The Locked Room (34 page)

'Yes. And as far as I know, this abortive piece of smuggling -for it was abortive - is highly criminal.'

'You're right there,' said Mauritzon, as if this were an angle he'd been overlooking.

'Furthermore, I have reason to assume that you were black¬mailed by this guy Svärd.'

Mauritzon didn't reply. Martin Beck shrugged and said: 'As I've already said, you needn't answer if you don't want to.'

Mauritzon still seemed as nervous as before. He kept altering his position and couldn't keep his hands still.

They must really have been putting psychological pressure on him, Martin Beck thought, faintiy astonished. He knew Kollberg's methods and knew they were almost always humane.

'I shall reply,' Mauritzon said. 'Don't stop. This brings me back to reality.'

'You paid Svärd seven hundred and fifty a month.'

'He wanted a thousand. I offered five hundred: Seven hundred and fifty was a compromise.'

'Why don't you tell me all about it yourself,' Martin Beck said. 'If there's anything you don't understand we can reconstruct it together.'

‘You think so?' said Mauritzon. His face twitched. He mumbled: 'Is that possible?'

'Of course,' said Martin Beck.

'Do you think I'm insane, too?' Mauritzon asked suddenly. 'No. Why should I?'

'Everyone seems to think I'm mad. I've almost come to believe it myself.'

'Just tell me what happened,' Martin Beck said. 'There's certainly an explanation for everything. So - Svärd squeezed you for money.'

'He was a bloodsucker,' Mauritzon said. ‘When that happened I simply couldn't afford to be put away. I'd been inside before and been given a couple of suspended sentences and was under surveil¬lance. Though of course you know all that'

Martin Beck said nothing. As yet he had not checked up too carefully on Mauritzon's criminal record.

'Well,' said Mauritzon. 'Seven hundred and fifty a month isn't the whole world. Nine thousand a year. That crate alone was worth a lot more.' He checked himself and added in consternation: 'I don't get it How can you know all this?'

'Most things in a society like ours are documented,' Martin Beck said amiably.

'But those bastards down at the docks must have been smashing up crates every damn week,' Mauritzon said.

'Indeed. But you were the only one who didn't claim any insur¬ance money.'

'That's true. I almost had to beg them not to get it for me. Otherwise we'd have had the insurance adjusters there, poking their noses into things. Svärd was quite enough.'

'I understand. And you went on paying.'

'After a year or so I tried to cut him off, but I only needed to be a few days late for the old boy to start threatening me. And my affairs weren't of a kind that could withstand inspection.'

'You could have reported Svärd for blackmail’

'Of course. And been put away for several years myself. No. There was only one thing I could do. Pay up. The bastard gave up his job and used me as some kind of a pension fund.'

'But in the end you'd had enough of it?'

'Yes.' Mauritzon twisted his handkerchief nervously between his fingers. 'Between ourselves,' he said. 'Wouldn't you have, too? Do you know how much I paid that guy?'

'Yes. Fifty-four thousand kronor.'

‘You seem to know everything,' Mauritzon said. 'Say, can't you take over that bank robbery from those lunatics out there?'

'That, perhaps, would be difficult,' Martin Beck said. 'But you didn't pay up without protest, did you? Now and again you threatened him?'

'How can you know that? A year or so ago I began thinking of all that money I'd paid to that thief over the years. Last winter I got in touch with him.'

'How?'

'I met him in town and told him to stop it. But the old skin¬flint just said I knew what would happen if the money wasn't paid in on time.'

'What would happen?'

'He'd rush straight to the police. Admittedly this business with the case of liqueur was ancient history. But that wouldn't have stopped the police from snooping into my affairs. Some of what I was busy with wasn't legal. Besides, I found it hard to explain why I'd gone on paying him all these years.'

'Anyway, Svärd told you something to calm you down, didn't he? He said he'd die soon.'

Mauritzon sat silent a long while. ‘Has Svärd told you all that? Or have you got it in writing?' 'No.'

'Are you some kind of a mind reader, or what?' Martin Beck shook his head.

'Then how can you know every damn detail? He said he had cancer in his guts and wouldn't live longer than six months. Anyway, I reckon he was a bit scared. And I thought to myself, if I've been keeping him for six years, six months more one way or the other doesn't matter.'

'When did you last speak to him?'

'It was in February. The way he was whining and complaining, you'd have thought I was some kind of a damn relation. He said he was going into the hospital - the "death factory", he called it. The radium clinic, that is. He seemed finished. Just as well, I thought to myself.'

'But you called up the hospital and checked?'

'Yeah. He wasn't there. They said he was in some clinic south of town. Then I began to suspect something was up.'

'I see. So you called up the doctor there and said Svärd was your uncle.'

'There doesn't seem much sense in my telling you anything, does there? I can't say anything you don't know already.' 'Oh yes...'

'And what might that be?'

'What name you gave, for example.'

'Svärd, obviously. How could I be the bastard's nephew if I didn't call myself Svärd? Haven't you thought that one out?' Mauritzon threw Martin Beck a glance of happy surprise.

'No, as a matter I hadn't. You see?'

Some kind of relationship was beginning to grow up between them.

'The doctor I talked to said the old boy was well and certainly wouldn't kick the bucket for another twenty years. I reckoned that...' He fell silent

Martin Beck made a swift calculation and said: 'That would mean a hundred and eighty thousand kronor more.'

'Okay, okay. I give up. You're too clever for me. That same day I paid in the money for March, so that the damn deposit slip would be lying there waiting for him when he got home. At the same time... Well, d'you know what I did at the same time?'

‘You decided it was to be the last time.'

'Precisely. I'd heard he was going to leave the hospital on Saturday, and as soon as he stuck his nose in the shop to buy his lousy cat food I grabbed him and told him it was all over. But he was just as impudent as always, said I knew what would happen if he didn't get a notification from the bank on the twentieth of next month at the latest. Yet he was really scared, even so. For d'you know what he did then?'

'He moved.'

'Of course you knew that too. And what I did then?' 'Yes.'

There was a moment's silence. Martin Beck reflected that the tape recorder really was completely soundless. Before receiving his visitor he'd checked that it was working and put on a new reel. Now he must choose his tactics.

Martin Beck said: ‘Yes, I know that too, as I've said. By and large we can regard this conversation as over.'

Mauritzon looked obviously upset. ‘Wait a moment,' he said. 'Do you really know?'

'Sure.'

'Because, you see, I don't. Damn it, I don't even know whether the old boy's alive or dead. And this is where the spooky stuff begins.'

'Spooky stuff?'

'Yeah, and since then everything has gone to... yes, gone to hell, you might say. And in two weeks' time I'll be sentenced to life for something only the devil himself could have fixed up. There's no goddam sense in it.'

‘You're from Småland.'

'Yeah, didn't you notice it until now?'

'No.'

'That's odd. You who understand everything. Well, and what did I do?'

'First you tracked down Svärd's new flat'

'Yeah, that was simple. I kept an eye on him for a few days, noticed when he went out, and so forth. It wasn't often. And the blind was always down, even when he was airing out the flat in the evenings. I checked on that, too.'

'Checked' was an 'in' word; everyone was using it to death. It had begun with children and then spread to almost everyone in Sweden. Even Martin Beck used it sometimes, though he did his best to speak pure Swedish.

‘You thought you'd give Svärd a real fright If worst came to worst you'd kill him.'

'I didn't much care which. But he was hard to get at. So I thought up a simple way of doing it. Of course you already know which way I mean?'

'You thought you'd shoot him through his window, either when he opened it to air the flat or else as he closed it'

'There you are, you see! Those were the only times he showed himself. And I found an ideal spot. Obviously you know where.'

Martin Beck nodded.

'I can just imagine it. There's only one place if one doesn't want to go into the house. The slope up to the park on the other side of the street. Svärd opened his window at nine every evening and shut it at ten. So I went there to put a bullet into the old guy'

'Which day?'

'Monday the seventeenth. I did it instead of going to the bank, as it were. Ten in the evening. Now the spooky stuff begins. You don't believe me? Hell, I can't prove it. But first let me check up on something. D'you know what I thought I'd do him in with?'

'Yes. A forty-five automatic - Llama 9-A.' Mauritzon put his head in his hands and said: 'You're in this conspiracy too. That's something, as far as I see, that you couldn't possibly know. Yet you do. It's uncanny.'

'So that the shot wouldn't attract people's attention, you put a silencer on it'

Mauritzon nodded, amazed.

'I assume you made it yourself. The usual type, which can only be used once.'

‘Yeah, yeah, that's right,' said Mauritzon. 'That's right, that's right, that's right But now you tell me what happened.'

‘You begin,' said Martin Beck. 'And I'll explain the rest'

'Well, I went there. Drove there in my own car. It was dark. Not a soul about Inside the flat the light was out. The window was open. The blind down. I took up my position on the slope. After a few minutes I looked at my watch: 9:58. Everything turns out precisely as I'd imagined. The goddam old bastard pushes the blind aside, appears in the window, and I expect he thought he'd close it. As it happened, though, I still hadn't quite made up my mind. But I suppose you know that'

'You hadn't made up your mind whether you'd kill Svärd or just warn him with a shot in the arm or maybe in the window frame.'

'Self-evident' said Mauritzon in despair. 'That you know that, too, is self-evident After all, these are just things I thought to myself and which were never anywhere except inside here.' He thumped his knuckles against his forehead.

'But in a flash you make up your mind.'

'Yeah. Seeing him standing there I think to myself it's just as well to put an end to him once and for all. So I fire.' He fell silent.

'What happened?'

'Well, what happened then? I don't know. It seems impos¬sible that I could have missed, though at first I thought so. He disappears, and to me it looks as though the window is being shut. Quick as can be. The blind's hanging down. Everything looks as it usually does.'

'What did you do then?'

'I drove home. What the hell else could I do? Then, day after day, I look at the newspapers; but there's nothing in them. Everything seems incomprehensible - so I thought then. But it's nothing compared to what I'm thinking now.'

'How was Svärd standing when you fired?'

'Leaning forward a bit, and his right arm raised. He must have been holding the window hook with one fist and leaning against the sill with the other.'

'Where did you get the gun from?'

'Some guys I know had bought some weapons abroad, on an export licence. I arranged for them to be brought into the country. At the same time I thought it might be a good idea to have a gun myself. So I bought an extra pistol. They already had one. I'm no expert on firearms, but I thought it looked okay.'

'Are you sure you hit Svärd?'

'Course I am. Anything else is unthinkable. But all the rest is beyond me. Why hasn't anyone ever bothered about it, for example? I used to drive past and take a look up at the window. Always just as closed, with the blind still pulled down. So I began to wonder whether I hadn't missed, even so. After that the strangest things began happening. Oh my God, what a mess. I don't understand a thing. And then here you are, all of a sudden, and understand everything.'

'Some things I reckon I can explain,' said Martin Beck. 'May I ask you a few questions, just for a change?'

'Of course. Go ahead.' 'First, did I hit the bastard?' 'Yes. You killed him on the spot'

'That's something anyway. I'd begun to think he must be sitting in the next room here, reading a newspaper, laughing till he pissed in his pants.'

'So,' said Martin Beck seriously, 'you've committed a murder.' 'I suppose so,' said Mauritzon, unconcernedly. 'That's what those bright boys in there are saying, too. My lawyer, for instance.' 'Any other questions?'

'Why didn't anyone bother about him being dead? There hasn't been a line in the papers.'

'Svärd wasn't found until long afterwards. At first various circumstances suggested that he had committed suicide.'

'Suicide?'

'Yes, the police are careless too, sometimes. The bullet had hit him from directly in front, which is understandable because at that moment he was leaning forward. And the room where he was lying had been locked from inside, the window too.'

'He must have pulled it after him as he fell, and the hook dropped into the ring.'

'That's the conclusion I've come to, too. More or less. Anyone who's hit by such a high-calibre projectile would be flung several yards backwards. Even if Svärd wasn't exacdy holding the window hook, it could very well have fallen into place when the window slammed shut I've seen similar things. Quite recendy.' Martin Beck smiled to himself. 'And so the whole affair's pretty well cleared up,' he said.

'Pretty well cleared up? How could you know what I was thinking just before I fired?'