The Laughing Policeman

mechanic. But the real expert, the workshop foreman, was still hale and hearty. And he worked here in Sodertalje. He was not a foreman any more but something grander and sat in an office with glass walls, talking on the phone. When the call was finished Kollberg went in to him, without knocking and without in any way saying who he was. He merely laid the photograph on the desk in front of the man and said, 'What make of car is this?'

'A Renault CV-4. An old job.'

'Are you sure?'

'Bet your life, I'm sure. I'm never wrong.' 'Positive?'

The man glanced again at the picture.

'Yes,' he said. 'It's a CV-4. Old model.'

'Thanks,' Kollberg said, reaching for the photograph.

The man gave him a puzzled look and said, 'Wait a sec. Are you trying to trick me?'

He examined the picture thoroughly. After a good fifteen seconds he said slowly, 'Na. This isn't a Renault. It's a Morris. A Morris Minor model '50 or '51. And there's something wrong with the picture.'

'Yes,' Kollberg said. 'It has been touched up and made to look as if it were taken in a bad light and in the rain, for instance on a summer evening.'

The man stared at him.

'Look here, who are you anyway?'

'Police,' Kollberg replied.

'I might have known it,' the man said. 'There was a policeman here early last autumn who ..

* * *

Shortly before five thirty the same afternoon Martin Beck had assembled his immediate colleagues for a briefing at investigation headquarters. Nordin and Mansson had returned from Christmas leave, and the force was complete. The only one missing was Hammar, who had gone away for the holidays. He knew how little had happened during forty-four intensive days of investigation and thought it unlikely that there would be any new development between Christmas and New Year, a time when both hunters and hunted mostly sit at home belching and wondering how to make ends meet until January.

'Oh, so a page was missing’ Melander said with satisfaction. 'Who can have taken it?'

Martin Beck and Kollberg exchanged a quick glance.

'Does anyone consider himself a specialist in house-searches?' Martin Beck asked.

‘I’m good at searching’ Mansson said listlessly from his seat over by the window. 'If there's anything to be found, I'll find it'

'Good’ Martin Beck said, 'I want you to comb through Ake Stenstrom's flat on Tjarhovsgatan.'

'What shall I look for?'

'A page out of a police report/ Kollberg said. 'It should be numbered 1244 and it's possible that the name Nils Erik Goransson occurs in the text'

'Tomorrow’ Mansson said. 'It's always easier in daylight'

'OK, that's fine’ Martin Beck said.

'I’ll give you the keys in the morning’ Kollberg informed him.

He already had them in his pocket but wanted to remove one or two traces of Stenstrom's photography before Mansson set to work.

At two o'clock the next afternoon the phone on Martin Beck's desk rang.

'Greetings. It's Per.'

'Per who?'

'Mansson.'

'Oh, it's you. Well?'

'I'm in Stenstrom's flat. The sheet of paper isn't here.'

'Are you sure?'

'Sure?'

Mansson sounded deeply offended.

'Of course I'm bloody sure. But are you sure he's the one who took that page?'

'We think so, anyway.'

'Oh, well, I'd better go on looking somewhere else.'

Martin Beck massaged his scalp.

'What do you mean by somewhere else?' he asked.

But Mansson had already put the phone down.

'There must be a copy in the central files, for Christ's sake,' Gunvald Larsson growled.

'Yes,' Martin Beck said, pressing a button on the telephone and dialling an inter-office number.

In the room next door, Kollberg and Melander were discussing the situation.

'I've been looking through your list.'

'Did you find anything?'

'Yes, a lot. But I don't know whether it's of any use.' 'I'll soon tell you.'

'Several of those guys are recidivists. For example, Karl Andersson, Vilhelm Rosberg and Bengt Wahlberg. Thieves all three. Sentenced dozens of times. They're too old to work now.'

'Go on.'

'Johan Gran was a fence then and no doubt still is. That waiter business is sheer bluff. He did time only a year ago. And this Valter Eriksson - do you know how he became a widower?'

'No.'

'He killed his wife with a kitchen chair during a drunken brawl. Was convicted of manslaughter and got five years.' 'Well, I'll be damned.'

'There are other troublemakers besides him in this collection. Both Ove Eriksson and Bengt Fredriksson have been sentenced for assault and battery. Frederiksson no less than six times. A couple of the charges should have been for attempted manslaughter, if you ask me. And the second-hand dealer, Jan Carlson, is a shady figure. He has never been caught, but it was a close shave a couple of times. I remember Bjorn Forsberg, too. He was up to quite a few crooked dealings at one time and was fairly well known in the underworld in the last half of the forties. Then he turned over a new leaf and made a nice career for himself. Married a wealthy woman and became a respected businessman. He has only one old sentence for swindling from 1947. Hans Wennstrom also has a first-rate list of crimes, everything from shoplifting to safecracking. That's quite a CV?

'Former assistant fishmonger,' Kollberg said, looking at the list.

'I think he had a stall in the marketplace at Sundbyberg twenty-five years ago. Well, he's another one of the real old-timers. Ingvar Bengtsson calls himself a journalist nowadays. He was one of the pioneers in cheque forging. He was a pimp too, come to that. Bo Frostensson is a third-rate actor and a notorious junkie.'

'Didn't this girl ever take it into her head to sleep with any decent guys?' Kollberg said plaintively.

'Oh yes, sure. You have several on this list. For example, Rune Bengtsson, Lennart Lindgren, Kurt Olsson and Ragnar Viklund. Upper class, the whole bunch. Not a shadow on them.'

Kollberg had a good grasp of the investigation.

'No,' he said. 'They were married too, all four of them. Had a hell of a time, I expect, explaining this to their wives.'

'On that point the police were pretty discreet. When it comes to these youngsters, who were about twenty or even younger, there was nothing much wrong with them. Out of six of that age on your list there's only one, actually, that hasn't made the grade. Kenneth Karlsson, he's been picked up once or twice. Borstal and so on. Though that's some time ago and nothing very serious. Do you want me to start delving seriously in these people's past?'

'Yes, please. You can weed out the old 'uns, for instance those who are over sixty now. Likewise the youngest, from thirty-eight downward.'

'That makes eight plus seven. Fifteen. That leaves fourteen. The field is shrinking.' 'What field?'

'Hm,' said Melander. 'All these men, of course, have an alibi for the Teresa murder.'

'Bet your life they have,' Kollberg said. 'At least for the time when the body was placed at Stadshagen.'

The search for copies of the report of the Teresa investigation had been started on 28 December, but New