Roseanna Read online

  Then he left a preliminary report with the following wording: ‘Death by strangulation in conjunction with gross sexual assault. Severe inner bleeding.’

  By that time the records of the inquiry and reports had already begun to accumulate on Ahlberg's desk. They could be summed up in one sentence: a dead woman had been found in the lock chamber at Borenshult.

  No one had been reported missing in the city or in neighbouring police districts. There was no description of any such missing person.

  3

  It was a quarter past five in the morning and it was raining. Martin Beck took more time brushing his teeth than usual to get rid of the taste of lead in his mouth.

  He buttoned his collar, tied his tie and looked listlessly at his face in the mirror. He shrugged his shoulders and went out into the hall, continued on through the living room, glanced longingly at the half-finished model of the training ship, Danmark, on which he had worked until the late hours the night before, and went into the kitchen.

  He moved quietly and softly, partly from habit and partly not to wake the children.

  He sat down at the kitchen table.

  ‘Hasn't the newspaper come yet?’ he said.

  ‘It never comes before six,’ his wife answered.

  It was completely light outside but overcast. The daylight in the kitchen was grey and soupy. His wife hadn't turned on the lights. She called that saving.

  He opened his mouth but closed it again without saying anything. There would only be an argument and this wasn't the moment for it. Instead he drummed slowly with his fingers on the formica table top. He looked at the empty cup with its blue rose pattern and a chip in the rim and a brown crack down from the notch. That cup had hung on for almost the duration of their marriage. More than ten years. She rarely broke anything, in any case not irreparably. The odd part of it was that the children were the same.

  Could such qualities be inherited? He didn't know.

  She took the coffee pot from the stove and filled his cup. He stopped drumming on the table.

  ‘Don't you want a sandwich?’ she asked.

  He drank carefully with small gulps. He was sitting slightly round-shouldered at the end of the table.

  ‘You really ought to eat something,’ she insisted.

  ‘You know I can't eat in the morning.’

  ‘You ought to in any case,’ she said. ‘Especially you, with your stomach.’

  He rubbed his fingers over his cheek and felt some places he'd missed with his razor. He drank some coffee.

  ‘I can make some toast,’ she suggested.

  Five minutes later he placed his cup on the saucer, moved it away without a sound, and looked up at his wife.

  She had on a fluffy red bathrobe over a nylon nightgown and she sat with her elbows on the table, supporting her chin with her hands. She was blonde, with fair skin and round, slightly popping eyes. She usually darkened her eyebrows but they had paled during the summer and were now nearly as light as her hair. She was a few years older than he and in spite of the fact that she had gained a good deal of weight in the last few years, the skin on her throat was beginning to sag a little.

  She had given up her job in an architect's office when their daughter was born twelve years ago and since then had not thought about working again. When the boy started school, Martin Beck had suggested she look for some part-time work, but she had figured it would hardly pay. Besides, she was comfortable with her own nature and pleased with her role as a housewife.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ thought Martin Beck and got up. He placed the blue-painted stool under the table quietly and stood by the window looking out at the drizzle.

  Down below the parking place and lawn, the highway lay smooth and empty. Not many windows were lit in the apartments on the hill behind the subway station. A few seagulls circled under the low, grey sky. Otherwise there was not another living thing to be seen.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she said.

  ‘Motala.’

  ‘Will you be gone long?’

  ‘I don't know.’

  ‘Is it that girl?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think you'll be gone long?’

  ‘I don't know any more about it than you do. Only what I've seen in the newspapers.’

  ‘Why do you have to take the train?’

  ‘The others took off yesterday. I wasn't supposed to go along.’

  ‘They'll drive with you, of course, as usual?’

  He took a patient breath and gazed outside. The rain was letting up.

  ‘Where will you stay?’

  ‘The City Hotel.’

  ‘Who will be with you?’

  ‘Kollberg and Melander. They went yesterday.’

  ‘By car?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you have to sit and get shaken up on the train?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Behind him he heard her washing the cup with the chip in the rim and the blue roses.

  ‘I have to pay the electric bill and also Little One's riding lessons this week.’

  ‘Don't you have enough money for that?’

  ‘I don't want to take it out of the bank, you know that.’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  He took his wallet out of his inner pocket and looked into it. Took out a 50 crown note, looked at it, put it back and placed the wallet back in his pocket.

  ‘I hate to draw out money,’ she said. ‘It's the beginning of the end when you start that.’

  He took the bill out again, folded it, turned around and laid it on the kitchen table.

  ‘I've packed your bag, Martin.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Take care of your throat. This is a treacherous time of the year, particularly the evenings.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you going to take that awful pistol with you?’

  ‘Yes, no. Yes, no. What's the difference?’ Martin Beck thought to himself.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  He went into the living room, unlocked a drawer in the secretary and took out the pistol. He put it in his suitcase and locked the drawer again.

  The pistol was an ordinary 7.6 millimetre Walther, licensed in Sweden. It was useless in most situations and he was a pretty poor shot anyway.

  He went out into the hall, put on his trenchcoat, and stood with his dark hat in his hands.

  ‘Aren't you going to say goodbye to Rolf and the Little One?’

  ‘It's ridiculous to call a twelve-year-old girl “Little One”.’

  ‘I think it's sweet.’

  ‘It's a shame to wake them. And anyway, they know that I am going.’

  He put his hat on.

  ‘So long. I'll call you.’

  ‘Bye bye, and be careful.’

  He stood on the platform and waited for the subway and thought that he really didn't mind leaving home in spite of the half-finished planking on the model of the training ship Danmark.

  Martin Beck wasn't chief of the Homicide Squad and had no such ambitions. Sometimes he doubted if he would ever make superintendent although the only things that could actually stand in his way were death or some very serious error in his duties. He was a First Detective Inspector with the National Police and had been with the Homicide Bureau for eight years. There were people who thought that he was the country's most capable examining officer.

  He had been on the police force half of his life. At the age of twenty-one he had begun at Jakob Police Station and after six years as a patrol officer in different districts in central Stockholm he was sent to the National Police College. He was one of the best in his class and when the course was finished he was appointed a Detective Inspector. He was twenty-eight years old at the time.

  His father had died that year and he moved from his furnished room in the middle of the city back to the family home in southern Stockholm to take care of his mother. That summer he met his wife. She had rented a cottag
e with a friend out in the archipelago where he happened to be with his sailing canoe. He fell very much in love. Then, in the autumn, when they were expecting a child, they got married at City Hall and moved to her small apartment back in the city.

  One year after the birth of their daughter, there wasn't much left of the happy and lively girl he had fallen in love with and their marriage had slipped into a fairly dull routine.

  Martin Beck sat on the green bench in the subway car and looked out through the rain-blurred window. He thought about his marriage apathetically, but when he realized that he was sitting there feeling sorry for himself, he took his newspaper out of his trenchcoat pocket and tried to concentrate on the editorial page.

  He looked tired and his sunburned skin seemed yellowish in the grey light. His face was lean with a broad forehead and a strong jaw. His mouth, under his short, straight nose, was thin and wide with two deep lines near the corners. When he smiled, you could see his healthy, white teeth. His dark hair was combed straight back from the even hairline and had not yet begun to grey. The look in his soft blue eyes was clear and calm. He was thin but not especially tall and somewhat round-shouldered. Some women would say he was good looking but most of them would see him as quite ordinary. He dressed in a way that would draw no attention. If anything, his clothes were a little too discreet.

  The air in the train was close and stuffy and he felt slightly uncomfortable as he usually did when he was on the subway. When they arrived at Central Station, he was the first one at the door with his suitcase in his hand.

  He disliked the subway. But since he cared even less for bumper-to-bumper traffic, and that ‘dream apartment’ in the centre of the city was still only a dream, he had no choice at the moment.

  The express to Gothenburg left the station at 7.30 a.m. Martin Beck thumbed through his newspaper but didn't see a line about the murder. He turned back to the cultural pages and began to read an article on the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner but fell asleep in a few minutes.

  He awoke in good time to change trains at Hallsberg. The lead taste in his mouth had come back and stayed with him despite the three glasses of water that he drank.

  He arrived in Motala at 10.30 a.m. and by then the rain had stopped. Since it was his first visit there, he asked at the kiosk in the station the way to the City Hotel and bought a pack of cigarettes and the Motala newspaper.

  The hotel was on the main square only a few blocks from the railway station. The short walk stimulated him. Up in his room he washed his hands, unpacked, and drank a bottle of mineral water which he got from the porter. He stood by the window for a moment and looked out over the square. It had a statue in the centre which he guessed was of Baltzar von Platen. Then he left the room to go to the police station. Since he knew it was right across the street, he left his trenchcoat in the room.

  He told the officer on duty who he was and was immediately shown to an office on the second floor. The name Ahlberg was on the door.

  The man sitting behind the desk was broad and thick-set and slightly bald. His jacket was on the back of his chair and he was drinking coffee out of a container. A cigarette was burning on the corner of an ash tray which was already filled with butts.

  Martin Beck had a way of slinking through a door which irritated a number of people. Someone once said that he was able to slip into a room and close the door behind him so quickly that it seemed as if he were still knocking on the outside.

  The man behind the desk seemed slightly surprised. He pushed his coffee container away and got up.

  ‘My name is Ahlberg,’ he said.

  There was something expectant in his manner. Martin Beck had seen the same thing before and knew what this sprang from. He was the expert from Stockholm and the man behind the desk was a country policeman who had come to a standstill on an investigation. The next few minutes would be decisive for their cooperation.

  ‘What's your first name?’ said Martin Beck.

  ‘Gunnar.’

  ‘What are Kollberg and Melander doing?’

  ‘I have no idea. Something I've forgotten, I suspect.’

  ‘Did they have that we'll-settle-this-thing-in-a-flash look?’

  The local policeman ran his fingers through his thin blond hair. Then he smiled wryly and took to his familiar chair.

  ‘Just about,’ he said.

  Martin Beck sat down opposite him, drew out a pack of cigarettes and laid it on the edge of the desk.

  ‘You look tired,’ Martin Beck stated.

  ‘My vacation got shot to hell.’

  Ahlberg emptied the container of coffee, crumpled it and threw it into the wastepaper basket under the desk.

  The disorder on his desk was remarkable. Martin Beck thought about his own desk in Stockholm. It was usually quite neat.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘How goes it?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Ahlberg. ‘After more than a week we don't know anything more than what the doctor has told us.’

  Out of habit he went on to the routine procedures.

  ‘Put to death by strangulation in conjunction with sexual assault. The culprit was brutal. Signs of perverse tendencies.’

  Martin Beck smiled. Ahlberg looked at him questioningly.

  ‘You said “put to death”. I say it myself sometimes. We've written too many reports.’

  ‘Yeah, isn't it hell?’

  Ahlberg sighed and ran his fingers through his hair.

  ‘We brought her up eight days ago,’ he said. ‘We haven't learned a thing since then. We don't know who she is, we don't know the scene of the crime, and we have no suspects. We haven't found a single thing that could have any real connection with her.’

  4

  ‘Death by strangulation,’ thought Martin Beck.

  He sat and thumbed through a bunch of photographs which Ahlberg had dug out of a basket on his desk. The pictures showed the locks, the dredger, its bucket in the foreground, the body lying on the embankment, and in the mortuary.

  Martin Beck placed a photo in front of Ahlberg and said:

  ‘We can have this picture cropped and retouched so that she looks presentable. Then we can begin knocking on doors. If she comes from around here someone ought to recognize her. How many men can you put on the job?’

  ‘Three at most,’ said Ahlberg. ‘We're short of men right now. Three of the boys are on vacation and one of them is in the hospital with a broken leg. Other than the Superintendent, Larsson and myself, there are only eight men at the station.’

  He counted on his fingers.

  ‘Yes, and one of them is a woman. Then too, someone has to take care of the other work.’

  ‘We'll have to help if worst comes to worst. It's going to take a hell of a lot of time. Have you had any trouble with sex criminals lately by the way?’

  Ahlberg tapped his pen against his front teeth while he was thinking. Then he reached into his desk drawer and dug up a paper.

  ‘We had one in for examination. From Västra Ny, a rapist. He was caught in Linköping the day before yesterday but he had an alibi for the entire week, according to this report from Blomgren. He's checking out the institutions.’

  Ahlberg placed the paper in a green file which lay on his desk.

  They sat quietly for a minute. Martin Beck was hungry. He thought about his wife and her chatter about regular meals. He hadn't eaten for twenty-four hours.

  The air in the room was thick with cigarette smoke. Ahlberg got up and opened the window. They could hear a time signal from a radio somewhere in the vicinity.

  ‘It's one o'clock,’ he said. ‘If you're hungry I can send out for something. I'm as hungry as a bear.’

  Martin Beck nodded and Ahlberg picked up the telephone. After a while there was a knock at the door and a girl in a blue dress and a red apron came in with a basket.

  After Martin Beck had eaten a ham sandwich and had a few swallows of coffee, he said:

  ‘How do you think she got there?’

  ‘
I don't know. During the day there are always a lot of people at the locks so it could hardly have happened then. He could have thrown her in from the pier or the embankment and then later the backwash from the boats' propellers might have moved her further out. Or maybe she was thrown overboard from some vessel.’

  ‘What kind of boats go through the locks? Small boats and pleasure craft?’

  ‘Some. Not so terribly many. Most of them are freighters. And then there are the canal boats, of course, the Diana, the Juna and the Wilhelm Tham’

  ‘Can we drive down there and take a look?’ asked Martin Beck.

  Ahlberg got up, took the photograph that Martin Beck had chosen, and said: ‘We can get going right away. I'll leave this at the lab on the way out.’

  It was almost three o'clock when they returned from Borenshult. The traffic in the locks was lively and Martin Beck had wanted to stay there among the vacationers and the fishermen on the pier to watch the boats.

  He had spoken with the crew of the dredger, been out on the embankment and looked at the system of locks. He had seen a sailing canoe cruising in the fresh breeze far out in the water and had begun to long for his own canoe which he had sold several years ago. During the trip back to town he sat thinking about sailing in the archipelago in summers past.

  There were eight, fresh copies of the picture from the photo laboratory lying on Ahlberg's desk when they returned. One of the policemen, who was also a photographer, had retouched the picture and the girl's face looked almost as if she had been photographed alive.

  Ahlberg looked through them, laid four of the copies in the green folder and said:

  ‘Fine. I'll pass these out to the boys so that they can get started immediately.’

  When he came back after a few minutes Martin Beck was standing next to the desk rubbing his nose.

  ‘I'd like to make a few telephone calls,’ he said.

  ‘Use the office farthest down the corridor.’

  The room was larger than Ahlberg's and had windows on two walls. It was furnished with two desks, five chairs, a filing cabinet and a typewriter table with a disgracefully old Remington.