by Wahlöö, Per
The pictures were in colour and about 3 by 4 inches in size. There were about fifteen of them in the envelope and the man in the easy chair held them between his thumb and his index finger. Martin Beck and Kollberg stood bent forward, one on either side of him.
‘This is us and here is Major Jentsch's wife, oh yes, and you can see my wife here … yes, and here am I. This photograph was taken from the command bridge. That was the first day out. I'm talking to the captain, as you probably can see. And here … unfortunately I don't see too well either… will you give me the magnifying glass, darling … ?’
The colonel wiped off the magnifying glass slowly and carefully before he continued.
‘Yes, here we are. Now you can see Major Jentsch himself, and then me and my wife … Major Jentsch's wife must have taken this photograph. It looks a bit dimmer than the rest. And here we are again, in the same place but from a slightly different angle, it seems to me. And … let me see … the lady that I am talking to here was a Frau Liebeneiner, she was German too. She ate at our table, too, a very charming and fine woman, but, unfortunately, a bit elderly. She lost her husband at El Alamein.’
Martin Beck paid closer attention and saw a very old woman in a flowered dress with a pink hat. She stood next to one of the lifeboats with a cup of coffee in one hand and a piece of pastry in the other.
The inspection continued. The shots were all the same. Martin Beck began to get a pain in his back. He knew now, without doubt, just how Major Jentsch's wife looked.
The last picture lay on the mahogany table in front of the colonel. It was one of those which Martin Beck had already spoken of. The Diana seen directly from the stern, tied up at the pier in Stockholm, with the City Hall in the background and two taxis right up at the gangway.
The picture must have been taken just before the boat sailed because there were a lot of people already on board. To the stern of the port lifeboat on the shelter deck, Major Jentsch's wife from Osnabrück could be seen. Directly below her stood Roseanna McGraw. She was bending forward with her arms resting on the railing and her feet spread apart. She had sandals on, and sunglasses. She wore a full yellow dress with shoulder straps. Martin Beck bent as far over as he could and tried to make out the people standing next to her. At the same time he heard Kollberg whistle through his teeth.
‘Oh yes, oh yes,’ said the colonel undisturbed. ‘This is the ship, here at Riddarholm. There is the City Hall tower. And there is Hildegard Jentsch. That was before we met. And, yes, that was strange. This young girl also sat at our table a few times. She was English or Dutch, I think. They must have moved her to another table later so that we old folks could have a little more room for our elbows.’
A strong, wrinkled index finger, with a lot of white hairs enlarged under the magnifying glass, rested on the girl in the sandals and the loose, yellow dress.
Martin Beck took a breath in order to say something, but Kollberg was quicker.
‘What?’ asked the colonel. ‘Am I certain? Of course I am certain. She sat at the same table as we did at least four or five times. She never said anything though, if I remember correctly.’
‘But…’
‘Yes, of course your colleague showed me her portrait, but you understand, it wasn't her face that I recognize. It's the dress, or more correctly, not exactly the dress, either.’
He turned to the left and placed his powerful index finger on Martin Beck's chest.
‘It was the décolleté,’ he said in a thundering whisper.
18
It was a quarter past eleven and they were still sitting in the office at Kristineberg. The breeze was blowing freshly and small drops of rain splashed against the windows.
Twenty photographs were spread out on the table in front of Martin Beck. He had pushed nineteen of them aside and was studying the picture of Roseanna McGraw in the magnifying glass's circle of light for, perhaps, the fiftieth time. She looked just exactly as he had imagined her. Her glance seemed to be directed upward, probably in the direction of Riddarholm's tower. She looked healthy and alert and totally unconscious of the fact that she had only about thirty-six hours left to live. On her left was cabin number A 7. The door was open but the picture didn't show enough for anyone to see how it looked inside.
‘Do you realize that we were lucky today,’ said Kollberg. ‘It's the first time, too, since we started on this damned case. One usually has some luck, sooner or later. This time though, it was a lot later.’
‘We've had some bad luck too.’
‘You mean because she was sitting at a table with two deaf old men and three half-blind women? That's not bad luck. That's just the law of averages. Let's go home and go to bed now. I'll drop you off. Or would you rather take that great gift to humanity, the subway?’
‘We have to get a telegram off to Kafka first. We can send the rest of it by letter tomorrow.’
They were finished half an hour later. Kollberg drove quickly and carelessly through the rain but Martin Beck didn't seem nervous, in spite of the fact that driving usually put him in a bad mood. They didn't speak at all during the trip. When they pulled up in front of the house where Martin Beck lived, Kollberg finally said: ‘Now you can go to bed and think about all this. So long.’
It was quiet and dark in the apartment but when Martin Beck went past his daughter's room, he heard the sound of radio music. She was probably lying in bed with the transistor radio under her pillow. When he was a boy he had read sea adventure novels with a flashlight under the blankets.
There was some bread and butter and cheese on the kitchen table. He made a sandwich for himself and looked for a bottle of beer in the ice-box. There wasn't any. He stood at the sink, ate his frugal supper, and washed it down with half a glass of milk.
Then he went into the bedroom and got into bed, very carefully. His wife turned towards him, half asleep, and tried to say something. He lay quietly on his back and held his breath. After a few minutes her breath was even and unconscious again. He relaxed, closed his eyes and began to think.
Roseanna McGraw had been in one of the earliest photographs. In addition, these photographs had clearly identified five other people, two retired military couples and the widow Liebeneiner. He could easily expect to receive between twenty-five and thirty more sets of pictures, most of them with more photographs than this one. Each negative would be rooted out, every picture would be studied carefully to find out whom he, or she, knew in each picture. It had to work. Eventually, they could map out Roseanna McGraw's final trip. They should be able to see it in front of them like a film.
A great deal depended on Kafka and what he could obtain from eight households spread across the continent of North America. Americans were wasteful with film. Weren't they known for that? And then, if anyone other than the murderer had been in contact with the woman from Lincoln, wouldn't it very likely have been one of her own countrymen? Maybe they should look for the murderer mainly among the Americans on board. Maybe, one of these days, he would have the telephone pressed against his ear and hear Kafka say: ‘Yeah, I shot the bastard.’
In the middle of this thought Martin Beck fell asleep, suddenly, and without trying.
It rained the next day, too, and it was grey and sprinkling. The last yellow leaves of autumn stuck sadly to the walls of the house and to the windowpanes.
Almost as if Martin Beck's night-time thoughts had reached him, Kafka sent a laconic telegram:
SEND AS MUCH MATERIAL AS POSSIBLE.
Two days later, Melander, who never forgot anything, took his pipe out of his mouth and said, tranquilly: ‘Uli Mildenberger is in Hamburg. He was there all summer. Would you like to have him examined?’
Martin Beck thought about it for about five seconds. ‘No.’
He was on the point of adding: ‘Make a note of his address,’ but stopped himself at the last minute, shrugged his shoulders and went on with his business.
During these days, he often had very little to do. The case had reached a
point where it was going on its own pretty much at the same time as it was spreading itself out all over the globe. There was an open ‘hot line’ between himself and Ahlberg in Motala. After that, it was spread like the rays of the sun all over the map from the North Cape in the north to Durban in the south and Ankara in the east. By far, the most important line of contact led to Kafka's office in Lincoln, nearly six thousand miles to the west. From there it branched out to a handful of geographically separated places on the American continent.
With so many widespread informants at their disposal, couldn't they ensnare and catch a murderer? The logical answer, unfortunately, was, No. Martin Beck had painful memories from a case involving another sex murder. It had taken place in a cellar in one of the Stockholm suburbs. The body had been found almost immediately and the police had arrived on the scene less than an hour later. Several persons had seen the murderer and gave lengthy descriptions of him. The man had left his footprints, cigarette butts, matches, and even several other objects. In addition, he had handled the body with a particularly idiosyncratic perversity. But they had never been able to get him. Their optimism had slowly turned into frustration at their impotence. All the clues had led to nothing. Seven years later, the man was discovered in the act of attempted rape, and arrested. During the examination that followed, he suddenly broke down and admitted the earlier murder. That crime and its solution seven years later had been only a small incident on the side for Martin Beck. But it had been of the utmost importance to one of his older colleagues. He remembered so well how that man had sat month after month, year after year, in his office late into the night, going through all the papers and rechecking the testimony for the five hundredth, or possibly the thousandth, time. He had met that man many times in unexpected places and in surprising circumstances when the man should have been off duty or on vacation but was, instead, always looking for new angles in the case which had become the tragedy of his life. In time, he had become sick and was given his pension early, but even then, he hadn't given up the search. And then, finally, the case was cleared up when someone who had never been arrested or even suspected of a crime suddenly burst into tears before an astonished policeman down in Halland and confessed to the seven year old crime of strangulation. Martin Beck sometimes wondered if that solution, which came so late, had really given the old detective any peace.
It could happen that way. But that woman in the cellar had been all the things that Roseanna McGraw wasn't, a rootless, wandering person who was hardly a member of society and whose asociability was as indisputable as the contents of her handbag.
Martin Beck thought a great deal about this while he waited for something to happen.
Meanwhile, in Motala, Ahlberg was occupied in annoying the authorities by insisting that every square inch of the bottom of the canal should be dragged and gone over by frogmen. He rarely got in touch with Martin Beck himself but was constantly waiting for the telephone to ring.
After a week, a new telegram arrived from Kafka. The message was cryptic and surprising:
YOU WILL HAVE A BREAK ANY MINUTE NOW.
Martin Beck telephoned Ahlberg.
‘He says that there will be a break for us any time now.’
‘He probably knows that we need one,’ said Ahlberg.
Kollberg added his dissenting opinion: ‘The man is near-sighted. He's suffering from the disease we call intuition.’
Melander didn't say anything at all.
In ten more days, they had received about fifty pictures and had about three times as many negatives printed. Many of the pictures were of poor quality and they could find Roseanna McGraw in only two of them. Both were taken at the Riddarholm pier and she was still standing alone in the stern of A deck, not very far from her cabin. One of the pictures showed her bending over and scratching her right ankle, but that was all. Otherwise they identified twenty-three more passengers, bringing the total identified up to twenty-eight.
Melander was in charge of scrutinizing the pictures and after he was through with them, he sent them to Kollberg who tried to place them in some kind of chronological order. Martin Beck studied all of them, hour after hour, but said nothing.
The next few days brought a few dozen more pictures but Roseanna McGraw wasn't to be seen on any of them.
On the other hand a letter arrived from Ankara, at last. It was on Martin Beck's desk the morning of the thirteenth day, but it took two more days before the Turkish Embassy presented them with a translation. Contrary to all expectations the contents of that letter seemed to represent the most progress in a long time.
One of the Turkish passengers, a twenty-two year old medical student named Günes Fratt, said that he recognized the woman in the picture but he didn't know her name or her nationality. After a ‘forceful examination’ conducted by a high level police officer with a very long name which seemed made up of only the letters ö, ü, and z, the witness had admitted that he had found the woman attractive and had made two ‘verbal overtures’ to her in English during the first day of the trip, but that he had not been encouraged. The woman had not replied. Somewhat later on the trip, he thought he had seen her with a man and had drawn the conclusion that she was married and that she had only happened to appear alone. The only thing the witness could say about the man's appearance was that he was ‘presumably tall’. During the latter part of the trip, the witness had not seen the woman. Günes Fratt's uncle, who was examined ‘informally’ by the official with that impossible name, stated that he had kept a watchful eye on his nephew during the entire trip and that the boy had not been left alone for more than ten minutes at a time.
The embassy added the comment that both the travellers belonged to wealthy and highly respected families.
The letter did not particularly surprise Martin Beck. He had known all along that a letter containing that kind of information would appear sooner or later. Now they had moved a step forward and while he was getting the information together to send to Motala, he was mostly thinking about how it would feel to be ‘forcefully examined’ by a high official of the Turkish police.
One flight up, Kollberg took the news in his stride.
‘The Turks? Yes, I've heard about their methods.’
He looked through his lists.
‘Picture number 23, 38, 102,109 …’
‘That's enough.’
Martin Beck looked through the pile of pictures until he found one which showed both of the men very clearly. He looked for a moment at the uncle's white moustache and then moved his eyes to Günes Fratt who was short, elegantly dressed, and had a small, dark moustache and even features. He didn't look so unattractive.
Unfortunately, Roseanna McGraw had thought differently.
This was the fifteenth day since they had thought of collecting photographs. By now they had definitely identified forty-one passengers who had appeared in one or another of the pictures. In addition, two more pictures of the woman from Lincoln had been added to the collection. Both of them had been taken while the boat was in the Södertälje canal. Roseanna McGraw was in the background of one of them, out of focus and with her back turned towards the camera. But in the other, she was seen in profile by the railing with a railway bridge behind her. She was three hours nearer her death, and had taken off her sunglasses and was squinting up at the sun. The wind had blown her dark hair and her mouth was half-open, as if she were on the verge of saying something or had just yawned. Martin Beck looked at her for a long time through the magnifying glass. Finally he said:
‘Who took this picture?’
‘One of the Danes,’ answered Melander. ‘Vibeke Amdal from Copenhagen. She was travelling alone in a single cabin.’
‘Find out whatever you can about her.’
Half an hour later the bomb exploded.
‘There's a cable from the United States,’ said the woman on the other end of the telephone. 'Shall I read it to you?
STRUCK A GOLD MINE YESTERDAY. TEN ROLLS EIGHT MILLIMETER COL
OR FILM AND 150 STILLS. YOU WILL SEE A LOT of ROSEANNA MCGRAW. SOME UNKNOWN CHARACTER SEEMS TO BE WITH HER. PAN AMERICAN GUARANTEES DELIVERY STOCKHOLM THURSDAY.
KAFKA.
‘Shall I try to translate it?’
‘No thank you. That's okay for now.’
Martin Beck fell into his chair. He rubbed his hairline and looked at his desk calendar. It was Wednesday, 25 November.
Outside, it was raining, and it was chilly. It would soon begin to snow.
19
They showed the film at a studio right across the street from the North Station. It was crowded in the screening room and even at that moment Martin Beck was having difficulty in getting over his aversion to groups of people.
His chief was there and so were the County Police Superintendent, the Public Prosecutor, Superintendent Larsson and Ahlberg. They had driven up from Motala. In addition, Kollberg, Stenström and Melander were there.
Even Hammar, who had seen more crime in his day than all the others put together, seemed quiet and tense and alert.
The lights were turned out.
The projector started to whirl.
‘Oh, yes, yes … ah.’
As usual it was hard for Kollberg to keep quiet.
The film started with a shot of the king's guard in Stockholm. They passed Gustaf Adolf's Square. Swung in towards the North Bridge. The camera panned towards the Opera House.
‘No style,’ said Kollberg. ‘They look like military police.’
The County Police Superintendent whispered ‘shush’.
Then came shots of pretty Swedish girls with turned up noses sitting in the sun on the steps of the Concert Hall. The tall buildings in the centre of the city. A tourist poster in front of a Laplander's tent at Skansen's Park. Gripsholm Castle with a group of folk dancers in the foreground. Some middle-aged Americans with violet lips and sunglasses. The Hotel Reisen, Skepps Bridge, the stern of the Svea Jarl, shots from a boat trip to Djurgården and of a large passenger ship anchored in Stockholm seen from a sightseeing boat.