The Man on the Balcony

A single word.

Andersson.

24

ANDERSSON.

Gunvald Larsson put his head on one side and looked at the name.

'Yes, it looks like Andersson all right. Or maybe Andersen. Or Andresen. It might be damn anything. Though I think it's meant to be Andersson.'

Andersson.

There are three hundred and ninety thousand people in Sweden called Andersson. The Stockholm telephone directory alone lists ten thousand two hundred subscribers with this name, plus another two thousand in the immediate environs.

Martin Beck thought this over. It might turn out to be very easy to get hold of the woman who had made the much-discussed phone call, provided they made use of press, radio and television. But it could also be very difficult. And up to now nothing had been easy during this investigation.

They did make use of press, radio and television.

Nothing happened.

It was understandable that nothing happened on Sunday.

By eleven o'clock on Monday morning there were still no developments and Martin Beck began to have his doubts.

To start door-to-door questioning and calling up thousands of subscribers meant that a very great part of the search squad must be freed from other work to follow up a clue which might very well turn out to be useless. But couldn't the sphere of work be limited in some way? A rather wide street. It must be somewhere in the central part of the city.

'Must it?' Kollberg said doubtfully.

'Of course not, but…'

'But what? Is your intuition telling you something?'

Martin Beck gave him a harried look, then pulled himself together and said:

'The subway ticket, which was bought at Radmansgatan.'

'And which is not proved to have any connection with either the murders or the murderer,' Kollberg said.

'It was bought at the station at Radmansgatan and used only in one direction,' Martin Beck said obstinately. 'The murderer kept it because he intended using it for the return journey. He took the subway from Radmansgatan to Mariatorget or Zinkensdamm and walked the rest of the way to Tanto Park.'

'Mere speculation,' Kollberg said.

'He had to do something to get rid of the little boy who was with the girl. He had nothing else to hand but the ticket.'

'Speculation,' Kollberg said.

'But it sticks together logically.'

'Only just.'

'And besides, the first murder was committed in Vanadis Park. It's all linked up with that part of the city. Vanadis Park, Radmansgatan, the whole area north of Odengatan.'

'You've said that before,' Kollberg said drily. 'It's pure guesswork.'

'The theory of probability.'

'You can call it that too if you like.'

'I want to get hold of that Andersson woman,' Martin Beck said, 'and we can't just sit twiddling our thumbs and wait for her to come to us of her own accord. She may not have a TV, she may not read the papers. But she must have a telephone at any rate.'

'Must she?'

'Without a doubt. You don't make a call like that from a call box or a tobacconist's. Besides, it seemed as if she was watching the man while she talked.'

'Okay, I give in on that point.'

'And if we're going to start ringing around and go from door to door, we must begin somewhere, within a certain area.

Seeing that we haven't enough men in the force to contact every single person by the name of Andersson.'

Kollberg sat in silence for a while. Then he said:

'Let's leave this Andersson woman for a moment and ask ourselves instead what we know of the murderer.'

'We have a sort of description.'

'Sort of, yes, that just sums it up. And we don't know if it was the murderer Lundgren saw, if indeed he saw anyone.'

'We know it's a man.'

'Yes. What else do we know?'

'We know that he's not in the vice squad's records.'

'Yes. Provided no one has been careless or forgotten something. That has happened before.'

'We know the approximate times the murders were committed—soon after seven in the evening in Vanadis Park and between two and three in the afternoon in Tanto. So he wasn't at work then.'

'Which implies?'

Martin Beck said nothing. Kollberg answered his own question:

'That he's out of work, is on vacation, is on sick leave, is only visiting Stockholm, has irregular working hours, is pensioned off, is a vagrant or… in short, it implies nothing at all.'

'True enough,' Martin Beck said. 'But we do have some idea of his behavior pattern.'

'You mean the psychologists' rigmarole?'

'Yes.'

'That's only guesswork too, but…'

Kollberg was silent for a moment before going on:

'But I must admit that Melander made a very plausible extract from all that stuff.'

'Yes.'

'As for this woman and her phone call, let's try and find her. And since we must start somewhere, as you so aptly pointed out, and since we're only guessing our way along anyway, we might just as well presume that you are right. How do you want it done?'

'Well start in the fifth and ninth districts,' Martin Beck said. 'Put a couple of men onto calling up everyone by the name of Andersson and a couple more onto door knocking. Well ask the entire personnel in those districts to focus then-attention on this particular question. Especially along wide streets where there are balconies— Odengatan, Karlbergsvagen, Tegnergatan, Sveavagen and so on.'

'Okay,' Kollberg said.

They set to work.

It was an awful Monday. The Great Detective (the general public), who had seemed less busy during Sunday, partly because so many people had gone to the country for the weekend, partly because of the reassuring appeals in press and television, were fully active once more. The central office for tips was swamped with calls from people who thought they knew something, from lunatics who wanted to confess and from scoundrels who called up just to be cussed. Parks and wooded areas swarmed with plainclothes police, as far as a hundred men can be said to swarm, and on top of all this came the search for someone called Andersson.

And the whole time fear was lurking in the background. Many parents called the police about children who had not been away from home for longer than fifteen or twenty minutes. Everything had to be noted down and checked. The material grew and grew. And in all cases was utterly useless.

In the middle of all this Hansson in fifth district called up.

'Have you found another body?' Martin Beck said.

'No, but I'm worried about that Eriksson we were to keep an eye on. The exhibitionist you had in