She turned her back to him.
'You are beautiful.'
'Thank you. Am I to stand like this?'
'No. The front is better.'
'O-oh.'
She turned right round and looked at him with the same expression on her face as before.
'Can you stand on your hands?'
'I could, at any rate, before I met you. Since then I've had no cause to. Shall I try?' 'You needn't bother.' 'I can if you like.'
She walked across the room and stood on her hands, arching her body upward and putting her feet against the wall. No effort at all. Kollberg looked at her thoughtfully. 'Do you want me to stay like this?' she asked. 'No, it's not necessary.'
'I'll do it gladly if it amuses you. They say you faint after a time. Of course in that case you can cover me over with a cloth or something.'
'No, come down now.'
She put her feet gracefully to the floor and stood upright, looking at him over her shoulder.
'Supposing I wanted to take your photograph like that?' he said. ‘What would you say?'
‘What do you mean by like that? Naked?'
'Yes.'
'Standing on my hands?' 'Yes, that for instance.' ‘You don't even have a camera/ 'No, but that's neither here nor there.' 'Of course you can if you want to. You can do whatever you damn well like with me. I already told you that two years ago.' He didn't answer. She remained standing by the wall. 'What are you going to do with the pictures anyway?' 'That's just the question.'
Turning around, she went up to him. Then she said, 'And now do you mind if I ask: What the hell is this all about? If it so happens that you want to make love to me, there's a comfortable bed in there, and if you can't be bothered going so far, this rya rug is also first-rate. Nice and soft. I made it myself.'
'Stenstrom had a bundle of pictures like that in the drawer of his desk.'
'At the office?' 'Yes.'
'Of whom?' 'His girl.' 'Asa?' 'Yes.'
'That can't have been any great feast for the eyes.'
'I wouldn't say that,' Kollberg replied.
She looked at him and frowned.
'The question is, why?' he said.
'Does it matter?'
'I don't know. I can't explain it'
'Perhaps he just wanted to look at them.'
'That's what Martin said.'
'It seems much more sensible, of course, to go home and have a look now and again.'
'Of course, Martin isn't always so bright either. He's worried about us, for instance. You can tell by the look of him.'
'About us? Why?'
'Because I went out alone on Friday evening, I think.' 'He has a wife, hasn't he?'
'Something doesn't add up,' Kollberg said. 'With Stenstrom and these pictures.'
'Why? You know how men are. Was she attractive in the pictures?' 'Yes.'
'Very?'
'Yes.'
‘You know what I should say now.'
'Yes.'
'But I'm not going to say it'
'No. I know that, too.'
'So far as Stenstrom is concerned, he probably wanted to show them to his mates. To boast.'
'It doesn't add up. He wasn't like that' 'Why are you worrying about this?'
'Don't know. I suppose because there are no other clues left'
'Do you call this a clue? Do you think someone shot Stenstrom because of these pictures? In that case why should he kill eight more people?'
Kollberg looked at her intently.
'Exactly. That's a good question.'
Bending over, she kissed him lightly on the forehead
'Let's go to bed,' Kollberg said.
'A brilliant idea. I'll just make a bottle for Bodil first. It only takes thirty seconds. According to the directions on the package. I’ll see you in bed. Or on the floor or in the bathtub or wherever you damn well like.'
'The bed, thanks.'
She went out into the kitchen. Kollberg got up and turned off the floor lamp. 'Lennart?' 'Yes?'
'How old is Asa?' 'Twenty-four.'
'Woman's sexual activity culminates between twenty-nine and thirty-two. Kinsey says so.' 'Oh? And man's?' 'At eighteen.'
He heard her whisking the babyfood in the saucepan. Then she called out, 'But with men it's more individual. If that's any consolation.'
Kollberg watched his wife through the half-open kitchen door. She was standing naked at the counter by the sink, stirring the saucepan. His wife was a long-legged girl of normal build and sensual nature. She was exactly what he wanted, but it had taken him over twenty years to mid her and another year to think it over.
At the moment her posture was impatient and she kept fidgetting with her feet
'Thirty seconds,' she muttered to herself. 'Damn liars.'
Kollberg smiled in the dark. He knew that soon he would be spared the thought of Stenstrom and the red doubledecker bus. For the first time in three days.
Martin Beck had not spent twenty years in search of his wife. He had met her seventeen years ago, made her pregnant on the spot and married in haste.
He had indeed repented at leisure, and now she was standing at the bedroom door, a living reminder of his mistake, in a crumpled nightdress and with red marks from the pillow on her face.
'You'll wake the whole house with your coughing and snuffling.'
'I'm sorry.'
'And why do you lie there smoking in the middle of the night?' she went on. ‘Your throat's bad enough as it is.'
Stubbing out the cigarette, he said, 'I'm sorry if I woke you up.'
'Oh, it doesn't matter. The main thing is that you don't go and get pneumonia again. You'd better stay at home tomorrow.'
'I can't very well.'
'Nonsense. If you're ill you shouldn't go to work. You're not the only policeman. Besides, you should be asleep, not lying reading those old reports. You'll never dear up that taxi murder anyhow. It's half-past one. Leave that old pile of papers alone and put the light out. Good night'
'Good night,' Martin Beck said mechanically to the closed bedroom door.
Frowning, he slowly put the stapled report down. It was quite wrong to call it an old pile of papers, as it was a copy of the postmortem reports handed to him just as he was going home the evening before. It was true, however, that a few months earlier he had lain awake at night going through the investigation into the murder of a taxi driver twelve years before.
He lay still for a while, staring up at the ceiling. When he heard his wife's light snoring from the bedroom, he got up swiftly and tiptoed out into the hall. Hesitated a moment with his hand on the telephone. Then he shrugged, lifted the receiver and dialled Kollberg's number.
'Kollberg,' Gun said breathlessly.
