LITMIR.BIZ

       6

      ‘I've met a lot of gorillas in my day,’ Per Månsson said. ‘But Bertil Mård is one of the worst.’

      They were sitting on Månsson's balcony overlooking Regementsgatan, enjoying a lovely day.

      Martin Beck had taken the bus to Malmö, mostly for the fun of it and so he could say that he had actually travelled the stretch that Sigbrit Mård apparently had not.

      He had also tried to question the bus driver, to no avail, since the man was a substitute and had not been driving on the day in question.

      Månsson was a large, leisurely man, who took life easy and was seldom guilty of an overstatement. But now he said:

      ‘The man struck me as a bully.’

      ‘Lots of sea captains go a bit funny,’ said Martin Beck. ‘They're often very lonely men, and if they're the overbearing type they tend to get tough and autocratic. They turn into gorillas, as you said. The only person they'll talk to is their chief.’

      ‘Their chief?’

      ‘The Chief Engineer.’

      ‘Oh.’

      ‘A lot of them drink too much and tyrannize their crews. Or else they pretend they don't even exist. Won't even speak to their mates.’

      ‘You know a lot about ships.’

      ‘Yes, it's my hobby. I had a case once on a ship. Murder. In the Indian Ocean. On a freighter. One of the most interesting cases I ever had.’

      ‘Well, I know the skipper of the Malmöhus. He's a decent fellow.’

      ‘Passenger ships are usually a different matter. The owners put on a different kind of officer. After all, the captains have to socialize with the passengers. On the big ships, they have a captain's table.’

      ‘What's that?’

      ‘The captain's own table in the dining room. For entertaining prominent first-class passengers.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘But Mård sailed on tramp steamers. And there's a certain difference.’

      ‘Yes, he was pretty damned arrogant,’ Månsson said. ‘Yelled at me and cursed his missus. Nasty son of a bitch. He thought he was something special. Rude and arrogant. I'm pretty easygoing, but I damned near lost my temper. That takes some doing.’

      ‘How does he make a living?’

      ‘He's got a brewpub in Limhamn. You know the story. He drank his liver to pieces in Ecuador or Venezuela. They had him in the hospital out there for a while. Then the shipping company flew him home. They wouldn't give him a clean bill of health, so he couldn't ship out again. He moved home to his wife in Anderslöv, but that didn't work out at all. He hit the bottle and beat her. She wanted out. He didn't. But she got her divorce, no sweat.’

      ‘Allwright says he's got an alibi for the seventeenth.’

      ‘Yes, sort of. He took the train ferry over to Copenhagen to go on a bender. But it's a rotten alibi. Seems to me. Claims he sat in the forward saloon. The ferry sails at a quarter to twelve these days – it used to sail at noon. He says he was alone in the saloon, and the waiter was hung over. And there was one crewman standing in there playing the slot machine. I often take that boat myself. The waiter, whose name is Sture, is always hung over, with bags under his eyes. And that same crewman is generally standing there stuffing one-krona pieces in the slot machine.’

      Månsson took a noisy sip of his drink. He always drank the same thing, a mixture of gin and grapefruit soda. It is a Finland-Swedish speciality, called Gripenberger after some obscure officer and nobleman.

      The weather was nice in Malmö. The city seemed almost inhabitable.

      ‘I think you ought to talk to Bertil Mård yourself,’ Månsson said.

      Martin Beck nodded.

      ‘The witness on the ferry identified him,’ Månsson said. ‘He's got the kind of looks you don't forget. The only trouble is that all those things happen every day. The ferry leaves here at the same hour, usually with the same passengers. You can't count on the crew remembering someone a couple of weeks later, and you can't be sure they'd have the right day. Talk to him yourself and see what you think.’

      ‘But you have already questioned him?’

      ‘Yes, and I wasn't specially convinced.’

      ‘Does he have a car?’

      ‘Yes. He lives on the West Side, a stone's throw from here if you've got a hell of a good arm. Mäster Johansgatan 23. Takes him half an hour to drive to Anderslöv. Roughly.’

      ‘What makes you point that out?’

      ‘Well, he seems to have made the trip now and then.’

      Martin Beck let the question drop.

      It was 3 November, a Saturday, and still almost summer. It was also a holiday – All Saints' Day – but Martin Beck was planning to disturb Captain Mård's tranquillity in spite of it. The chances were he wasn't a religious man.

      There had been no word from Kollberg. Perhaps he had found Växjö fascinating and decided to stay over for a day. But in what way fascinating? Perhaps someone had seduced him with illegal fresh crayfish. Of course, frozen crayfish were now available, but Kollberg was not easily deceived. Least of all in the matter of crayfish.

      Rhea had called that morning and cheered him up. As always. In one year she had changed his life and given him more satisfaction than twenty years of marriage to a person he had actually loved once, a person who had presented him with two children and many a joyful moment. Just count them. For that matter, ‘presented’ was a lousy word. They had been in it together, hadn't they? Well maybe so, but he had never had that feeling.

      With Rhea Nielsen, everything was different. They had a free and open relationship, of course. Perhaps a little too free and open, it seemed to him every once in a while. But first and foremost, there was a sense of community that stretched far beyond his love for this curiously perfect woman. Together with her, he had begun to mix with people in a manner that had never been possible for him before. Her building in Stockholm was quite different from the average apartment building. You might almost call it a commune, though with none of the negative connotations – often warranted but just as often imaginary – of that discredited term. People in communes smoked pot and screwed around like rabbits. The rest of the time they talked a lot of bullshit and ate macrobiotic food, and none of them worked and they all lived on welfare. The commune members considered themselves the victims of an evil social system. They often took LSD and thought they could fly, or drove a stiletto into their best friend's belly for the enrichment of

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