The Laughing Policeman Read Online Free PDF

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 for 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 more was known at police headquarters on Kungsholmsgatan. It wasn't even known for certain who was in charge of the investigation. The confusion was complete. Telephones rang incessantly, people came and went, floors were dirtied and the men who dirtied them were irritable and clammy with sweat and rain.
    'Who's working on the list of names?' Martin Beck asked.
    'Rönn, I should think,' said Kollberg without turning round. He was busy taping a plan to the wall. The sketch was over three yards long and more than half a yard wide and was awkward to handle.
    'Can't someone give me a hand?' he said. 'Sure,' said Melander calmly, putting down his pipe and standing up.
    Fredrik Melander was a tall, lean man of grave appearance and methodical disposition. He was forty-eight years old and a detective inspector on the homicide squad. Kollberg had worked together with him for many years. He had forgotten how many. Melander, on the other hand, had not He was known never to forget anything.
    Two telephones rang.
    'Hello. This is Superintendent Beck. Who? No, he's not here. Shall I ask him to call? Oh, I see.'
    He put the phone down and reached for the other one. An almost white-haired man of about fifty opened the door cautiously and stopped doubtfully on the threshold.
    'Well, Ek, what do you want?' Martin Beck asked as he lifted the receiver.
    'About the bus ...' the white-haired man said.
    'When will I be home? I haven't the vaguest idea,' said Martin Beck into the telephone.
    'Hell,' Kollberg exclaimed as the strip of tape got tangled up between his fat fingers.
    'Take it easy’ Melander said.
    Martin Beck turned back to the man in the doorway.
    'Well, what about the bus?'
    Ek shut the door behind him and studied his notes.
    'It's built by the Leyland factories in England,' he said. 'It's an Atlantean model, but here it's called Type H35. It holds seventy-five seated passengers. The odd thing is -'
    The door was flung open. Gunvald Larsson stared incredulously into his untidy office. His light raincoat was sopping wet, like his trousers and his fair hair. His shoes were muddy.
    'What a bloody mess in here,' he grumbled.
    'What was the odd thing about the bus?' Melander asked.
    'Well, that particular type isn't used on route 47.'
    'Isn't it?'
    'Not as a rule, I mean. They usually put German buses on, made by Bussing. They're also doubledeckers. This was just an exception.'
    'A brilliant clue,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'The madman who did this only murders people in English buses. Is that what you mean?'
    Ek looked at him resignedly. Gunvald Larsson shook himself and said, 'By the way, what's the horde of apes doing down in the vestibule? Who are they?'
    'Journalists,' Ek said. 'Someone ought to talk to them.'
    'Not me,' Kollberg said promptly.
    'Isn't Hammar or the Commissioner or the Attorney General or some other higher-up going to issue a communique?' Gunvald Larsson said.
    'It probably hasn't been worded yet,' said Martin Beck. 'Ek is right. Someone ought to talk to them.' 'Not me,'