The Abominable Man

9

The blue-white light of a flashbulb lit the dirty yellow façade of the hospital pavilion for an instant as Martin Beck and Rönn returned to the scene of the crime. An additional couple of cars had arrived and stood parked in the turnaround with their headlights on.

‘Apparently our photographer is here,’ Rönn said.

The photographer came towards them as they got out of the car. He carried no camera bag but held his camera and flash in one hand, while his pockets bulged with rolls of film and flashbulbs and lenses. Martin Beck recognized him from the scenes of previous crimes.

‘Wrong,’ he said to Rönn. ‘It looks like the papers got here first.’

The photographer, who worked for one of the tabloids, greeted them and took a picture as they walked towards the door. A reporter from the same paper was standing at the foot of the stairs trying to talk to a uniformed officer.

‘Good morning, Inspector,’ he said when he caught sight of Martin Beck. ‘I don't suppose I could follow you in?’

Martin Beck shook his head and walked up the steps with Rönn in his wake.

‘But you'll give me a little interview at least?’ the reporter said.

‘Later,’ said Martin Beck and held the door open for Rönn before closing it right on the nose of the reporter, who made a face.

The police photographer had also arrived and was standing outside the dead man's room with his camera bag. Further down the corridor was the doctor with the curious name and a plainclothes detective from the Fifth. Rönn went into the sickroom with the photographer and put him to work. Martin Beck walked over to the two men in the hall.

‘How's it going?’ he said.

The same old question.

The plainclothes officer, whose name was Hansson, scratched the back of his neck.

‘We've talked to most of the patients in this corridor, and none of them saw or heard anything. I was just trying to ask Doctor … uh … this doctor here, when we can talk to the other ones.’

‘Have you questioned the people in the adjoining rooms?’ Martin Beck asked.

‘Yes,’ Hansson said. ‘And we've been in all the wards. No one heard anything, but then the walls are thick in a building this old.’

‘We can wait on the others till breakfast,’ said Martin Beck.

The doctor said nothing. He obviously didn't understand Swedish, and after a while he pointed towards the office and said, ‘Have to go,’ in English.

Hansson nodded, and the black curls hurried off in clattering wooden shoes.

‘Did you know Nyman?’ asked Martin Beck.

‘Well, no, not really. I've never worked in his precinct, but of course we've met often enough. He's been around a long time. He was already an inspector when I started, twelve years ago.’

‘Do you know anyone who knew him well?’

‘You can always ask down at Klara,’ Hansson said. ‘That's where he was before he got sick.’

Martin Beck nodded and looked at the electric wall clock over the door to the bathroom. It said a quarter to five.

‘I think I'll go on over there for a while,’ he said. ‘There's not much I can do here for the moment.’

‘Go on,’ said Hansson. ‘I'll tell Rönn where you went.’

Martin Beck took a deep breath when he got outside. The chilly night air felt fresh and clean. The reporter and the photographer were nowhere to be seen, but the uniformed officer was still standing at the foot of the steps.

Martin Beck nodded to him and started walking towards the car park.

The centre of Stockholm had been subjected to sweeping and violent changes in the course of the last ten years. Entire districts had been levelled and new ones constructed. The structure of the city had been altered: streets had been broadened and motorways built. What was behind all this activity was hardly an ambition to create a humane social environment but rather a desire to achieve the fullest possible exploitation of valuable land. In the heart of the city it had not been enough to tear down ninety per cent of the buildings and completely obliterate the original street plan, violence had been visited on the natural topography itself.

Stockholm's inhabitants looked on with sorrow and bitterness as serviceable and irreplaceable old mansion blocks were razed to make way for sterile office buildings. Powerless, they let themselves be deported to distant suburbs while the pleasant, lively neighbourhoods where they had lived and worked were reduced to rubble. The inner city became a clamorous, all but impassable construction site from which the new city slowly and relentlessly arose with its broad, noisy traffic arteries, its shining façades of glass and light metal, its dead surfaces of flat concrete, its bleakness and its desolation.

In this frenzy of modernization, the city's police stations seemed to have been completely overlooked. All the station houses in the inner city were old-fashioned and the worse for wear, and in most cases, since the force had been enlarged over the years, crowded. In the Fourth Precinct, where Martin Beck was heading, this lack of space was one of the primary problems.

By the time he stepped out of the taxi in front of the Klara police station on Regeringsgatan, it had begun to get light. The sun would come up, there was still not a cloud in the sky, and it promised to be a pretty though rather chilly day.

He walked up the stone steps and pushed open the door. To the right was the switchboard, for the moment unmanned, and a counter behind which stood an older, grey-haired policeman. He had spread out the morning paper and was resting on his elbows as he read. When Martin Beck came in he straightened up and took off his glasses.

‘Why it's Inspector Beck, up and about at this time of the morning,’ he said. ‘I was just looking to see if the morning papers had anything about Inspector Nyman. It sounds like a very nasty business.’

He put on his glasses again, licked his thumb and turned a page in the paper.

‘It doesn't look as if they had time to get it in,’ he went on.

‘No,’ said Martin Beck. ‘I don't suppose they did.’

The Stockholm morning papers went to press early these days and had probably been ready for distribution even before Nyman was murdered.

He walked past the desk and into the duty room. It was empty. The morning papers lay on a table along with a couple of overflowing ashtrays and some coffee mugs. Through a window into one of the interrogation rooms he could see the officer in charge sitting talking to a young woman with long blonde hair. When he caught sight of Martin Beck he stood up, said something to the woman and came out of the glass cubicle. He closed the door behind him.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Is it me you're looking for?’

Martin Beck sat down at the short end of the table, pulled an ashtray towards him and lit a cigarette.

‘I'm not looking for anyone in particular,’ he said. ‘But have you got a minute?’

‘Can you wait just a moment?’ the other man said. ‘I just want to get this woman sent over to Criminal.’

He disappeared and returned a few minutes later with a constable, picked up an envelope from the desk and handed it to him. The woman stood up, hung her purse on her shoulder and walked quickly towards the door.

‘Come on, big boy,’ she said without turning her head. ‘Let's go for a ride.’

The constable looked at the officer, who shrugged his shoulders, amused. Then he put on his cap and followed her out.

‘She seemed right at home,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Oh yeah, this isn't the first time. And certainly not the last.’

He sat down at the table and started cleaning his pipe into an ashtray.

‘That was nasty, that business with Nyman,’ he said. ‘How did it happen, exactly?’

Martin Beck told him briefly what had happened.

‘Ugh,’ the officer said. ‘Whoever did it must be a raving lunatic. But why Nyman?’

‘You knew Nyman, didn't you?’ Martin Beck asked him.

‘Not very well. He wasn't the sort of person you knew well.’

‘He was here on special assignment of course. When did he come here to the Fourth?’

‘They gave him an office here three years ago. February '68.’

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