The Locked Room

‘Naturally they'd given it a false number plate,’ Gunvald Larsson put in.

‘Obviously But I've yet to hear of someone being able to respray a car between Maria Square and Slussen. And if they switched cars …’

‘Yes?’

‘Then where did the first one get to?’

Bulldozer Olsson paced the room, thumping the palms of his hands against his forehead. He was a man in his forties, chubby, well under average height, with a slightly florid complexion. His movements were as animated as his intellect. Now he was addressing himself: ‘They park the car in a garage near a metro station or a bus stop, then one of the guys hotfoots it with the loot; the other one gives the car a new number plate. Then he hotfoots it too. On Saturday the car guy comes back and does the respraying. And yesterday morning the car was ready to be driven off. But …’

‘But what?’ asked Kollberg.

‘But I had our people check every single Renault leaving the south side right up to one a.m. last night.’

‘So either it had time to get away, or else it's still here,’ said Kollberg.

Gunvald Larsson said nothing at all. Instead he scrutinized Bulldozer Olsson's attire and felt an intense antipathy. A crumpled light blue suit, a piggy-pink shirt, and a wide flowery tie. Black socks and pointed brown shoes with stitching – notably unbrushed.

‘And what do you mean by the car guy?’

‘They never fix the cars themselves. They always hire a special guy, who leaves them in some prearranged spot and gets them afterwards. Often he comes from some completely different town, Malmö or Göteborg, for example. They're always very careful about the getaway cars.’

Kollberg, looking even more pensive, said: ‘They? Who's they?’

‘Malmström and Mohrén, of course.’

‘And who are Malmström and Mohrén?’

Bulldozer Olsson gazed at him, dumbfounded. But then his gaze cleared. ‘Ah yes, of course. You're new to the squad, aren't you? Malmström and Mohrén are two of our most cunning bank robbers. It's four months now since they got out. And this is their fourth job since. They beat it from Kumla Prison at the end of February.’

‘But Kumla's supposed to be escape-proof,’ Kollberg said.

‘Malmström and Mohrén didn't escape. They just failed to return from weekend parole. As far as we can see, they didn't do any jobs until the end of April – before which they must certainly have gone on holiday to the Canaries or Gambia. Probably a fourteen-day round trip.’

‘And then?’

‘Then they equipped themselves. Weapons and so forth. They usually do that in Spain or Italy.’

‘But it was a woman who raided that bank last Friday, wasn't it?’ Kollberg remarked.

‘Disguised,’ said Bulldozer Olsson didactically. ‘Disguised in a blonde wig and falsies. But I'm dead sure it was Malmström and Mohrén who did it. Who else would have had the nerve, or been smart enough to make such a sudden move? This is a special job, don't you see? Hellish intriguing really. Frightfully exciting. Actually it's like …’

‘… playing a game of postal chess with a champ,’ said Gunvald Larsson. ‘But champ or not, both Malmström and Mohrén are as big as oxes, and that's something you can't talk yourself out of. Each weighs fifteen stone, wears size twelve shoes, and has hands like hams. Mohrén is forty-six inches around the chest – that's five more than Anita Ekberg in her prime. I find it difficult to imagine him fitted out in a dress, wearing falsies.’

‘Wasn't the woman wearing trousers anyway?’ asked Kollberg. ‘And rather on the small side?’

‘Naturally they sent in someone else,’ Bulldozer Olsson said placidly. ‘One of their usual tricks.’ Running over to one of the desks he grabbed a slip of paper. ‘How much loot have they got hold of?’ he asked himself. ‘Fifty thousand in Borås, forty in Gubbängen, twenty-six in Märsta, and now ninety. That makes over two hundred thousand! So they'll soon be ready.’

‘Ready?’ Kollberg asked. ‘Ready for what?’

‘Their big haul. Big with a capital “H”. All these other jobs are just to get some finance. But any time now it'll be the big bang.’ Seemingly beside himself with enthusiasm, he practically flew around the room. ‘But where, gentlemen? Where? Let me see, let me see. We must think. If I were Werner Roos now, what move would I make? How would I attack his king? How would you do it? And when?’

‘Who the hell's Werner Roos?’ Kollberg enquired again.

‘He's an airline purser,’ said Gunvald Larsson.

‘First and foremost he's a criminal,’ Bulldozer Olsson shouted. ‘In his own way Werner Roos is a genius. He's the one who plots out everything down to the last detail. Without him Malmström and Mohrén would be mere nonentities. It's he who does all the thinking. Without him plenty of others would be out of work. And he's the biggest skunk of the lot! He's a sort of professor of –’

‘Don't shout so damn loud,’ said Gunvald Larsson. ‘You're not in the district court.’

‘We'll get him,’ Bulldozer Olsson said, as if he'd just hit on some genial idea. ‘We'll nab him now, right away.’

‘And release him tomorrow,’ said Gunvald Larsson.

‘Never mind. It'll be a surprise. Catch him off his guard.’

‘You think so? It'll be the fifth time this year.’

‘No matter,’ said Bulldozer Olsson, making for the door.

Actually Bulldozer Olsson's first name was Sten. But this was something everyone, except possibly his wife, had long ago forgotten. She, on the other hand, had very likely forgotten what he looked like.

‘There seem to be a lot of things I don't understand,’ Kollberg complained.

‘Where Roos is concerned, Bulldozer's probably right,’ Gunvald Larsson said. ‘He's a smart devil who's always got an alibi. Fantastic alibis. Whenever anything happens he's always away in Singapore or San Francisco or Tokyo.’

‘But how does Bulldozer know these Malmström and Mohrén guys are behind this particular job?’

‘Some sort of sixth sense, I expect.’

Gunvald Larsson shrugged and said: ‘But where's the sense in it? Here are Malmström and Mohrén, known to be a couple of gangsters, who, though they never confess, have been inside any number of times. And now, when at last they're under lock and key in Kumla, they're granted weekend parole!’

‘Well, we can't really keep people locked up in one room with a TV set for all eternity, can we?’

‘No,’ said Gunvald Larsson. ‘That's true enough.’

For a while they sat silent. Both men were thinking the same thing: how it had cost the state millions to build Kumla Prison and equip it with every conceivable refinement designed to insulate social misfits from society. Foreigners with experience in penal institutions from far and wide had said that Kumla's internment department was probably the most inhuman and personality-deadening in the whole world. Lack of lice in the mattresses or maggots in the food is no substitute for human contact.

‘As for this murder on Hornsgatan …’ Kollberg began.

‘That wasn't murder. Probably just an accident. She fired by mistake, maybe didn't even realize the gun was loaded.’

‘Sure it was a girl?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What about all this talk of Malmström and Mohrén, then?’

‘Well, it's just possible they sent in a girl …’