The Locked Room

by Maj Sjowall

  Gunvald Larsson looked around, trying to find him on the platform. But it was as if the man had been swallowed up. He searched each exit without catching sight of Mauritzon, and in the end he took the escalator to the upper level. He went around to the five different exits. No Mauritzon. Finally he came to a standstill outside Ström’s shop window, swore, and wondered whether Mauritzon hadn’t seen him after all. In which case he could have given him the slip by running across the platform and jumping on a northbound train.

  Gunvald Larsson looked somberly at a pair of Italian shoes that were lying in the window and whose owner he would gladly have been had they existed in his size. Several days earlier he had been in and inquired.

  Now he turned to go up and take the bus to Kungsholmen. Suddenly he caught sight of Mauritzon at the other end of the station. He was on his way towards the Sveavägen exit. Besides his black suitcase he was now carrying a package tied with a large and elaborate ribbon with bows. After he had disappeared up the stairs, Gunvald Larsson followed.

  Mauritzon went on southwards down Sveavägen and entered the downtown air terminal. Gunvald Larsson took up his observation post behind a truck on Lästmakargatan. Through the huge windows he could see Mauritzon go up to the counter and talk to a tall blonde in uniform. Gunvald Larsson wondered where Mauritzon was thinking of going. South, of course, perhaps to some spot on the Mediterranean. Or still further—-Africa was popular nowadays. For obvious reasons Mauritzon was scared of staying in Stockholm; yet the moment Malmström and Mohrén realized he’d split they certainly wouldn’t be feeling kindly towards him either.

  He saw Mauritzon open his suitcase and put the box of chocolates, or whatever it was, inside. Then he got his tickets, stuffed them inside his jacket, and emerged onto the pavement.

  Gunvald Larsson watched him stroll slowly away in the direction of Sergelstorg; then he went inside. The girl who had helped Mauritzon was standing leafing through a card index. She threw Gunvald Larsson a quick glance, went on leafing, and said: “Yes sir, what can I do for you?”

  “I should like to know whether that gentleman who was here just now bought a ticket,” Gunvald Larsson said. “And if so, where to.”

  “I don’t know whether I should tell you that,” the blonde said. “Why do you ask?”

  Gunvald Larsson laid his identity card on the counter. The girl looked at it, then at Gunvald Larsson, and said: “I guess you mean Count von Brandenburg? He bought a ticket to Jönköping and reserved a seat on the 14:50 flight. He was planning to take the airport bus, because he asked what time it went. It leaves from Sergelstorg at five minutes to two. What has Count von …?”

  “Thank you, that was all I wanted to know,” said Gunvald Larsson. “Good day.”

  He went towards the door, wondering what business Mauritzon might have in Jönköping. Then he recalled seeing in Mauritzon’s file that he was born there and that his mother was still living in that town. So—Mauritzon was going home to hide away with his mom!

  Gunvald Larsson emerged onto Sveavägen. At a distance he could see Faithful Mauritzon Holm von Brandenburg slowly sauntering along the street in the sunshine. Gunvald Larsson went off in the opposite direction to find a phone and call Kollberg.

  23

  When he came to meet Gunvald Larsson at the appointed time and place, Lennart Kollberg had brought with him every thinkable jimmy and other tool for opening the door of the Armfeldtsgatan apartment. What he should have been supplied with, however, but wasn’t, was a search warrant issued by District Attorney Olsson. But neither he nor Gunvald Larsson were unduly troubled by the notion that they were about to commit an offense in the course of their duties. They were quietly counting on Bulldozer being so delighted if they found anything that could be of use that he’d forget all about the breach of regulations. And if they didn’t find anything, there’d be no reason to tell him about it. Anyway, the concept of a breach of regulations was without relevance nowadays. It was the regulations which were all wrong.

  By this time Mauritzon would be on his way south; not to Africa, admittedly, but far enough to let them work in peace.

  The doors to the apartment house were fitted with standard locks. So was Mauritzon’s; and it didn’t take Kollberg long to open it. On the inside, the door was equipped with two safety chains and a fox-lock, designed to lock only from within. These devices suggested that Mauritzon counted on receiving—or not receiving—guests a good deal more obstinate than the salesmen and peddlers whose visits he declined by means of a little enamel notice on the door.

  His apartment consisted of three rooms plus a kitchen, a hallway, and a bathroom. In itself it was rather elegant. But though its furniture was quite expensive, the overall impression was of tasteless banality. They went into the living room. In front of them was a teak wall unit consisting of bookcases, cupboards, and a built-in writing desk. One shelf was full of paperbacks, while the others were heaped with all kinds of bric-a-brac: souvenirs, pieces of china, little vases and bowls, and other ornaments. On the walls hung a few imitation oil paintings and reproductions of the sort commonly sold in dime stores. The furniture, curtains, and carpets, though they seemed by no means cheap, appeared to have been selected at random, and their patterns, materials, and colors did not go together.

  In one corner was a little cocktail bar. The mere sight of it would have been enough to make anyone feel sick, let alone the smell of the contents of the bottles behind the mirrored doors of the cabinet. The front of the bar was covered in oilcloth of a very peculiar pattern: yellow, green, and pink figures reminiscent of amoebas, or possibly highly magnified spermatozoa, were floating about on a black background. The same pattern, albeit on a considerably smaller scale, was repeated on the plastic surface of the bar.

  Kollberg went over and opened the cocktail cabinet. It contained a half-empty bottle of Parfait d’Amour, a virtually empty bottle of Swedish dessert wine, an unopened half-bottle of Carlshamns Punch, and a completely empty bottle of Beefeater Gin. Shuddering, he shut the doors of the cabinet and went into the next room.

  There was no door between the living room and the next room, only an arch supported by two pillars. Presumably the space beyond was intended to serve as a dining room. It was fairly small and had a bay window overlooking the street. In here was a piano and, in one corner, a radio and record player.

  “Aha, so here we have the music room,” said Kollberg, with a grand gesture.

  “Somehow I find it hard to imagine that rat of a fellow sitting here playing the Moonlight Sonata,” said Gunvald Larsson. He went over and lifted the piano lid, inspecting the instrument’s interior. “At least there are no corpses here,” he said.

  Having made the preliminary tour of inspection, Kollberg took off his jacket and they began going through the apartment in detail. They started in the bedroom where Gunvald Larsson immediately began ransacking the closet while Kollberg attacked the chest of drawers. For a while they worked in silence. It was Kollberg who broke it.

  “Gunvald,” he said.

  A muffled reply came from the depths of the closet.

  Kollberg went on: “They didn’t have much success shadowing Roos. He flew out from Arlanda a couple of hours ago, and Bulldozer got in the final report just before I left. He was deeply disappointed.”

  Gunvald Larsson grunted. Then he stuck his head out and said: “Bulldozer’s optimism and wild expectations expose him to constant disappointments. But he soon gets over them, as no doubt you’ve noticed. Well, what was Roos up to on his days off?” He disappeared into the closet again.

  Kollberg shoved in the lower drawer and straightened his back. “Well, he didn’t meet up with Malmström and Mohrén, as Bulldozer hoped,” he said. “The first evening, day before yesterday that is, he went to a restaurant with some dame and went skinny-dipping with her afterwards.”

  “Yes, I heard about that,” Gunvald Larsson said. “And then?”

  “He stayed with this dame until the afternoon and then
drove into town and wandered about, apparently aimlessly and all by himself. Yesterday evening he went to another restaurant with another girl but didn’t go for a swim, at least not outdoors. He took her home with him to Märsta. Yesterday he took her in a taxi to Odenplan, where they parted. Then he drifted about on his own, went into a few shops, drove home to Märsta again, changed his clothes, and drove out to Arlanda Airport. Not very exciting! And above all not particularly criminal.”

  “If the skinny-dipping isn’t to be regarded as an offense against public decency,” Gunvald Larsson said, “and Ek, who was sitting there in the bushes watching, doesn’t report him for committing a nuisance.” He came out of the closet and shut the door. “Nothing in there except for a lot of incredibly ugly clothes,” he said, going out to the bathroom.

  Kollberg went on to study a green cabinet that did duty as a bedside table. The two uppermost drawers contained a welter of objects, all more or less used: crumpled Kleenex, cuff links, a few empty matchboxes, half a bar of chocolate, safety pins, a thermometer, two packages of cough drops, restaurant bills and cash-register receipts, an unopened pack of black condoms, ball-point pens, a postcard from Stettin with the message: “Here’s vodka, women, and song, what more can one want? Nils,” a cigarette lighter that didn’t function, and a blunt peasant knife without a sheath.

  On top of the bedside table lay a paperback, the cover of which showed a bandy-legged cowboy holding a smoking revolver in his hands.

  Kollberg leafed through the book, which was entitled The Gunfight at Black Ravine, and a photo fell out onto the floor. A color snapshot, it showed a young woman sitting on a jetty wearing shorts and a short-sleeved white sweater. She was dark, and her appearance was humdrum. Kollberg turned the photo over. Along the top edge was written in lead pencil: “Möja, 1969,” and under it in blue ink and another handwriting, “Monita.” Kollberg stuck the photo back among the pages and pulled out the lower drawer.

  It was deeper than either of the others, and when he’d pulled it out he called for Gunvald Larsson. They looked down into the drawer.

  “Queer place to keep a grinding machine,” said Kollberg. “Or maybe it’s some advanced kind of a massage apparatus?”

  “Wonder what he used it for?” said Gunvald Larsson thoughtfully. “He doesn’t quite seem the type to have hobbies, does he? Though of course he could have stolen it or been given it in payment for dope.” He went back to the bathroom.

  Little more than an hour later their search of the apartment and its contents was finished. They had found little of special interest: no money stowed away, no incriminating correspondence, no weapons, and no medicines stronger than aspirin and Alka-Seltzer.

  Now they were standing in the kitchen, where they had rummaged through all the drawers and closets. The refrigerator, they noticed, had not been turned off and was full of food, which meant that Mauritzon wasn’t intending to stay away for long. Among other things, a smoked eel lay staring up challengingly at Kollberg, who ever since the day he’d decided to get his weight down had suffered continuously from hunger. However, he got control of himself and with a grumbling stomach turned away from the refrigerator and its temptations. He caught sight of a key ring with two keys, which was hanging from a hook behind the kitchen door. “Keys to the roof,” he said, pointing.

  Gunvald Larsson went up to the key ring and unhooked it. He said: “Or to the basement. Come on, let’s take a look.”

  Neither of the keys fitted the door to the roof, so they took the elevator down to the ground floor and went downstairs to the basement. The largest of the keys opened the lock of the fire door.

  First they entered a short hallway with doors on either side. Opening the door on the right they looked into the garbage room. The building had a garbage chute, at the mouth of which stood a metal container on wheels, lined with a large yellow plastic bag. Three more containers with bags—one filled to the brim with garbage and two empty—stood by the wall. In one corner stood a brush and pan.

  The door opposite was locked, and a notice said it led to the washroom.

  The corridor led into a long passageway stretching in both directions. Along its walls were rows of numbered lockers, all fitted with various types of padlocks.

  Kollberg and Gunvald Larsson tried out the smaller key in several of them and finally found the right one. There were only two things in Mauritzon’s locker: an ancient vacuum cleaner without a nozzle, and a large chest, which was locked. While Kollberg picked the lock Gunvald Larsson opened the vacuum cleaner and looked inside.

  “Empty,” he said.

  Kollberg opened the lid of the chest and said: “But not this one. Take a look.”

  Inside the chest were fourteen unopened bottles of 130 proof Polish vodka, four cassette tape recorders, an electric hair drier, and six electric shavers, all brand new and still sealed in their original packages.

  “Smuggled,” said Gunvald Larsson. “Or else stolen goods.”

  “They’re certainly stuff he’s been given in exchange,” Kollberg said. “I wouldn’t mind seizing the vodka, but I suppose we’d better leave it all where it is.”

  He shut the chest and locked it, and they went out again into the passage.

  “Well, that was something, at least,” Kollberg said. “But not much to bring home to Bulldozer. I guess we’d better put the keys back where we found them and beat it. Nothing more to be done here.”

  “Cautious bastard, that Mauritzon,” said Gunvald Larsson. “Maybe he’s even got a third apartment.” He stopped, nodding toward a door at the far end of the passage. Across the door the words “Air Raid Shelter” were stenciled in red paint. “Let’s see if it’s open,” he said. “While we’re at it.”

  The door was open. The air raid shelter seemed to be used as a bicycle storage room and general junk heap. Besides the bikes and dismantled motor scooter there were a couple of baby carriages, a sled, and an old-fashioned toboggan with a steering wheel. Against one wall was a carpenter’s workbench, and on the floor beneath it lay a couple of window frames without any glass in them. In one corner stood an iron spike, a couple of brooms, a snow shovel, and two pitchforks.

  “I always get claustrophobic in places like this,” Kollberg said. “During the war, when we had air raid practice, I always sat trying to imagine what it’d feel like to sit there underneath a bombed building and never be able to get out. Goddam awful.”

  He looked around. In the corner behind the bench stood an old wooden box with the hardly visible word “sand” painted on its front. On the lid was a galvanized bucket. “Look,” he said. “There’s one of those old sand boxes from the war.”

  He went over, lifted off the bucket, and opened the lid of the sand box. “There’s still some sand in it,” he said.

  “We never needed it,” said Gunvald Larsson, “anyway not to put out incendiary bombs with. What’s that?”

  Kollberg had bent down over the box. Shoving his hand into it he picked something out and placed it on the bench. It was a green American army-type shoulder bag.

  Kollberg opened the satchel and laid out its contents on the workbench:

  A crumpled pale-blue shirt.

  A blond wig.

  A blue denim hat, wide-brimmed.

  A pair of sunglasses.

  And a pistol: a forty-five-caliber Llama Auto.

  24

  The girl who called herself Monita had not met Filip Faithful Mauritzon on that summer day three years ago when she was photographed on a jetty on Möja—an island in the Stockholm Archipelago.

  That summer had been the last in her six years of marriage to Peter; in the autumn he met another woman, and just after Christmas had left Monita and their five-year-old daughter Mona. She did what he asked and applied for a quick divorce on grounds of his infidelity: he was in a hurry to marry his new woman, who was already in the fifth month of pregnancy when the divorce went through. Monita kept the two-room apartment in Hökarängen, out in the suburbs, and there had n
ever been any question that the child remain in her care. Peter relinquished his rights to have regular contacts with his daughter; later it was to turn out that he also defaulted on his duty to contribute to the child’s support.

  The divorce not only led to a sharp deterioration in Monita’s finances, it also forced her to break off her studies, which she had only recently begun. And this depressed her more than anything else in the whole wretched story.

  As time passed she had begun to feel handicapped by her lack of education. For she had never really had a chance to go on studying or to learn a profession. When she had finished her nine-year compulsory schooling she had wanted to take a year off before entering college. And when that year was at an end she had met Peter. They had gotten married, and her plans for higher education had been put on the shelf. The following year their daughter had been born. Peter had started night school. Not until he had completed his education—the year before their divorce—was it to have been her turn again. When Peter had left her, her educational prospects had been destroyed: it was impossible to get hold of a regular baby-sitter, and even if one had been available the expense would have been too much for her.

  The first two years after her daughter had come into the world Monita had stayed at home, but as soon as she had been able to place the child in a day care center she had begun working again. Earlier, that is to say from the month after she had left school up to a few weeks before the child’s delivery, she had held a number of different jobs. During those years she had been a secretary, a cashier at a supermarket, a stock clerk, a factory worker, and a waitress. She was a restless soul. As soon as she didn’t feel happy or felt she needed a change, she’d quit her job and look for a new one.

  When, after the two-year involuntary interruption, she again began looking for a job, she discovered that the labor market had grown tighter and that there wasn’t much for her to choose from. Lacking any professional education or useful contacts, only the worst-paid and least-stimulating occupations were open to her. Now it was not so easy to change jobs as soon as the boredom became excessive, but when she had begun to study again the future looked brighter and the soul-killing monotony of work on an assembly line became easier to put up with.