h.e.l.lstrom must have heard their footsteps on the gravel through the open door of the toolshed. He came to the doorway and watched them guardedly as they approached.

He looked about forty-five, tall and powerfully built, and was standing quite still, his feet apart, his back slightly bowed.

His eyes were blue and half-closed, his features heavy and serious. His dark untidy hair was streaked with grey and his short sideburns were almost white. He was holding a plane in one hand and some curls of fight wood clung to the dirty blue of his coverall.

'Are we interrupting your work, Mr h.e.l.lstrom?' said sa.

The man shrugged his shoulders and glanced behind him. 'No,' he said. 'I was just planing some mouldings. They can wait'

'We'd like to talk to you,' said Martin Beck. 'We're from the police.'

'A policeman's already been here,' said h.e.l.lstrom. 'I don't think I've got anything else to say.'

sa got out her identification, but h.e.l.lstrom turned around without looking at it, went over and put the plane down on a workbench inside the door.

"There's very little to say about Mr Petrus,' he said. 'I hardly knew him, just worked for him.'

'You have a daughter, haven't you?' said Martin Beck.

'Yes, but she doesn't live here any more. Has anything happened to her?' He was standing half-turned away from them, fiddling with the tools on the bench.

'Not that we know of. We'd just like to talk with you about her,' said Martin Beck. 'Is there anywhere we can go to talk in peace and quiet?'

'We can go to my place,' said h.e.l.lstrom. 'I'll just get this thing off.'

sa and Martin Beck waited while the man took off his coverall and hung it up on a nail. Under the coverall he was wearing blue jeans and a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He had a wide leather belt round his hips, with a large bra.s.s buckle in the shape of a horseshoe.

It had stopped raining, but heavy drops were splashing through the branches of a large chestnut tree by the house.

The outside door was not locked. h.e.l.lstrom opened it and waited on the steps while sa and Martin Beck stepped into the hall. Then he went ahead of them into the living room.

The room was not large and they could see into the bedroom through a half-open door. Apart from the little kitchen, which they had seen from the hall, the house had no more rooms. A sofa and two unmatched armchairs filled almost the whole of the living room. An old-fashioned television set stood in the corner, and along one wall was a home-made bookcase, half-filled with books.

While sa went over and sat on the sofa and h.e.l.lstrom vanished into the kitchen, Martin Beck looked at the t.i.tles of the books. There were a number of cla.s.sics, among them Dostoyevsky, Balzac and Strindberg, as well as a surprising amount of poetry - several anthologies and poetry-club editions, but also hardback editions of authors like Nils Ferlin, Elmer Diktonius and Edith Sddergran.

h.e.l.lstrom turned on the taps in the kitchen and a few moments later appeared in the doorway, wiping his hands on a dirty kitchen towel. 'Shall I make some tea?' he said. 'It's all I have to offer. I don't drink coffee myself, so there isn't any here.'

'Don't put yourself to any trouble,' said sa.

'I was going to have some myself,' said h.e.l.lstrom.

'In that case, tea would be nice,' said sa.

h.e.l.lstrom returned to the kitchen .and Martin Beck sat down in one of the armchairs. An open book lay on the table. He turned it over and looked at the jacket. Sermon to the Dogs by Ralf Parland. Walter Petrus's gardener obviously had rather good and advanced tastes in literature.

h.e.l.lstrom brought mugs, a sugar bowl and a carton of milk out to the table, went back to the kitchen and returned with the teapot. He sat down in the other armchair and took a flattened packet of cigarettes and a book of matches out of his jeans pocket. When he had lit a cigarette, he poured out the tea and looked at Martin Beck. 'You want to talk about my daughter, you said.'

'Yes,' said Martin Beck. 'Where is she?'

'The last time I heard from her, she was in Copenhagen.'

'What does she do there?' asked sa. 'Does she work?'

'I don't really know,' said h.e.l.lstrom, looking at the cigarette between his sunburnt fingers.

'When was it that you heard from her?' Martin Beck asked.

h.e.l.lstrom did not answer at once. 'I didn't really hear from her at all,' he said finally. 'But I was down to visit her a while back. In the spring.'

'And what was she doing then?' asked sa. 'Has she met a man there?'

h.e.l.lstrom smiled bitterly. 'You could say that. Not just one, either.'

'Do you mean she's...'

'She's a wh.o.r.e? Yes,' he interrupted, almost spitting out the words. 'She walks the streets, in other words. That's what she lives on. I got the social services down there to help me find her, and she was pretty down. She didn't want anything to do with me. I tried to get her to come home with me, but she wouldn't'

He paused and fingered his cigarette.

'She'll be twenty soon, so no one can stop her from living her own life,' he said.

'You brought her up on your own, didn't you?'

Martin Beck sat in silence, letting sa handle the conversation.

'Yes, my wife died when Kiki was only a month old. We didn't live here then. We lived in town.'

sa nodded and he went on.

'Mona took her own life and the doctor said it was because of some sort of depression after the baby was born. I didn't understand anything: Of course, I saw she was depressed and down, but I thought that was because of money worries and the future and all that, what with having a child?

'What sort of work did you do then?'

'I was a church caretaker. I was twenty-three, but I didn't have any kind of education. My father was a dustman, and my mother did cleaning jobs now and then. There was nothing for me to do but start work as soon as I finished school. I was an errand boy and worked in a warehouse and that sort of thing. Things were tight at home and I had several younger brothers and sisters, so we needed the money.'

'How did you come to be a gardener?'

'I worked on a farm in Svartsjdland. The old boy who owned it was all right and took me on as an apprentice. He paid for me to learn to drive and get my licence, too. He had a lorry and I drove vegetables and fruit to Klara market'

h.e.l.lstrom took a last draw on his cigarette and then stubbed it out in the ashtray, 'How did you manage to take care of the child and work at the same time?' asked sa, while Martin Beck drank his tea and listened.

'I had to,' said h.e.l.lstrom. 'When she was little, I took her with me everywhere. Later, when she went to school, she had to manage alone in the afternoons. It wasn't the best way to bring up a child, but I had no choice.'

He sipped his tea and added bitterly, 'You can see the result'

'When did you come here to Djursholm?' sa asked.

'I got this job ten years ago. A free house if I looked after the garden here. And then I got gardening jobs at several other places, so we managed pretty well. I thought this neighbourhood would be good for Kiki - a good school and fine friends. But I suppose it wasn't all that easy for her. All her school friends had rich parents who lived in big houses and she was ashamed of the way we lived. She never brought anyone home here.'

'The Petrus family has a daughter about the same age. Did the girls get along? They were neighbours, after all.'

h.e.l.lstrom shrugged. 'They were in the same cla.s.s, but they never played outside school. Petrus's daughter looked down on Kiki. The whole family did, in fact.'

'You were chauffeur to Petrus, too.'

'It wasn't really my job, but I often drove him places. When the Petrus family moved here, they hired me as gardener and they never mentioned chauffeuring. But I got some extra pay for taking care of the cars.'

'Where did you drive Mr Petrus?'

'To his office, and other places when he had other things to do in town. And sometimes when he and his wife went to a party.' 'Did you ever drive him to Rotebro?' 'A few times. Three or four, maybe.' 'What did you think of Mr Petrus?'

'I didn't think anything about him. He was just one of the people I worked for.'

sa thought for a while and then said, 'You worked for him for six years, didn't you?'

h.e.l.lstrom nodded.

'Yes, just about. Since they built the house here.'

"Then you must have talked to him quite a bit, in the car for instance.'

h.e.l.lstrom shook his head. 'We almost never talked in the car. And when we did, it was mostly about what had to be done in the garden and that kind of thing.'

'Did you know what kind of films Mr Petrus made?'

'I've never seen any of them. I hardly ever go to the cinema.'

'Did you know your daughter was in one of his films?'

h.e.l.lstrom shook his head again. 'No,' he said curtly.

sa looked at him, but he did not meet her eyes. After a while he said, 'As an extra?'

'She was in a p.o.r.nographic film,' said sa.

h.e.l.lstrom glanced swiftly at her. 'I didn't know that'

sa looked at him for a moment and said, 'You must have been very fond of your daughter. Perhaps more than most fathers. And she of you. You only had each other.'

h.e.l.lstrom nodded. 'Yes, we only had each other. When she was little she was the only thing I lived for.'

He straightened up and lit another cigarette. 'But she's grown up now and. does as she pleases. I'm not going to try to interfere with her life any more.'

'What were you doing that morning when Mr Petrus was murdered?'

'I was here, I suppose.'

'You know which day I'm talking about - Thursday the sixth of June?'

'I'm usually here and usually start work quite early. So that day was probably like any other.'

'Can anyone vouch for that? Any of your employers, for instance?'

'I don't know. It's a fairly independent job. As long as I do what has to be done, no one bothers about when I do it I usually start work about eight' He paused, then added, 'I didn't kill him. I didn't have any reason to.'

'Maybe you didn't' said Martin Beck, speaking up for the first time, 'but it'd be nice if someone could confirm that you were here on the morning of June sixth.'

'I don't know if anyone can. I live alone, and if I'm not out in the garden, then I'm usually in the workshop. There's always something that needs fixing.'

'We may have to talk to the people you work for, and anyone else who might have seen you' said Martin. 'Just to be sure.'

h.e.l.lstrom shrugged. 'It was so long ago' he said. 'I can't remember what I was doing on that particular morning.'

'No, maybe not' said Martin Beck.

'What happened in Copenhagen when you saw your daughter?' asked sa.

'Nothing special' h.e.l.lstrom replied. 'She was living in a little flat where she met her customers. She told me that straight out. She went on about some movie she was supposed to be in, and said that this other thing was just temporary, but she didn't have anything against being a wh.o.r.e, since it paid well, but she was going to stop soon, she said, as soon as she got this movie job. She promised to write, but I haven't heard from her yet. That was all. She got rid of me after an hour, said she didn't want to come back home with me, and there wasn't any point in me going to see her again. And I'm not going to either. As far as I'm concerned, she's lost for good. I just have to accept it'

'How long is it since she left home?'

'Oh, she left as soon as she finished school. Lived with some friends in town. She came here sometimes to see me. Not very often. Then she disappeared completely, and after a while I found out she was in Copenhagen.'

'Did you know about her relationship with Mr Petrus?'

'Relationship? No, there was no relationship between them. Maybe she got some kind of job in a movie, but otherwise she was just the gardener's daughter to him. Like the rest of the family. I can see why she didn't want to stay in a sn.o.bbish place like this, where everyone looks down on you if you don't have any money.'

'Do you know if there's anyone at home up at the house?' Martin Beck asked. 'Maybe I could go up and see if anyone saw you here that morning.'

'I don't know if they're at home,' said h.e.l.lstrom. 'But you can go up and see. Not that I think they keep track of what I'm up to.'

Martin Beck winked at sa and got up. sa took the cue, poured out another cup of tea for herself and h.e.l.lstrom and settled back into the sofa.

The lady of the house was at home, and to Martin Beck's question replied that no, indeed, she did not keep track of what the gardener did, as long as he did the work expected of him. She reminded him that the gardener didn't work just for them but for other households as well, and came and went as he liked.

Martin Beck thanked her and took his leave, walking back through the garden down to h.e.l.lstrom's house. He knew that sa was good at getting people to talk and had thought she would manage better with h.e.l.lstrom on her own.

He stopped and looked into the garage. It was empty except for a couple of spare tyres, a rolled-up hose and a large jerry can. The door to the workshop was ajar, so he pushed it open and walked in.

The lathe h.e.l.lstrom had been working on was screwed down to the bench. Along one wall were garden tools of various kinds, and above the bench hung tools on hooks and pegs. Just inside the door was a power-mower, and leaning against the wall beyond it was a row of newly painted greenhouse frames.

Martin Beck was standing by the bench, running his forefinger along the newly planed surface of the pine mouldings when he suddenly saw something half-hidden in a corner behind a heap of black plastic sacks. He went over and pulled the object out. It was a square wrought-iron grating with four octagonal bars soldered into a strong frame. A wide s.p.a.ce in the middle and two rough surfaces indicated that there should have been a fifth.

Martin Beck picked up the grating and went back to h.e.l.lstrom's house.

sa was sitting with her mug of tea in her hand, talking to h.e.l.lstrom, when Martin Beck came in. When she saw what he had in his hand, she fell silent 'I found this in your workshop,' said Martin Beck.

'It's from the old house they tore down when Petrus built his new one,' said h.e.l.lstrom. 'It was in one of the cellar windows. I thought I'd find a use for it, and it's been here ever since.'