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out through the window, where the woman in the nightgown was now standing with yet another child, a fair-haired boy of about five, wearing flowered blue pyjamas. The woman flung down the child just as swiftly and unexpectedly as before, but this time Larsson was more prepared and caught the boy safely in his arms. Strangely enough, the boy did not seem at all frightened.

      ‘What’s your name?’ he shouted.

      ‘Larsson.’

      ‘Are you a fireman?’

      ‘For God’s sake, push off now,’ said Gunvald Larsson, putting the child down on the ground.

      He looked up again and was hit on the head by a tile. It was red-hot and although his fur cap deadened the blow, everything went black before his eyes. He felt a burning pain in his forehead and blood pouring down his face. The woman in the nightgown had disappeared. Presumably to fetch the third child, he thought, and at that moment the woman appeared at the window with a large porcelain dog, which she at once threw out. It fell to the ground and smashed to pieces. The next second, she herself jumped. That did not go so well. Gunvald Larsson was standing directly in line and fell in a heap on the ground, the woman on top of him. He hit the back of his head and his back, but at once heaved the woman off and began to get up. The woman in the nightgown looked unhurt, but her eyes were glazed and staring. He looked at her and said:

      ‘Haven’t you got another child?’

      She stared at him, then hunched up and began to whimper like a hurt animal.

      ‘Get over there and look after the other two,’ said Gunvald Larsson.

      The fire had now caught the whole of the second floor and flames were already shooting out of the window from which the woman had jumped. But the two old people were still in the left-hand first-floor flat. It had obviously not begun to burn in there yet, but they had shown no sign of life. Presumably the flat was full of smoke, and it was also only a matter of minutes before the roof would fall in.

      Gunvald Larsson looked around for a tool and saw a large stone a few yards away. It was frozen into the ground, but he forced it loose. The stone weighed at least forty to fifty pounds. He raised it above his head with straight arms and flung it with all his strength through the middle of the window furthest to the left in the first-floor flat, shattering the window frame in a shower of splinters of glass and wood. He hauled himself up on to the sill, leaned against a blind which gave way and a table which fell over and landed on the floor in the room, where the smoke was thick and suffocating. He coughed and pulled his woollen scarf up over his mouth. Then he tore down the blind and looked round. The fire was roaring all around him. In the flickering reflections from outside, he saw a figure huddled in a shapeless heap on the floor. The old woman, obviously. He lifted her up, carried the slack body over to the window, took her under the arms and carefully let her down to the ground, where she at once sank into a heap against the foundation wall. She appeared to be alive but hardly conscious.

      He took a deep breath and returned to the flat, tore down the blind on the other window and smashed the windows with a chair. The smoke lifted slightly, but above him the ceiling was now bulging and orange tongues of flame were beginning to appear around the hall door. It did not take him more than fifteen seconds to find the man. He had not managed to get out of bed, but he was alive and was coughing weakly and pitifully.

      Gunvald whipped off the blanket, slung the old man over his shoulder, carried him right across the room and climbed out in a cascade of falling sparks. He coughed hoarsely and could hardly see for the blood running down from the wound in his forehead, mixing with the sweat and tears.

      With the old man still over his shoulder, he dragged the old woman away and laid them both down beside each other on the ground. Then he examined the woman to see if she was breathing. She was. He hauled off his sheepskin coat and brushed a few sparks off it. Then he used it 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.

       4

      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

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