The Locked Room

by Maj Sjowall

  “That last bit, too, is simple enough,” Gunvald Larsson said. “ ‘Abandon ship.’ That was the bit Mauritzon didn’t get. Orders to clear out at once. Which is why that apartment was empty. Probably Roos suspected Mauritzon and had them change their hideaway.”

  “And immediately afterwards comes the word ‘Milan,’ ” Kollberg said. “What’s that mean?”

  “Meet in Milan to split up the dough,” Bulldozer said unhesitatingly. “But as things are, they won’t even get out of the bank—that is, if we even let them get into it. The game’s ours.”

  “Indubitably,” Kollberg said. “At least, so it would seem.”

  Knowing all this, they easily drew up the countermeasures. Whatever might occur on Rosenlundsgatan, it was to be ignored as far as possible. As for the emergency vehicles on Kungsholmen, all that had to be done was to make sure that they were not there at the moment when the gangsters’ preventive action was set in motion. On the contrary, they would be placed at strategic points around the bank.

  “Well,” Bulldozer said, more or less to himself, “this plan is clearly the work of Werner Roos. But how are we ever going to prove it?”

  “The typewriter, perhaps?” said Rönn.

  “Electric typewriting is almost impossible to trace to any particular machine. And he doesn’t make any consistent typographical errors, either. So how are we to pin it on him?”

  “Surely you can figure out a little thing like that,” said Kollberg. “You who are a district attorney! Here in Sweden all you’ve got to do is bring charges against people in order to get them put away, even if they’re innocent.”

  “But Werner Roos is guilty,” Bulldozer said.

  “What’ll we do with Mauritzon?” Gunvald Larsson asked.

  “Let him go, of course,” Bulldozer said absent-mindedly. “He’s done his bit now and is out of the picture.”

  “Is he? I wonder,” said Gunvald Larsson dubiously.

  “Next Friday,” said Bulldozer dreamily. “Think what’s waiting for us!”

  “Yes, just think,” said Gunvald Larsson gruffly.

  The phone rang: bank robbery out at Vällingby.

  As a bank robbery, it was nothing to write home about. A toy pistol and only fifteen thousand in booty. An hour later the culprit was found staggering around in Humlegården Park, trying to give away the cash. But at least he’d had time to get thoroughly drunk and, to cap it all, had been shot in the leg by an ambitious patrolman. The special squad dealt with the matter without even leaving the building.

  “Could Roos be behind that, d’you think?” Gunvald Larsson asked maliciously.

  “Well,” said Bulldozer, cheered by the thought, “you’ve a bright idea there. Indirectly, Roos is guilty. His bank raids are an inspiration even to the ungifted. So indirectly, as I say, one could say …”

  “Oh my God,” said Gunvald Larsson. “Pack it in, will you?”

  Rönn went to his own room. Inside sat someone he hadn’t seen for a very long time: Martin Beck.

  “Hello,” Beck said, “been in a fight?”

  “Yes,” Rönn said. “Indirectly.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I don’t quite know,” Rönn said vaguely. “Everything’s so queer nowadays. What d’you want?”

  20

  Einar Rönn’s room was at the rear of the central police building on Kungsholmsgatan. From the window he had a view out over an immense hole in the ground—out of which the gigantic showy building of the National Police Board would in due course rise up and obscure the view. From this ultramodern colossus in the heart of Stockholm the police would extend their tentacles in every direction and hold the dispirited citizens of Sweden in an iron grip. At least some of them. After all, they couldn’t all emigrate or commit suicide.

  The location and overwhelming dimensions of the new police headquarters had been violently criticized in many quarters; but in the end the police had had their way—as far as the building was concerned.

  What the police, or to be more precise, some persons within its higher ranks, actually wanted, was power. This was the secret ingredient that in recent years had been guiding the department’s philosophy. Since the police had never previously been an independent power factor in Swedish politics, only a few as yet understood which way the wind was blowing. The quest for power also explained why so many aspects of the never-ending forays made by the police in recent years had appeared contradictory and incomprehensible.

  The new building was to be an important symbol of this new power. It was to facilitate a planned central directorate of a totalitarian type, and it was also to be a fortress against the prying eyes and ears of persons having no business there—which meant, in this case, the entire Swedish nation. In this context one line of thought was important: Swedes had gotten into the habit of laughing at the police. Soon no one would laugh any more. Or so it was hoped.

  All this, however, was so far no more than a pious aspiration, screened from all except a few; something which, with a little luck and if the right political breezes blew, could ripen into a Ministry of Terror. As yet it was still little more than a big hole in Kungsholmen’s rocky terrain.

  From Rönn’s window the view was still open toward the upper part of Bergsgatan and Kronoberg Park’s leafy trees.

  Now Martin Beck had gotten up from Rönn’s desk and was standing by the window. From it he could see the window of the flat where Karl Edvin Svärd had lain dead for two months or so with a bullet through his heart and without anyone missing him.

  “Before you became a specialist in bank robberies you investigated a death,” Martin Beck said. “A man named Svärd.”

  Rönn gave an embarrassed titter. “Specialist!” he said. “Oh my!” Rönn was not a man with any grave defects; but his temperament was miles apart from Martin Beck’s, and they’d always found it hard to collaborate. “Yes it’s true,” Rönn said. “I was just busy with that death when I was detailed off.”

  “Detailed off?”

  “Yes, to this special squad.”

  Martin Beck felt a very faint pang of irritation—perhaps at Rönn’s unconscious use of military jargon. Two years ago he’d not have used such an expression. “Did you come to any conclusion?” Martin Beck asked.

  Rönn rubbed his red nose with his thumb and said: “Didn’t have much time to do anything about it, did I? Why’re you asking?”

  “Because, as you probably know, the case has been passed on to me—as some kind of therapy, I guess.”

  “Well,” Rönn said, “it was a silly sort of a case. From the outset it looked like a detective story. Old man shot in a room locked from the inside. Added to which …” He fell silent, as if ashamed of something. This was one of his more irritating tricks. You had to keep needling him all the time.

  “What were you going to say?”

  “Well, Gunvald said I ought to arrest myself at once.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “As a suspect. Don’t you see? I could’ve shot him myself, here, from my room. Through the window.” Martin Beck said nothing, and Rönn immediately became unsure of himself. “Well, of course he was just joking. Besides, Svärd’s window was shut from the inside, and the blind was drawn down, and the pane hadn’t been broken. Added to which …”

  “What were you going to say?”

  “Added to which I’m a terribly bad shot. Once I missed a moose at twenty-five feet. After which my dad never let me shoot again—only carry his thermos and brandy and sandwiches for him. So …”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, it’s eight hundred feet away. And someone who can’t hit a moose at twenty-five feet with a rifle certainly couldn’t hit the building over there with a pistol. Well, I didn’t mean … I’m sorry.…”

  “What didn’t you mean?”

  “Well, it can’t be very nice for you—me babbling away here about pistols and shooting and so forth.”

  “That’s okay. Just how much work did you put into that case?”r />
  “Only a little, as I said. I fixed up a criminological investigation, but by then people over there had been trampling every which way. And I rang up the lab and asked whether anyone had taken any paraffin tests of Svärd’s hands. No one had, and to make matters worse …”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, the corpse had gone. Been cremated. A pretty story. What an investigation!”

  “Did you look into Svärd’s background at all?”

  “No, never got that far. But there was one other thing I tried to arrange.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Well, if he was shot, there must have been a bullet. But there’d been no ballistic investigation, see? So I rang up the guy who did the postmortem. Well, as a matter of fact it was a girl; and she said she’d stuffed the bullet into an envelope and put it somewhere. Carelessness from beginning to end.”

  “Well?”

  “She couldn’t find it. The envelope, that is. I told her she had to try, and send it in for a ballistic examination. Then the case was taken out of my hands.”

  Martin Beck looked across to the distant row of buildings on Bergsgatan and thoughtfully rubbed the bridge of his nose with his right thumb and forefinger. “Einar,” he said. “What’s your private opinion about how it all happened? What do you think about it, personally?”

  Only in the presence of his closest friends does a policeman ventilate his personal and private opinions about official investigations. Martin Beck and Rönn had never been either friends or enemies.

  Rönn sat silent for a long while, apparently thinking unpleasant thoughts. Then he said: “Well, it’s my belief that there was a revolver inside the apartment when the patrolmen got the door open.”

  Why just a revolver? The answer was simple: There’d been no cartridge case. Rönn’s thinking was lucid, even so. A revolver must have been lying somewhere on the floor, for example underneath the corpse. In which case neither the patrolmen nor Gustavsson, who’d been there to take a look, would have seen it as long as the corpse was there. And it was not quite certain they’d examined the floor after the body had been taken away.

  “Do you know Aldor Gustavsson?”

  “Sure.” Rönn squirmed unhappily in his chair.

  But Martin Beck refrained from putting the disagreeable question. Instead he said: “There’s one more important point, Einar.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Did you have a chance to have a word with Kristiansson and Kvastmo? When I got here on Monday only one of them was on duty; and now one’s on vacation and the other has a leave of absence.”

  “Sure, I called both of them to my office,” said Rönn.

  “And what did they have to say?”

  “Obviously they stuck to what they’d written in their report. From the moment they’d got the door open until they’d left there’d only been five people in that apartment.”

  “That is, themselves, Gustavsson, and the two men who took the corpse away?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And you asked them whether they’d looked under the corpse?”

  “Sure. And Kvastmo said he had. Kristiansson kept on vomiting, so he mostly stayed outside.”

  Now Martin Beck didn’t hesitate. He turned the screw. “And you think Kvastmo was lying?”

  Rönn’s answer was surprisingly long in coming. He’d said “A,” Martin Beck thought; so there was hardly any reason why he shouldn’t say “B” without more ado.

  Rönn fingered the bandage on his forehead, and said: “I’ve always heard you were an unpleasant guy to be examined by.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, that those people who say so are right.”

  “And now be a good fellow and answer.”

  “I’m no psychologist when it comes to judging witnesses,” Rönn said. “But to me Kvastmo seemed to be telling the truth.”

  “Your logic doesn’t fit,” Martin Beck said coldly. “How can you believe this revolver was in the room, and at the same time say you think the patrolmen were telling the truth?”

  “Because there’s no other explanation,” said Rönn. “It’s as simple as that.”

  “Okay, Einar, it’s just that I, too, think Kvastmo was telling the truth.”

  “But didn’t you say you hadn’t spoken to him?” said Rönn, astonished.

  “I said nothing of the kind. As a matter of fact I had a word with Kvastmo last Tuesday. But I wasn’t in a position to speak to him in such calm circumstances as I guess you were.”

  Rönn looked hurt. “You really are unpleasant,” he said. He pulled out the middle drawer of his desk and took out a spiral-bound notebook. He leafed through it awhile and then ripped out a page, which he handed to Martin Beck. “I’ve one more bit of information that may interest you,” he said. “Svärd hadn’t been living very long out here on Kungsholmen. I found out where he’d been living before. But then I wasn’t in a position to do anything more about the matter. Anyway, here’s the address. You’re welcome to it.”

  Martin Beck looked at the piece of paper. A name and address on Tulegatan—the district that, not without reason, had once been called Siberia. He folded the paper and put it in his pocket. “Thanks, Einar.”

  Rönn said nothing.

  “ ’Bye then,” said Martin Beck.

  Rönn replied with a curt nod.

  Relations between them had never been particularly cordial. They now seemed to have deteriorated further.

  Martin Beck left Rönn’s room, and soon afterwards the building. He walked briskly through the town—along Kungsholmsgatan and on over Kungsbron along Kungsgatan to Sveavägen, where he turned north.

  He could so easily have improved his relations with Rönn by saying something positive or at least friendly. He did not lack reasons for doing so. The investigation into Svärd’s death had been messed up from the beginning. But from the moment when Rönn had taken it over, it had been dealt with promptly and with perfect correctness.

  Rönn had instantly perceived that a revolver might have been lying underneath the corpse and that this was of crucial importance. Had Kvastmo really checked the floor after the remains had been removed? No one could really blame him if he hadn’t. Gustavsson had appeared on the scene both in his capacity as Kvastmo’s superior and as a specialist, and his self-assured way of assessing the situation had largely relieved both patrolmen of any further responsibility.

  If Kvastmo hadn’t looked, then matters at once assumed another aspect. After the corpse had been taken away, the men had sealed the apartment and gone off. But what, in this particular case, had been meant by “sealing”?

  Since the police had not been able to get into the apartment without removing the door from its hinges, and then only after these had been more or less demolished, sealing had meant no more than tying a piece of string tightly between the doorposts and hanging up the usual printed notice saying the place was sealed off in accordance with the appropriate paragraph of the law. In practice, of course, this had meant nothing. And for several days almost anyone could have gotten in without the least difficulty. And various objects could have been removed, for instance a gun.

  But all this implied, in the first place, that Kvastmo had been deliberately lying. And, further, it implied that he was a good enough liar to deceive not only Rönn but Martin Beck himself. Both Rönn and Martin Beck were old hands at the game, and neither had a reputation for being particularly easy to dupe.

  Second, if Svärd had really shot himself, why should anyone have taken the trouble to filch the weapon? Here was an obvious contradiction. Nor was it limited to the fact that the man had been found lying in a room which, in fact, had been locked from within and where, to cap it all, no weapon had been found.

  Svärd seemed to have no close relations. Nor, as far as anyone knew, had he kept any company. If no one knew him, who could have been interested in his death?

  Martin Beck felt he must widen his knowledge on a number of poin
ts. Among other things, he would check up on one further detail concerning what had happened on Sunday, June 18. But above all he wanted to know more about Karl Edvin Svärd.

  On the piece of paper he’d been given by Rönn was not only the address in “Siberia.” There was another jotting. A name: “Landlady—Rhea Nielsen.”

  Now Martin Beck had reached the house on Tulegatan. A glance at the list of names in the hallway revealed that the landlady lived in the building. A remarkable fact in itself and perhaps fortunate for him.

  He went up to the third floor and rang the bell.

  21

  The truck was gray, without any markings except its license plates. The men who used it were wearing overalls of much the same color as the truck itself. There was nothing about their appearance to indicate their occupation. They could have been repairmen of one kind or another, or perhaps city employees. Which in fact was precisely the case.

  It was nearly six o’clock in the evening, and if nothing alarming had occurred within the next fifteen minutes they would soon be finishing their day’s work and going off home to play with their kids for a while before settling down in front of the TV.

  Martin Beck, having found no one at home in Tulegatan, had seized upon these two. They were sitting beside their Volkswagen van drinking beer out of bottles, while the vehicle spread a pungent odor of disinfectant. But above all there was another smell that no chemical on earth could overcome. The rear doors hung open. Understandably, the men were airing the inside of the vehicle at the first available opportunity.

  In their beautiful city these men had a special and rather important function. Their daily task was to remove suicides and other unattractive persons who had departed this life to more suitable surroundings.

  Some few people, for instance firemen and policemen as well as certain journalists and other initiates, were familiar with this gray truck. And when they saw it come driving down the street they knew what was amiss. But the great majority saw nothing peculiar about it; for them it was just another vehicle. Which was precisely the effect intended. After all, there was no reason to make people more dispirited and scared than they were already.