Roseanna mb-1

Home > Other > Roseanna mb-1 > Page 5
Roseanna mb-1 Page 5

by Maj Sjowall


  'Did he recognize the boat?"

  'No, but wait. I called Gothenburg and spoke to a few men in the shipping office. One of them said that it certainly could be true. He thought the boat was named Diana and gave me the captain's address."

  A short pause followed. Martin Beck could hear that Ahlberg had struck a match.

  'I got hold of the captain. He said he certainly did remember although he would rather have forgotten it. First they had to stop at Hävringe for three hours because of heavy fog and then a steam pipe in the motor had broken…"

  'Engine."

  'What did you say?"

  'In the engine. Not the motor."

  'Oh yes, but in any case they had to stay over more than eight hours in Söderköping for repairs. That means that they were nearly twelve hours late and passed Borenshult after midnight. They didn't stop either in Motala or Vadstena but went directly on to Gothenburg."

  'When did this happen? Which day?"

  'The second trip after midsummer, the captain said. In other words, the night before the fifth."

  Neither of them said anything for at least ten seconds. Then Ahlberg said:

  'Four days before we found her. I called the shipping office guy again and checked out the time. He wondered what it was all about and I asked him if everyone on board had reached Gothenburg in good order. He said, 'Why shouldn't they have,' and I answered that I didn't really know. He must have thought that I was out of my mind."

  It was quiet again.

  'Do you think it means anything?" Ahlberg said finally.

  'I don't know," answered Martin Beck. "Maybe. You've done a fine job in any event."

  'If everyone who went on board arrived in Gothenburg, then it doesn't mean very much."

  His voice was a strange mixture of disappointment and modest triumph.

  'We have to check out all the information," Ahlberg said.

  'Naturally."

  'So long."

  'So long. I'll call you."

  Martin Beck remained standing a while with his hand on the telephone. Then he wrinkled his forehead and went through the living room like a sleepwalker. He closed the door behind him carefully and sat down in front of the model ship, lifted his right hand to make an adjustment on the mast, but dropped it immediately.

  He sat there for another hour until his wife came in and made him go to bed.

  8

  'No one could say that you look particularly well," said Kollberg.

  Martin Beck felt anything but well. He had a cold, and a sore throat, his ears hurt him and his chest felt miserable. The cold had, according to schedule, entered its worst phase. Even so, he had deliberately defied both the cold and the home front by spending the day in his office. First of all he had fled from the suffocating care which would have enveloped him had he remained in bed. Since the children had begun to grow up, Martin Beck's wife had adopted the role of home nurse with bubbling eagerness and almost manic determination. For her, his repeated bouts of colds and flu were on a par with birthdays and major holidays.

  In addition, for some reason he didn't have the conscience to stay home.

  'Why are you hanging around here if you aren't well?" said Kollberg.

  'There's nothing the matter with me."

  'Don't think so much about that case. It isn't the first time we have failed. It won't be the last either. You know that just as well as I do. We won't be any the better or the worse for it."

  'It isn't just the case that I'm thinking about"

  'Don't brood. It isn't good for the morale."

  'The morale?"

  'Yes, think what a lot of nonsense one can figure out with plenty of time. Brooding is the mother of ineffectiveness."

  After saying this Kollberg left.

  It had been an uneventful and dreary day, full of sneezing and spitting and dull routine. He had called Motala twice, mostly to cheer up Ahlberg, who in the light of day, had decided that his discovery wasn't worth very much as long as it couldn't be connected with the corpse at the locks.

  'I suspect that it is easy to overestimate certain things when you've been working like a dog for so long without results."

  Ahlberg had sounded crushed and regretful. It was almost heartbreaking.

  The girl who had disappeared from Räng was still missing. That didn't worry him. She was 5 feet, 1 inch tall, had blond hair and a Bardot hair style.

  At five o'clock he took a taxi home but got out at the subway station and walked the last bit in order to avoid the devastating economic argument which undoubtedly would have followed if his wife had happened to see him get out of a taxi.

  He couldn't eat anything but drank a cup of camomile tea. "For safety's sake, so that he'd get a stomach ache too," Martin Beck thought. Then he went and lay down and fell asleep immediately.

  The next morning he felt a little better. He ate a biscuit and drank with stoic calm the cup of scalding hot honey water which his wife had placed in front of him. The discussion about his health and the unreasonable demands that the government placed on its employees dragged on and by the time he arrived at his office at Kristineberg, it was already a quarter after ten.

  There was a cable on his desk.

  One minute later Martin Beck entered his chiefs office without knocking even though the "Don't Disturb" red light was on. This was the first time in eight years he had ever done this.

  The ever-present Kollberg and Commissioner Hammar were leaning against the edge of the desk studying a blueprint of an apartment. They both looked at him with amazement.

  'I got a cable from Kafka."

  'That's a hell of a way to start a work day," said Koll-berg.

  'That's his name. The detective in Lincoln, in America. He's identified the woman in Motala."

  'Can he do that by cable?" asked Hammar.

  'It seems so."

  He put the cable on the desk. All three of them read the text.

  THAT'S OUR GIRL ALL RIGHT. ROSEANNA MCGRAW, 27, LIBRARIAN. EXCHANGE OF FURTHER INFORMATION NECESSARY AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

  KAFKA, HOMICIDE

  'Roseanna McGraw," said Hammar. "Librarian. That's one you never thought of."

  'I had another theory," said Kollberg. "I thought she was from Mjölby. Where's Lincoln?"

  'In Nebraska, someplace in the middle of the country," said Martin Beck. "I think."

  Hammar read through the cable one more time.

  'We had better get going again then," he said. "This doesn't say particularly much."

  'Quite enough for us," said Kollberg. "We aren't spoiled."

  'Well," said Hammar calmly. "You and I ought to clear up what we're working on first."

  Martin Beck went back to his office, sat down a moment and massaged his hairline with his fingertips. The first surprised feeling of progress had somehow disappeared. It had taken three months to come up with information that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred you had free from the beginning. All the real work remained to be done.

  The embassy people and the County Police Superintendent could wait. He picked up the telephone and dialed the area code for Motala.

  'Yes," said Ahlberg.

  'She's been identified."

  'For sure?"

  'It seems so."

  Ahlberg said nothing.

  'She was an American. From a place called Lincoln in Nebraska. Are you writing it down?"

  'Hell, yes."

  'Her name was Roseanna McGraw. I'll spell it: R for Rudolf, O for Olof, S for Sigurd, E for Erik, A for Adam, N for Niklas, again N for Niklas, A for Adam. New word: capital M for Martin, C for Cesar, capital G for Gustav, R for Rudolf, A for Adam, W for Wilhelm. Have you got that?"

  'Sure I've got it."

  'She was twenty-seven years old and a librarian. That's all I know at the moment."

  'How did you manage that?"

  'Only routine. They began to look for her after a while. Not through Interpol. Via the embassy."

  'The boat?" said Ahlberg.
/>
  'What did you say?"

  'The boat. Where would an American tourist be coming from if not from a boat? Maybe not from my boat but from some pleasure yacht. Quite a few go through here."

  'We don't know if she was a tourist."

  'That's right. I'll get going immediately. If she knew anyone here or lived in town, I'll know about it in twenty-four hours."

  'Fine. I'll call you as soon as I know more."

  Martin Beck ended the conversation by sneezing in Ahlberg's ear. By the time he tried to apologize, the other had already hung up.

  In spite of his headache and his clogged up ears he felt better than he had for a long time. He felt like a longdistance runner one second before the starting gun. There were only two things that worried him: the murderer had jumped the gun and was three months ahead of him, and he didn't know in which direction to run.

  Somewhere under this surface of disquieting perspective and speculations of unknown worth his policeman's brain had already begun to plan the routine searches of the next forty- I eight hours, which, he knew in advance, would obtain certain results. This was as sure as the fact that sand will run down in an hour glass.

  For three months he hadn't really thought about anything but this. The moment when the investigation would really begin. It had been like trying to get out of a swamp in coal-black darkness and now he was feeling the first solid piece of ground under his feet. The next one would not be as far away.

  He wasn't expecting any quick results. If Ahlberg found out that the woman from Lincoln had worked in Motala, or had been visiting friends in the city, or had even been there, he would be more surprised than if the murderer walked through the door and placed the evidence of the murder on j his desk.

  On the other hand he was waiting for the supplementary 1 material from the U.S.A. without feeling particularly impa-tient. He thought about all the different statements that would gradually be sent on from the man in America and about Ahlberg's stubborn contention, which was actually to-tally groundless, that the woman had come by boat. It was more logical to think that the body had been brought down to the water by car.

  Immediately afterwards he began thinking about Detective Lieutenant Kafka, how he looked, and if the police station where he worked resembled the ones people saw on television.

  He wondered what time it was right now in Lincoln and where the woman had lived. He wondered if her apartment was empty, with white sheets covering the furniture, if the air in it was close and heavy, and filled with dust.

  It struck him that his knowledge of the geography of North America was rather poor. He didn't know where Lincoln was at all and the name Nebraska was just another name to him.

  After lunch he went to the library and took a look at a world atlas. He soon found Lincoln. The city certainly was inland, in fact as far in the middle of the United States as any city could be. It seemed to be a rather large city but he couldn't find any books containing information on North American cities. With the help of his pocket almanac he studied the time difference and figured it to be seven hours. It was now two-thirty in the afternoon in Stockholm and it was seven-thirty in the morning in Lincoln. Presumably Kafka was still in bed, reading his morning newspaper.

  He studied the map for several minutes, then placing his finger on the pin-sized point in the southeast corner of the state of Nebraska, which was nearly one hundred longitude degrees west of Greenwich, he said to himself: "Roseanna McGraw."

  He repeated the name several more times almost as if to nail it down in his consciousness.

  When he got back to the police station Kollberg was sitting at the typewriter.

  The telephone rang before either of them had time to say anything. It was the switchboard.

  'The Central Telephone Office has advised us that there is a phone call coming from the United States. It is coming in about thirty minutes. Can you take it?"

  Detective Lieutenant Kafka was not lying in bed reading the newspaper! Once again he had drawn too hasty a conclusion.

  'From America. Well, I'll be damned," said Kollberg.

  The call came after three-quarters of an hour. At first there were only confused noises and then a lot of telephone operators all talking at once, and then a voice came through, amazingly clear and distinct.

  'Yeah, Kafka speaking. That you Mr. Beck?"

  'Yes."

  'You got my wire?"

  'Yes. Thank you."

  'It's all clear, isn't it?"

  'Is there not any doubt about that it is the right woman?" asked Martin Beck.

  'You sound like a native," said Kollberg.

  'Nope, sir, that's Roseanna all right. I got her identified i less than one hour—thanks to your excellent description. even double-checked it. Gave it to her girlfriend and that ex-boyfriend of hers down in Omaha. Both were quite sure. All the same, I've mailed photographs and some other stuff for you."

  'When did she leave home?"

  'Beginning of May. Her idea was to spend about two months in Europe. It was her first trip abroad. As far as I know she was traveling alone."

  'Do you know anything about her plans?"

  'Not very much. In fact no one here does. I can give you one clue. She wrote a postcard from Norway to her girlfriend, saying that she was to stay one week in Sweden, then proceed to Copenhagen."

  'Did she not write anything more?"

  'Well, she said something about boarding a Swedish ship. For some sort of lake cruise through the country or something like that. That point is not very clear."

  Martin Beck held his breath.

  'Mr. Beck, are you still there?"

  'Yes."

  The connection was getting worse rather quickly.

  'I understand she was murdered," shouted Kafka. "Did you get the guy?"

  'Not yet."

  'I can't hear you."

  'In a short time, I hope, not yet," said Martin Beck.

  'You shot him?"

  'I did what? No, no, not shot…"

  'Yeah, I hear, you shot the bastard," screamed the man on the other side of the Atlantic. "That's great I'll give that to the papers here."

  'You are misunderstanding," Martin Beck roared.

  He heard Kafka's final reply like a weak whisper through ethereal noise.

  'Yeah, I understand perfectly well. I've got your name all right. So long. You'll be hearing from me. Well done, Martin."

  Martin Beck put down the receiver. He had been standing up during the entire conversation. He was panting and perspiration had broken out all over his face.

  'What are you doing?" asked Kollberg. "Do you think that they have speaking-tubes to Nebraska?"

  'We couldn't hear very well toward the end. He thought that I had shot the murderer. He said he was going to tell that to the newspapers."

  'Great. Tomorrow you'll be the hero of the day over there. The day after, they'll make you an honorary citizen and at Christmas time they'll send you the key to the city. A gilded one. 'Shoot-em-up-Martin, The avenger from south Stockholm.' The boys are going to have a good time with this one."

  Martin Beck blew his nose and wiped the perspiration from his face.

  'Well, what did he say? Or did he only go on about how clever you are?"

  'It was mostly you that was praised. For your description. 'Excellent description,' he said."

  'Was he positive of the identification?"

  'Yes, definitely. He had checked with her friend and with some sort of former beau."

  'What else?"

  'She left home in the middle of May. She was to spend two months in Europe. It was her first trip out of the country. She sent a postcard from Norway to her girlfriend and wrote that she would be here for a week and then continue on to Copenhagen. He said that he had mailed some pictures of her and some other things."

  'Was that all?"

  Martin Beck went over to the window and gazed out. He bit on his thumbnail.

  'She wrote on the postcard that she was going to take
a boat trip. Some sort of cruise through Sweden on the lakes and inland waterways…"

  He turned around and looked at his colleague. Kollberg was no longer smiling and the teasing look had left his eyes. After a while he said, very slowly:

  'So she did come with the canal boat Our friend in Motala was right."

  'It seems so," said Martin Beck.

  9

  Martin Beck took a deep breath when he came out of the subway station. The trip, with its crowded subway cars, had made him feel slightly ill as usual.

  The air was clear and light and a fresh breeze swept in over the city from the Baltic. He crossed the street and bought a pack of cigarettes in a tobacco store. He walked on toward Skepps Bridge and stopped, lit a cigarette and stood with his elbows on the bridge railing. A cruise ship bearing an English flag was anchored at a pier in the distance. He couldn't make out the name but guessed that it was the Devonia. A group of seagulls screeched as they fought over some garbage which had been thrown overboard. He stood for a while looking at the ship and then continued on toward the pier.

  Two dismal looking men sat on a pile of wood. The first one tried to light a cigarette butt in a wooden holder and when he didn't succeed the other one, whose hands shook less, tried to help him. Martin Beck looked at his wristwatch. Five minutes to nine. "They must be broke," he thought, "otherwise they would be waiting by the door of the liquor store at this time of day."

  He passed the Bore H which was tied up at the pier loading freight and stood on the curb directly across from the Hotel Reisen. It took a few minutes before he managed to break through the unending line of automobiles and get across the street.

  The passenger list for the Diana's trip on July 3 was not in the canal boat's shipping office. It was in the Gothenburg office but they had promised to send it as soon as possible. However, a list of the crew and other personnel was given to him immediately. When he left, he took a few brochures with him which he read on the way back to the office.

  Melander was already sitting in his visitor's chair when he arrived.

  'Hi there," Martin Beck said.

 

‹ Prev