Both officers had instantly noticed the odour. Kvastmo had defined it as arising from putrefaction; according to his own way of putting it, it was strongly reminiscent of the stench of rotten meat. A closer sniff – Kvastmo's again – had led the men to the door of a first-floor flat. According to available information, it was the door of a one-room flat, inhabited for some time by a man of about sixty-five, whose name might be Karl Edvin Svärd. The name had been found on a handwritten piece of cardboard under the doorbell. As it might be supposed that the smell arose from the body of a suicide, or of someone who had died from natural causes, or of a dog – still according to Kvastmo – or possibly of some sick or helpless person, they had decided to break in. The bell seemed to be out of order, but no amount of banging on the door had evoked any reaction. All their attempts to contact a caretaker or representative of the landlord or anyone else holding master keys had been unsuccessful.
The policemen therefore requested permission to break into the flat and received orders to do so. A locksmith had been called, causing yet another half-hour's delay.
On his arrival the locksmith had found that the door was equipped with a jemmy-proof lock and that there was no letter box. The lock was then drilled out with the aid of a special tool, but even this had not made it possible to open the door.
Kristiansson and Kvastmo, whose time had now been taken up by this case far beyond their normal working hours, asked for new instructions and were ordered to open the door by force. To their question whether someone from the Criminal Investigation Department ought not to attend, they received the laconic answer that no more personnel were available. By now the locksmith, feeling he had done his job, had left.
By 7.00 p.m. Kvastmo and Kristiansson had opened the door by breaking the pins of the hinges on the outside. In spite of this a new difficulty had arisen; for the door was then found to be fitted with two strong metal bolts and also with a so-called fox-lock, a sort of iron beam sunk in the doorposts. After a further hour's work the policemen had been able to make their way into the flat, where they were met by stifling heat and the overwhelming stench of corpse.
In the room, which faced the street, they found a dead man. The body was lying on its back, about three yards from the window overlooking Bergsgatan, beside a turned-on electric radiator – it was the heat from this, in conjunction with the prevailing heat wave, that had caused the corpse to swell up to at least twice its normal volume. The body was in a state of intense putrefaction, and there was an abundance of maggots.
The window facing the street was locked from the inside, and the blind had been pulled down. The flat's other window, in the kitchenette, looked out over the courtyard. It was stuck fast with window tapes and appeared not to have been opened for a long while. The furniture was sparse and the fittings plain. The flat was in a bad state of disrepair as regards the ceiling, floor, walls, wallpaper, and paint. Only a few utensils were to be found in the kitchenette and living room.
An official document they had found suggested that the deceased was the sixty-two-year-old Karl Edvin Svärd, a warehouseman who had been pensioned off before reaching retirement age, some six years back.
After the flat had been inspected by a detective sergeant called Gustavsson, the body was taken to the State Institute for Forensic Medicine for a routine post-mortem.
The case had been preliminarily assessed as suicide; alternatively, death from starvation, illness, or other natural causes was suspected.
Martin Beck groped in his jacket pocket for some non-existent Florida cigarettes.
Nothing had been mentioned about Svärd in the newspapers. The story was far too banal. Stockholm has one of the highest suicide rates in the world – something everyone carefully avoids talking about or which, when put on the spot, they attempt to conceal by means of variously manipulated and untruthful statistics. The most usual explanation is the simplest: All other countries cheat much more with their statistics. For some years now, however, not even members of the government had dared to say this aloud or in public, perhaps from the feeling that, in spite of everything, people tend to rely more on the evidence of their own eyes than on political explanations. And if, after all, this should turn out not to be so, it only made the matter still more embarrassing. For the fact of the matter is that the so-called Welfare State abounds with sick, poor, and lonely people, living at best on dog food, who are left uncared for until they waste away and die in their rat-hole tenements. No, this was nothing for the public. Hardly even for the police.
But that wasn't all. There was a sequel to the story of this premature pensioner, Karl Edvin Svärd.
Martin Beck had been in his profession long enough to know that if something in a report appears incomprehensible it's because in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred someone has been careless, made a mistake, is guilty of a slip of the pen, has overlooked the crux of the matter, or lacked the ability to make himself understood.
The second part of the tale of the man who had died in the flat on Bergsgatan seemed shadowy, to say the least. At first, matters had followed their usual course. On Sunday evening the body had been taken away and put in the morgue. The next day the flat had been disinfected, something that was certainly needed, and Kristiansson and Kvastmo had presented their report on the case.
The autopsy on the corpse had taken place on Tuesday, and the police department responsible had received the verdict the following day. Post-mortems on old corpses are no fun, least of all when the person in question is known in advance to have taken his own life or died of natural causes. If, furthermore, the person in question enjoyed no very eminent status in society –if for instance he had been a prematurely pensioned warehouseman – then the whole thing loses its last vestiges of any interest whatever.
The post-mortem report was signed by a person Martin Beck had never heard of, presumably a temp. The text was exceedingly scientific and abstruse. This, perhaps, was why the matter had been treated rather dozily. As far as he could see, the documents had not even reached Einar Rönn at the Murder Squad until a week later. Only there had it aroused the attention to which it was entitled.
Martin Beck pulled the telephone towards him to make his first duty call in a long time. He picked up the receiver, laid his right hand on the dial, and then just went on sitting. He'd forgotten the number of the State Institute for Forensic Medicine and had to look it up.
The pathologist seemed surprised. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course I remember. That report was sent in two weeks ago.’
‘I know.’
‘Is something unclear?’
He thought she sounded slightly hurt.
‘Just a few things I don't understand. According to your report, the person in question committed suicide.’
‘Of course.’
‘How?’
‘Have I really expressed myself so badly?’
‘Oh no, not at all.’
‘What is it you don't understand, then?’
‘Quite a bit, to be honest; but that, of course, is due to my own ignorance.’
‘You mean of terminology?’
‘Among other things.’
‘If one lacks medical knowledge,’ she said consolingly, ‘one always has to expect certain difficulties of that type.’ Her voice was light and clear. On the young side, certainly.
For a while Martin Beck sat silent. At this point he ought to have said: ‘My dear young lady, this report isn't meant for pathologists but for quite another kind of person. Since it's been requested by the Metropolitan Police it ought to be written in terms that even a police sergeant, for example, could understand.’ But he didn't. Why?
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