The Locked Room (31 page)

'Yes. May I come in?'

She looked at him. 'Okay.' She turned her back. He followed her into the lobby. After two steps she halted and stood there, her head bowed. She went back to the door and unlocked it - then changed her mind and locked it again. Finally she went ahead into the kitchen.

'I've bought a couple of bottles of wine.'

'Put them in the cupboard,' she said, sitting down at the kitchen table. On it lay two open books, some papers, a pen, and a pink eraser. He took his bottles out of the bag and put them away.

"With a sideways glance she said, annoyed: 'What d'you want to go and buy such expensive wine for?'

He sat down opposite her. Looking him straight in the eyes, she said: 'Svärd, eh?'

'No,' he said at once. "Though I'm using him as a pretext.'

'Do you have to have a pretext?'

'Yes, I do.'

'Okay,' she said. 'Then we'll make some tea.' She pushed aside her books and began banging about with her pots and pans. 'Actually I'd intended to study this evening,' she said. 'But it doesn't matter. It's so damn miserable being on one's own. Had dinner?'

'No.'

'Good. Then I'll make us something.' She stood with her legs apart, one hand on her hip, with the other scratching her neck. 'Rice,' she said. 'That'll do fine. I'll make some rice, and then we can mix it up with something to make it taste better.' 'Sure, that sounds fine.'

'It'll take a little while, though. Twenty minutes maybe. We'll have tea first.' She set out some cups, poured the tea, and sat down. Holding the cup in her broad hands she blew on her tea, mean¬while peering at him over the rim - still a trifle glum.

'By the way, you were right about Svärd. He had money in the bank. Quite a lot'

'Mmm,' she said.

'Someone was paying him seven hundred and fifty kronor a month. Have you any idea who that could have been?' 'No. He didn't know anyone, did he?' ‘Why did he move out?'

She shrugged her shoulders. 'The only explanation I can think of is that he didn't like it here. He was an odd bloke. Several times he complained of my not locking the street door earlier in the evenings. I reckon he thought the whole house existed only for him.'

‘Yes, that’s about right'

She sat silent a long while. Then she said: 'What's right? Is there anything interesting about Svärd?'

'Whether you'll think it's interesting or not I can't tell,' said Martin Beck. 'Someone must have shot him.'

'Strange,' she said. 'Tell me.' Again she began busying herself with her saucepans, but at the same time she listened carefully to what he had to tell her. From time to time, though she didn't inter¬rupt, she frowned. When he'd finished, she burst into uproarious laughter. 'Marvellous!' she said. 'Don't you ever read detective stories?'

'No.'

'I read tons of them. Anything. And forget most of it as soon as I've finished. But that's a classic. A room locked on the inside

• there are some major studies of just that kind of thing. I read one not long ago. Wait a moment - and get out some bowls. Take the soya from the shelf. Lay the table nicely.'
  

He did his best. She was out of the room for a few minutes. When she came back she had some kind of a magazine in her hand. Laying it open beside her bowl, she began spooning out food. 'Eat,' she commanded. 'While it's hot'

'Tasty,' he said.

'Mmmm,' she said. 'Success again.' She gulped down a sizeable portion, then looked into the magazine and said: 'Listen to this. "The Locked Room: A Study". It lists three possibilities, A, B, and C.

A: The crime has been committed in a locked room, which is really and truly locked and from which the murderer has disap¬peared, since there's no murderer inside it.

B: The crime has been committed inside a room, which only seems to be hermetically closed and from which there is some more-or-less ingenious way of getting out

C: The crime has been committed by a murderer who stays inside, hidden.'

She spooned up some more food. 'Category C seems to be out of the question,' she said. 'No one can remain hidden for two months with only half a can of cat food to live on. But there are lots of subsections. For example, A5: Murder with the help of animals. Or B2: Someone has gained access through the hinge side of the door, leaving lock and bolt intact, after which the hinge is again screwed back into place.'

'Who wrote it?'

She looked. 'Göran Sundholm, his name is. He quotes others too. A7 isn't so bad either: Murder by illusion, by erroneous sequence in time. A good variant is A9: The victim is dealt the deathblow somewhere else, whereupon he goes to the room in question and locks himself in before dying. Read it for yourself.'

She handed him the magazine. Martin Beck glanced through it then laid it aside.

'Who's doing the dishes?' she asked.

He got up and began clearing the table.

She lifted up her legs and sat with her heels on the seat of her chair and her arms around her knees. 'After all, you're the detec¬tive,' she said. 'It ought to amuse you when something out of the ordinary happens. Do you think it was the murderer who called the hospital?'

'Don't know.'

'Seems likely to me.' She shrugged. 'Of course the whole thing's as simple as can be,' she said.

'Probably.' He heard someone at the front door: but the bell didn't ring, nor did she react. There was a system here that worked. If she wanted to be in peace, she locked herself in. If anyone had an important errand, he rang. All this, however, called for confi¬dence in one's neighbours. Martin Beck sat down.

'Perhaps we can have a taste of that expensive wine,' she said.

And it tasted good. Neither of them said anything for a long while.

'How can you stand it, being a policeman?' 'Oh, I manage...'

'We can talk about it some other time.'

'They're thinking of promoting me to commissioner.'

'And you don't want it,' she declared.

Somewhat later she asked: 'What kind of music d'you like? I've every sort you can think of.'

They went into the room with the record player and the assort¬ment of armchairs. She played something.

'Take off your jacket, dammit,' she said. 'And your shoes.' She had opened the second botde, but this time they drank slowly.

'You seemed annoyed when I turned up,' he said.

'Yes and no.'

Not a word more. The way she had behaved then had meant something. That she wasn't an easy lay. She saw he'd understood; and he knew she saw it Martin Beck took a sip of his wine. Just now he was feeling unashamedly happy. He peeked at her where she sat with a downcast expression on her face and her elbows on the low table.

'Like to do a jigsaw puzzle?' she said.

'I've got a good one at home,' he said. 'The old Queen Elizabeth.’

That was true. He'd bought it a couple of years ago but had never given it a thought since.

'Bring it next time you come,' she said. Quickly and suddenly she changed her posture. Sitting with her legs crossed and her chin on her hands, she said: 'Perhaps I should inform you that for the time being I'm no sort of a lay.'

He threw her a quick glance, and she went on: 'You know how it is with women - infections and such.'

Martin Beck nodded.

'My sex life is without interest,' she said. 'And yours?'

'Non-existent'

'That's bad,' she said.

She changed the record and they drank some more.

He yawned.

‘You're tired,' she said.

He said nothing.

'But you don't want to go home. Okay then, don't go home.'

And then: 'I think I'll try and study a bit longer anyway. And I don't like this damn shift. Tight and silly.'

She peeled off her clothes and flung them in a heap on the floor. Then she put on a dark-red flannel nightgown, which reached down to her feet and looked very odd in every way.

As she changed he observed her, interested.

Naked, she looked exactly as he'd imagined. Firm-bodied, strong, and well-built. Fair hair. Bulging stomach, flat rounded breasts. Rather large light-brown nipples.

He didn't think: No scars, blemishes, or other identifying marks.

‘Why don't you lie down awhile?' she said. 'You look dead beat.'

Martin Beck obeyed. He really did feel beat and dropped off almost at once. The last thing he saw was her sitting at the table, her blonde head sunk over her books.

When he opened his eyes she was bending over him, saying: 'Wake up now. It's twelve o'clock. I'm as hungry as can be. Go down and lock the street door, will you, while I put a sandwich in the oven. The key's hanging on the left side of the door - on a bit of green string.'

Malmström and Mohrén robbed the bank on Friday, 14th July. At 2.45 exactly they marched in through the doors wearing Donald Duck masks, rubber gloves, and orange overalls.

In their hands they held high-calibre pistols, and Mohrén imme¬diately, fired a shot at the ceiling. Then, so that all present should understand what was happening, he shouted in very broken Swedish: 'This is a bank robbery!'

Hauser and Hoff were wearing their usual outdoor clothes and enormous black hoods with holes for their eyes. Hauser was also equipped with a Mauser and Hoff with the sawn-off Maritza shotgun. They stood at the doors to keep open their retreat to the getaway cars.

Hoff let the muzzle of the shotgun sway to and fro, to warn outsiders away, while Hauser took up his planned tactical posi¬tion in such a way as to be able to fire either into the bank or out at the pavement.

Meanwhile Malmström and Mohrén began systematically emptying all the cash drawers.

Never had anything worked so perfectly or gone so completely according to plan.

Five minutes earlier an old car had exploded outside a garage on Rosenlundsgatan, in the south of the city. Immediately after the explosion, someone had fired a series of shots in various direc¬tions, and a house had burst into flames. Enterpriser A, who had staged these spectacular events, ran off through an alley to the next street, where he got into his car and drove home.

One minute later a stolen furniture lorry backed obliquely into the driveway of the central police building and broke down. Its rear door opened and scores of boxes of oil-soaked cotton came spewing out and immediately caught fire.

Meanwhile, Enterpriser B walked calmly away, apparentiy unconcerned at the chaos he'd caused.

Yes, everything went off precisely as planned. Every detail was carried out oh the dot, according to schedule.

From the point of view of the police, too, everything worked out more or less as they had expected. Everything happened as had been foreseen, and at the proper time.

With one little hitch.

Malmström and Mohrén didn't rob a bank in Stockholm. They robbed a bank four hundred miles away, in Malmö.

Per Månsson of the Malmd CID was sitting in his office drinking coffee. He had a view out over the car park, and when the explo¬sion came and great clouds of smoke began rolling in from the driveway, his Danish pastry stuck in his throat At the same moment Benny Skacke, a young hopeful who, despite his careerist ambitions, had still risen no further than detective sergeant, jerked open his door and shouted that the catastrophe alarm had gone off. A bomb had exploded in Rosenlundsgatan, where it was also said that wild firing was going on and at least one building was in flames.

Though Skacke had been living in Malmö for three and a half years, he had never so much as heard of Rosenlundsgatan and did not know its whereabouts. But Per Månsson did. He knew this town inside out, and it struck him as exceedingly peculiar that such a bombing should occur in that forgotten street in the peaceful district called Sofielund.

As it turned out, neither he nor any other policeman was given much opportunity for this sort of musing. At the same time as all available personnel were directed southwards, the police headquarters themselves seemed to be threatened. It took some time before they realized that the whole tactical reserve had quite simply been shut up inside the car park. Many of them sped over to Rosenlundsgatan by taxi or in private cars that had no radio.

Månsson, for his part, got there at 3.07. By then the city fire department, which moved fast, had put out the fire. Obviously the whole thing was a bluff and had only caused insignificant damage to an empty garage. By this time large numbers of police were in the area, but apart from a badly damaged old car they found nothing remarkable. Eight minutes later a motorcycle policeman picked up a radio message that a city-centre bank was being robbed.

By that time Malmström and Mohrén had already left Malmö. They had been seen driving away from the bank in a blue Fiat but Had not been followed. Five minutes later they had separated and changed over to two other cars.

When, after a while, the police had managed to clear up the mess in their own car park and rid themselves of the furniture lorry and the troublesome boxes, roadblocks were put up at all exits to the city. The alarm went out "nationwide, and a search began for the getaway car.

Three days later it was found in a shed near the docks, together with the overalls, Donald Duck masks, rubber gloves, pistols, and various other accoutrements.

Hauser and Hoff did a good job for the lush fees that had been deposited in their wives' current accounts. After Malmström and Mohrén had vanished, they kept guard over the bank for nearly ten minutes and indeed didn't leave until the first policemen hove into view. As it happened, it was two constables walking their beat who first chanced upon the bank. Their experience of anything except school kids who drank beer in public places was almost nil. And their only contribution was to yell themselves hoarse into their walkie-talkies. By that time there was hardly a policeman in all Malmö who wasn't yelling into a walkie-talkie, and almost no one who was listening.

Hauser even got clean away, something that no one, least of all himself, had really expected. Shortly afterwards he left Sweden via Helsingborg and Helsingor without even being accosted.

Hoff, however, was caught - owing to a peculiar oversight At 3.55 he boarded the ferry Malmöhus wearing a grey suit, a white shirt a tie, and a black Ku Klux Klan hood. A trifle absent-minded, he'd forgotten to take it off. The police and the customs men, imagining some costume party was being held on board, let him pass. But the crew of the vessel felt there was something strange about him, and on arrival at Frihavnen he was handed over to an elderly, unarmed Danish policeman. He almost dropped his beer bottle in amazement when his prisoner affably brought out two loaded pistols, a bayonet, and a primed hand grenade and laid them all down on the table in a little room at the Frihavnen station. The Dane, however, soon pulled himself together; there was some¬thing peculiarly agreeable about arresting a prisoner with such a nice name. 'Hoff, in Danish, means 'restaurant'.