The Steel Spring by Per Wahlöö Read Free Book Online Page A

midnight. His mission was already entering its second day.
    It was pitch dark in the flat. He felt his way over to the bed, took off his hat, coat, jacket, tie and shirt.
    Jensen was extremely tired. He had been travelling for many hours.
    The raw, damp cold in the room indicated that the heating was not working either.
    He lay on his back in the bed and wrapped himself in the blanket. Turned on his side and pulled up his knees.
    In the far distance he could hear sirens.
    He wondered if the couple in the ambulance had fitted in their quickie.

CHAPTER 11
    Jensen was wide awake the moment he opened his eyes. Grey dawn light was filtering into the room. His first thoughts were that he had ruined his best overcoat and that he wanted a wash. He got up and went to the bathroom. There was no water in the taps. The toilet did work, however. Once.
    He stroked the stubble on his chin with the tips of his fingers. Since he only had an electric razor, there wasn’t much he could do.
    Jensen went back to the bedroom, took the rest of his clothes off, took out some clean socks and underwear. Plus a new white shirt. He dressed quickly but carefully, and combed his hair in front of the mirror.
    He was hungry and cold and went out to the kitchen, but the refrigerator was empty. He had emptied it three months earlier and set it to defrost. In the wardrobe he had two bottles of spirits hidden behind his police caps on the top shelf but he did not feel like drinking alcohol. He went through the kitchen cupboards systematically and found a jar of honey. It was all he had to eat, and since the alcohol was all he had to drink, he fetched one of the bottles from the wardrobe and poured about ten centilitres into a tumbler. He drank it in gulps, accompanied by about a third of the jar of honey.
    Then he went into the bedroom and got his binoculars out of the chest of drawers. Took up position by the window andstarted scanning the area. The rain had eased off but it was misty and hard to see much. He trained the binoculars on the apartment block opposite, adjusted the focus and ran his eyes along the rows of windows. Everything looked completely normal, but there were no lights on anywhere and it took him a long time to detect any signs of activity. Finally he saw a curtain move at a window on the seventh floor, and just after that, he saw a face. It was a woman. Almost immediately a man also came into view behind the windowpane. Their faces looked pale and strange. Perhaps it was because of the distance or the poor visibility. They looked out for only a couple of seconds, then vanished. No further movement was to be seen in the flat. Jensen measured the position of the window with his eye and calculated the position of the room in relation to the front entrance door. Staircase C, seventh floor, first door on the left.
    He continued his inspection, and gradually noticed a few other details to indicate that the block was lived in. Blurred little movements, the twitch of a curtain, reflections in the windows. At a guess, there were people in maybe a third of the flats.
    He heard a faint engine sound and when he pointed the binoculars the other way he saw a bus being driven along the motorway. It was coming from the direction of the city. As far as he could see, there were no passengers aboard, but the mist made it very hard to be certain. Right after the bus, he glimpsed two other vehicles going by. Presumably ambulances with their sirens and emergency lights turned off.
    Jensen put the binoculars down on the window ledge, went through to the bedroom and got his overcoat. Studied the rip, which was a good twenty centimetres long, folded up the garment and put it on the hall table. He selected a differentcoat from the wardrobe and hung it in the hall. Then he picked up the sheets of duplicated paper from the hall carpet and put them on his bedside table along with the logbook of the patrol car.
    Then he sat down and started to read. First the logbook.