Murder at the Savoy

MAJ SJÖWALL AND

PER WAHLÖÖ

Murder at the Savoy

Translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors' imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This ebook first published by Harper Perennial in 2009

This 4th Estate edition published in 2016

This translation first published by Random House Inc, New York, in 1971

Originally published in Sweden by P. A. Norstedt & Söners Forlag

Copyright text © Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö 1970

Copyright introduction © Arne Dahl 2009

Cover photograph © Shutterstock

PS Section © Richard Shephard 2007

PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007242962

Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007323432

Version: 2018-05-18

From the reviews of the Martin Beck series:

‘First class’

Daily Telegraph

‘One of the most authentic, gripping and profound collections of police procedural ever accomplished’

MICHAEL CONNELLY

‘Hauntingly effective storytelling’

New York Times

‘There's just no question about it: the reigning King and Queen of mystery fiction are Maj Sjöwall and her husband Per Wahlöö’

The National Observer

‘Sjöwall/Wahlöö are the best writers of police procedural in the world’

Birmingham Post

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

About the Authors

Other Books By

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

It’s unusual to be able to point to the actual parents of a literary tradition. It’s even more unusual when we speak of an entire genre. But that is actually the case for the Swedish crime fiction genre that is still the strongest today: the police procedural that has a perspective of social criticism. Before Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö appeared on the scene, the Swedish detective novel looked completely different. With them all the naïveté of the classic murder mystery was irrevocably lost.

Almost all Swedish authors who write police procedurals have at one time or another been hailed as successors to Sjöwall and Wahlöö. In my case, it has happened rather more often than for other writers. And I have never objected. When people ask me about my role models, I usually say: Sjöwall and Wahlöö. This is the honest truth, even though in life I’m generally not particularly dependent on role models – whether I sink or swim, I believe in going my own way. It’s always better for an author to speak in his own voice.

Writers of detective novels are almost always expected to say that they don’t read detective novels. And I have tended to live up to these expectations. When I took my first stumbling steps towards writing crime fiction nearly a decade ago, I could in all honesty say: I don’t read detective novels.

But it wasn’t always like that. In fact, I readily admit that the very opposite was true. The books that I read as an adolescent were to an absurdly high degree based on suspense fiction: nail-biting cliffhangers, action stories, classic murder mysteries, spy thrillers – you name it. I read absolutely everything that contained even the slightest hint of suspense.

You might well ask when the adolescent mind is at its most receptive, at which age in particular and under which mental conditions the most indelible impressions are made. Fifteen is a strong candidate. It could be deemed the most manic-depressive age in anyone’s life. On the one hand, life seems an almost incessant torment; on the other hand, you are starting to realize who you are and, in spite of everything, what possibilities life has to offer.

Sjöwall and Wahlöö came into my life after I had actually given up all those childish suspense books. And so I was ready for completely different literary impressions (precociously ready, that is). But when those two authors appeared, not only did they make use of all the various suspense traditions in which I had immersed myself, they also added two elements that I had been missing up until then: humour and a critical view of contemporary society.

And one more thing: an incredibly nuanced and meticulously chiselled use of language.

It’s always risky to return to a reading experience that had once proved so decisive in your life. Disappointment is the rule; relief is the exception. Yet I feel no disappointment when I re-read the ten books that make up the series called The Story of a Crime. I may feel a bit surprised by the brief format and the relatively simple plots – and perhaps also by the unrelenting plight of Martin Beck’s weary attitude towards life. And yet – what I really feel is relief. Relief that the books are still so good. That they actually are good role models. And for that I will always be grateful.

The books in the series known collectively as The Story of a Crime were published in Sweden between 1965 and 1975, with one book appearing each year except in 1973. But it was in that year that Per Wahlöö said in an interview: ‘In the beginning we tried to keep a low profile in order to reach an audience, but the socialist elements have undoubtedly become more prominent.’ As early as 1966 Wahlöö stated their goal with great clarity: ‘The basic idea is, via one long novel of approximately 3,000 pages – divided into ten freestanding parts, or chapters, if you will – to present a cross-section of a society that possesses a specific structure and to analyze criminality as a social function as well as its relationship to both society and the various types of moral lifestyles that encompass the society in question.’

In other words: literature emblematic of the 1968 generation. It ranges from the period of dawning political consciousness in 1965 up to what might be considered the most dogmatic of years, 1975. It was supposed to be like much of the fiction coming out of 1968: so politically doctrinaire that all forms of literary tension were lost and the whole thing fell flat.

The remarkable thing was that this didn’t happen. Not even in the last novel, The Terrorists, which was more or less completed by cutting and pasting it together after Wahlöö’s death. This novel is truly ideological down to the smallest detail. The final scene is significant. Martin Beck and his new lover, Rhea, are visiting the home of his former colleague Lennart Kollberg and his wife Gun. Here the entire series is supposed to be summed up, the threads from all ten books drawn together. There is also, in a rudimentary fashion, a political summation of the preceding ten years. But it happens in a relaxed and clear context. The four characters are sitting together playing a game as they chat. The game is called Crossword. One person says a letter of the alphabet and the others have to try to place it in a grid on their piece of paper. Kollberg keeps winning, and they keep starting over. He brings the scene to a close with the words: ‘It’s my turn to start. So I say “x,” “x” as in “Marx”.’

But the point is that the literary creation is never allowed to be subsumed by political proselytizing. The authors never forget the conventions of time and space; they never forget that the novel has to place the characters in a particular setting and that it has to be done with a certain vitality – a vitality that always comes before ideology. Which is what you will discover if you read the books closely.

With the sixth novel, Murder at the Savoy, from 1970, the ideological perspective moves to the forefront. From a purely literary point of view, the book is among the very best in the series – the technical skill of the authors is at its peak, and the humour is most fully developed – and yet the novel is also problematic. Both amazing and problematic.

It’s amazing because the literary creation has never been better. It’s problematic because the book personifies the least appealing side of the leftist politics of 1968. I think that in some ways we can talk about the dehumanizing side of the Left. The extremely predictable depiction of the capitalist circles criticized by the book is unrelenting. The corporate executive who is assassinated at the Savoy in Malmö in the opening chapter is given virtually no redeeming or even human qualities. Although there is a satirical power in the portrayal, it leaves the reader with a bitter aftertaste. So this was what the dehumanizing side of the Left looked like when ideology took precedence over humanism, and when the end was allowed to justify the means.

But if you’re prepared to accept this point of view, Murder at the Savoy makes for thoroughly fascinating reading. The book presents an incomparable picture of a social climate during a critical period in both Swedish and world history – a social climate that was in many ways idiotic and inhumane, and we are still living on the fringes of it today. If you read all ten books in order, you will actually discover that together they do form the story of a crime. An enormous crime.

What was it that Sjöwall and Wahlöö accomplished with their series of books? What was it that struck such a chord in a fifteen-year-old boy that twenty years later it triggered his own production of crime fiction? I think it was the sense of suppressed rage. A fire – but at the same time a strictly disciplined fire. The slowly emerging awareness that rage which is uncontrolled and without direction will fall flat. Yet at the same time, the fire must be present, and it must be preserved.

Maybe it was the desire to find a form for their anger.

Jan Arnald / Arne Dahl

(translated from the Swedish by Tiina Nunnally)

1

The day was hot and stifling, without a breath of air. There had been a haze quivering in the atmosphere, but now the sky was high and clear, its colours shifting from rose to dusky blue. The sun's red disc would soon disappear beyond the island of Ven. The evening breeze, which was already rippling the smooth mirror of the Sound, brought weak puffs of agreeable freshness to the streets of Malmö. With the gentle wind came fumes of the rotting refuse and seaweed that had been washed up on Ribersborg Beach and in through the mouth of the harbour into the canals.

The city doesn't resemble the rest of Sweden to a very great degree, largely because of its location. Malmö is closer to Rome than to the midnight sun, and the lights of the Danish coast twinkle along the horizon. And even if many winters are slushy and windblown, summers are just as often long and warm, filled with the song of the nightingale and scents from the lush vegetation of the expansive parks.

Which is exactly the way it was that fair summer evening early in July 1969. It was also quiet, calm and quite deserted. The tourists weren't noticeable to any extent – they hardly ever are. As for the roaming, unwashed hash-smokers, only the first bands had arrived, and not so many more would show up either, since most of them never get past Copenhagen.

It was rather quiet even in the big hotel across from the railway station near the harbour. A few foreign businessmen were deliberating over their reservations at the reception desk. The cloakroom attendant was reading one of the classics undisturbed in amongst the rails of coats. The dimly lit bar contained only a couple of regular customers speaking in low voices and a barman in a snow-white jacket.

In the large eighteenth-century dining room to the right of the lobby there wasn't much going on either, even if it was somewhat livelier. A few tables were occupied, mostly by people who were sitting alone. The pianist was taking a break. In front of the swinging doors leading to the kitchen stood a waiter, hands behind his back, looking contemplatively out of the big open windows, probably lost in thoughts of the sandy beaches not too far away.

A dinner party of seven, a well-dressed and solemn gathering of varying sexes and ages, was sitting in the back of the dining room. Their table was cluttered with glasses and fancy dishes, surrounded by champagne buckets. The restaurant personnel had discreetly withdrawn, for the host had just risen to speak.

He was a tall man in late middle age, with a dark-blue shantung suit, iron-grey hair and a deep suntan. He spoke calmly and skilfully, modulating his voice in subtly humorous phrases. The other six at the table sat watching him quietly; only one of them was smoking.

Through the open windows came the sounds of passing cars, trains switching tracks at the station across the canal, the largest junction in northern Europe, the abrupt hoarse tooting of a boat from Copenhagen, and somewhere on the bank of the canal a girl giggling.

This was the scene that soft warm Wednesday in July, at approximately eight-thirty in the evening. It's essential to use the expression ‘approximately’, for no one ever managed to pin down the exact time when it happened. On the other hand, what did happen is quite easy to describe.

A man came in through the main entrance, cast a glance at the reception desk with the foreign businessmen and the uniformed attendant, passed the cloakroom and the long narrow lobby outside the bar, and walked into the dining room calmly and resolutely, with steps that weren't notably rapid. There was nothing remarkable about this man so far. No one looked at him; he did not bother to look around either.

He passed the Hammond organ, the grand piano and the buffet with its array of glistening delicacies and continued past the two large pillars supporting the ceiling. With the same resolve he walked directly towards the party in the corner, where the host stood talking with his back turned to him. When the man was about five steps away, he thrust his right hand inside his suit coat. One of the women at the table looked at him, and the speaker half turned his head to see what was distracting her. He gave the approaching man a quick, indifferent glance, and started to turn back towards his guests, without a second's interruption in the comments he was making. At the same instant the newcomer pulled out a steel-blue object with a fluted butt and a long barrel, aimed carefully and shot the speaker in the head. The report was not shattering. It sounded more like the peaceful pop of a rifle in a shooting gallery at a fair.

The bullet struck the speaker just behind the left ear, and he fell forward on to the table, his left cheek in the crenellated mashed potatoes around an exquisite fish casserole à la Frans Suell.

Sticking the weapon into his pocket, the gunman turned sharply to the right, walked the few steps to the nearest open window, placed his left foot on the sill, swung himself over the low window, stepped into the window box outside, hopped down on to the pavement and disappeared.

At the table three windows away a diner in his fifties grew rigid and stared with amazement, a glass of whisky halfway to his mouth. In front of him was a book that he had been pretending to read.

The man with the suntan and the dark-blue shantung suit was not dead.

Stirring, he said, ‘Ow! It hurts.’

Dead people don't usually complain. Besides, it didn't even look as if he were bleeding.

2

Per Månsson was sitting in his bachelor den on Regementsgatan, talking to his wife on the telephone. He was a Detective Inspector with the Malmö police force, and although he was married, he lived as a bachelor five days of the week. For more than ten years he'd spent every free weekend with his wife – an arrangement which had so far satisfied them both.

He cradled the receiver with his left shoulder while he mixed a Gripenberger with his right hand. It was his favourite drink, consisting simply of a jigger of gin, crushed ice and grape juice in a big tumbler.

His wife, who'd been to the movies, was telling him the plot of Gone With the Wind.

It took some time, but Månsson listened patiently, because as soon as she had finished the story he planned to ward off their usual weekend get-together with the excuse that he had to work. Which was a lie.

It was twenty minutes after nine in the evening.

Månsson was sweating in spite of his light clothing – a string vest and chequered shorts. He had closed the balcony door at the beginning of the conversation so that he wouldn't be disturbed by the rumble of traffic from the street. Although the sun had long ago sunk behind the roofs of the buildings across the street, it was very warm in the room.

He stirred his drink with a fork, which he was embarrassed to admit had been either stolen or taken by accident from a restaurant called Översten. Månsson wondered if a person could take a fork by accident and said, ‘Yes, I see. It was Leslie Howard then who … No, huh? Clark Gable? Uh-hmm …’

Five minutes later she'd got to the end. He delivered his white lie and hung up.

The telephone rang. Månsson didn't answer immediately. He was off work and wanted to keep it that way. He slowly drained his Gripenberger. Watching the evening sky darken, he lifted the receiver and answered, ‘Månsson.’

‘This is Nilsson. That was one hell of a long conversation. I've been trying to get you for half an hour.’

Nilsson was an assistant detective, on duty that night at the central police station on Davidshall Square. Månsson sighed.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘What's up?’

‘A man has been shot in the dining room at the Savoy. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to get over there.’

The glass was empty but still cold. Månsson picked it up and rolled it against his forehead with the palm of his hand.

‘Is he dead?’ he asked.

‘Don't know,’ said Nilsson.

‘Can't you send Skacke?’

‘He's off. Impossible to get hold of. I'll keep looking for him. Backlund is there now, but you probably ought to …’

Månsson gave a start and put down the glass.

‘Backlund? Okay, I'll leave right away,’ he said.

He promptly called a taxi, then put the receiver on the table. While dressing, he listened to the rasping voice from the receiver mechanically repeating the words ‘Taxi Central, one moment please’ until his call was finally put through to the operator.

Outside the Savoy Hotel several police cars were carefully parked, and two constables were blocking the entrance from a growing crowd of curious evening strollers jammed together at the bottom of the stairs.

Månsson took in the scene as he paid for the cab, put the receipt in his pocket, observed that one of the constables was being rather brusque and reflected that it wouldn't be long before Malmö's police force had as bad a reputation as their colleagues in Stockholm.

He said nothing, however, only nodded as he walked past the uniformed policemen into the lobby. It was noisy there now. The hotel's entire staff had gathered and were chatting with each other and with some customers streaming out of the grill. Several policemen completed the picture. They seemed at a loss, unfamiliar with the surroundings. Evidently no one had told them how to act or what to expect.

Månsson was a big man in his fifties. He was dressed casually in polyester trousers and sandals, with his shirt out. He took a toothpick from his breast pocket, pulled off the paper wrapper and stuck it in his mouth. As he chewed, he methodically took stock of the situation. The toothpick was American, menthol-flavoured; he'd picked it up on the train ferry Malmöhus, which provides such things for its passengers.

Standing by the door leading to the large dining room was a patrolman named Elofsson, whom Månsson thought was a little more intelligent than the rest.

He walked over to him and said, ‘What's the story?’

‘Looks like someone's been shot.’

‘Have you had any instructions?’

‘Not a word.’

‘What's Backlund doing?’

‘Questioning witnesses.’

‘Where's the man who was shot?’

‘At the hospital, I suppose.’

Elofsson turned slightly red. Then he said, ‘The ambulance got here before the police, obviously.’

Månsson sighed and went into the dining room.

Backlund was standing by the table with the gleaming silver tureens questioning a waiter. He was an elderly man with glasses and ordinary features. Somehow he'd managed to become a first assistant detective. He was holding his notebook open in his hand, busily taking notes. Månsson stopped within hearing distance, but said nothing.

‘And at what time did this happen?’

‘Uh, about eight-thirty.’

‘About?’

‘Well, I don't know for sure.’

‘In other words, you don't know what time it was.’

‘No, I don't. ’

‘Rather odd,’ said Backlund.

‘What?’

‘I said, it seems rather odd. You have a wrist watch, don't you?’

‘Of course.’

‘And there is a clock on the wall over there, if I'm not mistaken.’

‘Yes, but …’

‘But what?’

‘Both of them are wrong. Anyway, I didn't think of looking at the clock.’

Backlund appeared overwhelmed by the response. He put down the pad and pencil and began to clean his glasses. He took a deep breath, grabbed the notebook and started writing again.