Per Wahloo – The Abominable Man (страница 9)

‘Do you know if your husband had ever received any threats? Or if there was anyone who thought he had reason to want to see him dead? Anyone who threatened him?’

She went on shaking her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Why should anyone threaten him?’

‘Anyone who hated him?’

‘Why should anyone hate him?’

‘Think carefully,’ Martin Beck said. ‘Wasn't there anyone who thought your husband had treated him badly? He was a policeman, after all, and making enemies is part of the job. Did he ever say someone was out to get him or had threatened him?’

The widow looked in confusion first at her son, then at Rönn, and then back at Martin Beck.

‘Not that I can recall. And I'd certainly remember if he'd said anything like that.’

‘Papa didn't talk much about his job,’ Stefan said. ‘You'd better ask at the station.’

‘We'll ask there too,’ said Martin Beck. ‘How long had he been sick?’

‘A long time, I don't remember exactly,’ the boy said, and looked at his mother.

‘Since June of last year,’ she said. ‘He got sick just before midsummer, an awful pain in his stomach, and he went to the doctor right after the holiday. The doctor thought it was an ulcer and had him go on sick leave. He's been on sick leave ever since, and he's been to several different doctors and they all say different things and prescribe different medicines. Then three weeks ago he went into Sabbath and they've been examining him and doing a lot of tests ever since, but they couldn't find out what it was.’

Talking seemed to distract her attention and help her repress the shock.

‘Papa thought it was cancer,’ the boy said. ‘The doctors said it wasn't. But he was terribly sick all the time.’

‘What did he do all this time? Hasn't he worked at all since last summer?’

‘No,’ Mrs Nyman said. ‘He was really very ill. Had attacks of pain that lasted several days in a row when all he could do was lie in bed. He took a lot of pills, but they didn't help much. He went down to the station a few times last autumn to see how things were going, as he said, but he couldn't work.’

‘Mrs Nyman, can't you remember anything he said or did that might have some connection with what's happened?’ asked Martin Beck.

She shook her head and started sobbing dryly. Her eyes glided on past Martin Beck and she stared straight ahead at nothing.

‘Do you have any brothers and sisters?’ Rönn asked the boy.

‘Yes, a sister, but she's married and lives in Malmö.’

Rönn glanced inquiringly at Martin Beck, who was rolling a cigarette thoughtfully back and forth between his fingers as he looked at the two people in front of him.

‘We'll be going now,’ he said to the boy. ‘I'm sure you can take care of your mother, but I think the best thing would be if you could get a doctor to come over and give her something to make her sleep. Is there any doctor you can call at this time of night?’

The boy stood up and nodded.

‘Doctor Blomberg,’ he said. ‘He usually comes when someone in the family's sick.’

He went out in the hall and they heard him dial a number and after a while someone seemed to answer.

The conversation was short and he came back and stood beside his mother. He looked more like an adult now than he had when they first saw him down in the doorway.

‘He's coming,’ the boy said. ‘You don't need to wait. It won't take him long.’

They stood up and Rönn went over and put his hand on the woman's shoulder. She didn't move, and when they said good-bye she didn't respond.

The boy went with them to the door.

‘We may have to come back,’ said Martin Beck. ‘We'll call you first to find out how your mother's doing.’

When they were out on the street he turned to Rönn.

‘I suppose you knew Nyman?’ he said.

‘Not especially well,’ said Rönn evasively.

9

The blue-white light of a flashbulb lit the dirty yellow façade of the hospital pavilion for an instant as Martin Beck and Rönn returned to the scene of the crime. An additional couple of cars had arrived and stood parked in the turnaround with their headlights on.

‘Apparently our photographer is here,’ Rönn said.

The photographer came towards them as they got out of the car. He carried no camera bag but held his camera and flash in one hand, while his pockets bulged with rolls of film and flashbulbs and lenses. Martin Beck recognized him from the scenes of previous crimes.

‘Wrong,’ he said to Rönn. ‘It looks like the papers got here first.’

The photographer, who worked for one of the tabloids, greeted them and took a picture as they walked towards the door. A reporter from the same paper was standing at the foot of the stairs trying to talk to a uniformed officer.

‘Good morning, Inspector,’ he said when he caught sight of Martin Beck. ‘I don't suppose I could follow you in?’

Martin Beck shook his head and walked up the steps with Rönn in his wake.

‘But you'll give me a little interview at least?’ the reporter said.

‘Later,’ said Martin Beck and held the door open for Rönn before closing it right on the nose of the reporter, who made a face.

The police photographer had also arrived and was standing outside the dead man's room with his camera bag. Further down the corridor was the doctor with the curious name and a plainclothes detective from the Fifth. Rönn went into the sickroom with the photographer and put him to work. Martin Beck walked over to the two men in the hall.

‘How's it going?’ he said.

The same old question.

The plainclothes officer, whose name was Hansson, scratched the back of his neck.

‘We've talked to most of the patients in this corridor, and none of them saw or heard anything. I was just trying to ask Doctor … uh … this doctor here, when we can talk to the other ones.’

‘Have you questioned the people in the adjoining rooms?’ Martin Beck asked.

‘Yes,’ Hansson said. ‘And we've been in all the wards. No one heard anything, but then the walls are thick in a building this old.’

‘We can wait on the others till breakfast,’ said Martin Beck.

The doctor said nothing. He obviously didn't understand Swedish, and after a while he pointed towards the office and said, ‘Have to go,’ in English.

Hansson nodded, and the black curls hurried off in clattering wooden shoes.

‘Did you know Nyman?’ asked Martin Beck.

‘Well, no, not really. I've never worked in his precinct, but of course we've met often enough. He's been around a long time. He was already an inspector when I started, twelve years ago.’

‘Do you know anyone who knew him well?’

‘You can always ask down at Klara,’ Hansson said. ‘That's where he was before he got sick.’

Martin Beck nodded and looked at the electric wall clock over the door to the bathroom. It said a quarter to five.

‘I think I'll go on over there for a while,’ he said. ‘There's not much I can do here for the moment.’

‘Go on,’ said Hansson. ‘I'll tell Rönn where you went.’

Martin Beck took a deep breath when he got outside. The chilly night air felt fresh and clean. The reporter and the photographer were nowhere to be seen, but the uniformed officer was still standing at the foot of the steps.

Martin Beck nodded to him and started walking towards the car park.

The centre of Stockholm had been subjected to sweeping and violent changes in the course of the last ten years. Entire districts had been levelled and new ones constructed. The structure of the city had been altered: streets had been broadened and motorways built. What was behind all this activity was hardly an ambition to create a humane social environment but rather a desire to achieve the fullest possible exploitation of valuable land. In the heart of the city it had not been enough to tear down ninety per cent of the buildings and completely obliterate the original street plan, violence had been visited on the natural topography itself.

Stockholm's inhabitants looked on with sorrow and bitterness as serviceable and irreplaceable old mansion blocks were razed to make way for sterile office buildings. Powerless, they let themselves be deported to distant suburbs while the pleasant, lively neighbourhoods where they had lived and worked were reduced to rubble. The inner city became a clamorous, all but impassable construction site from which the new city slowly and relentlessly arose with its broad, noisy traffic arteries, its shining façades of glass and light metal, its dead surfaces of flat concrete, its bleakness and its desolation.

In this frenzy of modernization, the city's police stations seemed to have been completely overlooked. All the station houses in the inner city were old-fashioned and the worse for wear, and in most cases, since the force had been enlarged over the years, crowded. In the Fourth Precinct, where Martin Beck was heading, this lack of space was one of the primary problems.