Martin Beck: The Locked Room Part 22

Martin Beck let his finger run down the rows of figures. Then he said: 'Didn't Svard ever take out any money?'

'No, and in my view that's the oddest thing of all. He has never drawn a single cheque on this account, and now that I've looked into the matter it also appears he never even had a chequebook. At least not for years.'

Martin Beck rubbed his nose energetically. No chequebook had been found at Svard's place, nor were there any copies of deposit slips or notifications from the bank.

'Was Svard known by sight here?'

'No. None of us had ever seen him.'

'How old is this account?'

'It seems to have been opened in April, 1966.'

'And since then seven hundred and fifty kronor have been coming in every month?'

'Yes. Though the last deposit is dated 16th March.' The man looked at his calendar. 'That was a Thursday. The next month no money came in.'

'The explanation is quite simple,' Martin Beck said. 'It was about then that Svard died.'

'Oh? We've had no notification to that effect. In such cases the. deceased's relatives usually communicate with us.'

'He doesn't seem to have had any.'

The bank manager looked bewildered.

'Until now,' Martin Beck said. 'Good morning.'

He realized he'd better get going before the bank was robbed. If that were to happen while he was on the premises he could hardly help becoming entangled in the activities of the special squad. And that kind of entanglement he'd certainly rather avoid.

New aspects to the case. Seven hundred and fifty a month for six years! That was a singularly regular income, and since Svard had never taken anything out, quite a large sum of money had gradually acc.u.mulated in the mysterious account: fifty-four thousand kronor.

To Martin Beck that was a lot of money. For Svard it must have been even more, almost a fortune.

So Rhea had not been that far from the truth when she'd talked about money in his mattress. The only difference was that Svard had been more rational; he had kept up with the times.

This new development spurred Martin Beck to fresh activity. The next step would be to have a word with the tax authorities, for one thing; and, for another, to take a look at such deposit slips as might have been filed.

The Internal Revenue people knew nothing of Svard. There he had been regarded as a pauper, and the authorities had contented themselves with that refined form of exploitation called value-added tax on foodstuffs - a tax that has been arranged with a special view to hitting those who have already been knocked out.

Well, Svard had certainly not earned his money by hard work, and the notion that anyone in his position could have saved it from his pension was absurd.

And the deposit slips, then?

The head office of the bank quickly produced the last twenty-two of them - all in all there should have been seventy-two, if he had counted correctly - and that same afternoon Martin Beck was already sitting and staring at them. They all came from various branch offices, and they all looked as if they had been written in different handwritings, accepted without question by as many different cas.h.i.+ers. By and by it would of course be possible to visit these people and ask whether they remembered the client But this would consume an enormous amount of time, without any great likelihood of yielding results.

Who could be expected to remember a person who had deposited seven hundred and fifty kronor into his own current account many months before? The answer was simple: no one.

A little later Martin Beck was home again, drinking tea out of his 1919 Peace Mug. He looked at it and thought that if the mysterious man who had made all these payments into his account looked like Field Marshal Haig, anyone would have been able to recognize him. But who looked like Haig? No one, not even in the most pretentious films or plays.

This evening, again, things were somehow different. He was still restless and unsatisfied, but this time it was due in some way to his not being able to tear his thoughts away from his job: Svard; that idiotic locked room; the mysterious man who had paid in all that money.

Who was he? Could it have been Svard himself, in spite of everything? No. It seemed most improbable that Svard should have put himself to all that trouble. And it also seemed improbable that Svard himself, a mere warehouseman, would ever have hit on the idea of opening a current account.

No, the money had been paid in by someone else. Probably a man, since it was less likely that a woman had gone into the bank, given her name as Karl Edvin Svard, and said she wanted to put seven hundred and fifty kronor into her own current account...

But why should anyone want to give Svard money, anyway? That was a question he must leave temporarily unanswered.

Then there was another misty figure he had to reckon with. The mysterious nephew.

And least tangible of all was the person who - sometime in April or early May - had managed to shoot Svard, even though the latter was in a veritable fortress, a room locked from the inside.

Was it possible, perhaps, that these three had all been the same person? The man who had made the payments, the nephew, and the murderer? Well, that was a question worth brooding on at some length.

He put aside his mug and looked at the clock. Time had pa.s.sed quickly - half past nine already. Too late to go anywhere. Anyway, where had he been thinking of going?

Martin Beck picked out a Bach record and turned on the record player. Then he decided to lie down for a while.

He carried on thinking. If all gaps and question marks were ignored, a story could be a.s.sembled out of what he now knew. The nephew, the man who had paid in the money, and the murderer were one and the same person. Svard was a petty blackmailer who for six years had been forcing this person to pay him seven hundred and fifty kronor a month. But being pathologically stingy, Svard had never used any of the money, and his victim had gone on paying, year after year. But in the end the latter had had enough.

Martin Beck found no particular difficulty in imagining Svard as a blackmailer. But a blackmailer must have something on his victim, must const.i.tute a latent threat to the person he extorts money from. In his own flat Svard had had nothing that could incriminate anyone. Of course, he might have rented a safe-deposit box in some bank. In which case it would soon come to the attention of the police.

In any case, a blackmailer had to be in possession of some kind of information. Where could a warehouseman get such information? Where he worked. Possibly in the house he lived in. As far as anyone knew, these were the only two places where Svard had any human contact. At home and at his job.

But Svard had stopped working in June, 1966; two months earlier the first payment had been made into his current account. All this had happened more than six years ago. What had Svard been doing since?

The record was still going around and around when he woke up. If he'd dreamed anything, he'd forgotten it.

Wednesday - and he was quite clear how his work should start: with a walk.

But not to the metro. His office at Vastberga did not attract him, and today he felt he had excellent reasons for not going to it. Instead, he thought he'd take a little stroll along the quays, and began by walking southwards along Skeppsbron, across Slussen and on eastwards along Stadsgrden Quay.

This was the part of Stockholm he'd always been fondest of. Particularly when he was a child - when all the s.h.i.+ps had tied up here with their cargoes from near and far. Nowadays the real s.h.i.+ps were few and far between, their day was past, and the Aland ferries, with their bars and drunks, had replaced them. A poor subst.i.tute. The old guard of dockers and seamen, too, who in those days had given this part of the harbour much of its charm, were beginning to die out Today, again, he was feeling a little different. He enjoyed, for example, walking in the fresh air, walking briskly, knowing where he was going and letting his thoughts run free.

He reflected on the persistent rumours about his own promotion and felt more troubled by them than before. Right up to his wretched mistake, fifteen months ago, Martin Beck had been afraid of precisely this: that he'd be given a job that would tie him to his desk. He'd always liked working out in the field - or at least to be able to come and go as he wished.

The thought of an office with a conference table, two 'genuine oil paintings', a swivel chair, armchairs for visitors, a cheap rug, and his own private secretary, all this was a good deal more terrifying today than it had been a week ago. Not because the rumours struck him as well founded, but because he had begun to think about the consequences. Perhaps, in spite of everything, what he made of his life wasn't entirely meaningless?

Half an hour of brisk walking and he reached his goal. The warehouse was an old one. Not being designed for container traffic or suitable to modern requirements, it was soon to be torn down.

Inside, very little was going on. The office where the chief warehouseman should have been sitting was empty, and the gla.s.s panes through which that important personage had formerly supervised the work were dusty. One was broken, in fact, and the calendar on the wall was two years out of date.

A forklift lorry was standing beside a not very impressive stack of merchandise, and behind it were two men - one wearing orange overalls and the other a grey coat Each was sitting on a plastic beer case, and another case, upside down, stood between them. One of the two men was quite young; the other looked as if he might be about seventy, though that seemed improbable. The younger man was reading yesterday's evening paper as he smoked a cigarette. The older was doing nothing at all.

Both looked up at Martin Beck lackadaisically, and the younger marked his arrival by dropping his cigarette on the floor and stamping it out with his heel.

'Smoking in the warehouse,' said the older man, shaking his head. 'That would have been...'

'In the old days...' the younger man said, bored. 'But we aren't living in the old days, now; haven't you got that yet, you old thief?' Turning to Martin Beck, he said in an unfriendly voice: 'What do you want? This is private property. It's even written on the door. Can't you read?'

Martin Beck took out his wallet and showed his card.

'Cop,' said the younger man with distaste.

The other said nothing, contenting himself with staring at the floor, clearing his throat, and spitting.

'How long have you been working here?' Martin Beck asked.

'Seven days,' the younger man said. 'And tomorrow it's over. I'm going back to the freight terminal. But what d'you want here?'

Martin Beck didn't reply.

Without waiting for him to speak, the man went on: 'Soon all this'll be over and done with, see? But my friend here can remember when there was twenty-five men and two bosses inside this old shack. Don't you, Grandpa?'

'Then he probably remembers a man named Svard. Karl Edvin Svard.'

The older man threw Martin Beck an empty glance and said: 'What of it? I don't know nothing.'

It wasn't hard to explain the old man's att.i.tude. Someone from the office must already have told him the police were looking for people who'd known Svard.

Martin Beck said: 'Svard's dead and buried.'

'Oh? Dead, is he? In that case I remember him.'

'Don't sit there boasting, Grandpa,' the other man said. 'When Johansson was here asking questions the other day, you didn't remember a b.l.o.o.d.y thing about it. Anyway, you're gaga.' Obviously regarding Martin Beck as utterly harmless, he shamelessly lit another cigarette and added, by way of information: 'The old boy's gaga, that's for sure. Next week he's getting laid off, and starting in January he'll be getting his pension. If he lives that long, that is.'

'I've a very good memory,' the old man said, somewhat offended. 'You bet I remember Kalle Svard. But no one told me he was dead.' Martin Beck said nothing.

'Even the cops can't push dead people around,' the man said philosophically.

The younger man got up and, taking the beer case he'd been sitting on with him, went over to the door. 'Isn't that d.a.m.n lorry coming soon,' he snorted, 'so I can get out of this old-folks home?' He went outside and sat down in the suns.h.i.+ne.

'What kind of a man was Kalle Svard?' Martin Beck asked.

The man shook his head. Again he cleared his throat and spat; but this time it wasn't by way of innuendo, though his phlegm landed only an inch or so from Martin Beck's right shoe.

'What kind of a man... is that what you want to know?'

'Yes.' .

'Sure he's dead?'

'Positive.'

'In that case I can tell you, sir, that Kalle Svard was the biggest b.l.o.o.d.y pain in the a.r.s.e I've ever met' 'How so?'

The man gave a hollow laugh. 'In every d.a.m.n lousy way a man can be! I've never worked with worse, and that's saying a lot, seeing as I'm a man who's sailed the seven seas, yessir! Not even drones like that lad out there could match Kalle Svard. And yet it's types like that who've turned a decent profession into donkey work.' He nodded towards the door.

'Was there anything special about Svard?'

'Special? Oh, he was special, like h.e.l.l he was! First and foremost he was the laziest b.a.s.t.a.r.d there ever was. No one could wriggle out of work like he did. And no one was more stingy, or less willing to stick up for his mates. He wouldn't have given a dying man a drop of water, he wouldn't.' The man fell silent Then he added slyly: 'Though he was good in some ways.'

'In which ways?'

The man's gaze wavered a little, and he hesitated before answering: 'Bah! Licking the foremen's a.r.s.es, he was good at that. And letting others do his job for him. And making out he was ill. Didn't he get himself pensioned off before his time, even before they started laying people off?'

Martin Beck sat down on the beer case. "There was something else you were going to say,' he said.

'Was I?'

'Yes, what was it?'

'Is it certain Kalle's kicked the bucket?' 'Yes, he's dead. Word of honour.'

'Cops ain't got no honour, and one shouldn't really talk ill of the dead. But I've always thought it don't make no difference, much, providing a bloke stands solid with them as is alive.'

'My view exactly,' Martin Beck said. 'What was it Kalle Svard was so good at?'

'He was dead good at breaking into the right crates, see. Though he usually did it during his overtime, so no one else didn't get nothing out of it.'

Martin Beck got up. This was news; and certainly the only news this man had to give him. To know which crates to break into had always been a matter of importance in this job - something of a professional trick and trade secret. Booze, tobacco, and foodstuffs can so easily get damaged in transit Also various saleable articles of the right size.

'Sure, sure,' said the old man. 'So that slipped out of me, did it? And I suppose that's what you wanted to know. And now you can hop it. So long, comrade.'

Karl Edvin Svard might not have been popular, but no one could say his mates hadn't stood up for him, at least as long as he was alive.

'Goodbye,' the man said. 'Goodbye, good-bye.'

Martin Beck had taken a step towards the door and was already opening his'mouth to say 'thanks very much' or something of that sort Instead he halted and went back to the case. 'I think I'll just sit here and talk awhile,' he said.

'What's that?' said the man, looking up.

'Pity we haven't a couple of beers. But I can go and get some.'

The old man stared at him. Gradually the resignation drained from his eyes and was replaced by astonishment. 'What's that?' he said again, suspiciously. 'You want to sit and talk with me?'

'Sure.'

'I've got some,' the man said. 'Beer, that is. Under that case you're sitting on.'

Martin Beck got up, and the man took out a couple of cans of beer.

'Is it okay if I pay?' Martin Beck asked.

'It sounds b.l.o.o.d.y okay to me. Though it's all the same.'

Martin Beck took out a five-kronor bill, handed it over, sat down, and said: 'So you've been at sea, you said. When did you first sign on?'

'Nineteen twenty-two, in Sundsvall. On a schooner called Fram. Skipper's name was Jansson - a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, if ever there was one.'