'Did you say he worked on Saturday, too?' Martin Beck asked. She nodded.
'Yes, but not all day. We left here together in the morning, and I finished at one and came straight home. Ake got home not long after. He had done the shopping. On Sunday he was free. We spent the whole day together.'
She went back to the armchair and sat down, clasped her hands round her drawn-up knees and bit her lower lip.
'Didn't he tell you what he was working on?' Kollberg asked.
Asa shook her head.
'Didn't he usually tell you?' Martin Beck asked.
'Oh, yes. We told each other everything. But not lately. He said nothing about this last job. I thought it was funny he didn't talk to me about it He always used to discuss the different cases, especially when it was something tricky and difficult. But perhaps he wasn't allowed -'
She broke off and raised her voice.
'Anyway, why are you asking me? You were his superiors. If you're trying to find out whether he told me any police secrets, then I can assure you he didn't He didn't say one word about his job during the last three weeks.'
'Perhaps it was because he didn't have anything special to tell you about,' Kollberg said soothingly. 'The last three weeks have been unusually uneventful and we've had very litde to do.'
Asa looked hard at him.
'How can you say that? Ake, at any rate, had a lot to do. He was working practically night and day.'
14
Ronn looked at his watch and yawned.
He glanced at the stretcher trolley and the person who lay there, bandaged beyond description. Then he regarded the complex apparatus that was apparently necessary to keep the injured man alive, and the snooty middle-aged nurse who checked that everything was functioning as it should. At the moment she was deftly changing one of the rigged-up drip bottles. Her actions were quick and precise; they showed many years' training and admirable economy of movement
Ronn sighed and yawned again behind the mask.
The nurse spotted it at once and gave him a swift, disapproving glance.
He had spent far too many hours in this antiseptic isolation ward with its cold light and bare white walls, or roaming about the corridor outside the operating theatre.
Moreover, for most of the time he had been in the company of a man called Ullholm, whom he had never seen before but who nevertheless turned out to be a plainclothes detective.
Ronn was not one of the shining lights of the age and he didn't pretend to be particularly well informed. He was quite content with himself and with life in general, and thought that things were pretty good as they were. It was these qualities, in feet, that made him a useful and capable policeman. He had a simple, straightforward attitude to things and had no talent for creating problems and difficulties which did not exist.
He liked most people and most people liked him.
But even to someone with Ronn's uncomplicated outlook, this Ullholm stood out as a monster of nagging tedium and reactionary stupidity.
Ullholm was dissatisfied with everything, from his salary grade, which not surprisingly was too low, to the police commissioner, who hadn't the sense to take strong measures.
He was indignant that children were not taught manners at school and that discipline was too slack within the police force.
He was particularly virulent about three categories of citizens who had never caused Ronn any headaches or worry: foreigners, teenagers and socialists.
Ullholm thought it was a scandal that beat officers were allowed to have beards.
'A moustache at the very most,' he said. 'But even that is extremely questionable. You see what I mean, don't you?'
He considered that there had been no law and order in society since the thirties.
He put the greatly increasing crime and brutality down to the feet that the police were not given proper military training and no longer wore sabres.
The introduction of right-hand traffic was a scandalous blunder that had made the situation much worse in a community that was already undisciplined and morally corrupt
'Furthermore, it increases promiscuity,' he said. ‘You see what I mean, don't you?'
'Huh,' said Ronn.
'Promiscuity. All these turn-around areas and parking facilities along the main highways. You see what I mean, don't you?'
He was a man who knew most things and understood everything. Only on one occasion did he consider himself forced to ask Ronn for information. He began by saying, 'When you see all this laxity you long to get back to nature. I'd make for the mountains if it weren't that the whole of Lapland is lousy with Lapps. You see what I mean, don't you?'
'I'm married to a Lapp girl,' Ronn said.
Ullholm looked at him with a peculiar mixture of distaste and curiosity. Lowering his voice, he said, 'How interesting and extraordinary. Is it true that Lapp women have it crosswise?'
'No,' Ronn replied wearily. 'It is not true. It's just a wrong idea that many people have.'
Ronn wondered why the man hadn't long since been transferred to the lost-and-found office.
Ullholm droned on incessantly and concluded every declaration of principle with the words, 'You see what I mean, don't you?'
Ronn saw only two things.
First: what had actually happened at investigation headquarters when he had asked the innocent question, 'Who's on duty at the hospital?'
Kollberg had rooted indifferently among his papers and said, 'Someone called Ullholm.'
The only one to recognize the name was Gunvald Larsson, who exclaimed,'What! Who?'
'Ullholm,' Kollberg repeated.
'It must be stopped! We'll have to send along someone to look after him. Someone more or less sane.'
Ronn had turned out to be this more-or-less sane person. Still just as innocently, he had asked, 'Am I to relieve him?'
'Relieve him? No, that's impossible. He'll think then that he's been slighted. He'll write hundreds of petitions. Report the national police board to the civil ombudsman. Call up the minister of justice.'
And as Ronn was on the way out, Gunvald Larsson had given him a final instruction: 'Einar.' 'Yes?'
'And don't let him say one word to the witness until you've seen the death certificate.'
Second: that he must in some way dam up the spate of words. At last he did find a theoretical solution. Put into practice, it worked as follows:
Ullholm wound up a long declaration by saying, 'It goes quite without saying that as a private person and a conservative, a citizen in a free democratic country, I don't make the slightest discrimination among people on account of colour, race or opinion. But
Whereupon Ronn cleared his throat modestly behind his mask and said, 'Yes. But as a matter of feet, I myself am one of those socialists, so ...'
'A communist?'
‘Yes. A communist.'
Ullholm wrapped himself in sepulchral silence and went over to the window.
He had been standing there now for two hours, grimly staring out at the treacherous world surrounding him.
Schwerin had been operated on three times; both the bullets had been removed from his body but none of the doctors looked particularly cheerful and the only answers Ronn had received to his discreet questions had been shrugs.
But about a quarter of an hour ago one of the surgeons had come into the isolation ward and said, 'If he is
