by Maj Sjowall
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke
( Martin Beck - 2 )
Maj Sjowall
Per Wahloo
The second book in the classic Martin Beck detective series from the 1960s “ the novels that shaped the future of Scandinavian crime writing. Hugely acclaimed, the Martin Beck series were the original Scandinavian crime novels and have inspired the writings of Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbo. Written in the 1960s, 10 books completed in 10 years, they are the work of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, a husband and wife team from Sweden. They follow the fortunes of the detective Martin Beck, whose enigmatic, taciturn character has inspired countless other policemen in crime fiction; without his creation Ian Rankin's John Rebus or Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander may never have been conceived. The novels can be read separately, but are best read in chronological order, so the reader can follow the characters' development and get drawn into the series as a whole. "The Man Who Went Up in Smoke" starts as Martin Beck has just begun his holiday: an August spent with his family on a small island off the coast of Sweden. But when a neighbour gets a phone call, Beck finds himself packed off to Budapest, where a boorish journalist has vanished without a trace. Instead of passing leisurely sun-filled days with his children, Beck must troll about in the Eastern Europe underworld for a man nobody knows, with the aid of the coolly efficient local police, who do business while soaking at the public baths “ and at the risk of vanishing along with his quarry.
THE MAN WHO WENT UP IN SMOKE
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
Translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate
A Martin Beck Police Mystery 2
THE MAN WHO WENT UP IN SMOKE
1
The room was small and shabby. There were no curtains and the view outside consisted of a gray fire wall, a few rusty armatures and a faded advertisement for margarine. The center pane of glass in the left half of the window was gone and had been replaced by a roughly cut piece of cardboard. The wallpaper was floral, but so discolored by soot and seeping moisture that the pattern was scarcely visible. Here and there it had come away from the crumbling plaster, and in several places there had been attempts to repair it with adhesive strips and wrapping paper.
There were a heating stove, six pieces of furniture and a picture in the room. In front of the stove stood a cardboard box of ashes and a dented aluminum coffee pot. The end of the bed faced the stove and the bedclothes consisted of a thick layer of old newspapers, a ragged quilt and a striped pillow. The picture was of a naked blonde standing beside a marble balustrade, and it was hanging to the right of the stove so that the person lying in the bed could see it before he fell asleep and immediately when he woke up. Someone appeared to have enlarged the woman's nipples and genitals with a pencil.
In the other part of the room, nearest to the window, stood a round table and two wooden chairs, of which one had lost its back. On the table were three empty vermouth bottles, a soft-drink bottle and two coffee cups, among other things. The ash tray had been turned upside down and among the cigarette butts, bottle tops and dead matches lay a few dirty sugar lumps, a small penknife with its blades open, and a piece of sausage. A third coffee cup had fallen to the floor and had broken. Face down on the worn linoleum, between the table and the bed, lay a dead body.
In all probability this was the same person who had improved upon the picture and tried to mend the wallpaper with strips of adhesive and wrapping paper. It was a man and he was lying with his legs close together, his elbows pressed against his ribs and his hands drawn up toward his head, as if in an effort to protect himself. The man was wearing a woolen vest and frayed trousers. On his feet were ragged woolen socks. A large sideboard had been tipped over him, obscuring his head and half the top part of his body. The third wooden chair had been thrown down beside the corpse. Its seat was bloodstained and on the top of the back handprints were clearly visible. The floor was covered with pieces of glass. Some of them had come from the glass doors of the j sideboard, others from a half-shattered wine bottle which had been thrown onto a heap of dirty underclothes by the wall. What was left of the bottle was covered with a thin skin of dried blood. Someone had drawn a white circle around it.
Of its kind, the picture was almost perfect, taken by the best wide-angle lens the police possessed and in an artificial light that gave an etched sharpness to every detail.
Martin Beck put down the photograph and magnifying glass, got up and went across to the window. Outside it was full Swedish summer. And more than that. It was hot. On the grass of Kristineberg Park a couple of girls were sunbathing in bikinis. They were lying flat on their- backs with their legs apart and their arms stretched outward away from their bodies. They were young and thin, or slim as they say, and they could do this with a certain grace. When he focused sharply, he even recognized them as two office girls from his own department. So it was already past twelve. In the morning they put on their bathing suits, cotton dresses and sandals and went to work. In the lunch hour they took off their dresses and went out and lay in the park. Practical.
Dejectedly, he recalled that soon he would have to leave all this and move over to the south police headquarters in the rowdy neighborhood around Västberga Allé.
Behind him he heard someone fling open the door and come into the room. He did not need to turn around to know who it was. Stenström. Stenström was still the youngest in the department and after him there would presumably be a whole generation of detectives who did not knock on doors.
'How's it going," he said.
'Not so well," said Stenström. "When I was there fifteen minutes ago he was still flatly denying everything."
Martin Beck turned around, went back to his desk and once again looked at the photo of the scene of the crime. On the ceiling above the newspaper mattress, the ragged quilt and the striped pillow, there was an old patch of dampness. It looked like a sea horse. With a little good will it could have been a mermaid. He wondered if the man on the floor had had that much imagination.
'It doesn't matter," said Stenström officiously. "We'll get him on the technical evidence."
Martin Beck made no reply. Instead he pointed at the thick report Stenström had put down on his desk and said, "What's that?"
'The record of the interrogation from Sundbyberg."
'Take the miserable thing away. Starting tomorrow I'm on my holiday. Give it to Kollberg. Or to anybody you damn please."
Martin Beck took the photograph and went up one flight of stairs, opened a door and found himself with Kollberg and Melander.
It was much warmer in there than in his room, presumably because the windows were closed and the curtains drawn. Kollberg and the suspect were sitting opposite each other at the table, quite still. Melander, a tall man, was standing by the window, his pipe in his mouth and his arms folded. He was looking steadily at the suspect. On a chair by the door sat a police guard in uniform trousers and a light-blue shirt. He was balancing his cap on his right knee. No one said anything and the only moving thing was the reel of the tape recorder. Martin Beck situated himself to one side and just behind Kollberg and joined in the general silence. A wasp could be heard bouncing against the window behind the curtains. Kollberg had taken off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt, but even so, his shirt was soaked with sweat between his plump shoulder blades. The wet patch slowly changed shape and spread downward in a line along his spine.
The man on the other side of the table was small, with thinning hair. He was slovenly dressed and the fingers gripping the arms of his chair were uncared-for, with bitten, duty nails. His face was thin and sickly, with weak evasive lines around his mouth. His chin wa
s trembling slightly and his eyes seemed cloudy and watery. The man hunched up and two tears fell down his cheeks.
'Uh-huh," said Kollberg gloomily. "You hit him on the head with the bottle, then, until it broke?"
The man nodded.
'Then you went on hitting him with the chair as he lay on the floor. How many times?"
'Don't know. Not many. Quite a lot though."
'I can imagine. And then you tipped the sideboard over him and left the room. What did the third one of you do in the meantime? This Ragnar Larsson? Didn't he try to interfere; I mean, stop you?"
'No, he didn't do anything. He just let it go on."
'Don't start lying again now."
'He was asleep. He'd passed out."
'Try to speak a little louder, all right?"
'He was lying on the bed, asleep. He didn't notice anything."
'No, not until he came to and then he went to the police. Well, so far it's clear. But there's one thing I still don't really understand. Why did it turn out this way? You'd never even seen each other before you met in that beer hall."
'He called me a damned nazi."
'Every policeman gets called a damned nazi several times a week. Hundreds of people have called me a nazi and gestapo man and even worse things, but I've never killed anyone for it."
'He sat there and said it over and over again, damned nazi, damned nazi, damned nazi__It was the only thing he said. And he sang."
'Sang?"
'Yes, to get my goat. Annoy me. About Hitler."
'Uh-huh. Well, had you given him any cause to talk like that?"
'I'd told him my old lady was German. That was before."
'Before you began drinking?"
'Yes. Then he just said it didn't matter what kind of mother a guy had."
'And when he was about to go out into the kitchen, you took the bottle and bit him from behind?"
'Yes."
'Did he fall?"
'He sort of fell to his knees. And began bleeding. And then he said, 'You bloody little nazi runt, you, now you're in for it.'"
'And so you went on hitting him?"
'I was… afraid. He was bigger than me and… you don't know what it feels like… everything just goes round and round and goes red__I didn't seem to know what I was doing."
The man's shoulders were shaking violently.
'That's enough," said Kollberg, switching off the tape recorder. "Give him something to eat and ask the doctor if he can have a sedative."
The policeman by the door rose, put his cap on and led the murderer out, holding him loosely by the arm.
'Bye for now. See you tomorrow," said Kollberg absently.
At the same time he was writing mechanically on the paper in front of him, "Confessed in tears."
'Quite a character," he said.
'Five previous convictions for assault," said Melander. "In spite of his denying it every time. I remember him very well."
'Said the walking card file," Kollberg commented.
He rose heavily and stared at Martin Beck.
'What are you doing here?" he said. "Go take your holiday and let us look after the criminal ways of the lower classes. Where are you going, by the way? To the islands?"
Martin Beck nodded.
'Smart," said Kollberg. "I went to Rumania first and got fried—in Mamaia. Then I come home and get boiled. Great. And you don't have any telephone out there?"
'No."
'Excellent. I'm going to take a shower now anyhow. Come on. Run along now."
Martin Beck thought it over. The suggestion had its advantages. Among other things, he would get away a day earlier. He shrugged his shoulders.
'I'm leaving. Bye, boys. See you in a month."
2
Most people's holidays were already over and Stockholm's August-hot streets had begun to fill with people who had spent a few rainy July weeks in tents and trailers and country boardinghouses. During the last few days, the subway had once again become crowded, but it was now the middle of the working day and Martin Beck was almost alone in the car. He sat looking at the dusty greenery outside and was glad that his eagerly awaited holiday had at last begun.
His family had already been out in the archipelago for a month. This summer they had had the good fortune to rent a cottage from a distant relative of his wife's, a cottage situated all by itself on a little island in the central part of the archipelago. The relative had gone abroad and the cottage was theirs until the children went back to school.
Martin Beck let himself into his empty flat, went straight into the kitchen and took a beer out of the refrigerator. He took a few gulps standing by the sink, then carried the bottle with him into the bedroom. He undressed and walked out onto the balcony in nothing but his shorts. He sat for a while in the sun, his feet on the balcony rail as he finished off the beer. The heat out there was almost intolerable and when the bottle was empty, he got up and went back into the relative cool of the flat.
He looked at his watch. The boat would be leaving in two hours. The island was located in an area of the archipelago where transportation to and from the city was still maintained by one of the few remaining old streamers. This, thought Martin Beck, was just about the best part of their summer holiday find.
He went out into the kitchen and put the empty bottle down on the pantry floor. The pantry had already been cleared of everything that might spoil, but for safety's sake he looked around to see if he had forgotten anything before he shut the pantry door. Then he pulled the refrigerator plug out of the wall, put the ice trays in the sink and looked around the kitchen before shutting the door and going into the bedroom to pack.
Most of what he needed for himself he had already taken out to the island on the weekend he had already spent there. His wife had given him a list of things which she and the children wanted brought out, and by the time he had included everything, he had two bags full. As he also had to pick up a carton of food from the supermarket, he decided to take a taxi to the boat.
There was plenty of room on board and when Martin Beck had put his bags down, he went up on deck and sat down.
The heat was trembling over the city and it was almost dead calm. The foliage in Karl XII Square had lost its freshness and the flags on the Grand Hotel were drooping. Martin Beck looked at his watch and waited impatiently for the men down there to pull in the gangplank.
When he felt the first vibrations from the engine, he got up and walked to the stern. The boat backed away from the quay and he leaned over the railing, watching the propellers whipping up the water into a whitish-green foam. The steam whistle sounded hoarsely, and as the boat began to turn toward Saltsjön, its hull shuddering, Martin Beck stood by the railing and turned his face toward the cool breeze. He suddenly felt free and untroubled; for a brief moment he seemed to relive the feeling he had had as a boy on the first day of the summer holidays.
He had dinner in the dining saloon, then went out and sat on deck again. Before approaching the jetty where he was to land, the boat passed his island, and he saw the cottage and some gaily colored garden chairs and his wife down on the shore. She was crouching at the water's edge, and he guessed she was scrubbing potatoes. She rose and waved, but he was not certain she could see him at such a distance with the afternoon sun in her eyes.
The children came out to meet him in the rowboat. Martin Beck liked rowing, and ignoring his son's protests, he took the oars and rowed across the bay between the steamer jetty and the island. His daughter—whose name was Ingrid, but who was called Baby although she would be fifteen in a few days—sat in the stern telling about a barn dance. Rolf, who was thirteen and despised girls, was talking about a pike he had landed. Martin listened absently, enjoying the rowing.
After he had taken off his city clothes, he took a brief swim by the rock before pulling on his blue trousers and sweater. After dinner he sat chatting with his wife outside the cottage, watching the sun go down behind the islands on the other side of the mirror-s
mooth bay. He went to bed early, after setting out some nets with his son.
For the first time ha a very long time, he fell asleep immediately.
When he woke, the sun was still low and there was dew on the grass as he padded out and sat down on a rock outside the cottage. It looked as if the day would be as fine as the previous one, but the sun had not yet begun to grow warm, and he was cold in his pajamas. After a while he went in again and sat down on the veranda with a cup of coffee. When it was seven, he dressed and woke his son, who got up reluctantly. They rowed out and hauled in the nets, which contained nothing but a mass of seaweed and water plants. When they got back, the other two were up and breakfast was on the table.
After breakfast Martin Beck went down to the shed and began to hang up and clean the nets. It was work that tried his patience and he decided that in the future he ought to make his son responsible for providing fish for the family.
He had almost finished the last net when he heard the stutter of a motorboat behind him, and a small fishing boat rounded the point, heading straight for him. At once he recognized the man in the boat. It was Nygren, the owner of a small boatyard on the next island, and their nearest neighbor. As there was no water on the Becks' island, they fetched their drinking water from him. Nygren also had a telephone.
Nygren turned off the motor and shouted:
'Telephone. They want you to call back as soon as possible. I wrote the number down on a slip of paper by the telephone."
'Didn't he say who he was?" said Martin Beck, although he in fact already knew.
'I wrote that down too. I've got to go out to Skärholmen now, and Elsa's in the strawberry patch, but the kitchen door's open."
Nygren started up the motor again and, standing in the stern, headed out toward the bay. Before he vanished around the point, he raised his hand in farewell.
Martin Beck watched him for a short while. Then he went down to the jetty, untied the rowboat and began to row toward Nygren's boathouse. As he rowed he thought: Hell. To hell with Kollberg, just when I'd almost forgotten he existed!
