Roseanna mb-1

by Maj Sjowall

  'Good morning," said Melander.

  'That pipe smells dreadful. But by all means sit here and poison the air. You are most welcome. Or was there something special you wanted?"

  'You don't get cancer as quickly if you smoke a pipe. Your brand of cigarettes are said to be the most dangerous, by the way. At least that's what I've heard. Otherwise, I'm on duty."

  'Check with American Express, the Post Office, banks, the telephone company, other contacts, you understand, don't you?"

  'I believe so. What was the woman's name again?"

  Martin Beck wrote the name on a piece of paper, ROSEANNA MCGRAW, and gave it to Melander.

  'How do you pronounce it?"

  He left and Martin Beck opened the window. It was chilly -and the wind blew through the tree tops and swept up the leaves on the ground. After a while he shut the window again, hung his jacket over the back of his chair and sat down.

  He picked up the telephone and dialed the number of the National Office for Aliens. If she had registered at a hotel she ought to be on file there. Some record of her ought to be there in any event. He had to wait a long time before anyone answered and then it took ten minutes before the girl came back to the phone. She had found the card. Roseanna McGraw had stayed at the Hotel Gillet in Stockholm from June 30 until July 2.

  'Please send me a photocopy," said Martin Beck.

  He pressed down the buttons on the telephone and waited for the disconnected signal with the receiver still in his hand. Then he telephoned for a taxi and put on his jacket. Ten minutes later he got out of the taxi, paid the driver, and entered the hotel through its glass doors.

  In front of the reception desk stood a group of six men. They had name tags on their lapels and were all talking at the same time. The desk clerk looked unhappy and threw up his arms in a complaining gesture. It looked as if the discussion would take some time, so Martin Beck sat down in one of the armchairs in the lobby.

  He waited until the discussion was over and let the group disappear into the elevator before he went up to the desk.

  The desk clerk looked stoically through the register until he found the name. He turned the book toward Martin Beck so that he could read it. She had printed with attractive, even letters. Place of Birth: Denver, Col. USA. Home Address: Lincoln, Nebr. Last Place Visited: Nebr. USA.

  Martin Beck checked the guests who had registered on June 30 and the days immediately preceding and following. Above Roseanna McGraw's name were the names of no less than eight Americans. All except the two names on top of the list had given some place in the U.S.A. as their last place visited. The first one had written Phyllis with the rest of the name illegible. She had written North Cape, Sweden, as the last place visited. The person who had registered just beneath her had written North Cape, Norway, in the same column.

  'Was it a group tour?" asked Martin Beck.

  'Let's see," said the desk clerk and turned his head to look. "No, I don't really remember, but it is very likely. We sometimes have American groups here. They arrive with the'dollar train' from Narvik."

  Martin Beck showed the man a photograph but he shook his head in reply.

  'No, I'm sorry, we have so many guests here…"

  No one had recognized her but the trip to the hotel had some results. Now he knew where she had stayed, he had seen her name in the register and had even looked at the room she had stayed in. She had left the hotel on July 2.

  'And then? Where did you go?" he said quietly to himself.

  His temples were throbbing and his throat hurt. He wondered how much fever he had, and went back to the office.

  She could have traveled with the canal boat and gone on board the night before it left Stockholm. He had read in the brochure from the shipping office that passengers could go on board the night before the boat left. He was more and more convinced that she had been on the Diana in spite of the fact that there was still no evidence of it

  He wondered where Melander was and reached for the telephone. Just as he was about to dial the number he heard a distinct pecking at the door.

  Melander stood in the doorway.

  'No," he said. "Neither American Express nor any other such place knows anything about her. I'll go and get something to eat now if you don't mind."

  He had no objection and Melander disappeared.

  He telephoned Motala but Ahlberg wasn't in.

  His headache was getting worse. After looking for some headache pills for a while he went up to Kollberg's office to borrow a few. Just inside the door he started coughing so badly that he couldn't say anything for a long tune.

  Kollberg cocked his head and looked at him worriedly.

  'You sound worse than eighteen Ladies of the Camelias. Come here and let the doctor look at you."

  He looked at Martin Beck through his magnifying glass.

  'If you don't listen to the doctor you won't have much time left. Go home and creep into bed and drink a real large glass of toddy. Preferably three of them. Rum toddies. That's the only thing that will help. Then go to sleep and you'll wake up like new."

  'What do you think it is? And, by the way, I don't like rum," said Martin Beck.

  'Take cognac then. Don't worry about Kafka. If he calls, I'll take care of him. My English is excellent."

  'He won't call. Do you have any headache pills?"

  'No, but you can have a chocolate praline."

  Martin Beck returned to his office. The air in the room was thick and smoky but he didn't want to open the window and let the cold air in.

  Ahlberg still wasn't there when he telephoned a half hour later. He took out the list of the Diana's crew. It contained eighteen names and addresses from different parts of the country. Six of them were in Stockholm and there were two names without an address. Two of them lived in Motala.

  At four-thirty he decided to take Kollberg's advice. He cleaned off his desk and put his hat and coat on.

  On the way home he stopped at a pharmacy and bought a box of pills.

  He found a drop of cognac in the pantry, poured it into a cup of bouillon, and took the cup with him into the bedroom. By the tune his wife had come in with a heat lamp he was already asleep.

  He awoke early the next morning but stayed in bed until a quarter to eight. Then he got up and got dressed. He felt a great deal better and his headache had disappeared.

  On the dot of nine he opened the door to his office. An envelope with a red special delivery sticker lay on his desk. He opened it up with his index finger without taking the time to take off his overcoat

  The envelope contained a passenger list

  His eyes caught her name immediately.

  McGraw, R., Miss, USA: Single cabin A 7.

  10

  'I knew that I was right," Ahlberg said. "I had a feeling. How many passengers were there on the boat?"

  'According to the list there were sixty-eight," said Martin Beck and filled in the number on the paper in front of him with a pen.

  'Are their addresses listed?"

  'No, only nationalities. It's going to be one hell of a job to find all these people. We can cross off some of them, of course. Children and old women, for example. Then too, we have the crew and other personnel to get hold of. That makes eighteen more but I have their addresses."

  'You said that Kafka thought that she was traveling alone. What do you think?"

  'It doesn't seem as if she was with anyone. She had a single cabin. According to the deck plan it was the one farthest back toward the stern on the middle deck."

  'I must admit that it doesn't tell me very much," said Ahlberg. "In spite of the fact that I see that boat several times a week every summer I don't really know what it looks like. I've never been on board any of them. All three seem alike to me."

  'Actually, they are not really alike. I think we ought to try and get a look at the Diana. Ill find out where she is," said Martin Beck.

  He told Ahlberg about his visit to the Hotel Gillet, gave him the address of the
pilot and chief engineer both of whom lived in Motala, and promised to call again when he found out where the Diana was now.

  After he had finished the conversation with Ahlberg, he went into his chief's office with the passenger list.

  Hammar congratulated him on the progress and asked him to go and have a look at the boat as soon as possible. Kollberg and Melander would have to worry about the passenger list for the time being.

  Melander didn't seem very enthusiastic about the task of locating the addresses of sixty-seven unknown people spread out over the entire globe. He sat in Martin Beck's office with a copy of the passenger list in his hand and made a fast tabulation:

  'Fifteen Swedes, of which five are named Andersson, three named Johansson, and three named Petersson. That sounds promising! Twenty-one Americans, minus one, of course. Twelve Germans, four Danes, four Englishmen, one Scot, two Frenchmen, two South Africans—we can look for them with tom-tom drums—five Dutchmen and two Turks."

  He tapped his pipe against the wastepaper basket and put the list into his pocket.

  'Turks. On the Göta Canal," he mumbled and left the room.

  Martin Beck telephoned the canal boat office. The Diana was at Bohus for the winter, a community on the Göta River about twelve miles from Gothenburg. A man from the Gothenburg office would meet them there and show them the boat.

  He called Ahlberg and informed him that he would take the afternoon train to Motala. They agreed that they would leave Motala at seven o'clock the following morning in order to be in Bohus around ten o'clock.

  For once he missed the rush hour going home and the subway car was almost empty.

  His wife had begun to understand how important this case was to him and only ventured a mild protest when he told her that he was leaving. She packed his suitcase in sullen silence but Martin Beck pretended not to notice her demonstrable sulkiness. He kissed her absentmindedly on the cheek and left home a full hour before train time.

  'I didn't bother to reserve a room for you at the hotel," said Ahlberg, who was waiting with his car in front of the railroad station in Motala. "We have a formidable sofa you can sleep on."

  They sat up late and talked that evening and when the alarm clock rang the next morning they felt anything but rested. Ahlberg telephoned S.K.A.* [* Statens Kriminal Teknista Anstalt—the federal criminal technical bureau.] and they promised to send two men to Bohus. Then they went down to the car.

  The morning was cold and gray and after they had driven a while it began to rain lightly.

  'Did you get hold of the pilot and the chief engineer? Martin Beck asked, when they had left the city behind them.

  'Only the chief engineer," said Ahlberg. "He was a tough guy. I had to drag every word out of him. In any case he had very little to do with the passengers. And on this particular trip he was obviously fully occupied due to the trouble with the motor… sorry, the engine. He was in a bad mood the minute I mentioned that trip. But he said that there had been two boys helping him and that as far as he knew, they had signed on a boat which was going to England and Germany right after the Diana's last trip."

  'Oh, well." Martin Beck replied. "We'll get hold of them. We'll have to go through all the shipping company lists."

  The rain increased and by the time they reached Bohus the water was pouring over the windshield. They didn't see very much of the town because the heavy rain blocked their view but it looked rather small with a few factories and a large building which stretched out along the river. They found their way to the edge of the river and after they had driven slowly for a while, they caught sight of the boats. They looked deserted and spooky and the men couldn't make out the names of the boats until they were almost on top of the pier.

  They remained in the car and watched for the man from the shipping office. There was no one in sight but another car was parked not too far from them. When they drove over to it, they saw a man sitting behind the wheel, looking in their direction.

  They pulled up and parked their car next to the other one. The man rolled down his side window and shouted something. Through the noise of the rain they could make out their names and Martin Beck nodded 'yes' while he opened his window.

  The man introduced himself and suggested that they go on board immediately in spite of the heavy rain.

  He was short and heavy and when he hurried off ahead of them toward the Diana, he almost seemed to be rolling forward. With a certain amount of trouble, he got over the railing and waited while Martin Beck and Ahlberg climbed after him.

  The little man unlocked a door on the starboard side and they walked into some kind of a coatroom. On the other side there was a similar door which led out to the port promenade deck.

  On the right there were two glass doors leading into the dining room and between the doors was a large mirror. Directly in front of the mirror a flight of stairs led to a lower deck. They followed them and then went down still another flight of stairs which led to four large cabins and a large lounge with lace-covered sofas. The little man showed them how the sofas could be hidden by a curtain.

  'When we have deck passengers they can usually sleep here," he said.

  The climbed back up the stairs to the next deck where there were cabins for passengers and crew, toilets and bathrooms. The dining room was on the middle deck. There were sk round tables which could each accommodate six persons, a buffet toward the stern, a reading and writing room where one could look out through a large window, and a small serving room, with a dumbwaiter, leading to the galley below.

  When they went out on the promenade deck again the rain had nearly stopped. They walked toward the stern. On the starboard side there were three doors, the first one led to the serving room and the other two to cabins. On the other side there was a ladder going to the upper deck and on up to the bridge. Next to the ladder was Roseanna McGraw's cabin.

  The door to that cabin opened directly toward the stern. The cabin was small, no more than twelve feet long, and lacked ventilation. The back rest on the bed could be lifted up and turned into a top bunk. There was also a wash basin with a mahogany cover which, when down, provided some counter space. On the bulkhead over the wash basin was a mirror with a holder for a glass and toilet articles. The cabin floor was covered with a rug which was tacked down and there was a place for luggage under the bunk. At the end of the bed there was an empty space with some clothing hooks on the bulkhead.

  There was hardly room for three people in there which was soon obvious to the man from the shipping office. He went out and sat on a box containing life jackets and looked anxiously at his soaking wet shoes which dangled a good bit above the deck.

  Martin Beck and Ahlberg examined the small cabin. They hadn't hoped to find any traces of Roseanna since they knew that the cabin had been cleaned a good number of times since she had occupied it. Ahlberg lay down on the bed carefully and stated that there was hardly enough room in it for an adult person.

  They left the cabin door open and went out and sat down beside the man on the life jacket box.

  After they had been sitting quietly for a while, looking into the cabin, a large, black car drove up. It was the men from the S.K.A. They carried a large, black case between them and it didn't take long before they had begun to work.

  Ahlberg poked Martin Beck in the ribs and nodded his head toward the ladder. They climbed up to the upper deck. There were two lifeboats there, one on each side of the smokestack, and several large containers for deck chairs and blankets, but otherwise the deck was quite empty. Up on the bridge deck were two passenger cabins, a storeroom, and the captain's cabin which was behind the pilot room.

  At the foot of the ladder Martin Beck stopped and took out the deck plans which he had received from the canal boat office. Following this, they went through the boat one more time. When they returned to the stern of the middle deck, the little man was still sitting on the box, looking sorrowfully at the men from the S.K.A. who were on their knees in the cabin pulling tacks out of the
rug.

  It was two o'clock by the tune the large, black police car drove off toward the Gothenburg road with a shower of mud spraying from its wheels. The technicians had taken everything that was loose in the cabin with them, although it wasn't very much. They didn't think it would take long for them to have the results of their analysis finished.

  Martin Beck and Ahlberg thanked the man from the shipping office and he shook their hands with exaggerated enthusiasm, clearly grateful to be finally getting away from there.

  When his car had disappeared round the first bend in the road, Ahlberg said: "I am tired and rather hungry. Let's drive down to Gothenburg and spend the night there. Okay?"

  About a half hour later they parked outside of a hotel on Post Street. They took single rooms, rested for an hour, and then went out to eat dinner.

  While they were eating Martin Beck talked about boats and Ahlberg talked about a trip he had taken to the Faroe Islands.

  Neither of them mentioned Roseanna McGraw.

  11

  To get from Gothenburg to Motala one takes Route 40 eastward via Borĺs and Ulricehamn to Jönköping. There, one turns northward onto the European Route 3 and continues on to ödeshög, and follows Route 50 from there past Tĺkern and Vadstena into Motala. It is a. distance of approximately 165 miles and on this particular morning it took Ahlberg only about three and a half hours to cover it.

  They had started at five-thirty in the morning, just at daybreak, while the garbage trucks were loading and newspaper women and one or two policemen were the only people to be seen on the rain-cleaned streets. A good many flat, gray miles disappeared behind the car before Ahlberg and Martin Beck broke the silence. After they had passed Hindĺs, Ahlberg cleared his throat and said:

  'Do you really think it happened there? Inside that crowded cabin?"

  'Where else?"

  'With other people only a few inches away, behind the wall in the next cabin?"

  'Bulkhead."

  'What did you say?"

  'Behind the bulkhead, not the wall."

  'Oh," said Ahlberg.

  Six miles later Martin Beck said:

  'With others so close by, he would have to keep her from screaming."