by Per Wahlöö
Inspecter Inspector
Mr Jesen DAM HELL BUG
He folded up the sheet of paper and put it in the glove compartment on top of his service pistol. Then he leaned his head against the side window and looked at the Skyscraper; his gaze was unperturbed and gave nothing away.
He had a hollow feeling in his stomach. He was hungry, but knew the pain would start as soon as he ate anything.
Inspector Jensen turned the ignition key and looked at his watch.
It was half past twelve, and already Wednesday.
CHAPTER 9
‘No,’ said the lab technician, ‘it’s not the same paper. Nor the same size. But …’
‘But?’
‘There’s very little difference in the quality. The structure’s similar. It’s rather unique, in fact.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning it could well be that both papers were made at the same factory.’
‘I see.’
‘We’re just following that up. It’s a distinct possibility, at any rate.’
The man seemed to be hesitating. After a moment he said:
‘Is whoever wrote the sentences on this piece of paper linked to the case in any way?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘A man who was here from the Institute for Forensic Psychiatry took a look at them. He concluded that the person who wrote these sentences suffers from dyslexia. He was pretty certain about it.’
‘Who allowed this psychiatrist to see case material?’
‘I did. He’s an acquaintance of mine. He happened to be here for something else.’
‘I shall be reporting you for professional misconduct.’
Inspector Jensen hung up.
‘Pretty certain,’ he said to himself.
‘Rather unique,’ he said.
He went out to the toilets for a paper cup of water, put in three teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda, stirred it with his pen and drank.
He fished out the key. It was long and flat, and the complicated key-bit was a strange shape. He weighed the key in his hand and took a quick glance at the clock.
It was twenty past three, and still Wednesday.
CHAPTER 10
From the lobby of the Skyscraper, Inspector Jensen turned left and took the paternoster lift down. The stack of lift compartments sank slowly and creakily, and he kept an observant eye out to see what was on each floor as he passed it. First came a vast space in which electric trucks moved along narrow corridors between walls of brand-new, bundled magazines; then men in overalls pushing curved moulds on trolleys and the deafening racket of the rotary presses. Another floor down he saw shower rooms, toilets and changing rooms with benches and rows of green metal lockers. On the benches sat people who seemed to be on their break or had finished their shift. Most of them were leafing apathetically through colourful magazines that had presumably just come off the presses. Then his ride was at an end; he got out and was in the paper warehouse. It was quiet down there, but not entirely silent, because the collected sounds of the immense building above penetrated down as a powerful, pulsating roar. He wandered around randomly for a while in the gloom, between rows of bales and rolls of paper standing on end. The only person he saw was a pale little man in a white warehouseman’s coat, who stared at him in alarm and crushed a burning cigarette in his closed hand.
Inspector Jensen left the paper store and took the lift back up. At street level he was joined by a middle-aged man in a grey suit. The man stepped into the same compartment and went with him up to the tenth floor, where they had to change. He said nothing, and did not once look at his fellow passenger. In the paternoster lift from the tenth floor, Jensen just had time to see the man in grey getting into the compartment below his own.
On the twentieth floor he changed to a third paternoster lift, and four minutes later he was at the top.
He found himself in a narrow, windowless concrete corridor, which was uncarpeted. It ran in a rectangle round a core of staircases and lift systems, and around its outer sides there were white-painted doors. To the left of each door was a little plate with one, two, three or four names. The corridor was flooded with cold, blue-white light from the banks of skylights in the roof.
It was clear from the metal plates that these were the editorial offices of the comic section. He went down five flights of stairs and was still in the same section. There were very few people to be seen in the corridors, but he heard voices and the clatter of typewriters through the doors. On every floor there were noticeboards, mainly used for notices from the management to the staff. There were also time clocks, clocking in machines for the nightwatchmen and, on the ceiling, an automatic sprinkler system in case of fire.
On the twenty-fourth floor there was a total of four editorial offices. He recognised the names of the magazines and recalled that they were all of simple, basic design, their content consisting mainly of stories with gaudy illustrations.
Inspector Jensen slowly worked his way down. On every floor he did a circuit of the four corridors, two longer and two shorter, joined into a rectangle. Here, too, the doors were white and the walls bare. Apart from the names on the doors, the top seven floors were all identical. Everything was very neat and tidy; there were no signs of carelessness or neglect and the cleaning service seemed immaculate. From behind the doors, voices and ringing telephones could be heard, with the sound of a typewriter here and there.
He stopped by one of the noticeboards and read:
Do not make derogatory comments about the Publishing House or its magazines!
It is forbidden to fix pictures or objects of any kind whatsoever to the outsides of the doors!
Always act as an ambassador for the company. Even in Your time off! Remember that the Publishing House always behaves fittingly: with judgement, dignity and responsibility!
Rise above unwarranted criticism. Escapism and Dishonesty are just other names for poetry and imagination!
Always be aware that You represent the Publishing House and Your magazine! Even in Your time off!
The truest features and stories are not always the best! Truth is a commodity that needs very cautious handling in modern journalism. You cannot be sure that everyone can take as much of it as You can!
Your task is to entertain our readers, to stimulate them to dream.
Your task is not to shock, agitate or alarm, nor to rouse or educate!
There were further exhortations, all with similar content and expressed in a similar way. Most of them were signed by the company management or those responsible for the building, a few of them by the publisher himself. Inspector Jensen read them all, then continued working his way down.
The next floors he came to were evidently where the bigger, more elegant magazines were produced. They were decorated rather differently, with pale carpets in the corridors, steel chairs and chrome ashtrays. The closer he got to the eighteenth floor, the greater the cool elegance grew, only to fade away again further down. The directorate occupied four floors; below that there were offices for general administration, advertising, distribution and much more. The corridors grew bare again and the clatter of typewriters intensified. The light was cold, white and searing.
Inspector Jensen toured floor after floor. When he got down to the vast lobby, it was almost five. He had used the stairs the whole way down and felt a vague weariness in his calves and at the backs of his knees.
Approximately two minutes later, the man in grey came down the stairs. Inspector Jensen hadn’t seen him since they parted by the paternoster lift on the tenth floor an hour earlier. The man went into the security desk at the front entrance. He could be seen saying something to the men in uniform behind the wall of glass. Then he wiped the sweat from his brow and cast a fleeting, indifferent glance round the lobby.
The clock in the big hall struck five and exactly one minute later, the automatic doors of the first fully loaded high-speed elevator opened.
The steady stream of people continued
for more than half an hour before it began to thin out. Inspector Jensen, his hands clasped behind his back, stood rocking gently to and fro on the balls of his feet as he watched the people hurry past. On the far side of the revolving doors they dispersed and disappeared, timid and hunched, in the direction of their cars.
By a quarter to six, the lobby was empty. The lifts stood still. The men in the white uniforms locked the front entrance and left. Only the man in grey was left there behind the wall of glass. It was almost dark outside.
Inspector Jensen stepped into one of the aluminium-lined lifts and pressed the top button on the control panel. The lift came to a swift, stomach-lurching stop at the eighteenth floor, the doors opened and closed, and then it continued upwards.
The corridors of the comic department were still as brightly lit, but the sounds behind the doors had stopped. He stood still, listening, and after about thirty seconds he heard a lift stop somewhere nearby, presumably one floor below. He waited a bit longer but could not hear any footsteps. There was nothing to be heard at all, and yet the silence was not complete. Only when he leaned sideways and pressed his ear to the concrete wall could he make out the roar and throb of distant machine halls. When he had listened long enough, the sound became more tangible, acute and insistent like an unidentified sensation of pain.
He straightened up and walked the corridors. He was constantly aware of the sound. At the top of the last flight of stairs there were two steel doors with white enamel paint, one of them rather taller and wider than the other. Neither had a handle. He got out the key with the strangely shaped key-bit and tried it first in the smaller door, but could not get it to fit. The second door, on the other hand, opened at once and he saw a steep, narrow flight of concrete steps, sparsely lit by small white globe-shaped lights.
Inspector Jensen went up the steps, opened another door and emerged on to the roof.
It was now completely dark, and the evening wind was chill and biting. Round the flat roof ran a brick-built parapet about a metre tall. Far below lay the town, with millions and millions of cold, white pinpricks of light. Some ten squat chimneys stuck up from the middle of the roof. Smoke was issuing from a couple of them, and despite the stiff wind he could smell the acrid, choking fumes.
He opened the door at the top of the steps and thought he heard someone shut the one at the bottom, but when he got down there, the thirtieth floor was empty, silent and deserted. He tried the master key in the lock of the smaller door one more time but still could not open it. Presumably the door led to some technical installation such as the lift machinery or the central electrical unit.
He made another circuit of the closed corridor system again, walking quietly and cautiously on his rubber soles from sheer force of habit. On the far side he stopped and listened, and again thought he could make out the sound of footsteps somewhere nearby. The sound ceased at once and might just have been an echo.
He took out the master key again, opened a door and went into one of the editorial offices. It was considerably larger than the arrest cells in the basement of the Sixteenth District police station; the concrete walls were bare and white, as was the ceiling, and the floor was pale grey. The furniture consisted of three white-painted desks, covering almost the entire floor area, and on the windowsill stood an intercom. On the desks were sheets of paper, drawings, rulers and felt pens, all tidily laid out.
Inspector Jensen paused by one of them and looked at a brightly coloured drawing, divided into four panels and clearly a comic strip. Beside the illustration lay a sheet of paper with some typed text and the heading: ‘Original script from the authorial department.’
The first picture was of a restaurant scene. A blonde woman with huge breasts was sitting at a table opposite a man who had a blue mask over his eyes and was wearing a catsuit with a wide leather belt. In the middle of his chest he had a skull motif. In the background there were a dance band and people in dinner jackets and long dresses, and on the table stood a champagne bottle and two glasses. In the next picture, the man with the peculiar costume was alone; he had a glowing halo round his head and his hand was stuck in something that looked a bit like a primus stove. The next panel showed the restaurant again; the man in the catsuit seemed to be hanging in mid-air above the table, while the blonde woman looked at him expressionlessly. The last illustration was of the man in the catsuit; he was still hanging there, and the stars were visible in the background. From a ring on his right index finger sprouted a giant-sized hand on a long stalk. In the hand lay an orange.
Some parts of the picture were white: the top of the panels, and the oval shapes emerging from the gleaming teeth of the characters. In these spaces there were short, easy-to-read captions, done in capital letters in felt pen, but still not complete.
That evening, the Blue Panther and rich Beatrice meet at New York’s classiest restaurant …
‘I think … it feels so strange … I think I … love you.’
‘What? I thought the moon just moved!’
Blue Panther sneaks out to recharge his power ring …
‘Excuse me, but I have to leave you for a little while. There’s something wrong with the moon!’
Once again the Blue Panther leaves the woman he loves to save the universe from certain destruction. It’s the fiendish Krysmopomps who …
He recognised the characters from one of the publications he had been studying the previous evening.
Pinned to the wall above the desk was a photocopied notice. He read:
In the last quarter, circulation has risen by 26 per cent. The magazine answers a vital need and has a great task ahead of it. The bridgehead has been taken. We fight on to final victory! The Editor in Chief.
Inspector Jensen took one last look at the illustrations, switched off the light and pulled the self-locking door closed behind him.
He took the lift down eight floors and was then in the offices of one of the bigger magazines. He could now clearly hear, at regular intervals, the faint sounds made by the person who was following. So that was settled, and he didn’t need to worry about it any longer.
He opened a couple of doors and went into concrete cells identical to those he had seen on the thirteenth floor. On the desks were pictures of royalty, film and pop stars, children, dogs and cats, along with articles that were obviously in the process of being translated or edited in some way. Some of them had been corrected in red ink.
He read through a few of them and found that the deletions were almost exclusively modestly critical observations or value judgements of varying kinds. The articles were about popular artistes abroad.
The editor in chief’s office was larger than the rest. It had a pale beige carpet and the chairs had white PVC seat covers. On the desk, besides a loudspeaker unit, there were two white telephones, a pale grey blotter and a photograph in a steel frame. The photo was obviously of the editor in chief himself, a thin, middle-aged man with a worried expression, a doglike gaze and a well-trimmed moustache.
Inspector Jensen sat down in the chair behind the desk. When he cleared his throat, the sound echoed around the room, which seemed cold and desolate and bigger than it really was. There were no books or magazines in there, but on the white wall opposite the desk there was a big, framed picture in full colour. It was a photograph of the Skyscraper after dark, its façade illuminated by floodlights.
He opened some of the drawers but did not find anything of interest. In one of them there was a brown envelope, sealed with sticky tape and marked PRIVATE. It contained some colour photographs and a printed slip bearing the words: This is an exclusive offer at a special reduced price from the Publishing House’s international picture service, reserved for top managerial positions. They were pictures of naked women with large, pink breasts and shaved genital areas.
Inspector Jensen carefully resealed the envelope and put it back in its place. There was no legal ban on images of that kind, but after a huge upswing in popularity a few years before, works of porno
graphy had for some reason almost disappeared off the market. In some quarters, the slump in demand was being linked to the rapid decline in the birth rate.
He lifted the blotter and found an internal memo from the head of publishing. It read:
The piece on the wedding of the Princess and the head of the National Confederation at the Royal Palace is deplorable. A number of important people close to the Publishing House are scarcely mentioned. The hint that the groom’s brother was a keen republican in his youth is downright offensive, as is the humorous remark about the possibility of the head of the National Confederation becoming King. As a professional, I also take exception to the sloppy design and layout of the feature. The reader’s letter in issue 8 should never have been published. The claim that the suicide rate in the country has gone down could lead to the distressing misconception that too many people committed suicide in our Society of Accord previously. Need I point out that your circulation figures are not rising in line with management calculations?
A note in the margin indicated that the memo had been sent to all top section heads.
As Inspector Jensen re-emerged into the corridor, he thought he heard a slight rustling sound behind one of the closed doors.
He got out the master key, opened the door and went in. The lights were off, but in the faint reflection of the floodlighting he saw a man slumped in a desk chair. He closed the door and switched on the light. The room was of the standard type, with concrete walls and chrome window frames. The air was heavy and suffocating, thick with the smell of alcohol, tobacco smoke and vomit.
The man in the chair appeared to be in his fifties. He was heavily built and on the plump side, and was wearing a jacket, a white shirt, a tie, shoes and socks. His trousers were spread out on the desk, where he had clearly been trying to wipe them clean; his underpants were hanging on the radiator. His chin was resting on his chest and his face was pink. On the desk stood a paper cup and an almost empty bottle of spirits, and there was an aluminium wastepaper bin between his feet.