‘God, life is strange,’ he added and slammed the door after him as he left the room.
The trees between the police station and Kristineberg's Hotel had begun to turn and to lose some of their leaves. The sky lay low and grey with trailing rain curtains and storm-torn clouds. It was the twenty-ninth of September and autumn was definitely on the way. Martin Beck looked distastefully at his half-smoked cigarette and thought about his sensitivity to temperature change and of the six months of winter's formidable colds which would soon strike him.
‘Poor little friend, whoever you are,’ he said to himself.
He was conscious of the fact that their chances were reduced each day that passed. Maybe they would never even find out who she was, not to speak of getting the person who was guilty, unless the same man repeated the crime. The woman who had lain out there on the breakwater in the sun at least had a face and a body and a nameless grave. The murderer was nothing, totally without contours, a dim figure, if that. But dim figures have no desires and no sharp pointed weapons. No strangler's hands.
Martin Beck straightened up. ‘Remember that you have three of the most important virtues a policeman can have,’ he thought. ‘You are stubborn and logical, and completely calm. You don't allow yourself to lose your composure and you act only professionally on a case, whatever it is. Words like repulsive, horrible, and bestial belong in the newspapers, not in your thinking. A murderer is a regular human being, only more unfortunate and maladjusted.’
He hadn't seen Ahlberg since that last evening at the City Hotel in Motala but they had talked on the telephone often. He had spoken to him last week and he remembered Ahlberg's final comment: ‘Vacation? Not before this thing is solved. I'll have all the material collected soon but I'm going to continue even if I have to drag all of Boren myself.’
These days Ahlberg wasn't much more than merely stubborn, Martin Beck thought.
‘Damn, damn, damn,’ he mumbled and rapped his forehead with his fist.
Then he went back to his desk and sat down, swung his chair a quarter turn to the left and stared listlessly at the paper in the typewriter. He tried to remember what it was he wanted to write before Kollberg had come in with the letter from Interpol.
Six hours later, at two minutes to five he had put on his hat and coat and already begun to hate the crowded subway train to the south. It was still raining and he could already perceive both the musty odour of wet clothing and the frightening feeling of having to stand hemmed in by a compact mass of strange bodies.
One minute before five, Stenström arrived. He opened the door without knocking as usual. It was irritating but endurable in comparison with Melander's woodpecker signals and Kollberg's deafening pounding.
‘Here's a message for the department of missing girls. You'd better send a thank you letter to the American Embassy. They sent it up.’
He studied the light red telegram sheet.
‘Lincoln, Nebraska. What was it the last time?’
‘Astoria, New York.’
‘Was that when they sent three pages of information but forgot to say that she was a Negro?’
‘Yes,’ said Martin Beck.
Stenström gave him the telegram and said:
‘Here's the number of some guy at the embassy. You ought to call him.’
With guilty pleasure at every excuse to postpone the subway torture, he went back to his desk but it was too late. The embassy staff had gone home.
The next day was a Wednesday and the weather was worse than ever. The morning paper had a late listing of a missing twenty-five year old housemaid from a place called Räng which seemed to be in the south of Sweden. She had not returned after her vacation.
During the morning registered copies of Kollberg's description and the retouched photographs were sent to the police in southern Sweden and to a certain Detective Lieutenant Elmer B. Kafka, Homicide Squad, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.
After lunch Martin Beck felt that the lymph glands in his neck were beginning to swell and by the time he got home that evening it was hard for him to swallow.
‘Tomorrow the National Police can manage without you, I've decided,’ said his wife.
He opened his mouth to answer her but looked at the children and closed it again without saying anything.
It didn't take her long to take advantage of her triumph.
‘Your nose is completely stopped up. You're gasping for breath like a fish out of water.’
He put down his knife and fork, mumbled ‘thanks for dinner’, and absorbed himself with his rigging problem. Gradually, this activity calmed him completely. He worked slowly and methodically on the model ship and had no unpleasant thoughts. If he actually heard the noise from the television in the next room, it didn't register. After a while his daughter stood on the threshold with a sullen look and traces of bubblegum on her chin.
‘Some guy's on the phone. Wouldn't you know, right in the middle of Perry Mason’
Damn it, he would have to have the telephone moved. Damn it, he would have to start getting involved in his children's upbringing. Damn it, what does one say to a child who is thirteen years old and loves the Beatles and is already developed?
He walked into the living room as if he had to excuse his existence and cast a sheepish look at the great defence lawyer's worn out dogface which filled the television screen. He picked up the telephone and took it out into the hall with him.
‘Hi,’ said Ahlberg. ‘I think I've found something.’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you remember that we spoke about the canal boats which pass here in the summer at twelve-thirty and at four o'clock during the day?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have tried to check up on the small boats and the freight traffic this week. It's almost impossible to do with all the boats that go by. But an hour ago one of the boys on the regular police staff suddenly said that he saw a passenger boat go past Platen's moat in a westerly direction in the middle of the night some time last summer. He didn't know when and he hadn't thought about it until now, when I asked him. He had been doing some special duty in that area for several nights. It seems completely unbelievable but he swore that it was true. He went on vacation the next day and after that he forgot about it.’
‘Did he recognize the boat?’
‘No, but wait. I called Gothenburg and spoke to a few men in the shipping office. One of them said that it certainly could be true. He thought the boat was named Diana and gave me the captain's address.’
A short pause followed. Martin Beck could hear that Ahlberg had struck a match.
‘I got hold of the captain. He said he certainly did remember although he would rather have forgotten it. First they had to stop at Hävringe for three hours because of heavy fog and then a steam pipe in the motor had broken …’
‘Engine.’
‘What did you say?’
‘In the engine. Not the motor.’
‘Oh yes, but in any case they had to stay over more than eight hours in Söderköping for repairs. That means that they were nearly twelve hours late and passed Borenshult after midnight. They didn't stop either in Motala or Vadstena but went directly on to Gothenburg.’
‘When did this happen? Which day?’
‘The second trip after midsummer, the captain said. In other words, the night before the fifth.’
Neither