MAJ SJÖWALL AND

PER WAHLÖÖ

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke

Translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate

Copyright

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

This ebook first published by Harper Perennial in 2006

This 4th Estate edition published in 2016

This translation first published by Random House Inc, New York, in 1969

Originally published in Stockholm, Sweden,

by P. A. Norstedt & Soners Forlag

Copyright text © Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö 1966

Copyright introduction © Val McDermid 2006

Cover photograph © Shutterstock

PS Section © Richard Shephard 2006

PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö assert the moral right to be identified

as the authors of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007439126

Ebook Edition © 1966 ISBN: 9780007323555

Version: 2018-05-17

From the reviews of the Martin Beck series:

‘First class’

Daily Telegraph

‘One of the most authentic, gripping and profound collections of police procedurals ever accomplished’

Michael Connelly

‘Hauntingly effective storytelling’

New York Times

‘There's just no question about it: the reigning King and Queen of mystery fiction are Maj Sjöwall and her husband Per Wahlöö’

The National Observer

‘Sjöwall/Wahlöö are the best writers of police procedural in the world’

Birmingham Post

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

About the Authors

Also by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

I first went to America in 1979. I had to buy another holdall to bring home the books. Discovering dedicated mystery booksellers was a bit like going to heaven without having to die first. There were so many crime writers whose books were available in the US only – ironically, some of them British – and in those pre-Internet days, the only apparent way to acquire them was physically to go there and buy them. Which I did. In industrial quantities.

Among the books in the holdall were ten paperbacks in the black livery of Vintage Press. They comprised a decalogue of crime novels written by the Swedish husband-and-wife team of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. They'd been on my must-read list since I'd read about them in Julian Symonds' definitive overview of the genre, Bloody Murder. He said, ‘they might come under the heading of “Police Novels” except that the authors are more interested in the philosophical implications of crime than in straightforward police routine … [They] are markedly individual and very good’. I suppose it was a bit of a gamble to buy all ten on that recommendation alone. But it's a gamble I've never regretted.

Reading the Martin Beck series with twenty-first-century eyes, it's almost impossible to grasp how revolutionary they felt when they first appeared almost forty years ago. So many of the elements that have become integral to the point of cliché in the police procedural sub-genre started life in these ten novels. So many of the features we take for granted and sigh over in a world-weary way have their roots in the work of a couple of journalists turned crime writers.

In the mid-sixties, when Sjöwall and Wahlöö started writing, there were plenty of examples of the police procedural novel around. Going back to the golden age of the 1930s, Ngaio Marsh's Inspector Alleyn and Freeman Wills Crofts' Inspector French were among those who led the way, but they were followed in a steady stream by the likes of J. J. Marric's Gideon and, on the other side of the Atlantic, Ed McBain.

What these examples of the roman policier have in common is that they are wedded to the status quo. Their world is divided into black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, with no uncomfortable intervening grey area. Bad men – and very occasionally bad women – do bad things and thus are bound to come to a bad end. Their police officers are honourable, upstanding family men who believe in the rule of law and the delivery of justice by their own hands. A bent cop is almost unthinkable; an incompetent one only a little less so.

And while the star of the series may have a sidekick, invariably less gifted and often more brawny, little more than lip service is paid to the rest of the squad, whose legwork goes mostly unrecognized. (McBain later became an exception to this, but in the earlier 87th Precinct novels Steve Carella is invariably centre-stage.) The police procedural was home to a singular hero. There was no room to share the limelight.

The books of Sjöwall and Wahlöö are different. Although they are generally referred to as the Martin Beck novels, they're not really about an individual. They're ensemble pieces.

Beck is not some solo maverick who operates with flagrant disregard for the rules and thinly disguised contempt for the lesser mortals who surround him. Nor is he a phenomenal genius blessed with so extraordinary a talent that mere mortals can only stand back in amazement as he leads them unerringly to the solution to the baffling mystery. He's not glamorous either. Not the scion of some high-society family, not the husband of an acclaimed portrait painter, nor the flamboyant solver of baffling mysteries with an upward flick of a single eyebrow.

No, Martin Beck is none of these things. He's a driven, middle-aged dyspeptic whose marriage slowly disintegrates during the series. Not because of some cataclysmic infidelity or clash of belief systems, but rather because of the quiet desperation that builds between two people who once loved each other but now have nothing in common but their children and their address.

He's also something of an idealist whose job forces him to confront the gulf between what should exist in an ideal world and what exists in actuality. His awareness of that gap colours his life, making him depressed and sometimes fatalistic about whether what he does can ever make any difference.

But more than this, he is part of a team, each member of which is a fully realized character. His strengths and weaknesses are balanced by those of his colleagues. He relies on them as they rely on him. This is a world where ideas are kicked around, where no individual has the monopoly on shafts of brilliant insight. Nor are the repetitive tedious tasks carried out offstage by minor minions. Both action and routine are shared between Beck and his underlings. Friendships and enmities are equally tested in the course of the ten books, and everyone is portrayed as an individual who has virtues and vices in distinct measure.

Of itself, that would be enough to mark these books out as different from the run of the mill. But Sjöwall and Wahlöö add other elements to the mix which demonstrate the uniqueness of their vision.

Their plots, for example, are second to none, both in terms of structure and subject. Sometimes it's the starting point which is surprising, a seemingly eccentric moment that leads cunningly to the heart of something much darker. Sometimes it's the choice of the underlying issue which confounds us; lulled into thinking we're getting one kind of story, we suddenly find ourselves in a very different place. Wherever their stories take us, Sjöwall and Wahlöö find ways to catch the reader on the back foot, making us reassess our take on the world.

Then there is that aspect that Julian Symonds picked on so astutely – their interest in the philosophical aspects of crime. These days, it is a given that the crime novel is capable of shining a light on society, of illuminating us to ourselves. At its best, the contemporary crime novel tells us how our society works, revealing its social strata and its patterns. It can strip away the surfaces, leaving the malign and the benign exposed, and it can use both characters and storylines to excoriate us for our sins.

But back when Sjöwall and Wahlöö started writing, those jobs were left to literary novelists. Crime writers were supposed only to entertain. The Swedish duo demonstrated that there was a different way to write about murder. Through the eyes of Martin Beck and his colleagues, they held a mirror up to Swedish society at a time when the ideals of the welfare state were beginning to buckle under the realities of everyday life. They write unsparingly and unswervingly about social ills and problems, but they never forget that they are writing novels, not polemics. They dress up their social concerns in fast-moving storytelling, never losing sight of the need to keep their readers engaged.

The end product, though serious in its intent, is far from gloomy. Sjöwall and Wahlöö are blessed with the gift of humour. It manifests itself in the sly, dark wit of Beck, but also in the knockabout farce that erupts from time to time, generally through the characters of Kristiansson and Kvant, a pair of patrol cops who are as stupid as they are unlucky. Their slapstick interludes are as funny to the reader as they are frustrating to the detectives. Before Sjöwall and Wahlöö, such a pair of Keystone Kops would have been unthinkable, undermining as they do the seriousness of police investigation and bringing it squarely into the realm of normal human behaviour.

In many respects, however, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke is an exception to the rest of the novels. It takes place mostly outside Sweden, in Budapest, at a time when the cold war was still an unnerving backdrop to everyday life. For much of the book, Beck is on his own in a strange land, without back-up and without any visceral understanding of the society he's trying to operate in. His investigation into the disappearance of a Swedish journalist seems to run into brick walls at every turn, growing more and more baffling with each successive revelation.

Soon we come to understand that Beck can't crack the case on his own. He has to draw on help both from his colleagues at home and from unexpected sources in Budapest before the pieces can finally fall into place, revealing a truth that manages to be both banal and original.

Sjöwall and Wahlöö won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar award for Best Novel in 1971 with The Laughing Policeman. It remains the only novel in translation ever to have won the award. To me, that's not particularly surprising. I guarantee if you read their books, you'll end up agreeing with me. And with all the other crime writers who know only too well how much we owe to that pair of Swedish journalists turned novelists.

Val McDermid

1

The room was small and shabby. There were no curtains and the view outside consisted of a grey fire wall, a few rusty armatures and a faded advertisement for margarine. The centre pane of glass in the left half of the window was gone and had been replaced by a roughly cut piece of cardboard. The wallpaper was floral, but so discoloured by soot and seeping moisture that the pattern was scarcely visible. Here and there it had come away from the crumbling plaster, and in several places there had been attempts to repair it with adhesive strips and wrapping paper.

There were a heating stove, six pieces of furniture and a picture in the room. In front of the stove stood a cardboard box of ashes and a dented aluminium coffee pot. The end of the bed faced the stove and the bedclothes consisted of a thick layer of old newspapers, a ragged quilt and a striped pillow. The picture was of a naked blonde standing beside a marble balustrade, and it was hanging to the right of the stove so that the person lying in the bed could see it before he fell asleep and immediately when he woke up. Someone appeared to have enlarged the woman's nipples and genitals with a pencil.

In the other part of the room, nearest to the window, stood a round table and two wooden chairs, of which one had lost its back. On the table were three empty vermouth bottles, a soft-drink bottle and two coffee cups, among other things. The ash tray had been turned upside down and among the cigarette butts, bottle tops and dead matches lay a few dirty sugar lumps, a small penknife with its blades open, and a piece of sausage. A third coffee cup had fallen to the floor and had broken. Face down on the worn linoleum, between the table and the bed, lay a dead body.

In all probability this was the same person who had improved upon the picture and tried to mend the wallpaper with strips of adhesive and wrapping paper. It was a man and he was lying with his legs close together, his elbows pressed against his ribs and his hands drawn up towards his head, as if in an effort to protect himself. The man was wearing a woollen vest and frayed trousers. On his feet were ragged woollen socks. A large sideboard had been tipped over him, obscuring his head and half the top part of his body. The third wooden chair had been thrown down beside the corpse. Its seat was bloodstained and on the top of the back handprints were clearly visible. The floor was covered with pieces of glass. Some of them had come from the glass doors of the sideboard, others from a half-shattered wine bottle which had been thrown onto a heap of dirty underclothes by the wall. What was left of the bottle was covered with a thin skin of dried blood. Someone had drawn a white circle around it.

Of its kind, the picture was almost perfect, taken by the best wide-angle lens the police possessed and in an artificial light that gave an etched sharpness to every detail.

Martin Beck put down the photograph and magnifying glass, got up and went across to the window. Outside it was full Swedish summer. And more than that. It was hot. On the grass of Kristineberg Park a couple of girls were sunbathing in bikinis. They were lying flat on their backs with their legs apart and their arms stretched outward away from their bodies. They were young and thin, or slim as they say, and they could do this with a certain grace. When he focused sharply, he even recognized them as two office girls from his own department. So it was already past twelve. In the morning they put on their bathing suits, cotton dresses and sandals and went to work. In the lunch hour they took off their dresses and went out and lay in the park. Practical.

Dejectedly, he recalled that soon he would have to leave all this and move over to the south police headquarters in the rowdy neighbourhood around Västberga Allé.

Behind him he heard someone fling open the door and come into the room. He did not need to turn around to know who it was. Stenström. Stenström was still the youngest in the department and after him there would presumably be a whole generation of detectives who did not knock on doors.

‘How's it going?’ he said.

‘Not so well,’ said Stenström. ‘When I was there fifteen minutes ago he was still flatly denying everything.’

Martin Beck turned around, went back to his desk and once again looked at the photo of the scene of the crime. On the ceiling above the newspaper mattress, the ragged quilt and the striped pillow, there was an old patch of dampness. It looked like a sea horse. With a little good will it could have been a mermaid. He wondered if the man on the floor had had that much imagination.

‘It doesn't matter,’ said Stenström officiously. ‘We'll get him on the technical evidence.’

Martin Beck made no reply. Instead he pointed at the thick report Stenström had put down on his desk and said, ‘What's that?’

‘The record of the interrogation from Sundbyberg.’

‘Take the miserable thing away. Starting tomorrow I'm on my holiday. Give it to Kollberg. Or to anybody you damn please.’

Martin Beck took the photograph and went up one flight of stairs, opened a door and found himself with Kollberg and Melander.

It was much warmer in there than in his room, presumably because the windows were closed and the curtains drawn. Kollberg and the suspect were sitting opposite each other at the table, quite still. Melander, a tall man, was standing by the window, his pipe in his mouth and his arms folded. He was looking steadily at the suspect. On a chair by the door sat a police guard in uniform trousers and a light-blue shirt. He was balancing his cap on his right knee. No one said anything and the only moving thing was the reel of the tape recorder. Martin Beck situated himself to one side and just behind Kollberg and joined in the general silence. A wasp could be heard bouncing against the window behind the curtains. Kollberg had taken off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt, but even so, his shirt was soaked with sweat between his plump shoulder blades. The wet patch slowly changed shape and spread downward in a line along his spine.

The man on the other side of the table was small, with thinning hair. He was slovenly dressed and the fingers gripping the arms of his chair were uncared-for, with bitten, dirty nails. His face was thin and sickly, with weak evasive lines around his mouth. His chin was trembling slightly and his eyes seemed cloudy and watery. The man hunched up and two tears fell down his cheeks.

‘Uh-huh,’ said Kollberg gloomily. ‘You hit him on the head with the bottle, then, until it broke?’

The man nodded.

‘Then you went on hitting him with the chair as he lay on the floor. How many times?’

‘Don't know. Not many. Quite a lot though.’

‘I can imagine. And then you tipped the sideboard over him and left the room. What did the third one of you do in the meantime? This Ragnar Larsson? Didn't he try to interfere; I mean, stop you?’

‘No, he didn't do anything. He just let it go on.’

‘Don't start lying again now.’

‘He was asleep. He'd passed out.’

‘Try to speak a little louder, all right?’

‘He was lying on the bed, asleep. He didn't notice anything.’

‘No, not until he came to and then he went to the police. Well, so far it's clear. But there's one thing I still don't really understand. Why did it turn out this way? You'd never even seen each other before you met in that beer hall.’

‘He called me a damned Nazi.’

‘Every policeman gets called a damned Nazi several times a week. Hundreds of people have called me a Nazi and Gestapo man and even worse things, but I've never killed anyone for it.’

‘He sat there and said it over and over again, damned Nazi, damned Nazi, damned Nazi… It was the only thing he said. And he sang.’

‘Sang?’

‘Yes, to get my goat. Annoy me. About Hitler.’

‘Uh-huh. Well, had you given him any cause to talk like that?’

‘I'd told him my old lady was German. That was before.’

‘Before you began drinking?’

‘Yes. Then he just said it didn't matter what kind of mother a guy had.’

‘And when he was about to go out into the kitchen, you took the bottle and hit him from behind?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he fall?’

‘He sort of fell to his knees. And began bleeding. And then he said, “You bloody little Nazi runt, you, now you're in for it.” ’

‘And so you went on hitting him?’

‘I was … afraid. He was bigger than me and … you don't know what it feels like … everything just goes round and round and goes red … I didn't seem to know what I was doing.’

The man's shoulders were shaking violently.

‘That's enough,’ said Kollberg, switching off the tape recorder. ‘Give him something to eat and ask the doctor if he can have a sedative.’

The policeman by the door rose, put his cap on and led the murderer out, holding him loosely by the arm.

‘Bye for now. See you tomorrow,’ said Kollberg absently.

At the same time he was writing mechanically on the paper in front of him, ‘Confessed in tears.’

‘Quite a character,’ he said.

‘Five previous convictions for assault,’ said Melander. ‘In spite of his denying it every time. I remember him very well.’

‘Said the walking card file,’ Kollberg commented.

He rose heavily and stared at Martin Beck.

‘What are you doing here?’ he said. ‘Go take your holiday and let us look after the criminal ways of the lower classes. Where are you going, by the way? To the islands?’

Martin Beck nodded.

‘Smart,’ said Kollberg. ‘I went to Rumania first and got fried-in Mamaia. Then I come home and get boiled. Great. And you don't have any telephone out there?’

‘No.’

‘Excellent. I'm going to take a shower now anyhow. Come on. Run along now.’

Martin Beck thought it over. The suggestion had its advantages. Among other things, he would get away a day earlier. He shrugged his shoulders.

‘I'm leaving. Bye, boys. See you in a month.’

2

Most people's holidays were already over and Stockholm's August-hot streets had begun to fill with people who had spent a few rainy July weeks in tents and trailers and country boarding-houses. During the last few days, the subway had once again become crowded, but it was now the middle of the working day and Martin Beck was almost alone in the car. He sat looking at the dusty greenery outside and was glad that his eagerly awaited holiday had at last begun.

His family had already been out in the archipelago for a month. This summer they had had the good fortune to rent a cottage from a distant relative of his wife's, a cottage situated all by itself on a little island in the central part of the archipelago. The relative had gone abroad and the cottage was theirs, until the children went back to school.

Martin Beck let himself into his empty flat, went straight into the kitchen and took a beer out of the refrigerator. He took a few gulps standing by the sink, then carried the bottle with him into the bedroom. He undressed and walked out onto the balcony in nothing but his shorts. He sat for a while in the sun, his feet on the balcony rail as he finished off the beer. The heat out there was almost intolerable and when the bottle was empty, he got up and went back into the relative cool of the flat.

He looked at his watch. The boat would be leaving in two hours. The island was located in an area of the archipelago where transportation to and from the city was still maintained by one of the few remaining old steamers. This, thought Martin Beck, was just about the best part of their summer holiday find.

He went out into the kitchen and put the empty bottle down on the pantry floor. The pantry had already been cleared of everything that might spoil, but for safety's sake he looked around to see if he had forgotten anything before he shut the pantry door. Then he pulled the refrigerator plug out of the wall, put the ice trays in the sink and looked around the kitchen before shutting the door and going into the bedroom to pack.

Most of what he needed for himself he had already taken out to the island on the weekend he had already spent there. His wife had given him a list of things which she and the children wanted brought out, and by the time he had included everything, he had two bags full. As he also had to pick up a box of food from the supermarket, he decided to take a taxi to the boat.

There was plenty of room on board and when Martin Beck had put his bags down, he went up on deck and sat down.

The heat was trembling over the city and it was almost dead calm. The foliage in Karl XII Square had lost its freshness and the flags on the Grand Hotel were drooping. Martin Beck looked at his watch and waited impatiently for the men down there to pull in the gangplank.

When he felt the first vibrations from the engine, he got up and walked to the stern. The boat backed away from the quay and he leaned over the railing, watching the propellers whipping up the water into a whitish-green foam. The steam whistle sounded hoarsely, and as the boat began to turn toward Saltsjön, its hull shuddering, Martin Beck stood by the railing and turned his face towards the cool breeze. He suddenly felt free and untroubled; for a brief moment he seemed to relive the feeling he had had as a boy on the first day of the summer holidays.

He had dinner in the dining saloon, then went out and sat on deck again. Before approaching the jetty where he was to land, the boat passed his island, and he saw the cottage and some gaily coloured garden chairs and his wife down on the shore. She was crouching at the water's edge, and he guessed she was scrubbing potatoes. She rose and waved, but he was not certain she could see him at such a distance with the afternoon sun in her eyes.

The children came out to meet him in the rowboat. Martin Beck liked rowing, and ignoring his son's protests, he took the oars and rowed across the bay between the steamer jetty and the island. His daughter – whose name was Ingrid, but who was called Baby although she would be fifteen in a few days – sat in the stern talking about a barn dance. Rolf, who was thirteen and despised girls, was talking about a pike he had landed. Martin listened absently, enjoying the rowing.

After he had taken off his city clothes, he took a brief swim by the rock before pulling on his blue trousers and sweater. After dinner he sat chatting with his wife outside the cottage, watching the sun go down behind the islands on the other side of the mirror-smooth bay. He went to bed early, after setting out some nets with his son.

For the first time in a very long time, he fell asleep immediately.

When he woke, the sun was still low and there was dew on the grass as he padded out and sat down on a rock outside the cottage. It looked as if the day would be as fine as the previous one, but the sun had not yet begun to grow warm, and he was cold in his pyjamas. After a while he went in again and sat down on the veranda with a cup of coffee. When it was seven, he dressed and woke his son, who got up reluctantly. They rowed out and hauled in the nets, which contained nothing but a mass of seaweed and water plants. When they got back, the other two were up and breakfast was on the table.

After breakfast Martin Beck went down to the shed and began to hang up and clean the nets. It was work that tried his patience and he decided that in the future he ought to make his son responsible for providing fish for the family.

He had almost finished the last net when he heard the stutter of a motorboat behind him, and a small fishing boat rounded the point, heading straight for him. At once he recognized the man in the boat. It was Nygren, the owner of a small boatyard on the next island, and their nearest neighbour. As there was no water on the Becks' island, they fetched their drinking water from him. Nygren also had a telephone.

Nygren turned off the motor and shouted:

‘Telephone. They want you to call back as soon as possible. I wrote the number down on a slip of paper by the telephone.’

‘Didn't he say who he was?’ said Martin Beck, although he in fact already knew.

‘I wrote that down too. I've got to go out to Skärholmen now, and Elsa's in the strawberry patch, but the kitchen door's open.’

Nygren started up the motor again and, standing in the stern, headed out towards the bay. Before he vanished around the point, he raised his hand in farewell.

Martin Beck watched him for a short while. Then he went down to the jetty, untied the rowboat and began to row toward Nygren's boathouse. As he rowed he thought: Hell. To hell with Kollberg, just when I'd almost forgotten he existed!

On the pad below the wall telephone in Nygren's kitchen was written, almost illegibly: Hammar 54 10 60.

Martin Beck dialled the number and not until he was waiting for the exchange to put him through did he begin to feel real alarm.

‘Hammar speaking,’ said Hammar.

‘Well, what's happened?’

‘I'm really sorry, Martin, but I've got to ask you to come in as soon as possible. You may have to sacrifice the rest of your holiday. Well, postpone it, that is.’

Hammar was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, ‘If you will.’

‘The rest of my holiday? I haven't even had a day of it yet.’

‘Awfully sorry, Martin, but I wouldn't ask you if it wasn't necessary. Can you get in today?’

‘Today? What's happened?’

‘If you can get in today, it'd be a good thing. It's really important. I'll tell you more about it when you're here.’

‘There's a boat in an hour,’ said Martin Beck, looking out through the fly-specked window at the glittering, sunlit bay. ‘What's so important about it? Couldn't Kollberg or Melander—’

‘No. You'll have to handle this. Someone seems to have disappeared.’

3

When Martin Beck opened the door to his chief's room it was ten to one and he had been on holiday for exactly twenty-four hours.

Chief Inspector Hammar was a heavily-built man with a bull-neck and bushy grey hair. He sat quite still in his swivel chair, his forearms resting on the top of his desk, completely absorbed in what malicious tongues maintained was his favourite occupation: namely, doing nothing whatsoever.

‘Oh, you've arrived,’ he said sourly. ‘Just in time too. You're due at the FO in half an hour.’

‘The Foreign Office?’

‘Precisely. You're to see this man.’

Hammar was holding a calling card by one corner, between his thumb and forefinger, as if it were a piece of lettuce with a caterpillar on it. Martin Beck looked at the name. It meant nothing to him.

‘A higher-up,’ said Hammar. ‘Considers himself very close to the Minister.’ He paused slightly, then said, ‘I've never heard of the fellow either.’

Hammar was fifty-nine and had been a policeman since 1927. He did not like politicians.

‘You don't look as angry as you ought to,’ said Hammar.

Martin Beck puzzled on this for a moment. He decided that he was much too confused to be angry.

‘What is this actually all about?’

‘We'll talk about it later. When you've met this nitwit here.’

‘You said something about a disappearance.’

Hammar stared in torment out through the window, then shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘The whole thing's quite idiotic. To tell you the truth, I've had … instructions not to give you any so-called further information until you've been to the FO.’

‘Have we started taking orders from them too?’

‘As you know, there are several departments,’ said Hammar dreamily.

His look became lost somewhere in the summer foliage. He said, ‘Since I began here we have had a whole regiment of Ministers. The overwhelming majority of them have known just about as much about the police as I know about the orange-shell louse. Namely, that it exists. G'bye,’ he said abruptly.

‘Bye,’ said Martin Beck.

When Martin Beck reached the door, Hammar returned to the present and said, ‘Martin.’

‘Yes.’

‘One thing I can tell you, anyhow. You needn't take this on if you don't want to.’

The man who was close to the Minister was large, angular and red-haired. He stared at Martin Beck with watery blue eyes, rose swiftly and expansively and rushed around his desk with his arm outstretched.

‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Splendid of you to come.’

They shook hands with great enthusiasm. Martin Beck said nothing.

The man returned to his swivel chair, grabbed his cold pipe and bit on the stem of it with his large, yellow, horse teeth. Then he heaved himself backward in his chair, jammed a thumb into the bowl of his pipe, lit a match and fixed his visitor with a cold, appraising look through the cloud of smoke.

‘No ceremony,’ he said. ‘I always begin a serious conversation this way. Spit in each other's faces. Things seem to go along more easily afterward. My name's Martin.’

‘So's mine,’ said Martin Beck gloomily.

A moment later, he added, ‘That's unfortunate. Perhaps it complicates the issue.’

This seemed to confound the man. He looked sharply at Martin Beck, as if sensing some treachery ahead. Then he laughed uproariously.

‘Of course. Funny. Ha ha ha.’

Suddenly he fell silent and threw himself at the intercom. Pressing the buttons nervously, he mumbled, ‘Yes, yes. Really damned funny.’

There was not a spark of humour in his voice.

‘May I have the Alf Matsson file,’ he called.

A middle-aged woman came in with a file and put it down on the desk in front of him. He did not even condescend to glance at her. When she had closed the door behind her, he turned his cold, impersonal fisheyes on Martin Beck, slowly opening the file at the same time. It contained one single sheet of paper, covered with scrawled pencil notes.

‘This is a tricky and damned unpleasant story,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ said Martin Beck. ‘In what way?’

‘Do you know Matsson?’

Martin Beck shook his head.

‘No? He's quite well known, actually. Journalist. Mainly in the weeklies. Television too. A clever writer. Here.’

He opened a drawer and rummaged around in it, then in another, finally lifting up his blotter and finding the object of his search.

‘I hate carelessness,’ he said, throwing a spiteful look in the direction of the door.

Martin Beck studied the object, which turned out to be a neatly typed index card containing certain information about a person by the name of Alf Matsson. The man did indeed appear to be a journalist, employed by one of the larger weeklies, one which Martin Beck himself never read but sometimes saw – with unspoken anxiety and distrust – in the hands of his children. In addition, Alf Sixten Matsson was said to have been born in Gothenburg in 1934. Clipped to the card was also an ordinary passport photograph. Martin Beck cocked his head and looked at a fairly young man with a moustache, a short neat beard and round steel-rimmed glasses. His face was so utterly expressionless that the picture must have come from one of those photo booths around town. Martin Beck put the card down and looked questioningly at the red-haired man.

‘Alf Matsson has disappeared,’ said the man with great emphasis.

‘Oh, yes? And your inquiries haven't produced any results?’

‘No inquiries have been made. And none are going to be made either,’ said the man, staring like a maniac.

Martin Beck, who did not realize at first that that watery look testified to a steely determination, frowned slightly.

‘How long has he been gone?’

‘Ten days.’

The reply did not especially surprise him. If the man had said ten minutes or ten years, it would not have moved him particularly either. The only thing that surprised Martin Beck at that moment was the fact that he was sitting here and not in a rowing boat out at the island. He looked at his watch. He would probably have time to catch the evening boat back.

‘Ten days isn't very long,’ he said mildly.

Another official came in from a nearby room and entered into the conversation so directly that he must have been listening at the door. Apparently some kind of caretaker, thought Martin Beck.

‘In this particular case, it's more than enough,’ said the new arrival. ‘The circumstances are highly exceptional. Alf Matsson flew to Budapest on the twenty-second of July, sent there by his magazine to write some articles. On the next Monday, he was to call the office here in Stockholm and read the text of a kind of regular column he writes every week. He didn't. It's relevant that Alf Matsson always delivered on time, as newspaper people say. In other words, he doesn't miss a deadline when it comes to turning in manuscripts. Two days later, the office phoned his hotel in Budapest, where they said that he was staying there, but he didn't seem to be in at that moment. The office left a message to say that Matsson should immediately inform Stockholm the moment he came in. They waited for two more days. Nothing was heard. They checked with his wife here in Stockholm. She hadn't heard anything either. That in itself wouldn't necessarily mean anything, as they're getting a divorce. Last Saturday the editor called us up here. By then they had contacted the hotel again and been told that no one there had seen Matsson since they called last, but that his things were still in his room and his passport was still at the reception desk. Last Monday, the first of August, we communicated with our people down there. They knew nothing about Matsson, but put out a feeler, as they called it, to the Hungarian police, who appeared “not interested.” Last Tuesday we had a visit from the editor in chief of the magazine. It was a very unpleasant meeting.’

The redheaded man had definitely been upstaged. He bit on the stem of his pipe in annoyance and said, ‘Yes, exactly. Damned unpleasant.’

A moment later he added by way of explanation: ‘This is my secretary.’

‘Well,’ said his secretary, ‘anyhow, the result of that conversation was that yesterday we made unofficial contact with the police at top level, which in turn led to your coming here today. Pleased to have you here, by the way.’

They shook hands. Martin Beck could not yet see the pattern. He massaged the bridge of his nose thoughtfully.

‘I'm afraid I don't really understand,’ he said. ‘Why didn't the editors report the matter in the ordinary way?’

‘You'll see why in a moment. The editor in chief and responsible publisher of the magazine – the same person, in fact – did not want to report the matter to the police or demand an official investigation because then the case would become known at once and would get into the rest of the press. Matsson is the magazine's own correspondent, and he has disappeared on a reporting trip abroad, so – rightly or wrongly – the magazine regards this as its own news. The editor in chief did seem rather worried about Matsson, but on the other hand, he made no bones about the fact that he smelled a scoop, as they say, news of the calibre that increases a publication's circulation by perhaps a hundred thousand copies just like that. If you know anything about the general line this magazine takes, then you ought to know … Well, anyhow, one of its correspondents has disappeared and the fact that he's done it in Hungary, of all places, doesn't make it any worse news.’

‘Behind the Iron Curtain,’ said the red-haired man gravely.

‘We don't use expressions like that,’ said the other man. ‘Well, I hope you realize what all this means. If the case is reported and gets into the papers, that's bad enough – even if the story retained some kind of reasonable proportions and did get a relatively factual treatment. But if the magazine keeps everything to itself and uses it for its own, opinion-leading purpose, then heaven only knows what… Well, anyhow it would damage important relations, which both we and other people have spent a long time and a good deal of effort building up. The magazine's editor had a copy of a completed article with him when he was here on Monday. We had the dubious pleasure of reading it. If it's published, it would mean absolute disaster in some respects. And they were actually intending to publish it in this week's issue. We had to use all our powers of persuasion and appeal to every conceivable ethical standard to put a stop to its publication. The whole thing ended with the editor in chief delivering an ultimatum. If Matsson has not made his presence known of his own accord or if we haven't found him before the end of next week … well, then sparks are going to fly.’

Martin Beck massaged the roots of his hair.

‘I suppose the magazine is making its own investigations,’ he said.

The official looked absently at his superior, who was now puffing away furiously on his pipe.

‘I got the impression that the magazine's efforts in that direction were somewhat modest. That their activities in this particular respect had been put on ice until further notice. For that matter, they haven't the slightest idea as to where Matsson is.’

‘The man does undoubtedly seem to have disappeared,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Yes, exactly. It's very worrying.’

‘But he can't have just gone up in smoke,’ said the red-haired man.

Martin Beck rested one elbow on the edge of the table, clenched his fist and pressed his knuckles against the bridge of his nose. The steamer and the island and the jetty became more and more distant and diffuse in his mind.

‘Where do I come into the picture?’ he said.

‘That was our idea, but naturally we didn't know it would be you personally. We can't investigate all this, least of all in ten days. Whatever's happened, if the man for some reason is keeping under cover, if he's committed suicide, if he's had an accident or … something else, then it's a police matter. I mean, insofar as the job can be done only by a professional. So, quite unofficially, we contacted the police at top level. Someone seems to have recommended you. Now it's largely a matter of whether you will take on the case. The fact that you've come here at all indicates that you can be released from your other duties, I suppose.’

Martin Beck suppressed a laugh. Both officials looked at him sternly. Presumably they found his behaviour inappropriate.

‘Yes, I can probably be released,’ he said, thinking about his nets and the rowing boat. ‘But exactly what do you think I'd be able to do?’

The official shrugged his shoulders.

‘Go down there, I suppose. Find him. You can go tomorrow morning if you like. Everything is arranged, by way of our channels. You'll be temporarily transferred to our payroll, but you've no official assignment. Naturally we'll help you in every possible way. For example, if you want to you can make contact with the police down there – or otherwise not. And as I said, you can leave tomorrow.’

Martin Beck thought about it.

‘The day after tomorrow, in that case.’

‘That's all right too.’

‘I'll let you know this afternoon.’

‘Don't think about it too long, though.’

‘I'll phone in about an hour. Good-bye.’

The red-haired man rushed up and round his desk. He thumped Martin Beck on the back with his left hand and shook hands with his right.

‘Well, good-bye then. Good-bye, Martin. And do what you can. This is important.’

‘It really is,’ said the other man.

‘Yes,’ said the redhead, ‘we might have another Wallenberg affair on our hands.’

‘That was the word we were told not to mention,’ said the other man in weary despair.

Martin Beck nodded and left.

4

‘Are you going out there?’ said Hammar.

‘Don't know yet. I don't even know the language.’

‘Neither does anyone else on the force. You can be quite sure we checked. Anyhow, they say you can get by with German and English.’

‘Odd story.’

‘Stupid story,’ said Hammar. ‘But I know something that those people at the FO don't know. We've got a dossier on him.’

‘Alf Matsson?’

‘Yes. The Third Section had it. In the secret files.’

‘Counter-Espionage?’

‘Exactly. The Security Division. An investigation was made on this guy three months ago.’

There was a deafening thumping on the door and Kollberg thrust his head in. He stared at Martin Beck in astonishment.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Having my holiday.’

‘What's all this hush-hush you're up to? Shall I go away? As quietly as I came, without anybody noticing?’

‘Yes,’ said Hammar. ‘No, don't. I'm tired of hush-hush. Come in and shut the door.’

He pulled a file out of a desk drawer.

‘This was a routine investigation,’ he said, ‘and it gave rise to no particular action. But parts of it might interest anyone who is thinking of looking into the case.’

‘What the hell are you up to?’ said Kollberg. ‘Have you opened a secret agency or something?’

‘If you don't pipe down, you can go,’ said Martin Beck. ‘Why was Counter-Espionage interested in Matsson?’

‘The passport people have their own little eccentricities. At Arlanda airport, for instance, they write down the names of people who travel to those European countries that require visas. Some bright boy who looked in their books got it into his head that this Matsson travelled all too often. To Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Sofia, Bucharest, Constanta, Belgrade. He was great for using his passport.’

‘And?’

‘So Security did a little hush-hush investigation. They went, for instance, to the magazine he works for and asked.’

‘And what did they reply?’

‘Perfectly correct, said the magazine. Alf Matsson is a great one for using his passport. Why shouldn't he be? He's our expert on Eastern European affairs. The results are no more remarkable than that. But there are one or two things. Take this rubbish and read it for yourself. You can sit here. Because now I'm going to go home. And this evening I'm going to go to a James Bond film. Bye!’

Martin Beck picked up the report and began to read. When he had finished the first page, he pushed it over to Kollberg, who picked it up between the tips of his fingers and placed it down in front of him. Martin Beck looked questioningly at him.

‘I sweat so much,’ said Kollberg. ‘Don't want to mess up their secret documents.’

Martin Beck nodded. He himself never sweated except when he had a cold.

They said nothing for the following half hour.

The dossier did not offer much of immediate interest, but it was very thoroughly compiled. Alf Matsson was not born in Gothenburg in 1934, but in Mölndal in 1933. He had begun as a journalist in the provinces in 1952 and been a reporter on several daily papers before going to Stockholm as a sports writer in 1955. As a sports reporter, he had made several trips abroad, among others to the Olympic Games, in Melbourne in 1956 and in Rome in 1960. A number of editors vouchsafed that he was a skilful journalist: ‘… adroit, with a speedy pen.’ He had left the daily press in 1961, when he was taken on by the weekly for which he still worked. During the last four years he had devoted more and more of his time to overseas reporting on a very wide variety of subjects, from politics and economics to sport and pop stars. He had taken his university entrance exam and spoke fluent English and German, passable Spanish and some French and Russian. He earned over 40,000 kronor a year and had been married twice. His first marriage took place in 1954 and was dissolved the following year. He had married again in 1961 and had two children, a daughter by his first marriage and a son by his second.

With praiseworthy diligence, the investigator now went over to the man's less admirable points. On several occasions he had neglected to pay maintenance for his elder child. His first wife described him as a ‘drunkard and a brutal beast.’ Parenthetically, it was pointed out that this witness appeared to be not entirely reliable. There were, however, several indications that Alf Matsson drank, among others a remark in a statement by an ex-colleague who said that he was ‘all right, but a bastard when he got drunk,’ but only one of these statements was supported by evidence. On the eve of Twelfth Night in 1966, a radio patrol in Malmö had taken him to the emergency room of General Hospital after he had been stabbed in the hand during a brawl at the home of a certain Bengt Jönsson, whom he had happened to be visiting. The case was investigated by the police but was not taken to court, as Matsson had not wished to press a charge. However, two policemen by the names of Kristiansson and Kvant described both Matsson and Jönsson as under the influence, so the case was registered at the Commission on Alcoholism.

The tone of the statement by his present boss, an editor called Eriksson, was snooty. Matsson was the magazine's ‘expert on Eastern Europe’ (whatever use a publication of this kind could possibly have for such a person) and the editorial board found no cause to give the police any further information about his journalistic activities. Matsson was, they went on to say, very interested in and well-informed on Eastern European matters, often produced projects of his own, and had on several occasions proved himself ambitious by giving up holidays and days off without extra pay to be able to carry out certain reporting assignments that especially interested him.

Some previous reader had in turn appeared ambitious by underlining this sentence in red. It could hardly have been Hammar, who did not mess up other people's reports.

A detailed account of Matsson's published articles showed that they consisted almost exclusively of interviews with famous athletes and reportage on sports, film stars and other figures from the entertainment world.

The dossier contained several items in the same style. When he had finished reading, Kollberg said, ‘Singularly uninteresting person.’

‘There's one peculiar detail.’

‘That he's disappeared, you mean?’

‘Exactly,’ said Martin Beck.

A minute later, he dialled the Foreign Office number and Kollberg, much to his surprise, heard him say, ‘Is that Martin? Yes, hi, Martin – this is Martin.’

Martin Beck seemed to listen for a moment, a tortured expression on his face. Then he said, ‘Yes, I'm going.’

5

The building was old and had no elevator. Matsson was the top name on the list of tenants down in the entrance hall. When Martin Beck had climbed the five steep flights of stairs, he was out of breath and his heart was thumping. He waited for a moment before ringing the doorbell.

The woman who opened the door was small and fair. She was wearing slacks and a cotton-knit top and had hard lines around her mouth. Martin Beck guessed she was about thirty.

‘Come in,’ she said, holding open the door.

He recognized her voice from the telephone conversation they had had an hour earlier.

The hall of the flat was large and unfurnished except for an unpainted stool along one wall. A small boy of about two or three came out of the kitchen. He had a half-eaten roll in his hand and went straight up to Martin Beck, stood in front of him and stretched up a sticky fist.

‘Hi,’ he said.

Then he turned around and ran into the living room. The woman followed him and lifted up the boy, who with a satisfied gurgle had sat down in the room's only comfortable armchair. The boy yelled as she carried him into a neighbouring room and closed the door. She came back, sat down on the sofa and lit a cigarette.

‘You want to ask me about Alf. Has something happened to him?’

After a moment's hesitation, Martin Beck sat down on the armchair.

‘Not so far as we know. It's just that he doesn't seem to have been heard from for a couple of weeks. Neither by the magazine, nor, so far as I can make out, by you, either. You don't know where he might be?’

‘No idea. And the fact that he's not let me know anything isn't very strange in itself. He's not been here for four weeks, and before that I didn't hear from him for a month.’

Martin Beck looked towards the closed door.

‘But the boy? Doesn't he usually …’

‘He hasn't seemed especially interested in his son since we've separated,’ she said, with some bitterness. ‘He sends money to us every month. But that's only right, don't you think?’

‘Does he earn a lot on the magazine?’

‘Yes. I don't know how much, but he always had plenty of money. And he wasn't mean. I never had to go without, although he spent a lot of money on himself. In restaurants and on taxis and so on. Now I've got a job, so I earn a little myself.’

‘How long have you been divorced?’

‘We're not divorced. It's not been granted yet. But he moved out of here almost eight months ago now. He got hold of a flat then. But even before that, he was away from home so much that it hardly made any difference.’

‘But I suppose you're familiar with his habits – who he sees and where he usually goes?’

‘Not any longer. To be quite frank, I don't know what he's up to. Before, he used to hang around mostly with people from work. Journalists and the like. They used to sit around in a restaurant called the Tankard. But I don't know now. Maybe he's found some other place. Anyhow, that restaurant's moved or has been torn down, hasn't it?’

She put out her cigarette and went over to the door to listen. Then she opened it cautiously and went in. A moment later she came out and shut the door just as carefully behind her.

‘He's asleep,’ she said.

‘Nice little boy,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Yes, he's nice.’

They sat silent for a moment, and then she said, ‘But Alf was on an assignment in Budapest, wasn't he? At least, I heard that somewhere. Mightn't he have stayed there? Or have gone somewhere else?’

‘Did he used to do that? When he was away on assignments?’

‘No,’ she said hesitantly. ‘No, actually he didn't. He's not especially conscientious and he drinks a lot, but while we were together he certainly didn't neglect his work. For instance, he was awfully particular about getting his manuscripts in at the time he'd promised. When he lived here, he often sat up late at night writing to get things finished in time.’

She looked at Martin Beck. For the first time during their conversation he noticed a vague anxiety in her eyes.

‘It does seem peculiar, doesn't it? That he's never got in touch with the magazine. Supposing something really has happened to him.’

‘Have you any idea what might have happened to him?’

She shook her head.

‘No, none at all.’

‘You said before that he drinks. Does he drink a lot?’

‘Yes – sometimes, at least. Towards the end, when he lived here, he often came home drunk. If he generally ever came home at all.’

The bitter lines around her mouth had returned.

‘But didn't that affect his work?’

‘No, it didn't really. Anyhow not much. When he began working for this weekly magazine, he often got special assignments. Abroad and that kind of thing. In between, he didn't have much to do and was often free. He didn't have to be at the office much. That was when he drank. Sometimes he sat around that cafe for days on end.’

‘I see,’ said Martin Beck. ‘Can you give me the names of anyone he used to go around with?’

She gave Martin Beck the names of three journalists who were unknown to him, and he wrote them down on a taxi receipt he found in his inside pocket. She looked at him and said:

‘I thought the police always had little notebooks with black covers that they wrote everything down in. But maybe that's just in books and at the movies.’

Martin Beck got up.

‘If you hear anything from him, perhaps you'd be good enough to call me,’ she said. ‘Would you?’

‘Naturally,’ said Martin Beck.

In the hall, he asked, ‘Where did you say he was living now?’

‘On Fleminggatan. Number 34. But I didn't say.’

‘Have you got a key to the apartment?’

‘Oh, no. I haven't even been there.’

6

On the door was a piece of cardboard with MATSSON lettered on it in India ink. The lock was an ordinary one and caused Martin Beck no difficulties. Aware that he was overstepping his authority, he made his way into the flat. On the doormat was some mail – a few advertisements, a postcard from Madrid signed by someone called Bibban, a sports car magazine in English and an electricity bill amounting to 28:45 kronor.

The flat consisted of two large rooms, a kitchen, hall and toilet. There was no bathroom, but two large wardrobes. The air in the flat was heavy and musty.

In the largest room, facing the street, were a bed, a night table, bookshelves, a low circular table with a glass top, a desk and two chairs. On the night table stood a record player and on the shelf below, a pile of long-playing records. Martin Beck read in English on the top sleeve: Blue Monk. It meant nothing to him. On the desk were a sheaf of typing paper, a daily paper dated the twentieth of July, a taxi receipt for 6:50 kronor dated the eighteenth, a German dictionary, a magnifying glass and a stencilled information sheet from a youth club. There was a telephone too, and telephone directories and two ash trays. The drawers contained old magazines, magazine photographs, receipts, a few letters and postcards, and a number of carbon copies of manuscripts.

In the back room there was no furniture at all except a narrow divan with a faded red cover, a chair and a stool that served as a night table. There were no curtains.

Martin Beck opened the doors of both wardrobes. One of them contained an almost empty laundry bag and on the shelves lay shirts, sweaters and underclothes, some of them with the laundry's paper bands still unbroken around them. In the other hung two tweed jackets, a dark-brown flannel suit, three pairs of trousers and a winter overcoat. Three hangers were empty. On the floor stood a pair of heavy brown shoes with rubber soles, a pair of thinner black ones, a pair of boots and a pair of galoshes. There was a large suitcase in the cupboard above the one wardrobe, but the other cupboard was empty.

Martin Beck went out into the kitchen. There were no dirty dishes in the sink, but on the draining board were two glasses and a mug. The pantry was empty except for a few empty wine bottles and two cans. Martin Beck thought about his own pantry, which he had quite unnecessarily cleaned out so thoroughly.

He walked through the flat one more time. The bed was made, the ash trays were empty, and there were neither passport, money, bankbooks nor anything else of value in the drawers of the desk. All in all, there was nothing to indicate that Alf Matsson had been home since he had left the flat and gone to Budapest two weeks previously.

Martin Beck left Alf Matsson's flat and stood for a moment by the deserted taxi stand down on Fleminggatan, but as usual at lunch time there were no taxis available and he took a trolley instead.

It was past one when he went into the dining room of the Tankard. All the tables were taken and the harassed waitresses took no notice of him. There was no headwaiter to be seen. He crossed over to the bar on the other side of the entrance hall. At that moment a fat man in a corduroy jacket gathered up his papers and rose from a round table in the corner next to the door. Martin Beck took his place. Here too, all the tables were full, but some of the customers were just paying their bills.

He ordered a sandwich and beer from the headwaiter and asked if any of the three journalists was there.

‘Mr Molin is sitting over there, but I haven't seen the others today. They'll probably be in later.’

Martin Beck followed the headwaiter's glance towards a table where five men were sitting talking with large steins of beer in front of them.

‘Which of the gentlemen is Mr Molin?’

‘The gentleman with the beard,’ said the headwaiter, and went away.

Confused, Martin Beck looked at the five men. Three of them had beards.

The waitress came with his sandwich and beer and gave him the chance to say, ‘Do you happen to know which of the gentlemen over there is Mr Molin?’

‘Of course, the one with the beard.’

She followed his somewhat desperate look and added, ‘Nearest the window.’

Martin Beck ate his sandwich very slowly. The man named Molin ordered another stein of beer. Martin Beck waited. The place began to empty. After a while Molin emptied his stein and was given another. Martin Beck finished eating his sandwich, ordered coffee, and waited.

Finally the man with the beard got up from his place by the window and walked towards the entrance hall. Just as he was passing, Martin Beck said, ‘Mr Molin?’

The man stopped. ‘Just a moment,’ he said, and went on out.

A short while later, he returned, breathed heavily all over Martin Beck, and said, ‘Do we know each other?’

‘No, not yet. But perhaps you'd like to sit down a moment and have a beer with me. There's something I'd like to ask you about.’

He himself could hear that it didn't sound especially good. Smelled of police business a mile away. But it worked anyhow. Molin sat down. He had fair, rather thin hair, combed forward onto his forehead. His beard was reddish and neat. He looked about thirty-five and was quite plump. He waved a waitress over to him.

‘Say, Stina, get me a round, will you?’

The waitress nodded and looked at Martin Beck.

‘The same,’ he said.

A ‘round’ turned out to be a bulbous and considerably larger stein than the cylindrical though quite large one he himself had drunk with his sandwich.

Molin took a large gulp and wiped his moustache with his handkerchief.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said. ‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about? Hangovers?’

‘About Alf Matsson,’ said Martin Beck. ‘You're good friends, aren't you?’

It still didn't sound quite right and he tried to improve on it by saying, ‘Buddies, aren't you?’

‘Of course. What's up with him? Does he owe you money?’

Molin looked suspiciously and haughtily at Martin Beck.

‘Well then, I'd first like to point out that I'm not any kind of collection agency.’

Clearly, he would have to watch his tongue. Moreover, the man was a journalist.

‘No, nothing like that at all,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Then what do you want Alfie for?’

‘Alfie and I've known each other for a long time. We worked on the same … well, we were on the same job together a number of years ago. I met him quite by chance a few weeks ago and he promised to do a job for me, and then I never heard another word from him. He talked about you quite a bit, so I thought perhaps you'd know where he was.’

Somewhat exhausted by this strenuous oratorical effort, Martin Beck took a deep gulp of his beer. The other man followed suit.

‘Oh, hell. You're an old pal of Alfie's, are you? The fact is that I've been wondering where he was too. But I suppose he's stayed on in Hungary. He's not in town, anyhow. Or we'd have seen him here.’

‘In Hungary? What's he doing there?’

‘On some trip for that gossip sheet he works for. But he should really be home by now. When he left, he said he was only going to be away for two or three days.’

‘Did you see him before he left?’

‘Yes indeed. The night before. We were here in the daytime and then went to a couple of other places in the evening.’

‘You and him?’

‘Yes, and some of the others. I don't really remember who. Per Kronkvist and Stig Lund were there, I think. We got really stoned. Yes, Åke and Pia were there too. Don't you know Åke, by the way?’

Martin Beck thought. It seemed somewhat pointless.

‘Åke? I don't know. Which Åke?’

‘Åke Gunnarsson,’ said Molin, turning around towards the table where he had been sitting before. Two of the men had left during their conversation. The two remaining were sitting silently over their beers.

‘He's sitting over there,’ said Molin. ‘The guy with the beard.’

One of the beards had gone, so there was no doubt which of them was Gunnarsson. The man looked quite pleasant.

‘No,’ said Martin Beck. ‘I don't think I know him. Where does he work?’

Molin gave the name of a publication that Martin Beck had never heard of, but it sounded like some kind of auto magazine.

‘Åke's all right. He got pretty high that night too, if I remember rightly. Otherwise, he doesn't get really drunk very often. No matter how much he pours into himself’

‘Haven't you seen Alfie since then?’

‘That's a hell of a lot of questions you're asking. Aren't you going to ask me how I am too?’

‘Of course. How are you?’

‘Absolutely god-damned awful. Hangover. Damned bad one, too.’

Molin's fat face grew gloomy. As if to obliterate the last shreds of the pleasures of living, he drank the remains of his beer in one huge gulp. He took out his handkerchief, and with a brooding look in his eyes, mopped his foamy moustache.

‘They ought to serve beer in moustache cups,’ he said. ‘There isn't much service left these days.’

After a brief pause he said, ‘No, I haven't seen Alfie since he left. The last I saw of him was when he was pouring his drink over some gal in the Opera House bar. Then he went to Budapest the next morning. Poor devil, having to sit up flying right across half of Europe with a hangover like that. Hope he didn't fly Scandinavian Airlines anyhow.’

‘And you've not heard anything from him since then?’

‘We don't usually write letters when we're on overseas trips,’ said Molin haughtily. ‘What the hell kind of a rag do you work for, anyhow? The Kiddy Krib? Well, what about another round?’

Half an hour and two more rounds later, Martin Beck managed to escape from Mr Molin, after having first lent him ten kronor. As he left, he heard the man's voice behind him, ‘Fia, old thing, get me a round, will you?’

7

The plane was an Ilyushin 18 turboprop from Czechoslovak Airlines. It rose in a steep arc over Copenhagen and Saltholm, and an Öresund that glittered in the sun.

Martin Beck sat by the window and looked down at Ven Island below, with Backafall Cliffs, the church and the little harbour. He had just had time to see a tugboat rounding the harbour pier before the plane turned south.

He liked travelling, but this time disappointment over his spoiled holiday overshadowed most of his pleasure. Moreover, his wife had not seemed to understand at all that his own choice in the matter had not been very great. He had called the evening before and tried to explain, but had not been particularly successful.

‘You don't care a bit about me or the children,’ she had said.

And a moment later:

‘There must be other policemen besides you. Do you have to take on every assignment?’

He had tried to convince her that he would in fact have preferred to go out to the island, but she had gone on being unreasonable. In addition, she had demonstrated varied evidence of faulty logic.

‘So you're going to Budapest to enjoy yourself while the children and I are stuck by ourselves out on this island.’

‘I am not going for fun.’

‘Hmm-mph.’

In the end she had put down the receiver in the middle of a sentence. He knew she would calm down eventually, but he had not attempted to call again.

Now, at an altitude of 16,000 feet, he tipped his seat back, lit a cigarette and let his thoughts of the island and his family sink into the back of his mind.

During their stopover at Schönefeld airport in East Berlin, he drank a beer in the transit lounge. He noted that the beer was called Radeberger. It was excellent beer, but he didn't think he would have cause to remember the name. The waiter entertained him in Berlin German. He did not understand very much of it and wondered gloomily how he was going to manage in the future.

In a basket by the entrance lay a few pamphlets in German and he took one out at random to have something to read while he waited. Clearly he needed to practise his German.

The leaflet was published by the German journalists' union and dealt with the Springer concern, one of the most powerful newspaper and magazine publishers in West Germany, and its chief, Axel Springer. It gave examples of the company's menacing fascist politics and quoted several of its more prominent contributors.

When his flight was called, Martin Beck noted that he had read almost the whole pamphlet without difficulty. He put the pamphlet into his pocket and boarded the plane.

After an hour in the air, the plane again came down to land, this time in Prague, a city that Martin Beck had always wanted to visit. Now he had to be content with a brief glimpse, from the air, of its many towers and bridges and of the Moldau; the stopover was too short to give him time to get into the city from the airport.

His red-haired namesake in the Foreign Office had apologized for the connections between Stockholm and Budapest which were not the world's best, but Martin Beck had no objections to the delays, although he was not able to see more of Berlin and Prague than their transit lounges.

Martin Beck had never been to Budapest and when the plane had taken off again, he read through a couple of leaflets he had received from the redhead's secretary. In one dealing with the geography of Hungary, he read that Budapest had two million inhabitants. He wondered how he was going to find Alf Matsson if the man had decided to disappear in this metropolis.

In his mind he reviewed what he knew about Alf Matsson. It was not a great deal, but he wondered whether there was really anything else to know. He thought of Kollberg's comment: ‘Singularly uninteresting person.’ Why should a man like Alf Matsson want to disappear? That is, if he had disappeared of his own free will? A woman? It seemed hardly credible that he should sacrifice a well-paid position – one that he seemed to be happy with, moreover – for that reason. He was still married, of course, but perfectly free to do as he wished. He had a home, work, money and friends. It was hard to think of any plausible reason why he should voluntarily leave all that.

Martin Beck took out the copy of the personal file from the Security Division. Alf Matsson had become an object of interest to the police simply because of his many and frequent trips to places in Eastern Europe. ‘Behind the Iron Curtain,’ the redhead had said. Well, the man was a reporter, and if he preferred to undertake assignments in Eastern Europe, then that in itself wasn't so peculiar. And if he had anything on his conscience now, why should he disappear? The Security Division had consigned the case to oblivion after a routine investigation. ‘A new Wallenberg affair,’ the man at the FO had said, thinking of the famous case of a well-known Swede last seen in Budapest in 1945: ‘Spirited away by the Communists.’ ‘You see too many James Bond movies,’ Kollberg would have said if he had been there.

Martin Beck folded up the copy and put it into his briefcase. He looked out the window. It was completely dark now but the stars were out, and way down there he could see small dots of light from villages and communities and pearl strings of light where the street lamps were on.

Perhaps Matsson had started to drink, abandoning the magazine and everything else. When he sobered up again he would be broke and full of remorse and would have to make his presence known. But that didn't sound likely either. True, he drank occasionally, but not to that degree, and normally he never neglected his job.

Perhaps he had committed suicide, had an accident, fallen into the Danube and drowned or been robbed and killed. Was this more likely? Hardly. Somewhere or other, Martin Beck had read that, of all the capitals in the world, Budapest had the lowest crime rate.

Perhaps he was sitting in the hotel dining room right now, having his dinner, and Martin Beck would be able to take the plane back the next day and continue his holiday.

The signs lit up. No smoking. Please fasten your seatbelts. And then they repeated the same thing in Russian.

When the plane stopped taxiing, Martin Beck picked up his briefcase and walked the short stretch towards the airport buildings. The air was soft and warm although it was late in the evening.

He had to wait quite a long time for his only suitcase, but the passport and customs formalities were dispensed with swiftly. He went through a huge lounge, its walls lined with shops, and then out onto the steps outside the building. The airport appeared to be far outside the city. He saw no other lights except those within the area of the airport itself. As he stood there, two elderly ladies climbed into the only taxi there was on the turn-around drive in front of the steps.

Some time elapsed before the next taxi drove up, and as it took him through suburbs and dark industrial areas, Martin Beck realized he was hungry. He knew nothing about the hotel he was going to stay at – other than its name and the fact that Alf Matsson had stayed there before he had disappeared – but he hoped he would be able to get something to eat there.

The taxi drove along broad streets and around large open squares into what appeared to be the centre of the city. There were not many people about and most of the streets were empty and rather dark. For a while they went down a wide street with brightly lit store windows before continuing into narrower and darker side streets. Martin Beck had no idea whatsoever where he was in the city, but all the while he kept an eye out for the river.

The taxi stopped outside the lighted entrance of the hotel. Martin Beck leaned over and read the figure on the red meter before paying the driver. It seemed expensive, more than a hundred forints. He had forgotten what a forint was worth in his own money, but he realized that it couldn't be very much.

An elderly man, with a grey moustache, a green uniform and visored cap, opened the taxi door and took his bag. Martin Beck walked through the revolving doors behind him. The entrance hall was large and very lofty, the reception desk running at an angle across the left-hand corner of the hall. The night porter spoke English. Martin Beck gave him his passport and asked if he could have dinner. The porter indicated a glass door farther down the hall and explained that the dining room was open until midnight. Then he gave the key to the waiting elevator man who took Martin Beck's bag and preceded him into the elevator. The car creaked its way up to the first floor. The elevator man appeared to be at least as old as the elevator, and Martin Beck tried in vain to relieve him of the bag. They walked down a long corridor, turned to the left twice, and then the old man unlocked some enormous double doors and put the bag inside.

The room was over twelve feet high and very large. The mahogany furniture was dark and huge. Martin Beck opened the door to the bathroom. The bath was spacious with large, old-fashioned taps and a shower.

The windows were high and had shutters on the inside, and in front of the window alcove hung heavy white lace curtains. He opened the shutters on one side and looked out. Immediately below was a gas lamp, throwing out a yellowish-green light. Far away he could see lights, but quite a time elapsed before he realized that the river was flowing between him and the lights over there.

He opened the window and leaned out. Below, a stone balustrade and large flower urns encompassed tables and chairs. Light was streaming out onto them, and he could hear a little orchestra playing a Strauss waltz. Between the hotel and the river ran a road with trees and gas lamps, a trolley line and a broad quay, on which there were benches and big flower pots. Two bridges, one to his right and the other to the left, spanned the river.

He left the window open and went down to eat. Opening the glass doors from the hall, he came into a lobby with deep armchairs, low tables and mirrors along one wall. Two steps led up to the dining room and at the far end sat the little orchestra he had heard up in his room.

The dining room was colossal, with two huge mahogany pillars and a balcony running along three of the walls, high up under the roof. Three waiters wearing reddish-brown jackets with black lapels were standing inside the door. They bowed and greeted him in chorus, while a fourth rushed forward and directed him to a table near the window and the orchestra.

Martin Beck stared at the menu for a long time before he found the column written in German and began to read. After a while the waiter, a grey-haired man with the physiognomy of a friendly boxer, leaned over toward him and said:

‘Very gut Fischsuppe, gentleman.’

Martin Beck at once decided upon fish soup.

‘Barack?’ said the waiter.

‘What's that?’ said Martin Beck, first in German, then in English.

‘Very gut apéritif,’ said the waiter.

Martin Beck drank the apéritif called barack. Barack palinka, explained the waiter, was Hungarian apricot brandy.

He ate the fish soup, which was red and strongly spiced with paprika and was indeed very good.

He ate fillet of veal with potatoes in strong paprika sauce and he drank Czechoslovakian beer.

When he had finished his coffee, which was strong, and an additional barack, he felt very sleepy and went straight up to his room.

He shut the window and the shutters and crept into bed. It creaked. It creaked in a friendly way, he thought, and fell asleep.

8

Martin Beck was woken by a hoarse, long-drawn-out toot. As he tried to orient himself, blinking in the half-light, the toot was repeated twice. He turned over on his side and picked his wristwatch up off the night table. It was already ten to nine. The great bed creaked ceremoniously. Perhaps, he thought, it had once creaked as majestically beneath Field Marshal Conrad von Hötzendorf. The daylight was trickling through the shutters. It was already very warm in the room.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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