They stared at Kollberg with a listless indifference that looked as if it might blossom into open hostility at any moment
'Hi,' said Kollberg. 'Can we get you anything? Some coffee and Danish or something?'
The boys mumbled affirmatively without actually saying a word, but the girl pushed the hair out of her face and spoke up in a clear voice.
'It's very bad for you to stuff yourself with coffee and a lot of sweet white bread. If you want to stay healthy in this society, you have to stick to the few pure natural products that are available, and avoid meat and all prepared foods.'
'Right,' said Kollberg.
He turned to the rookie who was standing in the doorway with an odd look on his face, torn as he was between trying to act overbearing and superior towards the three young people and obliging and obsequious towards Kollberg.
'Go get three coffees and a whole lot of Danish pastry,' Kollberg said. 'And then go down to the macrobiotic shop on the corner and get a biodynamic carrot'
The rookie went. The boys giggled, while the girl sat straight and silent and serious.
The hopeful rookie was a little red in the face when he returned with the coffee hamper and the carrot.
Now all three of them giggled, and Kollberg almost felt like grinning a little himself. Unfortunately, it was all too easy not to.
'Well, it was nice of you to come down,' Kollberg said. 'I suppose you know what it's about'
'Christer,' said one of the boys.
'Right.'
'Christer wasn't basically a bad person,' the girl said. 'But he'd been destroyed by society, and he hated it. And now the cops have shot him.'
'He shot a couple of them too,' Kollberg put in. 'Yes,' she said. 'It really doesn't surprise me.'
'How so?'
After a long pause, one of the boys answered.
'He was usually armed,' he said. 'A flick-knife or a gun or something. Christer said you had to carry something these days. He was sort of desperate, or whatever you call it.'
'It's my job to sit here and look into things like this,' Kollberg said. 'It's an unpleasant and very thankless task.'
'And it's our very unpleasant and thankless task to take over this rotten society, which we didn't help to ruin,' the girl said, 'and somehow make it habitable again.'
'Did Christer dislike policemen?' Kollberg said.
'We all hate cops,' the girl said. 'Why shouldn't we? The cops hate us.'
'Yes, they really do,' said one of the boys. 'There isn't any place they'll leave us alone, and there isn't anything they'll let us do. As soon as you sit down on a bench or on the grass, the cops are there giving you a bunch of shit. And if they get the chance, they work us over.'
'Or make fun of us,' the girl said, 'which is almost worse.' 'Did any of you meet this fellow that Christer had with him in Ljunghusen?'
'Yes. Caspar,' said the boy who hadn't said anything. 'I talked to him, just for a little while. Then the beer was all gone, so I left.' 'How did he seem?'
'Nice guy, I thought Peaceable, like the rest of us.' 'You knew he was called Caspar?'
'Yes, but I think his real name was something else. I think he said something like Robin or Ronnie or something.'
'What do you think? About what's happened?'
'It's just typical,' said the first boy. 'It's always the way. Everybody hates us, the cops most of all, and then when one of us gets desperate, finally, and puts up a fight, well, it turns out like this. I don't see why a lot more guys don't get guns and knives. Why should we be the only ones to take a beating?'
Kollberg thought for a moment
'If you had the chance to do anything you wanted,' he said, 'what would you do?'
'I'd be an astronaut and get spaced right out of sight,' said the first boy.
But the girl took the question seriously.
'I'd move out to a farm and live right and healthy and have lots of animals and children and see to it they didn't get poisoned but grew up to be real human beings.'
'Can I grow a little hash in your garden?' said the second boy.
Nothing else of any interest was said, and soon Kollberg went back to Månsson and Skacke.
They were making progress.
There was someone named Ronnie Casparsson.
Who had been in jail and whose fingerprints were all over the steering wheel and the dashboard.
On top of that, there was an alert petrol station owner near Katrineholm who had filled the tank on the car that was stolen in Veflinge on Sunday. The man also remembered that the driver had long blond hair and that he had paid with five-kronor coins. He was almost unnaturally observant. He even knew the licence number. Kollberg asked him how that had happened.
'I write down all the licence numbers. An old habit of mine. Will there be a reward?'
'Yes, I'll buy petrol from you next time I come that way,' Kollberg said. 'But don't be surprised if I put on a false beard and fake licence plates.'
By Friday they knew pretty much everything there was to know about Ronnie Casparsson - where his parents lived, where he had last been seen, in which direction he had been driving (north), even his social security number.
All of this moved the investigation a hell of a long way from Malmö Division. The cop-killer manhunt would continue in other parts of the country.
'Task Force Malmö is dissolved,' said Malm, militarily. 'Report to me here in Stockholm at once.' 'Kiss my arse,' said Kollberg. 'What?' 'Oh, nothing.'
As he packed his bag and went to fetch his car, he realized that he had had just about enough.
On Wednesday evening, Ronnie Casparsson learned that one of the policemen involved in the dramatic shootout in Ljunghusen was dead
That was the way the woman on the news put it. The dramatic shootout in Ljunghusen.
He was sitting on the sofa with his mother watching TV, and he heard them read out his description. The man, who is the object of a nationwide manhunt, is about twenty years of age, below average height, has long blond hair, and was last seen wearing jeans and a dark windcheater.
He glanced sideways at his mother. She was busy with her knitting, wrinkling her brow and moving her lips. Counting stitches, probably.
The description was not especially detailed, nor especially accurate. He had just passed his nineteenth birthday, but he knew from experience that people often took him for sixteen or seventeen. He had been wearing a black leather jacket. Moreover, his mother had cut his hair the previous evening, under simulated protest.
The newscaster also said that he was presumed to be driving a light-green Chevrolet with three sevens in the licence number.
Funny they hadn't found the car. He hadn't taken any special pains to hide it. They were sure to find it any moment now. 'I've got to leave tomorrow, Mama,' he said. She looked up from her knitting.
'But Ronnie, can't you stay till Papa comes home? He'll be so unhappy when he finds out you've come and gone, and he didn't get a chance to see you.'
'I have to give the car back. The kid I borrowed it from needs it tomorrow. But I'll come again soon.'
His mother sighed.
'Yes, yes, that's what you always say,' she said resignedly. 'And then we don't see you for a year.'
The next morning, he drove into Stockholm.
He didn't know where he was headed, but if the police managed to find out who he was, he didn't want to sit at home with his mother and wait to be arrested. In Stockholm, it was easier to disappear.
He didn't have much money, only a couple of the five-kronor pieces and two tens his mother had given him. Petrol was no problem. He had cut a section off the garden hose in his parents' garage, and as soon as it got dark, he could get all the petrol he needed Of course, most cars had locks on their fuel tanks these days, but as long as you weren't in a hurry, things usually went fine.
A place to live was more of a problem. He had some friends with their own flat, and he would drive over and ask them if he could crash with them for a couple of days, but most of the other people he knew were in the same fix he was in. No place to live.
It was still early when he got to Stockholm, and he drove around aimlessly in the centre of town before it struck him that he'd better look up his friends while there was still some chance of catching them in bed.
They lived in Henriksdal. He drove carefully, anxious not to break any laws or draw attention to himself. The car ran well and was comfortable and pleasant to drive.
There was a strange name on the door to his friends' flat. He rang the bell, and a woman in bathrobe and slippers answered the door. She said she'd moved in a few days ago and that she didn't know what had become of the previous tenants.
Caspar wasn't particularly surprised. He had been to some pretty wild parties there himself, and he knew they'd been threatened with eviction several times.
He drove back downtown. There wasn't much left in the tank, and he didn't want to waste the last of his money on petrol, which he could get for nothing that night. But luck was with him, and he found a free parking space on Skeppsbron.
As he stood waiting for the 'walk' light by the statue of Gustaf III, he turned and looked back at the car. It was last year's model and still fairly shiny and clean, without a dent or a scrape anywhere on it. It was a common make and looked sober and middle-class. It wasn't conspicuous in any way. With its new fake plates, to go on driving it would be no great risk.
He wandered around in the Old City and thought about what he would do.
He'd been away from Stockholm for two weeks. It felt like an eternity.
Fourteen days ago, he'd had a little money and so he'd gone to Copenhagen with a couple of other guys. Then, when the money ran out, he'd gone to Malmö, where he'd had the misfortune of running into Christer. Who was now dead. It was still hard for him to grasp what had happened. Sunday morning in Ljunghusen had somehow been ripped out of his life. It had nothing to do with him; it was more like something he'd seen in a movie or heard someone tell about than something he'd lived through himself.
He felt a strong need to talk to someone, to see his friends, to get back to his normal life, and convince himself that nothing had changed.
But everything had changed. Oh, he'd been on the lam before, but not like this.
This time it was really serious. He was the object of a nationwide manhunt - that's what they'd said on TV.
He couldn't go looking for his friends. They hung out in Humlegärden and Kungsträdgården and Sergei Square, the first places the police would go to look for him.
He was hungry and went into a shop on Köpmangatan to buy some rolls. A girl in jeans and a leather coat was standing at the counter paying for a packet of tea that she was holding under one arm. She had short blonde hair, and when she turned around, Caspar could see she was older than he'd thought. Thirty, at least She looked him right in the face with her searching blue eyes, and for an instant he thought she recognized him and fear tied a knot in his belly.
'Mr Beck still isn't back?' asked the assistant behind the counter, and the woman with the inquisitive gaze finally looked away.
'No, but he ought to be back any day,' she said.
Her voice was a little hoarse. She went to the door without looking at Caspar and stepped out into the street.
'Thank you, Mrs Nielsen,' the assistant called after her. 'Come again.'
Caspar bought his rolls, but it was some time before the knot in his stomach loosened enough for him to eat them.
I'm starting to crack up, he thought. I've got to pull myself together.
He left the Old City and crossed Slussen towards Södermalm Square. There were two Finns standing outside the entrance to the metro. He knew them slightly and had talked to them several times; but as he approached the steps leading down to where they stood, he caught sight of two policemen walking down Peter Myndes Hill. He changed direction abruptly and walked on towards Gotgatan.
He came to Medborgarplatsen and stopped to stare at the placards outside the newspaper kiosk next to Bjorn's Garden. POLICEMAN MURDERED, said one, and WOUNDED POLICEMAN DIES another, in fat black type. He read the smaller subheads. Desperado Sought Nationwide read one of them, while the other evening tabloid stated more laconically, Murderer at Large.
Caspar knew it was him they meant, but he still couldn't see how they could call him a 'desperado' and a 'murderer'.
He had never even held a gun in his hand, and if he had he wouldn't have had the nerve to use it on another human being, even if he were desperate.
It hadn't occurred to him all day to buy the papers, and now that he saw the placards, he was afraid to read what they had to say.
He thought of the green car, full of stolen property and with his fingerprints on the steering wheel. And not only the steering wheel. Once they found the car they would have his fingerprints, and once they had them they would know who they were hunting.
He remembered that time a year and a half ago all too well -the only time he'd been caught - and he could still see the stamp pad and the card they'd pressed his fingers on. All ten, one after the other.
Caspar didn't buy a paper. He went on walking up one street and down the next, without being conscious of where he was. He racked his brains trying to think of somewhere to hide.
His parents' house was out of the question. The police would go there as soon as they found out who he was. And they probably knew that already.
He felt sorry for his mother, and he wished he could explain to her what had happened. That he hadn't shot anyone. If he could find a place to hide out, maybe he'd write her a letter.
It was dark by four o'clock, and he started feeling calmer. After all, he hadn't killed anyone. It was all a misunderstanding, and you can't be punished for something you haven't done. Or can you?
Caspar was cold. He was wearing a thin pullover under his leather jacket, and his worn, washed-out jeans didn't afford much warmth. And his feet, in tennis shoes, were even colder than his legs. He considered going back to the car. He could try to siphon a little petrol and drive out into the country and sleep in the back seat. But he remembered how cold the night was by Lake Sommen three days earlier, and anyway, it was still too early.