'We could take a cautious look at them and see if any of them resembles Olsson.'
'Can you track them down?' 'I expect Melander can.'
Melander could. It took him only twenty minutes to find out that Forsberg was at home and would be at his city-centre office after lunch. At twelve o'clock he was to have lunch with a client at the Ambassador. Frostensson was in a film studio out at Solna, playing a small part in a film by Arne Mattsson.
'And Fredriksson is presumably drinking beer at the Cafe Ten Spot. He's usually to be found there at this hour of day.'
'I'll come with you,' Martin Beck said surprisingly. 'We'll take Mansson's car. I've given him one of ours instead.'
Sure enough Bengt Fredriksson, artist and brawler, was hard at it drinking beer in the beer hall in the Old Town. He was very fat, had a bushy, unkempt red beard and lank grey hair. He was already drunk.
Out at Solna the production manager piloted them through long, winding corridors to a corner of the big film studio.
'Frostensson is to play a scene in five minutes,' he said. 'It's the only line he has in the film.'
They stood at a safe distance but in the mercilessly strong spotlights they clearly saw the set behind a jumble of cables and shifted scenery. It was evidently meant to be the interior of a little grocer's shop.
'Stand by!' the director shouted. 'Silence! Camera! Action!' A man in a white cap and coat came into the stream of light and said, 'Good morning, madam. May I help you?' 'Cut!'
There was a retake, and another. Frostensson had to say the line five times. He was a lean, bald man with a stammer and a nervous twitch around his mouth and the corners of his eyes.
Half an hour later Gunvald Larsson braked the car twenty-five yards from the gates of Bjorn Forsberg's house at Stocksund. Martin Beck and Ronn crouched in the back. Through the open garage door they could see a black Mercedes of the largest type.
'He should be leaving now’ Gunvald Larsson said. 'If he doesn't want to be late for his lunch appointment'
They had to wait fifteen minutes before the front door opened and a man appeared on the steps together with a blonde woman, a dog and a litde girl of about seven. He kissed the woman on the cheek, lifted the child up and kissed her. Then he strode down to the garage, got into the car and drove off. The little girl blew him a kiss, laughed and shouted something.
Bjorn Forsberg was tall and slim. His face, with regular features and candid expression, was strikingly handsome, as though drawn from the illustration for a short story in a woman's magazine. He was suntanned and his bearing was relaxed and sporty. He was bareheaded and was wearing a loose-fitting, grey overcoat. His hair was wavy and brushed back. He looked younger than his forty-eight years.
'Like Olsson,' Ronn said. 'Especially his build and clothes. The overcoat, that is.'
'Hm,' Gunvald Larsson murmured. 'The difference being that Olsson paid 300 kronor for his coat at a sale three years ago. This guy has probably shelled out 5,000 for his. But someone like Schwerin wouldn't notice that'
'Nor would I, to tell the truth,' Ronn said.
'But I notice it,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'Luckily there are people who have an eye for quality. Otherwise they might as well build whorehouses all along Savile Row.'
'Where?' Ronn asked in astonishment
Kollberg's schedule broke down completely. Not only did he oversleep, but the weather was worse than ever. By one thirty he had still only got as far as a motel just north of Linkoping. He had a cup of coffee and called Stockholm. Well?
'Only nine of them had a car in the summer of '51,' Melander replied, 'Ingvar Bengtsson a new Volkswagen, Rune Bengtsson a '49 Packard, Kent Carlsson a '38 DKW, Ove Eriksson an old Opel Kapitan, prewar model, Bjorn Forsberg a '49 Ford Vedette and-'
'Stop. Did anyone else have one?' 'A Vedette? No.' 'Then that'll do.'
'The original paintwork on Goransson's Morris was pale green. The car might of course have been repainted while he had it.'
'Fine. Can you put me through to Martin?'
'One more detail. Goransson sent his car to the scrapyard in the summer of '51. It was removed from the car registry on 15 August, only one week after Goransson had been questioned by the police.'
Kollberg put another krona piece into the phone and thought impatiently of the 127 miles still ahead of him. In this weather the drive would take several hours. He regretted not having sent the ledger up by train the evening before.
'Hello, this is Superintendent Beck.'
'Hi. What did that firm do?'
'Sold stolen goods, I should think. But it could never be proved. They had a couple of travelling salesmen who went around the provinces peddling clothes and the like.'
'And who owned it?'
'Bjorn Forsberg.'
Kollberg thought for a moment, and then said, 'Tell Melander to concentrate entirely on Forsberg. And ask Hjelm if either he himself or someone else will stay at the lab until I get up to town. I've something that must be analysed.'
* * *
At five o'clock Kollberg had still not returned. Melander tapped at Martin Beck's door and went in, pipe in one hand and some papers in the other. He began speaking at once.
'Bjorn Forsberg was married on 17 June 1951, to a woman called Elsa Beatrice Hakansson. She was the only child of a businessman called Magnus Hakansson. He dealt in building materials and was the sole owner of his firm. He was considered very wealthy. Forsberg immediately wound up all his former commitments like the firm on Hollandaregatan. He worked hard, studied economics and developed into an energetic businessman. When Hakansson died nine years ago his daughter inherited both his fortune and his firm, but Forsberg had already become its managing director in the middle of the fifties. He bought the house at Stocksund in '59. It probably cost about half a million then.'
Martin Beck blew his nose.
'How long had he known the girl before he married her?'
'They seem to have met up at Are in March '51,' Melander replied. 'Forsberg was a winter sports enthusiast. Still is, for that matter. His wife too. It seems to have been so-called love at first sight They kept on meeting right up to the wedding, and he was a frequent guest in her parents' home. He was then thirty-two and Elsa Hakansson twenty-five.'
Melander changed papers.
'The marriage seems to have been a happy one. They have three children, two boys who are thirteen and twelve and a girl of seven. He sold his Ford Vedette soon after the wedding and bought a Lincoln. He's had dozens of cars since then.'
Melander was silent and lit his pipe.
'Is this what you have found out?'
'One more thing. Important, I should think. Bjorn Forsberg was a volunteer in the Finnish Winter War in 1940. He was twenty-one and went off to the front straight after he'd done his military service here at home. His father was a warrant officer in the Wende artillery regiment in Kristianstad. He came from a respectable, middle-class family and was considered promising until things started to go wrong for him soon after the war.'
'OK, it seems to be him.'
'Looks like it,' Melander said.
'Which men are still here?'
'Gunvald, Ronn, Nordin and Ek. Shall we look at his alibis?' 'Exacdy,' Martin Beck said.
Kollberg didn't reach Stockholm until seven o'clock. He drove first to the laboratory and handed in the garage ledger.
‘We have regular working hours,' Hjelm said sourly. 'Finishing at five.'
'Then it would be awfully good of you to -' 'OK, OK, I'll call you before long. Is it only the car number you
