to cover the naked girl, who was still screaming hysterically, and led her away to the others. He took off his tweed jacket and swept that around the two small children, and gave his woollen scarf to the naked man, who at once wound it round his hips. Finally he went over to the red-haired woman, lifted her up and carried her over to the assembly place. She smelled revolting and her screams cut to the quick.
He looked over at the house, which was now blazing all over, burning wildly and uninhibitedly. Several private cars had stopped near the road and bewildered people were just getting out of them. He ignored them. Instead he took off his ruined fur cap and pressed it down over the forehead of the woman in the nightgown. He repeated the question he had put to her a few minutes earlier:
‘Haven’t you got another child?’
‘Yes…Kristina…her room’s in the attic.’
Then the woman started weeping uncontrollably.
Gunvald Larsson nodded.
Bloodstained, soot-streaked, drenched with sweat and his clothes torn, he stood among these hysterical, shocked, screaming, unconscious, weeping and dying people. As if on a battlefield.
Above the roar of the fire came the primeval wail of the sirens.
And then suddenly everyone came at once. Water tankers, fire ladders, fire engines, police cars, ambulances, motorcycle police, and fire brigade officers in red saloon cars.
Zachrisson.
Who said: ‘What…how did it happen?’
And at that moment the roof fell in and the house was transformed into a cheerfully crackling beacon.
Gunvald Larsson looked at his watch. Sixteen minutes had gone by since he had stood, frozen, up on that hill.
On the afternoon of Friday, the eighth of March, Gunvald Larsson was sitting in a room at the police station in Kungsholmsgatan. He was wearing a white polo sweater and a pale grey suit with slanting pockets. Both hands were bandaged and the bandage around his head reminded him very strongly of the popular picture of General von Döbeln during the battle of Jutas in Finland. He also had two bandage patches on his face and neck. Some of his brushed-back fair hair had been singed away, as had his eyebrows, but his clear blue eyes looked just as blank and discontented as ever.
There were several other people in the room.
For instance, Martin Beck and Kollberg, who had been called there from the Murder Squad in Västberga, and Evald Hammar who was their superintendent and until further notice considered responsible for the investigation. Hammar was a large, heavily built man and his thick mane of hair had by now turned almost white in the course of duty. He had already begun to count the days until he retired, and regarded every serious crime of violence as persecution of himself personally.
‘Where are the others?’ asked Martin Beck.
As usual, he was standing to one side, fairly near the door, leaning with his right elbow against a filing cabinet.
‘What others?’ asked Hammar, well aware of the fact that the composition of the investigation team was entirely his affair. He had sufficient influence to be able to second any individual member of the force he wanted and was used to working with.
‘Rönn and Melander,’ said Martin Beck stoically.
‘Rönn is at South Hospital and Melander at the scene of the fire,’ said Hammar shortly.
The evening papers lay spread out over the desk in front of Gunvald Larsson and he was rustling angrily among them with his bandaged hands.
‘Damned hacks,’ he said, shoving one of the papers over towards Martin Beck. ‘Just look at that picture.’
The picture took up three columns and portrayed a young man in a trench coat and a narrow-brimmed hat, a troubled look on his face, standing poking with a stick in the still-smoking ruins of the house in Sköldgatan. Diagonally behind him, in the left-hand corner of the picture, stood Gunvald Larsson, staring foolishly into the camera.
‘You perhaps don’t come out to your best advantage,’ said Martin Beck. ‘Who’s the guy with the walking stick?’
‘His name is Zachrisson. A rookie from the Second District. Absolute idiot. Read the caption.’
Martin Beck read the caption.
The hero of the day, Inspector Gunwald Larsson (r) made a heroic contribution during last night’s fire by saving several people’s lives. Here he can be seen examining the remains of the house, which was totally destroyed.
‘Not only do the blasted bunglers not even know the difference between right and left,’ mumbled Gunvald Larsson, ‘but they…’
He did not say anything more, but Martin Beck knew what he meant, and nodded thoughtfully to himself. The name was spelled wrong too. Gunvald Larsson looked at the picture with distaste and pushed the paper away with his arm.
‘And I look moronic too,’ he said.
‘There are drawbacks to being famous,’ said Martin Beck.
Against his will, Kollberg, who detested Gunvald Larsson, squinted down at the scattered newspapers. All the pictures were equally misleading and every front page was decorated with Gunvald Larsson’s staring eyes underneath glaring headlines.
Heroic deeds and heroes and God knows what else, thought Kollberg, sighing dejectedly. He was sitting hunched up in a chair, fat and flabby, his elbows on the desk.
‘So we find ourselves in the strange position of not knowing what happened?’ said Hammar severely.
‘Not all that strange,’ said Kollberg. ‘I personally hardly ever know what’s happened.’
Hammar looked critically at him and said:
‘I mean we don’t know whether the fire was arson or not.’
‘Why should it be arson?’ asked Kollberg.
‘Optimist,’ said Martin Beck.
‘’Course it was bloody well arson,’ said Gunvald Larsson. ‘The house blew up practically right in front of my nose.’
‘And are you certain the fire began in this man Malm’s room?’
‘Yes. As good as.’
‘How long had you had the house under observation?’
‘About half an hour. Personally. And before that, that fathead Zachrisson was there. Hell of a lot of questions, by the way.’
Martin Beck massaged the bridge of his nose between his right-hand thumb and forefinger. Then he said:
‘And are you certain no one went in or out during that time?’
‘Yes,
