Murder on the Thirty-First Floor

by Per Wahlöö

‘No.’

  ‘I can’t explain everything. It would take us too far. It’s conceivable you’ve forgotten the meaning of the terms I’m using, but you must have heard them at some time. Consequently, you’ll gradually start to understand their implications and see the whole picture.’

  Jensen put down his pen and listened.

  ‘As I told you before, I became an arts correspondent, initially because I didn’t think I had it in me to be an author. I wasn’t good enough, to put it simply, even though writing was vitally important to me. It was almost my only passion.’

  He paused. Light rain pattered on the windows.

  ‘I worked as an arts editor on a privately owned newspaper for many years. Its pages not only provided information about art, literature, music and so on, they also left room for debate. For me, as for some other people, the debate was perhaps the most important element. It was broad in its scope, spanning virtually every aspect of society. It was often sharply critical, and not all the views expressed and points made were thoroughly thought through, not by any means.’

  Jensen started to move.

  ‘Stop,’ said the man, and held up his right hand. ‘I think I know what you’re going to say. Yes, that’s right, it did disturb people, and quite often dismayed or disappointed them, made them angry or frightened. It didn’t try to placate anybody, be they institutions, ideas or individuals. We, that’s to say I and a few others, thought that was only right.’

  Jensen carried through his move, checking the time. 19.45.

  ‘It’s claimed,’ the man said thoughtfully, ‘that criticism and violent attacks would on occasion hit a person so hard that they took their own life.’

  He lapsed into silence for a moment. The rain could still be heard.

  ‘Some of us were called cultural radicals, but we were all radical of course, whether our newspapers were privately owned or socialist. That didn’t dawn on me until later, though. But then, politics wasn’t something I took a major interest in. Besides, I mistrusted our politicians. Their qualifications often seemed inadequate to me, on both a human and an educational level.’

  Inspector Jensen drummed his fingers lightly on the edge of the table.

  ‘I know, you’re waiting for me to get to the point,’ the other man said mournfully. ‘All right: one social phenomenon I mistrusted wholeheartedly and consistently was magazines. To my way of thinking, they had done nothing but harm for a long time. In fact, of course, they fulfilled their purpose, such as it was, and should be allowed to survive, but that certainly didn’t mean they should be left to live in peace. I devoted a lot of my time to scrutinising their so-called ideology, to dissecting it and tearing it to bits. I did that in a whole series of articles, and in a polemical book.’

  He allowed himself a tight little smile.

  ‘That volume didn’t make me very popular among the sort of people who cherished that kind of magazine. They called me enemy number one of the weeklies, I recall. That was a long time ago.’

  The man stopped and drew a few diagrammatic sketches on the sheet of paper. The pencil strokes were fine and prim. He seemed to have a very light touch.

  ‘Well then, let’s observe the constraints of time and make a long and complicated story short and simple. The structure of society started to change, first slowly and imperceptibly, then at breakneck speed. The welfare state and the Accord were referred to increasingly often, until the two were seen as indissolubly linked and mutually dependent in every way. At first there was nothing to cause concern; the housing shortage was solved, crime figures went down; the youth question was being tackled. Meanwhile, the long-anticipated moral backlash started, as punctually as the Ice Age. Not especially worrying, as I say. Only a few of us had our suspicions. I assume you know as well as I do what happened next?’

  Jensen did not answer. A strange new sensation was coming over him. It was a feeling of isolation, of seclusion, as if he and the little man with the glasses were under a plastic dome, or in a glass case in some museum.

  ‘The most worrying thing for us, of course, was that all publishing activity was being gathered into the same camp, that publisher after publisher and paper after paper were being sold to the same group of companies, always with financial profitability as the deciding factor. It was all going well, to the point where anyone who criticised anything was made to feel like the proverbial dog barking at the moon. Even people one might have considered far-sighted began to think it carping and petty to create dissent around issues on which there was really only one view. I was never with them on that one, though that may have had something to do with my obstinate, monomaniac streak. A tiny number of cultural workers, that was the term they used then, reacted the way I did.’

  There was complete silence in the room. The sound from outside had stopped.

  ‘Even the paper I worked on was sucked in by the group, of course. I can’t remember exactly when it happened. I mean, there was an apparently endless series of fusions and dummy buyouts, and not much was written or said about it. Even before that, my section had been cut right down. In the end it was scrapped altogether, dismissed as unnecessary. That meant in practice I had no way of earning a living, like a number of colleagues from other papers and various freelance writers. For some reason it was only the most stubborn and pugnacious of us who couldn’t be found new positions. I didn’t realise why until much later. Sorry, I must just get a drink. Do you want anything?’

  Jensen shook his head. The man stood up and disappeared through a door that presumably led to the kitchen. He came back with a glass of mineral water, drank a few mouthfuls and set it down.

  ‘They’d never have made a sports reporter or TV reviewer of me, anyway,’ he muttered.

  He lifted the glass a few centimetres, evidently to check it wasn’t leaving a ring on the tabletop.

  ‘A month or two went by, and the future didn’t look very bright in practical terms. Then one day I was invited in to the big publishing house to discuss possible employment, to my utter astonishment.’

  He paused again. Jensen checked the time. 20.05. He hesitated for a moment and then said:

  ‘Do you admit to sending an anonymous and threatening letter to the management?’

  ‘No, no, not yet,’ the man said in irritation.

  He took a drink of water.

  ‘I went there full of scepticism, and was confronted with the management of the time, which was in fact more or less the same as today’s. They were extremely accommodating, and the proposal they made me took me totally unawares. I can still remember how they worded it.’

  The man gave a laugh.

  ‘Not because I’ve a particularly good memory, but because I wrote it down. They said that free debate mustn’t be allowed to die, or its practitioners be left to sink into inactivity. That even with society well on its way to perfection, there would always be issues to be discussed. That free debate, even if it was superfluous, was one of the primary requirements for the ideal state. That existing culture, in whatever form, had to be nurtured and preserved for posterity. Finally they said that the group, having now assumed responsibility for such a large proportion of the country’s most vital publishing activity, was also prepared to take responsibility for the cultural debate. That they planned to publish the country’s first all-round, completely independent cultural magazine, with the aid of the best and most spirited people in the business.’

  The man seemed to be getting more and more carried away by his subject. He tried to catch Jensen’s gaze and hold it.

  ‘They treated me very correctly. Dropped a few respectful insinuations about my frequently aired views on the weeklies, shook hands with me as if the whole thing were some kind of table tennis match, and said they were looking forward to confounding all my preconceptions. They rounded it all off with a concrete offer.’

  He sat there for a while, apparently absorbed in his own thoughts.

  ‘Censorship,’ he said. ‘There’s no official censorship i
n our country, is there?’

  Jensen shook his head.

  ‘Yet I can’t help feeling the censorship here is more implacable and thorough than it can ever be in a police state. Why? Because it’s implemented privately, of course, in an entirely unregulated fashion, using methods that are legally unimpeachable. Because, mark my words, the practical possibility of censoring things, as distinct from the right to do it, lies with people – be they civil servants or individual businessmen – who are convinced their decisions are right, and to the benefit of all. And because most of the ordinary people also believe in this absurd doctrine and consequently censor themselves, whenever the need arises.’

  He threw Jensen a quick glance, to check his audience was following.

  ‘Everything’s censored: the food we eat, the papers we read, the TV programmes we watch, the radio broadcasts we hear. Even the football matches are censored; they say they edit out any situations in which players are injured or infringe the rules in a major way. It’s all done for the good of the people. You could see the way it was all going from a very early stage.’

  He drew a few more geometric figures on his piece of paper.

  ‘Those of us who were concerned with the debate on cultural issues noticed the tendency long ago, though it only showed itself at first in contexts that weren’t really in our area. The symptoms were most obvious in the judicial system. It started with the secrecy laws being applied more often and more rigorously; the military managed to persuade the legal profession and the politicians that all sorts of petty little things might compromise national security. Then we started to notice that other cases were also increasingly being heard behind closed doors, a practice I’ve always considered dubious and objectionable, even when the accused happens to be a sex maniac. In the end, almost every trifling case was being heard wholly or partly out of reach of the individual members of the public. The motivation was always the same: to protect the individual from offensive, inflammatory or alarming facts that might have an impact on his or her peace of mind. At the same time it became clear – I still remember my amazement when I first discovered it – that a number of fairly high level state and local government officials had the authority to use the secrecy laws in connection with any enquiries pertaining to their own administrative bodies. Absurdly non-crucial matters, like where the local authority was to tip its rubbish and things like that, came under the Official Secrets Act and nobody turned a hair. And within the branches of business that were controlled by private capitalism, and newspaper publishing above all, censorship was deployed still more relentlessly. Usually not maliciously or to evil ends, but on the basis of something called moral responsibility.’

  He finished his mineral water.

  ‘As for the moral qualifications of the people who wielded that power, the less said on that subject the better.’

  Jensen looked at his watch. 20.17.

  ‘The moment the union movement and the private-sector employers reached unanimity, it created an unprecedented concentration of power. Organised opposition melted away.’

  Jensen nodded.

  ‘After all, there was nothing to oppose. All the problems were solved, even the housing shortage and the terrible parking situation. Everyone was becoming materially much better off, fewer children were being born outside marriage, fewer crimes were being committed. The only people who could possibly oppose or criticise the identikit political alliance that had achieved this economic and moral miracle were a handful of suspicious professional polemicists like myself. The sort who could be expected to ask lots of irrelevant questions. At what cost was this material luxury being won? Why were fewer children being born outside marriage? Why was criminality declining? And so on.’

  ‘Get to the point,’ said Inspector Jensen.

  ‘Yes of course, the point,’ the man said drily. ‘The concrete offer they made me was extremely tempting. The group was planning to publish this formidable magazine, as I said. It was to be written and edited by the best, the most explosively and dynamically thinking cultural figures in the country. I remember that exact wording. I was judged to belong in that category, and I can’t deny I felt flattered. They showed me the list of names of those who would be editing it. It surprised me, because the team they’d assembled, about twenty-five of them, amounted to what I would have termed at the time the cultural and intellectual elite of the nation. We would have every conceivable resource at our disposal. Do you see why I was surprised?’

  Jensen watched him with indifference.

  ‘Naturally there were a few provisos. The magazine would have to make a profit, or at least break even. That was one of their articles of faith, after all. The other was that everyone was to be protected from evil. Well, if it was going to make a profit, the magazine would have to be planned very carefully; the definitive form and design had to be put in place. Before that, a series of market research projects would have to be conducted; we could reckon on producing a long series of fully edited sample issues. Nothing was to be left to chance. As regards the content and the subjects raised, we were to have a completely free hand, of course, both in the testing stage and later, when the magazine was launched on the open market.’

  He smiled a grim smile.

  ‘They also said that one of the basic rules in their line of business was complete secrecy for any new publication in its projection and development phase. Otherwise someone else, God knows who, might steal the whole idea. They also pointed out that it had, for example, taken years for some titles – they named various ghastly titles from their standard range – to reach their definitive form. This was to support their advice that more haste might mean less speed, and that we should go about things cautiously and with the greatest discretion, to achieve a perfect result. It was an astonishingly advantageous offer. Within reasonable limits, I was to set my own salary. The salary we agreed was to be paid in the form of a fee for each piece I wrote, which would be entered in the accounts. Even if those fees didn’t amount to the total agreed in advance, that sum would be paid out anyway. Admittedly this might lead to a certain imbalance, meaning that at times I might technically be in debt to the publishing house, or vice versa. Then it would be up to me to restore the balance. If I was in deficit, I could make it up by producing more material; if I had over-produced I would have a chance to take a rest. The remainder of the contract was just routine clauses: I could be fired if I misbehaved, or deliberately sabotaged the group’s interests; I was not to leave my employment without paying off any money potentially owing, and various things like that.’

  The man fiddled with his pencil, but without moving it from its position.

  ‘I signed. The agreement gave me a far higher income than I’d ever had before. It turned out later that everyone had signed the same type of contract. A week later I started work in the Special Department.’

  Jensen opened his mouth to say something, but decided against it.

  ‘That was the official name, the Special Department. The Department 31 label came later. We were put on the thirty-first floor, you see, at the very top of the building. The rooms up there had originally been intended as some kind of storage or loft area; hardly anyone knew they were there. The lifts didn’t go up that far and the only way up was via a narrow metal staircase, spiral steps. There were no windows, either, but there were a few skylights in the roof. The reason we were up there was twofold, they said. Partly so we could work completely undisturbed, partly so it would be easier to keep the project secret through the planning stage. We worked different hours to everybody else in the group, shorter hours in fact. It all seemed plausible at the time. Does that surprise you?’

  Jensen did not answer.

  ‘So we started work, with a good deal of friction initially; you can just imagine two dozen individualists, with minds of their own and without an existing common denominator. The person in charge was a complete illiterate who later got one of the most senior jobs in the whole group of companies. I can add
to your store of anecdotes by telling you he’s said to have got top journalist posts because he’s dyslexic, just like the chairman and the publisher. He kept a low profile, though. The first sample issue didn’t go to print for eight months, largely because the technical production side was so slow. It was a good, bold issue, and to our complete amazement the management received it very positively. Despite the fact that lots of the articles were critical of almost everything, including the weekly press, they made no comment on the content. They just urged us to adjust a long list of technical details, and above all to step up the rate of production. Until we could guarantee a new issue every fourteen days, regular publication was out of the question. Even that sounded plausible.’

  He bestowed a kindly look on Jensen.

  ‘It took us two years, with the resources we had and ever more unwieldy processes of typesetting and going to press, to get into the rhythm of two issues a month. The magazine was always printed. We would be given ten sample copies of every issue. They were filed away for archival use; the need for discretion meant we were strictly forbidden to take copies out of the office. Well, when we’d got that far, the management seemed satisfied, delighted even, and they said all that was needed now was to give the magazine a new layout, a modern design to enable it to stand on its own in the competitive climate of the open market. And believe it or not, it wasn’t until that redesign, which was in the hands of strange groups of experts, had been going on for eight months with no visible results, that—’

  ‘That what?’ said Inspector Jensen.

  ‘That the full implication of what they were up to finally dawned on us. When we started to object, they placated us by printing bigger runs of sample issues, up to about five hundred, that were to be sent out to all the daily papers and important authorities. We gradually realised it was all a complete sham, but it took us a while. It was only as we slowly became aware that the magazine’s name was never mentioned and its content was never discussed that we realised copies were never actually distributed at all. That the magazine was only used as a correlative, or rather as an indication of what and how one was allowed to write. We always got our ten copies. Since then …’