objects seemed irrelevant and dreary. He took a shower. Shaved. Took out his newly pressed gray suit. Dressed carefully and correctly. Then went out on to the balcony. It had stopped raining. He looked at the thermometer. It was 60° Fahrenheit. He got himself a lugubrious grass-widower's breakfast of tea and rusks. Then he sat down and waited.
Kollberg came at nine o'clock. He had Stenstrom with him in the car. They drove to the police station.
'How did it go?' said Martin Beck.
'So so,' said Stenstrom.
He leafed through his notebook.
'Molin was working on that Saturday, that's clear. He was at the office from eight o'clock in the morning. On that Friday, he seems to have been at home sleeping off his hangover. We argued a bit over his being asleep. He said that he hadn't been sleeping, but had passed out. 'Don't you know what it is to pass out and have little demons sitting there on your pillow, copper? That's good. Then you're suited to being a policeman, because you don't understand a god damn about anything.' I wrote down that remark, word for word.'
'Why did he have little demons?' said Kollberg.
'That didn't come out. Didn't seem to know himself, and what he'd done the night between Thursday and Friday, he couldn't remember. He said he was grateful for that. He was pretty darned insolent and awkward all around.'
'Go on,' said Martin Beck.
'Well, I'm afraid I was wrong yesterday when I said Lund and Kronkvist were clear. It turned out, in fact, that it wasn't Kronkvist but Fors who had gone with those girls to Lidingo. On the other hand, it was Kronkvist who went with Lund to Karlstad, not on Friday but on Saturday. It is a bit of a mix-up, all this, but I don't think Lund was lying when he made the first statement. He really didn't remember. He and Kronkvist seem to have been the most drunk of the lot of them. Lund got everything mixed up. Fors was brighter and when I got hold of him things became clearer. Lund collapsed as soon as they got to the girls' place, and they didn't get a sign of life out of him all that Friday. Then on Saturday morning, he rang up Fors, who went there and picked him up, and then they went to the pub, not to the Tankard, as Lund had thought, but to the Opera House bar. When Lund had had something to eat and a couple of beers, he revived and went home and picked up Kronkvist and all his photographic gear. Kronkvist was at home at that time.'
'What had he done before that?'
'Lain at home feeling ill and lonely, he said. The only definite thing is that he was there at half past four on Saturday afternoon.'
'Is that verified?'
'Yes, they got to the hotel in Karlstad in the evening. Kronkvist also had a fearful hangover, he said. Lund said he was too high to have anything. Lund hasn't got a beard, by the way. I made a note of that.'
'Uh-huh.'
'Then there was Gunnarsson. His memory was a little better. He sat at home writing on Friday. On Saturday he was at the office at first in the morning and then in the evening, turning in various articles.'
'Are you certain?'
'I wouldn't say that. The office there is large and I couldn't find anyone who could remember anything special. On the other hand, it's true that he handed in an article, but that could just as well have been in the evening as in the morning.'
'And passports?'
'Wait a minute. Pia Bolt was also quite explicit. She refused to say where she'd been on that Thursday night, however. I got the impression that she'd been sleeping with someone but didn't want to say who.'
'Sounds possible,' said Kollberg. 'It was Thursday and all that.'
'What do you mean by that?' said Stenstrom.
'Nothing. Perhaps that was a little below the belt.'
'Go on,' said Martin Beck.
'On Saturday, anyway, she was at home with her mother from eleven in the morning on. I checked that in a discreet way. It was true. Well, now there are the passports. Molin refused to show his. He didn't have to identify himself in his own home, he said. Lund had an almost new passport. The last stamp was from Arlanda on the sixteenth of June, when he returned from Israel That seemed to be all right.'
'Refused to show his passport!' said Kollberg. 'And you let him.'
'Pia Bolt had been to Majorca for a week two years ago, that is all. Kronkvist had an old passport. It looked a mess, covered with notes and scribbles. The last stamp from Gothenburg in May. Returning from England. Gunnarsson also had an old passport, almost full, but a bit cleaner. He has stamps from Arlanda, left the country on the seventh of May and re-entered the tenth. Had been to the Renault factories in Billancourt, he said. Evidently they don't stamp passports in France.'
'No, that's right,' said Martin Beck.
'Then there were the others. I haven't had time to get around to them all. Krister Sjoberg was at home with his family in Alvsjo. That Meredith, he's an American—colored, by the way.'
'We'll skip that,' said Kollberg. 'We couldn't take him in anyhow, or we'd be lynched by the Mods.'
'Now you're being really stupid.'
'I usually am. Anyhow, I don't think you need go on.'
'No, I don't think so,' said Martin Beck.
'Do you know who it is?' said Stenstrom.
'We think so at least.'
'Who?'
Kollberg glared at Stenstrom.
'Think for yourself, man,' he said. 'In the first place, was it Alf Matsson who was in Budapest? Would Matsson take a small fortune to pay for drugs and then not bother about it and leave the money in his bag at the hotel? Would Matsson throw his key down outside the entrance of the police station? A man who ought to make a long detour around any policeman he ever saw down there? Why should Matsson disappear of his own free will, in such an improvised manner?'
'No, of course not.'
'Why should Matsson travel to Hungary dressed in a blue blazer, gray trousers and suede shoes, when he had exactly the same kind of clothes packed in his bag? What happened to Matsson's dark suit? The one he had on the night before and which was not in his bag and is not in his flat?'
'O.K. It wasn't Matsson. Who was it then?'
'Someone who had Matsson's glasses and raincoat, someone with a beard. Who was last seen with Matsson? Who had no alibi whatsoever before Saturday evening, at the earliest? Who of all that lot was sufficiently sober and intelligent to be able to cook up this little story? Think it over.'
Stenstrom looked very solemn.
'I've thought of something else,' said Kollberg.
He spread the map of Budapest out on the table.
'Look here. There's the hotel and there's the central station, or whatever it's called.'
'Budapest Nyugati.'
'Maybe. If I was going to walk from the hotel to the station, I would walk this way and thus pass police headquarters.'
'That's right, but in that case you'd go to the wrong station. The trains to Vienna go from down here, from the old Eastern Railway Station.'
Kollberg said nothing. He went on staring at the map.
Martin Beck spread out a blueprint of the Solna area and nodded at Stenstrom.
'Go on out to the Solna police,' he said. 'Ask them to rope this area off. There's a burnt-out house there. We'll be there soon.'
'Now, at once?'
'Yes.'
Stenstrom left. Martin Beck hunted for a cigarette and lit it. He smoked in silence. And looked at Kollberg who was sitting quite still. Then he put out the cigarette and said, 'Let's go, then.'
