Man On The Balcony by Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö Read Free Book Online Page B

the men detailed to go around from door to door had handed out five hundred stenciled questionnaires. Only one reply of any interest had been received. An eighteen-year-old girl by the name of Majken Jansson, who lived in the apartment house at Sveavägen 103 and was the daughter of a businessman, said that she and a boyfriend her own age had spent about twenty minutes in Vanadis Park sometime between eight and nine. She wasn't sure of the exact time. They had seen nothing and heard nothing.
    Asked what they had been doing in Vanadis Park, she had replied that they had been at a family dinner party and had just gone out to get a breath of air.
    'A breath of air," Melander said thoughtfully.
    'Between the legs, no doubt," Gunvald Larsson said.
    Larsson had been in the regular navy and was still in the reserve. Now and then he gave vent to his below-decks humor.
    Hour after hour dragged past. The investigation machinery went grinding on. The time was already past one o'clock on the night between Sunday and Monday when Martin Beck came home to Bagarmossen. Everyone was asleep. He took a can of beer out of the icebox and made a cheese sandwich. Then he drank the beer and threw the sandwich into the garbage bag.
    After he had got into bed he lay for a while thinking of the alcoholic warehouse laborer called Eriksson, who three years ago had stolen two hundred kronor from a workmate's coat.
    Kollberg couldn't get to sleep. He lay in the dark staring at the ceiling. He too thought of the man called Eriksson whose name had been in the vice squad's register. He also considered the fact that if the man who had committed the murder in Vanadis Park was not in the register, then computer technology was about as much good to them as it had been to the American police in their hunt for the Boston strangle!. In other words, none at all. The Boston strangler had killed thirteen people, all lone women, in two years without leaving a single clue.
    Now and then he looked at his wife. She was asleep, but twitched every time the baby in her body kicked.

11
    IT WAS MONDAY afternoon, fifty-four hours after the dead girl had been found in Vanadis Park.
    The police had appealed to the public for help through the press, radio and television, and over three hundred tips had already come in. Each item of information was registered and examined by a special working group, after which the results were studied in detail.
    The vice squad combed its registers, the forensic laboratory dealt with the meager material from the scene of the crime, the computers worked at high pressure, men from the assault squad went around the neighborhood knocking on doors, suspects and possible witnesses were questioned, and as yet all this activity had led nowhere. The murderer was unknown and still at large.
    The papers were piling up on Martin Beck's desk. Since early morning he had been working on the never-ceasing stream of reports and interrogation statements. The telephone had never stopped ringing, but in order to get a breathing space he had now asked Kollberg to take his calls during the next hour or so. Gunvald Larsson and Melander were spared all these telephone calls; they sat behind closed doors sifting material.
    Martin Beck had had only a few hours' sleep during the night and he had skipped lunch so as to have time for a press conference, which had yielded the journalists very little.
    He yawned and looked at the time, astonished that it was already a quarter past three. Gathering up a bundle of papers that belonged to Melander's department, he knocked at the door and went in to Melander and Larsson.
    Melander did not look up when he entered the room. They had worked together for so long that he knew Martin Beck's knock. Gunvald Larsson glared at the bundle of papers in Martin Beck's hand and said:
    'Good God, have you brought still more? We're swamped with work already."
    Martin Beck shrugged and put the papers down at Melander's elbow.
    'I was going to order