Gunnarsson looked stubbornly at his hands. 'I strangled him,' he said very quietly. Martin Beck waited for ten seconds. Then he ran his forefinger down his nose and said, 'And after that?'
'I suddenly turned completely sober, or at least I thought I had. He was lying there on the floor. Dead. It was about two o'clock. Naturally I should have called the police. It didn't seem so simple then.' He thought for a moment. 'Why, everything would have been ruined.' Martin Beck nodded and looked at his watch. This seemed to hurry the other man.
'Well, I sat here probably for a quarter of an hour, roughly, thinking what to do. In this chair. I refused to accept that the situation was hopeless. Everything that had happened was so… startling. It seemed so pointless. I wasn't really able to realize that it was me who had suddenly—oh, well, we can talk about that later.'
'You knew that Matsson was going to Budapest,' said Kollberg.
'Yes, of course. He had his passports and tickets on him. Had only had to go home and pick up his bag. I think it was his glasses that gave me the idea. They had fallen off and were lying here on the floor. They were rather special ones, changing his appearance in some way. Then I happened to think about that house out there. I had sat on the balcony watching the fire department practicing, how they set it alight and extinguished the fire again. Every Monday. They didn't investigate very carefully before setting fire to it. I knew they'd soon completely burn down the little that was left. It's no doubt cheaper than tearing things down in the ordinary way.'
Gunnarsson threw a swift, desperate look at Martin Beck and said hastily:
'Then I took his passport, tickets, car keys and the keys to his flat. Then…'
He shuddered but collected himself at once. 'Then I carried him down to the car. That was the hardest part, but I was… well, I was just about to say I was lucky. I drove out to Hagalund.' 'To the old farmhouse?'
'Yes. It was absolutely quiet out there. I carried… Alfie up to the attic. It was difficult because the stairs were half gone. And then I put him behind a loose wall, under a mass of rubbish so that no one would find him. He was dead, after all. It didn't matter all that much. I thought.' Martin Beck glanced anxiously at his watch. 'Go on,' he said.
'It was beginning to get light. I went to Fleminggatan and collected his bag, which was already packed, and put it in Alfie's car. Then I came back here, cleaned up a bit and took the glasses and his coat, which was still hanging in the hall. I came back almost at once. I didn't dare stay and wait. So I took his car, drove to Arlanda and parked it there.'
The man threw an appealing look at Martin Beck and said, 'Everything went so easily, as if of its own accord. I put on the glasses, but the coat was too small. I carried it over my arm and went through the passport control. I don't remember much about the trip, but everything seemed just as simple.'
'How had you planned to get away from there?' 'I just knew that it would work out somehow. I thought that the best way would be to take the train to the Austrian border and try to get over illegally. I had my own passport in my pocket and could return home from Vienna on that. I'd been there before, so I knew they didn't stamp the date of exit in your passport. But I was lucky again. I thought.' Martin Beck nodded.
'There was a shortage of rooms there and Alfie had been booked into two different hotels, just the first night at the one. I don't remember what ft was called.' 'The Ifjusag.'
'Yes, maybe. Anyhow, I arrived there at the same time as a party of people speaking French. I gathered that they had come earlier the same day. They looked like students—several of the fellows had beards. When I turned in Alfie's—Matsson's passport, the porter was just sorting other passports into the pigeonholes. People who had already regis tered. I stayed on a moment in the vestibule and then when the porter stepped away for a minute, I got the chance to take one of those passports. I only had to look at three of them before I found one I thought was suitable—it was Belgian. The fellow was named Roederer or something like that. Anyway, the name reminded me of some kind of champagne.'
Martin Beck looked carefully at his watch.
'And the next morning?'
'Then I was given back Alfie's—Matsson's passport and went to the other hotel. It was large and grand. The Duna, it was called. I handed in the passport, still Alfie's, at the reception desk and put his bag up in the room. I didn't stay longer than half an hour. Then I left. I'd got hold of a map and made my way to the railway station. On the way, I discovered I still had the room key in my pocket. It was large and a nuisance, so I threw it down outside a police station as I was walking past. I thought it was a good idea.'
'Not especially,' said Kollberg.
Gunnarsson smiled faintly.
'I managed to catch the express to Vienna and it took only four hours. First I took off Alfie's glasses, of course, and rolled up the coat. At that point I used the Belgian passport and that worked just as well. The train was very crowded and the passport officer was in a hurry. It was a girl, by the way. In Vienna, I took a taxi from the Eastern Railway Station directly to the airport and got on the afternoon plane to Stockholm.'
'What did you do with Roeder's passport?' said Martin Beck.
'Tore it up and flushed the pieces down a toilet at the Eastern Railway Station. The glasses too. I smashed the glass and broke up the frames.'
'And his coat?'
'I hung that up on a hook in the cafeteria on the station.'
'And by the evening you were back here again?'
'Yes, I went up to the office then and handed in two articles I'd written earlier.'
It was silent in the room. Finally Martin Beck said, 'Did you try the bed?'
'Where?'
'At the Duna?'
'Yes. It creaked.'
Gunnarsson looked down at his hands again. Then he said quietly, 'I was in a very difficult situation. Not only for myself.'
He looked quickly at the photograph.
'If nothing untoward had happened, I would have got married on Sunday. And…'
'Yes?'
'Actually it was an accident. Can you understand…'
'Yes,' said Martin Beck.
Kollberg had hardly moved during the last hour. Now he suddenly shrugged his shoulders and said irritably, 'O.K. Come on, let's go.'
The man who had killed Alf Matsson suddenly sagged.
'Yes, of course,' he said thickly. 'I'm sorry.'
He rose quickly and went out to the bathroom. Neither of the other two men moved, but Martin Beck looked unhappily at the closed door. Kollberg followed his look and said, 'There's nothing in there he can hurt himself with. I've even taken away the toothbrush glass.'
'There was a box of sleeping pills on the night table. Twenty-five in it, at least.'
Kollberg went into the bedroom and came back.
'It's gone,' he said.
He looked at the bathroom door.
'Shall we—'
'No,' said Martin Beck. 'We'll wait.'
They did not need to wait more than thirty seconds. Ake Gunnarsson came out unbidden. He smiled weakly and said, 'Can we go now?'
No one answered him. Kollberg went into the bathroom, got up on the toilet, lifted the lid of the tank, thrust his hand down and pulled out the empty pillbox. He read the label on it as he walked back into the study.
'Vesperax,' he said. 'A dangerous sort.'
Then he looked at Gunnarsson and said in a troubled voice, 'That was rather unnecessary, wasn't it? Now we've got to take you to the hospital. They'll put a bib on you which reaches all the way down to your feet and then they stick a rubber tube down your throat. Tomorrow you won't be able to eat or talk.'
Martin Beck phoned for a radio car.
They walked swiftly down the stairs, all driven by the same wish to get away quickly.
The radio car was already there.
