thoughtfully, and looked down into the drawer of the bedside table. There was a little pile of folded papers under a jar of cold cream.

He put the papers on the tabletop and unfolded them one by one. They were mostly receipts, plus a few unpaid bills, all of quite recent date.

At the bottom of the pile were two pieces of paper of an entirely different nature. A couple of short letters or messages, handwritten on thin, lined, light-blue paper.

The first one read as follows.

Dearest, don't wait for me. Sissy's brother is in town, and I can't possibly get away. Call you later this evening if I can. Love and kisses, Clark

Martin Beck read the brief message twice. The handwriting slanted slightly forward, but was smooth and easy to read, almost like printing.

Then he looked at the other slip of paper.

Dearest Sigge, Can you ever forgive me? I wasn't myself, and I didn't mean what I said. You must come on Thursday so I can make amends. I long for you, I love you, Clark

He took the two sheets of paper and went in to Kollberg, who was standing by the secretaire studying a couple of bank books.

'She didn't have much money in the bank,' he said without turning around. 'Made deposits and withdrawals one right after the other. Like when you're trying to save money but can't Before the divorce, she was in much better shape, financially. What have you got there?'

Martin Beck put the two sheets of paper on the secretaire in front of Kollberg. 'Love letters,' I think.'

Kollberg read them.

'It certainly looks that way. Maybe she's run off with this fellow Clark.'

Martin Beck brought out the pocket calendar and showed it to Kollberg, who whistled.

'A lover with regular habits. I wonder why Thursday especially.'

'Maybe he's got a job where he can only get away on Thursdays,' said Martin Beck.

'Drives a beer lorry,' Kollberg said. 'He delivers beer to the pub every Thursday - something like that.'

'Funny Herrgott didn't know about it'

Martin Beck took an empty envelope from the drawer in the sewing table, put the calendar and the two letters into it, and put the envelope in his back pocket

'Are you finished here?' he said.

Kollberg looked around.

'Yes,' he said. 'There's nothing of much interest. Tax forms, birth certificate, some uninteresting letters, receipts, and so on.' He put everything back where it belonged. 'Shall we go?' he said.

As they drove down the road they saw a long line of cars parked outside Folke Bengtsson's place. It was 9.30, and apparently the reporters were up and about.

Kollberg stepped on the accelerator and drove quickly past the crowd of journalists and out on to the main road. They had time to notice that another couple of police cars were parked in the yard beside the house and that the yard had been roped off.

On the way in to Anderslöv they sat for a long time without saying anything.

Finally Martin Beck broke the silence.

'It said, "You must come" in one of those letters,' he said. 'That must mean they didn't meet at her place.'

‘I’ll talk to Herrgott,' said Kollberg confidently. 'Maybe he'll know something.'

Herrgott Allwright was very surprised at Martin Beck's discovery.

He knew of no one named Clark.

There was no one by that name in all of Anderslöv. Wait There was one, but he was seven years old and had just started school

And as far as he knew, Sigbrit worked at the pastry shop in Trelleborg on Thursday evenings.

She didn't usually get home before eleven o'clock or so when she worked evenings.

'He calls her Sigge,' he said. 'I've never heard anyone call her that Sigge. It sounds silly. Anyway, it's a boy's name and doesn't fit a woman like Sigbrit at all.'

He stared at the light-blue sheets of paper and scratched the back of his neck. Then he chuckled.

‘What if she's run off with her lover?' he said. 'In that case, they can dig to their hearts' content, and Folke can turn his garden into a potato patch.'

There was a gentle, southerly wind, and the little bay lay smooth and shiny in the shelter of the land, but further out in the lake, quick breezes drew dark veins across the calm surface of the water. A raw chill rose from the marshy ground wherever the slanting rays of the afternoon sun did not reach, and a light mist hung over the reeds along the shore.

It was 11 November, a Sunday, and the sky continued blue and cloudless. The time was 1.30. The sun would warm for another couple of hours before dusk and the chill of evening took over.

A group of people came walking along the path that followed the southwest shore of the lake. Six women, five men, and two boys about eight to ten years old. They were all wearing rubber boots with their trousers tucked into the tops, and most of them were carrying rucksacks or shoulder bags. They walked quickly and in single file, for the path forced its way between tall clumps of yellow reeds and a thicket of alder and hazel, and there was no room to walk two abreast. They all kept their eyes on the ground, which was a churned-up mess of slippery black mud.

When they had walked this way for some distance, the thicket came to an end, and the path continued on along a fence of rotting

posts and rusty barbed wire. On the other side of the fence was a fellow field, and beyond the field was a dense spruce forest.

The man at the head of the line stopped and surveyed the landscape with a squint. He was slim and wiry and fairly short and looked more like a boy than a fifty-year-old man. His face was tanned, and his brown hair was ruffled.

It took a while for the others to gather around him.

A tall man with a salt-and-pepper beard brought up the rear with long, leisurely strides. He had his hands in the pockets of his windcheater, and he looked at the smaller man with a calm, jocular gaze.

'What are you up to now? Is it time to change course?'

'I thought we might cut across the field to those woods over there,' said the man who seemed to be leading the expedition.

'But that takes us away from the lake,' said one of the women. -

She had thrown herself down on a rock, crossed her legs and lit a cigarette.

'I mean, the whole idea is to walk around the lake,' she went on. 'But you're always trying to head us off in the wrong direction. Anyway, I'm hungry. Aren't we going to eat pretty soon?' The others agreed. They were all hungry and wanted to lighten the loads in their knapsacks.

'We'll rest when we get across the field,' said their leader.

He picked up the smaller of the two boys and put him down again on the other side of the fence. Then he climbed over it himself and set off across the grassy clumps with long strides.

When they reached the spruce woods they found the trees so close together that not even the children could get through easily. There followed a period of discussion, but since they couldn't agree on which way to go, the leader took the children and two of the women and headed off to the right along the woods, while the others, with the tall man in the lead, set off to the left in the direction of the lake.

Fifteen minutes later, the two groups met on the other side of the woods and started looking around for a good place to stop and eat

This time they were all in agreement. They relieved themselves of their knapsacks and shoulder bags in a sunny little glade between a tangle of storm debris and a stack of beech logs, and when one of the men, who was considered to be an expert on campfires, had selected a likely spot for the purpose, everyone began gathering fuel.

There were plenty of dry twigs and branches in amongst the debris, and before long they were making themselves comfortable around a lively, crackling blaze. The rest was well earned, for they had been walking over rather difficult terrain for three hours, almost without a break.

Thermoses, packets of sandwiches, and hip flasks appeared, and they didn't permit the food to silence them. The conversation glided from one subject to another, and the mood was cheerful and relaxed.

A man in a green jacket and a woollen cap stood warming his feet at the fire.

"This lake is too big,' he said. 'Let's take a smaller one next Sunday. Where there aren't quite so many muddy fields.'

He paused to empty a little silver cup of rowanberry aquavit. Then he looked at the sky.

'Lord knows if we'll make it around before it gets dark,' he said.

The fire began to die down and they speared sausages on sharp sticks and grilled them over the coals.

The two boys chased each other around the woodpile.

The botanist in the group had wandered off towards the woods looking for mushrooms. He had already gathered several handfuls of Marasmius scorodonius in the pocket of his parka, and he had a plastic bag full of musk-madder which, when dry, would spread its pleasant odour through his house.

The spruce woods were thinner on this side, and he peered in among the tree trunks and over the needle-strewn ground with a practised eye.

He was not really expecting to find anything. It was late in the season, and the autumn, like the summer, had been dry and warm.

Several yards into the woods he caught sight of what appeared to be a large and beautiful specimen of a parasol mushroom. He put down his bag of musk-madder on a mossy stone at the edge of the woods and started to push his way through the trees. He bent the sprawling branches aside and tried to keep his eye on the place where the mushroom stood.