Martin Beck followed Mrs. Oskarsson into the living room. Apart from the furniture, it was identical with the room he had just left. The little boy was standing in the middle of the floor, looking at him with expectant curiosity. He was holding a toy guitar.
'Go into your room and play, Bosse,' his mother said.
Bosse took no notice, and she didn't seem to expect him to.
She went over and moved some toys off the sofa by the balcony window.
'It's rather untidy here,' she said. 'Won't you sit down, and I'll get Lena.'
She left the room and Martin Beck smiled at the little boy. His own children were twelve and fifteen and he had forgotten how to make conversation with three-year-olds.
'Can you play that guitar?' he asked.
'Not lay,' the boy said. 'You lay.'
'No, I can't play.'
'Yes, you lay,' the boy persisted.
Mrs. Oskarsson came in, picked up the boy and the guitar and carried him firmly out of the room. He screamed and kicked and his mother said over her shoulder:
'll1 be back in a minute. You can be talking to Lena.'
The boys had said that Lena was ten years old. She was tall for her age and rather pretty, despite a slight pout. She was dressed in jeans and a cotton shirt and she bobbed shyly.
'Sit down,' Martin Beck said. 'We can talk better then.'
She sat on the edge of one of the armchairs with her knees pressed together.
'Your name's Lena, isn't it,' he said.
'Yes.'
'And mine's Martin. You know what has happened?'
'Yes,' the girl said, staring at the floor. 'I heard… Mom told me.'
'I know you must be upset, but I have to ask you one or two things.'
'Yes.'
'You were together with Annika earlier today, weren't you?'
'Yes, we played together. Ulla and Annika and I.'
'Where did you play?'
She nodded towards the window.
'First in the yard down here. Then Ulla had to go home for lunch, so Annika and I came home here. Then Ulla called for us and we went out again.'
'Where to?'
'To Tanto Park. I had to take Bosse with me and there are swings there and he likes that.'
'Do you know what the tune was then?'
'Oh, half past one, getting on for two maybe. Mom might know.'
'So then you went to Tanto Park. Did you see if Annika met anyone there? If a man spoke to her or anything?'
'No, I didn't see her talking to anyone.'
'What did you do in Tanto Park?'
The girl stared out of the window for a while. She seemed to be thinking back.
'Let me see… we played. First we were on the swings because Bosse wanted it. Then we did some skipping. Then we went down to the stand and bought an ice cream.'
'Were there any other children in the park?'
'Not just where we were. Oh yes, there were some small children in the sandpit. Bosse went and worried them. But they went away after a while with their mother.'
'What did you do when you'd bought the ice cream?' Martin Beck asked.
From another room he heard Mrs. Oskarsson's voice and the boy's scream of rage.
'We just walked about. Then Annika got the sulks.'
'Got the sulks? Why?'
'Oh, she just did. Ulla and I wanted to play hopscotch, but she didn't. She wanted to play hide-and-seek, but it's no good when Bosse's there. He runs about telling everyone where you've hidden. So she got cross and went off.'
'Where to? Did she say where she was going?'
'No, she didn't say. She just went off, and Ulla and I were drawing the squares for the hopscotch so we didn't see when she left.'
'You didn't see which way she went?'
'No, we never gave it a thought. We played hopscotch and after a while I noticed that Bosse had disappeared and then we saw that Annika had gone too.'
'Did you go and look for Bosse?'
The girl looked down at her hands and it was some moments before she answered.
'No. I thought he was with Annika. He's always running after Annika. She has… she had no small brothers or sisters of her own and was awfully nice to Bosse, always.'
'What happened then? Did Bosse come back?'
'Yes, after a while he came back. I suppose he'd been somewhere close by although we didn't see him.'
Martin Beck nodded. He wanted to light a cigarette but saw no ashtrays in the room and refrained.
'Where do you think Annika was then? Did Bosse say anything about where he had gone?'
The girl shook her head and a lock of fair hair fell down over her forehead.
'No, we just thought she'd gone home. We didn't ask Bosse and he said nothing. Then he got so naughty that we came home.'
'Do you know what the time was when Annika disappeared from the playground?'
'No, I had no watch. But it was three o'clock when we got home. And we didn't play hopscotch for long. Half an hour or so.'
'Didn't you see anyone else in the park?'
Lena pushed back her hair and frowned.
'We never thought about it. At any rate I didn't. Yes, there was a lady there with her dog for a while. A dachshund. Bosse wanted to pat it so I had to go and get him.'
She looked gravely at Martin Beck.
'He's not to pat dogs, it's dangerous.'
'You didn't notice anyone else in the park? Think back now, perhaps you can remember someone?'
She shook her head.
'No. We were playing and I had to keep an eye on Bosse, so I never thought about who was in the park. I suppose some people walked past, but I don't know.'
There was silence now in the room next door and Mrs. Oskarsson came back. Martin Beck got up.
'Would you mind giving me Ulla's name and address?' he said to the girl. 'Then I'll go, but I may have to talk to you again. If you happen to think of anything that happened or anything you saw in the park, will you ask your mother to call me?'
He turned to Mrs. Oskarsson.
'It might be some detail that seems unimportant,' he said. 'But I'd be glad if you'd call me in case she remembers anything more.'
He gave her his card, and she wrote down the third girl's name, address and telephone number on a slip of paper and handed it to him.
Then he went back to Tanto Park.
The men from the technical division were still working in the hollow below the open-air theater. The sun was low in the sky and cast long shadows across the grass. Martin Beck stayed until the dead girl had been taken away. Then he drove back to police headquarters at Kungsholmsgatan.
'And he took the girl's pants with him this time too,' Gunvald Larsson said.
'Yes,' Martin Beck said. 'White. Size 6.'
'The bastard,' Larsson said.
