The Abominable Man (10 page)

During the fifties and sixties, Hult began little by little
to advance and on several different occasions served under Nyman. Presumably, Nyman had been allowed to choose the assistants he needed for his special assignments, and Hult had quite clearly been one of his favorites. If Nyman was the kind of man Kollberg said he was, and there was no reason to doubt it, then any man who’d been his “unswervingly faithful sidekick” ought to be a very interesting psychological phenomenon.

Martin Beck started to be curious about Harald Hult and decided to take Kollberg’s advice and look him up. He called and made sure the man was at home before taking a taxi to the specified address on Reimersholme.

Hult lived on the northern tip of the island, in one of the apartment houses facing the Långholm Channel. The building stood on a high point of land, and on the other side of the street, which stopped abruptly in front of the last apartment house in the row, the ground sloped steeply down to the water.

The area looked pretty much the way it had at the end of the thirties when it was built, and owing to its location there was no through traffic. Reimersholme was a fairly small island, with only one bridge in and out, and the buildings were few and far between. A third of its area was occupied by the old alcohol plant and various other old factories and warehouses. There were generous gardens and grounds between the apartment houses, and the shore along Långholm Bay had been left in peace, so that the natural vegetation—alder and aspen and weeping willow—grew rank and lush right down to the water.

Captain Harald Hult lived alone in a two-room apartment on the second floor. It was clean and neat and somehow so tidy it seemed desolate. Almost, thought Martin Beck, as if it were unoccupied.

Hult himself looked to be about sixty, a large, heavy man with a strong chin and expressionless gray eyes.

They sat down by a low, varnished table near the window. The tabletop was bare, and nothing stood on the windowsill. There was, in fact, a general lack of ordinary personal possessions. There didn’t seem to be any paper in the apartment, for example, not even so much as a newspaper, and the only books he could discover were the three parts of the telephone directory, standing neatly on a little shelf in the front hall.

Martin Beck unbuttoned his jacket and loosened his tie a bit. Then he took out his pack of Floridas and a box of matches and started looking around for an ashtray.

Hult followed his glance.

“I don’t smoke,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever owned an ashtray.”

He got a white saucer from the kitchen cabinet.

“Can I get you something …?” he asked before sitting down again. “I’ve already had my coffee, but I can make some more.”

Martin Beck shook his head. He noticed that Hult was a trifle uncertain about how to address him, whether or not he ought to say “sir” to the head of the National Homicide Squad. That showed he was a man of the old school, where rank and discipline had been taken for granted. Although Hult had the day off, he was wearing his uniform trousers, a light blue shirt and a tie.

“Haven’t you got the day off?” Martin Beck asked.

“I wear my uniform most of the time,” Hult said tonelessly. “I prefer it.”

“Nice place you’ve got,” said Martin Beck, glancing out the window at the view.

“Yes,” Hult said. “I guess so. Though it’s pretty lonely.”

He put his large, meaty hands on the table in front of him as if they’d been a pair of clubs, and stared at them.

“I’m a widower. My wife died three years ago. Cancer. Since then it’s been kind of dull.”

Hult didn’t smoke and didn’t drink. He certainly never read a book and probably not the papers either. Martin Beck could picture him sitting passively in front of the TV while the darkness gathered outside.

“What’s it all about?”

“Stig Nyman is dead.”

There was virtually no reaction at all. The man threw a vacant look at his visitor.

“Oh?”

“I suppose you knew already.”

“No. But it’s hardly unexpected. Stig was sick. His body failed him.”

He looked back at his clublike fists, as if wondering how long it would be before his own body betrayed him.

“Did you know Stig?” he asked after a moment.

“Not very well,” Martin Beck said. “About as well as I know you.”

“That’s not very well. We’ve only met a couple of times, sir, you and I.”

And then he dropped the “sir” and went on in a more familiar tone.

“I’ve always been in the regular police. Never had much chance to hang around with you people at Criminal.”

“On the other hand you knew Nyman pretty well, didn’t you?”

“Yes. We worked together for years.”

“And what did you think of him?”

“He was a very good man.”

“I’ve heard the opposite.”

“Who from?”

“Different places.”

“In that case it’s wrong. Stig Nyman was a very good man. That’s all I can tell you.”

“Oh,” said Martin Beck. “I’m sure you can fill out the picture a bit.”

“No. In what way?”

“You know perfectly well, for example, that a lot of people criticized him. That there were people who didn’t like him.”

“No, I don’t know anything about that.”

“Really? I know, for example, that Nyman had his own particular methods.”

“He was good,” Hult repeated monotonously. “Very competent. A real man, and the best boss you could imagine.”

“But he took rather strong measures now and then?”

“Who says so? Someone who’s trying to run him down now that he’s dead, of course. If anyone says anything like that, then it’s a lie.”

“But he was inclined to be pretty hard, wasn’t he?”

“Never more than the situation required. Anything else is slander.”

“But you knew there were quite a lot of complaints about Nyman?”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“Let’s put it this way—I know you knew. You worked directly under him.”

“Just lies, to blacken the name of a fine and capable policeman.”

“There are people who think Nyman wasn’t a fine policeman at all.”

“In that case they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“But you do.”

“Yes, I do. Stig Nyman was the best commander I ever had.”

“There are people who say that you’re not a particularly good policeman either.”

“Maybe not. I’ve never had a bad mark on my record, but maybe not anyway. Trying to run down Stig Nyman is another story completely. And if anyone does it in my presence I’ll …”

“You’ll what?”

“I’ll shut their mouths.”

“How?”

“That’s my business. I’m an old hand. I know this job. I learned it from the bottom up.”

“From Stig Nyman?”

Hult looked back at his hands.

“Yes. I guess you could say that. He taught me a lot.”

“How to commit perjury, for example? How to copy each other’s reports so everything’ll jibe, even if every word’s a lie? How to rough people up in their cells? Where the best places are to park in peace and quiet if you want to give some poor bastard a little extra going over on the way from the precinct to Criminal?”

“I’ve never heard of that kind of thing.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Not even
heard
of it?”

“No. In any case not in connection with Nyman.”

“And you’ve never helped cut down strikers? Back in the days when the police carried sabers? And on Nyman’s orders?”

“No.”

“Or ride down student protesters? Or club unarmed schoolchildren at demonstrations? Still according to Nyman’s instructions?”

Hult didn’t move, just looked calmly at Martin Beck.

“No, I’ve never done any of that.”

“How long have you been a policeman?”

“For forty years.”

“And how long have you known Nyman?”

“Since the middle of the thirties.”

Martin Beck shrugged his shoulders.

“It seems odd,” he said dispassionately, “that you know nothing at all about any of the things I’ve mentioned. Stig Nyman was supposed to be an expert on maintaining order.”

“Not only supposed to be. He was the best.”

“And among other things he wrote studies on how the police should conduct themselves in demonstrations, strikes and riots. Studies where he recommended just such things as shock attacks with drawn sabers. Later on, when the sabers had disappeared, with nightsticks. He also suggested that motorcycle police should drive into crowds to break them up.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“No. That tactic was forbidden. They decided there was too much risk that the policemen would fall off their machines and injure themselves.”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“No, so you said. Nyman also had views on how to use tear gas and water cannons. Views he expressed officially and in his capacity as expert.”

“All I know is that Stig Nyman never used more force than necessity required.”

“Personally?”

“And he didn’t let his subordinates do so either.”

“In other words he was always right? Always stuck to the regulations, I mean.”

“Yes.”

“And no one had cause to complain?”

“No.”

“And still it did happen that people reported Nyman for misconduct,” Martin Beck pointed out.

“Then their reports were fabrications.”

Martin Beck stood up and paced a few steps back and forth.

“There’s one thing I haven’t told you,” he said. “But I’ll tell you now.”

“There’s something I’d like to say too,” Hult said.

“What is it?”

The man sat motionless, but his eyes sought out the window.

“I don’t have very much to do when I’m off work,” he said. “Like I said before, it’s been kind of dull since Maja died. I sit here by the window a lot and count the cars that go by. There aren’t an awful lot on a street like this. So I mostly sit and think.”

He stopped talking and Martin Beck waited.

“I don’t have much to think about,” he said, “except the way my own life’s been. Forty years in uniform in this city. How many times have people puked on me? How many times have people spit at me and stuck their tongues out at me and called me a pig or a swine or a murderer? How many suicides have I cleaned up? How many hours of unpaid overtime have I put in? All my life I’ve worked like a dog in order to try to maintain a little law and order, so respectable people could live in peace, so decent women wouldn’t get raped, so every single shop window wouldn’t get broken and every damn thing in sight get stolen. I’ve handled bodies so rotten that big white worms fell out of my cuffs at night when I got home and sat down to eat. I’ve changed the diapers on kids whose mothers had the d.t.’s. I’ve looked for lost kittens and I’ve stepped into knife fights. The whole time it’s only been getting worse and worse—more and more violence and blood and more and more people running us down. They always say us policemen are supposed to protect society, sometimes against working stiffs and
sometimes against students, sometimes against Nazis and sometimes against Communists. And now there’s hardly anything left to protect any more. But you put up with it, because the morale on the force has been good. And if there’d been more men like Stig Nyman, then things wouldn’t be the way they are today. So anyone who wants to hear a lot of old women’s gossip about his buddies, he doesn’t need to come to me.”

He lifted his hands an inch or so from the table and let them fall back again with a heavy smack.

“Yes, well, that turned out to be a real speech,” he said. “Nice to get it said. You’ve been a patrolman yourself, haven’t you?”

Martin Beck nodded.

“When?”

“Over twenty years ago. After the war.”

“Yes,” Hult said. “Those were the days.”

The apology was apparently over. Martin Beck cleared his throat.

“Now for what I wanted to say. Nyman didn’t die of his illness. He was murdered. We think whoever killed him was after revenge. It’s possible the man in question may have other people on his list.”

Hult stood up and went out in the hall. He took down the jacket to his uniform and put it on. Then he tightened the shoulder belt and adjusted his holster.

“When I came here, it was to ask a particular question,” said Martin Beck. “Who could have hated Stig Nyman enough to want to kill him?”

“No one. Now I have to go.”

“Where to?”

“To work,” Hult said, and held open the door.

Einar Rönn sat with his elbows on the tabletop and his head in his hands and read. He was so tired that letters and words and whole lines kept flowing together or sagging or hopping out of place, upward sometimes and sometimes down, just the way they often did on his aging Remington whenever he really tried to type something perfectly with no mistakes. He yawned and blinked and cleaned his glasses and started over from the beginning.

The text before him was handwritten on a piece of brown paper bag from a state liquor store, and despite the misspellings and the writer’s shaky hand, it gave the impression of having been written with patience and industry.