Quite recently Kollberg had said, in one of his rare moments of depression, ‘If you weren't there, God only knows whether I'd stay on the force.’
Martin Beck thought of this as he pulled on his wet raincoat and ran down the stairs to the waiting taxi.
Despite the rain and the late hour a cluster of people had collected outside the cordon towards Karlbergsvägen. They stared curiously at Martin Beck as he got out of the taxi. A young constable in a black raincape made a violent movement to check him, but another policeman grabbed his arm and saluted.
A small man in a light-coloured trench coat and cap placed himself in Martin Beck's way and said, ‘My condolences, Superintendent. I just heard a rumour that one of your –’
Martin Beck gave the man a look that made him swallow the rest of the sentence.
He knew the man in the cap only too well and disliked him intensely. The man was a freelance journalist and called himself a crime reporter. His speciality was reporting murders and his accounts were full of sensational, repulsive and usually erroneous details. In fact only the very worst weeklies published them.
The man slunk off and Martin Beck swung his legs over the rope. He saw that a similar cordon had been made a little farther up towards Torsplan. The roped-off area was swarming with black-and-white cars and unidentifiable figures in shiny raincoats. The ground around the red doubledecker was loose and squelchy.
The bus was lit up inside and the headlights were on, but the cones of light did not reach far in the heavy rain. The ambulance from the State Forensic Laboratory stood at the rear of the bus with its radiator pointing to Karlsbergsvägen. The medico-legal expert's car was also on the scene. Behind the broken wire fence some men were busy setting up floodlights. All these details showed that something far out of the ordinary had happened.
Martin Beck glanced up at the dismal blocks of flats on the other side of the street. Figures were silhouetted in several of the lit windows, and behind rain-streaked panes, like blurred white patches, he saw faces pressed against the glass. A bare-legged woman in boots and with a raincoat over her nightdress came out of an entrance obliquely opposite the scene of the accident. She got halfway across the street before being stopped by a policeman, who took her by the arm and led her back to the doorway. The constable strode along and she half ran beside him while the wet white nightdress twisted itself around her legs.
Martin Beck could not see the doors of the bus but he saw people moving about inside, and presumed that men from the forensic laboratory were already at work. He couldn't see any of his colleagues from the homicide squad, either, but guessed that they were somewhere on the other side of the vehicle.
Involuntarily he slowed his steps. He thought of what he was soon to see and clenched his hands in his coat pockets as he gave the forensic technicians' grey vehicle a wide berth.
In the glow from the doubledecker's open middle doors stood Hammar, who had been his boss for many years and was now a chief superintendent. He was talking to someone who was evidently inside the bus. He broke off and turned to Martin Beck.
‘There you are. I was beginning to think they'd forgotten to call you.’
Martin Beck made no answer but went over to the doors and looked in.
He felt his stomach muscles knotting. It was worse than he had expected.
The cold bright light made every detail stand out with the sharpness of an etching. The whole bus seemed to be full of twisted, lifeless bodies covered with blood.
He would have liked to have turned and walked away and not had to look, but his face did not betray his feelings. Instead, he forced himself to make a systematic mental note of all the details. The men from the laboratory were working silently and methodically. One of them looked at Martin Beck and slowly shook his head.
Martin Beck regarded the bodies one by one. He didn't recognize any of them. At least not in their present state.
‘The one up there,’ he said suddenly, ‘has he …’
He turned to Hammar and broke off short.
Behind Hammar, Kollberg appeared out of the dark, bareheaded and with his hair stuck to his forehead.
Martin Beck stared at him.
‘Hi,’ said Kollberg. ‘I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you. I was about to tell them to call you again.’
He stopped in front of Martin Beck and gave him a searching look.
Then he gave a swift, nauseated glance at the interior of the bus and went on, ‘You need a cup of coffee. I'll get one for you.’
Martin Beck shook his head.
‘Yes,’ Kollberg said.
He squished off. Martin Beck stared after him, then went over to the front doors and looked in. Hammar followed with heavy steps.
The bus driver lay slumped over the wheel. He had evidently been shot through the head. Martin Beck regarded what had been the man's face and was vaguely surprised that he didn't feel any nausea. He turned to Hammar, who was staring expressionlessly out into the rain.
‘What on earth was he doing here?’ Hammar said tonelessly. ‘On this bus?’
And at that instant Martin Beck knew to whom the man on the phone had been referring.
Nearest the window behind the stairs leading to the top deck sat Åke Stenström, detective sub-inspector on the homicide squad and one of Martin Beck's youngest colleagues.
‘Sat’ was perhaps not the right word. Stenström's dark-blue poplin raincoat was soaked with blood and he sprawled in his seat, his right shoulder against the back of a young woman who was sitting next to him, bent double.
He was dead. Like the young woman and the six other people in the bus.
In his right hand he held his service pistol.
The rain kept on all night and although the sun, according to the almanac, rose at twenty minutes to eight the time was nearer nine before it was strong enough to penetrate the clouds and disseminate an uncertain, hazy light.
Across the pavement on Norra Stationsgatan stood the red doubledecker bus just as it had stopped ten hours previously.
But that was the only thing that was the same. By now about fifty men were inside the extensive cordons, and outside them the crowd of curious onlookers got bigger and bigger. Many had been standing there ever since midnight, and all they had seen was police and ambulance men and wailing emergency vehicles of every conceivable kind. It had been a night of sirens, with a constant stream of cars roaring along the wet streets, apparently going nowhere and for no reason.
Nobody knew anything for sure, but there were two words that were whispered from person to person and soon spread in concentric circles through the crowd and the surrounding houses and city, finally taking more definite shape and being flung out across the country as a whole. By now the words had reached far beyond the frontiers.
Mass murder.
Mass murder in Stockholm.
Mass murder in a bus in Stockholm.
Everybody thought they knew this much at least.
Very little