by Per Wahlöö
‘I’m sorry I went on like that. It must have seemed naïve and muddled, the way I had to simplify and condense it all. But you would insist …’
And finally:
‘Incidentally, am I still under suspicion for something?’
Jensen was already on the stairs and did not reply.
The man remained in the doorway. He did not seem worried, just indifferent and rather tired.
CHAPTER 19
He sat in the car for a few minutes, looking over his notes. Then he turned the page and wrote: Number 3, former chief editor, age 48, unmarried, employment terminated at own request, on full pension.
Number 3 was a woman.
The sun was shining, white and pitiless. It was Saturday, and the clock showed one minute to twelve. He had exactly thirty-six hours left. Inspector Jensen turned the key in the ignition and pulled away.
He had turned off the short-wave radio, and even though he was obliged to pass through the city centre, he did not bother to drop into the Sixteenth District station.
He did, however, stop at a snack bar, where he spent some time contemplating the three standard dishes of the day. The menus were devised in a special division of the Ministry for Public Health. The food was prepared centrally by a large food industry syndicate, and the same dishes were served at all the snack bars and restaurants. He stood in front of the electronic menu for so long that the queue grew restive behind him.
Then he pressed one of the buttons, took the loaded tray that appeared, and pushed his way through to a table.
He sat and looked at his lunch: milk, carrot juice, mince, some soggy white cabbage and two boiled potatoes cooked to a mush.
He was very hungry but dared not rely on his digestive system. After a while he put a little bit of the mince in his mouth, chewed it for a long time, drank the carrot juice, got up and went out.
The street he was heading for was in the east, not far from the centre, and in a residential part of town that had always been favoured by whatever upper class happened to exist at the time. The building was new, and not designed to the standard model. It belonged to the group, and boasted not only guest suites and conference rooms but also a large studio apartment with a terrace and skylight windows.
A dumpy little woman opened the door. Her blonde hair seemed to be fixed up in some artistic style, and her made-up face was smooth, as bright and rosy as a picture in a colour supplement. She was wearing a pink and powder blue negligee of some filmy fabric. On her feet she had high-heeled red mules with gold embroidery, and peculiar, multicoloured tassels on the front.
Inspector Jensen felt he remembered precisely that outfit from a fold-out, colour picture in one of the hundred and forty-four magazines.
‘Ooh, a man,’ the woman giggled.
‘Inspector Jensen from the Sixteenth District. I’m conducting an investigation that has to do with your former employment and place of work,’ he intoned, holding up his police ID.
As he did so, he looked past the woman into the apartment.
It was a large, airy room, and the interior design looked expensive. Against a background of pastel fabrics and plants growing up a trellis were low groups of furniture made of light-coloured wood. The whole flat looked like a bedroom for the daughter of an American millionaire, abnormally enlarged and transplanted direct from an ideal home show.
On the sofa sat another woman, dark-haired and considerably younger. On one of the low tables sat a sherry bottle, a glass and an exotic species of cat.
The woman in the negligee tripped lightly into the room.
‘Heavens, how exciting, a detective,’ she said.
Jensen followed her.
‘Fancy that dear, a real detective, from some special office or district or whatever it’s called. Just like in one of our picture serials.’
She turned to him and chirped:
‘Do sit down, dear. By all means make yourself comfy in my little lair. Now, Inspector, can I offer you a glass of sherry?’
Jensen shook his head and sat down.
‘Oh, I’m forgetting that I’ve got company; this is one of my dear colleagues, one of those who took over the ship when I came ashore.’
The dark-haired woman gave Jensen a brief, uninterested glance. Then she turned a polite, subservient smile on the woman in the negligee. Her hostess sank on to the sofa, put her head to one side and blinked girlishly. Suddenly she said, in a cold and businesslike tone:
‘How can I help?
Jensen got out his notebook and pen.
‘When did you cease your employment?’
‘At the end of the year. But please don’t call it my employment. Being a journalist is a calling, as much as being a doctor or a priest is. One mustn’t forget for a moment that the readers are our fellow human beings, almost our spiritual patients. One’s life is so intensely in tune with the rhythm of our publications, and lived entirely for the readers; one had to give with one’s whole heart.’
The younger woman stared at her shoes and bit her lip. The corners of her mouth twitched, as if she were trying to suppress a scream or a smile.
‘Why did you leave?’
‘I left the publishing house because I felt my career was complete. I had achieved my goal, leading the magazine from triumph to triumph for twenty years. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I created it with my own hands. When I took it over it was nothing. In only a short time I had made it the biggest women’s magazine in the country, and before long it was the biggest of all the magazines. And it’s held on to that position.’
She looked at the dark-haired woman and said venomously:
‘And how did I do it? Through work, through total self-sacrifice. One has to live for one’s task, think in pictures and headlines, with every sense open to the reader’s demands, to …’
She thought for a moment.
‘To satisfy their legitimate need to gild their everyday lives with beautiful dreams, ideals and poetry.’
She took a sip of her sherry and said icily:
‘To achieve that, one has to have what we call feeling. Not many people have that natural gift. Sometimes we have to harden ourselves as we look inward in order to give our all when we look outward.’
She closed her eyes. Her voice softened.
‘All this one does with a single aim. The magazine and its readers.’
‘That’s two,’ said Inspector Jensen.
The dark-haired woman shot him a frightened glance. Their hostess did not react.
‘I presume you know how I became the editor in chief?’
‘No.’
Her tone changed again, becoming almost dreamy.
‘It’s almost like a fairy tale. I can see it all in front of me like a real-life picture story. This is how it happened.’
Her pitch and facial expression changed again.
‘My origins are simple, and I’m not ashamed of it,’ she said aggressively, the corners of her mouth turned down and her nose in the air.
‘I see.’
She gave her visitor a quick, appraising look and said matter-of-factly:
‘The chairman of the group is a genius. Nothing less than a genius. A great man, greater than Demokratus.’
‘Demokratus?’
She chirruped and waggled her head.
‘Oh, me and names. I mean somebody else, of course. It’s not easy when there’s so much to fit in up there.’
Jensen nodded.
‘The chairman took me directly from a very humble post and let me look after the magazine. I mean to say, what complete madness, what boldness. Just think, a young girl like me as the head of a big editorial department. But I was the fresh new blood the magazine needed. In three months I’d knocked the department into shape, cleared out the dead wood, and within six months I’d made it every woman’s favourite reading. Which it has been ever since.’
Her voice changed as she addressed herself to the woman with dark hair:
‘Never forget t
hat the eight-page horoscope, the cinemascope picture stories and the real-life series about the mothers of great men were my idea. We’re still making capital out of those today. And the pets, the full-colour pull-out.’
She made a feeble gesture of self-deprecation, rings sparkling on her fingers, and said mildly:
‘But I’m not saying that because I want praise or flattery. I’ve already got my reward, in the form of hundreds of thousands of heart-warming letters from grateful readers.’
The woman lapsed momentarily into silence, her hand raised and her head turned to one side, as if she were scanning the horizon.
‘Don’t ask me how you achieve something like that,’ she said diffidently. ‘It’s something you just feel, you feel it as surely as you know that every woman at least once in her life is going to experience a look of hot, intense desire.’
The dark-haired woman gave a stifled sort of gurgle.
The woman in the negligee flinched, and stared at her with undisguised loathing.
‘That was in our time, of course,’ she said in a hard, patronising tone. ‘When we women still had a bit of fire in our bellies.’
Her face had fallen and a network of wrinkles had emerged around her eyes and mouth. She chewed irritably on the long, pointed, shimmering silver nail of her left thumb.
‘You were given a farewell diploma when you left?’
‘I certainly was,’ she said. ‘Oh, it was just so sweet of them.’ The teenage smile returned and her eyes began to twinkle.
‘Would you like to see it?’
‘Yes.’
She rose gracefully and floated out of the room. The dark-haired woman gave Jensen a panic-stricken look.
The woman came back with the document pressed to her chest.
‘And can you imagine, every single personality of any importance signed it for me, even a real princess.’
She opened the diploma. The blank page on the left was covered in signatures.
‘I think this was my very favourite, of all the hundreds of presents I got. From all over, do you want to see?’
‘There’s no need,’ said Jensen.
The woman smiled, bashful and bewildered.
‘But why have you, a police inspector, come here to ask me all this?’
‘I’m not at liberty to discuss that,’ said Inspector Jensen.
Her face went through a whole series of fleeting expressions. Finally she threw out her hands in a gesture of helpless femininity, and said submissively:
‘Well I suppose I must resign myself.’
He was accompanied back down by the woman with dark hair. No sooner was the lift in motion than the girl gave a sob and said:
‘Don’t believe a word she says. She’s horrible, ghastly, a monster. There are the most disgusting stories going round about her.’
‘I see.’
‘She’s a monstrosity, so spiteful, so nosy. She’s still pulling all the strings, even since they managed to get her out of the building. Now she’s forcing me to be her spy. Every Wednesday and Saturday I have to come here and give her a complete report. She wants to know it all.’
‘Why are you doing it?’
‘Why? Good God, she could wipe me out in under ten minutes, the way you squash a louse. She wouldn’t hesitate for an instant. And all the while she insults me. Oh God.’
Inspector Jensen said nothing. When they reached the ground floor, he doffed his hat and opened the doors. The young woman gave him a shy look and scuttled out into the street.
There was noticeably less traffic. It was Saturday. The time was five minutes to four. The right side of his diaphragm was hurting.
CHAPTER 20
Inspector Jensen had switched off the engine, but was still sitting in the car, his notebook open on the steering wheel in front of him. He had just written: Number 4, art director, unmarried, age 20, employment terminated at own request.
Number 4 was also a woman.
The building was on the other side of the street. It was not brand new, but had been well maintained. He found the right door, conveniently located on the ground floor, and rang the bell. No one answered. He rang a couple more times, then knocked long and hard. Finally he tried the handle. The door was locked. Not a sound had come from inside. He stood there for a minute or two. While he was waiting, a telephone started to ring inside the flat. He returned to the car, left five pages of his pad blank and then wrote: Number 5, age 52, journalist, unmarried, left at the end of the agreed contract period.
This time he was lucky with the address: the street was in the same part of town and he only had to drive five blocks.
The building was just like the one he had been in ten minutes previously, long and yellow, five storeys high and set at an angle to the road. The whole district consisted of similar blocks of flats with laminated wood exteriors.
The sign on the door panel was made of letters cut from a newspaper or magazine and fixed on with sticky tape. Some of them had disintegrated or fallen off, making the name illegible. The bell worked, but although he could hear someone moving about inside the flat, it was several minutes before the door was opened.
The man looked older than expected. What was more, he looked extremely unkempt, with matted hair in need of a cut, and a shaggy grey beard. He was wearing a grubby, off-white shirt, drooping trousers and worn black shoes. Inspector Jensen frowned. It was very unusual nowadays for people to be poorly dressed.
‘Inspector Jensen from the Sixteenth District. I’m conducting an investigation that has to do with your former employment and place of work.’
He did not bother to get out his ID.
‘Can you show me your ID?’ the man said at once.
Jensen showed him the enamel tag.
‘Come in,’ said the man.
He seemed self-confident, almost arrogant.
The mess in the flat was remarkable. The floors were covered in loose sheets of paper, newspapers, books, old oranges, bulging rubbish sacks, dirty clothes and unwashed cups, plates and dishes. The furniture comprised a couple of upright wooden chairs, two sagging armchairs, a rickety table and a sofa with an untidy jumble of bedclothes on it. One half of the table had been cleared, obviously to make space for a typewriter and a pile of typescript. There was a layer of thick, greyish dust over everything. The atmosphere was stuffy. And it smelt of alcohol. The man cleared the other half of the table with the aid of a folded newspaper. The indeterminable pile of paper, household articles and other junk fell to the floor.
‘Sit here,’ he said, pushing forward a chair.
‘You are inebriated,’ said Inspector Jensen.
‘Not drunk. Under the influence of alcohol. I never get drunk, but I’m under the influence most of the time. There’s quite a difference.’
Inspector Jensen sat down. The bearded man stood diagonally behind him.
‘You’re a good observer, or you wouldn’t have noticed,’ he said. ‘Most people don’t.’
‘When did you leave your employment?’
‘Two months ago. Why do you ask?’
Jensen put his spiral-bound pad on the table and leafed through it. As he reached the page with Number 3, the man came up behind his back.
‘I’m in select company, I see.’
Jensen continued turning the pages.
‘It amazes me you got away from that cow with your reason intact,’ said the man, walking round the table. ‘Did you go to her place? I’d never dare.’
‘You know her?’
‘Are you joking? I was working on that magazine when she arrived. When she was made chief editor. And I survived for nearly a whole year.’
‘Survived?’
‘I was younger and stronger then, of course.’
He sat down on the sofa bed, thrust his right arm into the tangle of dirty bed linen and pulled out the bottle.
‘Since you’ve noticed anyway, it doesn’t make any difference. And anyway, as I told you, I’m not drunk. Just a bit more on the ball
.’
Jensen had his eyes fixed on him.
The man took a few swigs from the bottle, set it down and said:
‘What are you after?’
‘Some information.’
‘What about?’
Jensen didn’t answer.
‘If it’s that bitch you want to know about, you’ve come to the right address. Not many people know her better than me. I could write her biography.’
The man stopped, but did not seem to be expecting an answer. He peered at his visitor through screwed-up eyes, then at the window, which was almost opaque with filth. Despite the alcohol, his look was observant and alert.
‘Do you know how it happened, when she was put in charge of the biggest magazine in the country?’
Jensen said nothing.
‘Shame,’ said the man. ‘Nothing like enough people do. And yet it’s one of the major turning points in the history of the press.’
The room went quiet for a moment. Jensen regarded the man indifferently and twirled his plastic biro between his fingers.
‘Do you know what her job was before she became chief editor?’
He gave a spiteful laugh.
‘Cleaning lady. And do you know where she cleaned?’
Jensen drew a very small, five-pointed star on the empty page of his notepad.
‘In the holiest of holies. The management suite. How she’d managed to get put there, of all places, I don’t know, but I’m sure it was no coincidence.’
He leaned down and picked up the bottle.
‘She could arrange most things. You know, she was attractive, damn attractive so everyone thought until they’d known her for five minutes.’
He drank.
‘In those days, the cleaning was always done after office hours. The cleaners came at six. All of them except her. She got there an hour early, when the chairman was generally still in his office. He liked to send the secretaries home on the dot of five and then spend some time on something he didn’t want anyone else to see. I don’t know what.
‘But I’ve got a pretty good idea,’ he said, looking towards the window.
The room had darkened. Jensen looked at his watch. It was a quarter past six.
‘At exactly a quarter past five she’d open the door to the chairman’s office, look in and say sorry, then shut it again. Whenever he was on his way out, or going to the toilet or something, he’d always see her disappear round a corner of the corridor.’
