The windows, one in the living room and one in the dining area, gave onto the street and were shut; so was the balcony door. The air was close and stale.
The apartment was in no way dilapidated or neglected, yet somehow it seemed shabby. It was also very bare. The living room had only three pieces of furniture: an unmade bed with a torn, red quilt and grubby sheets, a kitchen chair at the head of the bed and, by the opposite wall, a low chest of drawers. No curtains and no rug on the linoleum floor. On the chair, which evidently served as a bedside table, lay a box of matches, a saucer and an issue of the
Above the chest of drawers hung a framed reproduction of an oil painting of two horses and a birch tree, and on the chest of drawers stood another ornament, a glazed blue ceramic dish. Empty. That was all.
Kollberg regarded the objects on the chair and said:
'Looks as if he saves the tobacco from the cigarette butts and smokes it in a pipe.'
Martin Beck nodded.
They didn't go out onto the balcony but merely looked through the glass pane of the closed door. The balcony had an iron tube railing and the sides were of corrugated iron. It was furnished with a rickety varnished garden table and a folding chair. The chair looked old, with worn wooden arms and faded canvas seat.
In the closet hung a reasonably good dark-blue suit, a threadbare winter overcoat and a pair of brown corduroy trousers. On the shelf lay a fur cap and a woolen scarf and on the floor one black shoe and a pair of worn-out brown boots. They looked about size 8.
'Small feet,' Kollberg said. 'Wonder where the other shoe is.'
They found it a few minutes later in the broom cupboard. Beside it lay a cleaning rag and a shoe brush. The shoe looked to be smeared with something, but the light was bad and they didn't want to touch it; they just stared into the dark cupboard.
The kitchen offered several other things of interest. On the gas cooker was a large box of matches and a saucepan with remains of food. Looked like oatmeal, quite dried up. On the sink an enamel coffeepot and a dirty cup with a thin layer of dregs in the bottom. Dry as dust. Also a soup plate and a can of coarse-ground coffee. Along the other wall was a refrigerator and two kitchen cupboards with sliding doors. The men opened all three. The refrigerator contained an opened half-packet of margarine, two eggs and a bit of sausage, which was so old that it was covered with a thin layer of mold.
One of the cupboards seemed to be used for china, the other as a pantry. A few plates, cups and glasses, a serving dish, salt, half a loaf of bread, a packet of lump sugar and a bag of rolled oats. In the drawers underneath were a carving knife and several odd knives, forks and spoons.
Kollberg poked at the bread. It was hard as a stone.
'He doesn't seem to have been home for a while,' he said.
'No,' Martin Beck agreed.
In the cupboard under the draining board was a frying pan and saucepans and in the opening under the sink was a garbage bag. It was almost empty.
By the window in the dining recess stood a red kitchen table with leaves and two kitchen chairs. On the table stood two bottles and a dirty glass. The bottles had contained ordinary sweet vermouth. One of them still had a little in the bottom.
Both window sill and table top were covered with a film of greasy dirt, obviously exhaust fumes from the street, which had seeped in through the cracks of the window, although this was shut.
Kollberg went into the bathroom and had a look, returned after half a minute and shook his head.
'Nothing there.'
The two top drawers of the chest of drawers contained shirts, a cardigan, socks, underclothes and two ties. They all seemed clean but threadbare. The bottom drawer was full of dirty linen. There was also an enrollment book from the army.
They opened it and read:
Martin Beck leafed through the enrollment book. It told him quite a lot about what Ingemund Rudolf Fransson had been doing up to and including the year 1947. He was born in Smaland forty-one years ago. In 1946 he had had a job as a gardening laborer in Malmo and had lived in Vastergatan there. In the same year he had been called up, had been graded as C3 and unfit for armed service, and had served twelve months with the antiaircraft regiment in Malmo. On being discharged from the army in 1947 someone with an illegible signature had given him the rating X- 5-5, which lay well below average. The Roman figure was a mark of military conduct and showed that he had not been guilty of any breach of discipline, the two fives indicated that he was not much of a soldier, even within the C3 category. The officer with the illegible signature had given him the laconic utility code 'kitchen hand,' which probably meant that he had performed his national service peeling potatoes.
Otherwise their rapid and superficial search of the apartment revealed nothing about Ingemund Fransson's present occupation or about his doings during the last twenty years.
'The mail,' Kollberg said, going out into the hall.
Martin Beck nodded. He was standing by the bed, looking down at it. The sheets were crumpled and grubby, the pillow squashed into a lump. Even so, it didn't look as if anyone had slept in it for several days.
Kollberg came back.
'Only newspapers and advertisements,' he said. 'What's the date of the paper lying there?'
Martin Beck put his head on one side, narrowed his eyes and said:
'Thursday the eighth of June.'
'It evidently comes the day after. He hasn't touched his post since Saturday the tenth. Not after the murder in Vanadis Park.'
'Yet he seems to have been home on Monday.'
'Yes,' Kollberg agreed, then added:
'But hardly since then.'
Martin Beck stretched out his right arm, took hold of one corner of the pillowcase with thumb and forefinger and lifted the pillow.
Under it lay two pairs of little girls' white pants.
Seemed very small.
Stained by spots in different shades.
They stood quite still in the stale, bleak room, listening to the traffic and their own breathing. For perhaps twenty seconds. Then Martin Beck said swiftly and tonelessly:
'Okay. That's it. We'll seal off the apartment and alert the technical squad.'
'Pity there was no photograph,' Kollberg said.
Martin Beck thought of the dead man in the condemned house in Vastmannagatan who had not yet been identified. It could be the same one but it was far from certain. Not even likely.
They still knew very little about the man called Ingemund Fransson.
Three hours later the time was two o'clock in the afternoon of Tuesday, the twentieth of June, and they knew considerably more.
For one thing, the dead man in Vastmannagatan was not identical with Ingemund Fransson. Several nauseated witnesses had confirmed this.
The police had at last got hold of a loose end of thread, and with the aid of the well-oiled and ruthlessly efficient investigation machinery they soon unraveled the relatively simple tangle concerning Ingemund Fransson's past. They had already been in touch with about a hundred persons: neighbors, shopkeepers, social workers, doctors, army officers, clergymen, temperance administrators and many others. The picture cleared up very quickly.
Ingemund Fransson had moved to Malmo in 1943 and had got a job with the parks branch of the municipal council. His change of domicile was probably due to the fact that he had lost his parents. His father, who had been a laborer in Vaxjo, had died in the spring and his mother had already been dead for five years. He had no other relations. As soon as he had done his national service he had moved to Stockholm. He had lived in the apartment in Sveavagen since 1948 and had been employed as a gardening laborer until 1956. He then gave up his job, was sick-
