Читать книгу The Man on the Balcony - Maj Sjowall, Per Wahloeoe - Страница 12

It rained all night but on Saturday morning the sun was shining again, hidden only now and then by the fluffy white clouds that floated across the clear blue sky. It was 10 June, the summer holidays had begun, and on Friday evening long lines of cars had crawled out of town on their way to country cottages, boat jetties and camping sites. But the city was still full of people who, as the weekend promised to be fine, would have to make do with the makeshift country life offered by parks and open-air swimming pools.

The time was a quarter past nine and a line was already waiting outside the pay window of the Vanadis Baths. Sun-thirsty Stockholmers, craving a swim, streamed up the paths leading from Sveavägen.

Two seedy figures crossed Frejgatan against the red light. One was dressed in jeans and a pullover, the other in black trousers and a brown jacket which bulged suspiciously over the left-hand breast pocket. They walked slowly, peering bleary-eyed against the sun. The man with the bulge in his jacket staggered and nearly bumped into a cyclist, an athletic man of sixty or so in a light-grey summer suit, with a pair of wet swimming trunks on the baggage carrier. The cyclist wobbled and had to put one foot to the ground.

‘Clumsy idiots!’ he shouted, as he rode pompously away.

‘Stupid old fool,’ the man with the jacket said. ‘Looks like a damned millionaire. Why, he might have knocked me down. I might have fallen and broken the bottle.’

He stopped indignantly on the pavement and the mere thought of how near he had been to disaster made him shudder and raise his hand to the bottle in his jacket.

‘And do you think he'd have paid for it? Not likely. Sitting pretty, he is, in a swanky apartment at Norr Mälarstrand with his fridge full of champagne, but the sonofabitch wouldn't think of paying for some poor bloke's bottle of booze that he'd broken. Dirty bastard!’

‘But he didn't break it,’ his friend objected quietly.

The second man was much younger; he took his irate companion by the arm and piloted him into the park. They climbed the slope, not towards the pool like the others but on past the gates. Then they turned off on to the path leading from Stefan's Church to the top of the hill. It was a steep pull and they were soon out of breath. Halfway up the younger man said:

‘Sometimes you can find a few coins in the grass behind the tower. If they've been playing poker there the night before. We might scrape enough together for another half-bottle before the off licence closes…’

It was Saturday and the off licences shut at one o'clock.

‘Not a hope. It was raining yesterday.’

‘So it was,’ the younger man said with a sigh.

The path skirted the fence of the bathing enclosure, which was teeming with bathers, some of them tanned so dark that they looked like Negroes, some of them real Negroes, but most of them pale after a long winter without even a week in the Canary Islands.

‘Hey, wait a minute,’ the younger man said. ‘Let's have a look at the girls.’

The older man walked on, saying over his shoulder:

‘Hell, no. Come on, I'm as thirsty as a camel.’

They went on up towards the water tower at the top of the park. Having rounded the gloomy building, they saw to their relief that they had the ground behind the tower to themselves. The older man sat down in the grass, took out the bottle and started unscrewing the cap. The younger man had continued to the top of the slope on the other side, where a red-painted wooden fence sagged.

‘Jocke!’ he shouted. ‘Let's sit here instead. In case anyone comes.’

Jocke got up, wheezing, and bottle in hand followed the other man, who had started down the slope.

‘Here's a good spot,’ the younger man called, ‘by these bush…’

He stopped dead and bent forward.

‘Christ!’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Jesus Christ!’

Jocke came up behind him, saw the girl on the ground, turned aside and vomited.

She was lying with the top part of her body half hidden under a bush. Her legs, wide apart, were stretched out on the damp sand. The face, turned to one side, was bluish and the mouth was open. Her right arm was bent over her head and her left hand lay against her hip, palm upwards.

The fair, longish hair had fallen across her cheek. She was barefoot and dressed in a skirt and a striped cotton T-shirt that had slipped up, leaving her waist bare.

She had been about nine years old.

There was no doubt that she was dead.

The time was five minutes to ten when Jocke and his mate appeared at the ninth district police station in Surbrunnsgatan. They gave a rambling and nervous account of what they had seen in Vanadis Park to a police inspector called Granlund, who was duty officer. Ten minutes later Granlund and four policemen were on the spot.

Only twelve hours had passed since two of the four policemen had been called to an adjacent part of the park, where yet another brutal robbery had taken place. As nearly an hour had passed between the assault and the time it was reported, everyone had taken it for granted that the assailant had made himself scarce. They had therefore not examined the area closely and couldn't say whether the girl's body had been there at that time or not.

The five policemen established the fact that the girl was dead and that as far as they could tell she had been strangled. That was about all they could do for the moment.

While waiting for the detectives and the men from the technical department their main duty was to see that no busybodies came prying about.

Granlund, casting his eye over the scene of the crime, saw that the men from headquarters were not going to have an easy job. It had obviously rained heavily for some time after the body had been put there. On the other hand he thought he knew who the girl was, and the knowledge didn't make him too happy.

At eleven o'clock the previous evening an anxious mother had come to the police station and begged them to search for her daughter. The girl was eight and a half years old. She had gone out to play at about seven, and had not been heard of since. The ninth district had alerted headquarters and all men on patrol had been given the girl's description. The accident wards of all hospitals had been checked.

The description, unfortunately, seemed to fit.

As far as Granlund knew, the missing girl had not been found. Also, she lived in Sveavägen near Vanadis Park. There seemed no room for doubt.

He thought of the girl's parents waiting at home in suspense, and inwardly he prayed that he would not have to be the one who told them the truth.

When the detectives at last arrived Granlund felt as if he had been standing an eternity in the sunshine near the child's little body.

As soon as the experts began their work he left them to it and walked back to the police station, the image of the dead girl branded on his retina.