‘I've packed your bag, Martin.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Take care of your throat. This is a treacherous time of the year, particularly the evenings.’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you going to take that awful pistol with you?’
‘Yes, no. Yes, no. What's the difference?’ Martin Beck thought to himself.
‘What are you laughing at?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’
He went into the living room, unlocked a drawer in the secretary and took out the pistol. He put it in his suitcase and locked the drawer again.
The pistol was an ordinary 7.6 millimetre Walther, licensed in Sweden. It was useless in most situations and he was a pretty poor shot anyway.
He went out into the hall, put on his trenchcoat, and stood with his dark hat in his hands.
‘Aren't you going to say goodbye to Rolf and the Little One?’
‘It's ridiculous to call a twelve-year-old girl “Little One”.’
‘I think it's sweet.’
‘It's a shame to wake them. And anyway, they know that I am going.’
He put his hat on.
‘So long. I'll call you.’
‘Bye bye, and be careful.’
He stood on the platform and waited for the subway and thought that he really didn't mind leaving home in spite of the half-finished planking on the model of the training ship Danmark.
Martin Beck wasn't chief of the Homicide Squad and had no such ambitions. Sometimes he doubted if he would ever make superintendent although the only things that could actually stand in his way were death or some very serious error in his duties. He was a First Detective Inspector with the National Police and had been with the Homicide Bureau for eight years. There were people who thought that he was the country's most capable examining officer.
He had been on the police force half of his life. At the age of twenty-one he had begun at Jakob Police Station and after six years as a patrol officer in different districts in central Stockholm he was sent to the National Police College. He was one of the best in his class and when the course was finished he was appointed a Detective Inspector. He was twenty-eight years old at the time.
His father had died that year and he moved from his furnished room in the middle of the city back to the family home in southern Stockholm to take care of his mother. That summer he met his wife. She had rented a cottage with a friend out in the archipelago where he happened to be with his sailing canoe. He fell very much in love. Then, in the autumn, when they were expecting a child, they got married at City Hall and moved to her small apartment back in the city.
One year after the birth of their daughter, there wasn't much left of the happy and lively girl he had fallen in love with and their marriage had slipped into a fairly dull routine.
Martin Beck sat on the green bench in the subway car and looked out through the rain-blurred window. He thought about his marriage apathetically, but when he realized that he was sitting there feeling sorry for himself, he took his newspaper out of his trenchcoat pocket and tried to concentrate on the editorial page.
He looked tired and his sunburned skin seemed yellowish in the grey light. His face was lean with a broad forehead and a strong jaw. His mouth, under his short, straight nose, was thin and wide with two deep lines near the corners. When he smiled, you could see his healthy, white teeth. His dark hair was combed straight back from the even hairline and had not yet begun to grey. The look in his soft blue eyes was clear and calm. He was thin but not especially tall and somewhat round-shouldered. Some women would say he was good looking but most of them would see him as quite ordinary. He dressed in a way that would draw no attention. If anything, his clothes were a little too discreet.
The air in the train was close and stuffy and he felt slightly uncomfortable as he usually did when he was on the subway. When they arrived at Central Station, he was the first one at the door with his suitcase in his hand.
He disliked the subway. But since he cared even less for bumper-to-bumper traffic, and that ‘dream apartment’ in the centre of the city was still only a dream, he had no choice at the moment.
The express to Gothenburg left the station at 7.30 a.m. Martin Beck thumbed through his newspaper but didn't see a line about the murder. He turned back to the cultural pages and began to read an article on the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner but fell asleep in a few minutes.
He awoke in good time to change trains at Hallsberg. The lead taste in his mouth had come back and stayed with him despite the three glasses of water that he drank.
He arrived in Motala at 10.30 a.m. and by then the rain had stopped. Since it was his first visit there, he asked at the kiosk in the station the way to the City Hotel and bought a pack of cigarettes and the Motala newspaper.
The hotel was on the main square only a few blocks from the railway station. The short walk stimulated him. Up in his room he washed his hands, unpacked, and drank a bottle of mineral water which he got from the porter. He stood by the window for a moment and looked out over the square. It had a statue in the centre which he guessed was of Baltzar von Platen. Then he left the room to go to the police station. Since he knew it was right across the street, he left his trenchcoat in the room.
He told the officer on duty who he was and was immediately shown to an office on the second floor. The name Ahlberg was on the door.
The man sitting behind the desk was broad and thick-set and slightly bald. His jacket was on the back of his chair and he was drinking coffee out of a container. A cigarette was burning on the corner of an ash tray which was already filled with butts.
Martin Beck had a way of slinking through a door which irritated a number of people. Someone once said that he was able to slip into a room and close the door behind him so quickly that it seemed as if he were still knocking on the outside.
The man behind the desk seemed slightly surprised. He pushed his coffee container away and got up.
‘My name is Ahlberg,’ he said.
There was something expectant in his manner. Martin Beck had seen the same thing before and knew what this sprang from. He was the expert from Stockholm and the man behind the desk was a country policeman who had come to a standstill on an investigation. The next few minutes would be decisive for their cooperation.
‘What's your first name?’ said Martin Beck.
‘Gunnar.’
‘What are Kollberg and Melander doing?’
‘I have no idea. Something I've forgotten, I suspect.’
‘Did they have that we'll-settle-this-thing-in-a-flash look?’
The local policeman ran his fingers through his thin blond hair. Then he smiled wryly and took to his familiar chair.
‘Just about,’ he said.
Martin Beck sat down opposite him, drew out a pack of cigarettes and laid it on the edge of the desk.
‘You look tired,’ Martin Beck stated.
‘My vacation got shot to hell.’
Ahlberg emptied the container of coffee, crumpled it and threw it into the wastepaper basket under the desk.
The disorder on his desk was remarkable. Martin Beck thought about his own desk in Stockholm. It was usually quite neat.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘How goes it?’
‘Not at all,’ said Ahlberg. ‘After more than a week we don't know anything more than what the doctor has told us.’
Out of habit he went on to the routine procedures.