The Locked Room (3 page)

As he did so he looked listlessly around his flat It was at the top of a building on Köpmangatan, in the Old City. Most Stockholmers would have called it a dream home. He'd been living here for more than three years, and could still remember how comfortable he'd been, right up to that spring day on that roof.

Nowadays he mostly felt shut in and lonely, even when someone dropped in on him. Presumably this was not the flat's fault. Often of late he'd caught himself feeling claustrophobic even when he was outdoors.

He felt a vague urge for a cigarette. True, the doctors had told him he must give it up; but he didn't care. A more crucial factor was the State Tobacco Company's discontinuance of his usual brand. Now there were no cardboard-filter cigarettes on the market at all. On two or three occasions he'd tried various other kinds, but hadn't been able to accustom himself to them. As he tied his tie he listlessly studied his ship models. There were three of them standing on a shelf over his bed, two completed and the third half-finished. It was more than eight years ago that he had started building them, but since that April day last year he hadn't even touched them.

Since then they had gathered a lot of dust Several times his daughter had offered to do something about this, but he'd asked her to leave them alone.

It was 8.30 a.m., the third of July, 1972, a Monday. A date of especial importance. On this particular day he was going back to work.

He was still a policeman - more exactly, a detective chief inspector, head of the National Murder Squad.

' Martin Beck put on his jacket and stuffed the newspaper in his pocket, intending to read it on the metro - just one little detail of the routine he was about to resume.

Walking along Skeppsbron in the sunlight, he inhaled the polluted air. He felt old and hollow. But none of this could be seen in his appearance. On the contrary, he seemed healthy and vigorous, and his movements were swift and lithe. A tall, suntanned man with a strong, jaw and calm, grey-blue eyes under a broad forehead, Martin Beck was forty-nine. Soon he'd be fifty. But most people thought he was younger.

The room in the South Police Headquarters on Västberga Avenue testified to the long residence of someone else as acting head of the Murder Squad. Though it was clean and tidy and someone had taken the trouble to place a vase of blue cornflowers and marguerites on his desk, everything vaguely suggested a lack of precision - superficial yet obvious, and in some way snug and homey. Especially in the desk drawers. Clearly, someone had just taken a lot of things out. of them; but a good deal was still left. Old taxi receipts and cinema tickets for example, broken ball-point pens and empty sweet packets. In several of the pen trays were daisy chains of paper clips, rubber bands, lumps of sugar, and packets of saccharine tablets. Also, two packets of moist towelettes, one pack of Kleenex, three cartridge cases, and a broken Exacta watch. And a large number of slips of paper with scattered notes written in a clear, highly legible hand.

Martin Beck had gone around the station and said hello to people. Most, but by no means all, were old acquaintances. Now he was sitting at his desk, examining the watch, which appeared to be utterly useless. The crystal was misty on the inside, and when he shook it a gloomy, rustling noise came from within the watch-case, as if every one of its screws had come loose.

Lennart Kollberg knocked and entered. 'Hello’ he said. 'Welcome.'

"Thanks. Is this your watch?'

'Yes,' said Kollberg glumly. 'I happened to put it in the washing machine. Forgot to empty my pockets.' He looked about him and went on apologetically: 'Actually I tried fixing it last Friday, but someone interrupted me. •Well, you know how it is...'

Martin Beck nodded. Kollberg was the person he'd seen most of during his long convalescence, and there wasn't much new for them to tell one another. 'How's the diet coming along?'

'Fine,' said Kollberg. 'I was down a pound this morning, from sixteen stone four pounds to sixteen three.'

'Then you've only put on a stone and a half since you began?'

'A stone and a quarter,' said Kollberg with a look of hurt pride. He shrugged and went on grumblingly: 'It's bloody awful. The whole project flies in the face of nature. And Gun just laughs at me. Bodil too, for that matter. How are you, by the way?'

'Fine.'

Kollberg frowned but said nothing. Instead he unzipped his briefcase and extracted a light red plastic folder. It seemed to contain a none-too-extensive report Maybe thirty pages.

‘What's that?'

'Let's call it a present'.

‘Who from?'

'Me, for example. Although it's not, actually. It's from Gunvald Larsson and Rönn. They think it's terribly funny.'

Kollberg laid the file on the table. Then he said: 'Unfortunately I have to go.'

'What for?'

'NPB.'

Which was the new National Police Board. 'Why?'

'These damn bank robbers.'

'But there's a special squad for them.'

"The special squad needs reinforcements. Last Friday some thick-headed twit got himself shot again.' ‘Yes, I've read about it'

'And so the State Police immediately decide to strengthen the special squad.' 'With you?'

'No,' said Kollberg. 'Actually, I think, with you. But this order came in last Friday, while I was still in charge here. So I made an independent decision.'

'Namely?'

'Namely to spare you that lunatic asylum, and move in myself to strengthen the special squad.'

'Thanks.' Martin Beck really meant what he'd said. To work in a special squad presumably implied a daily confrontation with, for example, the National Police Commissioner, at least two department heads, assorted superintendents, and other bom¬bastic amateurs. Kollberg had voluntarily taken these trials upon himself.

'Well,' Kollberg said, 'in exchange I've got this.' He put a thick index finger on the plastic file. 'What’s that?'

'A case,' said Kollberg. 'Really a most interesting case, not like bank hold-ups and things. The only pity is...'

'What?'

'That you don't read detective stories.' 'Why?'

'Because if you did you might have appreciated it more. Rönn and Larsson think everyone reads detective stories. Actually it's their case, but just now they're so overloaded with misery that they're inviting applications for their little jobs, from anyone who wants one. It's something to think about. Just sit very still and think.'

'Okay, I'll look it over,' said Martin Beck dispassionately. 'There's been no word about it in the papers. Aren't you curious?'

'Sure. Bye then.'

'See you,'said Kollberg.

Outside the door he stopped and stood still a few seconds, frowning. Then he shook his head in a troubled way and walked over to the lift

Martin Beck had said he was curious about the contents of the red file; but this was not really the truth. Actually it was of no interest to him whatever. Why, then, had he chosen to give an. evasive and misleading answer to the question? To make Kollberg happy? Hardly. To deceive him? Even more far-fetched. For one thing, there was no reason to do so; and anyway it was impos¬sible. They'd known one another far too well and for too many years. Besides which Kollberg was one of the least gullible men he'd ever met. Maybe to deceive himself? Even this thought was absurd.

Martin Beck went on chewing over this question as he completed his inspection of his office. When he'd finished with the drawers he passed on to the furniture, moved the chairs around, turned the desk to another angle, shoved the filing cabinet a few inches nearer to the door, unscrewed the office lamp and placed it on the right-hand corner of his desk. Obviously his deputy had preferred to have it on the left, or else it had just gotten that way. In little things Kollberg often acted haphazardly. But where important matters were concerned he was a perfectionist. For example, he'd waited till he was forty-two to get married, with the explicit moti¬vation that he wanted a perfect wife. He'd waited for the right one.

Martin Beck, on the other hand, could look back at almost two decades of unsuccessful marriage, to a person who certainly didn't seem to have been the right one. Anyway he was divorced now; he supposed he must have lingered until it was too late.

Sometimes in the last six months he'd caught himself wondering if the divorce, all things considered, hadn't been a mistake. Maybe a nagging, boring wife was at least more exciting than no wife at all?

Well, that was of no consequence. He took the vase of flowers and carried it in to one of the secretaries. This seemed to cheer her. Martin Beck sat down at his desk and looked about him. Order had been restored.

Was it that he wanted to convince himself nothing had changed? A pointless question, and to forget it as soon as possible he pulled the red file towards him. The plastic was transparent, and he saw immediately that it concerned a murder. That was okay. Murder was part and parcel of his profession. But where had it happened? Bergsgatan 57. Almost on the very doorstep of the police head¬quarters.

Usually he would have said it was no concern of his, or of his department, but of the Stockholm Criminal Investigation Department. For a second he felt tempted to pick up the phone, call up someone on Kungsholmen, and ask what all this was actu¬ally about. Or quite simply to stuff it all into an envelope and return it to its sender. He felt an urge to be rigid and formal - an urge so strong that he had to exert all his strength to suppress it He looked at the clock in order to distract himself. Lunchtime already. But he wasn't hungry.

Martin Beck got up, went out into the men's room, and drank a mug of lukewarm water.

Coming back he noticed the air in his office was warm and foetid. Yet he did not take off his jacket or even loosen his collar. He sat down, took out the papers, and started to read.

Twenty-eight years as a policeman had taught him a lot of things, among them the art of reading reports and rapidly sifting through repetitions and trivialities - the capacity to discern a pattern, if any existed.

It took him less than an hour to read conscientiously through the document. Most of it was ill-written, some was downright incomprehensible, and some sections were formulated particu¬larly badly. He immediately recognized the author. Einar Rönn, a policeman who, stylistically speaking, seemed to take after that comrade in officialdom who in his celebrated traffic regulations had declared, among much else, that darkness falls when the street¬lights are lit

Martin Beck leafed through the papers once again, stopping here and there to check certain details. Then he laid down the report, put his elbows on the desk and his forehead into the palms of his hands. Frowning, he thought through the apparent course of events.

The story fell into two parts. The first part was mundane and repulsive.

Fifteen days ago, viz., on Sunday, 18th June, a tenant at Bergsgatan 57 on Kungsholmen had called the police. The conver¬sation had been registered at 2.19 p.m., but not until two hours later had a patrol car with two officers arrived at the place. At most the house on Bergsgatan was no more than nine minutes' walk from the Stockholm Police Headquarters; but the delay was easily explained. The capital was suffering from an atrocious shortage of policemen; besides which it was the summer holi¬days, and a Sunday to boot. Moreover, nothing had indicated that the call was particularly urgent. Two constables, Karl Kristiansson and Kenneth Kvastmo, had entered the building and talked to the caller, a woman living two flights up in the part of the house facing the street. She had told them that for several days now she'd been irritated by an unpleasant smell in the stairwell and expressed a suspicion that all might not be as it should.

Both officers had instantly noticed the odour. Kvastmo had defined it as arising from putrefaction; according to his own way of putting it, it was strongly reminiscent of the stench of rotten meat. A closer sniff - Kvastmo's again - had led the men to the door of a first-floor flat. According to available information, it was the door of a one-room flat, inhabited for some time by a man of about sixty-five, whose name might be Karl Edvin Svärd. The name had been found on a handwritten piece of cardboard under the doorbell. As it might be supposed that the smell arose from the body of a suicide, or of someone who had died from natural causes, or of a dog - still according to Kvastmo - or possibly of some sick or helpless person, they had decided to break in. The bell seemed to be out of order, but no amount of banging on the door had evoked any reaction. All their attempts to contact a care¬taker or representative of the landlord or anyone else holding master keys had been unsuccessful.

The policemen therefore requested permission to break into the flat and received orders to do so. A locksmith had been called, causing yet another half-hour's delay.

On his arrival the locksmith had found that the door was equipped with a jemmy-proof lock and that there was no letter box. The lock was then drilled out with the aid of a special tool, but even this had not made it possible to open the door.

Kristiansson and Kvastmo, whose time had now been taken up by this case far beyond their normal working hours, asked for new instructions and were ordered to open the door by force. To their question whether someone from the Criminal Investigation Department ought not to attend, they received the laconic answer that no more personnel were available. By now the locksmith, feeling he had done his job, had left.

By 7.00 p.m. Kvastmo and Kristiansson had opened the door by breaking the pins of the hinges on the outside. In spite of this a new difficulty had arisen; for the door was then found to be fitted with two strong metal bolts and also with a so-called fox-lock, a sort of iron beam sunk in the doorposts. After a further hour's work the policemen had been able to make their way into the flat, where they were met by stifling heat and the overwhelming stench of corpse.

In the room, which faced the street, they found a dead man. The body was lying on its back, about three yards from the window overlooking Bergsgatan, beside a turned-on electric radiator - it was the heat from this, in conjunction with the prevailing heat wave, that had caused the corpse to swell up to at least twice its normal volume. The body was in a state of intense putrefaction, and there was an abundance of maggots.