about to hang up his overcoat when he caught sight of Martin Beck and Melander. He checked himself in the middle of the movement, for a fraction of a second. Recovered himself quickly, hung the coat on a hanger and came towards them.
Martin Beck and Melander stood up together. Bjorn Forsberg raised his eyebrows questionirigly. He opened his mouth to say something, and Martin Beck put out his hand and said, 'Superintendent Beck. This is Detective Inspector Melander. We'd like a word with you.'
Bjorn Forsberg shook hands with them.
'Why, certainly,' he said. 'Please come in.'
The man appeared quite calm and almost gay as he held open the door for them. He nodded to his secretary and said, 'Good morning, Miss Skold. I'll see you later. I'll be engaged with these gentlemen for a little while.'
He preceded them into his office, which was large and light and tastefully furnished. The floor was covered from wall to wall with a deep-pile grey-blue carpet, and the big desk was shining and empty. Two telephones, a dictaphone and an intercom stood on a small table beside the swivel chair covered in black leather. On the wide windowsill stood four photographs in pewter frames.
His wife and three children. On the wall between the windows hung a portrait in oils, presumably of his father-in-law. The room also contained a cocktail cabinet, a conference table with water carafe and glasses on a tray, a sofa and two easy chairs, some books and china figures in a case with sliding-glass doors, and a safe discreetly set into the wall.
All this Martin Beck saw as he closed the door behind him and as Bjorn Forsberg walked towards his desk with deliberate steps.
Laying his left hand on the top of the desk, Forsberg leaned forward, pulled out the drawer on the right and put his hand into it. When his hand reappeared, the fingers were closed around the butt of a pistol
Still supporting himself against the desk with his left hand, he raised the barrel of the pistol towards his open mouth, pushed it in as far as he could, closed his hps round the shiny, blue-black steel and pulled the trigger. He looked steadily at Martin Beck the whole time. His eyes were still almost cheery.
All this happened so quickly that Martin Beck and Melander were only halfway across the room when Bjorn Forsberg collapsed sprawling over the desk.
The pistol had been cocked and a sharp click had been heard as the hammer fell against the chamber. But the bullet that was to have rotated through the bore, shattered the roof of Bjorn Forsberg's mouth and flung most of his brains out through the back of his head never left the barrel. It was still in its brass casing inside the cartridge that lay in Martin Beck's right trouser pocket, together with the other five that had been in the magazine.
Martin Beck took out one of the cartridges, rolled it between his fingers and read the text punched around the copper envelope of the percussion cap: METALLVERKEN 38 SPL. The cartridge was Swedish but the pistol American, a Smith and Wesson 38 Special, made in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Bjorn Forsberg lay with his face pressed against the smooth desktop. His body was shaking. After a few seconds he slipped to the floor and began to scream.
'We'd better call an ambulance,' Melander said.
So Ronn was sitting once more with his tape recorder in an isolation ward at Karolinska Hospital. This time not in the surgical department but at the mental clinic, and in his company he had Gunvald Larsson instead of the detested Ullholm.
Bjorn Forsberg had been given various treatments with tranquillizing injections and a lot of other things, and the doctor concerned with his mental recovery had already been in the room for several hours. But the only thing the patient seemed able to say was, 'Why didn't you let me die?'
He had repeated this over and over again and now he said it once more, ‘Why didn't you let me die?'
'Yes, why didn't we?' Gunvald Larsson mumbled, and the doctor gave him a stern look.
They would not have been here at all if the doctors had not said that there was a certain risk that Forsberg really would die. They had explained that he had been subjected to a shock of enormous intensity, that his heart was weak and his nerves had gone to pieces; they rounded off the diagnosis by saying that his general condition was not so bad. Except that a heart attack might be the end of him at any moment.
Ronn pondered over this remark about his general condition.
'Why didn't you let me die?' Forsberg repeated.
'Why didn't you let Teresa Camarao live?' Gunvald Larsson retorted.
'Because I couldn't, I had to get rid of her.' 'Oh,' Ronn said patiently. 'Why did you have to?' 'I had no choice. She would have ruined my life.' 'It seems to be pretty well ruined in any case,' Gunvald Larsson said.
The doctor gave him another stern look.
'You don't understand’ Forsberg complained. 'I had told her never to come back. I'd given her money even though I was badly off. And still —
'What are you trying to say?' Ronn said kindly.
'Still she pursued me. When I got home that evening she was lying in my bed. Naked. She knew where I used to keep my spare key and had let herself in. And my wife... my fiancee was coming in fifteen minutes. There was no other way.'
'And then?'
'I carried her down into the cold-storage room where the furs were.'
‘Weren't you afraid that someone might find her there?'
'There were only two keys to it I had one and Nisse Goransson the other. And Nisse was away.'
'How long did you let her lie there?' Ronn asked.
'For five days. I wanted to wait for rain.'
Yes, you like rain’ Gunvald Larsson put in.
'Don't you understand? She was crazy. In one minute she could have ruined my whole life. Everything I had planned.'
Ronn nodded to himself. This was going well.
'Where did you get the submachine gun from?' Gunvald Larsson asked out of the blue.
'I brought it home from the war.'
Forsberg lay silent for a moment Then he added proudly, 'I killed three Bolsheviks with it'
'Was it Swedish?' Gunvald Larsson asked.
'No, Finnish. Suomi model 37.'
'And where is it now?'
'Where no one will ever find it'
'In the water?'
Forsberg nodded. Seemed to be deep in thought 'Did you like Nils Erik Goransson?' Ronn asked after a while. 'Nisse was fine. A good kid. I was like a father to him.' 'Yet you killed him?'
'He was threatening my existence. My family. Everything I live for. Eveiything I had to live for. He couldn't help it. But I gave him a quick and painless end. I didn't torment him as you're tormenting me.'
'Did Nisse know that it was you who murdered Teresa?' Ronn asked. He spoke quietly and kindly the whole time.
'He figured it out,' Forsberg replied. 'Nisse wasn't stupid. And he was a good pal. I gave him 10,000 kronor and a new car after I was married. Then we parted forever.'
'Forever?'
'Yes. I never heard from him again, not until last autumn. He called me and said that someone was shadowing him day and night. He was scared and he needed money. I gave him money. I tried to get him to go abroad.'
'But he didn't?'
'No. He was too down. And scared stiff. Thought it would look suspicious.'
'And so you killed him?'
'I had to. The situation gave me no choice. Otherwise he would have ruined my existence. My children's future. My business. Everything. Not deliberately, but he was weak and unreliable and scared. I knew that sooner or later he would come to me for protection. And thereby ruin me. Or else the police would get him and force him to talk. He was a drug addict, weak and unreliable. The police would torture him till he told eveiything he knew.'
'The police are not in the habit of torturing people,' Ronn said gently.
