man had been fifty yards nearer, he would probably no longer be alive. If on the other hand he had been fifty yards further away, he would probably not have had any pictures to show. Everything happened very quickly; first an enormous pillar of smoke, cars, animals and people all thrown high into the air, bodies torn apart, swallowed up in a cloud of smoke that looked almost like the mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb. Then the cameraman panned around the surroundings, which were very beautiful; a fountain playing, a wide palm-lined street. And then came the terrible paroxysms beside a heap of metal that might once have been a car, and something which a short time before had probably been a living human being.
Throughout the film the reporter kept up a ceaseless commentary in that eager, exalted tone that only American news reporters seem to achieve. It was as if he had – with enormous pleasure – just witnessed the end of the world.
‘Oh, God,’ said Rhea, burying her face in the chair cushion. ‘What a damned awful world we live in.’
But for Martin Beck it was going to be slightly more difficult.
The Swedish newsreader reappeared and said, ‘We have just learned that the Swedish police had a special observer at the site of the assassination, Inspector Gunvald Larsson, from the Violent Crimes Squad in Stockholm.’
The screen was filled with a still picture of Gunvald Larsson looking mentally deficient, his name, as usual, misspelled.
‘Unfortunately there is no news at the moment of what has happened to Inspector Larsson. The next newscast will be the regularly scheduled news on the radio.’
‘Dammit,’ said Martin Beck. ‘Dammit to hell.’
‘What's the matter?’ asked Rhea.
‘Gunvald. He's always right there when the shit hits the fan.’
‘I thought you didn't like him.’
‘But I do. Even if I don't say so very often.’
‘You should say what you think,’ said Rhea. ‘Come on, let's go to bed.’
Twenty minutes later he had fallen asleep with his cheek against her shoulder.
Her shoulder soon grew numb, and then her arm. She didn't move, but just lay awake in the dark, liking him.
The last commuter train of the night from Stockholm's Central Station stopped at Rotebro and dropped a single passenger.
The man, wearing a dark blue denim suit and black trainers, walked briskly along the platform and down the steps, but as he left the bright lights of the station behind him, he slowed down. He continued unhurriedly through the older villa section of the suburb, past the fences, low walls and well-cut hedges that surrounded the gardens. The air was chilly, but still and full of scents.
It was the darkest part of the night, but it was only two weeks to the summer solstice and the June sky arched deep blue above his head.
The houses on either side of the road lay dark and silent, the only sound that of the man's rubber soles against the pavement.
During the train journey, he had been uneasy and nervous, but now he was feeling calm and relaxed, his thoughts wandering their own ways. A poem by Elmer Diktonius came to his mind, its cadence matching his steps.
Walk carefully along the road
But never count your steps,
For fear will kill them.
From time to time he had tried to compose poetry himself, with indifferent results, but he liked reading poetry and had learned by heart many poems written by his favourite poets.
As he walked he kept his hand firmly clenched around the solid iron bar, over a foot long, that he was carrying thrust up the right sleeve of his denim jacket.
When the man had crossed Holmbodavägen and was approaching a street of terraced houses, his movements grew more cautious and his stance more alert. Up to now he had met no one and he was hoping his luck would hold for the short stretch remaining before he reached his goal. He felt more exposed here, the gardens were behind the houses, and the vegetation in the narrow strip between the fronts of houses and the pavement consisted of flower beds, bushes and hedges that were too low to offer any protection.
The houses along one side of the road were painted yellow, those opposite red. This appeared to be the only difference; their exteriors were otherwise identical, two-storey houses of wood, with mansard roofs. Between the houses were garages or tool-sheds, squeezed in as if to link the houses together as well as to separate them.
The man was on his way to the furthest row of houses, beyond which the buildings ceased and fields and meadows took over. He slipped swiftly and silently up to the garage next to one of the houses on the corner, as his eyes swept the terraces and the road. There was no one to be seen.
The garage had no doors, and there was no car inside, only a woman's bicycle leaning against the wall just inside the entrance, and opposite that a dustbin. Furthest in, by the far wall, were two large rectangular wooden crates standing on end. He had been worried that someone might have moved them away. The hiding place had been decided on beforehand and he would have found it difficult to find another one as good.
The space between the packing cases and the wall was narrow,but wide enough for him to squeeze into. He wriggled in behind the crates, which were solidly constructed of rough pine and about the same size as coffins. When he had assured himself that he was completely hidden he drew the iron bar out of his sleeve. He lay face down on the damp, cold cement floor, his face buried in the crook of his arm. In his right hand was the iron bar, still warm from the heat of his body. Now he had only to wait as the summer night outside gradually grew lighter.
He was awakened by the twittering of birds. Getting to his knees, he looked at his watch. Almost half-past four. The sun was just rising; he had four more hours to wait.
Just before six, sounds began to come from inside the house. They were faint and indefinite and the man behind the wooden crate felt like pressing his ear to the wall, but dared not as he would then be visible from the road. Through a narrow slit between the two crates he could see a bit of the road and the house opposite. A car passed, and shortly afterwards he heard an engine start up nearby and then saw another car go by.
At half-past six he heard steps approaching on the other side of the wall; it sounded like someone in clogs. The thumping faded away and came back several times, and finally he heard a deep female voice saying quite clearly, ‘Bye, then. I'm going. Will you call me this evening?’
He could not make out the reply, but heard the front door open and close. He stood quite still with his eye to the crack.
The woman in clogs came into the garage. He could not see her, but heard a small click as she unlocked the bicycle and then the crunch of her steps on the gravel path leading out to the road. The only thing he saw as she cycled past was that her trousers were white and her hair long and dark.
He scanned the house across the road. The blinds were down in the only window that was within his field of vision. He clamped the iron bar under his jacket with his left arm and moved three steps away from the protection of the crates, put one ear against the wall and listened, his eye on the road outside. At first he could hear nothing, but he soon caught the sound of steps vanishing up some stairs.
The road was empty. Far away he heard a dog bark and the distant grumble of a diesel engine, but in the immediate vicinity everything was quiet and still. He pulled on his gloves, which had been rolled up inside his jacket pockets, slipped quickly along the garage wall, stepped around the corner and pressed down the handle of the front porch door.
As he had expected, it was unlocked.
He held the door ajar, heard footsteps up on the next floor, established with a swift glance that the road was still empty, and slipped inside.
The