'What does the doctor say?'
'Suffocated by vomit, not a doubt. Thinks it's antifreeze. There was an empty can there.'
'How long had he been dead?'
'Twenty-four hours at the outside.'
They sat silent for a moment.
'I don't think he's the one,' Kollberg said.
'Nor do I.'
'But you never know.'
'No.'
Two hours later the mugger was confronted with the body.
'Christ, how disgusting,' he said.
And a moment later:
'No, it wasn't him I saw. I've never seen this guy before.'
Then he began to feel sick.
A real tough guy, thought Ronn, who was handcuffed to him and therefore had to accompany him to the lavatory. But he said nothing, merely took a towel and wiped Lundgren's mouth and forehead.
At investigation headquarters Kollberg said:
'There's no certainty, all the same.'
'No,' Martin Beck agreed.
21
THE TIME WAS a quarter to eight on Saturday evening when Kollberg's wife called up.
'Hello, Kollberg,' he said, picking up the phone.
'What in heaven's name are you up to, Lennart? You haven't been home since yesterday morning'
'I know.'
'I don't want to nag, but I hate being out here all by myself.'
'I know.'
'I want you to know that I'm not cross and I don't want to seem fretful, but I'm so lonely. I'm a tiny bit scared too.'
'I see. Okay, I'll come home now.'
'You're not to come just for my sake, not if there's something else you must do. As long as I can talk to you for a while.'
'Yes, I'll come now. At once.'
There was a short pause. Then she said with unexpected gentleness:
'Lennart?'
'Yes?'
“I saw you on TV not long ago. You looked so tired.' I am tired. I'll come home now. So long.'
'So long, darling.'
Kollberg said a few words to Martin Beck, then he went straight down to his car.
Like Martin Beck and Gunvald Larsson, he lived to the south of the city, but rather more centrally. At Palandergatan near the subway station of Skarmarbrink. He drove straight through the city but when he got to Slussen he turned off to the right along Hornsgatan instead of continuing south. It was not difficult for him to analyze his own action.
There was no private life any longer, no time off, no room for thought of anything but duty and responsibility. So long as the murderer was at large, so long as it was light, so long as there was a park, and so long as a child might be playing there, then only the investigation mattered.
Or rather, the hunt. For a police investigation implies that one has factual material to work with, and the few facts available had long since been ground to pieces in the investigation machinery.
He thought of the conclusions in the psychological analysis; the murderer was a figure with no features and no qualities, and the only aim was to seize him before he had time to commit another murder. In order to do this they must be lucky, one of the reporters had said after the evening's press conference. Kollberg knew that this was an erroneous line of reasoning. He also knew that when the murderer was caught—and he was quite certain that he would be—it would look like luck and would be regarded by many people as a fluke. But it was a case of giving luck a helping hand, of making the net of circumstance that was eventually to catch the criminal as fine-meshed as possible. And this was a task that rested on him. And on every other policeman. Not on any outsider.
That is why Kollberg did not drive straight home, although he had fully intended doing so. Instead, he drove slowly west along Hornsgatan.
Kollberg was very methodical and considered that the taking of chances had no part in police work. He thought, for instance, that Gunvald Larsson had been guilty of a grave mistake when he broke into the mugger's apartment, even if the door had been old and rickety. Supposing the door had not given at the first assault? Breaking open a door was taking a chance, and was therefore something of which he disapproved on principle. It even happened that he differed from Martin Beck on this point.
He drove around Mariatorget, closely observing the small groups of youngsters in the gardens and around the stands.
He knew that this was mostly where schoolchildren and other young people met the small-scale dope pushers. Every day large quantities of hashish, marijuana, preludin and LSD were passed furtively from seller to buyer. And the buyers were getting younger and younger. Soon they would become addicts. Only the day before he had heard that schoolgirls of ten and eleven were offered shots. And there was nothing much the police could do; they just hadn't the resources. And to make quite sure that vice was bolstered up and those who indulged in it were still further lulled into boastfulness and smug security, this fact was trumpeted out time and again by the country's mass communication media. Anyway, he doubted whether this was a concern of the police at all. Drug-taking among young people was caused by a catastrophic philosophy which had been provoked by the prevailing system. Consequently society should be duty bound to produce an effective counterargument. One that was not based on smugness and more police officers.
Likewise he couldn't see the point of striking demonstrators at Hotorget and outside the US Trade Center with sabers and truncheons, though he quite well understood those colleagues who were more or less forced to do so.
Detective Inspector Lennart Kollberg was thinking all this as he turned off down Rosenlundsgatan and Skoldgatan and drove past the miniature golf course at Tantogarden. He parked the car and walked along one of the paths leading up into the park.
The daylight was fading and there were not many people about. But naturally a few children were still playing, in spite of everything; come to that you could hardly expect all the children in a big city to be kept indoors just because a murderer was at large. Kollberg went and stood in one of the few sparse shrubberies, putting his right foot up on the stub of a tree. From this vantage point he could see the allotment gardens and the spot where the dead girl had lain five days earlier.
He was not aware of any special reason why he had been drawn to this particular place; perhaps because it was the biggest park in the central part of the city and was within easy reach on his way home. In the distance he saw several children, fairly big, perhaps in their early teens. He stood still, waiting. For what, he didn't know, perhaps for the children to go home. He was very tired. Now and then he saw a flickering in front of his eyes.
Kollberg was unarmed. Even with the growing gangster mentality and the steadily increasing brutality of crime, he was one of those who urged that the police should be disarmed entirely, and nowadays he carried a pistol only in case of extreme need and then only when directly ordered to do so.
A train trundled past on the high track, and only when the thud of the wheels on the joints began to die away did Kollberg realize that he was no longer alone in the shrubbery.
Then he was lying headlong in the dew-wet grass with the taste of blood in Ms mouth. Someone had struck him over the back of the neck, very hard and presumably with some kind of weapon.
Whoever struck Kollberg made a mistake. Similar mistakes had been made before, and several people had paid dearly for them.
Moreover, the assailant had put the weight of his body behind the blow and was off balance, and it took Kollberg less than two seconds to roll over on his back and bring his attacker to the ground—a tall, heavy man who
