Maj Sjowall - The Abominable Man

Martin Beck's opinion of Rönn was none too high, a circumstance the latter was well aware of and which gave him an inferiority complex. Martin Beck, for his part, recognized as his own failing a difficulty in establishing contact and thus became inhibited himself.

Rönn had produced the beloved old murder kit, secured a number of fingerprints, and had plastic covers placed over several pieces of evidence in the room and on the ground outside, thereby ensuring that details that might prove valuable later on would not be effaced by natural causes or destroyed by carelessness. These pieces of evidence were mostly footprints.

Martin Beck had a cold, as usual at this time of year. He snuffled and blew his nose and coughed and hacked and Rönn didn't react. He did not, as a matter of fact, even say ‘Bless you.’ This small civility was apparently not a part of his upbringing, nor of his vocabulary. And if he thought anything, he kept it to himself.

There was no tacit communication between them and Martin Beck felt himself called upon to break the silence.

‘Doesn't this whole ward seem a little old-fashioned?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Rönn said. ‘It's supposed to be vacated the day after tomorrow and modernized or turned into something else. The patients are going to be moved to new wards in the central building.’

Martin Beck's thoughts moved promptly off in new directions.

‘I wonder what he used,’ he said a while later, mostly to himself. ‘Maybe a machete or a samurai sword.’

‘Neither one,’ said Rönn, who had just come into the room. ‘We've found the weapon. It's lying outside, about twelve feet from the window.’

They went outside and looked.

In the cold white light of a spot lay a broad-bladed cutting tool.

‘A bayonet,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Yes. Exactly. For a Mauser carbine.’

The six-millimetre carbine had been a common military weapon, used mostly by the artillery and cavalry. Martin Beck had one himself when he did his national service. The weapon had probably gone out of use by now and been struck from the quartermaster's rolls.

The blade was entirely covered with clotted blood.

‘Can you get fingerprints from that grooved handle?’

Rönn shrugged his shoulders.

Every word had to be dragged from him, if not by force then by verbal pressure.

‘You're letting it lie there until it gets light?’

‘Yes,’ Rönn said. ‘Seems like a good idea.’

‘I'd very much like to talk to Nyman's family as soon as possible. Do you think we could get his wife out of bed at this hour?’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Rönn without conviction.

‘We have to start somewhere. Are you coming along?’ Rönn mumbled something.

‘What'd you say?’ said Martin Beck and blew his nose. ‘Got to get a photographer out here,’ Rönn said. ‘Yeah.’ But he didn't sound at all as if he cared.

Rönn walked out to the car and got into the driver's seat to wait for Martin Beck, who'd taken upon himself the unpleasant task of calling the widow.

‘How much did you tell her?’ he asked when Martin Beck had climbed in beside him.

‘Only that he's dead. He was apparently seriously ill, so maybe it didn't come as such a surprise. But of course now she's wondering what we've got to do with it.’

‘How did she sound? Shocked?’

‘Yes, of course. She was going to jump in a taxi and come straight over to the hospital. There's a doctor talking to her now. I hope he manages to convince her to wait at home.’

‘Yes. If she saw him now she'd really get a shock. It's bad enough having to tell her about it.’

Rönn drove north on Dalagatan towards Odengatan. Outside the Eastman Institute stood a black Volkswagen. Rönn nodded towards it.

‘Not bad enough he parks in a no-parking zone, he's halfway up on the pavement too. Lucky for him we're not from Traffic.’

‘On top of which he must have been drunk to park like that,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Or she,’ Rönn said. ‘It must be a woman. Women and cars …’

‘Typical stereotyped thinking,’ said Martin Beck. ‘If my daughter could hear you now you'd be in for a real lecture.’

The car swung right on Odengatan and drove on past Gustav Vasa Church and Odenplan. At the taxi station there were two cabs with their FREE signs lit, and at the traffic lights outside the city library there was a yellow street-cleaning machine with a blinking orange light on its roof, waiting for the light to turn green.

Martin Beck and Rönn drove on in silence. They turned on to Sveavägen and passed the street-sweeper as it rumbled around the corner. At the School of Economics they took a left on to Kungstensgatan.

‘Damn it to hell,’ said Martin Beck suddenly with emphasis.

‘Yeah,’ said Rönn.

Then it was quiet again in the car. When they'd crossed Birger Jarlsgatan, Rönn slowed down and started hunting for the number. A door to a block of flats across from the Citizens School opened and a young man stuck out his head and looked in their direction. He held the door open while they parked the car and crossed the street.

When they reached the doorway they saw that the boy was younger than he'd looked from a distance. He was almost as tall as Martin Beck, but looked to be fifteen years old at the most.

‘My name's Stefan,’ he said. ‘Mother's waiting upstairs.’

They followed him up the stairs to the second floor, where a door stood ajar. The boy showed them through the front hall and into the living room.

‘I'll get Mother,’ he mumbled and disappeared into the hall.

Martin Beck and Rönn remained standing in the middle of the room and looked around. It was very neat. One side was taken up by a suite of furniture that seemed to date from the 1940s and consisted of a sofa, three matching easy chairs in varnished blond wood and flowered cretonne upholstery, and an oval table of the same light wood. A white lace cloth lay on the table, and in the middle of the cloth was a large crystal vase of red tulips. The two windows looked out on the street, and behind the white lace curtains stood rows of well-tended potted plants. The wall at one end of the room was covered by a bookcase in gleaming mahogany, half filled with leather-bound books, half with souvenirs and knick-knacks. Small polished tables with pieces of silver and crystal stood here and there against the walls. A black piano with the lid closed over the keyboard completed the list of furniture. Framed portraits of the family stood lined up on the piano. Several still lifes and landscapes in wide ornate gold frames hung on the walls. A crystal chandelier burned in the middle of the room, and a wine-red Oriental rug lay beneath their feet.

Martin Beck took in the various details of the room as he listened to the footsteps approaching in the hall. Rönn had walked up to the bookcase and was suspiciously eyeing a brass reindeer-bell, one side of which was adorned with a brightly coloured picture of a mountain birch, a reindeer and a Lapp, plus the word ARJEPLOG in ornate red letters.

Mrs Nyman came into the room with her son. She was wearing a black wool dress, black shoes and stockings, and held a small white handkerchief clenched in one hand. She had been crying.

Martin Beck and Rönn introduced themselves. She didn't look as if she'd ever heard of them.

‘But please sit down,’ she said, and took a seat in one of the flowered chairs.

When the two policemen had seated themselves she looked at them with despair in her eyes.

‘What is it that's actually happened?’ she asked in a voice that was much too shrill.

Rönn took out his handkerchief and began to polish his florid nose, thoroughly and at length. But Martin Beck hadn't expected any help from that quarter.