The Man on the Balcony

‘Have they sent you here too? What have we done wrong now?’

Martin Beck took a sip of water.

‘Nothing, as far as I know. And don't worry. I only came up to see Melander. I asked him to do something for me. Where is he?’

‘In the lavatory as usual.’

Melander's curious capacity for always being in the lavatory was a hackneyed joke, and although there was a grain of truth in it Martin Beck for some reason felt irritated.

Mostly, however, he kept his irritation to himself. He gave the man at the desk a calm, searching look and said:

‘What's bothering you?’

‘What do you think? The muggings of course. There was one in Vanadis Park last night again.’

‘So I heard.’

‘A pensioner who was out with his dog. Struck on the head from behind. A hundred and forty kronor in his wallet. Concussion. Still in hospital. Heard nothing. Saw nothing.’

Martin Beck was silent.

‘This was the eighth time in two weeks. That guy will end by killing someone.’

Martin Beck drained the glass and put it down.

‘If someone doesn't grab him soon,’ Gunvald Larsson said.

‘Who do you mean by someone?’

‘The police, for Christ's sake. Us. Anybody. A civil patrol from the protection squad in ninth district was there ten minutes before it happened.’

‘And when it happened? Where were they then?’

‘Sitting over coffee at the station. It's the same all the time. If there's a policeman hiding in every bush in Vanadis Park, then it happens in Vasa Park, and if there's a policeman hiding in every bush in both Vanadis Park and Vasa Park, then he pops up in Lill-Jans Wood.’

‘And if there's a policeman in every bush there too?’

‘Then the demonstrators break up the US Trade Centre and set fire to the American embassy. This is no joking matter,’ Gunvald Larsson added stiffly.

Keeping his eyes fixed on him, Martin Beck said:

‘I'm not joking. I just wondered.’

‘This man knows his business. It's almost as if he had radar. There's never a policeman in sight when he attacks.’

Martin Beck rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

‘Send out…’

Larsson broke in at once.

‘Send out? Whom? What? The dog van? And let those damn dogs tear the civil patrol to pieces? Yesterday's victim had a dog, come to that. What good was it to him?’

‘What kind of dog?’

‘How the hell do I know? Shall I interrogate the dog perhaps? Shall I get the dog here and send it out to the lavatory so that Melander can interrogate it?’

Gunvald Larsson said this with great gravity. He pounded the desk with his fist and went on:

‘A lunatic prowls about the parks bashing people on the head and you come here and start talking about dogs!’

‘Actually it wasn't I who…’

Again Gunvald Larsson interrupted him.

‘Anyway, I told you, this man knows his business. He only goes for defenceless old men and women. And always from behind. What was it someone said last week? Oh yes, “he leaped out of the bushes like a panther.”’

‘There's only one way,’ Martin Beck said in a honeyed voice.

‘What's that?’

‘You'd better go out yourself. Disguised as a defenceless old man.’

The man at the desk turned his head and glared at him.

Gunvald Larsson was six foot three and weighed fifteen and a half stone. He had shoulders like a heavyweight boxer and huge hands covered with shaggy blond hair. He had fair hair, brushed straight back, and discontented, clear blue eyes. Kollberg usually completed the description by saying that the expression on his face was that of a motorcyclist.

Just now the blue eyes were looking at Martin Beck with more than the usual disapproval.

Martin Beck shrugged and said:

‘Joking apart…’

And Gunvald Larsson interrupted him at once.

‘Joking apart I can't see anything funny in this. Here am I up to my neck in one of the worst cases of robbery I've ever known, and along you come drivelling about dogs and God knows what.’

Martin Beck realized that the other man, no doubt unintentionally, was about to do something that only few succeeded in: to annoy him to the point of making him lose his temper. And although he was quite well aware of this, he could not help raising his arm from the cabinet and saying:

‘That's enough!’

At that moment, fortunately, Melander came in from the room next door. He was in his shirtsleeves, and had a pipe in his mouth and an open telephone directory in his hands.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Hello,’ said Martin Beck.

‘I thought of the name the second you hung up,’ Melander said. ‘Arvid Larsson. Found him in the telephone directory too. But it's no good calling him. He died in April. Stroke. But he was in the same line of business up to the last. Had a rag-and-bone shop on the south side. It's shut now.’