After that we can talk about it again.'
'Now?'
'Yes, today. Commissioner Hammar will arrange for you to be relieved of your other work until this is settled. And one more thing. We have to go to your apartment and see what it looks like. We have to arrange for duplicate keys as well. We'll get to the rest later.'
Ten minutes later he left her in the room next to Koll-berg's and Melander's office. She sat with her elbows on the table reading the first report.
Ahlberg arrived that afternoon. He had hardly sat down when Kollberg stormed in and thumped him on the back so hard that he almost fell out of the visitor's chair.
'Gunnar's going home tomorrow,' said Martin Beck. 'He ought to get a look at Bengtsson before he goes.'
'It had better be a pretty careful look,' said Kollberg. 'But then we had better get going immediately. Every person in town plus half the population in general is running around buying Christmas presents.'
Ahlberg snapped his fingers and struck his forehead with the palm of his hand.
'Christmas presents. I had completely forgotten.'
'Me too,' said Martin Beck. 'That is to say I think of it from time to time but that's all that ever gets done about it.'
The traffic was terrible. Two minutes before five they dropped Ahlberg at Norrmalms Square and watched him disappear into the crowds.
Kollberg and Martin Beck sat in the car and waited. After twenty-five minutes Ahlberg returned and climbed into the back seat. He said:
'It sure is the guy on the film. He took the number 56 bus.'
'To St. Erik's square. Then he'll buy milk, bread and butter and go home. Eat, look at the boob tube, go to bed and fall asleep,' said Kollberg. 'Where shall I drop you?'
'Here. Now we have our big chance to go Christmas shopping,' Martin Beck said.
One hour later in the toy department, Ahlberg said: 'Koll-berg was wrong. The other half of the population is here too.'
It took them nearly three hours to finish their shopping and another hour to get to Martin Beck's home.
The next day Ahlberg saw the woman who was to be their decoy for the first time. She had still only managed to get through a small part of the case material.
That evening Ahlberg went home to Motala for Christmas. They had agreed to start the plan working right after the new year.
It was a gray Christmas. The man called Folke Bengtsson spent it quietly at his mother's house in Sodertalje. Martin Beck thought unendingly about him, even during the Christmas service in church and in a bath of perspiration under his Santa Claus mask. Kollberg ate too much and had to spend three days in the hospital.
Ahlberg called the day after Christmas and was not sober.
The newspapers contained several differing and unengaging articles which pointed to the fact that the Canal Murder was almost cleared up and that the Swedish police no longer had any reason to bother with the case.
There was the traditional new year's murder in Gothenburg which was solved within twenty-four hours. Kafka sent a tremendously large repulsive postcard, which was lilac colored and portrayed a deer against a sunset.
January 7 arrived and looked like January 7. The streets were full of gray, frozen people without money. The sales had begun but even so, the stores were nearly empty. In addition, the weather was hazy and freezing cold.
January 7 was D-Day.
In the morning Hammar inspected the troops. Then he said:
'How long are we going to cany on with this experiment?'
'Until it succeeds,' said Ahlberg.
'So
Hammar thought about all the situations which might possibly arise. Martin Beck and Kollberg would be needed for other tasks. Melander and Stenstrom should, at least part of the time, be working on other cases. Soon, the Third District would begin to complain because the borrowed girl never came back.
'Good luck, children,' he said.
A little later, only Sonja Hansson was there. She had a cold and sat in the visitor's chair and sniffled. Martin Beck looked at her. She was dressed in boots, a gray dress and long black tights.
'Do you plan to look like that?' he said sourly.
'No, I'll go home and change first. But I want to point out one thing. On July 3 last year, it was summertime and now it's winter. It might look a bit odd if I ran into a moving company office just now in sunglasses and a thin dress and asked if they could move a bureau for me.'
'Do the best you can. The important thing is that you understand the main point.'
He sat quietly for a while.
'If, indeed,'' have understood it,' he said.
The woman looked thoughtfully at him.
'I think I understand,' she said, finally. 'I have read every word that has been written about her, over and over again. I've seen the film at least twenty times. I have chosen clothing that would seem to fit and I have practiced in front of the mirror for hours. But I'm not starting off with much. My personality and hers are completely different. Her habits were different too. I haven't lived as she did and I'm not going to either. But I'll do the best I can.'
'That's fine,' said Martin Beck.
She seemed unapproachable and it wasn't easy to get through to her. The only thing he knew about her private life was that she had a daughter who was five years old and lived in the country with her grandparents. It seemed that she had never been married. But in spite of the fact that he didn't know her very well, he thought a great deal of her. She was shrewd, and down to earth, and dedicated to her job. That was a lot to say about someone.
It was four o'clock in the afternoon before he heard from her again.
'I've just been there. I went directly home afterwards.'
'Well, he isn't going to come and break down the door right away. How did it go?'
'I think it went well. As well as one could wish. The bureau will be delivered tomorrow.'
'What did he think of you?'
'I don't know. I got the feeling that he lit up a little bit It's hard to say when I don't really know how he acts.'
'Was it difficult?'
'To be honest, it wasn't very hard. I thought he seemed rather nice. He's attractive, too, in some way. Are you sure that he's the right guy? That's not to say that I have had a great deal of experience with murderers, but I find it difficult to think of him as the man who murdered Roseanna McGraw.'
'Yes, I'm sure. What did he say? Did he get your telephone number?'
'Yes, he wrote the address and telephone number down on a loose sheet of paper. And I told him that I have a house phone but that I don't answer it if I am not expecting someone so that it's best to telephone ahead. In general, he didn't say very much.'
'Were you alone in the room with him?'
'Yes. There was a fat, old lady on the other side of the glass partition but she couldn't hear us. She was talking on the telephone and I couldn't hear her.'
'Did you get a chance to talk with him about anything other than the bureau?'
'Yes, I said that the weather was miserable and he said, it certainly was. Then I said that I was glad Christmas was over and then he said that he was too. I added that when one was alone as I was, Christmas could be sad.'
'What did he say then?'
'That he, too, was alone and thought that it was rather dismal at Christmas, even though he usually spent it with his mother.'
