‘Yes, I am, sort of.’
And then, with a certain hesitation:
‘Yes, he's sitting right here.’
Martin Beck took the receiver.
‘Beck.’
‘Hi, this is Ragnarsson. We've made about a hundred calls trying to locate you. What's up?’
One of the drawbacks of being chief of the National Murder Squad was that the large newspapers had people who kept an eye on where you went and why. In order to do that, they needed paid informers inside the police department, which was irritating, but couldn't be helped. The National Police Commissioner was especially irritated, but he was also scared to death that it would get out. Nothing was ever supposed to get out.
Ragnarsson was a newspaperman, one of the better and more decent ones, which by no means meant that his paper was one of the better and more decent papers.
‘Are you still there?’ Ragnarsson said.
‘Someone has disappeared,’ said Martin Beck.
‘Disappeared? People disappear every day, and they don't call you in. What's more, I heard Kollberg is on his way down there. There's something fishy about all this.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
‘We're sending down a couple of men. You might as well be prepared. That's all I wanted to tell you. I didn't want to do anything behind your back, you know that. You can trust me. So long.’
‘So long.’
Martin Beck rubbed the edge of his scalp. He trusted Ragnarsson, but not his reporters, and least of all his newspaper.
Allwright was looking thoughtful.
‘Journalist?’
‘Yes.’
‘From Stockholm?’
‘Yes.’
‘That blows it wide open then.’
‘Definitely.’
‘We've got local correspondents here too. They know all about it. But they're obliging. A kind of loyalty. The Trelleborgs Allehanda is fine. But then there are the Malmö papers. Kvällsposten, that's the worst. And now we'll have Aftonbladet and Expressen.’
‘Yes, I'm afraid so.’
‘Balls!’
Balls was a mild, everyday expression in Skåne.
Further north, it sounded very bad.
Maybe Allwright didn't know that. Or maybe he didn't care.
Martin Beck liked Allwright very much.
A sort of obvious, natural friendship. Things were going to work out fine.
‘What do we do now?’
‘Up to you,’ said Martin Beck. ‘You're the expert.’
‘Anderslöv district. Yes, I ought to be. Shall I give you an orientation? By car? But let's not take the patrol car. Mine's better.’
‘The tomato-coloured one?’
‘Right. Everyone knows it, of course. But I feel more comfortable in it. Shall we go?’
‘Whatever you say.’
They talked about three things in the car.
The first was something Allwright hadn't mentioned before, for some reason.
‘There's the post office over there, and now we're coming to the bus stop. The last time Sigbrit was seen she was standing right about here.’
He slowed down and stopped.
‘We've got a witness who saw something else too.’
‘What?’
‘Folke Bengtsson. He came driving along in his estate car, and when he passed Sigbrit he slowed down and stopped. Seems natural enough. He'd picked up his car and was headed home. They knew each other, lived next door. He knows she's waiting for the bus, and he gives her a lift.’
‘What sort of a witness?’
Allwright drummed his fingers on the wheel.
‘An older woman from town here. Her name is Signe Persson. When she heard Sigbrit had disappeared, she came in and told us she'd been walking down the other side of the street and noticed Sigbrit, and just then Bengtsson drove up from the other direction. He put on his brakes and stopped. Now it happens Britta was alone at the station when she came in, so she told her she ought to come back and talk to me. And she came back the next day, and I talked to her. She told me pretty much the same story. That she'd seen Sigbrit and that Folke stopped his car. So then I asked her if she had actually seen the car stop and Sigbrit get into it.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She said she didn't want to turn around and look because she didn't want to seem nosy. Which is a silly answer, since this old lady is probably the nosiest woman in the county. But when I coaxed her a little she did say she turned her head soon afterwards, and neither Sigbrit nor the car were anywhere to be seen. So we chatted a little about one thing and another, and after a while she said she wasn't sure. Said she didn't want to talk about people behind their backs. But then the next day she ran into one of my men at the Co-op and stated definitely that she'd seen Bengtsson stop and that Sigbrit got into the car. If she sticks to that, then Folke Bengtsson is definitely linked to the disappearance.’
‘What does Bengtsson say?’
‘Don't know. I haven't talked to him. Two detectives from Trelleborg were out there, but he wasn't at home. Then they decided to call you in and more or less ordered me not to do anything. Didn't want me to anticipate events, as it were. Bide my time and wait for the experts. I haven't even written up a report about my talk with Signe Persson. Do you think that sounds slipshod?’
Martin Beck didn't answer.
‘I think it's pretty slipshod,’ said Allwright with a little laugh. ‘But I'm a little wary of Signe Persson. She was mixed up in the worst case I ever had. Must be five years ago. She claimed a neighbour had poisoned her cat. Made a formal complaint, so we had to investigate. Then the other old lady made a complaint against Signe Persson, because the cat had killed her budgie. We dug up the cat and sent it to Helsingborg. They couldn't find any poison. So then Signe claimed the other woman had bought two cigars at the tobacconist's and boiled them. She'd read in some magazine that if you boil cigars long enough you get nicotine crystals, which are deadly poisonous and don't leave any trace. The neighbour actually had bought two cigars, but she said they were just to offer guests and her brother had smoked them. I asked her how the cat had managed to kill the budgie, since it was always in its cage. And she claimed Signe got the damned cat to scare the budgie to death, because the bird could talk and had uttered some dreadful truths.
