Kollberg paused briefly.
'You see, he didn't have a single personal thing in his office,' he said, explaining. 'Apart from these photographs.'
A long silence. At last she shook her head slowly and said, 'No. I don't know.'
Time to change the subject, Kollberg thought Aloud he said, 'Did he always go about with a gun?' 'Nearly always.' 'Why?'
'He liked to. Lately. He was interested in firearms.'
She seemed to be thinking something over. Then she got up suddenly and walked quickly out of the room. Through the short passage he saw her go into the bedroom and up to the bed. Sticking her hand under one of the crumpled pillows, she said hesitantly, 'I've a thing here ... a pistol...'
Kollberg's relative obesity and phlegmatic appearance had deceived many in various situations. He was in extremely good trim and his responses were amazingly quick.
Asa Torell was still bending over the bed when he stood beside her and wrenched the weapon from her hand.
'This is no pistol,' he said. 'It's an American revolver. A Colt .45 with a long barrel. Peacemaker it's called, absurdly enough. Besides which, it is loaded. And cocked.'
'As if I didn't know that,' she mumbled.
He opened the chamber and took out the cartridges.
'With cross-filed bullets, what's more,' he said. 'Forbidden even in America. The most dangerous small firearm imaginable. You can kill an elephant with it. If you shoot a human being at a range of five yards, the bullet makes a wound as big as a soup plate and hurls the body ten yards backward. Where the hell did you get it from?'
She shrugged bewilderedly. 'Ake. He's always had it' 'In bed?'
With a shake of her head she said quietly, 'No, no. It was I who ... now...'
Slipping the bullets into his trouser pocket he pointed the revolver at the floor and pulled the trigger. The click echoed in the silent flat.
'Moreover, the trigger has been filed,' he said. 'To make it quicker and more sensitive. Horribly dangerous. You'd only have had to turn over in your sleep to –‘
He fell silent.
'I haven't slept much lately,' she said.
'Hm,' Kollberg muttered to himself. 'He must have smuggled this away when he was confiscating weapons at some time. Swiped it in fact.'
He looked at the big, heavy revolver and weighed it in his hand Then he glanced at the girl's right wrist It was as slender as a child's.
'Well, I can understand him,' he mumbled. 'If you're fascinated by firearms ...'
Suddenly he raised his voice.
'But I'm not fascinated,' he shouted. 'I hate this sort of thing. Do you get that? This is a foul thing that shouldn't be allowed to exist No firearms should exist. The fact that they are still made and that all sorts of people have them lying about in drawers or carry them around in the street just shows that the whole system is perverted and crazy. Some bastard makes a fat profit by making and selling arms, just the way other people make a fat profit on factories that make narcotics and deadly pills. Do you get it?'
She looked at him with an entirely new expression; her eyes focused on him now with a clear, direct look.
'Go and sit down,' he said curtly. 'We're going to talk. This is serious.'
Asa Torell said nothing. She went straight into the living room and sat down in the armchair.
Kollberg went out into the hall and put the revolver on the hat rack. Took off his jacket and tie. Unbuttoned his collar and rolled up his sleeves. Then he went into the kitchen, put some water on to boil and made some tea. Brought the cups in and set them on the table. Emptied the ashtrays. Opened a window. Sat down.
'First of all,' he said, 'I want to know what you meant by 'lately'. When you said that lately he liked to go armed.'
'Quiet,' said Asa.
After ten seconds she added, ‘Wait'
She drew up her legs so that her feet in the big grey ski socks were resting against the edge of the armchair. Then she put her arms around her shins and sat quite still.
Kollberg waited
To be precise, he waited for fifteen minutes, and during the whole of this time she did not look at him once. Neither of them said a word. Then she looked him in the eye and said, 'Well?' 'How do you feel?'
'No better. But different Ask what you like. I promise to answer. Answer anything at all. There's only one thing I want to know first'
'Yes?'
'Have you told me everything?'
'No,' Kollberg replied. 'But I'm going to now. The reason why I'm here at all is that I don't believe in the official version - that Stenstrom merely chanced to fall victim to a crazy mass murderer. And quite apart from your assurances that he was not unfaithful to you or whatever you like to call it and what you base them on, I do not believe that he was on that bus for pleasure.'
'Then what
'That you were right from the outset. When you said that he was working. That he was busy with something in his capacity as policeman but for one reason or another didn't want to tell anybody, either you or us. One possibility, for instance, is that he had been shadowing someone for a long time, and that this someone at last grew desperate and killed him. Though I personally don't think that that theory is plausible.'
He paused briefly.
'Ake was very good at shadowing. It amused him.' 'Yes, I know.'
'You can shadow in two ways,' Kollberg went on. 'Either you follow a person as invisibly as possible, to find, out what he's up to. Or else you follow him quite openly, to drive him to desperation and make him do something rash and give himself away. Stenstrom had mastered the art of both methods better than anyone else I know.'
'Does anyone else besides you believe this?' Asa Torell asked.
'Yes. Beck and Melander at least'
He scratched his neck.
'But there are several weaknesses in the argument. We needn't go into them now.' She nodded.
'What do you want to know?'
'I'm not sure. We'll have to feel our way. I haven't quite understood you on all points. What did you mean, for instance, when you said that lately he carried a gun because it amused him? Lately?'
'When I first met Ake over four years ago he was still a little boy,' she said calmly. . 'In what way?'
'He was shy and childish. When someone killed him three weeks ago he had grown up. That development took place not so much at his work together with you and Beck, but here. Here at home. The first time we were together, in that room and in that bed, the pistol was the last thing he took off.'
Kollberg raised his eyebrows.
'He kept his shirt on, you see,' she said. 'And he laid the pistol on the bedside table. I was staggered. To tell the truth, I didn't even know he was a policeman that time and I wondered what sort of madman had got into my bed.'
She looked gravely at Kollberg.
'We didn't fall in love that first time, but we did the next And then it dawned on me. Ake was twenty-five then and I had just turned twenty. But if either of us could be called grown up and more or less mature, it was I. He went about with a pistol because he thought it made him a tough guy. He was childish, as I said, and it gave him huge pleasure to see me lying there naked, staring idiotically at a man dressed in a shirt and shoulder holster. He soon grew out of all that, but by that time it had become a habit. Besides, he was interested in firearms — '
She broke off and asked, 'Are you brave? Physically brave?'
'Not especially.'
'Ake was physically a coward though he did everything to try and overcome it. The pistol gave him a feeling
