The Man on the Balcony

‘Hi, mister,’ someone said in a hoarse whisper.

He turned to look at the person who had accosted him. A girl in her early teens was standing beside him; she had lank fair hair and was wearing a short batik dress. She was barefoot and dirty and looked the same age as his own daughter. In her cupped right hand she was holding a strip of four photographs, which she let him catch a glimpse of.

It was very easy to trace these pictures. The girl had gone into one of the automatic photo machines, knelt on the stool, pulled her dress up to her armpits and fed her coins into the slot.

The curtains of these photo cubicles had been shortened to knee height, but it didn't seem to have helped much. He glanced at the pictures; young girls these days developed earlier than they used to, he thought. And the little slobs never thought of wearing anything underneath either. All the same, the photos had not come out very well.

‘Twenty-five kronor?’ the child said hopefully.

Martin Beck looked around in annoyance and caught sight of two policemen in uniform on the other side of the hall. He went over to them. One of them recognized him and saluted.

‘Can't you keep the kids here in order?’ Martin Beck said angrily.

‘We do our best, sir.’

The policeman who answered was the same one who had saluted, a young man with blue eyes and a fair, well-trimmed beard.

Martin Beck said nothing but turned and walked towards the glass doors leading out to the platforms. The girl in the batik dress was now standing farther down the hall, looking furtively at the pictures, wondering if there was something wrong with her appearance.

Before long some idiot was sure to buy her photographs.

Then off she would go to Humlegården or Mariatorget and buy purple hearts or marijuana with the money. Or perhaps LSD.

The policeman who recognized him had had a beard. Twenty-four years earlier, when he himself joined the force, policemen had not worn beards.

By the way, why hadn't the other policeman saluted, the one without a beard? Because he hadn't recognized him?

Twenty-four years ago policemen had saluted anyone who came up to them even if he were not a superintendent. Or had they?

In those days girls of fourteen and fifteen had not photographed themselves naked in photo machines and tried to sell the pictures to detective superintendents in order to get money for a fix.

Anyway, he was not a bit pleased with the new title he had got at the beginning of the year. He was not pleased with his new office at southern police headquarters out in the noisy industrial area at Västberga. He was not pleased with his suspicious wife and with the fact that someone like Gunvald Larsson could be made a detective inspector.

Martin Beck sat by the window in his first-class compartment, pondering all this.

The train glided out of the station and past the City Hall. He caught sight of the old white steamer Mariefred, that still plied to Gripsholm, and the publishing house of Norstedt, before the train was swallowed up in the tunnel to the south. When it emerged into daylight again he saw the green expanse of Tantolunden -the park that he was soon going to have nightmares about – and heard the wheels echo on the railway bridge.

By the time the train stopped at Södertälje he was in a better mood. He bought a bottle of mineral water and a stale cheese sandwich from the metal handcart that now replaced the restaurant car on most of the express trains.

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‘Well,’ Ahlberg said, ‘that's how it happened. It was rather chilly that night and he had one of those old-fashioned electric heaters that he stood beside the bed. Then he kicked off the blanket in his sleep and it fell down over the heater and caught fire.’

Martin Beck nodded.

‘It seems quite plausible,’ Ahlberg said. ‘The technical investigation was completed today. I tried to phone you but you had already left.’

They were standing on the site of the fire at Borenshult and between the trees they could glimpse the lake and the flight of locks where they had found a dead woman three years earlier. All that remained of the burned-down house were the foundation and the base of the chimney. The fire brigade had, however, managed to save a small outhouse.

‘There were some stolen goods there,’ Ahlberg said. ‘He was a fence, this fellow Larsson. But he'd been sentenced before, so we weren't surprised. We'll send out a list of the things.’

Martin Beck nodded again, then said:

‘I checked up on his brother in Stockholm. He died last spring. Stroke. He was a fence too.’

‘Seems to have run in the family,’ Ahlberg said.

‘The brother never got caught but Melander remembered him.’

‘Oh yes, Melander … he's like the elephant, he never forgets. You don't work together any more, do you?’

Only sometimes. He's at headquarters in Kungsholmsgatan. Kollberg too, as from today. It's crazy, the way they keep moving us about.’

They turned their backs on the scene of the fire and went back to the car in silence.

A quarter of an hour later Ahlberg drew up in front of the police station, a low yellow-brick building at the corner of Prästgatan and Kungsgatan, just near the main square and the statue of Baltzar von Platen. Half-turning to Martin Beck he said:

‘Now that you're here with nothing to do you might as well stay for a couple of days.’

Martin Beck nodded.

‘We can go out with the motorboat,’ Ahlberg said.

That evening they dined at the City Hotel on the local speciality from Lake Vättern, a delicious salmon trout. They also had a few drinks.

On Saturday they took the motorboat out on the lake. On Sunday too. On Monday Martin Beck borrowed the motorboat. And again on Tuesday. On Wednesday he went to Vadstena and had a look at the castle.

The hotel he was staying at in Motala was modern and comfortable. He got on well with Ahlberg. He read a novel by Kurt Salomonson called The Man Outside. He was enjoying himself.

He deserved it. He had worked very hard during the winter and the spring had been awful. The hope that it would be a quiet summer still remained.

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The mugger had nothing against the weather.

It had started to rain early in the afternoon. At first heavily, then in a steady drizzle which had stopped about seven o'clock. But the sky was still overcast and oppressive and the rain was obviously going to start again soon. It was now nine o'clock and dusk was spreading under the trees. Half an hour or so still remained before lighting-up time.

The mugger had taken off his thin plastic raincoat and laid it beside him on the park bench. He was wearing tennis shoes, khaki trousers and a neat grey nylon pullover with a monogram on the breast pocket. A large red bandanna handkerchief was tied loosely around his neck. He had been in the park or its immediate vicinity for over two hours, observing people closely and calculatingly. On two occasions he had studied the passers-by with special interest and each time it had been not one person but two. The first couple had been a young man and a girl; both were younger than himself, the girl was dressed in sandals and a short black-and-white summer dress, the boy wore a smart blazer and light-grey trousers. They had made their way to the shady paths in the most secluded corner of the park. There they had stopped and embraced. The girl had stood with her back to a tree and after only a few seconds the boy had thrust his right hand up under her skirt and inside the elastic band of her panties and started digging with his fingers between her legs. ‘Someone might come,’ she said mechanically, but she had immediately moved her feet apart. The next second she had closed her eyes and started to twist her hips rhythmically, at the same time scratching the back of the boy's well-trimmed neck with the fingers of her left hand. What she had done with her right hand he had not been able to see, although he had been so close to them that he had caught a glimpse of the white lace panties.

He had walked on the grass, following them with silent steps, and stood crouched behind the bushes less than a dozen yards away. He had carefully weighed the pros and cons. An attack appealed to his sense of humour, but on the other hand the girl had no handbag and also he might not be able to stop her from screaming, which in its turn might impede the practice of his profession. Besides, the boy looked stronger and broader across the shoulders than he had first thought, and anyway it wasn't at all certain that he had any money in his wallet. An attack seemed unwise, so he had crept away as silently as he had come. He was no Peeping Tom, he had more important things to do; in any case, he presumed there wasn't much more to see. Before long the young couple had left the park, now suitably far apart. They had crossed the street and entered a block of flats, the outside of which indicated stable middle-class respectability. In the doorway the girl had straightened her panties and bra and drawn a moistened fingertip along her eyebrows. The boy had combed his hair.

At half past eight his attention focused on the next two people. A red Volvo had stopped in front of the ironmongers at the street corner. Two men were in the front seat. One of them got out and went into the park. He was bareheaded and wore a beige-coloured raincoat. A few minutes later the second man had got out and gone into the park another way; he was wearing a cap and tweed jacket but had no overcoat. After about fifteen minutes they had returned to the car, from different directions and at an interval of some minutes. He had stood with his back to them, looking into the window of the ironmongers, and he had overheard clearly what they said.

‘Well?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What do we do now?’