The whole plan seemed all right, fairly low-key, much as Martin Beck had wanted it. There were to be a few men stationed on rooftops with rifles, but not very many. Certain apartments and attics along the route were to be searched, but they were the exception.

Moller's close-range-security specialists should have an easy task. Of course, certain points were more sensitive than others: the Senator's arrival at the airport and his visit to the Royal Palace. Possibly the homage to the dead King, too, which was now to take place at Riddarholm Church. Gustaf VI Adolf's tomb was not there of course, but the church was centrally located and ideal from a security point of view. Also, most of the other Kings of Sweden were buried there, so what the h.e.l.l.

Naturally this involved certain changes in the timetable, but they were easily accommodated.

All the proposed activities of the distinguished visitor had already been reported in the newspapers, which had managed to dig out the minutest details. There was a certain amount of criticism in the press, but so far no one had actually attacked the police.

At ten past eleven, Martin Beck switched out the lights in all the rooms and locked the doors to the corridor, with an unpleasant sense of having neglected something, though quite what he did not know.

He didn't want to spend the night alone, so he went back to Rhea's. She usually had a kind of open house for her tenants and others on Wednesday evenings, and he felt a great need to talk to people whose thoughts were not forever circling around police cordons, specially trained marksmen, helicopters and highly improbable bombs. Since his own driver was off duty that day, he begged a lift in a patrol car and asked the driver to stop in Frejgatan, around the corner from Rhea's place.

Four minutes after Martin Beck left headquarters, Gunvald Larsson rode up in the lift He unlocked the doors and switched on his desk light, noticing the bulb was still warm.

Beck, he thought. Who else?

He was wet and his hair was mussed. Outside the windows, gangs, thieves, robbers, drunks and junkies reigned over the darkness, the cold and the rain.

Gunvald Larsson was tired. He had not slept the previous night but had lain awake thinking about ULAG, flying presidential heads and such. Then he had missed both lunch and dinner, and for hours, mostly out of doors, had been working with Einar Ronn, who was very much in need of a helping hand. Gunvald Larsson had a formidable const.i.tution, physically and mentally, but it could not stand up to absolutely anything.

They had a coffee percolator in the offices and he kept sugar and a few teabags in one of his desk drawers. He poured water into the coffee pot, plugged it in and waited. Since childhood he had known that the use of teabags was about as tasteful as putting condoms in the teapot, but here he had no choice in the matter.

When the tea was more or less as brewed as it could be, he took his private cup out of his desk - the others used plastic cups -then sat down at his desk and at once took several large hot gulps to warm himself up. Then he took all his papers out of his briefcase and began to read. He was in a bad mood, frowning heavily, a wedge of flesh forming above his nose. After a while even his blond eyebrows were furrowed, too.

Something was bound to go wrong, he was sure.

But what?

He fetched Sapo's close-range-security plans from Melander's desk. They were almost illegible because of the myriads of abbreviations in the text, but all the same he worked his way through it page by page, studying the appended tables and sketches thoroughly.

Like the others in the group, he had to admit that the plan seemed una.s.sailable. Eric Moller was a specialist and his a.s.sessments correct. Close-range security was an easier game anyway.

The surveillance of what Moller called 'sensitive areas' was to begin at midnight Gunvald Larsson looked at the clock on the wall. Nine minutes to twelve, so some of the four hundred security police mentioned in the text would now be on their way out to get wet.

He put the papers aside and went on to think about long-range protection. Logrden was a suitable spot not only for Moller; the King and this d.a.m.ned American would both be standing there as if on a platform, exposed to expert long-distance snipers from both Blasieholmen and Skeppsholmen, not to mention the boats on Strommen and along the quays.

But was there really any cause for alarm? The five thinkers - that was to say, himself, Beck, Melander, Rdnn and Skacke - had recognized all these dangers long ago. The bridge over to Skeppsholmen had been blocked some hours ago, and the buildings along Blasieholm quay had been rigorously checked, especially the Grand Hotel, which had a great many windows.

Gunvald Larsson sighed and leafed aimlessly through the papers. The sewers and other tunnels under Logrden were few and easy to check, provided people either had good rubber coveralls or else did not mind their clothes being ruined.

The clock on the wall clicked. Twelve exacdy.

He looked at his own chronograph. The wall clock was wrong as usual, one minute twenty-three seconds slow, to be precise. He got up to put it right.

At that moment, there was a knock on the door.

The members of the group never knocked, so it had to be someone else.

'Come in,' said Gunvald Larsson.

A girl came into the room. Well, a woman. She looked to be somewhere between twenty-three and thirty.

After a hesitant look at Gunvald Larsson, she said, 'Hi.'

'Good evening,' said Gunvald Larsson with great reserve. He was standing with his back to his desk, his arms folded. 'What can I do for you?'

'I recognize you, of course,' she said. 'You're Gunvald Larsson from the Violent Crimes Squad.' He said nothing.

'But you probably don't recognize me.'

Gunvald Larsson looked at her. She had ash-blonde hair, blue eyes and regular features. Quite tall, five ten or so, quite good-looking, simply and carefully dressed in a grey polo shirt, well-pressed blue trousers and low-heeled shoes. She looked too calm to have anything up her sleeve, but he was almost certain he had never seen her before. He frowned and stared at her with his china-blue eyes.

'My name's Ruth Salomonsson,' she informed him. 'I work here. In the Investigation Bureau.'

'As what?'

'Police a.s.sistant,' she said. 'I'm on duty now. That is, I'm just having a break.'

Gunvald Larsson remembered his tea, half turned and swallowed it down in one gulp.

'Do you want to see my card?' she asked.

'Yes.'

She took her ident.i.ty card out of the right-hand back pocket of her trousers and handed it to him. Gunvald Larsson studied it carefully. Twenty-five. That might well be right. He handed it back to her.

'What is it you want?'

'I know you're working on this special job under Chief Inspector Beck, the Stockholm chief and the National Commissioner.' 'Beck will do. Where did you hear that?' 'Oh, you know what a lot of talk there is around here. And...' 'And what?'

'Well, they say that you're looking for a certain person, whose name I'm not sure about But I've heard the description.' 'Where?'

'In the Identification Department. I've a friend working there.'

'If you've got anything to say, then let's have it,' said Gunvald Larsson.

'Won't you ask me to sit down?'

'No, I hadn't thought I would. What's it about?'

'Well, a few weeks ago -'

'When?' interrupted Gunvald Larsson. 'I'm only interested in facts.'

She looked resignedly at him. 'It was in actual fact Monday, the

fourth of November.' .

Gunvald Larsson nodded encouragingly. 'What happened on Monday the fourth?'

'Well, a friend of mine and I had agreed to go out dancing. We went to the Amarante -'

Gunvald Larsson interrupted her at once. 'The Amarante? Can you dance there?' She did not reply.

'Do they have dancing at the Amarante?' he repeated.

She suddenly seemed timid and shook her head.

'What did you and your friend do then?'

'We... we went into the bar.'

'Together?'

'No.'

'What happened then?'

'I met a Danish businessman, who said his name was Jorgensen.'

'Uh-huh. And then?'

'Then we went back to my place.'

'Uh-huh. And what happened there?'

'What do you think?'

'I never have preconceived ideas,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'Especially about other people's private lives.'

She bit her lip. 'We were together,' she said defiantly. 'Slept with each other, to put it nicely. Then he left and I've never seen him again.'

A vein in Gunvald Larsson's right temple swelled. He walked around the desk and sat down. Then he thumped his right fist on the top of the desk so hard that the electric wall clock stopped, at the wrong time what's more - one minute, thirty-three seconds slow.

'What kind of d.a.m.n joke is this?' he said angrily. 'What do you want me to do? Put up notices about the police providing free totty, who can be found in the bar at the Amarante? What are your hours? Mondays from five to eleven, say?'

'I must say I didn't expect such a rigid and old-fashioned att.i.tude,' she said. 'I'm twenty-five, unmarried and childless, and at the moment wish to remain so.'

'Twenty-five?'

'And unmarried and childless,' she said. 'Are you trying to tell me I have no right to a s.e.x life of my own?'

'No,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'Of course you do. As long as I'm not mixed up in it'

'I think I can guarantee that you won't be.'

Gunvald Larsson caught the sarcasm and again struck the desk with his fist, this time so hard that it hurt all the way to his elbow. He grimaced.

'Female cops who sit in hotel bars and pick up men,' he said. 'And then come around to bulls.h.i.t about Danes.'

He looked at the stopped dock and then at his watch. 'Coffee break must be over now,' he said. 'Out!'

'I came here to try to be helpful,' she said. 'But that's obviously a waste of time.'

'Obviously.'

'So I won't tell you the rest' 'I'm not interested in p.o.r.nography.' 'Neither am I,' she said. 'What's the rest then?'

'I liked this guy,' she said. 'He was educated and pleasant, and good in other ways;' She looked coldly at Gunvald Larsson. 'Remarkably good, even.'

Gunvald Larsson said nothing.

'Then ten days later I telephoned the hotel where he said he was staying.'

'Oh?' said Gunvald Larsson.

'Yes, and the receptionist said there was no guest by that name staying in the hotel and there never had been.'

'Extremely interesting. He probably goes around testing out policewomen in different countries for some kind of s.e.xual report. It'll probably be a best-seller. Have you made sure you'll get a cut?'

You're absolutely impossible,' she said.

'You think so?' said Gunvald Larsson politely.

'Anyway, I met my friend yesterday. She spoke to him for a while, you see, before we went back to my place.'

'And where do you live?'

'Twenty-seven Karlavagen.'

'Thank you. If I get an address book for Christmas, I'll write it in.'

She began to look angry then, and obstinate.

'But I won't get one,' said Gunvald Larsson conversationally. 'I buy all my Christmas presents myself.'

'My friend worked in Denmark for several years and she said that if he was Danish, then he was from a very strange part of the country. She said his Danish was the kind that was spoken at the turn of the century.'

'And how old is your friend?'

'Twenty-eight.'