by Maj Sjowall
'Yes, that's right. Växjö. I think she lives there."
'Do you know how well she knew this man?"
'No, I really don't. I think she was a bit taken with him. She used to meet him sometimes when we were off duty although we weren't actually supposed to mix with the passengers. He looked quite pleasant. Attractive in a way…"
'Can you describe him? I mean hair color, the color of his eyes, height, age, and so forth."
'Well, he was pretty tall. Taller than you are, I think. Not thin, not fat, but stockily built, one could say. He had rather broad shoulders, and I think he had blue eyes. I'm not sure about that, of course. Light hair, the kind called ash blond, a little lighter than mine. I didn't see his hair very much because he usually had that cap on. And he had nice teeth, I do remember that. His eyes were round… I mean I think he was a little popeyed. But he was definitely good looking. He could be between thirty-five and forty."
Martin Beck asked a few more questions but didn't get much more information. When he got back to his office he looked through the list again and soon found the name he was looking for. There was no address given, only a notation that she had worked on the Diana from 1960 until 1963.
It took him only a few minutes to find her name in the Växjö telephone book but he had to wait a long time before she answered the telephone. She seemed very unwilling to meet him but she couldn't really refuse.
Martin Beck took the night train and arrived in Växjö at 6:30 a.m. It was still dark and the air was mild and hazy. He walked through the streets and watched the city awaken. At a quarter of eight he was back at the railroad station. He had forgotten his galoshes and the dampness had begun to penetrate the thin soles of his shoes. He bought a newspaper at the kiosk and read it, sitting on a bench in the waiting room with his feet up against a radiator. After a while he went out, looked for a cafe which was open, drank some coffee and waited.
At nine o'clock he got up and paid his check. Four minutes later he was standing in front of the woman's door. The name Larsson was on a metal plate and above it was a calling card with the name Siv Svensson printed in an ornate style. The door was opened by a large woman in a light blue bathrobe.
'Miss Larsson?" said Martin Beck.
The woman tittered and disappeared. From inside the apartment he heard her voice: "Karin, there's a man at the door asking for you."
He didn't hear an answer but the large woman came back and asked him to come in. Then she disappeared.
He stood in the small, dark hall with his hat in his hand. It was several minutes before a pair of drapes were pushed aside and a voice said to him, "Come in."
'I wasn't expecting you this early," said the woman who was standing inside.
She had gray streaks in her dark hair which was swept up sloppily from her neck. Her face was thin and seemed small in relation to her body. Her features were even and pretty but her skin was sallow and she had not had time to put on any make-up. There were still traces of mascara around her eyes, which were brown and slightly slanted. Her green jersey dress was tight across her breasts and her broad hips.
'I work late every night so I usually sleep late in the morning," she said with some annoyance.
'I beg your pardon," said Martin Beck. "I have come to ask your help in a matter which has a connection with your employment on the Diana. Did you work there last summer too?"
'No, last summer I was on a boat that went to Leningrad." answered the woman.
She was still standing up and looked at Martin Beck cautiously. He sat down in one of the flowery easy chairs. Then he gave her the picture. She took it and looked at it. A nearly imperceptible change crossed her face, her eyes widened for a fraction of a second, but when he handed the picture back to him her face was stiff and dismissing.
'Yes?"
'You know this man, don't you?"
'No," she answered, without the slightest hesitation.
She walked across the room and took a cigarette out of a glass box which lay on the tile table in front of the window. She lit the cigarette and sat down on the sofa across from Martin Beck.
'What do you mean? I've never seen him. Why are you asking?"
Her voice was calm. Martin Beck looked at her for a while. Then he said:
'I know that you know him. You met him on the Diana the summer before last."
'No, I've never seen him. You had better go now. I have to get some sleep."
'Why are you lying?"
'You have no right to come here and be impertinent. You had better leave now, as I said."
'Miss Larsson. Why won't you admit that you know who he is? I know that you are not telling the truth. If you don't tell the truth now, it could be unpleasant for you later on."
'I don't know him."
'Since I can prove that you have been seen with this man several times, it would be better to tell the truth. I want to know who the man on the photograph is and you can tell me. Be reasonable."
'This is a mistake. You must be wrong. I don't know who he is. Please leave me alone."
During the conversation Martin Beck looked steadily at the woman. She was sitting on the edge of the sofa and constantly tapping her index finger against her cigarette although there wasn't any ash to knock off. Her face was tense and he saw how her jawbones moved under her skin.
She was frightened.
He stayed in the flowery chair and tried to get her to talk. But now, she said nothing at all, only sat stiffly on the sofa and peeled pieces of orange colored nail polish off her fingernails. Finally she got up and walked back and forth across the room. After a while Martin Beck also got up, took his hat, and said goodbye. She didn't answer. She stood there stiff and dismissing with her back turned toward him.
'You will hear from me again," he said.
Before he left he laid his card on the table.
It was evening before he got back to Stockholm. He went directly to the subway and went home.
The next morning he telephoned Göta Isaksson. She wasn't going to work until the afternoon shift so that he was welcome to stop by whenever he wanted. One hour later he sat in her small apartment. She made some coffee in the kitchenette and when she had poured it and sat down opposite him, he said:
'I went down to Växjö yesterday and talked with your colleague. She denied that she had known the man. And she seemed frightened. Do you know why she won't admit that she knew him?"
'I have no idea. I actually know very little about her. She wasn't particularly talkative. We did work together for three summers but she seldom said anything about herself."
'Do you remember if she used to talk about men during the time you were together?"
'Only one. I remember that she said she had met a nice man on the boat. That must have been the second summer we worked together."
She cocked her head and counted to herself.
'Yes, it must have been the summer of '61."
'Did she speak about him often?"
'She mentioned him from time to time. It seemed as if she was seeing him too now and then. He must have been on several trips or else have met her in Stockholm or Gothenburg. Maybe he was a passenger. Maybe he was there because of her. What do I know?"
'You never saw him?"
'No. I've really never thought about it until now when you started asking questions. It could have been the same man as the one in the picture although it seemed as if she hadn't met him until two summers ago. And then she never said anything."
'What did she say about him the first summer? 1961?"
'Oh, nothing special. That he was nice. I think that she said that he was refined in some way. I suspect that she meant that he was well mannered and polite and so forth, as if ordinary people weren't good enough for her. But then she stopped talking about him. I think it was over or else something happened between them because she seemed rather depressed toward the end of that summer."
'The following summer, did you see each other then?"
'N
o, she was still on the Diana then and I was working on the Juno. We saw each other a few times in Vadstena, I think. The boats meet there, but we never spoke. Won't you have some more coffee?"
Martin Beck could feel his stomach reacting but he couldn't bring himself to say no.
'Has she done anything? I mean, you're asking so many questions."
'No," said Martin Beck. "She hasn't done anything but we want to get hold of the man in the photograph. Do you remember if she said or did anything the summer before last which could have any connection with the man in this picture?"
'No, not that I remember. We shared a cabin and she was sometimes out at night. I suspect that she was meeting some man, but I'm not the type that meddles in other people's business. But I know that she wasn't particularly happy. I mean that if she was in love with someone, she should have seemed happy. But she wasn't. To the contrary, she was nervous and sad. Almost a bit strange. But that could have been because she was sick. She quit before the end of the season, a month early, I think. She just didn't show up one morning and I had to work alone the whole day before they found a replacement. They said that she had gone to the hospital, but no one knew what was wrong with her. She didn't come back that summer in any event. I haven't seen her since."
She poured some more coffee and offered Martin Beck some cookies, while she continued to talk, freely and a great deal, about her work routine, her fellow employees, and some passengers she remembered. It was another full hour
before he left there.
The weather had gotten better. The streets were nearly dry and the sun shone down from a clear sky. Martin Beck didn't feel too well, due to the coffee, and he walked back to his office at Kristineberg. While he walked along the water at North Mälarstrand he thought about what he had learned of the two waitresses.
He hadn't learned anything at all from Karin Larsson but the visit to Växjö had convinced him that she knew the man but didn't dare talk about it.
From Göta Isaksson he had learned that:
Karin Larsson had met a man on board the Diana during the summer of 1961. Probably a deck passenger, who had possibly traveled with the boat several times that summer.
That two summers later, the summer of 1963, she had met a man, probably a deck passenger, who traveled with the boat now and then. The man could well have been identical to the one on the photograph, according to Göta Isaksson.
That she had seemed depressed and nervous that summer and had quit her job before the end of the season sometime at the beginning of August, and had gone into the hospital.
He didn't know why. Nor did he know which hospital she had gone to and how long she had stayed. The only chance seemed to be to ask her directly.
He dialed the number in Växjö as soon as he got back to his office but didn't get any answer. He suspected that she was asleep or else was working on an early shift.
During the course of the afternoon he called again several times and also a few times during the evening.
On his seventh attempt at two o'clock in the afternoon the following day, a voice which he thought belonged to the large woman in the blue bathrobe answered.
'No, she's away."
'When?"
'She left last night. Who's calling?"
'A good friend. Where did she go?"
'She didn't say. But I heard her call and ask about the trains to Gothenburg."
'Did you hear anything else?"
'It sounded as if she was thinking about working on some boat."
'When did she decide to go?"
'She must have decided awfully quickly. There was some man here yesterday morning and right after that she made up her mind to leave. She seemed changed."
'Do you know which boat she was going to begin working on?"
'No, I didn't hear."
'Will she be gone long?"
'She didn't say. Can I give her any message if I hear from her?"
'No, thank you."
She had gone away, in a great hurry. He was sure that she was already on some boat going far out of reach. And now he was certain of what had before been only a guess.
She was frightened to death of someone or something and he had to find out why.
21
The office at the Växjö hospital was quick in getting the information.
'Larsson, Karin Elisabeth, yes, that's right, someone by that name did enter the women's clinic on August 9 and stayed until October 1 last year. For what? You will have to talk to the doctor about that."
The doctor at the women's clinic said: "Yes, it's quite possible that I remember. I'll call you back after I've looked at the records."
While Martin Beck waited he looked at the photographs and read through the description which they had made up after his conversation with Göta Isaksson. It was imperfect but a great deal better than the one they had a few hours earlier.
Height: approximately 6' I". Body build: normal. Hair color: ash blond. Eyes: presumably blue (green or gray), round, slightly protrudent. Teeth: white, healthy.
The phone call came an hour later. The doctor had located the records.
'Yes, it was just as I thought. She came here on her own the evening of August 9. I remember that I was just going to go home when they called me to take a look at her. They had taken her into the examining room and she was bleeding pretty heavily from her genitals. She had obviously been bleeding heavily for quite a while because she had lost a lot of blood and was in pretty bad shape. No direct danger of course. When I asked her what had happened, she refused to answer. It is not unusual in my department that the patient won't discuss the reason for their bleeding. You can figure the reason out yourself and anyway, it usually comes out sooner or later. But this one didn't say anything at all in the beginning and later on she lied. Do you want me to read directly from the record for you? Otherwise I can tell you in layman's language."
'Yes, please do," said Martin Beck. "My Latin isn't very good."
'Mine neither," said the doctor.
He came from southern Sweden and spoke calmly, evenly and methodically.
'As I said, she bled profusely and had pain, so we gave her an injection. The bleeding came partially from the mouth of the uterus and partly from a wound in the vagina. At the mouth of the uterus and on the back part of the walls of the vagina were wounds which must have been made by a hard, sharp object. Around the muscles at the opening of the vagina there were splits which showed that the instrument must also have been terribly coarse. It isn't unusual for a woman who has undergone a careless or badly performed abortion, or has tried to do the abortion herself, to end up with bad wounds. But I can state that I have never seen anything like her condition in connection with an abortion. It seems totally impossible that she could have made such an attack on herself."
'Did she say that she had, that she had done it herself?"
'Yes, that's what she claimed when she finally said something. I tried to get her to tell me how it had happened but she kept on saying that she had done it herself. I didn't believe her and she knew that I didn't believe her and finally she didn't even try to convince me but just kept repeating what she had already said; 'I did it myself, I did it myself like a broken phonograph record. The strange part of it was that she hadn't even been pregnant. The uterus was damaged but if she had been pregnant it must have been in such an early stage that she couldn't possibly have known it herself."
'What do you think had happened?"
'Some perverse maniac. It sounds crazy to say it right out but I am almost sure she was trying to protect someone. I was worried about her so we kept her here until October 1 although we could well have let her go earlier. In addition, I hadn't given up hope that she might speak up and tell us about it. But she kept on denying everything else and finally we had to let her go home. There was nothing more I could do. I did speak about it to some acquaintances in the police force here, and they must have done something, but never came up with anything."
; Martin Beck said nothing.
'As I told you I don't know exactly what happened," said the doctor. "But it was some kind of a weapon, it's not easy to say what. Maybe a bottle. Has something happened to her?"
'No, I only wanted to talk with her."
'That isn't going to be particularly easy."
'No," said Martin Beck. "Thank you for the help."
He put his pen back in his pocket without having made a single note.
Martin Beck rubbed his hairline with the tips of his fingers while he looked at the picture of the man in the sport cap.
He thought about the woman in Växjö whose fear had caused her to hide the truth so stubbornly and carefully and had now driven her to flee from all questions. He stared at the photograph and mumbled, "Why?" But he knew already that there was only one answer to that question.
The telephone rang. It was the doctor.
'I forgot something that might be of interest to you. The patient in question had been in the hospital earlier, at the end of December 1962, to be exact. I forgot it, partly because I was on vacation then, partly because she was in another section of the hospital. But I read about it in her record when I took care of her. That time she had broken two fingers, the index finger and the middle finger on her left hand. That time, too, she refused to say how it had happened. Someone asked her if she had fallen down some stairs and at first she had replied that it had happened that way. But according to the doctor who took care of her at the time, that wasn't likely. The fingers had been broken backwards, toward the back side of her hand, but otherwise there were no other wounds at all. I don't know much more than that. She was treated as usual with gypsum and the like and she healed normally."
Martin Beck thanked him and hung up the receiver. He picked it up immediately again and dialed the number of the SHT Restaurant. He heard a lot of noise from the kitchen and someone calling out "Three beef ĺ la Lindström!" right next to the receiver. A few minutes later Göta Isaksson answered.
'It's so noisy here," she said. "Where were we when she got sick? Yes, I do remember that. We were in Gothenburg then. She wasn't there when the boat left in the morning and then they didn't get a replacement for her until we got into Töreboda."