The Locked Room

by Maj Sjowall

  Hauser even got clean away, something that no one, least of all himself, had really expected. Shortly afterwards he left Sweden via Helsingborg and Helsingør without even being accosted.

  Hoff, however, was caught—owing to a peculiar oversight. At 3:55 he boarded the ferry “Malmöhus” wearing a gray suit, a white shirt, a tie, and a black Ku Klux Klan hood. A trifle absent-minded, he’d forgotten to take it off. The police and the customs men, imagining some costume party was being held on board, let him pass. But the crew of the vessel felt there was something strange about him, and on arrival at Frihavnen he was handed over to an elderly, unarmed Danish policeman. He almost dropped his beer bottle in amazement when his prisoner affably brought out two loaded pistols, a bayonet, and a primed hand grenade and laid them all down on the table in a little room at the Frihavnen station. The Dane, however, soon pulled himself together; there was something peculiarly agreeable about arresting a prisoner with such a nice name. “Hof,” in Danish, means “restaurant.”

  Apart from a ticket to Frankfurt, Hoff had a certain amount of money on him: to be exact, forty German marks, two Danish ten-kronor notes, and about four kronor in Swedish money. That was all the loot that could be found.

  It reduced the bank’s losses to 1,613,496 kronor and 65 öre.

  Meanwhile in Stockholm the strangest things were happening. The worst of them befell Einar Rönn.

  Together with six patrolmen he had been assigned the less important task of keeping an eye on Rosenlundsgatan and grabbing Enterpriser A. Since the street is quite long, he had spread out his little force as cleverly as possible: a flying squad of two men in a car and the others placed at strategic points along the way. Bulldozer Olsson had told him to take it easy and above all, whatever happened, not to lose his nerve.

  At 2:38 he was standing on the pavement opposite Bergsgruvan and feeling fairly tranquil, when two young men came up to him. Their appearance was similar to most people nowadays: dirty.

  “Got a light?” one of them asked.

  “Sure, no,” Rönn said peacefully. “That is to say, I haven’t. No.”

  A second later a dagger was pointing at his belly at the same time as a bicycle chain was being swung around in disturbing proximity to his head.

  “Now, you bloody fucking goddam cop,” said the young man with the dagger. And in the same breath, he said to his mate: “You take his wallet. I’ll take his watch and ring. Then we’ll slice him up.”

  Ronn had never been a jujitsu or karate champion, but he still remembered a little of what he’d once learned in the gymnasium.

  Putting out his foot he neatly tripped the guy with the dagger so that he sat down astonished on his ass. The rest, however, didn’t come off quite so well. Though Rönn jerked his head as quickly as he could, he still got a nasty bang of the bicycle chain above his right ear; as everything went black before his eyes he grabbed assailant number two and, as he fell, pulled him down onto the pavement.

  “And that’s your last little fling, you bastard,” hissed the guy with the dagger.

  But at that moment the flying squad turned up, and by the time Rönn could see again the patrolmen had already given the two prostrate thugs a thorough beating with nightsticks and pistol butts and had handcuffed them as well.

  The one with the bicycle chain was the first to recover. Blood streaming down his face, he looked around and said, as usual: “What happened?”

  “You walked straight into a police trap, my lad,” said one of the patrolmen.

  “Police trap? For us? Are you out of your mind? We were just going to have some fun with a cop.”

  Once again Rönn had gotten a lump on his head. It was the only physical injury suffered by any member of the special squad that day. All their other wounds were of a purely psychological nature.

  In the gray bus that, equipped to the teeth with every thinkable device, was his operational headquarters, Bulldozer Olsson could hardly sit still from excitement—something that seriously disturbed not only the radio operator but also Kollberg.

  At 2:45, after the tension had reached its peak, the seconds began to draw out and pass with agonizing languor.

  At 3:00 the staff of the bank began to make arrangements to close, and the sizable police unit inside the bank, led by Gunvald Larsson, could hardly object to them getting on with their work.

  A feeling of great emptiness had begun to overcome them all, but Bulldozer Olsson said: “Gentlemen, we have only temporarily been outwitted. Werner Roos has guessed we’ve figured out something, and is hoping we’ll give up. He’ll have Malmström and Mohrén strike next Friday, a week from today, that is. Well, it’s he who’s losing time, not us.”

  At 3:30 the first really disturbing report came in. It was so alarming that all withdrew at once to Kungsholmen, there to await further developments. During the next few hours the telex never ceased tapping out new messages.

  Gradually the picture cleared, though it took some time.

  “ ‘Milan’ obviously didn’t mean what you thought it did,” said Kollberg coldly.

  “No,” Bulldozer said. “Malmö. That was smart.” For some considerable time now he’d been sitting quite still.

  “Who the hell could have known the streets in Malmö have the same names,” Gunvald Larsson said.

  “Or that almost all the new banks have the same interior design,” said Kollberg.

  “We should have known it, gentlemen,” shouted Bulldozer. “Roos knew it. It’s cheaper to build all the banks the same. Roos pinned us down in Stockholm. But next time he won’t get away with it. We’ll just have to wait till next time.”

  Bulldozer had apparently recovered. He got up and said: “And where is Werner Roos?”

  “In Istanbul,” said Gunvald Larsson. “Where he’s taken a few days off, to rest up.”

  “Sure,” said Kollberg. “Where d’you think Malmström and Mohrén are resting up?”

  “Makes no difference,” said Bulldozer, some of his old fire returning. “Easy come, easy go. They’ll soon be back again. Then it’ll be our turn.”

  “D’you think so?” Kollberg said dubiously.

  The situation was no longer particularly mysterious, but the hour was late.

  Malmström, for instance, had already reached his hotel in Geneva, where he’d had a room booked for the last three weeks.

  Mohrén was in Zurich. But he was going on to South America the next day.

  In those last few minutes in the shed where they’d swapped cars, they hadn’t had much time to talk.

  “Now don’t go and throw away all your hard-earned money on underpants and loose women,” Mohrén admonished.

  “What a hell of a lot of bread!” Malmström said.

  “And what shall we do with the hardware?”

  “Deposit it in some bank, of course,” Mohrén said. “Where else?”

  A day or so later Werner Roos was sitting in the bar of the Istanbul Hilton sipping a daiquiri and reading the Herald Tribune. It was the first time he had managed to draw the attention of this haughty news organ to himself. It was a single-column article, quite short, under the laconic heading: “Swedish Bank Robbed.” The text mentioned the more important facts: for example, the amount of money. At least half a million dollars. And one less important piece of information: “A representative of the Swedish police said today that they think they know the organization behind the coup.”

  A little further down came another Swedish news item. “Mass escape from prison. Fifteen of Sweden’s most dangerous bank robbers today escaped over the wall of Kumla Prison, hitherto regarded as escape-proof.”

  This latter bit of news reached Bulldozer Olsson just as, for the first time in several weeks, he had gone to bed with his wife. Instantly jumping out again, he began traipsing about the bedroom, repeating the same delighted words: “What possibilities! What fantastic possibilities! It’s war to the death, now! War to the death!”

  That same Friday, Martin Beck arrived at the ho
use in Tulegatan at 5:15. He had his jigsaw puzzle under his arm, and in his hand was a bag containing some bottles from the State Liquor Monopoly. He met Rhea on the ground floor. She came tramping down the stairs in her red clogs, with nothing on but her long pale-mauve cardigan. She was carrying a garbage bag in either hand.

  “Hi,” she said. “Glad you’ve come. I’ve something to show you.”

  “Let me take those,” he said.

  “It’s just garbage,” she said. “And anyway you’ve got your hands full. Is that the puzzle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. Open the gate, will you?”

  He held open the gate to the yard and watched her go over to the garbage cans. Her legs were like everything else about her: solid, muscular, shapely. As the lid of the garbage can fell with a bang she turned and ran back. She ran like a sportswoman, straight forward, head down, knowing where she was going. She also half-ran up the stairs, so that he had to take several steps at a time to keep up with her.

  Two people were sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea: one was the girl called Ingela, the other was someone he didn’t know.

  “What was it you were going to show me?”

  “Here,” she said. “Come.”

  He followed her.

  She pointed at a door. “There you are,” she said. “A locked room.”

  “The nursery?”

  “Dead right,” she said. “There’s no one in there, and it’s locked from inside.”

  He stared at her. Today she looked happy—and extremely healthy. She began to laugh, a hoarse hearty laugh. “The kids’ve got a hook on the inside,” she said. “I put it on myself. After all, they’ve a right to be in peace and quiet when they want to, too.”

  “But they aren’t at home.”

  “You’re dumb,” she said. “I was in there with the vacuum cleaner, and when I was through I slammed the door behind me. A bit too hard, maybe. So the hook flew up and dropped into the eye. Now I can’t get it open again.”

  He felt the door. It opened outwards but seemed impossible to budge.

  “The hook is on the door, and the eye’s on the doorpost,” she said. “They’re both made of heavy metal.”

  “How’re we to get it open?”

  She shrugged and said: “By force, I guess. It’s all yours. That’s what one needs a man about the house for, so they say.”

  He must have looked unusually dumb standing there, for she laughed again. Then, passing the back of her hand swiftly over his cheek, she said: “Don’t worry. I can fix it just as well myself. But anyway, it’s a locked room; which subsection I couldn’t say.”

  “Can’t we slip something in through the crack?”

  “There isn’t any crack. I told you I mounted that hook myself. I did it right.”

  So she had. The door yielded no more than a tiny fraction of an inch.

  She seized the doorknob, kicked off her right shoe, and put her foot against the doorpost.

  “No, hang on,” he said. “Let me.”

  “Okay,” she said and went back to join the others in the kitchen.

  Martin Beck took a good long look at the door. Then he did the same as she had. He put his foot against the doorpost and grabbed the doorknob, which seemed old and dirty. The fact was, there was no other way. Unless you wanted to smash the pegs of the hinges.

  The first time he didn’t exert all his strength. The second time he did. But he wasn’t successful until his fifth try. The screws came out of the timber with a whining sound and the door burst open.

  It was the screws of the hook that had pulled out. The eye still sat firmly anchored to the doorpost. It was cast in one piece with a four-hole base plate. The hook was still hooked into the eye. It too was thick and seemed impossible to bend. Steel, probably.

  Martin Beck looked around him. The nursery was empty, and its window was firmly closed.

  To fix the hook arrangement again, both hook and eye had to be moved an inch or so. The woodwork around the old screw holes had been destroyed.

  He went out into the kitchen where everyone was talking at once, discussing the genocide in Vietnam.

  “Rhea,” he said. “Where are your tools?”

  “Over there in the chest.” She pointed to it with her foot, her hands being full. She was demonstrating a crochet stitch to one of the others.

  He got a screwdriver and awl.

  “There’s no hurry,” she said. “Get yourself a cup and come and sit down. Anna here has been baking. Buns.”

  He sat down and ate a freshly baked bun. Though he followed what they were talking about, his thoughts were elsewhere. Then he turned to something else.

  He sat silent, listening to memory’s tape recorder—a conversation from eleven days ago.

  Conversation in a corridor in the Stockholm City Hall, Tuesday, July 4, 1972.

  MARTIN BECK.—So when you’d smashed the pegs and got the door open you entered the apartment?

  KENNETH KVASTMO.—Yes.

  MARTIN BECK.—Who went in first?

  KENNETH KVASTMO.—I did. Kristiansson felt sick from the smell.

  MARTIN BECK.—What did you do, precisely, when you came in?

  KENNETH KVASTMO.—There was a horrible stench. The light was poor, but I could see the corpse lying on the floor, two or three yards away from the window.

  MARTIN BECK.—And then? Try and remember it in detail.

  KENNETH KVASTMO.—You could hardly breathe in there. I walked around the body and over to the window.

  MARTIN BECK.—Was it shut?

  KENNETH KVASTMO.—Sure. And the window shade was down. I tried to pull it up but couldn’t. The spring was uncoiled. But I figured we’d just have to get that window open and get some air.

  MARTIN BECK.—What did you do then?

  KENNETH KVASTMO.—I pushed the shade aside and opened the window. Then I wound up the shade and set the spring—though that was afterwards.

  MARTIN BECK.—And the window was closed?

  KENNETH KVASTMO.—Sure. At least, one hook was on properly. I unhooked it and opened the window.

  MARTIN BECK.—Do you remember whether it was the upper or the lower hook?

  KENNETH KVASTMO.—Not absolutely for certain. The upper, I guess. What the lower one was like I don’t remember. I guess I opened that one too–no, I’m not sure.

  MARTIN BECK.—But you are sure the window was hooked on the inside?

  KENNETH KVASTMO.—Sure, one hundred percent. I’m absolutely sure.

  Rhea gave him a playful kick on the shin. “Take a bun, for God’s sake,” she said.

  “Rhea,” he said. “Have you got a good flashlight?”

  “Sure. It’s hanging on a nail in the cleaning closet.”

  “May I borrow it?”

  “Sure you can.”

  “Then I’m going out awhile. I’ll be back soon and fix that door.”

  “Fine,” she said. “So long.”

  “So long,” said Martin Beck. He got the flashlight, called for a taxi, and drove to Bergsgatan.

  He stood awhile on the sidewalk, looking up at the window on the other side of the street. Then he turned around. Behind him Kronoberg Park lay on rising ground. The slope was rocky and steep, covered with bushes.

  He clambered up until he’d reached a position opposite the window. He was almost on level with it, and the distance was at most twenty-five yards. Taking a ball-point pen out of his pocket he pointed it at the window’s dark rectangle. The shade was drawn down; the landlord, to his intense annoyance, had been forbidden to rent the apartment until the police said he could.

  Martin Beck moved around until he’d found the very best spot. He was nothing of a marksman, but if his ball-point pen had been a forty-five automatic he could have hit anyone who’d shown himself at that window. Of that he was sure.

  He was well hidden here. Naturally, in mid-April the vegetation had been a good deal sparser, but even then it should have been possible to hide without drawing attentio
n—as long as you didn’t move.

  Now it was broad daylight, but even late in the evening the street lighting should have been enough. Darkness would also have offered better protection to anyone standing on the slope. Even so, no one would be likely to fire from here without a silencer on his pistol.

  Once again he considered closely which spot was best. And using it as his starting point he began his search. Few people were passing by beneath him. Those who did halted when they heard him poking about in the shrubs. But only momentarily. Then they hurried on their way, anxious not to get involved.

  He searched systematically. He began to his right. Almost all automatics reject their cartridges to the right, but how far and in what direction? It was a job that called for patience. Close to the ground, he was glad he had the flashlight. Martin Beck did not intend to give up. At least not for a long time.

  After an hour and forty minutes he found the empty cartridge. It was lying between two stones, partially covered by leaves and dirt. Plenty of rain had fallen since April. Dogs and other animals had been trampling about up here; certainly humans too—for example, those who took it into their heads to break the law by drinking beer in a public place.

  He pried out the little brass cylinder, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and put it in his pocket.

  Then he walked eastwards along Bergsgatan. Near City Hall he found a cab and drove out to the criminology lab. At this time of day they would probably be closed, but he was counting on someone being there. Almost always nowadays someone was working overtime. But he had to do a lot of talking before anyone even agreed to accept his find.

  In the end, however, he talked them into it. He put it in a plastic box and carefully filled in the details on a card.