about identifying him, so nothing came of it. But now he confesses. Says he was drunk both times, else he wouldn't have done it.'
'Oh, so he admits it now,' Kollberg said.
'Yes.'
Martin Beck glanced inquiringly at Kollberg. Then he turned to Ronn and said:
'You didn't get any sleep last night, did you?'
'No.'
'Then you'd better go home and catch up on it'
'Shall we let this fellow go?'
'No,' Kollberg said. 'We won't let him go.'
10
SURE ENOUGH, the man's name was Eriksson. He was a warehouse laborer and it didn't take an expert to see that he was an alcoholic. He was sixty years old, tall, bald and emaciated. His whole body twitched and shook.
Kollberg and Martin Beck questioned him for two hours, which were equally wretched for all concerned.
The man admitted the same disgusting details over and over again. At intervals he sniffled and sobbed, calling heaven to witness that he had gone straight home from the restaurant on Friday afternoon. At any rate he couldn't remember anything else.
After two hours he confessed that he had stolen two hundred kronor in July 1964 and a cycle when he was eighteen. He then did nothing but snivel. He was a human wreck, an outcast from the dubious fellowship that surrounded him, and utterly alone.
Kollberg and Martin Beck regarded him gloomily and sent him back to the cell.
At the same time other men from the division, and from the fifth district, tried to find someone in the apartment house at Hagagatan who could either confirm or confute his alibi They were not successful.
The autopsy report available about four o'clock that afternoon was still preliminary. It spoke of strangulation, finger marks on the neck and sexual assault. Out-and-out rape had not been established.
Otherwise the report contained negative information. There was no indication that the girl had had a chance to resist. No scrapings of skin had been found under the nails and no bruises on arms and hands, though there were some on the lower abdomen, as if caused by blows of a fist
The technical division had examined her clothes, and had nothing unusual to report. Her pants, however, were missing. They couldn't be found anywhere. They had been white cotton, size 6, and a well-known make.
In the evening the men detailed to go around from door to door had handed out five hundred stenciled questionnaires. Only one reply of any interest had been received. An eighteen-year-old girl by the name of Majken Jansson, who lived in the apartment house at Sveavagen 103 and was the daughter of a businessman, said that she and a boyfriend her own age had spent about twenty minutes in Vanadis Park sometime between eight and nine. She wasn't sure of the exact time. They had seen nothing and heard nothing.
Asked what they had been doing in Vanadis Park, she had replied that they had been at a family dinner party and had just gone out to get a breath of air.
'A breath of air,' Melander said thoughtfully.
'Between the legs, no doubt,' Gunvald Larsson said.
Larsson had been in the regular navy and was still in the reserve. Now and then he gave vent to his below- decks humor.
Hour after hour dragged past. The investigation machinery went grinding on. The time was already past one o'clock on the night between Sunday and Monday when Martin Beck came home to Bagarmossen. Everyone was asleep. He took a can of beer out of the icebox and made a cheese sandwich. Then he drank the beer and threw the sandwich into the garbage bag.
After he had got into bed he lay for a while thinking of the alcoholic warehouse laborer called Eriksson, who three years ago had stolen two hundred kronor from a workmate's coat.
Kollberg couldn't get to sleep. He lay in the dark staring at the ceiling. He too thought of the man called Eriksson whose name had been in the vice squad's register. He also considered the fact that if the man who had committed the murder in Vanadis Park was not in the register, then computer technology was about as much good to them as it had been to the American police in their hunt for the Boston strangle!. In other words, none at all. The Boston strangler had killed thirteen people, all lone women, in two years without leaving a single clue.
Now and then he looked at his wife. She was asleep, but twitched every time the baby in her body kicked.
11
IT WAS MONDAY afternoon, fifty-four hours after the dead girl had been found in Vanadis Park.
The police had appealed to the public for help through the press, radio and television, and over three hundred tips had already come in. Each item of information was registered and examined by a special working group, after which the results were studied in detail.
The vice squad combed its registers, the forensic laboratory dealt with the meager material from the scene of the crime, the computers worked at high pressure, men from the assault squad went around the neighborhood knocking on doors, suspects and possible witnesses were questioned, and as yet all this activity had led nowhere. The murderer was unknown and still at large.
The papers were piling up on Martin Beck's desk. Since early morning he had been working on the never- ceasing stream of reports and interrogation statements. The telephone had never stopped ringing, but in order to get a breathing space he had now asked Kollberg to take his calls during the next hour or so. Gunvald Larsson and Melander were spared all these telephone calls; they sat behind closed doors sifting material.
Martin Beck had had only a few hours' sleep during the night and he had skipped lunch so as to have time for a press conference, which had yielded the journalists very little.
He yawned and looked at the time, astonished that it was already a quarter past three. Gathering up a bundle of papers that belonged to Melander's department, he knocked at the door and went in to Melander and Larsson.
Melander did not look up when he entered the room. They had worked together for so long that he knew Martin Beck's knock. Gunvald Larsson glared at the bundle of papers in Martin Beck's hand and said:
'Good God, have you brought still more? We're swamped with work already.'
Martin Beck shrugged and put the papers down at Melander's elbow.
'I was going to order some coffee,' he said. 'Like some?'
Melander shook his head without looking up.
'Good idea,' Gunvald Larsson said.
Martin Beck went out, shut the door behind him and collided with Kollberg, who had come rushing up. Martin Beck saw the frantic expression on Kollberg's round face and asked:
'What's up with you?'
Kollberg gripped his arm and said, so fast that the words tumbled over each other:
'Martin, it has happened again! He has done it again! In Tanto Park.'
They drove across the West Bridge with sirens full on, and on the radio they heard that all available squad cars had been directed to Tanto Park to cordon it off. All that Martin Beck and Kollberg had been told before leaving headquarters was that a girl had been found dead near the open-air theater, that the circumstances were similar to the murder in Vanadis Park and that the body had been found so soon after the crime that there was a chance the murderer had not yet got very far.
As they drove past the Zinkensdamm athletic field they saw a couple of black-and-white cars turn into Wollmar Yxkullsgatan. One or two more were standing in Ringvagen and inside the park.
They pulled up outside the row of old wooden houses in Skoldgatan. The road into the park was blocked by a car with a radio aerial. On the footpath they saw a uniformed police officer stop some children who were on their way up the hill.
Martin Beck strode swiftly towards the officer, leaving
Kollberg to follow as best he could. The policeman saluted and pointed up into the park. Martin Beck strode on without slacking his pace. The park was very hummocky and not until he had passed the theater and climbed' the slope did he see some men standing in a semicircle with their backs to him. They were in a hollow about thirty
