Hard Cheese

by Ulf Durling

  2

  Blom was waiting for me outside The Little Boarding-House. He is an uncommonly disgusting man, obsequious, pasty-faced and sweaty, with a squeaky voice and an averted gaze.

  He began by saying how very sorry he was for having to disturb the inspector—me—on a Sunday. I said that it remained to be seen who was to be pitied. Then I tramped past him through the reception and up the stairs.

  Ivehed was standing outside the caved-in door.

  ‘We thought something was amiss, chief. Nobody answered in the room and when I couldn’t open the door, I battered it down. He’s inside, dead.’

  ‘Has anyone except you been inside yet?’

  ‘No. I only felt the pulse, which was quite unnecessary. He was as stiff as a board and the livor mortis was already visible.’

  ‘In that case, he must have been dead for some time. Was it necessary to break the door down?’

  ‘I tried the picklock at first, but it didn’t work.’

  ‘Keep everyone out while I go in and take a look.’

  The room was a total mess. To begin with, there was the dead man, of course. He was lying on his back and had fallen in a rather peculiar way, for his left hand was pinned under his body. His head was near the foot of the bed and his feet were under the table. The body formed an angle of 60 degrees with the bed, with an overturned chair next to it. When I took a look at the corpse I became a little bewildered: Ivehed hadn’t said anything about the red wine. I assume he wanted me to fall into the same trap as he had and think that it was blood, which I would have done but for the stench of old booze. Come over to the station one Saturday morning and put your nose into one of our cells—“single rooms” we call them—and you’ll understand what I mean. Of course, I noticed the red wine bottle on the table as well. The liquid had splashed over the dead man’s face and stained his shirt front and pants as well. He had been wearing a white shirt, open at the neck. No tie. The jacket was hanging on a chair by the window. Ivehed came in immediately when I called.

  ‘You haven’t moved anything here?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, no!’

  We squatted on either side of the corpse.

  ‘Not much point in trying a heart massage,’ I said, attempting to lighten the atmosphere.

  ‘I don’t think so. How long could he have been lying like this?’

  ‘No idea. The medics will find out, taking samples of visceral contents and such. His watch shows a quarter past eleven, the same as mine. What are we doing to do now?’

  Ivehed was wise enough not to say anything. He shouldn’t, of course, advise me what to do.

  ‘Do you know his identity?’ I asked him.

  ‘He answered to the name of Axel Nilsson.’

  ‘Very well.’

  At the sight of the messy stiff, Ivehed grew paler.

  ‘Do you feel sick? Drink a glass of water.’

  He didn’t dare contradict me and slithered away to the wash-stand.

  ‘Chief, there are three glasses here.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Usually there are two glasses in every room. These three are all different and they’ve been washed.’

  ‘Let me see!’

  He was right. There was one with ribbed glass, another was a plastic mug and the third the kind of glass you get when buying mustard. They were totally clean, hardly any finger prints.

  ‘Let’s look around and see if we can find something.’

  Ivehed checked the door, while I scrutinized the windows. They were firmly locked; the right one even had the window-catch attached. On the window-sill stood Blom’s horrible flowers, and repulsive keepsakes ranged along a narrow cloth embroidered with an Art Nouveau design.

  ‘Here’s the key Nilsson used to lock the door. It’s lying here on the carpet and it blocked the view when Blom tried to look through the keyhole before he called us.’

  ‘Good. Make a note of it.’

  A few moments later Ivehed found the towel in the wastebasket, wrapped in a bundle and smelling awful.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes, bits of paper and…wait … there’s some cheese!’

  ‘Cheese? What the hell do you mean? Did he keep food in there?’

  It was a wedge of cheese, which someone had hacked away at, so that there were a lot of irregular cuts in it. Kerstin used to scold me because I did toboggan-runs of the wedges. In this case, it was more like a downhill race.

  We put everything on the carpet, which was the least dirty spot.

  We continued to take inventory. In the wardrobe there were socks, frayed underpants and faded shirts which had been folded carelessly. There was also a pullover and a pair of unused handkerchiefs. A threadbare suit was suspended from a hanger. On the floor was a pair of unpolished shoes. The left shoe was worn-down on one side and the shoestrings had snapped a couple of times. They’d been tied back together again and the result was like the upper side of a Christmas gift when the sales clerk has rippled the pieces of tape.

  I found a wallet and a passport in the inside pocket of Nilsson’s coat. In another pocket there were a few small coins, a beer-bottle opener and a matchbox. The others were empty; likewise, there was nothing in his trouser pockets, except for a bandanna.

  The passport had been issued this year at the Swedish consulate in Washington. The immigration officer in Göteborg had put a neat stamp in it: Entry October 12, 1969. Mr. Axel Leonard Nilsson, born March 3, 1917, was 179 centimetres tall, had fair hair, humour eyes and was unmarried. A non-descript face smiled stupidly out from the photograph.

  In his wallet there were a few creased ten crown bills, a page from a diary; a few newspaper cuttings in English, a guarantee certificate for a shaver, an old Swedish driving license, a handwritten prescription for some kind of hair pomade and a few slips of paper with sundry scrawl and numerals, which could be telephone numbers. That was all.

  The findings were not too illuminating, I thought. We put the rubbish on the carpet, next to a medicine jar Ivehed had just found. According to the label it contained 100 Dichlotride-K-pills, sold at Uttern, the pharmacy, with instructions to take two pills twice daily. The box was almost full.

  ‘I found it on the bedside table together with a pair of spectacles and a few issues of the porno magazine Lektyr,’ Ivehed said.

  I sent him over to the window to check the view. I suggested he should try to estimate the distance from the window sill to the ground below, rather than peep at the naked girls in Nilsson’s paper.

  ‘At least four metres,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t try to jump down.’

  If Ivehed couldn’t jump that, then nobody could. He plays soccer and hockey and is incredibly fit and fast. I myself am swiftest when it comes to talking and using my fingers. I am trained in typewriting and playing poker at the station. At home it’s mostly bridge. I’m a very good dummy and I’m afraid that’s what I’ll be proving at the Ramsten’s tomorrow. What I mean to say is that people lose their shape after they’re married. While I was doing physical training at the Police Academy I could run the steeplechase course in four minutes. Or maybe it was ten. Anyway, it was fast.

  From above, the jump really looked impossible. We opened the windows and looked at either side.

  ‘How did he get out?’ Ivehed asked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The murderer.’

  ‘What damned murderer? I haven’t said anything about murder.’

  Ivehed looked surprised, but said nothing. I myself was at my wit’s end. The dead man was lying on the floor bathed in red wine, there had been a piece of mouldy old cheese in the wastebasket and the room was locked from the inside. I became angry at Ivehed.

  ‘Let me handle this. If it’s murder I’ll let you know. Understood?’

  Then I sent him off to question Blom about the boarding-house guests, especially Nilsson.

  For a while I stood at the window and tried to collect my thoughts.

  It was a matter of trying to make
head or tail of things, and it had to be done fast, for at home the situation was critical due to Kerstin’s illness and the children’s fidgetiness. I looked around the room, from the sagging bed to the table streaked with wine and to the spot where the bottle stood. The bottle was wrapped in twined straws and contained some Italian slop.

  My next thought was that a doctor had to be called. One couldn’t say anything for sure before a thorough medical examination had been carried out. Surely it was an accident, but what if it wasn’t? I mean, the room was locked from the inside, no doubt about that. That’s why I really got angry when I thought of Ivehed yelling about murder! He who couldn’t even handle a picklock!

  I must get Gustavsson to come here, I decided. He can take care of this. I called out to Ivehed again and asked him to dial the station and summon some sensible people. Notice that I used the word “sensible”!

  That left me with a breathing space for mental activity. I walked out of Nilsson’s room and settled down in the sparsely furnished reception area. In addition to the two armchairs, there was a sagging plush-covered sofa and a table with full ashtrays. The TV was next to the staircase banisters and had to be fed with coins. Underneath the window was a bookcase with a few issues of the annual volumes of the Swedish Tourist Association, the local elementary school song-book, a few pulp novels from the turn of last century and a couple of battered cheap detective stories: Lawless Desperado and Fair-Haired Women Are Dangerous. At the very bottom of the case I found some party games. The ludo board had been used as a combined ashtray and cuspidor. There was also a chess set with many of the pieces missing. I’ve never been very interested in chess. It’s all about luck and manual dexterity.

  For a while I sat there, staring into the distance. I tried to look intelligent in case someone happened by. A thought was nagging at my mind. I freely admit I’m not a big thinker, but I do usually get somewhere. Except now. My mind was a blank.

  After a quarter of an hour I went back to number 5. Sometimes you get fresh ideas when your initial impressions are dispersed and you return to the scene of crime a second time.

  I walked slowly around the room and regarded the body from different angles. Then I turned on the radio by the window. A mass was being broadcast, so I turned it off at once. On reflection, the music did fit the environment, but I kept it off anyway.

  I nearly tripped over the towel with the almost-rose-coloured stains of red wine on it as I left the room and headed for the reception area.

  My mind was superficially blank, but there was definitely something there gnawing at me. In such circumstances, the best thing was to wait and see. There was no point in forcing anything.

  At this point I shall permit myself to squeeze in a few lines for literary effect. When gazing out through the window, one could see a blue sky and a yellow sun. As the sunbeams filtered through the dirty curtains, well … there was a lot of dust in the rays of light. When I was a boy I thought that the dust particles were vitamins. I used to stand there breathing deeply to become fresh and strong. I was obviously an idiot from the very beginning.

  It had been windy during Saturday evening with plenty of rain. I remember it because I had felt an incredible need to go outside and cool down when Pelle’s cheating was at its worst. Now it was calm. I’m not usually one for physical culture, but I am able to determine whether it’s raining or not. We do have quite a lot of rainfall in the town at this time of year.

  Gustavsson surfaced as I was sitting there in a philosophical mood. I sent him away to do a reconnaissance of the place. The numbskull Melin was with him. We used to engage him for particularly sensitive operations. He’s particularly well equipped to order and pick up sandwiches from Modin’s café. We used to vary between meat with cheese and salami-type sausage, so that he would not find police work too monotonous. In that way he could learn to focus his attention and follow instructions to the letter, important things for a policeman. Otherwise he is utterly useless. I told him to walk around and knock on the room doors, making a note of each room number and the names of the guests. If Melin managed to survive that ordeal by fire, he could maybe rise up in the world. He could, for example, have a sandwich with liver pâté next time.

  I had just got him out of the way when Ivehed emerged and told me what Blom had had to say about Nilsson. I was also informed about the hullaballoo last evening, about the plaster at half past eight, about the turned-on transistor radio and about the key which had vanished.

  It wasn’t until he mentioned Blom’s surveillance of the house that I pricked up my ears. Ivehed carefully described the host’s room at the rear and how the back door could be monitored. I got to know the approximate times of Blom’s activities, how he locked the back door at one o’clock and how it was opened again by the maid in the morning. Just as the room keys were deposited on their hooks behind the reception desk, the back door key was similarly hung up in the same place.

  It was not until I got the report from Gustavsson that an idea finally took shape. He gave me a detailed description of the house with entrances and rooms, including the basement and the attic. Gustavsson had also been snooping in the garden. He showed me a neatly executed sketch.

  Then Melin reported that there were three guest rooms on the ground floor. For some reason none of them was occupied, perhaps because of their proximity to the dining rooms. Blom served beer and various salads at “reasonable prices.” He also had a “Today’s Special.” According to the menu the special on Sunday consisted of boiled sausage and mashed potatoes. The reasonable price was three crowns and seventy-five öre, inclusive of VAT and service, the latter probably provided by Blom himself. He was not fully licensed and could only serve light beer. Let me add that the dining-rooms (notice the plural form) of The Little Boarding-House enjoy a deservedly bad reputation. If, against all expectations and wishes, I had to eat there I would gladly pay a five crown bill in order to avoid service.

  Be that as it may, Melin supplied a list of the rooms and guests on the first floor:

  No 4. Schoolmistress Berta Söderström, Stockholm. She had been there since October 20.

  No 5. Mr. Axel Nilsson, moved in October 13.

  No 6. Schoolmistress Sylvia Hurtig-Olofsson, Stockholm. The same arrival date as her companion Söderström.

  No 7. Vacant.

  No 8. Travelling salesman Ivar Johanson, Malmö, arrived October 23.

  No 9. Vacant.

  No 10. Warrant Officer Sten Renqvist, Boden, arrived October 24.

  Melin had discovered that the schoolmistresses had checked in together and were attending a conference on some esoteric subject of no interest whatsoever to anyone outside their profession, an event which would last the whole week. They had jabbered a lot in their rooms and on Friday Nilsson had asked if no younger women would come soon. He had been told that the conference would be ending the following day.

  One of the ladies was built like a rugby forward; the other one was more mousy and ran around with a bag over her shoulder, attempting to look ambitious and busy.

  Johanson was a frequent guest at the hotel. He was a heavy drinker and was in possession of several empty bottles when Melin examined the room. He said there had been a lot of noise during Sunday evening from room number 5 on the opposite side of the corridor. He’d knocked on the door at around nine o’clock and caused at least a temporary silence.

  The warrant officer Renqvist had stayed at the hotel for a couple of days because he had been called up as an instructor by the nearby regiment. He had an expense allowance which made it possible for him to live outside the barracks. He’d run into Johanson in the upstairs corridor on his way to the loo at nine o’clock. Gastric flu had caused him to spend half the night there.

  Such was the information I assembled, which was quite enough for my purposes.

  The last thing I did was to scrutinise the stiff a little more closely without changing its position, of course. I carefully tucked up the shirt-sleeves, turned up the trousers
from the ankles, examined the face and the neck and looked carefully at the scalp. There was not a single scratch anywhere, much less any plaster.

  There was a rose tattooed on the right forearm. Utterly charming.

  It was at that point that I realised how the case should be handled. All the problems were now over and done with.

  Before I dismissed everyone, I announced that we would resume the hearings in the dining room at six that evening. I told them I’d have a surprise for them.

  When it came to my subordinate colleagues, it was a question of giving them something to think about. Had I dreamt of what a row there would be amongst them after my conversation with my old man, I would of course have remained silent. All the same, I didn’t hoodwink them. All the details were absolutely right, although I did keep it secret that murder had never been on the agenda, at least not on mine! Is it my fault that they made a muddle of it?

  As far as I was concerned, everything was as plain as the nose on my face from the very beginning. Nilsson had got drunk during the evening of Saturday and when his visitor had gone, he had locked the door, washed the glasses and closed the window. He was intoxicated and slipped or stumbled and his head hit the bed and he died. When he fell he got red wine all over him, and that was it.

  Can I be responsible for the lads getting hold of the wrong end of the stick, raving about a locked room? And making a great feature of the wine spots on the towel? Don’t you think that I can see the difference between blood and red wine? Had there been something fishy about the towel, we would have analysed the spots. But because there was nothing notable about it, the maid could dispose of the rag.

  Then there’s the business of the damned transistor radio. Nilsson was listening to it before he died. Nobody but he turned it off.

  In fact, the investigation had come at a good time. Now I would at last get the opportunity to take a closer look at Blom. On the pretext of investigating the circumstances surrounding the death, I’d be able to poke into his affairs undisturbed. That the old men in the detective club would be the losers, so to speak, was icing on the cake.