Roseanna

It was a quarter past ten.

He went into the bedroom and closed the door after him.

When she awakened him he thought he had only slept for a few minutes.

The clock showed that it was a quarter to one.

‘I told you one hour.’

‘You looked so tired. Commissioner Hammar is on the telephone.’

‘Oh, damn.’

An hour later he was sitting in his chief's office.

‘Didn't you get anywhere?’

‘No. We don't know a thing. We don't know who she was, where she was murdered, and least of all by whom. We know approximately how and where but that's all.’

Hammar sat with the palms of his hands on the top of the desk, and studied his fingernails and wrinkled his forehead. He was a good man to work for, calm, almost a little slow, and they always got along well together.

Commissioner Hammar folded his hands and looked up at Martin Beck.

‘Keep in contact with Motala. You are most probably right. The girl was on vacation, thought to be away, maybe even out of the country. It might take two weeks at least before anyone misses her. If we count on a three week vacation. But I would like to see your report as soon as possible.’

‘You'll get it this afternoon.’

Martin Beck went into his office, took the cover off his typewriter, thumbed through the papers he had received from Ahlberg, and began to type.

At five-thirty the telephone rang.

‘Are you coming home to dinner?’

‘It doesn't seem so.’

‘Aren't there any other policemen but you?’ said his wife. ‘Do you have to do everything? When do they think you'll see your family? The children are asking for you.’

‘I'll try to get home by six-thirty.’

An hour and a half later his report was finished.

‘Go home and get some sleep,’ said Hammar. ‘You look tired.’

Martin Beck was tired. He took a taxi home, ate dinner and went to bed.

He fell asleep immediately.

At one-thirty in the morning the telephone awakened him.

‘Were you asleep? I'm sorry that I woke you up. I only wanted to tell you that the case has been solved. He turned himself in.’

‘Who?’

‘Holm, the neighbour. Her husband. He collapsed, totally. It was jealousy. Funny, isn't it?’

‘Whose neighbour? Who are you talking about?’

‘The dame in Storängen, naturally. I only wanted to tell you so that you wouldn't lie awake and think about it unnecessarily … Oh, God, have I made a mistake?’

‘Yes.’

‘Damn it, of course. You weren't there. It was Stenström. I'm sorry. I'll see you in the morning.’

‘Nice of you to call,’ said Martin Beck.

He went back to bed but he couldn't sleep. He lay there looking at the ceiling and listening to his wife's mild snoring. He felt empty and depressed.

When the sun began to shine into the room he turned over on his side and thought: ‘Tomorrow I'll telephone Ahlberg.’

He called Ahlberg the next day and then four or five times a week during the following month but neither of them had anything special to say. The girl's origins remained a mystery. The newspapers had stopped writing about the case and Hammar had stopped asking how it was going. There was still no report of a missing person that matched in any way. Sometimes it seemed as if she had never existed. Everyone except Martin Beck and Ahlberg seemed to have forgotten that they had ever seen her.

At the beginning of August, Martin Beck took one week's vacation and went out to the archipelago with his family. When he got back he continued to work on the routine jobs which came to his desk. He was depressed and slept poorly.

One night, at the end of August, he lay in his bed and looked out in the dark.

Ahlberg had called rather late that evening. He had been at the City Hotel and sounded a little drunk. They had talked for a while about the murder and before Ahlberg had hung up, he had said: ‘Whoever he is and wherever he is, we'll get him.’

Martin Beck got up and walked barefooted into the living room. He turned on the light over his desk and looked at the model of the training ship Danmark. He still had the rigging to finish.

He sat down at the desk and took a folder out of a cubbyhole. Kollberg's description of the girl was in the folder together with copies of the pictures that the police photographer in Motala had taken nearly two months ago. In spite of the fact that he practically knew the description by heart he read it again, slowly and carefully. Then he placed the photographs in front of him and studied them for a long time.

When he put the papers back in the folder and turned off the light, he thought: ‘Whoever she was, and wherever she came from, I'm going to find out.’

7

‘Interpol, the devil with them,’ said Kollberg.

Martin Beck said nothing. Kollberg looked over his shoulder.

‘Do those louses write in French too?’

‘Yes. This is from the police in Toulouse. They have a missing person.’

‘French police,’ said Kollberg. ‘I made a search with them through Interpol last year. A little gal from Djursholm section. We didn't hear a word for three months and then got a long letter from the police in Paris. I didn't understand a word of it and turned it in to be translated. The next day I read in the newspaper that a Swedish tourist had found her. Found her, hell. She was sitting in that world-famous cafe where all the Swedish beatniks sit…’

‘Le Dôme.’

‘Yes, that one. She was sitting there with some Arab that she was living with and she had been sitting there every day for nearly six months. That afternoon I got the translation. The letter stated that she hadn't been seen in France for at least three months and absolutely was not there now. In any case, not alive. “Normal” disappearances were always cleared up within two weeks, they wrote, and in this case, unfortunately, one would have to assume some kind of crime.’

Martin Beck folded the letter and placed it in one of his desk drawers.

‘What did they write?’ asked Kollberg.

‘About the girl in Toulouse? The Spanish police found her in Mallorca a week ago.’

‘Why the devil do they need so many official stamps and so many strange words to say so little.’

‘You're right,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Anyway, your girl must be Swedish. As everyone thought from the beginning. Strange.’

‘What's strange?’

‘That no one has missed her, whoever she is. I sometimes think about her too.’

Kollberg's tone changed gradually.

‘It irritates me,’ he said. ‘It irritates me a lot. How many blanks have you drawn now?’

‘Twenty-seven with this one.’

‘That's a lot.’

‘You're right.’

‘Don't think too much about the mess.’

‘No.’

‘Well meant advice is easier to give than to take,’ thought Martin Beck. He got up and walked over to the window.

‘I'd better be getting back to my murderer,’ said Kollberg. 'He just grins and gnashes his teeth. What behaviour! First he drinks a bottle of soda water and then he kills his wife and children with an axe. Then he tries to set fire to the house and cuts his throat with a saw. On top of everything else he runs to the police crying and complains about the food. I'm sending him to the nut house this afternoon.

‘God, life is strange,’ he added and slammed the door after him as he left the room.

The trees between the police station and Kristineberg's Hotel had begun to turn and to lose some of their leaves. The sky lay low and grey with trailing rain curtains and storm-torn clouds. It was the twenty-ninth of September and autumn was definitely on the way. Martin Beck looked distastefully at his half-smoked cigarette and thought about his sensitivity to temperature change and of the six months of winter's formidable colds which would soon strike him.

‘Poor little friend, whoever you are,’ he said to himself.

He was conscious of the fact that their chances were reduced each day that passed. Maybe they would never even find out who she was, not to speak of getting the person who was guilty, unless the same man repeated the crime. The woman who had lain out there on the breakwater in the sun at least had a face and a body and a nameless grave. The murderer was nothing, totally without contours, a dim figure, if that. But dim figures have no desires and no sharp pointed weapons. No strangler's hands.

Martin Beck straightened up. ‘Remember that you have three of the most important virtues a policeman can have,’ he thought. ‘You are stubborn and logical, and completely calm. You don't allow yourself to lose your composure and you act only professionally on a case, whatever it is. Words like repulsive, horrible, and bestial belong in the newspapers, not in your thinking. A murderer is a regular human being, only more unfortunate and maladjusted.’

He hadn't seen Ahlberg since that last evening at the City Hotel in Motala but they had talked on the telephone often. He had spoken to him last week and he remembered Ahlberg's final comment: ‘Vacation? Not before this thing is solved. I'll have all the material collected soon but I'm going to continue even if I have to drag all of Boren myself.’

These days Ahlberg wasn't much more than merely stubborn, Martin Beck thought.

‘Damn, damn, damn,’ he mumbled and rapped his forehead with his fist.

Then he went back to his desk and sat down, swung his chair a quarter turn to the left and stared listlessly at the paper in the typewriter. He tried to remember what it was he wanted to write before Kollberg had come in with the letter from Interpol.

Six hours later, at two minutes to five he had put on his hat and coat and already begun to hate the crowded subway train to the south. It was still raining and he could already perceive both the musty odour of wet clothing and the frightening feeling of having to stand hemmed in by a compact mass of strange bodies.

One minute before five, Stenström arrived. He opened the door without knocking as usual. It was irritating but endurable in comparison with Melander's woodpecker signals and Kollberg's deafening pounding.

‘Here's a message for the department of missing girls. You'd better send a thank you letter to the American Embassy. They sent it up.’

He studied the light red telegram sheet.

‘Lincoln, Nebraska. What was it the last time?’

‘Astoria, New York.’

‘Was that when they sent three pages of information but forgot to say that she was a Negro?’

‘Yes,’ said Martin Beck.

Stenström gave him the telegram and said:

‘Here's the number of some guy at the embassy. You ought to call him.’

With guilty pleasure at every excuse to postpone the subway torture, he went back to his desk but it was too late. The embassy staff had gone home.

The next day was a Wednesday and the weather was worse than ever. The morning paper had a late listing of a missing twenty-five year old housemaid from a place called Räng which seemed to be in the south of Sweden. She had not returned after her vacation.

During the morning registered copies of Kollberg's description and the retouched photographs were sent to the police in southern Sweden and to a certain Detective Lieutenant Elmer B. Kafka, Homicide Squad, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.

After lunch Martin Beck felt that the lymph glands in his neck were beginning to swell and by the time he got home that evening it was hard for him to swallow.

‘Tomorrow the National Police can manage without you, I've decided,’ said his wife.

He opened his mouth to answer her but looked at the children and closed it again without saying anything.

It didn't take her long to take advantage of her triumph.

‘Your nose is completely stopped up. You're gasping for breath like a fish out of water.’

He put down his knife and fork, mumbled ‘thanks for dinner’, and absorbed himself with his rigging problem. Gradually, this activity calmed him completely. He worked slowly and methodically on the model ship and had no unpleasant thoughts. If he actually heard the noise from the television in the next room, it didn't register. After a while his daughter stood on the threshold with a sullen look and traces of bubblegum on her chin.

‘Some guy's on the phone. Wouldn't you know, right in the middle of Perry Mason’

Damn it, he would have to have the telephone moved. Damn it, he would have to start getting involved in his children's upbringing. Damn it, what does one say to a child who is thirteen years old and loves the Beatles and is already developed?

He walked into the living room as if he had to excuse his existence and cast a sheepish look at the great defence lawyer's worn out dogface which filled the television screen. He picked up the telephone and took it out into the hall with him.

‘Hi,’ said Ahlberg. ‘I think I've found something.’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you remember that we spoke about the canal boats which pass here in the summer at twelve-thirty and at four o'clock during the day?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have tried to check up on the small boats and the freight traffic this week. It's almost impossible to do with all the boats that go by. But an hour ago one of the boys on the regular police staff suddenly said that he saw a passenger boat go past Platen's moat in a westerly direction in the middle of the night some time last summer. He didn't know when and he hadn't thought about it until now, when I asked him. He had been doing some special duty in that area for several nights. It seems completely unbelievable but he swore that it was true. He went on vacation the next day and after that he forgot about it.’

‘Did he recognize the boat?’

‘No, but wait. I called Gothenburg and spoke to a few men in the shipping office. One of them said that it certainly could be true. He thought the boat was named Diana and gave me the captain's address.’

A short pause followed. Martin Beck could hear that Ahlberg had struck a match.

‘I got hold of the captain. He said he certainly did remember although he would rather have forgotten it. First they had to stop at Hävringe for three hours because of heavy fog and then a steam pipe in the motor had broken …’

‘Engine.’

‘What did you say?’

‘In the engine. Not the motor.’

‘Oh yes, but in any case they had to stay over more than eight hours in Söderköping for repairs. That means that they were nearly twelve hours late and passed Borenshult after midnight. They didn't stop either in Motala or Vadstena but went directly on to Gothenburg.’

‘When did this happen? Which day?’

‘The second trip after midsummer, the captain said. In other words, the night before the fifth.’

Neither of them said anything for at least ten seconds. Then Ahlberg said:

‘Four days before we found her. I called the shipping office guy again and checked out the time. He wondered what it was all about and I asked him if everyone on board had reached Gothenburg in good order. He said, “Why shouldn't they have?” and I answered that I didn't really know. He must have thought that I was out of my mind.’

It was quiet again.

‘Do you think it means anything?’ Ahlberg said finally.

‘I don't know,’ answered Martin Beck. ‘Maybe. You've done a fine job in any event.’

‘If everyone who went on board arrived in Gothenburg, then it doesn't mean very much.’

His voice was a strange mixture of disappointment and modest triumph.

‘We have to check out all the information,’ Ahlberg said.

‘Naturally.’

‘So long.’

‘So long. I'll call you.’

Martin Beck remained standing a while with his hand on the telephone. Then he wrinkled his forehead and went through the living room like a sleepwalker. He closed the door behind him carefully and sat down in front of the model ship, lifted his right hand to make an adjustment on the mast, but dropped it immediately.

He sat there for another hour until his wife came in and made him go to bed.

8

‘No one could say that you look particularly well,’ said Kollberg. Martin Beck felt anything but well. He had a cold, and a sore throat, his ears hurt him and his chest felt miserable. The cold had, according to schedule, entered its worst phase. Even so, he had deliberately defied both the cold and the home front by spending the day in his office. First of all he had fled from the suffocating care which would have enveloped him had he remained in bed. Since the children had begun to grow up, Martin Beck's wife had adopted the role of home nurse with bubbling eagerness and almost manic determination. For her, his repeated bouts of colds and flu were on a par with birthdays and major holidays.

In addition, for some reason he didn't have the conscience to stay home.

‘Why are you hanging around here if you aren't well?’ said Kollberg.

‘There's nothing the matter with me.’

‘Don't think so much about that case. It isn't the first time we have failed. It won't be the last either. You know that just as well as I do. We won't be any the better or the worse for it.’

‘It isn't just the case that I'm thinking about.’

‘Don't brood. It isn't good for the morale.’

‘The morale?’

‘Yes, think what a lot of nonsense one can figure out with plenty of time. Brooding is the mother of ineffectiveness.’

After saying this Kollberg left.

It had been an uneventful and dreary day, full of sneezing and spitting and dull routine. He had called Motala twice, mostly to cheer up Ahlberg, who in the light of day had decided that his discovery wasn't worth very much as long as it couldn't be connected with the corpse at the locks.

‘I suspect that it is easy to overestimate certain things when you've been working like a dog for so long without results.’

Ahlberg had sounded crushed and regretful. It was almost heartbreaking.

The girl who had disappeared from Räng was still missing. That didn't worry him. She was 5 feet, 1 inch tall, had blonde hair and a Bardot hair style.

At five o'clock he took a taxi home but got out at the subway station and walked the last bit in order to avoid the devastating economic argument which undoubtedly would have followed if his wife had happened to see him get out of a taxi.

He couldn't eat anything but drank a cup of camomile tea. ‘For safety's sake, so that he'd get a stomach ache too,’ Martin Beck thought. Then he went and lay down and fell asleep immediately.

The next morning he felt a little better. He ate a biscuit and drank with stoic calm the cup of scalding hot honey water which his wife had placed in front of him. The discussion about his health and the unreasonable demands that the government placed on its employees dragged on and by the time he arrived at his office at Kristineberg, it was already a quarter past ten.

There was a cable on his desk.

One minute later Martin Beck entered his chief's office without knocking even though the ‘Don't Disturb’ red light was on. This was the first time in eight years he had ever done this.

The ever-present Kollberg and Commissioner Hammar were leaning against the edge of the desk studying a blueprint of an apartment. They both looked at him with amazement.

‘I got a cable from Kafka.’

‘That's a hell of a way to start a work day,’ said Kollberg.

‘That's his name. The detective in Lincoln, in America. He's identified the woman in Motala.’

‘Can he do that by cable?’ asked Hammar.

‘It seems so.’

He put the cable on the desk. All three of them read the text.

THAT'S OUR GIRL ALL RIGHT. ROSEANNA MCGRAW, 27, LIBRARIAN. EXCHANGE OF FURTHER INFORMATION NECESSARY AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

KAFKA, HOMICIDE

‘Roseanna McGraw,’ said Hammar. ‘Librarian. That's one you never thought of.’

‘I had another theory,’ said Kollberg. ‘I thought she was from Mjölby. Where's Lincoln?’

‘In Nebraska, somewhere in the middle of the country,’ said Martin Beck. ‘I think.’

Hammar read through the cable one more time.

‘We had better get going again then,’ he said. ‘This doesn't say particularly much.’

‘Quite enough for us,’ said Kollberg. ‘We aren't spoiled.’

‘Well,’ said Hammar calmly. ‘You and I ought to clear up what we're working on first.’

Martin Beck went back to his office, sat down for a moment and massaged his hairline with his fingertips. The first surprised feeling of progress had somehow disappeared. It had taken three months to come up with information that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred you had free from the beginning. All the real work remained to be done.

The embassy people and the County Police Superintendent could wait. He picked up the telephone and dialled the area code for Motala.

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