The Laughing Policeman

down himself did he realize Gunvald Larsson's problem.

As the construction of the chair really permitted only an outstretched horizontal position, and it would look odd with a reclining interrogator, Gunvald Larsson had more or less folded himself double. He was red in the face from the discomfort and glared at Martin Beck between his knees, which stuck up like two alpine peaks in front of him.

Martin Beck twisted his legs first to the left, then to the right, then he tried to cross them and wedge them under the chair, but it was too low. At last he adopted the same position as Gunvald Larsson.

Meanwhile the widow had drained her glass and held it out to her brother-in-law to be refilled. He gave her a searching look and then went and fetched a carafe and a clean glass from a sideboard.

'You'll have a glass of sherry, won't you, Superintendent' he said.

And before Martin Beck had time to protest the man had filled the glass and placed it on the table in front of him.

I was just asking Mrs Assarsson if she knew why her husband was on that bus on Monday night' Gunvald Larsson said

'And I gave the same reply to you as I did to the person who had the bad taste to question me about my husband only seconds after I had been informed of his death. That I don't know.'

She raised her glass to Martin Beck and drained it in one gulp. Martin Beck made an attempt to reach his sherry glass but missed by about a foot and fell back into the chair.

'Do you know where your husband was earlier in the evening?' he asked.

Putting down her glass, she took an orange-coloured cigarette with a gold tip out of a green glass box on the table. She fumbled with the cigarette and tapped it several times on the lid of the box before allowing her brother- in-law to light it for her. Martin Beck noticed that she was not quite sober.

'Yes, I do,' she said. 'He was at a meeting. We had dinner at six o'clock, then he changed and went out at about seven.'

Gunvald Larsson took a piece of paper and a ball-point pen out of his breast pocket and asked, as he dug at his ear with the pen, 'A meeting? Where and with whom?'

Assarsson looked at his sister-in-law and when she didn't answer he said, 'It was an organization of old school friends. They called themselves the Camels. It consisted of nine members, who had kept in touch ever since they were at the naval cadet school together. They used to meet at the home of a businessman called Sjoberg on Narvavagen.'

'The Camels?' Gunvald Larsson exclaimed incredulously.

'Yes,'Assarsson replied. 'They used to greet each other by saying: 'Hi, old camel,' so they took to calling themselves the Camels.'

The widow looked critically at her brother-in-law.

'It's an idealistic association,' she said. 'It does a lot for charity.'

'Oh?' Gunvald Larsson said. 'Such as ... ?'

'It's a secret,' Mrs Assarsson replied. 'Not even we wives were allowed to know. Some societies do that Work sub rosa so to speak.'

Feeling Gunvald Larsson's eyes on him, Martin Beck said, 'Mrs Assarsson, do you know when your husband left Narvavagen?'

‘Well, I couldn't get to sleep, so I got up about two o'clock in the morning to take a little nightcap, and when I saw that Gosta hadn't come home I called up the Screw - that's what they call Mr Sjoberg - and the Screw said that Gosta had left about half-past ten.'

She stubbed out her cigarette.

‘Where do you think he was going on the 47 bus?' Martin Beck asked.

Assarsson gave him an anxious look.

'He was on his way to some business acquaintance, of course. My husband was very energetic and worked very hard with his firm - that's to say, Ture here is also part-owner, of course - and it wasn't at all unusual for him to have business dealings at night For instance, when people came up from the provinces and were only in Stockholm overnight and then, er ...'

She seemed to lose the thread. She picked up her empty glass and twiddled it between her fingers.

Gunvald Larsson was busy writing on his scrap of paper. Martin Beck stretched one leg and massaged his knee.

'Have you any children, Mrs Assarsson?' he asked.

Mrs Assarsson put her glass in front of her brother-in-law to be refilled, but he immediately took it to the sideboard without looking at her. She gave him a resentful look, stood up with an effort and brushed some cigarette ash off her skirt

'No, Superintendent Peck, I haven't Unfortunately my husband couldn't give me any children.'

She stared vacantly at a point beyond Martin Beck's left ear. He could see now that she was pretty well stewed. She blinked slowly a couple of times and then looked at him.

'Are your parents American, Superintendent Peck?' she asked.

'No,' Martin Beck replied.

Gunvald Larsson was still scribbling. Martin Beck craned his neck and looked at the piece-of paper. It was covered with camels.

'If Superintendents Peck and Larsson will excuse me, I must retire,' Mrs Assarsson said, walking unsteadily towards the door.

'Good-bye, it's been so nice,' she said vaguely, and closed the door behind her.

Gunvald Larsson put away his pen and the paper with the camels and struggled out of the chair.

'Whom did he sleep with?' he asked, without looking at Assarsson.

Assarsson glanced at the closed door.

'Eivor Olsson,' he replied. 'A girl at the office.'

₁₇

There was little to be said in favour of this repulsive Wednesday.

Not surprisingly, the evening papers had ferreted out the story of Schwerin, splashing it across the front pages and larding it with details and sarcastic gibes at the police.

The investigation was already at a deadlock. The police had smuggled away the only important witness. The police had lied to the press and the public.

If the press and the Great Detective the General Public were not given correct information, how could the police count on help?

The only thing the papers didn't say was that Schwerin had died, but that was probably only because they had been so early going to press.

They had also managed somehow to sniff out the dismal truth about the state in which the forensic laboratory technicians had found the scene of the crime.

Valuable time had been lost

Unhappily, too, the mass murder had coincided with a raid -decided on several weeks earlier - on kiosks and tobacco shops in an attempt to confiscate pornographic literature.

One of the newspapers was kind enough to point out in a prominent place that a maniac mass-murderer was running amok in town and that the public was panic-stricken.

And, it went on, while the scent grew cold a whole army of Swedish Keystone Cops were, plodding about looking at porno pictures, scratching their heads and trying to make out the ministry of justice's hazy instructions as to what could be considered offensive to public decency.

When Kollberg arrived at Kungsholmsgatan at about four o'clock in the afternoon, he had ice crystals in his hair and eyebrows, a grim expression on his face and the evening papers under his arm.

If we had as many snouts as local rags, we'd never have to lift a finger,' he said.

'It's a question of money,' Melander said.

'I know that. Does that make it any better?'

'No,' Melander said. 'But it's as simple as that'

He knocked out his pipe and returned to his papers.