by Maj Sjowall
“Did you go on meeting at her place?”
“A few times, yes. But it was too risky. I was married, after all, and even if she was divorced, people gossip so much. Especially out there where she lived. So I rented a little place in Trelleborg where we could meet.”
“Were you in love with her?”
Clark Sundström snorted.
“In love? No. But she sure as hell turned me on. I wanted to go to bed with her. My wife wasn’t very interested any more. She never was, for that matter. I sort of felt I had the right to have a mistress. But my wife would go crazy if she found out. She’d want a divorce on the spot.”
“Was Sigbrit Mård in love with you?”
“I guess she was. At first I thought she just wanted someone to go to bed with, like me, but then she started talking about how we ought to move in together.”
“When did she start talking about that?”
“Last spring. Everything was going along fine. We’d meet once a week at the apartment. And then all of a sudden she starts in about how we ought to get married and how she wants to have kids. The fact that I was already married and had children didn’t seem to make any difference to her. All I had to do was get a divorce, she said.”
“You didn’t want that?”
“Christ, no. In the first place, we’ve got a pretty good life, my wife and I and the kids. And in the second place, it would have been a financial catastrophe. The house we live in belongs to my wife, and the factory belongs to her too, even if I do run it. If we got divorced, I’d be penniless and out of a job. I’m fifty-two years old. I’ve worked like a dog for that factory. Sigbrit was crazy to think I’d leave all that for her sake. She was after money too.”
Talking had put a little color back in his cheeks, and his eyes were no longer so exhausted.
“Besides, I was beginning to get tired of her,” he said. “Even last winter I was trying to think of some nice way to get out of it.”
The way you chose was not especially nice, thought Martin Beck.
“What happened? Did she get too troublesome?”
“She started threatening me,” Sundström said. “She said she was going to talk to my wife. I had to promise her I’d mention the divorce myself, which, of course, I never meant to do. I didn’t know what to do. I lay awake nights …”
He stopped talking and put his arm over his eyes.
“Couldn’t you have told your wife …?”
“No, that was out of the question. She could never accept or forgive a thing like that. She’s incredibly principled about that sort of thing, and rigidly moralistic. And she’s terribly afraid of what people will say too, and very careful about keeping up appearances. No, there was only … There wasn’t any way out.”
“But you finally did find a way out,” said Martin Beck after a moment of silence. “Though not an especially good one.”
“I worried about it until I thought I’d lose my mind. In the end I was desperate. I just wanted to be rid of her and her nagging and her threats. Yes, I thought of a hundred different ways. And then I thought of that sex lunatic who lived next door, and I figured if I make it look like a sex murder, everyone would think it was him.”
He looked at Martin Beck—a quick, fleeting glance—and there was something almost triumphant in his voice.
“And that is what you thought, isn’t it?”
“Weren’t you afraid that an innocent man would be convicted for something you’d done?”
“He wasn’t innocent. He’d already killed one person, and they shouldn’t have let him out anyway. No, I didn’t worry about that.”
“How did you do it?”
“I picked her up in my car as she was waiting for the bus. I knew she had her car in being serviced. Then I drove to this place I’d picked out earlier. She thought we were going to make love. We used to do that sometimes, outdoors, in the summer.”
He suddenly stared at Martin Beck, and his eyes went rigid. His whole face altered. His mouth fell open, his lips tightened across his teeth, and there was a rattling in his throat. He raised his left hand, and Martin Beck took his wrist and stood up. The hand clasped his hand convulsively, and the man’s eyes opened wide and stared fixedly at the spot where Martin Beck’s face had been. Martin Beck glanced up and saw the bright green dot moving slowly across the screen in a straight line. The device was giving off a faint, steady whistling sound.
Martin Beck felt the hand he was holding relax, and he put it on the cover and rang the buzzer before running out into the corridor.
Within a minute, the room was full of people in white coats. Before the door closed, he saw something that looked like a tabletop being shoved in under the lifeless body.
He waited outside the door. After a while it opened, and someone handed him the tape recorder.
He opened his mouth to say something, but the man in white shook his head.
“I don’t think we’re going to pull him through this time,” he said.
The door closed again, and Martin Beck was left standing there with his tape recorder. He rolled up the microphone cord and stuffed it into his pocket. The arrest warrant was in there already, neatly typed, folded, and unused.
Nor would he have any use for it. Forty-five minutes later, a doctor came in to him in the waiting room and informed him that they had not been able to save Clark Sundström’s life. The second blood clot had entered the heart directly and stopped there.
Martin Beck went to the police building on Davidshall Square and left the tape for Per Månsson, along with instructions for closing the case.
Then he took a taxi to Anderslöv.
The fog lay thick and silver gray across the plain. Visibility was only a few yards, and to the side he could see nothing but the shoulder and the ditch, with dry clumps of yellow grass and occasional patches of snow. If he hadn’t seen this countryside before in clear weather, he would have no idea what was hidden in the fog. But he had seen the plain and knew what it was like. Not flat and monotonous the way it looked from an airplane, but gently rolling, with fields of beets and hay, pastures with rows of naked, straggling willows, small whitewashed churches, and farms surrounded by enormous elms and beeches. He had also seen the sky over the plain on a clear day, as high and wide as he had otherwise seen it only above the sea, or with flying clouds that threw fleeting shadows across the bright, open landscape. But now the fog was like a wall on both sides of the road, and the journey through the gray mist had an element of timelessness and unreality.
They passed the side road to Domme, but he couldn’t see the houses up on the hill.
Allwright was sitting at his desk in his office, drinking tea and glancing through a pile of stenciled notices. Timmy lay stretched out across his feet under the desk. Martin Beck sank down in the visitor’s chair, and Timmy gave him his usual hearty welcome. Martin Beck pushed the dog away and wiped off his face. Allwright put the packet of papers to one side and looked at him.
“Tired?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Tea?”
“Yes, thanks.”
Allwright went out and came back with a porcelain mug, which he filled with tea from the pot.
“Are you going home now?” he asked.
Martin Beck nodded.
“My plane leaves in two hours,” he said. “If it takes off at all in this fog.”
“We’ll call in an hour and find out. The fog may lift. Have you still got your room at the inn?”
“Yes,” said Martin Beck. “I came directly here.”
“Why don’t you go lie down and get some sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s time to leave.”
Martin Beck nodded. He was really very tired.
He packed his few things and lay down on the bed and fell asleep almost instantly. Before he went to sleep it occurred to him that he ought to call Rhea.
He woke up as Herrgott Allwright banged on the door and came into his room. He looked at the clock and discovered to his amazemen
t that he had slept for over three hours.
“The fog’s lifting,” Allwright said. “They think they can take off in forty-five minutes. I didn’t want to wake you up unnecessarily. But we’ve got to go now.”
They got into the car and headed for Sturup.
“Folke’s back at home,” Allwright said. “I drove by Domme half an hour ago, and he was hard at work fixing his hen house.”
“What will happen to Sigbrit Mård’s house?” said Martin Beck. “She didn’t have any relatives, did she?”
“No. There’ll be an auction, I suppose. You’re not thinking of moving down here, are you?”
Allwright looked at Martin Beck and laughed.
“But you can’t bring National Homicide with you,” he said.
The sun was beginning to break through the fog, and at the airport they were assured that the plane would take off soon. Martin Beck checked his bag and walked back out to the car with Allwright. He leaned into the back seat and scratched Timmy behind one ear. Then he clapped Allwright on the shoulder.
“Thanks for everything,” he said.
“You’ll be back, I hope,” said Allwright. “Unofficially, I mean. I’m not going to put up with any more murders in this district. Why don’t you come down on your vacation?”
“Maybe I will,” said Martin Beck. “So long.”
Allwright climbed into his car.
“We could go pheasant hunting,” he said and winked.
Martin Beck stood and watched the red car drive away. Then he walked into the airport building and called Rhea Nielsen.
“I’ll be home in a couple of hours,” he said.
“Then I’ll go over to your place now,” she said. “And fix dinner. You’ll want to eat?”
“Sure will.”
“I’ve invented something new,” she said. “Sort of a stew. And I’ll pick up some wine on the way.”
“Good. I’ve missed you.”
“And I’ve missed you. Hurry.”
A little while later he was in the air.
The plane made a wide sweep, and the plains of Skåne lay beneath him in the sunshine, while off to the south he could see the ocean, blue and sparkling. Then his view disappeared as the plane climbed into a bank of clouds and headed north.
He was on his way home.
And there was someone waiting for him.
ALSO BY MAJ SJÖWALL AND
PER WAHLÖÖ
ROSEANNA
On a July afternoon, a young woman’s body is dredged from Sweden’s beautiful Lake Vättern. With no clues, Beck begins an investigation not only to uncover a murderer but also to discover who the victim was. Three months later, all Beck knows is that her name was Roseanna and that she could have been strangled by any one of eighty-five people on a cruise. As the melancholic Beck narrows the list of suspects, he is drawn increasingly to the enigma of the victim, a free-spirited traveler with a penchant for casual sex, and to the psychopathology of a murderer with a distinctive—indeed, terrifying—sense of propriety.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39046-2
THE MAN WHO WENT UP IN SMOKE
Inspector Martin Beck of the Stockholm Homicide Squad has his vacation abruptly terminated when the top brass at the foreign office pack him off to Budapest to search for Alf Matsson, who has vanished. Beck investigates viperous Eastern European underworld figures and—at the risk of his life—stumbles upon the international racket in which Matsson was involved. With the coolly efficient local police on his side and a predatory nymphet on his tail, Beck pursues a case whose international implications grow with each new clue.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39048-6
THE MAN ON THE BALCONY
In the once peaceful parks of Stockholm, a killer is stalking young girls and disposing of their bodies. The city is on edge, and an undercurrent of fear has gripped its residents. Martin Beck, now a superintendent, has two possible witnesses: a silent, stone-cold mugger and a mute three-year-old boy. With the likelihood of another murder growing as each day passes, the police force works night and day. But their efforts have offered little insight into the methodology of the killer. Then a distant memory resurfaces in Beck’s mind, and he may just have the break he needs.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39047-9
THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN
On a cold and rainy Stockholm night, nine bus riders are gunned down by a mysterious assassin. The press portrays it as a freak attack and dubs the killer a madman. But Superintendent Martin Beck thinks otherwise—one of his most ambitious young detectives was among those killed—and he suspects it was more than coincidence. Beck seeks out the girlfriend of the murdered detective, and with her help Beck reconstructs the steps that led to his murder. The police comb the country for the killer, only to find that this attack may be connected to a much older cold-case murder.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39050-9
THE FIRE ENGINE THAT DISAPPEARED
The cunning incendiary device that blew the roof off a Stockholm apartment building not only interrupted the small, peaceful orgy underway inside, it nearly took the lives of the eleven occupants. And if one of Martin Beck’s colleagues hadn’t been on the scene, the explosion would have led to a major catastrophe since—for reasons nobody could satisfactorily explain—a regulation fire truck has vanished. Was it terrorism, suicide, or simply a gas leak? And what, if anything, did the explosion have to do with the peculiar death earlier that day of a forty-six-year-old bachelor whose cryptic suicide note consisted of only two words: “Martin Beck”?
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39092-9
MURDER AT THE SAVOY
When Viktor Palmgren, a powerful Swedish industrialist, is shot during his after-dinner speech in the luxurious Hotel Savoy, it sends a shiver down the spine of the international money markets and terrifies the tiny town of Malmö. No one in the restaurant can identify the gunman, and local police are sheepishly baffled. That’s when Beck takes over the scene and quickly picks through Palmgren’s background. What he finds is a web of vice so despicable that it’s hard for him to imagine who wouldn’t want Palmgren dead, but that doesn’t stop him and his team of dedicated detectives from tackling one of their most intriguing cases yet.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39091-2
THE ABOMINABLE MAN
The gruesome murder of a police captain in his hospital room reveals the unsavory history of a man who spent forty years practicing a horrible blend of strong-arm police work and shear brutality. Beck and his colleagues comb Stockholm for the murderer, a demented and deadly rifleman, who has plans for even more chaos. As the tension builds and a feeling of imminent danger grips Beck, his investigation unearths evidence of police corruption. That’s when an even stronger sense of responsibility and something like shame urge him into taking a series of drastic steps, which lead to a shocking disaster.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39090-5
THE LOCKED ROOM
A young blonde in sunglasses robs a bank and kills a hapless citizen. Across town, a corpse with a bullet shot through its heart is found in a locked room—with no gun at the scene. The crimes seem disparate, but to Martin Beck they are two pieces of the same puzzle, and solving it becomes the one way he can escape the pains of his failed marriage and the lingering effects of a near-fatal bullet wound. Exploring the ramifications of egotism and intellect, luck and accident, this tour de force of detection bears the unmistakable substance of real life.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39049-3
THE TERRORISTS
An American senator is visiting Stockholm and Martin Beck must lead a team to protect him from an international gang of terrorists. In the midst of the fervor created by the diplomatic visit, a young, peace-loving woman is accused of robbing a bank. Beck is determined to prove her innocence, but gets trapped in the maze of police bureaucracy. To complicate matters a millionaire pornographer has been bludgeoned to death in his own bathtub. The Terrorists is the stunning conclusion to the series that changed crime fiction fo
rever.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-39088-2
VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD
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