The Locked Room

by Maj Sjowall

  Like many others in slightly peculiar professions, these fellows took their job as it came and with great aplomb; they rarely or never overdramatized their task in the welfare machine. By and large, they only discussed it among themselves; they had long ago perceived that most listeners’ reactions were highly negative—particularly when in jolly company, among friends, or at their wives’ coffee tables.

  Their contacts with the police, though everyday affairs, were always with cops of the most humdrum order. For a detective chief inspector to show interest in their doings, and even seek them out, was definitely flattering.

  The more loquacious of the two wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said: “Sure, I remember that one. Bergsgatan wasn’t it?”

  “Right.”

  “Though the name don’t mean nothing. Stål, you say?”

  “No, Svärd.”

  “Don’t mean a thing to me. We don’t often bother about names.”

  “I understand.”

  “That was a Sunday, too. Sundays is always busy, see?”

  “Do you remember the policeman I named? Kenneth Kvastmo?”

  “Nix. Name means nothing to me. But I remember a cop standing there, gaping.”

  “While you were taking out the body?”

  The man nodded. “Sure. We thought he was one of the tougher sort.”

  “Oh, why?”

  “There’s two sorts of cops, see? Them as pukes and them what don’t. That guy didn’t even hold his nose.”

  “So he was there all the time?”

  “Sure, I said so, didn’t I? He made damn sure we did our job to satisfaction, so to speak.”

  The other tittered and took a swig of beer.

  “Just one more question.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “When you picked up the body, did you notice whether there was anything lying underneath it? Any object?”

  “And what might that have been, then?”

  “An automatic, for instance. Or a revolver.”

  The man burst out laughing. “A pistol or a revolver,” he roared. “Anyway what’s the difference?”

  “A revolver has a rotating chamber, which is turned by the mechanism.”

  “Like cowboys have, eh?”

  “Sure, that’s it. Not that it makes much difference. The main question is whether there could have been any kind of a weapon lying underneath the dead man.”

  “Now listen here, Chief Inspector. This customer was a middle-aged guy.”

  “Middle-aged?”

  “Sure, about two months gone.”

  Martin Beck nodded.

  “We lifted him over onto the plastic sheet, see, and while I sealed the cover around the edges, Arne here swept up the worms on the floor. We usually pour them into a bag with some stuff in it; snuffs ’em out on the spot, it does.”

  “Oh?”

  “And if Arne had swept up a rod, too, he couldn’t have helped noticing it, could he?”

  Arne nodded and tittered. The last drops of beer stuck in his windpipe. “I sure would,” he coughed.

  “So—there was nothing there?”

  “Nothing at all. Besides, that patrolman was standing there all the time, looking on. In fact, he was still there after we’d put our client into the zinc box and pushed off. That’s right, Arne, isn’t it?”

  “Dead right,” said Arne.

  “You seem quite sure of yourselves.”

  “Sure? We’re more than that. Underneath that client weren’t nothing, see, except for a pretty collection of cynomyia mortuorum.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Corpse worms.”

  “And you’re quite sure?”

  “Sure as hell.”

  “Thanks,” said Martin Beck. And left.

  The men in gray overalls exchanged a few words.

  “You put him where he belonged,” said Arne.

  “How so?”

  “With all that Greek of yours! Them big shots never thinks we’re no good for nothing except packaging rotten corpses.”

  The mobile telephone buzzed in the front seat. Arne answered, grunted something, and put down the receiver. “Goddammit,” he said. “Another bastard’s gone and hanged himself.”

  “Oh well,” his colleague said resignedly.

  “I’ve never been able to stomach these guys as hangs themselves, to tell the truth. What do you mean by life, anyway?”

  “Bah, come on, let’s get going.”

  By now Martin Beck had a feeling of knowing, technically speaking, most of what was to be known about the queer death on Bergsgatan. At the very least the police activities seemed satisfactorily cleared up. But one important point remained. To get hold of the report from the ballistic investigation, if there’d been one.

  About Svärd, personally, he still knew very little, even though he’d put a fair amount of work into finding out about the dead man.

  The Wednesday of the stakeout of Malmström and Mohrén’s apartment had hardly been eventful as far as Martin Beck had been concerned. He knew nothing about the bank robberies or the special squad’s trials and tribulations; and for this he was mostly glad. After his visit to Svärd’s flat on Tuesday afternoon he had first gone to the central police station on Kungsholmsgatan—where everyone else was deeply involved in his own problems and no one had any time for him—and thence to the National Police Board. There he had heard a rumor that at first seemed only ridiculous, but which, on reflection, had upset him.

  It was being said he was to be promoted. But to what? Superintendent? Commissioner? Head of Section? Perhaps to health, wealth, and prosperity?

  However, this was not the main point. Probably the whole assumption was nothing but a product of backstairs gossip, for the most part baseless.

  He’d been promoted to detective chief inspector as recently as 1967, and there were no real grounds for supposing he would ever reach the higher grades. Under no circumstances could there be any question of his being promoted to something better within four or five years, at the earliest. This was something that everyone should have known, for if there is one matter that bureaucrats are thoroughly acquainted with it’s salary scales and promotions—matters where everyone keeps a jealous eye on his own and others’ chances.

  How could such a rumor have started? There must be some line of reasoning behind it. But what? As far as he could see, he could choose between two explanations.

  The first was that they wanted to get rid of him as head of the National Homicide Squad, even to the point where they were prepared to kick him upstairs into the bureaucracy. That, after all, is the commonest way of getting rid of unpleasant or obviously incompetent officials. This, however, was improbable. True, he had enemies on the National Police Board, though to them he could hardly constitute a threat. Moreover, they could hardly avoid promoting Kollberg to succeed him, something which from their point of view would be quite as undesirable.

  Therefore, the second alternative seemed the more probable. But unfortunately it was a good deal more humiliating for all parties. Fifteen months earlier he had been within an inch of losing his life: the only senior official in modern Swedish history to do so. He had been shot by a so-called criminal. The occurrence had drawn much attention, and what he had done had furnished him with a halo he certainly didn’t deserve. However, for obvious reasons, heroes are in very short supply on the police force, and that was why the happy outcome of that drama had been grossly exaggerated.

  So—there was now a hero on the force. And what can one do with a hero? He’d already been given a medal; and the least they could do with him now was promote him.

  Martin Beck himself had had plenty of time to analyze what had happened on that fateful day in April, 1971. He had long ago come to the conclusion that he’d acted wrongly; not only morally but also professionally. He was also well aware that this reflection had also occurred to more than one of his colleagues long before he’d appreciated it himself. He’d been shot
because he’d acted like an idiot. And on these grounds they were now about to give him a higher and more responsible position.

  He had been contemplating his own situation on Tuesday evening, but as soon as he again sat down at his desk at Västberga, he had immediately stopped thinking about it. Instead, indifferent but ruthlessly systematic, he had devoted Wednesday to the Svärd case, sitting alone in his room and working his way through the investigation.

  At one moment he had thought to himself that this was just about what he could henceforth hope to get out of his job when it was at its best. To be left alone to deal with a case in the approved manner, and without outside interference.

  Somewhere inside him he still felt a faint nostalgia—for what, he couldn’t say. Perhaps a genuine interest in what he was doing. He had always found solitude easy, and now he seemed definitely on his way to becoming a recluse who had no desire for others’ company or any real will to break out of his vacuum. Was he turning into a serviceable robot, enclosed, as it were, under a casserole cover—a dome of invisible glass?

  Where the present problem was concerned he had no professional doubts. Either he would solve it, or else he would not. The percentage of murders and manslaughters cleared up by his department was a high one. This was due to the fact that most crimes are uncomplicated and those persons who are guilty of them are usually disposed to throw in the sponge.

  Further, the homicide squad was relatively well-equipped. The only segment of the force that had greater resources in proportion to the crimes it had to combat was the security police. Since they still mostly occupied themselves with keeping a register of communists, meanwhile obstinately averting their eyes from various more or less exotic fascist organizations, they really had no function anyway. Therefore they mostly spent their time dreaming up political crimes and potential security risks in order to have something to do. The results of their activities were just what one would expect: laughable. Nevertheless, the security police constituted a kind of tactical political reserve, always ready to be employed against disagreeable ideologies. And situations could easily be envisaged in which their activities would no longer be in the least bit laughable.

  Sometimes, of course, the National Homicide Squad was also unsuccessful. Investigations became bogged down and were eventually filed away. Usually these concerned cases where the culprit was known but, because of his obstinate denials, could not be proven guilty. The more primitive a violent crime, the poorer, often, is the evidence.

  Martin Beck’s latest fiasco could serve as a typical example of this. An elderly man in Lapland had killed his wife, who was the same age as himself, with an axe. The motive was that he had long had a relationship with the couple’s housekeeper, who was somewhat younger, and had finally tired of his old lady’s nagging and jealousy. After murdering her, he had put the corpse out into the woodshed. Since it was winter and the cold had been severe, he had waited some two months before laying a door on a sled and taking her off to the nearest village, which lay more than twelve trackless miles from his farm. Whereupon he had simply declared that the old woman had fallen over and hit her head against the stove, and that he hadn’t been able to take her to the village earlier because of the cold weather. Everyone in the place knew it was a lie; but the man had stuck to his tale and so did his housekeeper. The amateurish investigation of the local police had destroyed all traces of the crime. They then called in outside help, and Martin Beck had spent two weeks in a strange hotel before giving up and going home. In the daytime he had questioned the murderer, and in the evenings had sat in the hotel dining room, listening to the locals laughing at him behind his back. Such reverses, however, were exceptional.

  The Svärd story was odder and not really reminiscent of any case Martin Beck had ever handled. This should have been stimulating, but he had no personal interest in enigmas and did not feel stimulated at all.

  His desk work on Wednesday had also yielded very little. The files of punished crimes contained no trace of Karl Edvin Svärd. In itself, this meant no more than that he’d never been convicted of any crime. But how many transgressors of the law get away without ever appearing before a court—quite apart from the fact that the law has been designed to protect certain social classes and their dubious interests, and otherwise seems mostly to consist of loopholes?

  The report from the State Wines and Spirits Board drew a blank. This, presumably, meant that Svärd had not been an alcoholic. For a person of his social status would certainly have had his drinking habits scrutinized by the authorities. When the upper class drinks, it is known as “culture”; citizens of the other class having similar needs are immediately categorized as alcoholics, or as cases in need of care and protection. Whereafter they receive neither care nor protection.

  All his adult life Svärd had been a warehouseman, and his last job had been with a forwarding agency. He’d had a bad back, a common enough thing in his profession, and at the age of fifty-six had been declared medically unfit.

  Since then he had dragged out his days on his pension. In other words he belonged to that category for whom the chain stores maintain overstocked counters of dog and cat food.

  A half-empty can of cat food, with the label “Miaow,” had been the only apparently edible constituent of his larder.

  Some data, certainly without significance: Svärd had been born in Stockholm; his parents had died in the forties; and he had never married or had to support anyone. He had not turned to the welfare authorities. At the firm where he had had his last job there was no one who remembered him.

  The doctor who had certified him as unfit for work fished out a few notes, in which it was said that the patient was not up to physical work and too old to be retrained. Further, Svärd had said he had no wish to work any more, “since it seemed senseless.”

  Perhaps it was also senseless to try to find out who might possibly have killed him, and if so, why. Since the manner of his killing seemed incomprehensible, the simplest procedure seemed to be to try and find the murderer first, and then ask him how he’d done it.

  So now it was Thursday, and almost evening. Hardly an hour after his visit to the men with the evil-smelling truck, Martin Beck made a fresh attempt on the house on Tulegatan. His working day was really over, but he didn’t feel like going home. So again he climbed the two flights of stairs and then waited a minute to get his breath back. As he did so he looked at the oval enamel doorplate with green letters on a white background: “Rhea Nielsen.”

  There was no doorbell button. Only a bell rope. He pulled it and waited. A bell tinkled. Otherwise nothing happened.

  The tenement was an old one, and through the door’s panes of frosted glass he saw a light shining in the vestibule. This indicated that someone was at home. At his previous visit all the lights had been out.

  After a suitable interval he again pulled the bell rope; the tinkle was repeated, swift, shuffling footsteps were heard, and he glimpsed someone behind the opaque glass.

  Martin Beck was used to the routine of swiftly summing up the people he met in the course of his duties, a kind of “preliminary description,” to use the official term.

  The woman who opened the door seemed at most to be thirty-five, but something told him she was actually a few years older. She was not very tall, only five foot two or so, he guessed. Though of compact build, she gave the impression of being lithe and shapely rather than plump or clumsy. Her features were strong, somewhat irregular. The eyes were blue and uncompromising, the gaze steady, and she looked him straight in the eyes as if she were always ready to come to grips with things, of whatever sort they might be.

  Her hair was straight, blond, cut short, though just then wet and tousled. She gave off a clean smell, very likely of herbal shampoo, and wore a short-sleeved knitted cardigan and faded blue jeans, suggestive of innumerable washings. The cardigan had not been on her more than a few seconds; large wet splashes were spreading over her shoulders and bosom. She was relatively broad across
the shoulders, slender around the hips, with a short neck and dense, fine down on her sunburned arms. She had rather stubby bare feet with straight toes—as if accustomed to walking in sandals or clogs and as often as possible in nothing at all.

  Aware that he was examining her feet with the same professional meticulousness that he was accustomed to devoting to bloodstains and marks on corpses, he raised his eyes to her face.

  Now the eyes were searching and the brow slightly ruffled. “I was just washing my hair,” she said. Her voice was hoarse; perhaps she had a cold, or was a chain smoker, or just naturally spoke like that.

  He nodded.

  “I shouted ‘come in’ twice. The door’s not locked. I don’t usually lock it when I’m at home. Not unless I want to be in peace and quiet, that is. Didn’t you hear me call out?”

  “No. Are you Rhea Nielsen?”

  “Sure. And you’re a policeman, eh?”

  Though Martin Beck’s powers of observation functioned unusually swiftly, for once he had an immediate sense of having met someone who in this respect was his superior. In a few seconds she had pigeonholed him correctly; and further, the look in her eyes suggested that she had already summed him up. Though that remained to be seen.

  The explanation of her quick assessment of him might, of course, be that she was expecting a visit from the police, though he didn’t think so. As he took out his wallet to show his identity card, she said: “It’s quite enough if you tell me your name. Goddammit, man, come in! There’s something you want, I guess, and neither of us likes standing talking out here on the stairs.”

  Though Martin Beck felt he had only slightly been thrown off his guard, it was a feeling he very rarely had occasion to feel.

  Turning abruptly, she led the way into her apartment. At first its size and layout were beyond him. But the rooms were pleasantly furnished with old odds and ends of furniture. Some children’s drawings, stuck up with drawing pins, indicated she had some kind of a family. Otherwise the decorations on the walls were mixed. There were oil paintings, and drawings, and old photos in oval frames, but also newspaper clippings and posters—among them portraits of Lenin and Mao, though these, as far as he could see, were mostly without political implications. There were also a lot of books, on bookshelves or piled up here and there, as well as a respectable collection of records, a stereo set, a couple of old and apparently much-used typewriters, and above all papers, most of them stenciled and clipped together, which almost looked like police reports. He concluded that they were notes of one sort or another and that she was busy with some kind of studies.