by Maj Sjowall
Martin Beck took a deep breath.
“I don’t know how many cases I’ve worked on, but it’s quite a number by now. And I can assure you that we’re doing our best.”
“I’m convinced of that,” Malm said in a conciliatory manner.
“But that’s not what I really wanted to say,” Martin Beck continued. “Just that a week can be a very short time. It hasn’t even been a week now, as you may know. I got here on Friday, and today’s Wednesday. Some time ago we arrested a man who committed a murder sixteen years before. That was two years ago and therefore before your time.”
“Okay, I know all that. But this isn’t an ordinary murder.”
“You said that before.”
“There could be international complications,” Malm said with a touch of desperation in his voice. “In fact, there already are.”
“In what way?”
“Repeated pressure has been put on us by several foreign embassies. And I’m fairly certain that there are Security men from abroad already here. They’re sure to turn up soon in Malmö or Copenhagen.”
He paused. Then he said in a wavering voice, “Or here in my office.”
“Oh, well,” Martin Beck said consolingly, “they can’t mess things up much more than Sepo, at any rate.”
“The Security people? A man of theirs is in Malmö. Are you working together?”
“I wouldn’t say that exactly.”
“Haven’t you met?”
“I’ve seen him.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes. And only because I couldn’t avoid it.”
“We haven’t received any positive information from them, either,” Malm said despondently.
“Did you expect any?”
“I can’t help feeling that you’re taking this much too lightly.”
“If that’s true, you’re wrong. I never take a murder lightly.”
“But this is not an ordinary murder.”
Martin Beck had a feeling he’d heard that before.
“You can’t go at it any old way,” Malm said, putting heavy stress on the words. “Viktor Palmgren was a celebrity, both here and abroad.”
“Yeah. I gather he appeared in the weeklies every week or so.”
“Hampus Broberg and Mats Linder are also prominent citizens.”
“I see.”
“You can’t treat them any old way.”
“Of course not.”
“At the same time you must be very careful what you leak to the press.”
“I don’t leak a thing myself.”
“As I told you last time, it could cause irreparable damage if certain of Palmgren’s activities became public knowledge.”
“Who would be irreparably damaged?”
“Who do you think,” Malm said agitatedly. “The nation, naturally. This nation of ours. If it became known that members of the Government had been aware of certain transactions, then …”
“Then?”
“Then the political consequences could be devastating.”
Martin Beck detested politics. If he had political views he kept them strictly to himself. He’d always tried to dodge assignments that might have political consequences. Generally, he offered no opinion when political crimes came up in a conversation.
But this time he couldn’t help saying, “For whom?”
Malm let out a sound as though he’d been stabbed in the back.
“Do everything you can,” he pleaded.
“Okay,” Martin Beck said mildly. “I’ll do everything I can …”
After a second he added, “Stig.”
That was the first time he’d called the Chief Superintendent by his first name. And hopefully the last.
The remainder of the afternoon passed in a melancholy mood.
The Palmgren investigation had bogged down.
However, it was unusually lively at the police station. The Malmö police force raided two brothels downtown, much to the indignation of the employees and to the even greater shame of the customers who’d been hauled in.
Åsa Torell had obviously been right when she said she’d have a lot to do.
He left the police station about eight, still feeling dissatisfied and vaguely worried.
His appetite deserted him, so there was no question of having a hearty skånsk dinner. He forced down a sandwich and a glass of milk, anyway, at the Mitt-i-City cafeteria on Gustav Adolf Square.
He chewed his food carefully and slowly. Through the window he studied the teenage vagrants, who were smoking hash and trading it for stolen records around the rectangular stone basin on the square.
No policemen were in sight, and the staff of the Bureau of Child Welfare must have had other things to do.
Eventually he strolled along Södergatan, diagonally across Stortorget and down toward the harbor. When he got back to the hotel it was ten-thirty.
In the lobby his eyes immediately fell on two men sitting in the easy chairs to the right of the entrance to the dining room. One of them was tall and bald and had a thick black mustache. He was also incredibly suntanned. The second man was a hunchback, almost a dwarf, with a pale face, sharp features and intelligent black eyes. Both were impeccably dressed, the mustachioed one in dark blue shantung and the hunchback in a well-cut pale gray suit with a vest. Both men had shiny black shoes, and both were motionless, staring vacantly straight ahead. A bottle of Chivas Regal and two glasses were on the table between them.
Foreigners, thought Martin Beck. The hotel swarmed with foreign guests, and on the flagpoles outside he’d seen at least two national flags he didn’t recognize.
As he picked up the room key, he saw Paulsson come out of the elevator and walk over to the two men’s table.
24
Up in his room the maid had prepared everything for the night, turned down the bed, put out the bedside rug, closed the window and drawn the curtains.
Martin Beck turned on the bedside lamp and glanced at the TV set. He had no desire to turn it on and, besides, the programs were probably all over by now.
He took off his shoes, socks and shirt. Then he pulled open the drapes and opened out the double windows.
A faint breath of cool air, just barely noticeable, floated in from outside.
He propped his hands on the window sill and gazed out over the canal, the train station and the harbor.
He stood there for a long time in pants and fishnet undershirt and thought about nothing, on the whole.
The air was warm and unmoving, the sky filled with stars.
Illuminated passenger boats came and went; the train ferry bellowed in the harbor entrance. The traffic on the streets was almost nonexistent, and there was a long row of taxis outside of the train station with their vacant signs on and their front doors open. The drivers stood in clusters and passed the time of day, and the cars were painted in a variety of quite bright colors, not black as in Stockholm.
He didn’t want to go to bed. He’d already read the evening newspapers and he’d forgotten to pick up a book. He could go down and buy one, but then he’d have to get dressed again. Yet he didn’t want to read either, and if he did, the Bible and the telephone directory were always close by. Or the autopsy report, but he knew it almost by heart.
So he stood there by the window and looked, feeling curiously alone and shut off. Totally of his own choosing, since he could have been sitting in the bar or at Månsson’s home or in a thousand different places.
Something was missing, but he didn’t really know what.
After he’d stood there for quite a while he heard someone tapping on the door. Very lightly. If he’d been sleeping or in the shower, he wouldn’t have heard it.
“Come in,” he said, without turning his head.
He heard the door open.
Maybe it was the murderer, striding in with his revolver raised, ready for action. If he aimed for the back of the head this time, too, Martin Beck would fall forward out of the window and, if he were unluc
ky, he would be dead before he was smashed on the sidewalk far below.
He smiled and turned around.
It was Paulsson in his houndstooth suit and his canary yellow shoes.
He looked unhappy. Even his mustache didn’t seem quite as elegant as usual.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
“May I come in?”
“Sure,” Martin Beck said. “Sit right down.”
He went over and sat down on the edge of his bed.
Paulsson squirmed in his chair. His forehead and cheeks glistened with perspiration.
“Take off your jacket,” Martin Beck said. “We’re not too particular about formalities here.”
Paulsson hesitated for a long time, but finally he began to undo the buttons on the double-breasted jacket and struggled out of it. He folded it very carefully and laid it over the arm of the chair.
Under the jacket he was wearing a shirt with broad pale green and orange stripes. Plus a pistol in a shoulder holster.
Martin Beck wondered how long it would take him to get at the gun, if he first had to go through all that complicated unbuttoning process.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked calmly.
“Uh … I wanted to ask you something.”
“Go ahead. What?”
“You don’t have to answer, of course.”
“Don’t be silly. What is it?”
“Well …”
And then finally it came, visibly after the exercise of a great deal of self-control, “Have you gotten anywhere?”
“No,” Martin Beck said.
From pure courtesy he returned the question, “Have you?”
Paulsson shook his head wistfully. Lovingly stroked his mustache, as if it gave him renewed strength.
“This seems pretty complicated,” he said.
“Or else it may be very simple,” Martin Beck said.
“Simple?” Paulsson said.
Questioningly and incredulously.
Martin Beck shrugged.
“No,” Paulsson said, “I don’t think so … And the worst thing is …”
He broke off. With a hopeful glint in his eye, he said, “Have they been raking you over the coals, too?”
“Who?”
“Oh, the bosses. In Stockholm.”
“They seem a little nervous,” Martin Beck said. “What’s the worst thing, you were going to say?”
“This is going to be a large-scale international investigation, politically complicated. With ramifications in all directions. Tonight two foreign security agents arrived. At the hotel.”
“Those two characters sitting in the lobby a while ago?”
Paulsson nodded.
“Where are they from?”
“The little man is from Lisbon and the other one from Africa. Loranga Marcuse, or whatever it’s called.”
“Lourenço Marques,” Martin Beck said. “It’s in Mozambique. Do they have an official assignment here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are they even policemen?”
“Security agents, I think. They introduce themselves as businessmen. But …”
“What?”
“But they identified me right away. Knew who I was. Strange.” Extremely strange, Martin Beck thought. Aloud he said, “Have you talked to them?”
“Yes. They speak very good English.”
Martin Beck happened to know that Paulsson’s English had serious shortcomings. Maybe he was good at Chinese or Ukrainian or something else that was valuable to the security of the realm.
“What did they want?”
“They asked things I really didn’t get. That’s why I bothered you like this. First they wanted to see a list of the suspects.”
“So?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t have a list like that. Maybe you do?”
Martin Beck shook his head.
“Of course, I didn’t say that,” Paulsson said cunningly. “But then they asked me something I didn’t get at all.”
“What was that?”
“Well, as I understood it, but it has to be wrong, they wanted to know which people from the overseas provinces were suspected. The overseas provinces … But they said it several times in different languages.”
“You understood correctly,” Martin Beck said kindly. “The Portuguese claim that their colonies in Africa and other places have an equal status with the provinces in Portugal itself. Apparently they meant people—above all political refugees—from places like Angola, Mozambique, Macao, Cape Verde Islands, Guinea and so on.”
Paulsson’s face suddenly lit up.
“Well I’ll be—!” he said. “Then I did hear right after all.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Nothing definite. They seemed pretty disappointed.”
Well, that was easy to imagine.
“Are they planning to stay here?”
“No,” Paulsson said. “They’re going on up to Stockholm. To talk to their embassy. By the way, I’m flying up there tomorrow, too. Have to report. And study the archives.”
He yawned and said, “Better go to bed. It’s been a tough week. Thanks for the help.”
“With what?”
“These … overseas things.”
Paulsson got up, put on his jacket and buttoned all the buttons with great care.
“Bye,” he said.
“Good night.”
In the doorway he turned around and said ominously, “I think this is going to take years.”
Martin Beck sat still for two minutes. Then he grinned to himself, took off the rest of his clothes and went into the bathroom.
He stood under a cold shower for a long time, wrapped the bath towel around himself and returned to his place by the window.
It was quiet and dark outside. All activity seemed to have ceased, both in the harbor and at the railroad station.
A police car rolled slowly past. Most of the cab drivers had given up and driven home.
Martin Beck stood gazing out into the silent summer night. It was still warm, but he felt cool and fresh after the shower.
After a while he felt it was time to go to bed. Sooner or later it had to happen, after all, even if sleep still seemed far away.
He frowned at his pyjamas, which were lying on his pillow. They looked pleasant now, but would inevitably be sweaty and cling to his body when he awoke.
He put them in the closet. Folded the blanket neatly and put it away under the bed. Hung out the big towel on the drying rack in the bathroom.
Then he lay on his back in the bed, folded the sheet almost down to his waist and clasped his hands behind his head. He lay watching the ceiling, where the reflection from the reading lamp threw indistinct shadows.
He was thinking, but with neither precision nor concentration.
After he’d lain like that for fifteen or maybe twenty minutes there were more taps on the door. Very light this time, too.
Good God! he thought. Could he really stand more dribble about espionage and secret agents? Naturally it would be easiest to pretend to be asleep. Or was that neglect of duty?
“Okay, come in,” he said with a sense of doom.
The door was opened cautiously, and Åsa Torell came into the room, dressed in slippers and a short white nylon robe, tied with a sash around her waist.
“You weren’t sleeping, were you?”
“No,” Martin Beck said.
After a moment he added foolishly, “You weren’t, either?”
She smiled and shook her head. Her short dark hair shone.
“No,” she said. “I just got in. I’ve scarcely had time to take a shower.”
“I heard you had your hands full today.”
She nodded.
“Yeah. Darn it. We’ve hardly eaten today. Just a couple of sandwiches.”
“Sit down.”
“Thanks. You’re not too tired?”
“You don’t get tired from doing nothing.”
She still hesitated, with one hand on the doorknob.
“I’ll just get my cigarettes,” she said. “My room isn’t more than two doors away.”
She left the door ajar. He still lay with his hands behind his head and waited.
After twenty seconds she was back, closed the door soundlessly and padded over to the chair where Paulsson had been in agony about an hour before. She kicked off her slippers and drew her legs under her. She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply several times.
“Oh, wow!” she said. “It’s really been a helluva day.”
“Are you beginning to have second thoughts about being a policewoman?”
“Yes and no. You see so much misery that you only heard about before.”
She looked thoughtfully at her cigarette and continued, “But sometimes you do have the feeling you’re doing a little good, too.”
“Yes,” he said, “once in a while.”
“Did you have a bad day?”
“Yes, very. Nothing new or constructive. But it’s like that a lot.”
She nodded.
“Do you have any ideas?” he said.
“Huh-uh. How could I have, really? Except to say Palmgren was a bastard. A lot of people must have had good reason to hate him. What I mean is that maybe it doesn’t have to be so complicated as some people seem to think. Revenge. Pure and simple.”
“Yes, I’ve thought about that, too.”
She fell silent.
When the cigarette was finished she lit another. She smoked Danish cigarettes—Cecil, in a green, white and red pack.
Martin Beck turned his head and looked at her feet, which were thin and gracefully arched, with long, straight toes.
Then he raised his eyes to her face. She looked preoccupied, and her eyes had a faraway look.
He continued to watch her. After a while she relaxed, lifted her head slightly and looked straight into his eyes.
Hers were big and brown and serious.
A moment ago she’d been preoccupied; now, suddenly, she was intensely present.
They went on looking at each other.
She put out her cigarette, and this time she didn’t light another.
She moistened her lips and bit the end of her tongue. Her teeth were white, but slightly uneven. Her eyebrows thick and dark.
“Well?” he said.
She nodded slowly and said very quietly, “Well, sooner or later. Why not now?”