The Locked Room (27 page)

This was why the Vietnam demonstration, planned for that evening, came at a most inopportune moment Many thousands of people were indignant about the bombing of North "Vietnam's dykes and wholly unprotected villages, which for reasons of pres¬tige had to be blasted back into the Stone Age. Some of these people had gathered at Hakberget to adopt a resolution. Afterwards it was their intention to hand the document to some doorman at the United States Embassy.

This must not be allowed to happen. The situation was deli¬cate, the chief of the Stockholm Police was off duty, and the head of the riot police was away on holiday. Thousands of disturbers of the peace were threateningly close to the city's most sacrosanct building: the glass palace of the United States. In this situation the National Commissioner of Police made a historic decision. He was going to see to it, in person, that the demonstration went off peacefully. He personally would lead the procession to some safe spot, far from the dangerous neighbourhood. This safe place was Humlegården Park, in the centre of Stockholm. There the damned resolution was to be read aloud, after which the demonstration was to be dissolved. The demonstrators, for their part, were peaceful enough and agreed to everything. The procession got going along Karlavägen. Every able-bodied policeman within reach was mobi¬lized to supervise the operation.

For example, Gunvald Larsson suddenly found himself sitting in a helicopter, staring down at the long line of people with banners and "Viet Cong flags proceeding at a snail's pace northwards. He clearly saw what happened but could do little or nothing about it. Nor did he want to.

At the junction of Karlavägen and Sturegatan the National Police Commissioner, in person, led the procession straight into a large and extremely disgruntled crowd of football fans who were pouring out of the civic stadium, greatly displeased at the poor showing of the home team. The melee that ensued was reminis¬cent of the rout after Waterloo or the Pope's visit to Jerusalem. Within three minutes policemen of every kind were striking out right and left against everything and everyone: football fans, people taking a stroll in Humlegården, and pacifists - all of whom suddenly found batons raining down on them, and motorcycle police and mounted detachments brutally forcing their way among them. Demonstrators and fans began fighting without knowing why, and in the end the uniformed police were knocking down their plainclothes colleagues. The National Police Commissioner himself had to be evacuated by helicopter.

Not, however, the one Gunvald Larsson was sitting in; for after a minute of this hullabaloo he said: 'Fly off, dammit, anywhere you like, as long as it's for away.'

A hundred people were arrested and many more were injured. None of them knew why. Stockholm was in chaos. And the National Police Commissioner said, out of pure habit 'None of this must be allowed to come out'

Martin Beck rode again - crouching low and at a gallop across a plain - surrounded by men in raglan coats. In front of him he saw the Russian artillery emplacement; the muzzle of a gun stuck out between the sandbags, staring at him. Death's black eye. He saw the shell coming straight towards him. It grew. It became bigger and bigger until it filled his whole field of vision - and then the image blackened. This must be Balaklava. Then he was standing on the bridge of HMS Lion. The Indefatigable and the Queen Mary had just blown up and been swallowed by the sea. A messenger rushed up and yelled: 'Princess Royal has blown up!' Beatty bent forward and said in a loud, calm voice, above the roar of battle: 'Beck, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today. Steer two points closer to the enemy.'

Then came the usual scene with Garfield and Guiteau. He jumped off his horse, rushed through the railway station, and caught the bullet in his body. At the very moment when he was breathing his last, the National Police Commissioner came up and affixed a medal to his shattered chest, unrolled something resem¬bling a scroll of parchment, and said, rolling his r's: 'You've been prromoted to the rrank of Commissioner, salarry grrade B-thrree.'

The President lay in a heap on the platform, wearing his top hat Then a wave of burning pain passed through him, and he opened his eyes.

He was lying, soaked in sweat in his own bed. The cliches were getting worse and worse. This time Guiteau had looked like ex-Constable Eriksson, President Garfield like an elegantly turned out elderly gendeman, the National Police Commissioner like the National Police Commissioner, and Beatty as he did on the 1919 Peace Mug - surrounded by a laurel wreath and exuding a faindy arrogant air.

Otherwise his dream, this time too, had been full of absurdi¬ties and misquotations.

David Beatty had never said: "Turn two points nearer to the enemy.' According to all available sources, his order had been: 'Chatfield, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today. Turn two points to port' In itself, of course, this made no difference. Two points to port, in this context, was the same as two points towards the enemy.

And in the previous dream, when Guiteau had looked like John Carradine, the pistol was a Hammerli International. Now, when he had resembled Eriksson, his gun had been a derringer. Furthermore, only Fitzroy James Henry Somerset, surely, had worn a raglan coat at Balaklava. There was neither rhyme nor reason to these dreams of his.

He got up, shed his pyjamas, and took a shower. As the cold water gave him goose pimples he thought of Rhea.

On his way to the metro he thought about his own odd behav¬iour yesterday evening.

At his desk out at Västberga, all of a sudden he felt unpleas-andy alone.

Kollberg came in and asked him how he was. It was a tricky question, and all he managed to reply was: 'Oh, not too bad.'

Kollberg left again, almost at once. He was sweating and was in a big rush. In the doorway he said: 'That job on Hornsgatan seems to have been cleared up. What's more, we've a fine chance to catch Malmström and Mohrén red-handed. How's your locked room coming along, by the way?'

'Not too bad. Anyway, better than I'd expected.'

'Really?' said Kollberg. Lingering a couple of seconds longer, he said: 'I think you're looking a bit brighter today. So long.'

'So long.'

Then he was alone again. He began thinking about Svärd.

At the same time he thought about Rhea. She had given him much more than he'd expected. From a policeman's point of view, that is. Three lines of thought, maybe four. Svärd was pathologi¬cally miserly. Always, or at any rate for years, he had barricaded himself inside his flat even though it had contained nothing of any value. Svärd had been ill and not long before his death had been admitted to a radium clinic.

Could Svärd have had some money stashed away somewhere? And if so, where?

Had Svärd been frightened of something? And if so, what? The only thing of any putative value inside his lair, barred and bolted, had been his own life.

What the devil had Svärd suffered from? The radium clinic suggested cancer. But if he had been a doomed man anyway, why had he been so concerned to protect himself against someone or something? Perhaps he'd been afraid of one particular person? In which case - of whom?

And why had he moved to a more expensive and presumably inferior flat if he was really as stingy as everyone made out?

Questions - hard ones, but not altogether insoluble - questions hardly to be resolved in a couple of hours. More likely they'd take days. Why not weeks or months? Perhaps several years. Or maybe for ever.

And what about that ballistic investigation? That's where he should make a start. Martin Beck reached for the phone. It was not in a helpful mood today. He had to dial six times, four of which ended with a 'Just a moment, please’ and then went dead. But finally he got hold of the girl who had opened up Svärd's chest seventeen days earlier.

'Oh yes,' she said. 'Now I remember. There was a policeman who called me, grumbling about that bullet.'

'Detective Inspector Rönn.'

'I suppose that was his name, yes. Don't remember. Anyway, it wasn't the same guy who had charge of the case earlier, Aldor Gustavsson, I mean. This one didn't seem so experienced. He began all his sentences with "okay" or "well".'

'What happened then?'

'Well, as I told you last time, the police didn't seem all that interested to begin with. No one had asked for a ballistic investi¬gation until that northerner called up. I didn't really know what to do with the bullet But...'

'Yes?'

'It seemed wrong to throw it away, so I stuffed it into an enve¬lope and added my own comments, what it was all about, and so forth. Exactly as if it had been a real murder case. But I didn't send it over to the lab since I happen to know how overwhelmed with work they are there.'

'What did you do then?'

'Put the envelope aside. Then I couldn't find it immediately. I'm new here, and I don't have a filing cabinet of my own, and so forth. But anyway I found it and sent it in.'

'To be examined?'

'Well, it's not my business to ask for that kind of thing. But I assume that if the ballistics people get hold of a bullet they examine it, even when it's suicide.'

'Suicide?'

'Yes, I made a note of that. The police said at once it was suicide.' 'Well, in that case I'll have to call the lab,' Martin Beck said. 'But there's one more thing I wanted to ask you.' 'What's that?'

'During the autopsy, did you notice anything particular?' 'Yes; that he'd shot himself. That was in the police report.' 'I was mostly thinking of something else. Did you find anything to suggest that Svärd had suffered from any serious illness?' 'No. His organs seemed healthy. But...' 'But?'

'But I didn't examine him all that closely. Just confirmed the cause of death. That was why I only looked at the thorax organs.' 'Which means?'

'Heart and lungs, mostly. Nothing wrong with them. Apart from the fact that he was dead, that is.'

'Otherwise he could have suffered from almost anything?'

'Certainly. Anything from gout to cancer of the liver. Hey, why're you asking me so much about this? It was just a routine case, wasn't it?'

'Questions are part of our routine,' Martin Beck said. He brought the conversation to an end and tried to contact one of the ballis¬tics experts at the lab. He had no success and was finally obliged to call the head of the department himself. This was a man called Oskar Hjelm who, though he was an eminent criminologist, was above all a person disinclined to conversation.

'Oh, so it's you, is it?' Hjelm said sourly. 'I thought you were going to be promoted to commissioner. But perhaps that was a vain hope.'

'How so?'

'Commissioners sit thinking about their own careers,' said Hjelm, 'when they're not out playing golf or talking nonsense on television. Above all they don't ring me up and ask a lot of obvious questions. What is it now?'

'Just a ballistic check-up.'

'Just? And which one, if I may ask? Any lunatic can send us something. We've heaps of objects under study here and no one to study them. The other day- we received a toilet bucket from Melander. He wanted to know how many different individuals had shat in it It was full to the brim, certainly hadn't been emptied for a couple of years.' 'Not very nice.'

Fredrik Melander was a detective on the murder squad who for many years had been one of Martin Beck's most valuable assistants. A while ago, however, he'd been transferred to the burglary squad, presumably in the hope that he might be able to do some¬thing about the total confusion prevailing there.

'No,' said Hjelm. 'Our work isn't nice. But no one seems to understand that The National Police Commissioner hasn't so much as set foot in this place for several years, and when I asked to speak to him last spring he sent a message saying he was occu¬pied for the foreseeable future.'

'I know your life's hell,' said Martin Beck.

'To say the least,' said Hjelm, a bit more conciliatory now. 'You can hardly imagine how things are here, but we're always grateful for the least little bit of encouragement or understanding. Though we never get any, of course.'

The fellow was an incurable grumbler, but clever and suscep¬tible to flattery.

'It's a wonder you get by at all,' Martin Beck said.

'More than that,' said Hjelm, thoroughly amiable now. 'It's a miracle. And now, what was this ballistic question?'

'It was about a bullet from a guy who was killed. A man called Svärd. Karl Edvin Svärd.'

'Oh yes,' said Hjelm. 'I know that one. Typical story. Suicide, so it was alleged. The autopsy people sent it here without telling us what to do with it Shall we have it gold-plated and sent to the police museum, or what? Or was it just a polite hint that we can just as well give up and shoot ourselves?'

'What sort of bullet was it?'

'A pistol bullet. Used. Haven't you got the weapon?'

'No.'

'Then how can it be suicide?'

A good question. Martin Beck made a note on his pad. 'Any special characteristics?'

'Well, one might suppose it came from a forty-five automatic. There are so many makes of them. But if you'll send us the empty cartridge we can tell you more about it'

'I haven't found the cartridge.'

'Haven't you? What did this Svärd fellow do after he'd shot himself, may I ask?' 'Don't know.'

'People who have that kind of a bullet in their guts aren't usually so nimble,' said Hjelm. 'They don't have much choice, just lie down and die, for the most part'

'Yes,' said Martin Beck. 'Thanks very much.'

'For what?'

'For your help. And good luck.'

'No macabre jokes, if you please,' Hjelm said. He put down the phone.

So that was that. Whether Svärd himself or someone else had fired the lethal shot, he hadn't taken any risks. With a forty-five one can be pretty sure of obtaining the desired results, even if one doesn't quite hit the heart.

But what had this conversation yielded, really? A bullet isn't much in the way of evidence as long as one hasn't got the weapon or at least the cartridge. But there was one positive detail. Hjelm had said it was a forty-five automatic, and he was known for never making statements he couldn't substantiate. Therefore Svärd had been shot with an automatic.