Year's Eve and 1968 arrived before it showed any result
Not until the morning of 5 January was there a dusty pile of papers lying on Martin Beck's desk. He didn't need to be a detective to see that it had come from the innermost recesses of the files and that several years had passed since it had last been opened by human hand.
Martin Beck flicked through quickly until he came to page 1244. The text was brief. Kollberg leaned over his shoulder and they read:
Interrogation of salesmen Nils Erik Goransson, 7 August 1951.
Regarding himself, Goransson states that he was born in the Finnish parish in Stockholm on 4 Oct 1929, son of electrician Algot Erik Goransson and Benita Goransson, nee Rantanen. He is at present employed as salesman by the firm of Allimport, Hollandaregatan 10, Stockholm.
Goransson owns to having known Teresa Camarao, who periodically moved in the same circles as he did, though not during the months immediately prior to her death. Goransson owns further than on two occasions he had intimate sexual relations (intercourse) with Teresa Camarao. On the first occasion in a flat in Svartmansgatan here in town, when several other persons were also present. Of these he says he remembers only one Karl Ake Birger Svensson-Rask. On the second occasion the meeting took place in a cellar at Hollandaregatan here in town. On this occasion too Svensson-Rask was present and he also had intimate sex relations (intercourse) with Mrs Camarao. Goransson says he does not remember the exact dates but thinks the events must have taken place at an interval of several days at the end of November and/or beginning of December the previous year, i.e. 1950. Goransson says he knows nothing of Mrs Camarao's acquaintances otherwise.
From June 2-13 Goransson was in Eksjo, to which he drove in an automobile with registration number A 6310 for the purpose of the sale of clothes for the firm where he is employed. Goransson is the owner of automobile A 6310, a 1949 model Morris Minor. This statement read out and approved.
(Signed)
It can be added that the above-mentioned Karl Ake Birger Svensson-Rask is identical with the man who first informed the police that Goransson had had intimate sexual relations (intercourse) with Mrs Camarao. Goransson's account of his visit to Eksjo is confirmed by the staff of the City Hotel at that place. Questioned in detail about Goransson's movements on the evening of 10 June, Sverker Johnsson, waiter at the said hotel, states that Goransson sat the whole evening in the hotel dining room, until this was closed at 11.30 p.m. Goransson was then the worse for drink. Sverker Johnsson's statements should be credited, the more so as they are confirmed by items on Goransson's hotel bill.
'Well, that’s that; Kollberg said. 'So far.' ‘What are you going to do now?' ‘What Stenstrom didn't have time for. Go down to Eksjo.' 'The pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fit together,' Martin Beck said.
‘Yes,' Kollberg agreed. 'By the way, where's Mansson?'
'At Hallstahammar, I think, looking for that piece of paper. At Stenstrom's mother's place.'
'He's not one to give up easily,' Kollberg said. 'Pity. I was going to borrow his car. Mine has something wrong with the ignition.'
Kollberg arrived in Eksjo on the morning of 8 January. He had driven down during the night, 208 miles in a snowstorm and on icy roads, but did not feel particularly tired even so. The City Hotel was in the main square and was a handsome, old-fashioned building which blended perfectly into the idyllic setting of this little Swedish country town. The waiter called Sverker Johnsson had died ten years ago, but a copy of Nils Erik Goransson's hotel bill existed. It took several hours to fish it out of a dusty cardboard box in the loft.
The bill seemed to confirm that Goransson had stayed at the hotel for eleven days. He had had all his meals and done all his drinking in the hotel dining room, and signed the bills, after which the amounts had been transferred to his hotel bill. There were also a number of other expenses, including telephone calls, but the numbers Goransson had called were not recorded. Another item, however, caught Kollberg's eye.
On 6 June 1951, the hotel had paid out 52 kronor and 25 ore to a garage on the guest's behalf. The amount was for 'towing and repairs'.
'Does this garage still exist?' Kollberg asked the hotel owner. 'Oh, indeed it does, and the same owner the last twenty-five years. Just follow the road out toward Langanas and ...'
Actually the man had had the garage for twenty-seven years.
He stared incredulously at Kollberg and said, 'Sixteen and a half years ago? How the hell can I remember that?' 'Don't you keep books?'
'You bet I do,' the man said indignantly. 'This is a properly run place.'
It took him an hour and a half to find the old ledger. He wouldn't let it out of his hands but turned the pages slowly and carefully until he came to the day in question.
'The sixth of June,' he murmured. 'Here it is. Picked up from hotel, that's right. The throttle cable had gone haywire. It cost 52:25, the whole business. With towing and all.'
Kollberg waited.
'Towing,' muttered the man. 'What an idiot Why didn't he hook up the throttle cable with something and drive here himself?'
'Have you any particulars about the car?' Kollberg asked.
'Yes. Registration number A ... something. I can't read it. Someone's put an oily thumb over the figures. Evidently a Stockholmer, anyway.'
'You don't know what sort of car it was?'
'Sure I do. A Ford Vedette.'
'Not a Morris Minor?'
'If it says Ford Vedette here, then a Ford Vedette it damn well was,' the garage owner said testily. 'Morris Minor? There's a slight difference, isn't there.'
Kollberg took the ledger with him, after a good half hour's threats and persuasions. When finally he was on his way, the workshop owner said, 'Well, anyway, that explains why he wasted money on towing.'
'Really. Why?'
'He was a Stockholmer, wasn't he?'
When Kollberg got back to the City Hotel in Eksjo it was already evening. He was hungry, cold and tired, and instead of starting the long drive north he took a room at the hotel Had a bath and
ordered dinner. While he was waiting for the food to be prepared he made two phone calls. First to Melander.
'Will you please find out which of the guys on the list had a car in June 1951? And what make?'
'Sure. Tomorrow morning.'
'And the colour of Goransson's Morris?'
'Yes.'
Then Martin Beck.
'Goransson didn't bring his Morris here. He was driving another car.'
'So Stenstrom was right'
'Can you put somone on to finding out who owned that firm in Hollandaregatan where Goransson was employed, and what it did?'
'Sure.'
'I should be back in town about midday tomorrow.'
He went down into the dining room and had dinner. As he sat there it suddenly dawned on him that he had in fact stayed at this hotel exactly sixteen years ago. He had been working on a taxi murder. They had cleared it up in three or four days. If he had known then what he knew now he could probably have solved the Teresa case in ten minutes.
Ronn was thinking about Olsson and about the restaurant bill he had found among the rubbish in Goransson's paper shopping bag. On Tuesday morning he got an idea and as usual when something was weighing on his mind he went to Gunvald Larsson. Despite the far from cordial attitude they adopted towards each other at work, Ronn and Gunvald Larsson were friends. Very few outsiders knew this, and they would have been even more surprised had they known that the two had in fact spent both Christmas and New Year's Eve together.
'I've been thinking about the bit of paper with the initials BF,' Ronn said. 'On that list that Melander and Kollberg are messing about with are three persons with those initials. Bo Frostensson, Bengt Fredriksson and Bjorn Forsberg.' 'Well?'
