there and messed it all up. So we couldn't use them.’
‘Any ballistic investigation?’
‘You bet your life there was. The experts got both the bullet and the cartridge. They say she shot him with a forty-five, presumably a Llama Auto.’
‘Big gun … especially for a girl.’
‘Yeah. According to Bulldozer that's another bit of evidence on this Malmström and Mohrén and Roos gang. They always use big, heavy weapons, to cause alarm. But …’
‘But what?’
‘Malmström and Mohrén don't shoot people. At least they've never done so yet. If someone causes trouble they just put a bullet in the ceiling, to restore order.’
‘Is there any point in holding this Roos guy?’
‘Hmm, well I suspect Bulldozer's reasoning goes like this: If Roos has one of his usual perfect alibis – for instance, if he was in Yokohama last Friday – then we can be dead sure he planned the job. On the other hand, if he was in Stockholm, then the thing's more doubtful.’
‘What does Roos say himself? Doesn't he get angry?’
‘Never. He says it's true Malmström and Mohrén are old chums of his and he thinks it's sad things should have turned out so badly for them in life. Last time he asked if we thought he could help his old chums in some way. Malm happened to be there. He almost had a brain haemorrhage.’
‘And Olsson?’
‘Bulldozer just roared. He loved it.’
‘What's he waiting for, then?’
‘The next move, didn't you hear? He thinks Roos is planning a major job which Malmström and Mohrén are going to carry out. Presumably Malmström and Mohrén want to scrape enough money together to emigrate quietly and live the rest of their lives on the proceeds.’
‘And it's got to be a bank robbery?’
‘Bulldozer thinks everything except banks can go to the devil,’ said Gunvald Larsson. ‘It's his orders, so they say.’
‘What about the witness?’
‘Einar's?’
‘Yeah.’
‘He was here this morning, looking at pictures. Didn't recognize anyone.’
‘But he's sure of the car?’
‘Damn right.’
Gunvald Larsson sat silent, tugging at his fingers one after the other until the joints cracked. After a long while he said: ‘There's something about that car that doesn't jell.’
The day looked as if it was going to be a hot one, and Martin Beck took his lightest suit out of the closet. It was pale blue. He'd bought it a month ago and only worn it once. As he pulled on his trousers a big, sticky chocolate mark on the right trouser knee reminded him how, on that particular occasion, he'd been chatting with Kollberg's two kids and how they'd indulged in an orgy of lollipops and Mums-Mums chocolate balls.
Martin Beck climbed out of his trousers again, took them into the kitchen, and soaked one corner of a towel in hot water. Then he rubbed the towel against the stain, which immediately spread. Yet he didn't give up. As he gritted his teeth and went on working away at the material he thought to himself it was really only in such situations that he missed Inga – which said a good deal about their former relationship. At least one of the trouser legs was thoroughly soaked, and the stain seemed at least partially to have disappeared. Squeezing his thumb and forefinger along the crease, he hung his trousers over a chair in the sunshine which was flooding in through the open window.
It was only eight o'clock, but already he'd been awake for several hours. In spite of everything, he'd fallen asleep early the previous evening, and his sleep had been unusually calm and free of dreams. True, though it had been his first real working day in a long time, it had not been a particularly strenuous one; even so, it had left him exhausted.
Martin Beck opened the refrigerator door, inspected the milk carton, the stick of butter, and a solitary bottle of Ramlosa – reminding himself that on his way home tonight he must make some purchases, beer and yoghurt. Or maybe he ought to stop having yoghurt in the mornings; it really didn't taste all that good. On the other hand, that would mean he'd have to think up something else for his breakfast. The doctor had said he must put back on every pound he'd lost since he'd come out of the hospital, and preferably a few more.
The telephone in the bedroom rang. Martin Beck closed the refrigerator, and going in, picked up the receiver. It was Sister Birgit at the old people's home.
‘Mrs Beck is worse,’ she said. ‘This morning she had a high temperature, well over 101. I thought you'd want to know, Inspector.’
‘Sure. Of course. Is she awake now?’
‘She was, five minutes ago. But she's very tired.’
‘I'll be over immediately,’ Martin Beck said.
‘We've had to move her into a room where we can have her under better observation,’ Sister Birgit said. ‘But come to my office first.’
Martin Beck's mother was eighty-two and had spent the last two years in the sick ward of the old people's home. Her illness had been of long duration. Its first signs had been slight attacks of dizziness. As time had gone by, these had become more severe and occurred at closer intervals. In the end she'd become partially paralysed. All last year she'd only been able to sit up in a wheelchair, and since the end of April hadn't left her bed.
Martin Beck had visited her quite often during his own convalescence, but it pained him to see her slowly wasting away as her age and illness dazed her. The last few times he'd been to see her she'd taken him for her husband. His father had been dead twenty-two years.
To see how lonely she'd become in her sickroom, and how utterly cut off from the outside world too, had pained him. Right up to the time when the spells of dizziness had started she'd gone out, even gone into town, just to visit shops and see people around her, or to call on those few of her friends who were still alive. Often she'd gone out to see Inga and Rolf in Bagarmossen or visited her granddaughter Ingrid, who lived by herself out at Stocksund. Naturally, even before her illness, she'd often been bored and lonely in the old people's home, but as long as she'd been healthy and on her feet she still had an occasional chance to see something besides invalids and old people. She'd still read the papers, watched TV, and listened to the radio – occasionally she had even gone to a concert or the cinema. She had kept in touch with the world around her and been able to interest herself in what was going on in it. But once isolation had been forced upon her, there had been rapid mental deterioration.
Martin Beck had watched her becoming slow-witted, ceasing to interest herself in life outside the sickroom walls, until in the end she'd lost all touch with reality and the present. It must be some defence mechanism of her mind, he assumed, which nowadays tied her consciousness to the past: there was nothing heartening about her present reality.
When
