The Man on the Balcony Read online

  Praise for

  MAJ SJÖWALL and

  PER WAHLÖÖ

  “It’s hard to think of any other thriller writers (apart from Simenon perhaps) who can capture so much of a society in a couple of hundred pages and yet still hold true to the thriller form.”

  —Sean and Nicci French

  “Sjöwall and Wahlöö are the best writers of police procedurals in the world.”

  —The Birmingham Post

  “One of the most authentic, gripping and profound collections of police procedurals ever accomplished.”

  —Michael Connelly

  “Anyone who doesn’t know their work and likes murder mysteries has a real treat coming, namely reading one of their books.”

  —Indianapolis Star

  “Magically successful, a series of crime novels you shouldn’t miss.”

  —Minneapolis Tribune

  THE MARTIN BECK MYSTERY SERIES

  by

  MAJ SJÖWALL and

  PER WAHLÖÖ

  Roseanna

  The Man Who Went Up in Smoke

  The Man on the Balcony

  The Laughing Policeman

  The Fire Engine That Disappeared

  Murder at the Savoy

  The Abominable Man

  The Locked Room

  Cop Killer

  The Terrorists

  MAJ SJÖWALL and

  PER WAHLÖÖ

  THE MAN ON THE BALCONY

  Maj Sjöwall and her husband, Per Wahlöö, wrote ten Martin Beck mysteries. Mr. Wahlöö, who died in 1975, was a reporter for several Swedish newspapers and magazines and wrote numerous radio and television plays, film scripts, short stories, and novels. Maj Sjöwall is a poet. The books, together known as “The Story of Crime,” remain one of the greatest series of crime stories ever written.

  SECOND VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EDITION, FEBRUARY 2009

  Translation copyright © 1968 and renewed 1996 by Random House, Inc. Introduction translation copyright © 2009 by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Sweden as Mannen på balkongen by P.A. Norstedt & Soner, Stockholm, in 1967. Copyright © 1967 by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. This translation originally published in hardcover in slightly different form in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1968, and subsequently in paperback in slightly different form in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc, New York, in 1993. This edition includes a translation of an unpublished introduction by Jo Nesbø, copyright © 2009 by Jo Nesbø.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sjöwall, Maj.

  [Mannen på balkongen English]

  The man on the balcony/by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö; translated by Alan Blair.—1st Vintage Crime/Black Lizard ed. p. cm.

  I. Wahlöö, Per 1926–1975. II. Title. III. Series.

  PT9876.29.J63M713 1993

  839.7′374—dc20

  92-50693

  Vintage eISBN: 978-0-307-74427-2

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.1

  THIS IS FOR BARBARA AND NEWTON

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  INTRODUCTION

  Artists stand on the shoulders of those who have come before. That is how it is whether they like it or not and whether they are aware of it or not. It doesn’t matter whether they dance, play football, or write books, they create something that builds on their forerunners’ work. However, some shoulders are broader than others and those standing there may still not be able to attain the same heights. Sjöwall and Wahlöö, for example, have shoulders that can accommodate all of today’s crime writers. And we are all there. Even those who have never read a Sjöwall&Wahlöö book, thereby considering themselves uninfluenced, are there. Because Sjöwall and Wahlöö, beside writers such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Georges Simenon, have shaped the genre and the reader’s expectations as to what crime fiction should be, the very starting point, ground zero, where all writers with the genre-defining label “crime novel” on the sleeve of their book begin communicating with the reader. Where they go from there is, of course, up to the individual. And, naturally, they can create something quite new. As Sjöwall and Wahlöö did.

  The Man on the Balcony was the Swedish writing duo’s great breakthrough in 1967. In Stockholm during the summer of 1963 two small girls were enticed away from the park where they were playing and were sexually abused and murdered. This real case was the inspiration for the novel.

  This is also the first thing that strikes you when you begin to read the book: the story is real. Through objective eyes, the opening scene is a sober account, there is no drama, the atmosphere is not charged in any way. It describes a town waking up, the social routines, the individuals who constitute the figures in these routines, the mosaic of tiny, trivial events that can be observed from a balcony in a well-organized, social-democratic Scandinavian town. So why does such a strange, eerie presence still pervade this initial sequence? I, for my part, believe it is for two simple reasons.

  First of all, the book has been categorized as a “crime novel,” so from the very start, as we are introduced to a person anonymous in both name and deed—even before any crime has been mentioned—all our genre expectations and fears are aroused and we suspect that we may already have met the story’s antagonist. Secondly, there is the title of the book. It tells us that this place and this person are central to the novel. On the other hand, this person will have witnessed other men on other balconies, so the uncertainty—and the tension—lies in the point of view the writer adopts. This interplay between opening and title not only makes The Man on the Balcony one of the best titles in crime literature, it also ensures that the reader’s attention goes up a notch from the very first sentence. And it never goes back down.

  Furthermore, when we are introduced to the cast of policemen and women, the sense of reality is palpable. These are normal people with normal lots, normal thoughts, problems and pleasures, people who are not larger than life, though not any smaller, either. They are simply cast with the same clay as reality, be they the averagely heroic hero Martin Beck or the averagely detestable Gunvald Larsson, who makes his first appearance in this b
ook. The sober, almost austere, realism is enhanced by the way the story is told and the course of events itself. The format is strictly chronological, focusing almost exclusively on the murder investigation, written in language that is pared right down, such as when the police question suspects, where only the dialogue is given and speakers are identified by an initial. It is as though the readers take the part of the detectives, have the tape played to them, listen, and draw their own conclusions.

  And this is not chance, for The Man on the Balcony is in truth a procedural novel. After the introductory glimpse from the balcony, the point of view changes; it alternates between several characters, but it is always the police view. And the narration is given color through trivial and further realistic details from 1960s police work. If you can say that police bureaucracy and waiting times for forensic examination are the browns of this story, the yellows, reds, and greens come from the houses, streets, and parks of Stockholm and the Scandinavian summer.

  Can you love a town you have never visited? Of course you can, that’s what we have literature for. I grew up in the seventies and like many other Scandinavians I developed a deep passion for Stockholm through Ulf Lundell’s bildungsroman Jack, which draws on Stockholm for all it is worth. But it was the careful, almost bashful, use of the city as the backdrop for The Man on the Balcony that I first fell in love with. And, rereading the novel, I find it impossible to put my finger on where or when the cowriters build the image of Stockholm, how they create this feeling of a specific time and place. Ray Bradbury, the science fiction writer, paints with a broad brush and a large canvas to bring Mars to life for the reader. Sjöwall and Wahlöö achieve the same effect by mentioning a street name on police radio. How they do it, I do not know. All I know is that, after having read a relatively short novel with brief descriptions of the countryside, a clear focus on the murder, the investigation, and a peek into a few policemen’s lives, I had experienced Stockholm in a more real and intimate way than if I had gone there. I know that now because I have been to Stockholm. And I was always getting lost in this confusing city of two levels, and staring forlornly at physical and human facades, unable to penetrate them. Perhaps I see Stockholm better in the novel because it is easier to see when you are standing on someone else’s capacious shoulders.

  Why is The Man on the Balcony so exciting? I think, basically, because it is credible. You believe because it has the aberrations, the normality, and the meaninglessness that exists in real life. Most storytellers shy away from this kind of realism because it deprives them of the power they have as the story’s architect and master builder. In The Man on the Balcony you have the feeling that it is not the narrator who determines what happens, it is reality. Action is not determined by the urgency of the drama, the plot’s desire to please, or the protagonist’s moral decision, aiming to tell a greater, more universal story. In The Man on the Balcony the shaping is seamless and the story line appears to be determined by what another voice of the time, Bob Dylan, called “a simple twist of fate.” A fascinating unpredictability is created with subtle portraits and small dramaturgical syncopations, a feeling of haphazardness, such that we are not even guaranteed a solution or a plausible explanation of the crime. In other words, you believe. And that is not bad for a book with “crime novel” on the cover. You could almost believe it was art.

  —Jo Nesbø

  1

  At a quarter to three the sun rose.

  An hour and a half earlier the traffic had thinned out and died away, together with the noise of the last night revelers on their way home. The street-sweeping machines had passed, leaving dark wet strips here and there on the asphalt. An ambulance had wailed down the long, straight street. A black car with white mudguards, radio antenna on the roof and the word POLICE in white block letters on the sides had glided past, silently and slowly. Five minutes later the tinkle of broken glass had been heard as someone drove a gloved hand through a shop window; then came the sound of running footsteps and a car tearing off down a sidestreet.

  The man on the balcony had observed all this. The balcony was the ordinary kind with tubular iron rail and sides of corrugated metal. He had stood leaning on the rail, and the glow of his cigarette had been a tiny dark-red spot in the dark. At regular intervals he had stubbed out a cigarette, carefully picked the butt—barely a third of an inch long—out of the wooden holder and placed it beside the others. Ten of these butts were already neatly lined up along the edge of the saucer on the little garden table.

  It was quiet now, as quiet as it could be on a mild early summer’s night in a big city. A couple of hours still remained before the women who delivered the newspapers appeared, pushing their converted prams, and before the first office cleaner went to work.

  The bleak half-light of dawn was dispersed slowly; the first hesitant sunbeams groped over the five-storied and six-storied apartment houses and were reflected in the television aerials and the round chimney pots above the roofs on the other side of the street. Then the light fell on the metal roofs themselves, slid quickly down and crept over the eaves along plastered brick walls with rows of unseeing windows, most of which were screened by drawn curtains or lowered Venetian blinds.

  The man on the balcony leaned over and looked down the street It ran from north to south and was long and straight; he could survey a stretch of more than two thousand yards. Once it had been an avenue, a showplace and the pride of the city, but forty years had passed since it was built. The street was almost exactly the same age as the man on the balcony.

  When he strained his eyes he could make out a lone figure in the far distance. Perhaps a policeman. For the first time in several hours he went into the apartment; he passed through the living room and out into the kitchen. It was broad daylight now and he had no need to switch on the electric light; in fact he used it very sparingly even in the winter. Opening a cupboard, he took out an enamel coffeepot, then measured one and a half cups of water and two spoonfuls of coarse-ground coffee. He put the pot on the stove, struck a match and lit the gas. Felt the match with his fingertips to make sure it had gone out, then opened the door of the cupboard under the sink and threw the dead match into the garbage bag. He stood at the stove until the coffee had boiled up, then turned the gas off and went out to the bathroom and urinated while waiting for the grounds to sink. He avoided flushing the toilet so as not to disturb the neighbors. Went back to the kitchen, poured the coffee carefully into the cup, took a lump of sugar from the half-empty packet on the sink and a spoon out of the drawer. Then he carried the cup to the balcony, put it on the varnished wooden table and sat down on the folding chair. The sun had already climbed fairly high and lit up the front of the buildings on the other side of the street down as far as the two lowest apartments. Taking a nickel-plated snuffbox from his trouser pocket, he crumbled the cigarette butts one by one, letting the tobacco flakes run through his fingers down into the round metal box and crumpling the bits of paper into pea-sized balls which he placed on the chipped saucer. He stirred the coffee and drank it very slowly. The sirens sounded again, far away. He stood up and watched the ambulance as the howl grew louder and louder and then subsided. A minute later the ambulance was nothing but a small white rectangle which turned left at the north end of the street and vanished from sight. Sitting down again on the folding chair he abstractedly stirred the coffee, which was now cold. He sat quite still, listening to the city wake up around him, at first reluctantly and undecidedly.

  The man on the balcony was of average height and normal build. His face was nondescript and he was dressed in a white shirt with no tie, unpressed brown gabardine trousers, gray socks and black shoes. His hair was thin and brushed straight back, he had a big nose and gray-blue eyes.

  The time was half past six on the morning of June 2, 1967. The city was Stockholm.

  The man on the balcony had no feeling of being observed. He had no particular feeling of anything. He thought he would make some oatmeal a little later.

&
nbsp; The street was coming alive. The stream of motor vehicles was denser and every time the traffic lights at the intersection changed to red the line of waiting cars grew longer. A baker’s van tooted angrily at a cyclist who swung out heedlessly into the road. Two cars behind braked with a screech.

  The man got up, leaned his arms on the balcony rail and looked down into the street. The cyclist wobbled anxiously in towards the sidewalk, pretending not to hear the abuse slung at him by the delivery man.

  On the sidewalks a few pedestrians hurried along. Two women in light summer dresses stood talking by the gasoline station below the balcony, and farther away a man was exercising his dog. He jerked impatiently at the lead while the dachshund unconcernedly sniffed around the trunk of a tree.

  The man on the balcony straightened up, smoothed his thinning hair and put his hands in his pockets. The time now was twenty to eight and the sun was high. He looked up at the sky where a jet plane was drawing a trail of white wool in the blue. Then he lowered his eyes once more to the street and watched an elderly white-haired woman in a pale-blue coat who was standing outside the baker’s in the building opposite. She fumbled for a long time in her handbag before getting out a key and unlocking the door. He saw her take out the key, put it in the lock on the inside and then shut the door after her. Drawn down behind the pane of the door was a white blind with the word CLOSED.

  At the same moment the apartment-house entrance door next to the baker’s opened and a little girl came out into the sunshine. The man on the balcony moved back a step, took his hands out of his pockets and stood quite still. His eyes were glued to the girl down in the street.

  She looked about eight or nine and was carrying a red-checked satchel. She was wearing a short blue skirt, a striped T-shirt and a red jacket with sleeves that were too short. On her feet she had black wooden-soled sandals that made her long thin legs seem even longer and thinner. She turned to the left outside the door and started walking slowly along the street with lowered head.