MAJ SJÖWALL AND

PER WAHLÖÖ

The Abominable Man

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 2009

This 4th Estate edition published in 2016

This translation first published by Random House Inc,

New York, in 1972

Originally published in Sweden by P. A. Norstedt & Söners Forlag

Copyright text © Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö 1971

Copyright introduction © Arne Dahl 2009

Cover photograph © Shutterstock

PS Section © Richard Shephard 2007

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 authors' 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 nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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 e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780007439171

Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007323449

Version: 2016-03-30

Praise

From the reviews of the Martin Beck series:

‘First class’

Daily Telegraph

‘One of the most authentic, gripping and profound collections of police procedural 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

Cover

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

Other Books by

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

Nations are stereotyped as easily as anything else, and in the 1960s and 70s most of us thought of Sweden as a paradise, where social democracy worked, where the welfare state was successful, where the girls were blonde and beautiful, where the scenery was lovely and the buildings half-timbered, and where sexuality was frank and innocent. Even its legendary suicide rate could be seen in a positive light, as being the result of the admirable willingness of Sweden’s coroners to be open and honest instead of hushing things up because of outdated taboos.

Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo lived there, and knew different.

They’re usually described as a wife-and-husband team, but they weren’t married. They’re usually described as Marxists,but they were, more accurately, modern European socialists, intensely sceptical of capitalist excess. What is agreed upon – and what we readers should be grateful for – is that instead of writing agitprop in obscure journals, they aired their views in a series of ten crime novels, of which this title was the seventh. Originally the series had a single subtitle – what we might now call a strapline – which was ‘The Story of a Crime’, and which, it became clear, had a dual meaning. The books were crime stories, obviously, but the series as a whole was the authors’ indictment of the way power treats the powerless.

All very worthy, all very noble and interesting, and like most things worthy and noble and interesting probably destined for the footnotes of history – except that along the way Sjowall and Wahloo also invented a brand-new type of police procedural that changed the genre for ever and still resonates to this day.

Their criticism of government was unrestrained: ‘The centre of Stockholm had been subjected to sweeping and violent changes in the course of the last ten years. Entire districts had been levelled and new ones constructed … What was behind all this activity was hardly an ambition to create a humane social environment but rather a desire to achieve the fullest possible exploitation of valuable land.’ With predictable results: ‘This is an insane city in a country that’s mentally deranged.’

The police force was both their narrative vehicle and their political focus. Again stereotypically, because Sweden had been neutral during World War Two, and because the girls were blonde and beautiful, we thought of Sweden as an essentially pacifist country, but Sjowall and Wahloo were at pains to point out its central militaristic culture, and the way in which the police recruited from the military ranks. They saw the nationalisation of Sweden’s regional police forces in the mid-1960s as a final nail in the coffin, as a transition to a paramilitary force answerable to, and interested in, no one but itself: ‘If you really want to be sure of getting caught, the thing to do is kill a policeman … There are plenty of unsolved murders in Swedish criminal history, but not one of them involves the murder of a policeman.’ And: ‘… everyone knows it’s pointless to report a policeman. The general public has no legal rights vis-à-vis the police.’

Interesting, eye-opening and worthy, but forgettable, regrettably, except that their narrative vehicle was so perversely compelling. Cop stories until then had tended to be exaggerated and glamorous, but Sjowall and Wahloo went the other way. Their manifesto is recapitulated in this book as succinctly as anywhere: ‘Police work is built on realism, routine, stubbornness and system.’

And in the middle of it was Martin Beck.

By this seventh title Beck was fully mature and fully realized as a character. Dour, determined, dissatisfied, dogged, even a little depressed, he was revolutionary at the time, and lives on as the grandfather of practically all current Scandinavian detectives, as well as foreigners as far-flung as Ian Rankin’s John Rebus and Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko. He is a marvellous invention, well served by a supporting cast of colleagues as superbly drawn as, say, Ed McBain’s ‘87th Precinct’ repertory. (And very well served, here and elsewhere, it must be said, by Thomas Teal’s English translation, which captures Beck’s weary, sardonic tone to perfection.) Even minor passing characters are delightfully written: in this text, one Captain Hult is found wearing his uniform on his day off. ‘I wear my uniform most of the time,’ he says. ‘I prefer it.’ Thus Sjowall and Wahloo create an impression in eleven words, where some writers would use eleven paragraphs.

And surprisingly, given the rubric of routine, the plotting is equally able. Subtle reversals come thick and fast. I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say this book opens with the gruesome murder of a senior policeman. But ‘The Abominable Man’ is not the perpetrator – it’s the victim. The moral ground shifts under our feet just as new clues alter the direction of the investigation. These books work superbly well as thrillers – no question about that – but they’re remembered for making the crime novel socially realistic. Or is it the other way around?

Lee Child

New York, 2011

1

Just after midnight he stopped thinking.

He'd been writing something earlier, but now the blue ballpoint pen lay in front of him on the newspaper, exactly in the right-hand column of the crossword puzzle. He was sitting erect and utterly motionless on a worn wooden chair in front of a low table in the cramped little attic room. A round yellowish lampshade with a long fringe hung above his head. The fabric was pale with age, and the light from the feeble bulb was hazy and uncertain.

It was quiet in the house. But the quiet was relative – inside there were three people breathing, and from outside came an indistinct, pulsating, barely discernible murmur. As if from traffic on far-off roads, or from a distant boiling sea. The sound of a million human beings. Of a large city in its anxious sleep.

The man in the attic room was dressed in a beige lumber jacket, grey ski pants, a machine-knit black turtleneck jumper and brown ski boots. He had a large but well-tended moustache, just a shade lighter than the hair combed smoothly back at an angle across his head. His face was narrow, with a clean profile and finely chiselled features, and behind the rigid mask of resentful accusation and obstinate purpose there was an almost childlike expression, weak and perplexed and appealing, and nevertheless a little bit calculating.

His clear blue eyes were steady but vacant.

He looked like a little boy grown suddenly very old.

The man sat stock still for almost an hour, the palms of his hands resting on his thighs, his eyes staring blankly at the same spot on the faded flowered wallpaper.

Then he stood up, walked across the room, opened a closet door, reached up with his left hand and took something from the shelf. A long thin object wrapped in a white kitchen towel with a red border.

The object was a carbine bayonet.

He drew it and very carefully wiped off the yellow gun grease before sliding it into its steel-blue scabbard.

In spite of the fact that he was tall and rather heavy, his movements were quick and lithe and economical, and his hands were as steady as his gaze.

He unbuckled his belt and slid it through the leather loop on the sheath. Then he zipped up his jacket, put on a pair of gloves and a chequered tweed cap and left the house.

The wooden stairs creaked beneath his weight, but his footsteps themselves were inaudible.

The house was small and old and stood on the top of a little hill above the main road. It was a chilly, starlit night.

The man in the tweed cap swung around the corner of the house and moved with the sureness of a sleepwalker towards the driveway behind.

He opened the left front door of his black Volkswagen, climbed in behind the wheel and adjusted the bayonet, which rested against his right thigh.

Then he started the engine, turned on the headlights, backed out on to the main road and drove north.

The little black car hurtled forward through the darkness precisely and implacably, as if it were a weightless craft in space.

The buildings tightened along the road and the city rose up beneath its dome of light, huge and cold and desolate, stripped of everything but hard naked surfaces of metal, glass and concrete.

Not even in the central city was there any street life at this hour of the night. With the exception of an occasional taxi, two ambulances and a patrol car, everything was dead. The police car was black with white sides and rushed quickly past on its own bawling carpet of sound.

The traffic lights changed from red to yellow to green to yellow to red with a meaningless mechanical monotony.

The black car drove strictly in accordance with traffic regulations, never exceeded the speed limit, slowed at all cross streets and stopped at all red lights.

It drove along Vasagatan past the Central Station and the newly completed Sheraton-Stockholm, swung left at Norra Bantorget and continued north on Torsgatan.

In the square was an illuminated tree and bus 591 waiting at its stop. A new moon hung above St Eriksplan and the blue neon hands on the Bonnier Building showed the time. Twenty minutes to two.

At that instant, the man in the car was precisely thirty-six years old.

Now he drove east along Odengatan, past deserted Vasa Park with its cold white streetlamps and the thick, veined shadows of ten thousand leafless tree limbs.

The black car made another right and drove one hundred and twenty-five yards south along Dalagatan. Then it braked and stopped.

With studied negligence, the man in the lumber jacket and the tweed cap parked with two wheels on the pavement right in front of the stairs to the Eastman Institute.

He stepped out into the night and slammed the door behind him.

It was the third of April, 1971. A Saturday.

It was still only an hour and forty minutes old and nothing in particular had happened.

2

At a quarter to two the morphine stopped working.

He'd had the last injection just before ten, which meant the narcosis lasted less than four hours.

The pain came back sporadically, first on the left side of his diaphragm and then a few minutes later on the right as well. Then it radiated out towards his back and passed fitfully through his body, quick, cruel and biting, as if starving vultures had torn their way into his vitals.

He lay on his back in the tall, narrow bed and stared at the white plaster ceiling, where the dim glow of the night light and the reflections from outside produced an angular static pattern of shadows that were indecipherable and as cold and repellent as the room itself.

The ceiling wasn't flat but arched in two shallow curves and seemed distant. It was in fact high, over twelve feet, and old-fashioned like everything else in the building. The bed stood in the middle of the stone floor and there were only two other pieces of furniture: the night table and a straight-backed wooden chair.

The curtains were not completely drawn, and the window was ajar. Air filtered chilly and fresh through the two-inch crack from the spring-winter night outside, but he nevertheless felt a suffocating disgust at the rotting odour from the flowers on the night table and from his own sick body.

He had not slept but lain wakeful and silent and thought about this very fact – that the painkiller would soon wear off.

It was about an hour since he'd heard the night nurse pass the double doors to the corridor in her wooden shoes. Since then he'd heard nothing but the sound of his own breathing and maybe of his blood, pulsing heavily and unevenly through his body. But these were not distinct sounds; they were more like figments of his imagination, fitting companions to his dread of the agony that would soon begin and to his mindless fear of dying.

He had always been a hard man, unwilling to tolerate mistakes or weakness in others and never prepared to admit that he himself might someday falter, either physically or mentally.

Now he was afraid and in pain. He felt betrayed and taken by surprise. His senses had sharpened during his weeks in the hospital. He had become unnaturally sensitive to all forms of pain and shuddered even at the prospect of an injection or the needle in the fold of his arm when the nurses took the daily blood tests. On top of that he was afraid of the dark and couldn't stand to be alone and had learned to hear noises he'd never heard before.

The examinations – which ironically enough the doctors referred to as the ‘investigation’ – wore him out and made him feel worse. And the sicker he felt, the more intense his fear of death became, until it circumscribed his entire conscious life and left him utterly naked, in a state of spiritual exposure and almost obscene egoism.

Something rustled outside the window. An animal of course, padding through the withered rose bed. A field mouse or a hedgehog, maybe a cat. But didn't hedgehogs hibernate?

It must be an animal, he thought, and then no longer in control of his actions, he raised his left hand towards the electric call-button that hung in comfortable reach, wound once around the bedpost.

But when his fingers brushed the cold metal of the bed frame, his hand trembled in an involuntary spasm and the switch slid away and fell to the floor with a little rattling bang.

The sound made him pull himself together.

If he'd gotten his hand on the switch and pushed the white button, a red light would have gone on out in the corridor above his door and soon the night nurse would have come trotting from her room in her clattering wooden clogs.

Since he wasn't only afraid but also vain, he was almost glad he hadn't managed to ring.

The night nurse would have come into the room and turned on the overhead light and stared at him questioningly as he lay there in his wretchedness and misery.

He lay still for a while and felt the pain recede and then approach again in sudden waves, as if it were a runaway train driven by an insane engineer.

He suddenly became aware of a new urgency. He needed to urinate.

There was a bottle within reach, stuck down in the yellow plastic wastebasket behind the night table. But he didn't want to use it. He was allowed to get up if he wanted to. One of the doctors had even said it would be good for him to move around a little.

So he thought he'd get up and open the double doors and walk to the toilet, which was right on the other side of the corridor. It was a distraction, a practical task, something that could force his mind into new combinations for a time.

He folded aside the blanket and the sheet, heaved himself into a sitting position and sat for several seconds on the edge of the bed with his feet dangling while he pulled at the white nightgown and heard the plastic mattress cover rustling underneath him.

Then he carefully eased himself down until he felt the cold stone floor beneath the damp soles of his feet. He tried to straighten up and, in spite of the broad bandages that pulled at his groin and tightened around his thighs, he succeeded. He was still wearing plastic foam pressure-dressings from the aortography the day before.

His slippers lay beside the table and he stuck his feet into them and walked cautiously and gropingly towards the door. He opened the first door in and the second out and walked straight across the shadowy corridor and into the lavatory.

He went to the toilet and rinsed off his hands in cold water and started back, then stopped in the corridor to listen. The muffled sound of the night nurse's radio could be heard a long way off. He was in pain again and his fear came back and he thought after all he could go in and ask for a couple of painkillers. They wouldn't have any particular effect, but anyway she'd have to unlock the medicine cabinet and take out the bottle and then give him some juice, and that way at least someone would have to fuss over him for a little while.

The distance to the office was about sixty feet and he took his time. Shuffled along slowly with the sweaty nightshirt slapping against his calves.

The light was on in the duty room but there was no one there. Only the transistor radio, which stood serenading itself between two half-emptied coffee cups.

The night nurse and the orderly were busy someplace else of course.

The room began to swim and he had to support himself against the door. It felt a little better after a minute or two, and he walked slowly back towards his room through the darkened corridor.

The doors were the way he'd left them, slightly ajar. He closed them carefully, took the few steps to the bed, stepped out of his slippers, lay down on his back and pulled the blanket up to his chin with a shiver. Lay still with wide-open eyes and felt the express train rushing through his body.

Something was different. The pattern on the ceiling had changed in some slight way.

He was aware of it almost at once.

But what was it that had made the pattern of shadows and reflections change?

His gaze ran over the bare walls, then he turned his head to the right and looked towards the window.

The window had been open when he left the room, he was certain of that.

Now it was closed.

Terror overwhelmed him immediately and he lifted his hand to the call button. But it wasn't in its place. He'd forgotten to pick up the cord and the switch from the floor.

He held his fingers tightly around the iron pipe where the buzzer ought to have been and stared at the window.

The gap between the long curtains was still about two inches wide, but they weren't hanging quite the way they had been, and the window was closed.

Could someone from the staff have been in the room?

It didn't seem likely.

He felt the sweat bursting from his pores, and his nightshirt cold and clammy against his sensitive skin.

Completely at the mercy of his fear and unable to tear his eyes from the window, he began to sit up in bed.

The curtains hung absolutely motionless, yet he was certain someone was standing behind them.

Who, he thought.

Who?

And then with a last flash of common sense: This must be a hallucination.

Now he stood beside the bed, ill and unsteady, his bare feet on the stone floor. Took two uncertain steps towards the window. Came to a stop, slightly bent, his lips twitching.

The man in the window alcove threw aside the curtains with his right hand as he simultaneously drew the bayonet with his left.

Reflections glittered on the long broad blade.

The man in the lumber jacket and the chequered tweed cap took two quick steps forward and stopped, legs apart, tall, straight, with the weapon at shoulder height.

The sick man recognized him at once and started to open his mouth to bellow.

The heavy handle of the bayonet hit him across the mouth and he felt his lips being torn to shreds and his dental plate breaking.

And that was the last thing he felt.

The rest of it went too fast. Time rushed away from him.

The first blow caught him on the right side of his diaphragm just below his ribs, and the bayonet sank in to its hilt.

The sick man was still on his feet, his head thrown back, when the man in the lumber jacket raised the weapon for the third time and sliced open his throat, from the left ear to the right.

A bubbling, slightly hissing noise came from the open windpipe.

Nothing more.

3

It was Friday evening and Stockholm's cafés should have been full of happy people enjoying themselves after the drudgery of the week. Such, however, was not the case, and it wasn't hard to work out why. In the course of the preceding five years, restaurant prices had as good as doubled, and very few ordinary wage-earners could afford to treat themselves to even one night out a month. The restaurant owners complained and talked crisis, but the ones who had not turned their establishments into pubs or discotheques to attract the easy-spending young managed to keep their heads above water by means of the increasing number of businessmen with credit cards and expense accounts who preferred to conduct their transactions across a laden table.

The Golden Peace in the Old City was no exception. It was late, to be sure – Friday had turned into Saturday – but during the last hour there had been only two guests in the ground-floor dining room. A man and a woman. They'd eaten steak tartare and were now drinking coffee and punsch as they talked in low voices across the table in the alcove.

Two waitresses sat folding napkins at a little table opposite the entrance. The younger, who was red-haired and looked tired, stood up and threw a glance at the clock above the bar. She yawned, picked up a napkin and walked over to the guests in the alcove.

‘Will there be anything else before the bar closes?’ she said, using the napkin to sweep some crumbs of tobacco from the tablecloth. ‘Would you care for some more hot coffee, Inspector?’

Martin Beck noticed to his own surprise that he was flattered at her knowing who he was. He was normally irritated by any reminder that as chief of the National Murder Squad he was a more or less public personage, but it was a long time now since he'd had his picture in the papers or appeared on television, and he took the waitress's recognition only as an indication that the Peace was beginning to regard him as a regular customer. Rightly so, for that matter. He'd been living not far away for two years now, and when he now and again went out to eat he gave his custom mostly to the Peace. Having a companion, as he did this evening, was less usual.

The girl across from him was his daughter, Ingrid. She was nineteen years old, and if you overlooked the fact that she was very blonde and he very dark, they were strikingly similar.

‘Do you want more coffee?’ asked Martin Beck.

Ingrid shook her head and the waitress withdrew to prepare the bill. Martin Beck lifted the little bottle of punsch from its ice bucket and poured what remained into the two glasses. Ingrid sipped at hers.

‘We ought to do this more often,’ she said.

‘Drink punsch?’

‘Mmm, it is good. No, I mean get together. Next time I'll invite you to dinner. At my place on Klostervägen. You haven't seen it yet.’

Ingrid had moved away from home three months before her parents separated. Martin Beck sometimes wondered if he ever would have had the strength to break out of his stagnant marriage to Inga if Ingrid hadn't encouraged him. She hadn't been happy at home and moved in with a friend even before she was out of school. Now she was studying sociology at the university and had just recently found a one-room apartment in Stocksund. For the time being she was still subletting, but she had prospects of eventually getting the lease on her own.

‘Mama and Rolf were out to visit the day before yesterday,’ she said. ‘I was hoping you'd come too, but I couldn't get hold of you.’

‘No, I was in Örebro for a couple of days. How are they?’

‘Fine. Mama had a whole trunkload of stuff with her. Towels and napkins and that blue coffee service and I don't know what all. Oh, and we talked about Rolf's birthday. Mama wants us to come out and have dinner with them. If you can.’

Rolf was three years younger than Ingrid. They were as different as a brother and sister can be, but they'd always got along well.

The redhead came with the bill. Martin Beck paid and emptied his glass. He looked at his wristwatch. It was a couple of minutes to one.

‘Shall we go?’ said Ingrid, quickly downing the last few drops of her punsch.

They strolled north on Österlänggatan. The stars were out and the air was quite chilly. A couple of drunken teenagers came walking out of Drakens Gränd, shouting and hollering until the walls of the old buildings echoed with the din.

Ingrid put her hand under her father's arm and matched her stride to his. She was long-legged and slim, almost skinny, Martin Beck thought, but she herself was always saying she'd have to go on a diet.

‘Do you want to come up?’ he asked on the hill up towards Köpmantorget.

‘Yes, but only to call a taxi. It's late, and you have to sleep.’

Martin Beck yawned.

‘As a matter of fact I am rather tired,’ he said.

A man was squatting by the base of the statue of St George and the Dragon. He seemed to be sleeping, his forehead resting against his knees.

As Ingrid and Martin Beck passed, he lifted his head and said something inarticulate in a high thick voice, then stretched his legs out in front of him and fell asleep again with his chin on his chest.

‘Shouldn't he be sleeping it off at Nicolai?’ said Ingrid. ‘It's a bit cold to be sitting outside.’

‘He'll probably wind up there eventually,’ Martin Beck said. ‘If there's room. But it's a long time since it was my job to take care of drunks.’

They walked on into Köpmangatan in silence.

Martin Beck was thinking about the summer twenty-two years ago when he'd walked a beat in the Nicolai precinct. Stockholm was a different city then. The Old City had been an idyllic little town. More drunkenness and poverty and misery, of course, before they'd cleared out the slums and restored the buildings and raised the rents so the old tenants could no longer afford to stay. Living here had become fashionable, and he himself was now one of the privileged few.

They rode to the top floor in the lift, which had been installed when the building was renovated and was one of the few in the Old City. The flat was completely modernized and consisted of a hall, a small kitchen, a bathroom and two rooms whose windows opened on to a large open courtyard on the east. The rooms were snug and asymmetrical, with deep bay windows and low ceilings. The first of the two rooms was furnished with comfortable easy chairs and low tables and had a fireplace. The inner room contained a broad bed framed by deep built-in shelves and cupboards and, by the window, a huge desk with drawers beneath.

Without taking off her coat, Ingrid went in and sat down at the desk, lifted the receiver and dialled for a taxi.

‘Won't you stay for a minute?’ Martin called from the kitchen.

‘No, I have to go home and get to bed. I'm dead tired. So are you, for that matter.’

Martin Beck made no objection. All of a sudden he didn't feel a bit sleepy, but all evening long he'd been yawning, and at the cinema – they'd been to see Truffaut's The 400 Blows – he'd several times been on the verge of dozing off.

Ingrid finally got hold of a taxi, came out to the kitchen and kissed Martin Beck on the cheek.

‘Thanks for a good time. I'll see you at Rolf's birthday if not before. Sleep well.’

Martin Beck followed her out to the lift and whispered good night before closing the doors and going back into his flat.

He poured the beer he'd taken from the refrigerator into a big glass, walked in and set it on the desk. Then he went to the hi-fi by the fireplace, looked through his records and put one of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos on the turntable. The building was well insulated and he knew he could turn the volume quite high without bothering the neighbours. He sat down at the desk and drank the beer, which was fresh and cold and washed away the sweet sticky taste of punsch. He pinched together the paper mouthpiece of a Florida, put the cigarette between his teeth and lit a match. Then he rested his chin in his hands and stared out through the window.

The spring sky arched deep blue and starry above the moonlit roof on the other side of the courtyard. Martin Beck listened to the music and let his thoughts wander freely. He felt utterly relaxed and content.

When he'd turned the record, he walked over to the shelf above the bed and lifted down a half-completed model of the clipper ship Flying Cloud. He worked on masts and yards for almost an hour before putting the model back on its shelf.

While getting undressed, he admired his two completed models with a certain pride – the Cutty Sark and the training ship Danmark. Soon he'd have only the rigging left to do on the Flying Cloud, the most difficult and the most trying part.

He walked naked out to the kitchen and put the ashtray and the beer glass on the counter beside the sink. Then he turned out all the lights except the one above his pillow, closed the bedroom door to a crack and went to bed. He wound the clock, which said two thirty-five, and checked to see that the alarm button was pushed in. He had, he hoped, a free day in front of him and could sleep as long as he liked.

Kurt Bergengren's Archipelago Steamboats lay on the bedside table and he browsed through it, looking at pictures he'd studied carefully before and reading a passage here and a caption there with a strong feeling of nostalgia. The book was large and heavy and not particularly well suited for reading in bed, and his arms were soon tired from holding it. He put it aside and reached out to turn off the reading light.

Then the telephone rang.

4

Einar Rönn really was dead tired.

He'd been at work for over seventeen hours at a single stretch. Right at the moment, he was standing in the Criminal Division orderly room in the police building on Kungsholmsgatan, looking at a sobbing male adult who had laid hands on one of his fellow men.

For that matter maybe ‘male adult’ was saying too much, since the prisoner was by and large only a child. An eighteen-year-old boy with shoulder-length blond hair, bright red Levi's and a brown suede jacket with a fringe and the word LOVE painted on the back. The letters were surrounded by ornamental flowers in flourishes of pink and violet and baby blue. There were also flowers and words on the legs of his boots; to be precise, the words PEACE and MAGGIE. Long fringes of soft wavy human hair were ingeniously sewn to the jacket's arms.

It was enough to make you wonder if someone hadn't been scalped.

Rönn felt like sobbing himself. Partly from exhaustion, but mostly, as was so often the case these days, because he felt sorrier for the criminal than for the victim.

The young man with the pretty hair had tried to kill a drug pusher. The attempt had not been particularly successful, yet successful enough that the police regarded him as a prime suspect for attempted murder in the second degree.

Rönn had been hunting him since five o'clock that afternoon, which meant he'd been forced to track down and search through no fewer than eighteen drug hangouts in different parts of his beautiful city, each one filthier and more repulsive than the one before.

All because some bastard who sold hash mixed with opium to school kids on Mariatorget had got a bump on the head. All right, caused by an iron pipe and motivated by the fact that the agent of the blow was broke. But after all. Rönn thought.

Plus: nine hours'overtime, which for that matter would be ten before he got home to his apartment in Vällingby.

But you had to take the bad with the good. In this case the good would be the salary.

Rönn was from Lapland, born in Arjeplog and married to a Lappish girl. He didn't particularly like Vällingby, but he liked the name of the street he lived on: Lapland Street.

He looked on while one of his younger colleagues, on night duty, wrote out a receipt for the transfer of the prisoner and delivered up the hair fetish to two guards, who in their turn shoved the prisoner into a lift for forwarding to the booking section three flights up.

A transfer receipt is a piece of paper bearing the name of the prisoner and binding on no one, on the back of which the duty officer writes appropriate remarks. For example: Very wild, threw himself again and again against the wall and was injured. Or: Uncontrollable, ran into a door and was injured. Maybe just: Fell down and hurt himself.

And so on.

The door from the yard opened and two constables ushered in an older man with a bushy grey beard. Just as they crossed the threshold one of the constables drove his fist into the prisoner's abdomen. The man doubled up and gave out a stifled cry, something like the howl of a dog. The two on-duty detectives shuffled their papers undisturbed.

Rönn threw a tired look at the constables but said nothing.

Then he yawned and looked at his watch.

Seventeen minutes after two.

The telephone rang. One of the detectives answered.

‘Yes, this is Criminal, Gustavsson here.’

Rönn put on his fur hat and moved towards the door. He had his hand on the knob when the man named Gustavsson stopped him.

‘What? Wait a second. Hey, Rönn?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Here's something for you.’

‘What now?’

‘Something at Mount Sabbath. Somebody's been shot or something. The guy on the phone sounds pretty confused.’

Rönn sighed and turned around. Gustavsson took his hand off the receiver.

‘One of the boys from Violent Crime is here right now. One of the big wheels. Okay?’

A short pause.

‘Yes, yes, I can hear you. It's awful, yes. Now, exactly where are you?’

Gustavsson was a thinnish man in his thirties with a tough and impassive air. He listened, then put his hand over the receiver again.

‘He's at the main entrance to the central building at Mount Sabbath. Obviously needs help. Are you going?’

‘Okay,’ Rönn said. ‘I suppose I will.’

‘Do you need a ride? This radio car seems to be free.’

Rönn looked a little woefully at the two constables and shook his head. They were big and strong and armed with pistols and batons in leather holsters. Their prisoner lay like a whimpering bundle at their feet.

They themselves stared jealously and foolishly at Rönn, the hope of promotion in their shallow blue eyes.

‘No, I'll take my own car,’ he said, and left.

Einar Rönn was no big wheel, and right at the moment he didn't feel even like a cog. There were some people who thought he was a very able policeman, and others who said he was typically mediocre. Be that as it may, he had, after years of faithful service, become a deputy inspector on the Violent Crime Squad. A real sleuth, to use the language of the tabloids. That he was peaceable and middle-aged, red-nosed and slightly corpulent from sitting still too much – on those points everyone agreed.

It took him four minutes and twelve seconds to drive to the indicated address.

Mount Sabbath Hospital is spread out over a large, hilly, roughly triangular tract with its base in the north along Vasa Park, its sides along Dalagatan on the east and Torsgatan on the west, and its tip cut off abruptly by the approach to the new bridge over Barnhus Bay. A large brick building belonging to the gasworks pushes in from Torsgatan, putting a notch in one corner.

The hospital gets its name from an innkeeper, Vallentin Sabbath, who, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, owned two taverns in the Old City – the Rostock and the Lion. He bought land here and raised carp in ponds that have since dried out or been filled in, and for three years he operated a restaurant on the property before departing this life in 1720.

About ten years later a mineral springs, or spa, was opened on the premises. The two-hundred-year-old mineral springs hotel, which in the course of the years has seen service both as a hospital and a poorhouse, now crouches in the shadow of an eight-storey geriatric centre.

The original hospital was built a little more than a hundred years ago on the rocky outcropping along Dalagatan and consisted of a number of pavilions connected by long, covered passages. Some of the old pavilions are still in use, but a number of them have quite recently been torn down and replaced by new ones, and the system of passages is now underground.

At the far end of the grounds stand a number of older buildings that house the old people's home. There is a little chapel here, and in the middle of a garden of lawns and hedges and gravel walks there is a yellow summerhouse with white trim and a spire on its rounded roof. An avenue of trees leads from the chapel to an old gatehouse down by the street. Behind the chapel the grounds rise higher only to come to a sudden stop high above Torsgatan, which curves between the cliff and the Bonnier Building across the way. This is the quietest and least frequented part of the hospital area. The main entrance is on Dalagatan where it was a hundred years ago, and next to it is the new central hospital building.

5

Rönn felt almost ghostlike in the blue light flashing from the roof of the patrol car. But it would soon get worse.

‘What's happened?’ he said.

‘Don't know for sure. Something ugly.’ The constable looked very young. His face was open and sympathetic, but his glance wandered and he seemed to be having trouble standing still. He was holding on to the car door with his left hand and fingering the butt of his pistol a little hesitantly with his right. Ten seconds earlier he'd made a sound that could only have been a sigh of relief.

The boy's scared, Rönn thought. He made his voice reassuring.

‘Well, we'll see. Where is it?’

‘It's a bit tricky to get there. I'll drive in front.’

Rönn nodded and went back to his own car. Started the engine and followed the blue flashes in a wide swing around the central hospital and into the grounds. In the course of thirty seconds the patrol car made three right turns, two left turns, then braked and stopped outside a long low building with yellow plaster walls and a black mansard roof. It looked ancient. Above the weathered wooden door a single flickering bulb in an old-fashioned milkglass globe was fighting what was pretty much a losing battle against the darkness. The constable climbed out and assumed his former stance, fingers on car door and pistol butt as a kind of shield against the night and what it might be presumed to conceal.

‘In there,’ he said, glancing guardedly at the double wooden door.

Rönn stifled a yawn and nodded.

‘Shall I call for more men?’

‘Well, we'll see,’ Rönn repeated good-naturedly.

He was already on the steps pushing open the right-hand half of the door, which creaked mournfully on un-oiled hinges. Another couple of steps and another door and he found himself in a sparsely lit corridor. It was broad and high-ceilinged and stretched the entire length of the building.

On one side were private rooms and wards, the other was apparently reserved for lavatories and linen closets and examination rooms. On the wall was an old black pay phone of the kind that only cost ten öre to use. Rönn stared at an oval white enamel plate with the laconic inscription ENEMA and then went on to study the four people he could see from where he stood.

Two of them were uniformed policemen. One of these was stocky and solid and stood with feet apart and his arms at his sides and his eyes straight ahead. In his left hand he was holding an open notebook with a black cover. His colleague was leaning against the wall, head down, his gaze directed into an enamelled cast-iron washbasin with an old-fashioned brass tap. Of all the young men Rönn had encountered during his nine hours of overtime, this one looked to be easily the youngest. In his leather jacket and shoulder belt and apparently indispensable weaponry, he looked like a parody of a policeman. An older grey-haired woman with glasses sat collapsed in a wicker chair, staring apathetically at her white wooden clogs. She was wearing a white smock and had an ugly case of varicose veins on her pale calves. The quartet was completed by a man in his thirties. He had curly black hair and was biting his knuckles in irritation. He too was wearing a white coat and wooden-soled shoes.

The air in the corridor was unpleasant and smelled of disinfectant, vomit, or medicine, or maybe all three at once. Rönn sneezed suddenly and unexpectedly and, a little late, grabbed his nose between thumb and forefinger.

The only one to react was the policeman with the notebook. Without saying anything, he pointed to a tall door with light yellow crackled paint and a typewritten white card in a metal frame. The door was not quite closed. Rönn plucked it open without touching the handle. Inside there was another door. That one too was ajar, but opened inwards.

Rönn pushed it with his foot, looked into the room and gave a start. He let go of his reddish nose and took another look, this one more systematic.

‘My, my,’ he said to himself.

Then he took a step backwards, let the outer door swing back to its former position, put on his glasses and examined the name-plate.

‘Jesus,’ he said.

The policeman had put away the black notebook and had taken out his badge instead, which he now stood fingering as if it had been a rosary or an amulet.

Police badges were soon to be eliminated, Rönn remembered, irrationally. And with that, the long battle as to whether badges should be worn on the chest as forthright identification or hidden away in a pocket somewhere had come to a disappointing as well as surprising conclusion. They were simply done away with, replaced by ordinary ID cards, and policemen could safely go on hiding behind the anonymity of the uniform.

‘What's your name?’ he said out loud.

‘Andersson.’

‘What time did you get here?’

The policeman looked at his wristwatch.

‘At two sixteen. Nine minutes ago. We were in the area. At Odenplan.’

Rönn took off his glasses and glanced at the uniformed boy, who was light green in the face and vomiting helplessly into the sink. The older constable followed his look.

‘He's just a cadet,’ he said under his breath. ‘It's his first time out.’

‘Better give him a hand,’ said Rönn. ‘And send out a call for five or six men from the Fifth.’

‘The emergency bus from Precinct Five, yes sir,’ Andersson said, looking as if he were about to salute or snap to attention or some other inane thing.

‘Just a moment,’ Rönn said. ‘Have you seen anything suspicious around here?’

He hadn't put it too well perhaps, and the constable stared bewilderedly at the door to the sickroom.

‘Well, ah …’ he said evasively.

‘Do you know who that is? The man in there?’

‘Chief Inspector Nyman, isn't it?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Though you can't hardly tell by looking.’

‘No,’ Rönn said. ‘Not hardly.’

Andersson went out.

Rönn wiped the sweat from his forehead and considered what he ought to do.

For ten seconds. Then he walked over to the pay phone and dialled Martin Beck's home number.

‘Hi. It's Rönn. I'm at Mount Sabbath. Come on over.’

‘Okay,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Quick.’

‘Okay.’

Rönn hung up the receiver and went back to the others. Waited. Gave his handkerchief to the cadet, who self-consciously wiped his mouth.

‘I'm sorry,’ he said.

‘It can happen to anyone.’

‘I couldn't help it. Is it always like this?’

‘No,’ Rönn said. ‘I wouldn't say that. I've been a policeman for twenty-one years and to be honest I've never seen anything like this before.’

Then he turned to the man with the curly black hair.

‘Is there a psychiatric ward here?’

‘Nix verstehen,’ the doctor said.

Rönn put on his glasses and examined the plastic name badge on the doctor's white coat. Sure enough, there was his name.

DR ÜZK ÜKÖCÖTÜPZE.

‘Oh,’ he said to himself.

Put away his glasses and waited.

6

The room was fifteen feet long, ten feet wide, and almost twelve feet high. The colours were very drab – ceiling a dirty white and the plastered walls an indefinite greyish yellow. Grey-white marble tiles on the floor. Light grey window-frames and door. In front of the window hung heavy pale-yellow damask curtains and, behind them, thin white cotton nets. The iron bed was white, likewise the sheets and pillowcase. The night table was grey and the wooden chair light brown. The paint on the furniture was worn, and on the rough walls it was crackled with age. The plaster on the ceiling was flaking and in several places there were light brown spots where moisture had seeped through. Everything was old but very clean. On the table was a nickel silver vase with seven pale red roses. Plus a pair of glasses and a glasses case, a transparent plastic beaker containing two small white tablets, a little white transistor radio, a half-eaten apple, and a tumbler half full of some bright yellow liquid. On the shelf below lay a pile of magazines, four letters, a tablet of lined paper, a shiny Waterman pen with ballpoint cartridges in four different colours, and some loose change – to be exact, eight ten-öre pieces, two twenty-five-öre pieces, and six one-krona coins. The table had two drawers. In the upper one were three used handkerchiefs, a bar of soap in a plastic box, toothpaste, toothbrush, a small bottle of after-shave, a box of cough drops, and a leather case with a nail clipper, file and scissors. The other contained a wallet, an electric razor, a small folder of postage stamps, two pipes, a tobacco pouch and a blank picture postcard of the Stockholm city hall. There were some clothes hanging over the back of the straight chair – a grey cotton coat, trousers of the same colour and material, and a knee-length white shirt. Underwear and socks lay on the seat, and next to the bed stood a pair of slippers. A beige bathrobe hung on the clothes hook by the door.

There was only one completely dissident colour in the room. And that was a shocking red.

The dead man lay partly on his side between the bed and the window. The throat had been cut with such force that the head had been thrown back at an angle of almost ninety degrees and lay with its left cheek against the floor. The tongue had forced its way out through the gaping incision and the victim's broken false teeth stuck out between the mutilated lips.

As he fell backwards a thick stream of blood had pumped out through the carotid artery. This explained the crimson streak across the bed and the splashes of blood on the flower vase and night table.

On the other hand it was the wound in the midriff that had soaked the victim's shirt and provided the enormous pool of blood around the body. A superficial inspection of this wound indicated that someone, with a single blow, had cut through the liver, bile ducts, stomach, spleen and pancreas. Not to mention the aorta.

Virtually all the blood in the body had welled out in the course of a few seconds. The skin was bluish white and seemed almost transparent, where, that is, it could be seen at all, for example on the forehead and parts of the shins and feet.

The lesion on the torso was about ten inches long and wide open; the lacerated organs had pressed out between the sliced edges of the peritoneum.

The man had virtually been cut in two.

Even for people whose job it was to linger at the scenes of macabre and bloody crimes, this was strong stuff.

But Martin Beck's expression hadn't changed since he entered the room. To an outside observer it would have seemed almost as if everything were part of the routine – going to the Peace with his daughter, eating, drinking, getting undressed, pottering with a ship model, going to bed with a book. And then suddenly rushing off to inspect a slaughtered chief inspector of police. The worst part was that he felt that way himself. He never allowed himself to be taken aback, except by his own emotional coolness.

It was now three ten in the morning and he sat on his haunches beside the bed and surveyed the body, coldly and appraisingly.

‘Yes, it's Nyman,’ he said.

‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

Rönn stood poking among the objects on the table. All at once he yawned and put his hand guiltily to his mouth.

Martin Beck threw him a quick glance.

‘Have you got some sort of timetable?’

‘Yes,’ Rönn said.

He pulled out a small notebook where he'd made some industrious jottings in a tiny, stingy hand. Put on his glasses and rattled it off in a monotone.

‘An assistant nurse opened those doors at ten minutes after two. Hadn't heard or seen anything unusual. Making a routine check on the patients. Nyman was dead then. She dialled 90-000 at two eleven. The officers in the radio car got the alarm at two twelve. They were at Odenplan and made it here in between three and four minutes. They reported to Criminal at two seventeen. I got here at two twenty-two. Called you at two twenty-nine. You got here at sixteen minutes to three.’

Rönn looked at his watch.

‘It's now eight minutes to three. When I arrived he'd been dead at the most half an hour.’

‘Is that what the doctor said?’

‘No, that's my own conclusion, so to speak. The warmth of the body, coagulation –’

He stopped, as if it had been presumptuous to mention his own observations.

Martin Beck rubbed the bridge of his nose thoughtfully with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

‘So then everything happened very fast,’ he said.

Rönn didn't answer. He seemed to be thinking about something else.

‘Well,’ he said after a while, ‘you understand why it was I called you. Not because –’

He stopped, seeming somehow distracted.

‘Not because?’

‘Not because Nyman was a chief inspector, but because … well, because of this.’

Rönn gestured vaguely towards the body.

‘He was butchered.’

He paused for a second and then came up with a new conclusion.

‘I mean, whoever did this must be raving mad.’

Martin Beck nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It looks that way.’

7

Martin Beck was beginning to feel ill at ease. The sensation was vague and hard to trace, somewhat like the sneaking fatigue when you're falling asleep over a book and go on reading without turning any pages.

He'd have to make an effort to gather his wits and get a grip on these slippery apprehensions.

Closely related to this lurking sensation of impotence, there was another feeling he couldn't seem to get rid of.

A sense of danger.

That something was about to happen. Something that had to be warded off at any price. But he didn't know what, and still less how.

He'd had such feelings before, if only at long intervals. His colleagues tended to laugh off this phenomenon and call it intuition.

Police work is built on realism, routine, stubbornness and system. It's true that a lot of difficult cases are cleared up by coincidence, but it's equally true that coincidence is an elastic concept that mustn't be confused with luck or accident. In a criminal investigation, it's a question of weaving the net of coincidence as fine as possible. And experience and industry play a larger role there than brilliant inspiration. A good memory and ordinary common sense are more valuable qualities than intellectual brilliance.

Intuition has no place in practical police work.

Intuition is not even a quality, any more than astrology and phrenology are sciences.

And still it was there, however reluctant he was to admit it, and there had been times when it seemed to have put him on the right track.

And yet his ambivalence might also depend on simpler, more tangible and immediate things.

On Rönn, for example.

Martin Beck expected a great deal of the people he worked with. The blame for that fell on Lennart Kollberg, for many years his right-hand man, first when he was a city detective in Stockholm and then later at the old National Criminal Division in Västberga. Kollberg had always been his surest complement, the man who played the best shots, asked the right leading questions and gave the proper cues.

But Kollberg wasn't available. He was at home asleep, presumably, and there was no acceptable reason for waking him. It would be against the rules, and an insult to Rönn what's more.

Martin Beck expected Rönn to do something or at least say something that showed he too sensed the danger. That he would come up with some assertion or supposition that Martin Beck could refute or pursue.

But Rönn said nothing.

Instead he did his job calmly and capably. The investigation was for the moment his, and he was doing everything that could reasonably be expected.

The area outside the window had been cordoned off with ropes and sawhorses, patrol cars had been driven up and headlights lit. Spotlights swept the terrain and small white patches of light from police flashlights wandered jerkily across the ground like frightened sand crabs across a beach in unorganized flight from approaching intruders.

Rönn had gone through what there was on and in the night table without finding anything but ordinary personal belongings and a few trivial letters of the insensitively hearty type that healthy people write to individuals who are suspected of being seriously ill. Civilian personnel from the Fifth Precinct had gone through the adjoining rooms and wards without finding anything of note.

If Martin Beck wanted to know anything in particular, he would have to ask, and furthermore would have to formulate his question clearly, in phrases that could not be misunderstood.

The truth of the matter was simply that they worked together badly. Both of them had discovered this years before, and they therefore generally avoided situations where they had only one another to fall back on.

Martin Beck's opinion of Rönn was none too high, a circumstance the latter was well aware of and which gave him an inferiority complex. Martin Beck, for his part, recognized as his own failing a difficulty in establishing contact and thus became inhibited himself.

Rönn had produced the beloved old murder kit, secured a number of fingerprints, and had plastic covers placed over several pieces of evidence in the room and on the ground outside, thereby ensuring that details that might prove valuable later on would not be effaced by natural causes or destroyed by carelessness. These pieces of evidence were mostly footprints.

Martin Beck had a cold, as usual at this time of year. He snuffled and blew his nose and coughed and hacked and Rönn didn't react. He did not, as a matter of fact, even say ‘Bless you.’ This small civility was apparently not a part of his upbringing, nor of his vocabulary. And if he thought anything, he kept it to himself.

There was no tacit communication between them and Martin Beck felt himself called upon to break the silence.

‘Doesn't this whole ward seem a little old-fashioned?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Rönn said. ‘It's supposed to be vacated the day after tomorrow and modernized or turned into something else. The patients are going to be moved to new wards in the central building.’

Martin Beck's thoughts moved promptly off in new directions.

‘I wonder what he used,’ he said a while later, mostly to himself. ‘Maybe a machete or a samurai sword.’

‘Neither one,’ said Rönn, who had just come into the room. ‘We've found the weapon. It's lying outside, about twelve feet from the window.’

They went outside and looked.

In the cold white light of a spot lay a broad-bladed cutting tool.

‘A bayonet,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Yes. Exactly. For a Mauser carbine.’

The six-millimetre carbine had been a common military weapon, used mostly by the artillery and cavalry. Martin Beck had one himself when he did his national service. The weapon had probably gone out of use by now and been struck from the quartermaster's rolls.

The blade was entirely covered with clotted blood.

‘Can you get fingerprints from that grooved handle?’

Rönn shrugged his shoulders.

Every word had to be dragged from him, if not by force then by verbal pressure.

‘You're letting it lie there until it gets light?’

‘Yes,’ Rönn said. ‘Seems like a good idea.’

‘I'd very much like to talk to Nyman's family as soon as possible. Do you think we could get his wife out of bed at this hour?’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Rönn without conviction.

‘We have to start somewhere. Are you coming along?’ Rönn mumbled something.

‘What'd you say?’ said Martin Beck and blew his nose. ‘Got to get a photographer out here,’ Rönn said. ‘Yeah.’ But he didn't sound at all as if he cared.

8

Rönn walked out to the car and got into the driver's seat to wait for Martin Beck, who'd taken upon himself the unpleasant task of calling the widow.

‘How much did you tell her?’ he asked when Martin Beck had climbed in beside him.

‘Only that he's dead. He was apparently seriously ill, so maybe it didn't come as such a surprise. But of course now she's wondering what we've got to do with it.’

‘How did she sound? Shocked?’

‘Yes, of course. She was going to jump in a taxi and come straight over to the hospital. There's a doctor talking to her now. I hope he manages to convince her to wait at home.’

‘Yes. If she saw him now she'd really get a shock. It's bad enough having to tell her about it.’

Rönn drove north on Dalagatan towards Odengatan. Outside the Eastman Institute stood a black Volkswagen. Rönn nodded towards it.

‘Not bad enough he parks in a no-parking zone, he's halfway up on the pavement too. Lucky for him we're not from Traffic.’

‘On top of which he must have been drunk to park like that,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Or she,’ Rönn said. ‘It must be a woman. Women and cars …’

‘Typical stereotyped thinking,’ said Martin Beck. ‘If my daughter could hear you now you'd be in for a real lecture.’

The car swung right on Odengatan and drove on past Gustav Vasa Church and Odenplan. At the taxi station there were two cabs with their FREE signs lit, and at the traffic lights outside the city library there was a yellow street-cleaning machine with a blinking orange light on its roof, waiting for the light to turn green.

Martin Beck and Rönn drove on in silence. They turned on to Sveavägen and passed the street-sweeper as it rumbled around the corner. At the School of Economics they took a left on to Kungstensgatan.

‘Damn it to hell,’ said Martin Beck suddenly with emphasis.

‘Yeah,’ said Rönn.

Then it was quiet again in the car. When they'd crossed Birger Jarlsgatan, Rönn slowed down and started hunting for the number. A door to a block of flats across from the Citizens School opened and a young man stuck out his head and looked in their direction. He held the door open while they parked the car and crossed the street.

When they reached the doorway they saw that the boy was younger than he'd looked from a distance. He was almost as tall as Martin Beck, but looked to be fifteen years old at the most.

‘My name's Stefan,’ he said. ‘Mother's waiting upstairs.’

They followed him up the stairs to the second floor, where a door stood ajar. The boy showed them through the front hall and into the living room.

‘I'll get Mother,’ he mumbled and disappeared into the hall.

Martin Beck and Rönn remained standing in the middle of the room and looked around. It was very neat. One side was taken up by a suite of furniture that seemed to date from the 1940s and consisted of a sofa, three matching easy chairs in varnished blond wood and flowered cretonne upholstery, and an oval table of the same light wood. A white lace cloth lay on the table, and in the middle of the cloth was a large crystal vase of red tulips. The two windows looked out on the street, and behind the white lace curtains stood rows of well-tended potted plants. The wall at one end of the room was covered by a bookcase in gleaming mahogany, half filled with leather-bound books, half with souvenirs and knick-knacks. Small polished tables with pieces of silver and crystal stood here and there against the walls. A black piano with the lid closed over the keyboard completed the list of furniture. Framed portraits of the family stood lined up on the piano. Several still lifes and landscapes in wide ornate gold frames hung on the walls. A crystal chandelier burned in the middle of the room, and a wine-red Oriental rug lay beneath their feet.

Martin Beck took in the various details of the room as he listened to the footsteps approaching in the hall. Rönn had walked up to the bookcase and was suspiciously eyeing a brass reindeer-bell, one side of which was adorned with a brightly coloured picture of a mountain birch, a reindeer and a Lapp, plus the word ARJEPLOG in ornate red letters.

Mrs Nyman came into the room with her son. She was wearing a black wool dress, black shoes and stockings, and held a small white handkerchief clenched in one hand. She had been crying.

Martin Beck and Rönn introduced themselves. She didn't look as if she'd ever heard of them.

‘But please sit down,’ she said, and took a seat in one of the flowered chairs.

When the two policemen had seated themselves she looked at them with despair in her eyes.

‘What is it that's actually happened?’ she asked in a voice that was much too shrill.

Rönn took out his handkerchief and began to polish his florid nose, thoroughly and at length. But Martin Beck hadn't expected any help from that quarter.

‘If you have anything to calm your nerves, Mrs Nyman – pills, I mean – I think it would be wise to take a couple now,’ he said.

The boy, who had taken a seat on the piano stool, stood up.

‘Papa has … There's a bottle of Restenil in the cabinet in the bathroom,’ he said. ‘Shall I get it?’

Martin Beck nodded and the boy went out to the bathroom and came back with the tablets and a glass of water. Martin Beck looked at the label, shook out two tablets into the lid of the bottle and handed them to Mrs Nyman, who obediently swallowed them with a gulp of water.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Now please tell me what it is you want. Stig is dead, and neither you nor I can do anything about that.’

She pressed the handkerchief to her mouth, and her voice was stifled when she spoke.

‘Why wasn't I allowed to go to him? He's my husband after all. What have they done to him there at the hospital? That doctor … he sounded so odd …’

Her son went over and sat on the arm of her chair. He put his arm around her shoulders.

Martin Beck twisted in his chair so that he sat directly facing her, then he threw a glance at Rönn, sitting silently on the sofa.

‘Mrs Nyman,’ he said, ‘your husband did not die of his illness. Someone entered his room and killed him.’

The woman stared at him and he could see in her eyes that several seconds passed before she understood the significance of what he'd said. She lowered the hand with the handkerchief and pressed it to her breast. She was very pale.

‘Killed? Someone killed him? I don't understand …’

The son had gone white around the nostrils and his grip around his mother's shoulders tightened.

‘Who?’ he said.

‘We don't know. A nurse found him on the floor of his room just after two o'clock. Someone had come in through the window and killed him with a bayonet. It must have happened in the course of a few seconds, I don't think he had time to realize what was happening.’

Said Martin Beck. The giver of comfort.

‘Everything indicates he was taken by surprise,’ Rönn said. ‘If he'd had time to react he would have tried to protect himself or ward off the blows, but there's no sign that he did.’

The woman now stared at Rönn.

‘But why?’ she said.

‘We don't know,’ Rönn said.

That was all he said.

‘Mrs Nyman, maybe you can help us find out,’ said Martin Beck. ‘We don't want to cause you unnecessary pain, but we have to ask you a few questions. First of all, can you think of anyone who might have done it?’

The woman shook her head hopelessly.

‘Do you know if your husband had ever received any threats? Or if there was anyone who thought he had reason to want to see him dead? Anyone who threatened him?’

She went on shaking her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Why should anyone threaten him?’

‘Anyone who hated him?’

‘Why should anyone hate him?’

‘Think carefully,’ Martin Beck said. ‘Wasn't there anyone who thought your husband had treated him badly? He was a policeman, after all, and making enemies is part of the job. Did he ever say someone was out to get him or had threatened him?’

The widow looked in confusion first at her son, then at Rönn, and then back at Martin Beck.

‘Not that I can recall. And I'd certainly remember if he'd said anything like that.’

‘Papa didn't talk much about his job,’ Stefan said. ‘You'd better ask at the station.’

‘We'll ask there too,’ said Martin Beck. ‘How long had he been sick?’

‘A long time, I don't remember exactly,’ the boy said, and looked at his mother.

‘Since June of last year,’ she said. ‘He got sick just before midsummer, an awful pain in his stomach, and he went to the doctor right after the holiday. The doctor thought it was an ulcer and had him go on sick leave. He's been on sick leave ever since, and he's been to several different doctors and they all say different things and prescribe different medicines. Then three weeks ago he went into Sabbath and they've been examining him and doing a lot of tests ever since, but they couldn't find out what it was.’

Talking seemed to distract her attention and help her repress the shock.

‘Papa thought it was cancer,’ the boy said. ‘The doctors said it wasn't. But he was terribly sick all the time.’

‘What did he do all this time? Hasn't he worked at all since last summer?’

‘No,’ Mrs Nyman said. ‘He was really very ill. Had attacks of pain that lasted several days in a row when all he could do was lie in bed. He took a lot of pills, but they didn't help much. He went down to the station a few times last autumn to see how things were going, as he said, but he couldn't work.’

‘Mrs Nyman, can't you remember anything he said or did that might have some connection with what's happened?’ asked Martin Beck.

She shook her head and started sobbing dryly. Her eyes glided on past Martin Beck and she stared straight ahead at nothing.

‘Do you have any brothers and sisters?’ Rönn asked the boy.

‘Yes, a sister, but she's married and lives in Malmö.’

Rönn glanced inquiringly at Martin Beck, who was rolling a cigarette thoughtfully back and forth between his fingers as he looked at the two people in front of him.

‘We'll be going now,’ he said to the boy. ‘I'm sure you can take care of your mother, but I think the best thing would be if you could get a doctor to come over and give her something to make her sleep. Is there any doctor you can call at this time of night?’

The boy stood up and nodded.

‘Doctor Blomberg,’ he said. ‘He usually comes when someone in the family's sick.’

He went out in the hall and they heard him dial a number and after a while someone seemed to answer.

The conversation was short and he came back and stood beside his mother. He looked more like an adult now than he had when they first saw him down in the doorway.

‘He's coming,’ the boy said. ‘You don't need to wait. It won't take him long.’

They stood up and Rönn went over and put his hand on the woman's shoulder. She didn't move, and when they said good-bye she didn't respond.

The boy went with them to the door.

‘We may have to come back,’ said Martin Beck. ‘We'll call you first to find out how your mother's doing.’

When they were out on the street he turned to Rönn.

‘I suppose you knew Nyman?’ he said.

‘Not especially well,’ said Rönn evasively.

9

The blue-white light of a flashbulb lit the dirty yellow façade of the hospital pavilion for an instant as Martin Beck and Rönn returned to the scene of the crime. An additional couple of cars had arrived and stood parked in the turnaround with their headlights on.

‘Apparently our photographer is here,’ Rönn said.

The photographer came towards them as they got out of the car. He carried no camera bag but held his camera and flash in one hand, while his pockets bulged with rolls of film and flashbulbs and lenses. Martin Beck recognized him from the scenes of previous crimes.

‘Wrong,’ he said to Rönn. ‘It looks like the papers got here first.’

The photographer, who worked for one of the tabloids, greeted them and took a picture as they walked towards the door. A reporter from the same paper was standing at the foot of the stairs trying to talk to a uniformed officer.

‘Good morning, Inspector,’ he said when he caught sight of Martin Beck. ‘I don't suppose I could follow you in?’

Martin Beck shook his head and walked up the steps with Rönn in his wake.

‘But you'll give me a little interview at least?’ the reporter said.

‘Later,’ said Martin Beck and held the door open for Rönn before closing it right on the nose of the reporter, who made a face.

The police photographer had also arrived and was standing outside the dead man's room with his camera bag. Further down the corridor was the doctor with the curious name and a plainclothes detective from the Fifth. Rönn went into the sickroom with the photographer and put him to work. Martin Beck walked over to the two men in the hall.

‘How's it going?’ he said.

The same old question.

The plainclothes officer, whose name was Hansson, scratched the back of his neck.

‘We've talked to most of the patients in this corridor, and none of them saw or heard anything. I was just trying to ask Doctor … uh … this doctor here, when we can talk to the other ones.’

‘Have you questioned the people in the adjoining rooms?’ Martin Beck asked.

‘Yes,’ Hansson said. ‘And we've been in all the wards. No one heard anything, but then the walls are thick in a building this old.’

‘We can wait on the others till breakfast,’ said Martin Beck.

The doctor said nothing. He obviously didn't understand Swedish, and after a while he pointed towards the office and said, ‘Have to go,’ in English.

Hansson nodded, and the black curls hurried off in clattering wooden shoes.

‘Did you know Nyman?’ asked Martin Beck.

‘Well, no, not really. I've never worked in his precinct, but of course we've met often enough. He's been around a long time. He was already an inspector when I started, twelve years ago.’

‘Do you know anyone who knew him well?’

‘You can always ask down at Klara,’ Hansson said. ‘That's where he was before he got sick.’

Martin Beck nodded and looked at the electric wall clock over the door to the bathroom. It said a quarter to five.

‘I think I'll go on over there for a while,’ he said. ‘There's not much I can do here for the moment.’

‘Go on,’ said Hansson. ‘I'll tell Rönn where you went.’

Martin Beck took a deep breath when he got outside. The chilly night air felt fresh and clean. The reporter and the photographer were nowhere to be seen, but the uniformed officer was still standing at the foot of the steps.

Martin Beck nodded to him and started walking towards the car park.

The centre of Stockholm had been subjected to sweeping and violent changes in the course of the last ten years. Entire districts had been levelled and new ones constructed. The structure of the city had been altered: streets had been broadened and motorways built. What was behind all this activity was hardly an ambition to create a humane social environment but rather a desire to achieve the fullest possible exploitation of valuable land. In the heart of the city it had not been enough to tear down ninety per cent of the buildings and completely obliterate the original street plan, violence had been visited on the natural topography itself.

Stockholm's inhabitants looked on with sorrow and bitterness as serviceable and irreplaceable old mansion blocks were razed to make way for sterile office buildings. Powerless, they let themselves be deported to distant suburbs while the pleasant, lively neighbourhoods where they had lived and worked were reduced to rubble. The inner city became a clamorous, all but impassable construction site from which the new city slowly and relentlessly arose with its broad, noisy traffic arteries, its shining façades of glass and light metal, its dead surfaces of flat concrete, its bleakness and its desolation.

In this frenzy of modernization, the city's police stations seemed to have been completely overlooked. All the station houses in the inner city were old-fashioned and the worse for wear, and in most cases, since the force had been enlarged over the years, crowded. In the Fourth Precinct, where Martin Beck was heading, this lack of space was one of the primary problems.

By the time he stepped out of the taxi in front of the Klara police station on Regeringsgatan, it had begun to get light. The sun would come up, there was still not a cloud in the sky, and it promised to be a pretty though rather chilly day.

He walked up the stone steps and pushed open the door. To the right was the switchboard, for the moment unmanned, and a counter behind which stood an older, grey-haired policeman. He had spread out the morning paper and was resting on his elbows as he read. When Martin Beck came in he straightened up and took off his glasses.

‘Why it's Inspector Beck, up and about at this time of the morning,’ he said. ‘I was just looking to see if the morning papers had anything about Inspector Nyman. It sounds like a very nasty business.’

He put on his glasses again, licked his thumb and turned a page in the paper.

‘It doesn't look as if they had time to get it in,’ he went on.

‘No,’ said Martin Beck. ‘I don't suppose they did.’

The Stockholm morning papers went to press early these days and had probably been ready for distribution even before Nyman was murdered.

He walked past the desk and into the duty room. It was empty. The morning papers lay on a table along with a couple of overflowing ashtrays and some coffee mugs. Through a window into one of the interrogation rooms he could see the officer in charge sitting talking to a young woman with long blonde hair. When he caught sight of Martin Beck he stood up, said something to the woman and came out of the glass cubicle. He closed the door behind him.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Is it me you're looking for?’

Martin Beck sat down at the short end of the table, pulled an ashtray towards him and lit a cigarette.

‘I'm not looking for anyone in particular,’ he said. ‘But have you got a minute?’

‘Can you wait just a moment?’ the other man said. ‘I just want to get this woman sent over to Criminal.’

He disappeared and returned a few minutes later with a constable, picked up an envelope from the desk and handed it to him. The woman stood up, hung her purse on her shoulder and walked quickly towards the door.

‘Come on, big boy,’ she said without turning her head. ‘Let's go for a ride.’

The constable looked at the officer, who shrugged his shoulders, amused. Then he put on his cap and followed her out.

‘She seemed right at home,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Oh yeah, this isn't the first time. And certainly not the last.’

He sat down at the table and started cleaning his pipe into an ashtray.

‘That was nasty, that business with Nyman,’ he said. ‘How did it happen, exactly?’

Martin Beck told him briefly what had happened.

‘Ugh,’ the officer said. ‘Whoever did it must be a raving lunatic. But why Nyman?’

‘You knew Nyman, didn't you?’ Martin Beck asked him.

‘Not very well. He wasn't the sort of person you knew well.’

‘He was here on special assignment of course. When did he come here to the Fourth?’

‘They gave him an office here three years ago. February '68.’

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