by Maj Sjowall
Everyone had seen him.
'Stop the film," said the County Police Superintendent.
'No, no," said Ahlberg.
The camera did not return to the boat. A number of green shores glided past. Meadows, trees, tall grass blowing in the breeze, until the summer countryside faded away behind a lot of white spots.
Martin Beck took his handkerchief out of his breast pocket, crumpled it in his hands, and dried his neck.
The picture that covered the screen was new and surprising. The canal lay before and below them; it curved through a long, soft distance between tree-covered shores. Along the left side ran a path, and far off to the left some horses were grazing behind a fence. A group of people were walking along the path.
Ahlberg spoke before the County Superintendent had a chance to.
'This is west of Roxen now. The boat has passed Berg's locks. The photographer must have gone ahead to Ljungsbro during that time. There is the last lock before the one at Borensberg. It's about seven o'clock in the evening now."
The white bow with the Gothenburg flag appeared in the foreground far ahead. The people on the path came nearer.
'Thank God," said Ahlberg.
Only Martin Beck knew what he meant. The man who took the movie had an alternative. He could have gotten off the boat and gone with a guide who showed people around a monastery in Vreta during the time the boat was in the lock chamber.
Now there was a shot of the entire boat, moving slowly along the canal, inertly, with a gray-white plume of smoke which was reflected against the evening light.
But no one in the projection room looked at the boat any longer. The group of passengers on the path had come so close that separate individuals could be discerned. Martin Beck immediately identified Günes Fratt, the twenty-two year old medical student from Ankara. He walked ahead of the others, waving to the person who was following him.
Then he saw her.
About forty-five feet behind the main group there were two figures. One of them was Roseanna McGraw, still wearing light slacks and a dark sweater. Beside her, taking long steps, walked the man in the sport cap.
They were still quite far away.
'Let there be enough film," thought Martin Beck.
They came nearer. The position of the camera did not change.
Could they make out the faces?
He saw the tall man take her by the arm, as if to help her past a puddle of water in the path.
Saw them stop and look at the boat, which passed by and began to hide them from view. They were gone. But Mr. Bellamy from Klamath Falls was more stubborn than ever and held the position of his camera. Roseanna McGraw passed the boat, could be seen completely and clearly down on the path. She stopped walking and nodded her head, stretched out her right arm toward the person who was still bidden, but who then appeared. There.
The change of scene came as a shock. The sluice gate in the foreground, around and about, on the periphery, observers' legs. He thought he saw a pair of light trousers, feet in sandals and a pair of low shoes right beside them.
The picture was gone. It flickered slightly. Several people sighed. Martin Beck twisted his handkerchief between his fingers.
But it wasn't over yet. A somewhat underexposed shot of a face with violet lips and sunglasses filled the screen, and then disappeared to the right. Along the post side of A deck a waitress in a white blouse banged on a gong. Roseanna McGraw stepped out from behind her coming from the door to the dining room, wrinkled her forehead, looked up at the sky, laughed, and turned toward someone who was hidden. Not completely. They could see an arm in speckled tweed, a bit of a shoulder. Then came the white spots, and then the film faded and ended in gray, gray, gray.
She had laughed. He was certain of it. At seven o'clock on the evening of the fourth of July. Ten minutes later she had eaten beefsteak, fresh potatoes, strawberries and milk, while a Swedish colonel and a German major had exchanged viewpoints on the siege of Stalingrad.
The screen was flooded with light. More locks. A blue sky with floating clouds. The captain with his hand on the telegraph machine.
'Sjötorp," said Ahlberg. "Twelve o'clock the next day. Soon they'll be out in Lake Vĺnern."
Martin Beck remembered all the details. One hour later it had stopped raining. Roseanna McGraw was dead. Her body had been lying naked and violated in the mud near the breakwater at Borenshult for nearly twelve hours.
On the canal boat's deck people were stretched out in deck chairs, talking, laughing, and looking up at the sun. A wrinkled, upper class woman from Klamath Falls, Oregon, smiled violently toward the camera.
Now they were in Lake Vänern. People moved about here and there. The repulsive young man from the examination room in Motala emptied a sack of ashes into the lake. His face was sooty and he looked angrily at the photographer.
No woman in a dark sweater and light pants and sandals.
No tall man in a tweed jacket and a sport cap.
Roll after roll of film went by. Vänersborg in the evening sun. The Diana tied up there at the pier. A shot of a deck boy going on land. The Tröllhatten canal.
'There's a motor bike on the forward deck," said Ahlberg.
The boat lay tied up at Lilla Bomen in Gothenburg in the clear morning sun, at the stern of the full rigger, the Viking. A shot of the forward deck, people going down the gangway. The motor bike was no longer there.
Another shot, the woman with the violet lips sitting stiffly in one of Gothenburg's sightseeing boats, a pan over the Garden Association's flowers, white spots running vertically over the screen.
Fade-out. The end. The lights turned on.
After fifteen seconds of total silence Commissioner Ham-mar got out of his chair, looked from the County Police Superintendent to the Public Prosecutor and over at Larsson.
'Lunchtime, gentlemen. You are guests of the government."
He looked blandly at the others and said: "I guess that you will want to remain here for a little while."
Stenström left too. He was actually working on a different case.
Kollberg looked questioningly at Melander.
'No, I've never seen that man before."
Ahlberg held his right hand in front of his face.
'A deck passenger," he said.
He turned around and looked at Martin Beck.
'Do you remember the man that showed us around the boat in Bohus? The draperies that could be drawn if any of the deck passengers wanted to sleep on one of the sofas?"
Martin Beck nodded.
'The motor bike wasn't there in the beginning. The first time I saw it was in the locks after Söderköping," said Melander.
He took his pipe out of his mouth and emptied it.
'The guy in the sport cap could be seen there too," he said. "Once, from the back."
When they ran the film the next time, they saw that he was right.
20
The first snow of winter had begun to fall. It flew against the windows in large, white flakes which melted immediately and ran down the window panes in broad rills. It murmured in the rain gutters and heavy drops splashed against the metal window sills.
In spite of the fact that it was twelve noon, it was so dark in the room that Martin Beck had to turn on his reading light. It spread a pleasant light over his desk and the open file in front of him. The rest of the room lay in darkness.
Martin Beck put out his last cigarette, lifted up the ash tray and blew the ashes from the top of his desk.
He felt hungry and regretted that he had not gone to the cafeteria with Kollberg and Melander.
Ten days had passed since they had seen Kafka's film and they were still waiting for something to happen. Just as everything else in this case had, the new clue had disappeared in a jungle of question marks and doubtful testimony. Examination of witnesses had been conducted almost completely by Ahlberg and his staff, very carefully and with a great deal of energy. But the results had been meager. The most positiv
e thing that could be said was that they had not heard anything to negate their theory that a deck passenger had come on board the boat in Mem, Söderköping or Norsholm, and had stayed on the boat all the way to Gothenburg. Nor was there anything to contradict their assumption that this deck passenger had been a man of average build, somewhat above average height, and that he had been wearing a sport cap, a gray speckled tweed jacket, gray gabardine trousers, and brownish shoes. Or, in addition, that he had a blue Monark motor bike.
The first mate, whose testimony was the most helpful, thought that he had sold a ticket to someone who reminded him of the man in the pictures. He did not know when. He wasn't even sure if it had been this past summer. It could have been one of the previous summers. He did have a weak recollection, however, that the man, if indeed it was the same one that they meant, could have had a bicycle or a motor bike with him and, in addition, some fishing equipment and other stuff which could point to the fact that he was a sport fisherman.
Ahlberg had heard this testimony himself and had pushed the witness to the boundary of the conceivable. A copy of the record was in Martin Beck's files.
AHLBERG: Is it usual to carry deck passengers on a cruise?
WITNESS : It was more usual in past years but there are always a few.
A: Where do they usually get on?
W: Wherever the boat stops, or at the locks.
A: What is the most natural stretch for deck passengers to stay on board?
W: Any part of the trip. A lot of people on bicycles or hikers get on in Motala or Vadstena to get across Lake Vättern.
A: And others?
W: Yes, what shall I say. We used to take vacationers from Stockholm to Oxelösund, and from Lidköping to Vĺnersborg, but we stopped that.
A: Why?
W: It got too crowded. The regular passengers have paid a good price. They shouldn't have to be crowded out by a bunch of old women and young people running around with their thermoses and lunch baskets.
A: Is there anything to contradict the fact that a deck passenger could have come on board at Söderköping?
W: Not at all. He could have come on board anyplace. At any lock, too. There are sixty-five locks on the way. In addition, we tie up at several different places.
A: How many deck passengers could you take on board?
W: At one time? Nowadays, seldom more than ten. Most of the time only two or three. Sometimes none at all.
A: What kind of people are they? Are they usually Swedish?
W: No, not at all. They are often foreigners. They can be anyone at all, although most of them are the kind that like boats and take the trouble to find out what the time-table is.
A: And their names are not placed on the passenger lists?
W: No.
A: Do the deck passengers have a chance to eat meals on board?
W: Yes, they can eat like the others if they want to. Often, in an extra sitting after the others have finished. There are fixed prices for the cost of the meal. A la carte, so to speak.
A: You said earlier that you haven't the slightest recollection of the woman on this photograph, and now you say that you think you recognize this man. There was no purser on board and as the first mate, didn't you have the responsibility . to take care of the passengers?
W: I take their tickets when they come on board and I welcome them. After that they are left in peace. The idea of this trip isn't to shout out a lot of tourist information. They get enough of that in other places.
A: Isn't it odd that you don't recognize these people? You spent nearly three days with them.
W: All the passengers look alike to me. Remember, I see two thousand of them every summer. In ten years that makes twenty thousand. And while I'm working I am on the bridge. There are only two of us who can take watches. That makes twelve hours a day.
A: This trip was a special one, anyway, with unusual events.
W: I still had a watch on the bridge for twelve hours in any case. And, anyway, I had my wife with me on that trip.
A: Her name isn't on the passenger list.
W: No, why should it be? Members of the crew have the right to take their dependents along on some of the trips.
A: Then information that there were eighty-six people on board for this is not reliable. With deck passengers and dependents it could just as well have been one hundred?
W: Yes, of course.
A: Well, the man with the motor bike, the man on this picture, when did he leave the boat?
W: If I'm not even sure that I've seen him, how the devil should I know when he got off? A number of people who were in a hurry to catch trains, or planes, or other boats debarked at three o'clock in the morning as soon as we got to Lilla Bommen. Others stayed on and slept through the night and waited to debark in the morning.
A: Where did your wife get on board?
W: Here in Motala. We live here.
A: In Motala? In the middle of the night?
W: No, on the way up to Stockholm five days earlier. Then she left the boat on the next trip up, the eighth of July at four o'clock in the afternoon. Are you satisfied now?
A: How do you react when you think about what happened on that trip?
W. I don't believe that it happened as you say it did.
A: Why not?
W: Someone would have noticed it. Think about it, one hundred people on a small boat which is ninety feet long and fifteen feet wide. In a cabin which is as big as a rat trap.
A: Have you ever had anything other than a professional relationship with the passengers?
W: Yes, with my wife.
Martin Beck took the three photographs out of his inner pocket. Two of them had been made directly from the movie film, one was a partial blow-up of a black and white amateur picture from a group that Kafka had sent. They had two things in common: they depicted a tall man in a sport cap and a tweed jacket and they were both of very poor quality.
At this juncture hundreds of policemen in Stockholm, Gothenberg, Söderköping and Linköping had received copies of these pictures. In addition they had been sent to every public prosecutor's office and almost every police station from one end of the country to the other, and to several places in other countries.
They were poor photographs but anyone who was really acquainted with the man ought to have recognized him.
Maybe. But at their last meeting Hammar had said: "I think it looks like Melander."
He had also said: "This is no case. It is a guessing contest. Have we any reason to believe that the man is a Swede?"
'The motor bike."
'Which we are not sure was his."
'Yes."
'Is that all?"
'Yes."
Martin Beck put the pictures back in his inner pocket. He took Ahlberg's record of the hearing and looked back through several answers until he found the one he was looking for:
W: Yes, they can eat like the others, if they want to. Often, in an extra sitting after the others have finished…
He thumbed through the papers and took out a list of the canal boats' personnel for the last five years. He read through the list, took his pen from the desk holder and placed a mark next to one of the names. It read:
Göta Isaksson, waitress, Polhems Street 7, Stockholm. Employed at the SHT Restaurant from October 15, 1964. The Diana, 1959-1961, the Juno, 1962, the Diana, 1963, the Juno, 1964.
There was no notation that either Melander or Kollberg had examined her.
Both telephone numbers for the taxi companies were busy and after he had dismissed the thought of getting hold of a radio car, he put on his hat and coat, turned up his collar and walked through the slush to the subway.
The headwaiter at the SHT Restaurant seemed harassed and irritated, but showed him to one of Miss Göta's tables right next to the swinging doors which led to the kitchen. Martin Beck sat down on the banquette and picked up the menu. While he was reading it, he looked out over the restaurant.
Almost all the table
s were taken and only a few of the patrons were women. At several tables there were men sitting alone, most of them in late middle age. To judge by their familiar manner with the waitresses most of them ate there quite often.
Martin Beck watched the waitresses who rushed in and out through the swinging doors. He wondered which of them was Miss Göta and it took almost twenty minutes before he found out.
She had a round, friendly face, large teeth, short rumpled hair, the color of which Martin Beck described as "hair color."
He ordered small sandwiches, meatballs and an Amstel beer and ate slowly while he waited for the lunchtime rush to ebb away. When he had finished eating and had downed four cups of coffee, Miss Göta's other tables were empty and she came over to his.
He told her why he had come and showed her the photograph. She looked at it for a while, laid it down on the table, and took a breath before answering.
'Yes," she said. "I recognize him. I don't have any idea of who he is but he has traveled with the boats several times. Both the Juno and the Diana, I believe."
Martin Beck took the picture and held it up before her.
'Are you certain?" he asked. "The picture isn't very clear, it could be someone else."
'Yes, I'm certain. He was always dressed like that, by the way. I recognize the jacket and that cap."
'Do you remember if you saw him this past summer? You were on the Juno then, weren't you?"
'Yes. Let me think. I don't really think so. I see so many people. But the summer before last. I know that I saw him several times. Twice, in any case. I was on the Diana then and the girl I worked with, the other waitress, knew him. I remember that they used to talk to each other. He wasn't a regular passenger. I think he only went part of the way. He was a deck passenger. In any event he used to eat at the second or third sitting and he didn't come to all of the meals. But I think he usually got off in Gothenburg."
'Where does your friend live?"
'I wouldn't exactly call her my friend, we only worked together. I don't know where she lives, but she usually went to Växjö at the end of the season."
Miss Göta shifted her weight to the other foot and crossed her hands over her stomach as she looked up at the ceiling.