The Man Who Went Up in Smoke

by Maj Sjowall

  Martin Beck put everything back as nicely and neatly as possible and returned to the reception desk. It was noon and high time to go out. As he still didn’t know what he should do. he might at least do it out in the fresh air—for instance, in the sun on the quay. He took his room key out of his pocket and looked at it. It looked just as old, as venerable and as solid as the hotel itself. He put it down on the desk. The porter at once reached out his hand for the key.

  “That’s a spare key, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t understand,” said the porter.

  “I thought that the previous guest took the key with him.”

  “Yes, that’s right. But we got the key back the next day.”

  “Got it back? Who from?”

  “From the police, sir.”

  “From the police? Which police?”

  The porter shrugged his shoulders in bewilderment.

  “From the ordinary police, of course. Who else? A policeman handed in the key to the doorman. Mr. Matsson must have dropped it somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know, sir.”

  Martin Beck asked one more question.

  “Has anyone else besides me gone through Mr. Matsson’s luggage?”

  The porter hesitated for a moment before answering.

  “I don’t think so, sir.”

  Martin Beck went through the revolving door. The man with the gray mustache and a visored cap was standing in the shade beneath the balcony, perfectly still with his hands behind his back, a living memorial to Emil Jannings.

  “Do you remember receiving a room key from a policeman two weeks ago?”

  The old man looked at him questioningly.

  “Of course.”

  “Was it a uniformed policeman?”

  “Yes, yes … A patrol car stopped here and one of the policemen got out and turned in the key.”

  “What did he say?”

  The man thought.

  “He said: ‘Lost property.’ Nothing else, I believe.”

  Martin Beck turned around and walked away. After three steps, he remembered that he had forgotten to leave a tip. He went back and placed a number of the unfamiliar light-metal coins into the man’s hand. The doorman touched the visor of his cap with the fingertips of his right hand and said, “Thank you, but it isn’t necessary.”

  “You speak excellent German,” said Martin Beck.

  And he thought: Hell of a lot better than I do, anyway.

  “I learned it at the Isonzo front in 1916.”

  As Martin Beck turned the corner of the block, he took out the map and looked at it. Then he walked, map still in hand, down toward the quay. A big white paddle steamer with two funnels was forging its way upriver. He looked at it joylessly.

  There was something fundamentally wrong with all this. Something was quite definitely not as it should be. What it was he did not know.

  9

  It was Sunday and very warm. A light haze of heat trembled over the mountain slopes. The quay was crowded with people walking back and forth or sitting sunning themselves on the steps down to the river. On the small steamers and motor launches shuttling up and down the river people clad in summer clothes crowded together on their way to bathing sites and holiday spots. Long lines were waiting at the ticket offices.

  Martin Beck had forgotten that it was Sunday and was at first surprised by the crowds. He followed the stream of strollers and walked along the quay, watching the lively boat traffic. He had thought of starting the day with a walk across the next bridge to Margaret Island, out in the middle of the river, but changed his mind when he imagined the crowds of Budapest citizens spending their Sunday out there.

  He was slightly irritated by the crush, and the sight of all these people, happy on their free Sunday, filled him with an urge for activity. He would visit the hotel at which Alf Matsson spent his first and perhaps only night in Budapest—a young people’s hotel on the Buda side, the Embassy man had said.

  Martin Beck broke out of the stream of people and went up to the street above the quay. He stood in the shade of the gable of a house and studied the map. He hunted for a long time, but could not find a hotel called Ifjuság, and finally he folded up the map and began to walk toward the bridge over to the island and onto the Buda side. He looked around for a police patrolman but did not succeed in finding one. At the end of the bridge there was a taxi stand and a taxi was waiting there. It looked free.

  The driver could speak only Hungarian and did not understand a word until Martin Beck showed him the piece of paper with the hotel’s name written on it.

  They drove across the bridge, past the green island, where he caught sight of a high-flung surge of water between the trees, then on along a shopping street, up steep narrow streets and in onto an open square with lawns and a modernistic bronze group representing a man and a woman sitting staring at each other.

  The taxi stopped there and Martin Beck paid—probably much too much, for the driver thanked him profusely in his incomprehensible language.

  The hotel was low and spread out along the square, which was more like a widening of the street, with flower beds and parking places. The building appeared to be built just recently, in contrast to the other houses that surrounded the square. The architecture was modern and the entire façade was covered with balconies. The steps leading up to the entrance were wide and few.

  Inside the glass doors was a long, light foyer, containing a souvenir stand (which was closed), elevator doors, a couple of groups of chairs and a reception desk. The reception desk was empty and there was not a soul in the foyer.

  Adjoining the foyer was a big lounge with armchairs and low tables and large windows all along the far wall. This room was empty too.

  Martin Beck went across to the wall with the windows and looked out.

  A few young people were lying on the lawn outside, sunning themselves in bathing suits.

  The hotel was situated on a hill with a view across to the Pest side. The houses on the slope between the hotel and the river appeared old and shabby. From the taxi Martin Beck had seen bullet holes in most of the façades, and on a number of houses the plastering had been almost entirely shot away.

  He looked out into the foyer, which was still just as deserted, and sat down in one of the armchairs in the lounge. He did not expect much from his visit to the Ifjuság. Alf Matsson had stayed here one night, there was a shortage of hotel rooms in Budapest in the summer, and the fact that this particular hotel had a room free was probably sheer chance. It was hardly plausible that anyone would remember a guest who had come late in the evening and left the next morning, at the height of the summer season.

  He extinguished his last Florida cigarette and looked gloomily at the sunburned youngsters out on the lawn. It suddenly seemed to him quite ridiculous that he should be gadding about Budapest trying to find a person to whom he was completely indifferent. He could not remember ever being given such a hopeless, meaningless assignment.

  Steps could be heard out in the foyer, and Martin Beck got up and went out after them. A young man was standing behind the reception desk with a telephone receiver in his hand, staring up at the ceiling and biting his thumbnail as he listened. Then he began to speak and at first Martin Beck thought the man was speaking Finnish, but then remembered that Finnish and Hungarian stemmed from the same linguistic stock.

  The young man put down the receiver and looked inquiringly at Martin Beck, who hesitated while trying to decide which language he should begin with.

  “What can I do for you?” said the youth in perfect English, to Martin Beck’s relief.

  “It’s about a guest who stayed at this hotel the night of July twenty-second. Have you any idea who was on duty here that night?”

  The young man looked at a wall calendar.

  “I really don’t remember,” he said. “It’s more than two weeks ago. One moment, and I’ll have a look.”

  He hunted around for a while on
a shelf under the desk, retrieved a little black book and leafed through it. Then he said, “It was me, in fact. Friday night, yes … What kind of person? Did he stay just one night?”

  “Yes, as far as I know,” said Martin Beck. “He might have stayed here later, of course. A Swedish journalist named Alf Matsson.”

  The youth stared at the ceiling and chewed his nail. Then he shook his head.

  “I can’t remember any Swede. We get very few Swedes here. What did he look like?”

  Martin Beck showed him Alf Matsson’s passport photograph. The youth looked at it for a moment and said hesitantly, “I don’t know. Perhaps I’ve seen him before. I can’t really remember.”

  “Do you have a ledger? A guest register?”

  The young man pulled out a card-file drawer and began to search. Martin Beck waited. He felt an urge to smoke and hunted through his pockets, but his cigarettes were irrevocably at an end.

  “Here it is,” said the youth, taking a card out of the drawer. “Alf Matsson. Swedish, yes. He stayed here the night of July twenty-second, just as you say.”

  “And he didn’t stay here after that night?”

  “No, not afterward. But he did stay here for a few days at the end of May. But that was before I came here. I was taking my exams then.”

  Martin Beck took the card and looked at it. Alf Matsson had stayed at the hotel from the twenty-fifth to the twenty-eighth of May.

  “Who was on duty here then?”

  The youth thought about it. Then he said, “It must have been Stefi. Or else the man who was here before me. I really can’t remember what his name is.”

  “Stefi,” said Martin Beck. “Does he still work here?”

  “She,” said the young man. “It’s a girl—Stefania. Yes, she and I work in shifts.”

  “When is she coming in?”

  “She’s bound to be here already. I mean in her room. She lives here at the hotel, you see. But she has the night shift this week, so she’s probably asleep.”

  “Could you find out?” asked Martin Beck. “If she’s awake, I’d like to speak to her.”

  The youth lifted the receiver and dialed a number. After a while he replaced the receiver.

  “No answer.”

  He lifted the flap door in the desk and came out.

  “I’ll see if she’s in,” he said. “Just a moment.”

  He got into one of the elevators and Martin Beck saw from the signal light that he had stopped at the second floor. After a while he came down again.

  “Her roommate says she’s out sunbathing. Wait a moment and I’ll go get her.”

  He disappeared into the lounge and returned a moment later with a girl. She was small and chubby, wearing sandals on her feet and a checkered cotton robe over her bikini. She was buttoning up the robe as she came toward Martin Beck.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the girl called Stefi. “Can I help you with anything?”

  Martin Beck asked her if she had been on duty during the particular days in May. She went behind the desk, looked in the black book and nodded.

  “Yes,” she said. “But only in the daytime.”

  Martin Beck showed her Alf Matsson’s passport.

  “Swedish?” she asked without looking up.

  “Yes,” said Martin Beck. “A journalist.”

  He looked at her and waited. She looked at the passport photograph and cocked her head.

  “Ye-es,” she said hesitantly. “Yes, I think I remember him. He was alone at first in a room with three beds, and then we had a Russian party, so I needed the room and had to move him. He was awfully angry that he didn’t get a telephone in the new room. We haven’t got telephones in all the rooms. He made such a fuss about not having one, I was forced to let him exchange rooms with someone who didn’t need a telephone.”

  She closed the passport and put it down on the desk.

  “If it was him,” she said, “that photo’s not very good.”

  “Do you remember if he had any visitors?” said Martin Beck.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think so. Not so far as I can remember, anyhow.”

  “Did he use the phone a lot? Or did he receive any calls which you can remember?”

  “It seems to me that a lady rang several times, but I’m not certain,” said Stefi.

  Martin Beck pondered awhile and then said, “Do you remember anything else about him?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “He had a typewriter with him, I’m sure. And I remember that he was well dressed. Otherwise I can’t remember anything special about him.”

  Martin Beck put the passport back in his pocket and recalled that he had run out of cigarettes.

  “May I buy a pack of cigarettes here?” he said.

  The girl bent forward and looked in a drawer.

  “Certainly,” she said. “But I’ve only got Tervs.”

  “That’s fine,” said Martin Beck, taking the pack made of gray paper, with a picture of a factory with tall smokestacks on it. He paid with a note and told her to keep the change. Then he took a pen and a pad from the desk, wrote down his own name and that of his hotel, tore off the sheet and handed it to Stefi.

  “If you can think of anything else, perhaps you’d call me, would you?”

  Stefi looked at the piece of paper with a frown.

  “I’ve just remembered something else when you were writing that note,” she said. “I think it was that Swede who asked how you got to an address in Újpest. It might not have been him, I’m not certain. Perhaps it was a different guest. I drew a little map for him.”

  She fell silent and Martin Beck waited.

  “I remember the street he was asking about, but not the number. My aunt lives on that street, so that’s why I remembered it.”

  Martin Beck pushed the pad toward her.

  “Would you be good enough to write down the name of the street for me?”

  As Martin Beck came out of the hotel, he looked at the slip of paper. Venetianer út.

  He put the paper into his pocket, lit a Terv and began strolling down toward the river.

  10

  It was Monday the eighth of August and Martin Beck was waked by the telephone. He propped himself sleepily up on his elbow, fumbled with the receiver a moment and heard the telephone operator say something he did not understand. Then a familiar voice said:

  “Hullo.”

  Out of sheer astonishment, Martin Beck forgot to reply.

  “Hulloo-o-o, is anyone there?”

  Kollberg could be heard as clearly as if he had been in the room next door.

  “Where are you?”

  “At the office, of course. It’s already quarter past nine. Don’t tell me you’re still lying snoring in bed.”

  “What’s the weather like up your way?” said Martin Beck, then falling silent, paralyzed himself by the idiocy of the remark.

  “It’s raining,” said Kollberg suspiciously, “but that wasn’t why I called. Are you sick or something?”

  Martin Beck managed to sit up on the edge of the bed and light one of those unfamiliar Hungarian cigarettes from the pack with the factory on it.

  “No. What d’you want?”

  “I’ve been digging around a bit up here. Alf Matsson doesn’t seem to be a very nice guy.”

  “How so?”

  “Well. Mostly just an impression I’ve got. He just seems to be one big all-round ass.”

  “Did you call to tell me that?”

  “No, actually, I didn’t. But there was one thing I thought you ought to know. I didn’t have anything to do on Saturday so I went and sat around in that bar place. The Tankard.”

  “Listen, don’t go poking your nose in too much. Officially you’ve never even heard about this case. And you don’t know I’m here.”

  Kollberg sounded clearly offended.

  “D’you think I’m a moron?”

  “Only occasionally,” sa
id Martin Beck, amiably.

  “I didn’t speak to anyone. Just sat at the table next to that gang and listened to them shoot the breeze. For five hours. They sure put away the liquor.”

  The telephone operator broke in and said something incomprehensible.

  “You’re bankrupting the government,” said Martin Beck. “What’s up? Get it off your chest.”

  “Well, the guys were shooting the bull back and forth, one thing and another about Alfie, as they call him. They’re just the type to let off a lot of hot air behind each other’s backs. As soon as one of them goes to the head, then the others all get started on him.”

  “Don’t be so long-winded.”

  “That Molin seems to be the worst. He was the one who started talking about the thing I’m calling about, too. Nasty, but it might not be all lies.”

  “Come on now, look sharp, Lennart.”

  “And you tell me that! Anyhow it turned out that Matsson makes off like a shot for Hungary because he’s got a gal down there. Some sort of small-time athlete he met while he was a sports reporter here in Stockholm—at some international sports meet or other. While he was still living with his wife.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “They also said it was very likely that he arranged his trips to other places—Prague and Berlin and so forth—so he could meet her when she was competing there.”

  “Doesn’t sound likely to me. Girl athletes are usually kept under lock and key.”