The Locked Room

by Maj Sjowall

  The South Police Station was by no means deserted. Somewhere not far away he could hear a couple of colleagues discussing something in shrill, indignant voices. He was not the least bit curious about whatever it was they were talking about.

  Leaving the building, he went to Midsommarkransen subway station, where he had to wait a rather long time for a train. It looked good enough on the outside, but the interior had been grossly vandalized—its seats were slashed and anything that could be removed, unscrewed, or ripped off was gone. He got off in the Old City, and went home.

  After he had put on his pajamas he looked for some beer in the icebox and wine in the kitchen closet, knowing full well that he would find neither.

  Martin Beck opened a can of Russian crab, made himself a couple of sandwiches, and took out a bottle of mineral water. There was nothing wrong with the food. But to sit there chewing it all alone was goddam dreary. Admittedly, it had been just as dreary late Wednesday; but then it hadn’t mattered, so to speak.

  Seized with a desire for activity, he went to bed with one of his many unread books. It happened to be Ray Parkins’ documentary novel about the Battle of Lake Java. He read it through from start to finish and thought it poor. He couldn’t understand why it had been translated into Swedish and looked to see which publisher was responsible. Norstedts. Odd.

  In The Two-Ocean War Samuel Eliot Morison had treated the same subject more exhaustively and in an infinitely more exciting manner in nine pages than Parkins had succeeded in doing in two hundred and fifty-seven.

  Before dropping off to sleep he thought of spaghetti bolognese. At the same time he felt something like expectation about the next day.

  It must have been this unmotivated feeling that caused Saturday and Sunday to seem so insufferably empty of all content. For the first time in years he felt restless and painfully shut in. He went out. On Sunday he even took the steamer out to Mariefred, though that did not help. Even outdoors he still felt just as shut in. Something was basically wrong with his existence, something he wasn’t prepared to accept as equably as he had before. Observing people all around him, he gained the impression that many of them were in the same predicament he was, though they either didn’t realize it or wouldn’t admit it to themselves.

  On Monday morning he rode again. Guiteau looked like Carradine and shot with a forty-five automatic, and when Martin Beck had carried out his ritual sacrifice Rhea Nielsen came up to him and asked: “What the hell are you up to?”

  Later he was sitting in the South Police Station belaboring the telephone. He began with the radium clinic. In the end he got his answer, but it was not a very satisfactory one. Svärd had been admitted on Monday, March 6. But the following day he had been transferred to the communicable disease clinic of South Hospital. Why?

  “Not easy to say, so long afterwards,” said the secretary who had finally managed to find Svärd’s name among her papers. “He was obviously no case for us. We haven’t got his records here, just a note that he’d been sent to us by a private doctor.”

  “Which private doctor?”

  “Dr. Berglund, a general practitioner. Yes, here it is. Can’t read what’s written on the admittance slip, you know what doctors’ handwriting is like. And it’s a bad photostat anyway.”

  “But the address?”

  “His office? Odengatan 30.”

  “So that’s legible, at least,” said Martin Beck.

  “It’s embossed,” said the secretary laconically.

  Dr. Berglund’s automatic telephone-answering machine informed him that the office was closed and would not be opening again until the fifteenth of August. The doctor, of course, was on vacation.

  Martin Beck, however, was not disposed to wait for more than a month to find out what illness Svärd had suffered from. So he called up South Hospital, which is an enormous place with heavy telephone traffic. It took him more than two hours to get it confirmed that Karl Edvin Svärd had in fact been admitted to the communicable disease clinic in March—to be precise, from Tuesday the seventh to Saturday the eighteenth, when, as far as could be determined, he had gone home.

  But had he been released as healthy or mortally ill? To get an answer to this question seemed impossible: the doctor in charge was on duty, but busy, and couldn’t come to the phone. The time had obviously come for Martin Beck to resume his visits.

  He took a taxi to South Hospital and after wandering around for a while found the right corridor. Only ten minutes later he was sitting in the office of the person who ought to know all about Svärd’s state of health.

  The doctor was a man of about forty, small of stature, dark-haired, and with neutral-colored eyes—blue-gray with a touch of green and light brown. While Martin Beck searched his pockets for some nonexistent cigarettes, the man put on a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and became absorbed in his records. After ten minutes of total silence he pushed his spectacles up onto his forehead, looked at his visitor, and said: “Yes, yes. And what was it you wanted to know?”

  “What was Svärd’s illness?”

  “None at all.”

  Martin Beck pondered this somewhat surprising statement. Then he said: “Then why was he in here for almost two weeks?”

  “Eleven days, to be exact. We gave him a thorough checkup. For he had certain symptoms and had been sent to us by a private doctor.”

  “Dr. Berglund?”

  “Right. The patient himself thought he was seriously ill. He had a couple of minor swellings on his neck and a lump on the left side of his midriff. It could be felt clearly, even by pressing it only lightly. Like so many other people, he’d got it into his head that he had cancer. He went to a private doctor, who found the symptoms alarming. The fact is, general practitioners rarely have access to the equipment necessary to diagnose cases of this kind. Nor is their judgment always of the best. In this case an erroneous diagnosis was made, and the patient was immediately sent to the radium clinic. There they could only note that no valid diagnosis had been made, and so he was sent to us. Here he went through a whole series of examinations. We always examine patients very thoroughly.”

  “And the result was that Svärd had nothing wrong with him?”

  “By and large, yes. Those things on his neck we could dismiss at once. They were just ordinary fat formations, quite harmless. The lump on his midriff needed more careful investigation. Among other things we had a complete aortography done and also X-rayed his whole digestive system. Further, we made a complete liver biopsy and—”

  “What’s that?”

  “Liver biopsy? To put it simply, we put a tube into the patient’s side and extract a piece of his liver. As a matter of fact, I did it myself. Then the sample was sent to the laboratory, and they looked to see whether there were, for example, any cancer cells. Well, we found nothing of that kind. The lump turned out to be an isolated cyst on the colon—”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The gut. A cyst, as I say. Nothing to imperil his life. In itself, it could be removed by an operation, but we didn’t think such intervention necessary. The patient suffered no discomfort from it. True, he said he had earlier had severe pains, but those were obviously of a psychosomatic nature.” The doctor paused, threw Martin Beck a glance of the kind one usually reserves for children and other hopelessly uneducated people, and explained: “Imaginary pains, that is.”

  “Did you have any personal contact with Svärd?”

  “Sure. I spoke to him every day, and before he was allowed to go home we had a long talk.”

  “How did he react?”

  “First he behaved as if he was suffering from the disease he imagined. He was convinced he was suffering from incurable cancer and would die very soon. Didn’t think he had much more than a month to live.”

  “And in fact he didn’t,” said Martin Beck.

  “Really? Was he run over?”

  “Shot. It’s possible he committed suicide.”

  The doctor took off his glasses and wi
ped them thoughtfully on a corner of his white coat. “The latter suggestion strikes me as utterly improbable,” he said.

  “Oh, and why?”

  “Before we let Svärd go home I had, as I’ve already said, a long talk with him. He was enormously relieved when it dawned on him he was healthy. Earlier, he’d been in a terrible state. But now he changed altogether. He became happy, quite simply. We had already seen how his pains disappeared as soon as we’d given him some very weak pain killers. Pills that—just between ourselves—cannot alleviate any real physical pain whatsoever.”

  “So you think he can’t have committed suicide?”

  “He wasn’t the type.”

  “What type was he, then?”

  “I’m not a psychiatrist, but mostly I got the impression of him being a hard, shut-in man. I know the staff here had a certain amount of trouble with him and thought him demanding and querulous. But these traits didn’t appear until the last few days, after he’d realized his complaint constituted no threat to his life.”

  Martin Beck pondered. Then he said: “I suppose you don’t know whether he had any visitors while he was here?”

  “No. I can’t say I do. He told me he had no friends.”

  Martin. Beck got up. “Thanks,” he said. “That’s all I wanted to know. Good-bye.”

  He got as far as the door when the doctor said: “About visitors and friends, there’s something I’ve just thought of.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, Svärd had a relative, whom he heard from. A nephew. He called up during my telephone hour and asked how his uncle was.”

  “And what did you reply?”

  “This nephew of his called just at the moment our examinations were finished. So I could give him the happy news that Svärd was in good health and still had every prospect of living for many years.”

  “How did the man react?”

  “He seemed astonished. Obviously Svärd had convinced him, too, that he was gravely ill and would hardly survive his hospitalization.”

  “Did this nephew tell you his name?”

  “Presumably, but I don’t remember it.”

  “One other thing strikes me,” Martin Beck said. “Don’t people usually give the name and address of their next of kin when they enter the hospital, or some friend, just in case they …” He left his sentence hanging in the air.

  “Sure. Quite right,” said the doctor and put on his glasses again. “Let’s see. There ought to be a name here. Yes, here it is.”

  “What is it?”

  “Rhea Nielsen.”

  Martin Beck walked through Tantolunden Park, deep in thought. No one robbed him, or clobbered him on the head. All he saw were flocks of drunks, who lay spread out there behind the bushes, presumably waiting to be taken care of.

  Now he really had got something to think about. Karl Edvin Svärd had not had any brothers or sisters. So how could he have a nephew?

  Now Martin Beck had a reason to go to Tulegatan, this Monday evening, and he was in fact almost there.

  But when he’d gotten as far as Central Station, where he was to change trains, he changed his mind and went back two stations to get off at Slussen. Then he walked along Skeppsbron Quay to see whether there were any interesting boats to look at. But few were in.

  Suddenly he noticed he was hungry. Since he’d forgotten to do his shopping, he went to a restaurant called The Golden Peace and—under the gaze of a number of tourists who kept on tormenting the personnel with idiotic questions about which famous people were seated where—ate some ham. Last year he had himself contrived to become rather well-known, but people’s memories are short, and by this time his celebrity had had time to fade.

  As he paid his bill, he had reason to note that this was his first restaurant meal for some time. During his period of abstinence the prices, already exorbitant, had gotten ridiculous.

  Home again, he felt more restless than ever and wandered about the little apartment for a long while before retiring with a book; a book that was neither boring enough to send him to sleep nor interesting enough to keep him awake. About three o’clock he got up and took a couple of sleeping pills, something from which he usually abstained. They quickly knocked him out, and when he woke up he still felt groggy. Yet he had long overslept his usual hour and hadn’t dreamt at all.

  Once back in his office he began the day’s investigations by thoroughly reading through his own notes. This kept him busy until lunch, which consisted of a cup of tea and some dry toast.

  Then he went to the bathroom and washed his hands. When he came back, something happened: the phone rang.

  “Inspector Beck?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Handelsbanken.” The man said which branch of the bank he worked at and went on: “We received an inquiry from you about a client called Karl Edvin Svärd.”

  “Yes?”

  “He has an account with us.”

  “Is there any money in it?”

  “Yes. A considerable sum.”

  “How much?”

  “About sixty thousand. It’s …” The man fell silent.

  “What were you about to say?” Martin Beck asked.

  “Well, in my opinion there’s something odd about this account.”

  “Have you got the papers there?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Then I can come and look at them at once?”

  “Naturally. Just ask for me. My name is Bengtsson. I’m the manager.”

  It was a relief to get moving. The bank was on the corner of Odengatan and Sveavägen. In spite of all the traffic he was there in less than half an hour.

  The manager was right. There was something odd about Svärd’s account.

  Martin Beck sat at a table behind the counter, studying the documents and for once feeling grateful for a system that gave the police and other authorities unrestricted access to people’s private affairs.

  The bank manager said: “The striking thing about it, of course, is that this client has a checking account. It would have been more natural for him to have, for instance, a savings account, which yields a higher rate of interest.”

  This observation was correct. But even more striking was the regularity with which the sum of seven hundred and fifty kronor had been deposited. The entries were always made between the fifteenth and the twentieth of every month.

  “As far as I can see,” Martin Beck said, “this money was not paid in directly to this branch.”

  “No, never. The deposits were always made somewhere else. If you’ll take a look, Inspector, you’ll see they were always made at other branches, often branches of banks other than ours. Technically it makes no difference, since the money always ended up in Svärd’s checking account here with us. But there almost seems to be a system behind these constant changes.”

  “You mean Svärd put the money in himself but didn’t want to be recognized?”

  “Well, that would be the first thing one would think of, yes. When you put money into your checking account, after all, you don’t have to state who made the deposit.”

  “Though you have to fill in a deposit slip, don’t you?”

  “Not necessarily. Plenty of people are unfamiliar with the system, and in that case the teller usually fills in the name, the account number, and the number of the branch. It’s all part of our service to our clients.”

  “But what happens to the slip?”

  “The client gets a copy, which is his receipt. When the payment is made into the client’s own account the bank doesn’t send him any notification. Notifications are only sent when asked for.”

  “Then where are all the originals?”

  “They are filed centrally.”

  Martin Beck let his finger run down the rows of figures. Then he said: “Didn’t Svärd ever take out any money?”

  “No, and in my view that’s the oddest thing of all. He has never drawn a single check on this account, and now that I’ve looked into the matte
r it also appears he never even had a checkbook. At least not for years.”

  Martin Beck rubbed his nose energetically. No checkbook had been found at Svärd’s place, nor were there any copies of deposit slips or notifications from the bank.

  “Was Svärd known by sight here?”

  “No. None of us had ever seen him.”

  “How old is this account?”

  “It seems to have been opened in April, 1966.”

  “And since then seven hundred and fifty kronor have been coming in every month?”

  “Yes. Though the last deposit is dated March 16. The man looked at his calendar. “That was a Thursday. The next month no money came in.”

  “The explanation is quite simple,” Martin Beck said. “It was about then that Svärd died.”

  “Oh? We’ve had no notification to that effect. In such cases the deceased’s relatives usually communicate with us.”

  “He doesn’t seem to have had any.”

  The bank manager looked bewildered.

  “Until now,” Martin Beck said. “Good morning.”

  He realized he’d better get going before the bank was robbed. If that were to happen while he was on the premises he could hardly help becoming entangled in the activities of the special squad. And that kind of entanglement he’d certainly rather avoid.

  New aspects to the case. Seven hundred and fifty a month for six years! That was a singularly regular income, and since Svärd had never taken anything out, quite a large sum of money had gradually accumulated in the mysterious account: Fifty-four thousand kronor.

  To Martin Beck that was a lot of money. For Svärd it must have been even more, almost a fortune.

  So Rhea had not been that far from the truth when she’d talked about money in his mattress. The only difference was that Svärd had been more rational; he had kept up with the times.

  This new development spurred Martin Beck to fresh activity. The next step would be to have a word with the tax authorities, for one thing; and, for another, to take a look at such deposit slips as might have been filed.