mugger drop the weapon and tumbled backwards against the wall, where he remained sitting with his left arm over his face.
'Don't hit me,' he said.
He was naked. The woman, who had leaped up from the bed a second later, was wearing a wrist watch with a tartan strap. She stood stock still with her back to the wall on the other side of the bed, staring from the submachine gun on the floor to the gigantic fair man in the tweed suit. She made not the slightest attempt to cover herself. She was a pretty girl with short hair and long, slim legs. She had young breasts with large, pale-brown nipples and a prominent dark line from the navel to the moist, dark-brown patch of hair around her private parts. She also had dark, bushy hair in her armpits. There was already goose-flesh on her thighs, arms and breasts.
A man from the workshop on the ground floor was gaping through the broken door.
Martin Beck was struck by the absurdity of the situation and for the first time in weeks he felt the corners of his mouth twitch. He was standing in the middle of a room in broad daylight pointing a 7.65-millimeter Walther at two naked people while a man in a blue carpenter's apron and with a foot-rule in his right hand stared at him in amazement.
He put his pistol away. A policeman appeared outside the door and told the workman to get a move on. 'What!' the girl exclaimed.
Gunvald Larsson looked at her with distaste and said: 'Get your clothes on.' After a moment he added: 'If you have any.'
He was standing with his right foot on the submachine gun. With a glance at the mugger he said: 'You too. Get your clothes on.'
The mugger was a muscular, well-built young man with a fine suntan, apart from a narrow white band across his thighs, and with long fair hair on his arms and legs. He straightened up slowly, holding his right hand in front of his genitals, and said:
'That goddam stinking little slob.'
Another policeman entered the room and stared. The girl still stood motionless with her palms pressed against the wall and her fingers wide apart, but the expression in her brown eyes showed that she was pulling herself together.
Martin Beck looked around the room and saw a blue cotton dress slung over the back of a kitchen table. On the chair were also a pair of panties, a bra and a string bag. Under it, on the floor, was a pair of sandals. Handing her the dress he said:
'Who are you?'
The girl stretched out her right hand and took the dress but did not put it on. Looking at him with her clear brown eyes she said:
'My name's Lisbeth Hedvig Maria Karlstrom. Who are you?'
'A policeman.'
'I'm reading modern languages at Stockholm University and have passed my finals in English.'
'And this is what you learn at the university?' Gunvald Larsson said without turning his head.
'I came of age a year ago and I'm wearing a diaphragm.'
'How long have you known this man?' Martin Beck asked.
The girl still made no attempt to get dressed. Instead, she looked at her wrist watch and said:
'For exactly two hours and twenty-five minutes. I met him at the Vanadis Baths.'
In the other part of the room the man was fumbling putting on his underpants and khaki trousers.
'That's nothing much to show the ladies,' Gunvald Larsson said.
'You're a boor,' the girl said.
'Think so?'
Gunvald Larsson said this without taking his eyes off the mugger. He had looked at the girl only once.
'On with your shirt now,' he urged paternally. 'Now your socks. And shoes. That's a good boy.'
Two uniformed radio policemen had entered the room; they admired the scenery for a moment, then led the mugger away.
'Get dressed, please,' Martin Beck said to the girl.
At last she drew the dress over her head, went over to the chair, put on her panties and slipped her feet into the sandals. Rolled up the bra and put it in the string bag.
'What has he done?' she asked.
'Sex maniac,' Gunvald Larsson said.
Martin Beck saw her turn pale and swallow. She looked at Mm inquiringly. He shook his head. She swallowed again and said uncertainly:
'Shall I…'
'There's no need. Just give your name and address to the officer outside. Good-bye.'
The girl went out.
'You let her go!' Gunvald Larsson said in amazement.
'Yes,' Martin Beck said.
Then he shrugged and said:
'Let's go through things, shall we?'
15
FIVE HOURS later the time was half past five and Rolf Evert Lundgren had still admitted nothing but the fact that his name was Rolf Evert Lundgren.
They had stood around him, and sat opposite him, and he had smoked their cigarettes, and the tape recorder had turned and turned, and his name was still Rolf Evert Lundgren and anyway, it was on his driver's license.
They had asked and asked and asked him questions, Martin Beck, and Melander, and Gunvald Larsson, and Kollberg, and Ronn, and even Hammar, who was now chief superintendent, had been in and looked at him and said one or two well-chosen words. His name was still Rolf Evert Lundgren and anyway it was on his driver's license and the only thing that seemed to annoy him was when Ronn sneezed without holding a handkerchief to his mouth.
The absurd thing was that had it concerned only himself he could have pleaded not guilty for all they cared, right through every interrogation and every conceivable court of appeal and his entire prison sentence, for in the one-room apartment across the yard and in the built-in wardrobe they had found not only two submachine guns and a Smith and Wesson 38 Special but also objects which definitely bound him to four of the robberies, plus the bandanna handkerchief, the tennis shoes, the nylon pullover with the monogram on the breast pocket, two thousand preludin pills, the brass knuckles and several stolen cameras.
At six o'clock Rolf Evert Lundgren sat drinking coffee with Superintendent Martin Beck of the homicide squad and Detective Inspector Fredrik Melander. All three took two lumps of sugar and all three were equally glum and exhausted as they sipped at their paper mugs.
'The absurd thing is that if this had concerned only yourself we could have called it a day now and gone home,' Martin Beck said.
'I don't know what you're getting at,' Lundren said.
'I mean what's so silly is…'
'Oh, stop nagging.'
Martin Beck made no reply; he sat quite still, staring at the arrested man. Melander said nothing either.
At six fifteen Martin Beck drank up his coffee, which was now stone cold, crumpled up the mug and dropped it into the wastepaper basket.
They had tried persuasion, kindness, severity, logic, shock tactics; they had tried to get him to engage a lawyer and they had asked him ten times if he wanted anything to eat. In fact, they had tried everything except striking him. Martin Beck had noticed that Gunvald Larsson had been several times on the point of resorting even to this forbidden method but had realized that it wouldn't do to hit suspects, especially while superintendents and commissioners were running in and out of the room. At last this had annoyed Gunvald Larsson so much that he had gone home.
At half past six Melander also went home. Ronn came in and sat down. Rolf Evert Lundgren said:
'Put that filthy handkerchief away. I don't want your germs.'
Ronn, who was a mediocre policeman with mediocre imagination and a mediocre sense of humor, considered
