The Locked Room (33 page)

He was well hidden here. Naturally, in mid-April the vegeta¬tion had been a good deal sparser, but even then it should have been possible to hide without drawing attention - as long as you didn't move.

Now it was broad daylight, but even late in the evening the street lighting should have been enough. Darkness would also have offered better protection to anyone standing on the slope. Even so, no one would be likely to fire from here without a silencer on his pistol.

Once again he considered carefully which spot was best. And using it as his starting point he began his search. Few people were passing by beneath him. Those who did halted when they heard him poking about in the shrubs. But only momentarily. Then they hurried on their way, anxious not to get involved.

He searched systematically. He began to his right Almost all automatics reject their cartridges to the right, but how far and in what direction? It was a job that called for patience. Close to the ground, he was glad he had the torch. Martin Beck did not intend to give up. At least not for a long time.

After an hour and forty minutes he found the empty cartridge. It was lying between two stones, partially covered by leaves and soil. Plenty of rain had fallen since April. Dogs and other animals had been trampling about up here; certainly humans too - for example, those who took it into their heads to break the law by drinking beer in a public place.

He pried out the little brass cylinder, wrapped it in a handker¬chief, and put it in his pocket.

Then he walked eastwards along Bergsgatan. Near City Hall he found a taxi and drove out to the criminology lab. At this time of day they would probably be closed, but he was counting on someone being there. Almost always nowadays someone was working overtime. But he had to do a lot of talking before anyone even agreed to accept his find.

In the end, however, he talked them into it. He put it in a plastic box and carefully filled in the details on a card.

And of course you're in a hell of a hurry for it,' said one of the technicians who was working overtime.

'Not particularly,' Martin Beck said. 'In fact not at all. I'd just be grateful if you'd take a look at it when you get the chance.'

The technician contemplated the cartridge case. It wasn't much to look at, squashed and dirty. It didn't seem too hopeful 'Just because you said that,' the technician said, 'I'll look at it as soon as I possibly can. We're fed up to here with all you guys who come in saying there's not a precious second to lose.'

By this time it was so late he felt he must call Rhea.

'Hi,' she said. 'I'm all by myself now. The street door's locked, but I'll throw down the key.'

'I'll fix that door.'

'I've already done that myself. Have you done what you wanted?' 'Yes.'

'Good. Then you'll be here in half an hour.'

‘Just about.'

'Just give a shout from the street I'll hear you.'

He got there just after eleven and whistled. At first nothing happened. Then she came down herself and opened the door, barefoot, wearing her long red nightie.

Up in the kitchen she said: 'Did you use the torch?'

'Yes. It came in very useful.'

'Shall we open the wine now? By the way, have you had anything to eat?'

'Nope.'

'That's no good. I'll fix something. Won't take long. You're starving.'

Starving. Yes, perhaps he was. 'How're things going with Svärd?' 'Seem to be getting clearer.'

'How so? Tell me. I'm so bloody curious about everything.' By one o'clock the wine bottle was empty. She yawned.

'By the way,' she said, 'I'm leaving town tomorrow. Back on Monday. Maybe not until Tuesday.' He was about to say: 'Now I'll be off.'

‘You don't want to go home,' she said.

'No.'

"Then you cart sleep here.' He nodded.

She said: 'But it's not easy sleeping in the same bed as me. I kick around all the time, even while I'm asleep.' He undressed and got into bed.

‘Would you like me to take off my nice nightie?' she said.

'Sure.'

'Okay'

She did so and lay down beside him. 'But that's the end of the fun,' she said.

He reflected that two years had gone by since he'd shared a bed with another human being. Martin Beck didn't reply. She was warm and very close.

‘We didn't have time to start on that puzzle,' she said. 'It'll have to be next week.'

Whereupon he dropped off to sleep.

Monday morning. Martin Beck was humming to himself as he turned up at Västberga. A clerk stared at him in astonishment as he walked down the corridor. All weekend he'd been feeling fine, even though he'd spent it alone. In fact he could hardly recall when he'd last felt so optimistic The summer of 1968 hadn't been too bad.

At the same time he was breaking into Svärd's locked room he was also breaking out of his own.

He spread out the excerpts from the warehouse ledgers in front of him, putting a tick beside the names that seemed most worthy of consideration. Then he attacked the telephone.

Insurance companies have one urgent task: to earn as much money as possible. So they keep their personnel up to their ears in work. For the same reason they keep all their documents in apple-pie order, in a constant panic that someone may swindle them and gnaw unpunished into their profits. Nowadays this mad working tempo had tended to become an end in itself: 'Impossible, we haven't got the time.'

There were various types of countermeasures he could apply, e.g., the one he'd used on the lab technicians on Friday evening. Another was to pretend to be even more pressed for time than

they were; this often worked if one represented some branch of the bureaucracy. As a policeman it's tough trying to speed up other policemen. But in certain other cases it works admirably.

'Impossible, we haven't time. Is it urgent?'

'Fantastically urgent! You've just got to find the time.'

'Who's your immediate superior?'

And so forth.

The answers gradually began coming in, and he noted them on his list: compensation paid; incident closed; the insured died before the debt could be setded.

Martin Beck went on phoning and making notes. By now the margins of the ledgers had begun to look really full, though of course he didn't get answers to everything.

During his eighth conversation a thought struck him. He said: 'What becomes of the damaged merchandise after the company has paid out the insurance?'

'Naturally, we inspect it If the merchandise can still be used we sell it to our employees at a discount'

Yes, yes. And that, too, meant a small profit. Naturally.

Suddenly he remembered his own experiences in this field. Almost twenty years ago, right after he got married, he'd been very hard up. Before Inga - the cause of the marriage - was born, his wife had been working for an insurance company. There she had been able to buy at a discount a great number of cans of unusually foul-tasting consomme1 damaged in transit. They'd lived on them for months. Since then he'd never really liked consommé. Maybe the loathsome liquid had already been tasted by Kalle Svärd or some other expert and found unsuitable for human consumption.

Martin Beck never got as far as dialling his ninth call. The phone squawked. Somebody wanted something of him. Surely it couldn't be...

'Yes, Beck here.'

'Mmmm, Hjelm here.' 'Hi, nice of you to call.'

'It certainly is. But you seem to have behaved decently out here, and anyway I was thinking of doing you one last service.'

'A last service?'

'Before you're promoted to commissioner. I see you've found that cartridge.'

'Have you looked at it?'

‘Why else do you think I'm phoning?' Hjelm said irritably. 'We've no time here for unnecessary phone calls.'

He must have something up his sleeve, Martin Beck thought If Hjelm called, it was always to triumph in one way or another. Ordinarily you heard from him in writing. Aloud he said: "That's damn decent of you.'

'One might say that,' Hjelm agreed. 'Well, that cartridge of yours is in pretty bad shape. Very hard to get anything out of it at all.'

'I understand.'

'I doubt it. I suppose you want to know whether it matches that suicide bullet, eh?' 'Yes.' Silence.

'Yes,' Martin Beck said. 'That's just what I'd like to know.' 'It matches,' said Hjelm. 'For certain?'

'Haven't I told you, once and for all, that we don't deal in guess¬work here?' 'Sorry.'

'I don't suppose you've got the gun too?' 'No. I don't know where it is.'

'But it so happens I do,' said Hjelm dryly. 'At this moment it's lying right here on my desk.'

In the special squad's lair on Kungsholmsgatan there was nothing that could be said to indicate optimism.

Bulldozer Olsson had rushed off to the National Police Board for consultations. The National Police Chief had told them nothing must be allowed to come out, and just now Olsson was urgently trying to find out what it was that mustn't come out.

Kollberg, Rönn, and Gunvald Larsson were sitting silent in postures reminiscent of parodies of Rodin's The Thinker.

There was a knock at the door, and at virtually the same moment Martin Beck was standing in the room. 'Hi,' he said.

'Hi,' said Kollberg.

Rönn nodded, and Gunvald Larsson didn't even bother. 'You guys don't seem too happy.'

Kollberg stared at his old friend and said: 'We have our reasons. And what brings you here? No one ever comes here of his own free will.'

'I did. Unless I'm wrongly informed, you've got a joker here by the name of Mauritzon.'

'Sure,' said Rönn. 'The Hornsgatan murderer.' 'What do you want him for?' said Kollberg, suspicious. 'Just to meet him.' 'How so?'

'I'd like to have a httle talk with him - assuming he knows how to talk.'

'Not much point in that,' Kollberg said. 'He's a chatterbox, but not in the right way' 'Won't he confess?'

'You can be damn certain he won't But the circumstantial evidence'll be too much for him. We've found his disguise in the house where he lives. Plus the murder weapon. And we've tied him to it'

'How?'

'The serial number on the gun had been filed off. And the marks on the metal come from a grinding machine that is demonstrably his and that was found in his bedside table. The grinding pattern agrees with the microscopic image. It's airtight. And yet he goes on denying it.'

'Right And he's been identified by witnesses,' said Rönn.

'Well...' Kollberg began. But he immediately broke off, pressed some buttons on his phone, and barked some orders into the mouthpiece.

They're bringing him down.'

'Where can we talk?'

'Take my room,' Rönn said.

'Take good care of that idiot,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'He's all we've got'

Within five minutes Mauritzon appeared, handcuffed to a guard.

'That seems superfluous,' Martin Beck said. ‘We're just going to have a little talk. Unlock him and wait outside.'

The warder fiddled with the handcuffs. Mauritzon irritably rubbed his right wrist.

'Please sit down,' said Martin Beck.

They sat down opposite each other at the desk.

Martin Beck had never seen Mauritzon before and noticed, though it did not astonish him, that the man seemed to be emotionally disturbed and exceedingly nervous - on the verge of collapse.

Perhaps they'd beaten him up. But probably not. It was all too common for murderers to have an unstable disposition and lose their heads as soon as they were caught.

'I'm the object of a diabolical conspiracy,' Mauritzon said in a shrill voice. 'The police or someone else has planted a lot of false evidence in my home. But when that bank was robbed I wasn't even in town, though even my own lawyer doesn't believe me. What the hell am I to do?'

'Are you a Swedish-American?'

'No. Why?'

'You said "planted". That's not a Swedish term.'

'Well, what in God's name can you call it when the police come breaking into your home and put wigs, and sunglasses, and pistols, and God knows what else there and then pretend to have found them? I swear I've never robbed a bank. But even my own lawyer says I haven't a chance. What do you want me to do? Confess to a murder I had absolutely nothing to do with? I'm going nuts here.'

Martin Beck put his hand under the desk and pressed a button. Rönn's desk was a new one, cunningly equipped with a built-in tape recorder. 'The fact is,' said Martin Beck, 'I've nothing at all to do with all that.'

'Haven't you?'

'No. Nothing at all.'

'So what do you want?'

'To talk about something else.'

'And what could that be?'

'A story I imagine you are familiar with. It begins in March, 1966. With a crate of Spanish liqueur.' 'What?'

'The fact is, I've documented almost everything. Quite legally, you imported a case of liqueur, declared it to the customs, and paid the duty. Above all the duty; but also the freight. Is that correct?'

Mauritzon didn't answer. Martin Beck looked up and saw the fellow was gaping at him, astounded.

'I've got all the papers,' Martin Beck repeated. 'So I assume it's correct.'

'Yes,' Mauritzon said, at length, 'that is correct'

'But you never received that consignment. If I understand

the matter correctly, the crate was destroyed by accident while

in transit.'

'Yes. Though I wouldn't exactly call it an accident'

'No, you're right enough on that point. I believe that a warehouseman, by the name of Svärd, smashed it intentionally to get at the liqueur.'

'You believe bloody right. That was exactly what happened.'

'Mmmm,' Martin Beck said. 'I realize you're tired from all these other matters. Perhaps you'd prefer not to talk about this old story?'

After a very long while Mauritzon said: 'Okay. Why not? It's good for me to talk about something that really happened. Otherwise I'll go out of my mind.'

'As you wish,' Martin Beck said. 'Now, in my view those bottles didn't contain liqueur.'

'And you're still right.'

‘What they really did contain we can leave for the moment.'

'If you're interested, I can tell you. The bottles had been fixed in Spain. Though they looked perfecdy authentic they contained a morphine-based solution of phenedrine, a commodity much appreciated in those days. The consignment was quite valuable.'