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in her defense, and she had also immediately confessed that she had gone to the bank to get money.
    Everyone began to glance at the clock, but Bulldozer Olsson did not approve of adjournments and promptly called his first witness, Hedy-Marie Wirén, the bank cashier. Her testimony was short and confirmed in all respects what had already been said.
    Bulldozer asked: “When did you realize that this was a holdup?”
    “As soon as she threw her bag on the counter and demanded money. And then I saw the knife. It looked awfully dangerous. A kind of dagger.”
    “Why did you hand over the money?”
    “We’ve had instructions not to offer resistance in situations like this, but to do what the robber says.”
    This was true. The banks did not wish to run the risk of paying out life insurances and expensive damages to employees who were injured.
    A clap of thunder seemed to shake the venerable courtroom. In fact it was Hedobald Braxén belching. This did not happen all that seldom and was one of the many reasons for his nickname.
    “Has the defense any questions?”
    Crasher shook his head. He was busy writing something down on a piece of paper.
    Bulldozer called his next witness.
    Kenneth Kvastmo stepped up and laboriously repeated the oath. His testimony began with the usual litany: occupation police assistant, born in Arvika in nineteen hundred and forty-two; first served in patrol cars in Solna and later in Stockholm.
    Bulldozer said, foolishly, “Tell us in your own words.”
    “What?”
    “What happened, of course.”
    “Yes,” said Kvastmo. “She was standing there, the murderess. Well, she didn’t manage to murder nobody, of course. Karl didn’t do nothing, as usual, of course, so I threw myself on her like a panther.”
    The image was unfortunate. Kvastmo was a large, shapeless man with a fat bottom, a bull neck and fleshy features.
    “I got hold of her right hand just as she was trying to pull out the knife, and then I told her she was under arrest and then I just arrested her. I had to carry her out to the car and in the back seat she resisted arrest violently and then it turns out she was assaulting an officer of the law because one of my shoulder flaps almost come off and my wife was furious when she had to sew it on because there was something on TV she was going to watch and also a button had almost came off my uniform and she didn’t have no blue thread, Anna-Greta, my wife, I mean.And when we was done in the bank, then Karl drove us to the station. There wasn’t nothing else after that except she called me a pig, but that’s not really insulting a policeman. A pig don’t cause no disrespect or contempt of the force, I mean neither to the individual officer which in this case was me, or to the force as a whole does it? She’s the one, over there, that said it.” He pointed to Rebecka Lind.
    While the policeman was revealing his narrative abilities, Bulldozer was watching the woman spectator, who had been busily taking notes and was now sitting with her elbows on her thighs, her chin in her hands, as she attentively watched both Braxén and Rebecka in turn. Her face looked troubled, or rather expressed profound unease. She bent down and scratched an ankle with one hand as she chewed a nail on the other hand. Now she was looking at Braxén again and her half-closed blue eyes expressed a mixture of resignation and hesitant hope.
    Hedobald Braxén appeared to be only just physically present, and there was no indication whatsoever that he had heard a word of the evidence.
    “No questions,” he said.
    Bulldozer Olsson was satisfied. The case was open-and-shut, exactly as he had said from the start. The only fault was that it had taken so long. Now when the judge suggested an hour’s adjournment, he nodded his approval enthusiastically and rushed toward the door with short, bouncing steps.
    Martin Beck and Rhea Nielsen used the break to go to the Amarante. After open sandwiches and beer, they finished