The Locked Room (2 page)

She tried to cram the nylon bag down on top of the automatic in her shoulder bag, but there wasn't enough room. She took off her hat, glasses, and blonde wig, and stuffed them all into the shoulder bag. Her own hair was dark and short. She stood up, unbuttoned her shirt, took it off, and put that too into the bag. Under her shirt she was wearing a short-sleeved black cotton jumper. Slinging the shoulder bag over her left shoulder, she picked up the nylon shopping bag and went up the stairs to the yard again. She climbed over a couple of walls before at last finding herself in a street at the far end of the block.

Then she entered a small grocery, bought two litres of milk, put the cartons into a large paper bag, and laid her nylon shop¬ping bag on top of them.

After which she walked down to Slussen and took the metro home.

Gunvald Larsson arrived at the scene of the crime in his own strictly private car. It was a red BMW, which is unusual in Sweden and in many people's eyes far too grand for a detective inspector, especially when he uses it on the job.

This beautiful Friday afternoon he'd just settled down behind the wheel to drive home, when Einar Rönn had come rushing out into the yard of police headquarters and dashed all his plans for a quiet evening at home in Bollmora. Einar Rönn too was a detec¬tive inspector in the National Murder Squad and very likely the only friend Gunvald Larsson had; so when he said he was sorry but Gunvald Larsson would have to sacrifice his free evening, he really meant it.

Rönn drove to Hornsgatan in a police car. When he got there, several cars and some people from the South Precinct were already on the spot, and Gunvald Larsson was already inside the bank.

A little group of people had gathered outside the bank, and as Rönn crossed the pavement one of the uniformed constables who stood there glaring at the spectators came up to him and said: 'I've a couple of witnesses here who said they heard the shot What shall I do with them?'

'Hold 'em a moment,' Rönn said. 'And try to disperse the others.'

The constable nodded and Rönn went on into the bank.

On the marble floor between the counter and the desks the dead man, his arms flung wide and his left knee bent, lay on his back. One trouser leg had slipped up, baring a chalk-white Orion sock with a dark blue anchor on it and a deeply sunburned leg covered with gleaming blond hairs. The bullet had hit him right in the face, and blood and brain matter had exuded from the back of his head.

The staff of the bank were sitting together in the far corner of the room, and in front of them Gunvald Larsson half stood, half sat, one thigh across the edge of a desk. He was writing in a note¬book while one of the women spoke in a shrill, indignant voice.

Seeing Rönn, Gunvald Larsson held up his right palm at the woman, who immediately broke off in the middle of a sentence. Gunvald Larsson got up, went behind the counter, and, notebook in hand, walked over to Rönn. With a nod at the man on the floor he said:

'He doesn't look too good. If you stay here I can take the witnesses somewhere, maybe to the old police station on Rosenlundsgatan. Then you can work here undisturbed.'

Rönn nodded. 'They say it was a girl who did it,' he said. 'And she got away with the cash. Did anyone see where she went?'

'None of the bank staff at any rate,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'Apparently there was a guy standing outside who saw a car drive off, but he didn't see the number and wasn't too sure of the make, so that's not much to go on. I'll talk with him later.'

'And who's this?' asked Rönn with a curt nod at the dead man.

'Some idiot wanting to play the hero. He tried to fling himself at the robber, and then of course, in sheer panic, she fired. He was one of the bank's customers and the staff knew him. He'd been in here going through his safe-deposit box and came up the stairway over there, right in the middle of it all.' Gunvald Larsson consulted his notebook. 'He was director of a gymnastics insti¬tute, and his name was Gårdon. With an "å".'

'I guess he thought he was Flash Gordon’ Rönn said.

Gunvald Larsson threw him a questioning look.

Rönn blushed, and to change the subject said: 'Well, I expect there are some photos of her in that thing.' He pointed to the camera fixed beneath the ceiling.

'If it's properly focused and also has some film in it,' Gunvald Larsson said sceptically. 'And if the cashier remembered to press the button.'

Nowadays most Swedish banks are equipped with cameras that shoot when the cashier on duty steps on a button on the floor. This was the only thing the staff had to do in the event of a hold¬up. With armed bank robberies becoming ever more frequent, banks had issued orders to their staff to hand over any money demanded of them and in general not to do anything to stop robbers or to prevent them getting away that might risk their own lives. This order did not, as one might be led to believe, derive from any humanitarian motives or any consideration for bank personnel It was the fruit of experience. It is cheaper for banks and insurance companies to allow robbers to get away with their haul than to be obliged to pay out damages and maybe even support the victims' families for the rest of their lives - which can so easily be the case if someone gets injured or killed.

Now the police surgeon arrived, and Rönn went out to his car to fetch the murder kit He used old-fashioned methods, not infre¬quently with success. Gunvald Larsson left for the old police station on Rosenlundsgatan, together with the staff of the bank and four other people who had identified themselves as witnesses.

He was lent an interrogation room, where he took off his suede jacket and hung it over the back of a chair before begin¬ning the preliminary examinations. The first three statements given by the bank personnel were as good as identical; the four others diverged widely.

The first of these four witnesses was a forty-two-year-old man who, when the shot had gone off, had been standing in a doorway five yards from the bank. He'd seen a girl in a black hat and sunglasses hurry past, and when, according to his own statement, half a minute later, he'd looked down the street, he'd seen a green passenger car, probably an Opel, pull out from the kerb fifteen yards away. The car had disappeared quickly in the direction of Hornsplan, and he thought he'd seen the girl with the hat in the back seat He hadn't caught the car's registration number but believed it to be an 'AB' plate.

The next witness, a woman, was a boutique owner. When she heard a shot she'd been standing in the open door of her shop, which shared a party wall with the bank. First she thought the sound had come from the pantry inside her boutique. Afraid that the gas stove had exploded, she dashed inside. Finding it hadn't, she returned to the door. Looking down the street, she'd seen a big blue car swing out into the traffic - tyres squealing. At the same instant a woman had come out of the bank and shouted that someone had been shot. She hadn't seen who had been sitting in the car or what its number was, but she thought it looked more or less like a taxi.

The third witness was a thirty-two-year-old metal worker. His account was more circumstantial. He hadn't heard the shot, or at least hadn't been aware of it When the girl emerged from the bank he'd been walking along the pavement. She was in a hurry, and as she passed had pushed him aside. He hadn't seen her face but guessed her age to be about thirty. She was wearing blue trousers, a shirt, and a hat and was carrying a dark bag. He'd seen her go up to an ‘A'-reg car with two threes on its number plate. The car was a pale beige Renault 16. A thin man, who looked something between twenty and twenty-five, had been sitting at the wheel. He had long, lank, black hair and wore a short-sleeved cotton T-shirt He was strikingly pale. Another man, who looked a little older, had stood on the pavement and opened the back door for the girl. After closing the door behind her, he sat down beside the driver in the front seat This man was strongly built, about five foot ten, tall, and had ashen hair - fuzzy arid very thick. He had a florid complexion and was dressed in black flares and a black shirt of some shiny material. The car had made a U-turn and disappeared in the direction of Slussen.

After this evidence Gunvald Larsson felt somewhat confused. Before calling in the last witness he carefully read through his notes.

This last witness turned out to be a fifty-year-old watchmaker who'd been sitting in his car right outside the bank, waiting for his wife who was in a shoe shop on the other side of the street. He'd had his window open and had heard the shot, but hadn't reacted since there's always so much noise on a busy street like Hornsgatan. It had been five past three when he'd seen the woman come out of the bank. He'd noticed her because she seemed to be in too much of a hurry to apologize for bumping into an elderly lady, and he'd thought it was typical of Stockholmers to be in such a rush and so unfriendly. He himself came from Södertälje. The woman was dressed in long trousers, and on her head she'd been wearing something reminiscent of a cowboy hat and had had a black shopping bag in her hand. She'd run to the crossroads and disappeared around the corner. No, she hadn't got into any car, nor had she halted on her way, but had gone straight on up to the corner and disappeared.

Gunvald Larsson phoned in the description of the two men in the Renault, got up, gathered his papers, and looked at the clock. Six already.

Presumably he'd done a lot of work in vain. The presence of the various cars had long since been reported by the first officers to arrive on the scene. Besides which none of the witnesses had given a coherent overall picture. Everything had gone to hell, of course. As usual.

For a moment he wondered whether he ought to detain the last witness, but dropped the idea. Everyone appeared eager to get home as quickly as possible. To tell the truth, he was the most eager of all, though probably that was hoping too much. So he let all the witnesses go.

Putting on his jacket, he went back to the bank.

The remains of the courageous gymnastics teacher had been removed, and a young constable stepped out of his car and informed him politely that Detective Inspector Rönn was waiting for him in his office. Gunvald Larsson sighed and went over to his car.

He awoke astonished at being alive. This was nothing new. For exactly the last fifteen months he'd opened his eyes every day with the same confused question: How is it I'm alive?

Just before waking he'd had a dream. This too was fifteen months old. Though it shifted constantly, it always followed the same pattern. He was riding. A cold wind tearing at his hair,, he was galloping, leaning forward. Then he was running along a station platform. In front of him he saw a man who'd just raised a gun. He knew who the man was and what was going to happen. The man was Charles J. Guiteau; the weapon was a marksman's pistol, a Hammerli International.

Just as the man fired he threw himself forward and stopped the bullet with his body. The shot hit him like a hammer, right in the middle of his chest Obviously he had sacrificed himself; yet at the same moment he realized his action had been in vain. The President was already lying crumpled on the ground, the shiny top hat had toppled from his head and was rolling around in a semicircle.

As always, he'd woken up just as the bullet hit him. At first everything went black, a wave of scorching heat swept over his brain. Then he opened his eyes.

Martin Beck lay quietly in his bed, looking up at the ceiling. It was light in the room. He thought about his dream. It didn't seem particularly meaningful, at least not in this version. Besides which it was full of absurdities. The weapon for example; it ought to have been a revolver or possibly a derringer; and how could Garfield be lying there, fatally wounded, when it was he himself who demon¬strably had stopped the bullet with his chest?

He had no idea what the murderer had looked like in reality. If ever he'd seen a photo of the man, the mental image had been wiped out long ago. Usually Guiteau had blue eyes, a blond moustache, and sleek hair, combed back; but today he'd mostly resembled an actor in some famous role. Immediately he realized which: John Carradine as the gambler in Stagecoach. The whole thing was amaz¬ingly romantic

A bullet in your chest, however, can easily lose its poetic qual¬ities. That much he knew from experience. If it perforates the right lung and then lodges near the spine, the effect is intermittently painful and in the long run very tedious.

But there was also much in his dream that agreed with his own reality. The marksman's pistol, for example. It had belonged to a dismissed police constable with blue eyes, a blond moustache, and hair combed diagonally back. They'd met on the roof of a house under a cold, dark, spring sky. No words had been exchanged. Only a pistol shot.

That evening he'd woken up in a bed in a room with white walls - more precisely in the thorax clinic of Karolinska Hospital. They'd told him there his life was in no danger. Even so, he'd asked himself how it was he was still alive.

Later they'd said the injury no longer constituted a threat to his life, but the bullet wasn't sitting too well. He'd grasped, though not appreciated, the finesse of that little 'no longer'. The surgeons had examined the X-ray plates for weeks before removing the foreign object from his body. Then they'd said his injury definitely no longer constituted any danger to his life. On the contrary, he'd make a complete recovery - providing he took things very easy. But by that stage he'd stopped believing them.

All the same, he had taken things pretty easy. He'd had no choice.

Now they said he'd made a complete recovery. This time too, however, there was an addition: 'Physically.' Furthermore he shouldn't smoke. His windpipe had never been too good, and a shot through the lung hadn't improved matters. After it had healed, mysterious marks had appeared around the scars.

Martin Beck got up. He went through his living room out into the hallway and, picking up his newspaper, which lay on the doormat, went on into the kitchen, meanwhile running his eyes over the front-page headlines. Beautiful weather, and it would hold, according to the weatherman. Apart from that, everything seemed, as usual, to be taking a turn for the worse. Setting down the newspaper on the kitchen table, he took a yoghurt out of the fridge. It tasted as it usually did, not good and not exactly bad, just a trifle musty and artificial. The carton was probably too old. Probably it had already been old when he'd bought it - the days were long gone when a Stockholmer could buy anything fresh without having to make a particular effort or pay an outrageous price. Next stop was the bathroom. After washing and brushing his teeth he returned to the bedroom, made the bed, took off his pyjama trousers, and began to dress.