The Fire Engine That Disappeared

On the afternoon of Friday, the eighth of March, Gunvald Larsson was sitting in a room at the police station in Kungsholmsgatan. He was wearing a white polo sweater and a pale grey suit with slanting pockets. Both hands were bandaged and the bandage around his head reminded him very strongly of the popular picture of General von Döbeln during the battle of Jutas in Finland. He also had two bandage patches on his face and neck. Some of his brushed-back fair hair had been singed away, as had his eyebrows, but his clear blue eyes looked just as blank and discontented as ever.

There were several other people in the room.

For instance, Martin Beck and Kollberg, who had been called there from the Murder Squad in Västberga, and Evald Hammar who was their superintendent and until further notice considered responsible for the investigation. Hammar was a large, heavily built man and his thick mane of hair had by now turned almost white in the course of duty. He had already begun to count the days until he retired, and regarded every serious crime of violence as persecution of himself personally.

‘Where are the others?’ asked Martin Beck.

As usual, he was standing to one side, fairly near the door, leaning with his right elbow against a filing cabinet.

‘What others?’ asked Hammar, well aware of the fact that the composition of the investigation team was entirely his affair. He had sufficient influence to be able to second any individual member of the force he wanted and was used to working with.

‘Rönn and Melander,’ said Martin Beck stoically.

‘Rönn is at South Hospital and Melander at the scene of the fire,’ said Hammar shortly.

The evening papers lay spread out over the desk in front of Gunvald Larsson and he was rustling angrily among them with his bandaged hands.

‘Damned hacks,’ he said, shoving one of the papers over towards Martin Beck. ‘Just look at that picture.’

The picture took up three columns and portrayed a young man in a trench coat and a narrow-brimmed hat, a troubled look on his face, standing poking with a stick in the still-smoking ruins of the house in Sköldgatan. Diagonally behind him, in the left-hand corner of the picture, stood Gunvald Larsson, staring foolishly into the camera.

‘You perhaps don’t come out to your best advantage,’ said Martin Beck. ‘Who’s the guy with the walking stick?’

‘His name is Zachrisson. A rookie from the Second District. Absolute idiot. Read the caption.’

Martin Beck read the caption.

The hero of the day, Inspector Gunwald Larsson (r) made a heroic contribution during last night’s fire by saving several people’s lives. Here he can be seen examining the remains of the house, which was totally destroyed.

‘Not only do the blasted bunglers not even know the difference between right and left,’ mumbled Gunvald Larsson, ‘but they…’

He did not say anything more, but Martin Beck knew what he meant, and nodded thoughtfully to himself. The name was spelled wrong too. Gunvald Larsson looked at the picture with distaste and pushed the paper away with his arm.

‘And I look moronic too,’ he said.

‘There are drawbacks to being famous,’ said Martin Beck.

Against his will, Kollberg, who detested Gunvald Larsson, squinted down at the scattered newspapers. All the pictures were equally misleading and every front page was decorated with Gunvald Larsson’s staring eyes underneath glaring headlines.

Heroic deeds and heroes and God knows what else, thought Kollberg, sighing dejectedly. He was sitting hunched up in a chair, fat and flabby, his elbows on the desk.

‘So we find ourselves in the strange position of not knowing what happened?’ said Hammar severely.

‘Not all that strange,’ said Kollberg. ‘I personally hardly ever know what’s happened.’

Hammar looked critically at him and said:

‘I mean we don’t know whether the fire was arson or not.’

‘Why should it be arson?’ asked Kollberg.

‘Optimist,’ said Martin Beck.

‘’Course it was bloody well arson,’ said Gunvald Larsson. ‘The house blew up practically right in front of my nose.’

‘And are you certain the fire began in this man Malm’s room?’

‘Yes. As good as.’

‘How long had you had the house under observation?’

‘About half an hour. Personally. And before that, that fathead Zachrisson was there. Hell of a lot of questions, by the way.’

Martin Beck massaged the bridge of his nose between his right-hand thumb and forefinger. Then he said:

‘And are you certain no one went in or out during that time?’

‘Yes, I’m damned sure of that. What happened before I went there, I don’t know. Zachrisson said that three people had gone in and no one had come out.’

‘Can one rely on that?’

‘Don’t think so. He seems unusually dumb.’

‘You don’t mean that, do you?’

Gunvald Larsson looked angrily at him and said:

‘What the hell’s all this about anyway? I’m standing there and the miserable house catches fire. Eleven people were trapped inside and I got eight of them out.’

‘Yes, I’ve noticed that,’ said Kollberg, glancing sideways at the newspapers.

‘Is it quite certain that it is a question of only three people killed in the fire?’ Hammar asked.

Martin Beck took some papers out of his inside pocket and studied them. Then he said:

‘It seems so. That man Malm, another called Kenneth Roth who lived above Malm, and then Kristina Modig, who had a room in the attic. She was only fourteen.’

‘Why did she live in the attic?’ asked Hammar.

‘Don’t know,’ said Martin Beck. ‘We’ll have to find that out.’

‘There’s a hell of a lot more we’ve got to find out,’ said Kollberg. ‘We don’t even know that it was just those three who were killed. And also, all that about eleven people is just a supposition, isn’t it, Mr Larsson?’

‘Who were the people who got themselves out, then?’ said Hammar.

‘First of all, they didn’t get themselves out,’ said Gunvald Larsson. ‘I was the one who got them out. If I hadn’t happened to have been standing there, not a damned one of them would have got clear. And second, I didn’t write down their names. I had other things to do at the time.’

Martin Beck looked thoughtfully at the big man in bandages. Gunvald Larsson often behaved badly, but to be offensive to Hammar must be due to either megalomania or a stroke. Hammar frowned.