The Man on the Balcony

MAJ SJÖWALL

AND PER WAHLÖÖ

The Man on the Balcony

Translated from the Swedish by Alan Blair

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

This ebook first published by Harper Perennial in 2007

This 4th Estate edition published in 2016

This translation first published by Random House Inc, New York, in 1968

Originally published in Sweden by P. A. Norstedt & Soners Forlag

Copyright text © Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö 1967

Cover photograph © Shutterstock

PS Section © Richard Shephard 2007

PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors’ imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007439133

Ebook Edition © APRIL 2009 ISBN: 9780007323531

Version: 2018-05-18

From the reviews of the Martin Beck series:

‘First class’

Daily Telegraph

‘One of the most authentic, gripping and profound collections of police procedural ever accomplished’

MICHAEL CONNELLY

‘Hauntingly effective storytelling’

New York Times

‘There's just no question about it: the reigning King and Queen of mystery fiction are Maj Sjöwall and her husband Per Wahlöö’

The National Observer

‘Sjöwall/Wahlöö are the best writers of police procedural in the world’

Birmingham Post

This is for Barbara and Newton

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

About the Authors

Also by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

About the Publisher

1

At a quarter to three the sun rose.

An hour and a half earlier the traffic had thinned out and died away, together with the noise of the last night revellers on their way home. The street-sweeping machines had passed, leaving dark wet strips here and there on the asphalt. An ambulance had wailed down the long, straight street. A black car with white mudguards, radio antenna on the roof and the word POLICE in white block letters on the sides had glided past, silently and slowly. Five minutes later the tinkle of broken glass had been heard as someone drove a gloved hand through a shop window; then came the sound of running footsteps and a car tearing off down a sidestreet.

The man on the balcony had observed all this. The balcony was the ordinary kind with tubular iron rail and sides of corrugated metal. He had stood leaning on the rail, and the glow of his cigarette had been a tiny dark-red spot in the dark. At regular intervals he had stubbed out a cigarette, carefully picked the butt – barely a third of an inch long – out of the wooden holder and placed it beside the others. Ten of these butts were already neatly lined up along the edge of the saucer on the little garden table.

It was quiet now, as quiet as it could be on a mild early summer's night in a big city. A couple of hours still remained before the women who delivered the newspapers appeared, pushing their converted prams, and before the first office cleaner went to work.

The bleak half-light of dawn was dispersed slowly; the first hesitant sunbeams groped over the five-storeyed and six-storeyed blocks of flats and were reflected in the television aerials and the round chimney pots above the roofs on the other side of the street. Then the light fell on the metal roofs themselves, slid quickly down and crept over the eaves along plastered brick walls with rows of unseeing windows, most of which were screened by drawn curtains or lowered Venetian blinds.

The man on the balcony leaned over and looked down the street. It ran from north to south and was long and straight; he could survey a stretch of more than two thousand yards. Once it had been an avenue, a showplace and the pride of the city, but forty years had passed since it was built. The street was almost exactly the same age as the man on the balcony.

When he strained his eyes he could make out a lone figure in the far distance. Perhaps a policeman. For the first time in several hours he went into the flat; he passed through the living room and out into the kitchen. It was broad daylight now and he had no need to switch on the electric light; in fact he used it very sparingly even in the winter. Opening a cupboard, he took out an enamel coffeepot, then measured one and a half cups of water and two spoonfuls of coarse-ground coffee. He put the pot on the stove, struck a match and lit the gas. Felt the match with his fingertips to make sure it had gone out, then opened the door of the cupboard under the sink and threw the dead match into the bin liner. He stood at the stove until the coffee had boiled up, then turned the gas off and went out to the bathroom and urinated while waiting for the grounds to sink. He avoided flushing the toilet so as not to disturb the neighbours. Went back to the kitchen, poured the coffee carefully into the cup, took a lump of sugar from the half-empty packet on the sink and a spoon out of the drawer. Then he carried the cup to the balcony, put it on the varnished wooden table and sat down on the folding chair. The sun had already climbed fairly high and lit up the front of the buildings on the other side of the street down as far as the two lowest flats. Taking a nickel-plated snuffbox from his trouser pocket, he crumbled the cigarette butts one by one, letting the tobacco flakes run through his fingers down into the round metal box and crumpling the bits of paper into pea-sized balls which he placed on the chipped saucer. He stirred the coffee and drank it very slowly. The sirens sounded again, far away. He stood up and watched the ambulance as the howl grew louder and louder and then subsided. A minute later the ambulance was nothing but a small white rectangle which turned left at the north end of the street and vanished from sight. Sitting down again on the folding chair he abstractedly stirred the coffee, which was now cold. He sat quite still, listening to the city wake up around him, at first reluctantly and undecidedly.

The man on the balcony was of average height and normal build. His face was nondescript and he was dressed in a white shirt with no tie, unpressed brown gabardine trousers, grey socks and black shoes. His hair was thin and brushed straight back, he had a big nose and grey-blue eyes.

The time was half past six on the morning of 2 June 1967. The city was Stockholm.

The man on the balcony had no feeling of being observed. He had no particular feeling of anything. He thought he would make some oatmeal a little later.

The street was coming alive. The stream of vehicles was denser and every time the traffic lights at the intersection changed to red the line of waiting cars grew longer. A baker's van tooted angrily at a cyclist who swung out heedlessly into the road. Two cars behind braked with a screech.

The man got up, leaned his arms on the balcony rail and looked down into the street. The cyclist wobbled anxiously in towards the kerb, pretending not to hear the abuse slung at him by the delivery man.

On the pavements a few pedestrians hurried along. Two women in light summer dresses stood talking by the petrol station below the balcony, and farther away a man was exercising his dog. He jerked impatiently at the lead while the dachshund unconcernedly sniffed around the trunk of a tree.

The man on the balcony straightened up, smoothed his thinning hair and put his hands in his pockets. The time now was twenty to eight and the sun was high. He looked up at the sky where a jet plane was drawing a trail of white wool in the blue. Then he lowered his eyes once more to the street and watched an elderly white-haired woman in a pale-blue coat who was standing outside the baker's in the building opposite. She fumbled for a long time in her handbag before getting out a key and unlocking the door. He saw her take out the key, put it in the lock on the inside and then shut the door after her. Drawn down behind the pane of the door was a white blind with the word CLOSED.

At the same moment the door to the flats above the baker's opened and a little girl came out into the sunshine. The man on the balcony moved back a step, took his hands out of his pockets and stood quite still. His eyes were glued to the girl down in the street.

She looked about eight or nine and was carrying a red-checked satchel. She was wearing a short blue skirt, a striped T-shirt and a red jacket with sleeves that were too short. On her feet she had black wooden-soled sandals that made her long thin legs seem even longer and thinner. She turned to the left outside the door and started walking slowly along the street with lowered head.

The man on the balcony followed her with his eyes. When she had gone about twenty yards she stopped, raised her hand to her breast and stood like that for a moment. Then she opened the satchel and rummaged in it while she turned and began to walk back. Then she broke into a run and rushed back inside without closing the satchel.

The man on the balcony stood quite still and watched the entrance door close behind her. Some minutes passed before it opened again and the girl came out. She had closed the satchel now and walked more quickly. Her fair hair was tied in a pony tail and swung against her back. When she got to the end of the block she turned the corner and disappeared.

The time was three minutes to eight. The man turned around, went inside and into the kitchen. There he drank a glass of water, rinsed the glass, put it on the rack and went out again on to the balcony.

He sat down on the folding chair and laid his left arm on the rail. He lit a cigarette and looked down into the street while he smoked.

2

The time by the electric wall-clock was five minutes to eleven and the date, according to the calendar on Gunvald Larsson's desk, was Friday, 2 June 1967.

Martin Beck was only in the room by chance. He had just come in and put down his case on the floor inside the door. He had said hello, laid his hat beside the carafe on the filing cabinet, taken a glass from the tray and filled it with water, leaned against the cabinet and was about to drink. The man behind the desk looked at him ill-humouredly and said:

‘Have they sent you here too? What have we done wrong now?’

Martin Beck took a sip of water.

‘Nothing, as far as I know. And don't worry. I only came up to see Melander. I asked him to do something for me. Where is he?’

‘In the lavatory as usual.’

Melander's curious capacity for always being in the lavatory was a hackneyed joke, and although there was a grain of truth in it Martin Beck for some reason felt irritated.

Mostly, however, he kept his irritation to himself. He gave the man at the desk a calm, searching look and said:

‘What's bothering you?’

‘What do you think? The muggings of course. There was one in Vanadis Park last night again.’

‘So I heard.’

‘A pensioner who was out with his dog. Struck on the head from behind. A hundred and forty kronor in his wallet. Concussion. Still in hospital. Heard nothing. Saw nothing.’

Martin Beck was silent.

‘This was the eighth time in two weeks. That guy will end by killing someone.’

Martin Beck drained the glass and put it down.

‘If someone doesn't grab him soon,’ Gunvald Larsson said.

‘Who do you mean by someone?’

‘The police, for Christ's sake. Us. Anybody. A civil patrol from the protection squad in ninth district was there ten minutes before it happened.’

‘And when it happened? Where were they then?’

‘Sitting over coffee at the station. It's the same all the time. If there's a policeman hiding in every bush in Vanadis Park, then it happens in Vasa Park, and if there's a policeman hiding in every bush in both Vanadis Park and Vasa Park, then he pops up in Lill-Jans Wood.’

‘And if there's a policeman in every bush there too?’

‘Then the demonstrators break up the US Trade Centre and set fire to the American embassy. This is no joking matter,’ Gunvald Larsson added stiffly.

Keeping his eyes fixed on him, Martin Beck said:

‘I'm not joking. I just wondered.’

‘This man knows his business. It's almost as if he had radar. There's never a policeman in sight when he attacks.’

Martin Beck rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

‘Send out…’

Larsson broke in at once.

‘Send out? Whom? What? The dog van? And let those damn dogs tear the civil patrol to pieces? Yesterday's victim had a dog, come to that. What good was it to him?’

‘What kind of dog?’

‘How the hell do I know? Shall I interrogate the dog perhaps? Shall I get the dog here and send it out to the lavatory so that Melander can interrogate it?’

Gunvald Larsson said this with great gravity. He pounded the desk with his fist and went on:

‘A lunatic prowls about the parks bashing people on the head and you come here and start talking about dogs!’

‘Actually it wasn't I who…’

Again Gunvald Larsson interrupted him.

‘Anyway, I told you, this man knows his business. He only goes for defenceless old men and women. And always from behind. What was it someone said last week? Oh yes, “he leaped out of the bushes like a panther.”’

‘There's only one way,’ Martin Beck said in a honeyed voice.

‘What's that?’

‘You'd better go out yourself. Disguised as a defenceless old man.’

The man at the desk turned his head and glared at him.

Gunvald Larsson was six foot three and weighed fifteen and a half stone. He had shoulders like a heavyweight boxer and huge hands covered with shaggy blond hair. He had fair hair, brushed straight back, and discontented, clear blue eyes. Kollberg usually completed the description by saying that the expression on his face was that of a motorcyclist.

Just now the blue eyes were looking at Martin Beck with more than the usual disapproval.

Martin Beck shrugged and said:

‘Joking apart…’

And Gunvald Larsson interrupted him at once.

‘Joking apart I can't see anything funny in this. Here am I up to my neck in one of the worst cases of robbery I've ever known, and along you come drivelling about dogs and God knows what.’

Martin Beck realized that the other man, no doubt unintentionally, was about to do something that only few succeeded in: to annoy him to the point of making him lose his temper. And although he was quite well aware of this, he could not help raising his arm from the cabinet and saying:

‘That's enough!’

At that moment, fortunately, Melander came in from the room next door. He was in his shirtsleeves, and had a pipe in his mouth and an open telephone directory in his hands.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Hello,’ said Martin Beck.

‘I thought of the name the second you hung up,’ Melander said. ‘Arvid Larsson. Found him in the telephone directory too. But it's no good calling him. He died in April. Stroke. But he was in the same line of business up to the last. Had a rag-and-bone shop on the south side. It's shut now.’

Martin Beck took the directory, looked at it and nodded. Melander dug a matchbox out of his trouser pocket and began elaborately lighting his pipe. Martin Beck took two steps into the room and put the directory down on the table. Then he went back to the filing cabinet.

‘What are you busy on, you two?’ Gunvald Larsson asked suspiciously.

‘Nothing much,’ Melander said. ‘Martin had forgotten the name of a fence we tried to nab twelve years ago.’

‘And did you?’

‘No,’ said Melander.

‘But you remembered it?’

‘Yes.’

Gunvald Larsson pulled the directory towards him, riffled through it and said:

‘How the devil can you remember the name of a man called Larsson for twelve years?’

‘It's quite easy,’ Melander said gravely.

The telephone rang.

‘First division, duty officer.

‘Sorry, madam, what did you say?

‘What?

‘Am I a detective? This is the duty officer of the first division, Detective Inspector Larsson.

‘And your name is …?’

Gunvald Larsson took a ball-point pen from his breast pocket and scribbled a word. Then sat with the pen in mid-air.

‘And what can I do for you?

‘Sorry, I didn't get that.

‘Eh? A what?

‘A cat?

‘A cat on the balcony?

‘Oh, a man.

‘Is there a man standing on your balcony?’

Gunvald Larsson pushed the telephone directory aside and drew a memo pad towards him. Put pen to paper. Wrote a few words.

‘Yes, I see. What does he look like, did you say?

‘Yes, I'm listening. Thin hair brushed straight back. Big nose. Aha. White shirt. Average height. Hm. Brown trousers. Unbuttoned. What? Oh, the shirt. Blue-grey eyes.

‘One moment, madam. Let's get this straight. You mean he's standing on his own balcony?’

Gunvald Larsson looked from Melander to Martin Beck and shrugged. He went on listening and poked his ear with the pen.

‘Sorry, madam. You say this man is standing on his own balcony? Has he molested you?

‘Oh, he hasn't. What? On the other side of the street? On his own balcony?

‘Then how can you see that he has blue-grey eyes? It must be a very narrow street.

‘What? You're doing what?

‘Now wait a minute, madam. All this man has done is to stand on his own balcony. What else is he doing?

‘Looking down into the street? What's happening in the street?

‘Nothing? What did you say? Cars? Children playing?

‘At night too? Do the children play at night too?

‘Oh, they don't. But he stands there at night? What do you want us to do? Send the dog van?

‘As a matter of fact there's no law forbidding people to stand on their balconies, madam.

‘Report an observation, you say? Heavens above, madam, if everyone reported their observations we'd need three policemen for every inhabitant.

‘Grateful? We ought to be grateful?

‘Impertinent? I've been impertinent? Now look here, madam…’

Gunvald Larsson broke off and sat with the receiver a foot from his ear.

‘She hung up,’ he said in amazement.

After three seconds he banged down the receiver and said:

‘Go to hell, you old bitch.’

He tore off the sheet of paper he had been writing on and carefully wiped the ear wax off the tip of the pen.

‘People are crazy,’ he said. ‘No wonder we get nothing done. Why doesn't the switchboard block calls like that? There ought to be a direct line to the nut house.’

‘You'll just have to get used to it,’ Melander said, calmly taking his telephone directory, closing it and going into the next room.

Gunvald Larsson, having finished cleaning his pen, crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. With a sour look at the suitcase by the door he said:

‘Where are you off to?’

‘Just going down to Motala for a couple of days,’ Martin Beck replied. ‘Something there I must look at.’

‘Oh.’

‘Be back inside a week. But Kollberg will be home today. He's on duty here as from tomorrow. So you needn't worry.’

‘I'm not worrying.’

‘By the way, those robberies…’

‘Yes?’

‘No, it doesn't matter.’

‘If he does it twice more we'll get him,’ Melander said from the next room.

‘Exactly,’ said Martin Beck. ‘So long.’

‘So long,’ Gunvald Larsson replied.

3

Martin Beck got to Central Station nineteen minutes before the train was due to leave and thought he would fill in the time by making two telephone calls.

First home.

‘Haven't you left yet?’ his wife said.

He ignored this rhetorical question and merely said:

‘I'll be staying at a hotel called the Palace. Thought you'd better know.’

‘How long will you be away?’

‘A week’

‘How do you know for certain?’

This was a good question. She wasn't dumb at any rate, Martin Beck thought.

‘Love to the children,’ he said, adding after a moment, ‘take care of yourself.’

‘Thanks,’ she said coldly.

He hung up and fished another coin out of his trouser pocket. There was a line in front of the telephone boxes and the people standing nearest glared at him as he put the coin in the slot and dialled the number of southern police headquarters. It took about a minute before he got Kollberg on the line.

‘Beck here. Just wanted to make sure you were back.’

‘Very thoughtful of you,’ Kollberg said. ‘Are you still here?’

‘How's Gun?’

‘Fine. Big as a house of course.’

Gun was Kollberg's wife; she was expecting a baby at the end of August.

‘I'll be back in a week.’

‘So I gather. And by that time I shall no longer be on duty here.’

There was a pause, then Kollberg said:

‘What takes you to Motala?’

‘That fellow…’

‘Which fellow?’

‘That second-hand dealer who was burned to death the night before last. Haven't you…’

‘I read about it in the papers. So what?’

‘I'm going down to have a look.’

‘Are they so dumb they can't clear up an ordinary fire on their own?’

‘Anyway they've asked…’

‘Look here,’ Kollberg said. ‘You might get your wife to swallow that, but you can't kid me. Anyway, I know quite well what they've asked and who has asked it. Who's head of the investigation department at Motala now?’