The Locked Room

by Maj Sjowall

  It was extremely hot up in the attic, and the dust swirled around them like fog. Otherwise it all went easily enough. After half an hour they’d found the right box. The daybooks and ledgers were of the old-fashioned cloth-bound type, with cracked cardboard covers. Their labels bore the numbers of the various warehouses as well as the years. All in all they found five volumes with the right numbers and dates—from the second half of 1965 and the first six months of 1966.

  The young clerk did not look so tidy now. His jacket was ripe for the cleaners, and his face was streaked with dust and sweat.

  Down in the office everyone looked at the daybooks with amazement and distaste. No, they didn’t want a receipt for them; indeed they couldn’t care less whether they ever saw them again.

  “I do hope I’ve been no trouble,” Martin Beck said blithely.

  They stared listlessly after him as he departed, his booty under his arm.

  He made no pretense of having increased the popularity of the country’s “largest public service organization,” as the National Police Commissioner, in a statement that—even within the force—had aroused an amazement bordering on dismay, had recently called the police.

  At Västberga Martin Beck took the volumes out to the bathroom and wiped them off. Then he washed himself, went to his room, and sat down to read them. It was three o’clock when he began, and five when he felt he’d finished.

  Though largely incomprehensible to any uninitiated person, the warehouse ledgers had been fairly well kept. The jottings went on from day to day, noting in abbreviated terminology the quantities of goods handled.

  But what Martin Beck was looking for was there too. At irregular intervals there were notes of goods damaged. For example:

  Gds dmgd in transit, I case cans of soup, fr recptn Svanberg Wholesalers, Huvudstagat. 16, Solna.

  Such a note always indicated the type of merchandise and who it was for. On the other hand, there was never any note of the extent of the damage, its nature, or who had caused it.

  Admittedly, such accidents had not happened very often. But liquor, foodstuffs, and other consumer articles constituted the overwhelming majority.

  Martin Beck transferred all the damage reports into his own notebook. And their dates. Altogether they added up to some fifty entries. When he’d done with the ledgers, he carried the whole pile out to the office and wrote on a slip of paper that they were to be mailed back to the forwarding agents. On top of it all he put one of the white police correspondence cards with the message: “Thanks for your help! Beck.”

  On his way to the subway station he reflected that this would give the forwarding agency another shipment to handle, a sadistic thought that he was surprised to note aroused in him a certain childish glee.

  While waiting for a vandalized subway train he reflected on modern container traffic. To lose a steel container full of bottles of cognac and then smash it in order to lovingly gather up the fragments that remained in buckets and gasoline cans was now out of the question. In containers, on the other hand, today’s gangster syndicates could smuggle in literally anything, and were daily doing so. The Customs Bureau had lost all control over these events and therefore occupied itself with senselessly persecuting individual travelers who might have a few packs of cigarettes or an undeclared bottle of whisky in their baggage.

  He changed trains at Central Station and got off at the College of Commerce.

  In the state liquor store on Surbrunnsgatan the woman behind the counter stared suspiciously at his jacket, dusty and crumpled from his foray into the basement.

  “I’d just like a couple of bottles of red wine, please,” he said.

  Instantly her hand went under the counter to press the button that lit up the red control light. “Your identity card, please,” she said grimly.

  He showed his card, and she blushed slightly, as if victimized by an unusually stupid and indecent practical joke.

  Then he went home to Rhea.

  After pulling the bell rope once, Martin Beck felt if the door was open. It was locked. But inside the foyer the light was on, and after half a minute or so he tried again.

  She came and opened. Today she was wearing brown corduroy trousers and a funny sort of pale-mauve shift that reached halfway down her thighs. “Oh, it’s you, is it?” she said grumpily.

  “Yes. May I come in?”

  She looked at him. “Okay.” She turned her back.

  He followed her into the foyer. After two steps she halted and stood there, her head bowed. She went back to the door and unlocked it—then changed her mind and locked it again. Finally she went ahead into the kitchen.

  “I’ve bought a couple of bottles of wine.”

  “Put them in the closet,” she said, sitting down at the kitchen table. On it lay two open books, some papers, a pen, and a pink eraser. He took his bottles out of the bag and put them away.

  With a sideways glance she said, annoyed: “What d’you want to go and buy such expensive wine for?”

  He sat down opposite her. Looking him straight in the eyes, she said: “Svärd, eh?”

  “No,” he said at once. “Though I’m using him as a pretext.”

  “Do you have to have a pretext?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Then we’ll make some tea.” She pushed aside her books and began banging about with her pots and pans. “Actually I’d intended to study this evening,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s so goddam miserable being on one’s own. Had dinner?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Then I’ll make us something.” She stood with her legs apart, one hand on her hip, with the other scratching her neck. “Rice,” she said. “That’ll do fine. I’ll make some rice, and then we can mix it up with something to make it taste better.”

  “Sure, that sounds fine.”

  “It’ll take a little while, though. Twenty minutes maybe. We’ll have tea first.” She set out some cups, poured the tea, and sat down. Holding the cup in her broad hands she blew on her tea, meanwhile peering at him over the rim—still a trifle glum.

  “By the way, you were right about Svärd. He had money in the bank. Quite a lot.”

  “Mmm,” she said.

  “Someone was paying him seven hundred and fifty kronor a month. Have you any idea who that could have been?”

  “No. He didn’t know anyone, did he?”

  “Why did he move out?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “The only explanation I can think of is that he didn’t like it here. He was a queer guy. Several times he complained of my not locking the street door earlier in the evenings. I guess he thought the whole house existed only for him.”

  “Sure, that’s about right.”

  She sat silent a long while. Then she said: “What’s right? Is there anything interesting about Svärd?”

  “Whether you’ll think it’s interesting or not I can’t tell,” said Martin Beck. “Someone must have shot him.”

  “Queer,” she said. “Tell me.” Again she began busying herself with her saucepans, but at the same time she listened carefully to what he had to tell her. From time to time, though she didn’t interrupt, she frowned. When he’d finished, she burst out into uproarious laughter. “Marvelous!” she said. “Don’t you ever read detective stories?”

  “No.”

  “I read heaps of them. Anything. And forget most of it as soon as I’ve finished. But that’s a classic. A room locked on the inside—there are some major studies of just that kind of thing. I read one not long ago. Wait a moment—and get out some bowls. Take the soya from the shelf. Lay the table nicely.”

  He did his best. She was out of the room for a few minutes. When she came back she had some kind of a magazine in her hand. Laying it open beside her bowl, she began spooning out food. “Eat,” she commanded. “While it’s hot.”

  “Tasty,” he said.

  “Mmmm,” she said. “Success again.” She gulped down a sizable portion, then look
ed into the magazine and said: “Listen to this. ‘The Locked Room: A Study.’ It contains three possibilities, A, B, and C. A: The crime has been committed in a locked room, which is really and truly locked and from which the murderer has disappeared, since there’s no murderer inside it. B: The crime has been committed inside a room, which only seems to be hermetically closed and from which there is some more-or-less ingenious way of getting out. C: The crime has been committed by a murderer who stays inside, hidden.

  She spooned up some more food. “Category C seems to be out of the question,” she said. “No one can remain hidden for two months with only half a can of cat food to live on. But there are lots of subsections. For example, A5: Murder with the help of animals. Or B2: Someone has gotten in through the hinge side of the door, leaving lock and bolt intact, after which the hinge is again screwed back into place.”

  “Who wrote it?”

  She looked. “Göran Sundholm, his name is. He quotes others too. A7 isn’t so bad either: Murder by illusion, by erroneous sequence in time. A good variant is A9: The victim is dealt the deathblow somewhere else, whereupon he goes to the room in question and locks himself in before dying. Read it for yourself.”

  She handed him the magazine. Martin Beck glanced through it, then laid it aside.

  “Who’s doing the dishes?” she asked.

  He got up and began clearing the table.

  She lifted up her legs and sat with her heels on the seat of her chair and her arms around her knees. “After all, you’re the detective,” she said. “It ought to amuse you when something out of the ordinary happens. Do you think it was the murderer who called the hospital?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Seems likely to me.” She shrugged. “Of course the whole thing’s as simple as can be,” she said.

  “Probably.” He heard someone at the front door: but the bell didn’t ring, nor did she react. There was a system here that worked. If she wanted to be in peace, she locked herself in. If anyone had an important errand, he rang. All this, however, called for confidence in one’s neighbors. Martin Beck sat down.

  “Perhaps we can have a taste of that expensive wine,” she said.

  And it tasted good. Neither of them said anything for a long while.

  “How can you stand it, being a policeman?”

  “Oh, I manage.…”

  “We can talk about it some other time.”

  “They’re thinking of promoting me to commissioner.”

  “And you don’t want it,” she declared.

  Somewhat later she asked: “What kind of music d’you like? I’ve every sort you can think of.”

  They went into the room with the record player and the assortment of armchairs. She played something.

  “Take off your jacket, goddam it,” she said. “And your shoes.” She had opened the second bottle, but this time they drank slowly.

  “You seemed annoyed when I turned up,” he said.

  “Yes and no.”

  Not a word more. The way she had behaved then had meant something. That she wasn’t an easy lay. She saw he’d understood; and he knew she saw it. Martin Beck took a sip of his wine. Just now he was feeling un-ashamedly happy. He peeked at her where she sat with a downcast expression on her face and her elbows on the low table.

  “Like to do a jigsaw puzzle?” she said.

  “I’ve got a good one at home,” he said. “The old ‘Queen Elizabeth.’ ”

  That was true. He’d bought it a couple of years ago but had never given it a thought since.

  “Bring it next time you come,” she said. Quickly and suddenly she changed her posture. Sitting with her legs crossed and her chin on her hands, she said: “Perhaps I should inform you that for the time being I’m no sort of a lay.”

  He threw her a quick glance, and she went on: “You know how it is with women—infections and such.”

  Martin Beck nodded.

  “My sex life is without interest,” she said. “And yours?”

  “Nonexistent.”

  “That’s bad,” she said.

  She changed the record and they drank some more.

  He yawned.

  “You’re tired,” she said.

  He said nothing.

  “But you don’t want to go home. Okay then, don’t go home.”

  And then: “I think I’ll try and study a bit longer anyway. And I don’t like this goddam shift. Tight and silly.”

  She peeled off her clothes and flung them in a heap on the floor. Then she put on a dark-red flannel nightgown, which reached down to her feet and looked very odd in every way.

  As she changed he observed her, interested.

  Naked, she looked exactly as he’d imagined. Firm-bodied, strong, and well-built. Fair hair. Bulging stomach, flat rounded breasts. Rather large light-brown nipples.

  He didn’t think: No scars, blemishes, or other identifying marks.

  “Why don’t you lie down awhile?” she said. “You look really beat.”

  Martin Beck obeyed. He really did feel beat and dropped off almost at once. The last thing he saw was her sitting at the table, her blond head sunk over her books.

  When he opened his eyes she was bending over him, saying: “Wake up now. It’s twelve o’clock. I’m as hungry as can be. Go down and lock the street door, will you, while I put a sandwich in the oven. The key’s hanging on the left side of the door—on a bit of green string.”

  27

  Malmström and Mohrén robbed the bank on Friday, July 14. At 2:45 exactly they marched in through the doors wearing Donald Duck masks, rubber gloves, and orange overalls.

  In their hands they held high-caliber pistols, and Mohrén immediately fired a shot at the ceiling. Then, so that all present should understand what was happening, he shouted in very broken Swedish: “This is a bank robbery!”

  Hauser and Hoff were wearing their usual outdoor clothes and enormous black hoods with holes for their eyes. Hauser was also equipped with a Mauser and Hoff with the sawed-off Maritza shotgun. They stood at the doors to keep open their retreat to the getaway cars.

  Hoff let the muzzle of the shotgun sway to and fro, to warn outsiders away, while Hauser took up his planned tactical position in such a way as to be able to fire either into the bank or out at the sidewalk.

  Meanwhile Malmström and Mohrén began systematically emptying all the cash drawers.

  Never had anything worked so perfectly or gone so completely according to plan.

  Five minutes earlier an old car had exploded outside a garage on Rosenlundsgatan, on the south side of the city. Immediately after the explosion, someone had fired a series of shots in various directions, and a house had burst into flames. Enterpriser A, who had staged these spectacular events, ran off through an alley to the next street, where he got into his car and drove home.

  One minute later a stolen furniture truck backed obliquely into the driveway of the central police building and broke down. Its rear door opened and scores of cartons of oil-soaked cotton came spewing out and immediately caught fire.

  Meanwhile, Enterpriser B walked calmly away down the sidewalk, apparently unconcerned at the chaos he’d caused.

  Yes, everything went off precisely as planned. Every detail was carried out on the dot, according to schedule.

  From the point of view of the police, too, everything worked out more or less as they had expected. Everything happened as had been foreseen, and at the proper time.

  With one little hitch.

  Malmström and Mohrén didn’t rob a bank in Stockholm. They robbed a bank four hundred miles away, in Malmö.

  Per Månsson of the Malmö C.I.D. was sitting in his office drinking coffee. He had a view out over the parking lot, and when the explosion came and great clouds of smoke began rolling in from the driveway, his Danish pastry stuck in his throat. At the same moment Benny Skacke, a young hopeful who, despite his careerist ambitions, had still gotten no further than detective sergeant, jerked open his door and shouted t
hat the catastrophe alarm had gone off. A bomb had exploded in Rosenlundsgatan, where it was also said that wild firing was going on and at least one building was in flames.

  Though Skacke had been living in Malmö for three and a half years, he had never so much as heard of Rosenlundsgatan and did not know its whereabouts. But Per Månsson did. He knew this town inside out, and it struck him as exceedingly peculiar that such a bombing should occur in that forgotten street in the peaceful district called Sofielund.

  As it turned out, neither he nor any other policeman was given much of a chance for this kind of musing. At the same time as all available personnel were directed southwards, the police headquarters themselves seemed to be threatened. It took some time before they realized that the whole tactical reserve had quite simply been shut up inside the parking lot. Many of them sped over to Rosenlundsgatan by taxi or in private cars that had no radio.

  Månsson, for his part, got there at 3:07. By then the city fire department, which moved fast, had put out the fire. Obviously the whole thing was a bluff and had only caused insignificant damage to an empty garage. By this time large numbers of police were in the area, but apart from a badly damaged old car they found nothing remarkable. Eight minutes later a motorcycle policeman picked up a radio message that a downtown bank was being robbed.

  By that time Malmström and Mohrén had already left Malmö. They had been seen driving away from the bank in a blue Fiat but had not been followed. Five minutes later they had separated and changed over to two other cars.

  When, after a while, the police had managed to clear up the mess in their own parking lot and rid themselves of the furniture truck and the troublesome cartons, roadblocks were put up at all exits to the city. The alarm went out nationwide, and a search began for the getaway car.

  Three days later it was found in a shed near the docks, together with the overalls, Donald Duck masks, rubber gloves, pistols, and various other accouterments.

  Hauser and Hoff did a good job for the lush fees that had been deposited in their wives’ checking accounts. After Malmström and Mohrén had vanished, they kept guard over the bank for nearly ten minutes and indeed didn’t leave until the first policemen hove into view. As it happened, it was two patrolmen walking their beat who first chanced upon the bank. Their experience of anything except school kids who drank beer in public places was almost nil. And their only contribution was to yell themselves hoarse into their walkie-talkies. By that time there was hardly a policeman in all Malmö who wasn’t yelling into a walkie-talkie, and almost no one who was listening.