The Terrorists Read Online Free PDF Page A

from that day on.
    On this day he arrived breathlessly, two minutes before the trial was to begin. He was a corpulent but light-footed little man with a joyous countenance and lively movements. He always wore bright pink shirts, and his ties were in such indescribably bad taste that they had driven Gunvald Larsson almost insane when he had worked in Bulldozer’s special group.
    He looked round the bare and ill-heated anteroom of the court and discovered a group of five people, among them his own witnesses, and a person whose presence surprised him enormously. It was, in fact, the chief of the Homicide Squad.
    “What on earth are you doing here,” he said to Martin Beck.
    “I’ve been called as a witness.”
    “By whom?”
    “The defense.”
    “The defense? What does that mean?”
    “Braxén, counsel for the defense,” said Martin Beck. “He drew this case, apparently.”
    “Crasher,” said Bulldozer, clearly upset. “I’ve already had three meetings and two arrests today, and now I’ll have to sit and listen to Crasher for the rest of the afternoon, I suppose. Do you know anything about this case?”
    “Not much, but Braxén’s argument convinced me I ought to come. And I don’t have anything special at the moment.”
    “You people in Homicide don’t know what real work is,” said Bulldozer Olsson. “I’ve got thirty-nine cases on the books and just as many on ice. You should work with me for a while, then you’d find out.”
    Bulldozer Olsson won all his cases, with very few exceptionsindeed. This, to put it delicately, was not especially flattering to the judiciary.
    “But you’ll have an amusing afternoon,” said Olsson. “Crasher’ll give you a good show, for sure.”
    “I didn’t come here to have a good time,” said Martin Beck.
    Their discussion was interrupted by the case being called, and those involved, with one important exception, filed into the courtroom, a singularly dismal sector of the principal city courthouse. The windows were large and majestic, which in no way excused but possibly explained why they clearly had not been cleaned for a very long time.
    The judge, assistant judge and seven jurymen on a platform behind a long connecting pulpit were staring with dignity out into the courtroom.
    The accused was brought in through a small side door, a girl with shoulder-length fair hair, a sulky mouth and distant brown eyes. She was wearing a long, pale-green embroidered dress of some light, thin material and had black clogs on her feet.
    The court was seated.
    The judge turned to the girl, who was sitting to the left of the bench, and said, “The accused in the case is Rebecka Lind. Are you Rebecka Lind?”
    “Yes.”
    “May I ask you to speak a little louder?”
    “Yes.”
    “You were born on the third of January, nineteen hundred and fifty-six?”
    “Yes.”
    “I must ask the accused to speak louder.” He said this as if it had to be said ritualistically, which was true, as the acoustics in the courtroom were singularly poor.
    “Counsel for the Defense Hedobald Braxén appears to have been delayed,” he went on. “In the meantime, we can summon the witnesses. Counsel for the prosecution has called two witnesses—Kerstin Franzén, bank cashier, and Kenneth Kvastmo, police assistant. The defense has called the following: Martin Beck, chief inspector, Homicide Squad; Karl Kristiansson, police assistant; Rumford Bondesson, bank director; and Hedy-Marie Wirén, home economics teacher. Counsel for the defensehas also called Walter Petrus, business executive, to testify, but he has declared himself unable to attend and has also declared that he has nothing whatsoever to do with the case.”
    One of the jurymen sniggered.
    “The witnesses may now leave the court.”
    The two policemen—as always on these occasions wearing uniform trousers and black shoes plus dreary blazers—Martin Beck, the bank director, the home economics teacher and the bank cashier all trooped out