The Man on the Balcony

listed first by a doctor in private practice, then gradually examined by various psychiatrists in social welfare and was finally pensioned off two years later as unfit to work. The official report had the somewhat mystifying wording: 'mentally incapable of physical work.'

The doctors concerned said that he had more than average talent but was seized by a kind of chronic fear of work which simply prevented him from going off to work. Attempts at rehabilitation had failed. When he was supposed to be working in a machine shop he went to the factory gates every morning for four weeks but could not bring himself to go in. It was said that this type of inability to work was rare but by no means unique. Fransson was not mentally ill in any way or in need of care. There was nothing wrong with his intelligence and he had no physical defects to speak of. (The army doctor had given him a low rating because of flat feet.) But he was very unsociable, had no need of human contact, no friends and no interests, apart from what a doctor called 'a vague interest in his native Smaland countryside.' He had a quiet, friendly manner, did not drink, was extremely economical and could be considered orderly, although he 'didn't bother much about his appearance.' He smoked. No sexual abnormalities had been apparent; Fransson had answered very vaguely when asked whether he was in the habit of masturbating, but the doctor presumed that he did so and that in any case he had an unusually weak sex urge. He suffered from agoraphobia.

Most of this dated from doctors' reports of the years 1957 and 1958. Since then none of the authorities had had reason to concern themselves with Fransson other than as a matter of routine. He had drawn his national pension and had kept to himself. He had subscribed to the Smaland Gazette since the early 1950s.

'What's agoraphobia?' Gunvald Larsson asked.

'Morbid dread of public places,' Melander said.

Investigation headquarters were buzzing with activity. Every available man had been put on to the job. Most of them had forgotten their tiredness. Hope of a quick solution had been kindled.

Outside, the weather grew slowly colder. A light rain had begun to fall.

Information poured in as though on a teleprinter. The police as yet had no photograph, but they did have a complete description, the missing details having been filled in by doctors, neighbors, former workmates and the assistants in the shops where he bought his food.

Fransson was 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighed about 176 pounds and, sure enough, took size 8 in shoes.

The neighbors said that he spoke little but was a gentle and friendly man who always passed the time of day. He had a Smaland accent. Seemed the sort of person you could trust. No one had seen him for eight days.

The technicians in the apartment at Sveavagen had by this time checked and examined everything possible. There seemed no doubt that Fransson had committed both murders. They had even found blood on the black shoe in the closet.

'So he lay low for more than ten years,' Kollberg said.

'And now he's got the itch and wanders about raping and murdering little girls,' Gunvald Larsson said.

A telephone rang. Ronn answered.

Martin Beck paced up and down, biting his knuckles.

'We know practically everything that's worth knowing about him,' he said. 'We have everything except his photograph. And I expect that will turn up too. The only thing we don't know is—where is he now?'

'I know where he was fifteen minutes ago,' Ronn said. 'A dead girl is lying in St. Erik's Park.'

28

ST. ERIK'S PARK is one of the smallest in the city; in fact it is so insignificant that most Stockholmers don't even know of its existence. Few people go there and still fewer have any thought of guarding it.

It lies in the north part of the city, forming a kind of unnatural end to the long street of Vastmannagatan. A small tree-covered, rocky outcrop with gravel paths and steps, pitching down rather steeply towards the surrounding streets. The greater part of the area is, moreover, occupied by a school, which of course is closed in the summer.

The body lay in the northwest part of the park, fully visible and right out on the edge of the rock. It was a macabre corroboration of the theory that the murders would get more and more horrible. The man called Ingemund Fransson had been in a great hurry this time. He had bashed the girl's head against a stone and strangled her. Then he had ripped open her red plastic coat and her dress, torn her pants off and rammed something resembling the shaft of an old hammer up between her legs.

To make matters worse, it was the girl's mother who had found her. The girl, whose name was Solveig, was older than the previous victims, having already turned eleven. She lived in Dannemoragatan, less than five minutes' walk from the scene of the crime, and, as far as anyone knew, she had had no reason to be in the park at all. She had gone out to buy some chocolate at a candy stand almost on the corner of Dannemoragatan and Norra Stationsgatan, outside the actual park and at its northeast end. The errand should not have taken more than ten minutes and the girl had been told several times previously not to play in the park, which in any case she was not in the habit of doing. When she had been gone only a quarter of an hour her mother had gone out to look for her. She would have gone with her at the outset if she had not had another daughter, who was only eighteen months old and had to be looked after. She had found the body almost at once, had broken down completely and was already in the hospital.

They stood in the bleak drizzle gazing down at the dead child, feeling far more guilty than the murderer of this death, so hideous and pointless. The pants could not be found, nor the chocolate. Perhaps Ingemund Fransson was hungry and had taken it with him.

No doubt that it was his work. There was even a witness, who had seen him standing and talking to the girl But they had seemed on such familiar terms that the witness was convinced that he saw a father who was out with his daughter. Ingemund Fransson was, as they knew, gentle and friendly and seemed the sort of person you could trust. He had been dressed in a beige-colored corduroy jacket, brown trousers, white shirt open at the neck, and neat black shoes.

The missing underpants were light-blue.

'He must be somewhere close by,' Kollberg said.

Below them, the heavy traffic rumbled past on the main thoroughfare along St. Eriksgatan and Norra Stationsgatan. Martin Beck gazed out over the sprawling freightyard of the railroad and said quietly:

'Comb every railroad car, every warehouse, every cellar, every attic in this area. Now. Immediately.'

Then he turned and walked away. The time was three o'clock on Tuesday the twentieth of June. It was raining.

29

THE HUNT BEGAN about five o'clock on Tuesday afternoon; it was still going on at midnight and was intensified during the early morning hours.

Every single man who could be spared for the search was on the go, every dog was out and every car in movement. The hunt was concentrated at first on the northern parts of the city but spread by degrees to the center and then out to the suburbs.

Stockholm is a city in which many thousands of people sleep out of doors in the summer. Not only tramps, junkies and alcoholics but also a large number of visitors who cannot get hotel rooms and just as many homeless people who, though fit for work and for the most part capable of holding down a job, cannot find anywhere to live, since bungled community planning has resulted in an acute housing shortage. They sleep on park benches and on old newspapers spread out on the ground, under bridges, on quaysides and in back yards. An equal number find temporary lodging in condemned houses, in buildings under construction, in air-raid shelters, garages, railroad cars, staircases, cellars, attics and sheds. Or in coastal vessels and motorboats and old wrecks. Many drift about in the subway stations and at the railroad station or climb into some athletic field, and those who are smart have no great difficulty in getting down into the subterranean communications system beneath the big city buildings with its labyrinth of corridors and connecting shafts.

Plainclothes and uniformed policemen shook thousands of such people awake on this night, forcing them to their feet, shining flashlights into faces stupid with sleep and demanding proof of identity. Many came in for this five or six times; they moved about from place to place, only to be prodded awake by new police who were just as exhausted as themselves.

Otherwise the streets were quiet. Not even prostitutes and drug pushers dared to show their faces; evidently they did not realize that the police had less time for them than ever.