Colin Dexter - The Fire Engine That Disappeared

‘I’m not so old and decrepit that I can’t even use my legs,’ she said. ‘Sit yourself down instead. Shall we have sherry or coffee?’

He hung up his hat and coat and sat down.

‘Whichever you like,’ he said.

‘I’ll make coffee,’ she said. ‘Then I can save the sherry and offer some to the old ladies and boast about my nice son. One has to save up the cheerful subjects.’

Martin Beck sat in silence, watching as she switched on the electric hotplate and measured out the water and coffee. She was small and fragile and seemed to grow smaller each time he saw her.

‘Is it boring for you here, Mother?’

‘Me? I’m never bored.’

The reply came much too quickly and glibly for him to believe her. Before sitting down, she put the coffee pot on the hotplate and the vase of flowers on the table.

‘Don’t you worry about me,’ she said. ‘I’ve got such a lot to do. I read and talk to the other old girls, and I knit. Sometimes I go into town and just look, though it’s awful the way they’re pulling everything down. Did you see that the building your father’s business was in has been demolished?’

Martin Beck nodded. His father had had a small transport business in Klara and where it had once been, there was now a shopping centre of glass and concrete. He looked at the photograph of his father that stood on the chest of drawers by her bed. The picture had been taken in the mid-twenties, when he himself had been only a few years old and his father had still been a young man with clear eyes, glossy hair with a side-parting, and a stubborn chin. It was said that Martin Beck resembled his father. He himself had never been able to see the likeness, and should there be any, then it was limited to physical appearance. He remembered his father as a straightforward, cheerful man who was generally liked and who laughed and joked easily. Martin Beck would have described himself as a shy and rather dull person. At the time the photograph had been taken, his father had been a construction worker, but a few years later the depression came and he was unemployed for a couple of years. Martin Beck reckoned that his mother had never really got over those years of poverty and anxiety; although they were much better off later on, she had never stopped worrying about money. She still could not bring herself to buy anything new if it were not absolutely necessary, and both her clothes and the few bits of furniture she had brought with her from her old home were worn by the years.

Martin Beck tried to give her money now and again and at regular intervals he offered to pay the bill at the home, but she was proud and obstinate and wished to be independent.

When the coffee had boiled, he brought the pot over and let his mother pour it. She had always been solicitous towards her son and when he had been a boy she had never even allowed him to help with the dishes or make his own bed. He had not realized how misdirected her thoughtfulness had been until he had discovered how clumsy he was when it came to the simplest domestic chore.

Martin Beck watched his mother with amusement as she popped a sugar lump into her mouth before taking a sip of the coffee. He had never seen her drinking coffee ‘on the lump’ before. She caught his eye and said:

‘Ah well, you can take a few liberties when you’re as old as I am.’

She put down her cup and leaned back, her thin freckled hands loosely clasped in her lap.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Tell me how things are with my grandchildren.’

Nowadays, Martin Beck was always careful to express himself in nothing but positive terms when he talked to his mother about his children, as she considered her grandchildren cleverer, more brilliant and more beautiful than any other children. She often complained that he did not appreciate their merits and she had even accused him of being an unsympathetic and harsh father. He himself thought he was able to regard his children in a quite sober light and he presumed they were much like any other children. His contact with sixteen-year-old Ingrid was best; a lively, intelligent girl who found things easy at school and was a good mixer. Rolf would soon be thirteen and was more of a problem. He was lazy and introverted, totally uninterested in anything to do with school and did not seem to have any other special interests or talents either. Martin Beck was concerned about his son’s inertia, but hoped it was just his age and that the boy would overcome his lethargy. As he could not find anything positive to say about Rolf at the moment and as his mother would not have believed him if he had told her the truth, he avoided the subject. When he had told her about Ingrid’s latest progress at school, his mother said quite unexpectedly:

‘Rolf’s not going into the police force when he leaves school, is he?’

‘I don’t think so. Anyhow, he’s hardly thirteen. It’s a little soon to begin worrying about that sort of thing.’

‘Because if he wants to, you must stop him,’ she said. ‘I’ve never understood why you were so stubborn about becoming a policeman. Nowadays it must be an even more awful profession than it was when you first began. Why did you join the police force, anyway, Martin?’

Martin Beck stared at her in astonishment. It was true she had been against his choice of profession at the time, twenty-four years ago, but it surprised him that she brought the subject up now. He had become a chief inspector in the Murder Squad less than a year ago and his conditions of work were completely different from those that had existed when he had been a young constable.

He leaned forward and patted her hand.

‘I am all right now, Mother,’ he said. ‘Nowadays, I mostly sit at a desk. But of course, I’ve often asked myself the same question.’

It was true. He had often asked himself why he had become a policeman.

Naturally he could have replied that at the time, during the war years, it was a good way of avoiding military service. After a two-year deferment because of bad lungs, he had been declared fit and no longer exempt, which was quite an important reason. In 1944 conscientious objectors were not tolerated. Many of those who had evaded military service in the way he had, had since changed occupation, but he himself had been promoted over the years to chief inspector. That ought to mean that he was a good policeman, but he was not so sure. There were several instances of senior posts in the police being held by less able policemen. He was not even certain he wanted to be good policeman, if that involved being a dutiful person who never deviated one iota from the regulations. He remembered something Lennart Kollberg had once said a long time ago. ‘There are lots of good cops around. Stupid guys who are good cops. Inflexible, limited, tough, self-satisfied types who are all good cops. It would be better if there were a few more good guys who were cops.’

His mother came out with him, and they walked together in the park a bit. The slushy snow made it difficult to walk and the icy wind rattled round the branches of the tall bare trees. After they had slipped about for ten minutes, he accompanied her back to the porch and kissed her on the cheek. He turned around on his way down the slope and saw her standing there waving by the entrance. Small and shrunken and grey.

He took the metro back to the South police station in Västberga Allé.

On the way to his office, he glanced into Kollberg’s room. Kollberg was an inspector as well as Martin Beck’s assistant and best friend. The room was empty. He glanced at his wristwatch. It was half-past one. It was Thursday. It required no powers of deduction to work out where Kollberg was. For a brief moment Martin Beck even considered joining him down there with his pea soup, but then he thought of his stomach and desisted. It was already disturbed by the far too numerous cups of coffee his mother had pressed on him.