The Locked Room (20 page)

'Yes, one could say that.'

They found it easy to understand each other. Strangely enough neither was surprised at this. It seemed self-evident

'So there was something odd about him?' he said.

'Yes,' said Rhea. 'He was a strange one, he was. A very strange guy indeed. Couldn't make head or tail of him. So, if the truth be told, I was happy when he moved out. By the way, how did he die?'

'He was found in his flat on the eighteenth of last month. By that time he'd been dead at least six weeks. Probably longer. At a guess, about two months.'

She shook herself and said: 'Dammit, I don't want to know the details. I'm hypersensitive to the more advanced class of gory details, if you know what I mean. Dream about them after¬wards.'

It was on the tip of his tongue to say she would not be exposed to any unnecessary descriptions. But he saw it was superfluous.

Instead it was she who said: 'One thing's dear, anyway.' 'Oh, and what's that?'

'It could never have happened while he was living here.'

'Couldn't it? Why not?'

'Because I wouldn't have allowed it to.'

She put her chin in her hand, her nose between her fore¬finger and middle finger. He noticed she had quite a big nose and strong hands with very short nails and was looking at him seriously.

Then she suddenly got up again and poked about on the kitchen shelf until she'd found some matches and a pack of cigarettes. She smoked, inhaling deeply. Then she stubbed out her cigarette, ate up the fourth sandwich, and sat there with her elbows on her knees and her head bowed. She threw him a glance and said: 'It's possible I couldn't have prevented him from dying. But he wouldn't have stayed there for two months without me noticing it. Not even two days.'

Martin Beck said nothing. She was certainly only telling the truth.

'Landlords in this country are the last things God created,' she said. 'But the system encourages them to exploit people.'

He chewed his lower lip. Martin Beck had never made his polit¬ical opinions public and always tried to avoid conversations of political import

She said: 'No politics, eh? Okay, we'll skip the politics. But I happen to be a landlord myself.. .just happen to be. I inher¬ited this dump, as I've said before. Actually it's a good building, but when I inherited it and moved in it was a bloody rat hole. My dad certainly hadn't changed a light bulb or paid to have a broken window mended in ten years. He lived miles away from here and was only interested in collecting the rents and kicking out tenants who couldn't pay on time. Then he divided the flats up into bedsits and rented them out at swinishly high prices to foreigners and others who had no choice. They've got to live somewhere too, haven't they? In almost all these old houses it's the same story.'

Martin Beck heard someone open the front door and come in. The woman didn't so much as react

A girl came into the kitchen. She was wearing a dressing gown and carried a bundle. 'Hello,' she said. 'Can I use the washing machine?'

'Sure, go ahead.'

The girl paid no attention to Martin Beck; but Rhea said: 'I guess you two don't know each other. This is... well, what did you say your name was, again?'

Martin Beck got up and shook hands. 'Martin,' he said.

'Ingela,' said the girl.

'She's just moved in,' Rhea said. 'Lives in the flat Svärd used to have.' She turned to the girl with the bundle. 'How do you like it?' she asked.

'It's just fine,' the girl said. 'But there's trouble with the toilet again today.'

'Hell. I'll ring the plumber first thing tomorrow.' 'Otherwise everything's lovely. By the way...'

‘Yes?'

'I don't have any detergent' 'It's behind the bath.' 'I'm stone broke.'

'Okay. Don't take more than fifty ore's worth. You can do me some little fifty-ore service sometime. Lock the street door, for instance.'

'Nice of you.' The girl went out into the bathroom.

Rhea lit a fresh cigarette. 'That's one thing. Svärd's was a good flat. I had it done up two years ago. It only cost eighty kronor a month. Yet he moved out, even so.'

'Why?'

'Couldn't say.'

'No trouble?'

'None. I don't have trouble with people who live here. No need for it Everyone's got his own little ways, naturally. But that's just fun.'

Martin Beck said nothing. He felt he'd begun to relax. He also noticed that he didn't need to put questions to her.

'Svärd's oddest trait was that he used to have four locks on his door. In a house where almost no one ever locks his door except when he absolutely needs to be in peace. When he moved out he unscrewed all his chains and bolts and took the whole lot with him. He was as strongly protected as little girls are nowadays.'

'You mean - metaphorically?'

'Sure. Sexually. Here our pillars of society go crying out in horror because kids, girls particularly, begin feeling their oats when they're thirteen. Idiots. Everyone knows we begin getting sexy when we're thirteen or so, and with the pill and all that a girl's as safe as Fort Knox. So what's there to be afraid of nowadays? In our day a girl was dead scared of getting pregnant. Anyway, how did we come to talk of such things?'

Martin Beck laughed. He was astonished. But it was a fact. He had laughed. ‘We were talking about Svärd's door,' he said.

'Yes. And you laughed. I didn't think you knew how. Or that you'd forgotten the trick of it'

'Maybe I happen to be in a bad mood today,' he conceded.

But it was the wrong line; it achieved the opposite effect from what he'd intended. A faint expression of disappointment flitted over her face. She had been right and she knew it.

To try to fool each other was stupid, and he said: 'I'm sorry.'

'Though it's true I didn't really fall in love until I was sixteen. But things were different in those days.' She killed her cigarette, and said in a matter-of-fact voice: 'I talk far too much. Always. But that's only one of my many weaknesses. Though it's not exactly a flaw of character, is it?'

He shook his head.

She scratched her neck and said: 'Did Svärd still have all those lock gadgets?' 'Yes.'

She shook her head, kicked off her clogs, put her heels on the floor, and turned her feet inwards so that the toes rubbed each other.

'Couldn't understand it. Must have been a phobia with him. But sometimes it worried me. I've spare keys to all the doors. Some of the people here are old. They can fall ill and need help. And then one must be able to get in. But what's the use of a spare key if the door's barricaded from inside? And Svärd was fairly old, of course.'

The noises from the bathroom changed character, and Rhea shouted out: 'Need some help, Ingela?' 'Yes... I guess so...'

She got up and was out awhile. When she came back she said: 'Now that's fixed. Apropos this age question, we must be about the same.'

Martin Beck smiled. He knew that almost everyone took him for about five years less than the fifty he'd soon be.

'Svärd really wasn't all that old, though,' she said. 'But he wasn't well. Apparently pretty ill. He didn't count on living all that much longer, and when he moved he went into the hospital for a check-up. What the result was I don't know. But he was in the radium clinic and that doesn't sound too good, it seems to me.'

Martin Beck pricked up his ears. This was news. But now the front door opened again. Someone said in a bright voice: 'Rhea?' 'Yes. I'm out here in the kitchen.'

A man came in. Seeing Martin Beck, he hesitated a moment, but at once she pushed him a chair with her foot and said: 'Sit down.'

The man was fairly young, perhaps twenty-five, of medium height and normal physique. Oval face, fair hair, grey eyes, and good teeth. Clothes: a flannel shirt, corduroy trousers, and sandals. In his hand he held a bottle of red wine. 'I've brought this with me,' he said.

'And I who'd meant to stick to tea today,' she said. 'But okay. You can get yourself a glass. Four, while you're at it. Ingela's in there, doing her wash.'

She bent forward, scratched her left wrist,, and said: 'One bottle won't go far with four of us. I've got some too. You can get one out of the pantry. On the left inside the door. The corkscrew's in the top drawer below and-to the left of the dish¬washer.'

The newcomer followed her instructions. He seemed accus¬tomed to obey. When he'd sat down, she said: 'I guess you've never met Martin... Kent'

'Hi,' said the man.

'Hi,' said Martin Beck.

They shook hands.

She poured the wine and called out in her hoarse voice: 'Ingela, we've some wine in here when you've finished.' Then, troubled, she looked at the man in the flannel shirt and said: ‘You look wretched. What's up? Something else gone wrong?'

Kent took a swig of the wine and put his face in his hands. 'Rhea,' he said, 'what am I going to do?'

'Still no job?'

'Not a ghost of one. So here I am, with my exam in my pocket and no job. The devil only knows whether there'll ever be one, either.' He reached out and tried to take her hand. This irritated her, and she withdrew it 'I'd a desperate idea, today,' he said. 'I must ask you what you think about it'

'And what does your idea look like?'

To enter the Police Academy. Anyone can get in there, even if he's retarded. They're short of people, and with my credentials I ought to get in easily, as soon as I've learned to knock drunks on the head.'

'Do you feel like beating people up, then?'

'You know very well I don't. But maybe one can do some good, somehow. Reform from the inside, after one's got over the worst.'

'Though their activities are hardly aimed at drunks,' she said. 'And meanwhile how are you going to support Stina and the kids?'

'I'll have to borrow. I found out all about it today when I was there getting the application forms. Here, I've got them with me. I thought you'd like to look through them... you who under¬stand everything.'

He took some folded forms and a recruiting brochure out of his hip pocket, pushed them across the table, and said: 'If you think it's insane, say so.'

'Rather, I must say. On the whole I shouldn't say the police are a scrap interested in people who use their brains, or who want to reform from within. How about your papers, politically? Are they clean?'

'Oh, I was in a leftist student group once, but that's all, and now they're accepting everyone, except members of left-wing parties... actual communists, that is.'

She reflected, took a big gulp of wine, and shrugged. 'Why not? It seems crazy, but I suppose it could be interesting.'

'The chief question is...' He drank. Then he said 'skål' to Martin Beck, who also drank, cautiously to begin with.

'What's the question?' she asked, irritated.

'Well, Rhea. Can anybody stand it in the long run? Can they?'

She threw Martin Beck a cunning look. Her irritation had been wiped out by a smile. 'Ask Martin here. He's an expert'

The man looked at Martin Beck with an astonished and dubious expression. 'D'you know something about this?'

'A little. The truth is the police need all the good applicants they can get. It's a profession with plenty of variety to it, as you see from that brochure there, and with many forms of special duties. Anyone who's interested in helicopters, for instance, or machinery, or organizational problems, or horses...'

Rhea struck the table with the flat of her hand so that the glasses jumped. 'Don't talk rubbish now,' she said angrily. 'Dammit, man, give him an honest answer!'

To his own astonishment Martin Beck replied: 'You've a chance of sticking it out the first few years, if you're prepared to associate with numbskulls and be shouted at by your super¬iors, who are either climbers, or obsessed by a sense of their own importance, or just idiots. You can't have any opinions of your own. Afterwards you've every prospect of becoming one yourself.'

'Obviously you've no use for the police,' said Kent despondently. 'But it can't be as crazy as all that. There's too much unmotivated hatred of the police, and that's for sure. Or what do you think, Rhea?'

She gave an unusually hearty laugh. Then she said: 'Try it. You'll make a fine policeman, I'm sure. Everything else seems to be out of the question. And the competition is said to be not over¬whelming.'

'Can you help me fill in the application?'

'Give me a pen.'

Martin Beck had one in his breast pocket and gave it to her at once.

The girl called Ingela had finished her washing and came in and sat down. She talked a bit about things in general, mostly food prices and the way they were cheating with the date marks in the dairy department. Obviously she worked in a super¬market.

The bell tinkled, the door opened, and someone came in with dragging footsteps. It was an elderly woman. She said: 'The recep¬tion on my TV is awful.'

'If it's the aerial I'll get Eriksson to look at it tomorrow. Otherwise I suppose we'll just have to repair the set. It's worn out, of course, but I've some friends who've got a spare one. If worst comes to worst we can borrow their old one. I'll see to it tomorrow.'

'I've been baking today, and I've brought you a loaf, Rhea.' 'Thanks. Very nice of you. I'll fix that TV of yours, auntie, you'll see.'

She had finished the application forms and gave them to the man in the flannel shirt. She had filled them in with amazing swiftness.

Now she looked at Martin Beck again, the same steady gaze as before. 'As a landlord one has to function as a caretaker,' she said. 'You see? It's needed, but not many people think like that. Almost everyone speculates and is stingy as can be. They don't think any further than their noses, and that's swinish. I try to do my best here; people who five in the same building must feel they belong together and that it's their home. These flats are fine now, but I can't afford repairs to the outside. Naturally I don't want to raise the rents more than necessary this autumn. Though I'll have to put them up a bit. If a house is to be looked after properly there's a lot to see to. After all, one is responsible to one's tenants.'

Martin Beck felt in a surprisingly good mood. He had no desire to leave this kitchen. He was also a trifle sleepy. Due to the wine. For fifteen months he'd drunk nothing.