The Man on the Balcony

He drank some more.

'Very nice,' he said.

'It's just that I don't know anything. Nothing at all. It was a lousy business, with that Simonsson, I mean.'

'His name was Rolf Evert Lundgren,' Kollberg said.

'Oh, that too. You must think I seem… that I don't appear in a very good light. But there's nothing I can do about it. Now.'

She looked about her unhappily.

'Perhaps you'd like to smoke?' she asked. 'I'm afraid I haven't any cigarettes. I don't smoke myself.'

'Nor do I,' Kollberg said.

'Oh. Well, bad light or not, it can't be helped. I met him at the Vanadis Baths at nine o'clock and then I went home with him. I know nothing at all.'

'Presumably you do know one thing that interests us.'

'What would that be?'

'How was he? Sexually, I mean?'

She shrugged awkwardly. Took a rusk and began nibbling it. At last she said:

'No comments. I don't as a rule…'

'What don't you as a rule?'

'I don't as a rule comment on men I go with. If you and I, for instance, got into bed together now, I wouldn't go around afterwards giving people details about you.'

Kollberg fidgeted.. He felt hot and upset. He wanted to take off his coat. It was even possible that he wanted to take off his clothes altogether and have sex with this girl. True, he had very seldom done so while on duty and particularly not since he had got married, but it had happened.

'I'd be very glad if you would answer this question,' he said. 'Was he normal, sexually?' She did not answer. 'It's important,' he added.

She looked him straight in the eyes and said gravely: 'Why?'

Kollberg looked at the girl doubtfully. It was a hard decision and he knew that many of his colleagues would consider his next words more blameworthy than if he had undressed and got into bed with her.

'Lundgren is a professional criminal,' he said at last. 'He has confessed to about a dozen violent assaults. Last Friday evening—a week ago, that is—he is known to have been in Vanadis Park at the same time as a little girl was murdered there.'

She looked at him quickly and swallowed several times. 'Oh,' she said softly. 'I didn't know that. I would never have thought that.'

After a moment she looked at him again with her clear brown eyes and said:

'That answers my question. Now I see that I must answer yours.' 'Well?'

'As far as I could judge he was completely normal. Almost too normal.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'I mean that I too am completely normal sexually but that… well, since I do it fairly seldom I want a little more than… shall we say routine?'

'I see,' Kollberg said, scratching behind his ear with embarrassment.

He hesitated a few seconds. The girl regarded him gravely. At last he said:

'Was it he who… approached you in the Vanadis Baths?'

'No, the reverse, if anything.'

She got up abruptly and went over to the window, which looked out onto the cathedral. Without turning her head she said:

'Exactly. The reverse, if anything. I went out yesterday to pick up a man. I was prepared for it, had prepared myself, if you like.'

She shrugged.

'That's the way I live,' she said. 'I've done so for several years and if you like I'll tell you why I live like that.'

'It's not necessary,' Kollberg said.

'I don't mind,' she said, fingering the curtain. 'Telling you, I mean…'

'It's not necessary,' Kollberg repeated.

'At any rate I can assure you that he behaved quite normally together with me. At first he didn't even seem… particularly interested. But… I saw to it that he became so.'

Kollberg drank up his coffee.

'Well, that's about all,' he said uncertainly.

Still without turning around, she said:

'I've had things happen before, but this really makes me think. It's not at all nice.'

Kollberg said nothing.

'Nasty,' she said to herself, again fingering the curtain.

Then she turned around and said:

'I assure you it was I who took the initiative. In a very flagrant manner. If you like I'll…'

'No, you needn't.'

'And I can assure you that he was absolutely normal when he… when we were in bed together.'

Kollberg got up.

'I think you're very nice,' she said spontaneously.

'I like you too,' he said.

He walked over to the door and opened it. Then to his own astonishment he said:

'I'm married. Have been for over a year. My wife's expecting a baby.'

She nodded.

'As regards the life I lead…'

She broke off.

'It's not so good,' he said. 'It can be dangerous.'

'I know.'

'So long,' Kollberg said.

'So long,' said Lisbeth Hedvig Maria Karlstrom.

He found a parking ticket on his car. Absentmindedly he folded up the yellow slip and put it in his pocket. Nice girl, he thought. Looks rather like Gun, I wonder why…

As he settled down behind the wheel he reflected that the whole thing was verging on the perfect parody of a really bad novel.

At headquarters Gunvald Larsson said heartily:

'That settles it. He's sexually normal and his reliability as a witness is confirmed. Waste of time, the whole thing.'

Kollberg was not altogether sure that it had been a waste of time.

'Where's Martin?' he asked.

'Out interrogating infants,' Gunvald Larsson said.

'And otherwise?'

'Nothing.'

'Here's something,' Melander said, looking up from his papers.

'What?'

'A summary from the psychologists. Their viewpoints.'

'Humph,' Gunvald Larsson snorted. 'Unrequited love for a wheelbarrow and all that rot.'

'Well, I'm not so sure,' Melander mumbled.

'Take the pipe out of your mouth so that we can hear what you say,' Kollberg said.

'They have an explanation here, an explanation that seems very plausible. It's rather worrying.'

'Can things be more worrying than they are already?'

'As regards the possibility that this man is not in our records,' Melander went on impassively. 'They say that he might very well have a clean police record. That he might even have lived for a long time without giving any