The Locked Room

by Maj Sjowall

  “He’s a goddam louse,” Malmström said. “It’s as simple as that.”

  “I guess so.”

  “How many grand has he had off us since we started working?”

  “About a hundred and fifty. Though of course he’s had considerable expenses: weapons, cars, travel, and so forth. And then there’s a certain amount of risk involved.”

  “The hell there is,” Malmström said. “No one except Roos even knows we know him.”

  “And there’s that woman with a name like a steamboat.”

  “Imagine him trying to palm off that ghost on me,” Malmström said indignantly. “It’s obvious she’s hardly up to it at all, and she probably hasn’t washed since yesterday.”

  “Though to be objective, you’re not being quite fair,” Mohrén objected. “Factum est, he gave you an honest declaration of the nature of the goods.”

  “Est?”

  “And as far as the hygienic details go you could easily have disinfected her first.”

  “The hell I could.”

  Mohrén extracted three sheets of paper from the envelope and laid them down on the table before him. “Eureka,” he cried.

  “Eh? What?”

  “Here’s what we’ve been waiting for, my lad. Come and take a look.”

  “I’ll just wash up first,” Malmström said, disappearing into the bathroom.

  After ten minutes he was back. Mohrén rubbed his hands gleefully.

  “Well?” said Malmström.

  “Everything seems to be in order. Here’s the plan. Perfect. And here are all the timings. Exact down to the last detail.”

  “What about Hauser and Hoff, then?”

  “Coming tomorrow. Read this.”

  Malmström read. Mohrén burst out laughing.

  “What’re you laughing at?”

  “The codes. ‘Jean’s got a long moustache,’ for example. Do you know where he got it from and what it meant originally?”

  “Search me.”

  “Oh well, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Does it say two-and-a-half million?”

  “Without any question!”

  “Net?”

  “Right. All the expenses have already been calculated.”

  “Minus twenty-five percent for Roos?”

  “Precisely. We’ll get exactly one million each.”

  “How much does this Mauritzon fathead know, then?”

  “Not much—except the timings, of course.”

  “When’s it to be?”

  “Friday, 14:45. But it doesn’t say which Friday.”

  “But the street names are here too,” Malmström said.

  “Forget Mauritzon,” Mohrén said calmly. “Do you see what’s written down here at the bottom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t happen to remember what it means, do you?”

  “Sure,” said Malmström. “Sure I do. And that puts a different complexion on things, of course.”

  “That’s what I think, too,” said Mohrén. “Jesus, how I long for those crawfish.”

  15

  Hoff and Hauser were two German gangsters whom Malmström and Mohrén had employed in the course of their business trip to Frankfurt. Both had good recommendations, and indeed the whole matter could perfectly well have been negotiated by mail. Malmström and Mohrén, however, were as scrupulous as their plans were careful, and their German trip had been partially motivated by a desire to see what their prospective assistants looked like.

  The meeting had taken place in early June. They contacted Hauser in the Magnolia Bar. Afterwards he introduced them to Hoff.

  The Magnolia Bar, in downtown Frankfurt, was small and dark. The orange-colored lighting seeped out from concealed fixtures; the walls were violet, so was the wall-to-wall carpeting. The low armchairs, grouped around a few small circular plexiglass tables, were pinkish. There was a semicircular bar of polished brass, the music was soft, the barmaids blond, high-bosomed, and décolleté, and the drinks expensive.

  Malmström and Mohrén settled down in a pink armchair by the only free table in the place, which, though it contained no more than a score of customers, seemed full to the bursting point. The fair sex was represented by the two blondes behind the counter. All the clients were male.

  Coming up to them, the barmaid leaned over their table and gave them a glimpse of her large pink nipples and a sniff of her hardly pleasant odor of sweat and perfume. After Malmström had gotten his gimlet and Mohrén his Chivas without ice, they looked around for Hauser. They’d no idea what he looked like, though they knew he had a reputation as a tough customer.

  Malmström caught sight of him first. He was standing at the far end of the bar, a long thin cigarillo in one corner of his mouth and a glass of whisky in his hand. Tall, slim, broad-shouldered, he was wearing a sandy-colored suede suit. He wore thick sideburns and his dark hair, thinning slightly at the crown, curled in at the nape of his neck. Leaning nonchalantly over the counter, he said something to the barmaid who, in a brief pause, came over and talked to him. He was strikingly like Sean Connery. The blonde gazed admiringly at him and giggled affectedly. Cupping her hand under the cigarillo that was glued between his lips, she tapped it lightly with her finger, and the long column of ash dropped into her hand. A gesture he pretended not to notice. After a while he swigged down his whisky and was instantly given another. His face was impassive, and the steely blue gaze was aimed at some point above and beyond the girl’s bleached tresses. He did not so much as deign to graze her with his eyes. He just stood there looking as stony and tough as they’d heard he was. Even Mohrén was slightly impressed. They waited until he should look their way.

  A small square man in an ill-fitting gray suit, a white nylon shirt, and wine-red tie came and sat down in the third armchair at their table. His face was round and rosy; behind thick rimless lenses his eyes were large and china blue, and his wavy hair was cut short and parted neatly on one side.

  Malmström and Mohrén glanced at him indifferently and went on observing the James Bond character at the bar.

  After a while the newcomer said something in a low voice, and it was some time before they realized he’d addressed them—still longer before it occurred to them that it was this cherubic person, not the tough over at the bar, who was Gustav Hauser.

  A while later they left the Magnolia Bar.

  Dumbfounded, Malmström and Mohrén followed Hauser who, dressed in a full-length dark green leather coat and a Tyrolean hat, marched on ahead of them, leading the way to Hoff’s apartment.

  Hoff was a cheerful man in his thirties. He received them into his family circle, which consisted of his wife, two children, and a dachshund. Later that evening the four men went out and had supper together and talked about their common interests. Both Hoff and Hauser turned out to be particularly experienced in this line of business, and each possessed special knowledge in several useful fields. Moreover, having just been released after serving a four-year sentence, they were in a hurry to get back to work.

  After three days together with their new companions, Malmström and Mohrén went home again to continue their preparations for the big coup. The Germans promised to hold themselves ready and to be on the spot when the time came.

  On Thursday, July 7, they were to be on location. They arrived in Sweden that Wednesday.

  Hauser took the morning ferry over to Limhamn from Dragør in his car. It had been agreed he should fetch Hoff on Skeppsbron when the latter arrived by one of the Öresund Co.’s boats at noon.

  Hoff had never been in Sweden before and was not even familiar with the appearance of a Swedish policeman. This, perhaps, explained his slightly confused and ill-mannered way of entering the country. As he walked down the gangway from the “Absalom” a uniformed customs officer approached him. Hoff immediately jumped to the conclusion that this man in uniform was a policeman, that something had gone wrong, and that they’d come to arrest him.

  At the same moment he saw Ha
user sitting in his car on the other side of the street, waiting for him with the engine running. In a panic Hoff pulled out his pistol and pointed it at the astonished customs official, who had been on his way to meet his fiancée, a young lady who, conveniently enough, worked in the “Absalom’s” cafeteria. Before he or anyone else had time to do anything, Hoff had leapt over the barrier between the dock area and the sidewalk, dashed between a couple of cabs, jumped over yet another barrier, slipped in between two long-distance trucks, and, his pistol drawn, flung himself into Hauser’s car.

  Seeing Hoff rushing over towards him, Hauser had wrenched the door open, and the car was already moving before he got there. Then Hoff jammed his foot down on the accelerator and vanished around the corner before it occurred to anyone to note the car’s license number. He went on driving until he was sure no one was going to stop or follow him.

  16

  Good and bad luck notoriously tend to balance each other out, so that one person’s ill luck turns out to be another’s good luck, and vice versa.

  Mauritzon was a man who did not regard himself as able to afford either and who therefore rarely left anything to chance. All his operations were characterized by a double security system, devised by himself, which guaranteed that only the most improbable combinations of various items of bad luck could precipitate a disaster.

  Professional setbacks, of course, did occur at regular intervals, but they were only financial. Thus, some weeks earlier, an unusually incorruptible Italian lieutenant of Carabinieri had placed an embargo on a long-distance truckful of pornography; but for any detective to trace it back to Mauritzon, in person, was impossible.

  On the other hand, a couple of months earlier, he’d become involved in a completely incomprehensible occurrence. Not even this, however, had had any consequences, and he felt certain many years would pass before anything similar would occur again. With good reason he deemed his chances of being arrested as even smaller than the chances of his getting thirteen right in his standing thirty-two-line soccer-pools system.

  Mauritzon was seldom idle, and his Wednesday program was pretty full. First he was to accept a narcotics consignment at Central Station and take it to a storage locker at the Östermalm subway. Afterwards he planned to hand the key to a certain person in exchange for an envelope containing money. Then he would look up the contact where the mysterious letters addressed to Malmström and Mohrén were in the habit of appearing. It annoyed him slightly that, despite his ambitious attempts, he still hadn’t managed to figure out the sender’s identity. Then it would be time to do some shopping, buy some underpants, etc., and last on his program came his daily visit to the house on Danvik Cliffs.

  The narcotics consisted of amphetamines and hash, ingeniously inserted in a loaf of bread and a piece of cheese, both in an ordinary shopping bag together with a variety of other objects of a particularly innocent nature.

  He had already picked up the goods and was standing by the crosswalk outside Central Station, an insignificant but respectable-looking little man, holding a shopping bag.

  On one side of him stood an old lady. On the other, a female crossing guard in a green uniform together with a crowd of other people. On the sidewalk, five yards away, two sheepish-looking policemen were standing with their hands clasped behind their backs. There was the usual—that is to say very heavy—traffic, and the air was saturated with enough gasoline fumes to make one gasp.

  At length the lights turned green, and everyone began shoving and jostling, trying to beat the others across the street. Somebody bumped into the old lady, who turned around in horror and said:

  “I see so badly without my glasses, but it’s green now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Mauritzon said amiably. “I’ll help you across, madam.” Experience had taught him that a helpful attitude could often yield certain advantages.

  “Thank you so much,” the old lady said. “It’s so seldom anyone gives us old people a thought.”

  “I’m in no hurry,” Mauritzon said. Taking her lightly by the arm, he began to pilot her across the street. When they’d gone three yards from the curb another pedestrian in a hurry bumped up against the old woman again, so that she faltered. Just as Mauritzon prevented her from falling he heard someone shout:

  “Hey, you there!”

  He looked up and saw the crossing guard pointing at him accusingly and yelling: “Police! Police!”

  The old lady looked around, bewildered.

  “Grab that thief,” the crossing guard yelled.

  Mauritzon frowned but stood stock still.

  “What?” said the lady. “What’s the matter?”

  Then she too squeaked: “A thief! A thief!”

  The two policemen strode over. “What’s all this, now?” asked one of them in an authoritative tone. Since he spoke in a Närke dialect of the most whining variety, he had some difficulty in producing the harsh strident tone supposedly required of a man in his position.

  “A purse snatcher!” shouted the crossing guard, still pointing. “He tried to snatch that old lady’s handbag.”

  Mauritzon looked at his antagonist, and a voice within him said: “Hold your tongue, you bloody ape.”

  Aloud he said: “Excuse me, but there must be some misunderstanding.”

  The crossing guard was a blonde of about twenty-five, who had contrived further to spoil her inherently unimpressive appearance with the aid of lipstick and powder.

  “I saw it myself,” she said.

  “What?” said the old woman. “Where’s the thief?”

  “What’s all this, now?” said the two patrolmen in unison.

  Mauritzon remained completely calm. “It’s all a misunderstanding,” he said.

  “This gentleman was just helping me across the street,” said the old woman.

  “Pretending to help you, yes,” said the blonde. “That’s how they do it. He snatched the old woman’s … I mean the old lady’s bag so she almost fell over.”

  “You are misinterpreting the situation,” Mauritzon said. “It was someone else who happened to bump into her. I just caught hold of her so she shouldn’t fall over and hurt herself.”

  “Now don’t you try that one,” the crossing guard said stubbornly.

  The policemen exchanged a questioning glance. The more authoritative of the two was evidently also the more experienced and enterprising. He reflected a moment, then delivered himself of the appropriate line: “You’d better come along with us.”

  Pause.

  “All three of you. Suspect, witness, and plaintiff.”

  The old lady seemed utterly bewildered, and the crossing guard’s interest immediately faded.

  Mauritzon became even more diffident. “A complete misunderstanding,” he said. “But one easily made, of course, with all these muggers roaming the streets. I’ve nothing against accompanying you.”

  “What is it?” asked the old lady. “Where are we going?”

  “To the station,” said the authoritative policeman.

  “Station?”

  “The police station.”

  The procession marched off under the gaping stare of hurrying citizens.

  “I may have been mistaken in what I saw,” the blonde said waveringly. She was used to taking down names and license numbers, but not to being taken down herself.

  “That doesn’t matter,” said Mauritzon mildly. “It’s quite right to keep your eyes peeled, especially at spots like this.”

  The police have an office right next to the railway station. Among many other things it’s intended as a place where they can drink coffee. It’s also for the temporary custody of detained persons.

  The formalities became elaborate. First the names and addresses of the witness and of the old lady who had supposedly been robbed were taken down.

  “I guess I was mistaken,” the witness said nervously. “And I’ve my job to attend to.”

  “We must clear this matter up,” said the more experienced of the police
men. “Search his pockets, Kenneth.”

  The man from Närke started searching Mauritzon, picking out various commonplace objects. Meanwhile the interrogation continued.

  “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Arne Lennart Holm,” said Mauritzon. “Known as Lennart.”

  “And your address?”

  “Vickergatan six.”

  “Yes, the name’s correct,” said the other patrolman. “It’s here on his driver’s license, so it’s perfectly correct. His name’s Arne Lennart Holm. So that fits.”

  Next the interrogator turned to the old lady. “Have you lost anything, madam?”

  “No.”

  “But I’m beginning to lose patience,” the blonde said sharply. “What’s your name?”

  “That’s irrelevant,” the patrolman said bluntly.

  “Oh, take it easy,” Mauritzon said, relaxed.

  “Have you lost anything, madam?”

  “No. You’ve just asked me that.”

  “What articles of value did you have on you, madam?”

  “Six thirty-five in my purse. And then my fifty-kronor card and pensioner’s card.”

  “Do you still have these things?”

  “Of course.”

  The patrolman closed his notebook, looked the assembled company over, and said: “The matter seems settled. You two may leave. Holm stays.”

  Mauritzon retrieved his belongings. The shopping bag was standing by the door. A cucumber and six rhubarb stalks protruded from it.

  “What’s in that shopping bag?” the policeman asked.

  “Food.”

  “Really? You’d better check on that too, Kenneth.”

  The Närke man began plucking out the contents and laying them out on a bench by the door, used by off-duty policemen for putting down their caps and shoulder belts.