Martin Beck: The Locked Room Part 18

Sometimes at night, as she wandered aimlessly between the living room and the kitchen, too tired to read and too nervous to sleep, it would seem to her that she was going out of her mind. It was as if she only had to let go a little, and the barriers would fall and madness would burst through.

Often she contemplated suicide, and many times her feelings of hopelessness and anxiety were so acute that only the thought of her child prevented her from taking her own life.

She worried deeply about the child. She would weep tears of helpless bitterness when she thought of her daughter's future. She wanted her child to grow up in a warm, secure, humane environment - one where the rat race after power, money, and social status did not make everyone into an enemy, and where the words 'buy and 'own' weren't regarded as synonymous with happiness. She wanted to give her child a chance to develop her individuality and not be shaped to fit into one of the pigeonholes society had prepared for her. She wanted her child to feel the joy of working, of sharing life with others, of security; and she wanted her to have self-respect Such elementary demands on existence for her daughter did not seem to her presumptuous; but she clearly saw that she'd never realize these hopes as long as they went on living in Sweden. What she couldn't figure out was how to get the money to emigrate; and her despair and despondency threatened to turn into resignation and apathy.

When she'd come home after her visit to Oslo, she had decided to pull herself together and do something about her situation. To enlarge her own freedom and also save Mona from becoming too isolated, she tried - for the tenth time - to get her a place in a day-care centre nearer to the building they lived in. To her astonishment a place was available, and Mona was able to start at once.

Very much at random, Monita had begun answering the want ads. And all the while she was brooding on her main problem: What was she to do to get some money? That she'd need a great deal of it if she was ever to radically alter her situation was something she clearly realized. She wanted at all costs to go abroad. She felt less and less content - and had begun to hate this society, which boasted of a prosperity actually reserved for a small privileged minority while the great majority's only privilege was to keep moving on the treadmill that turned the machinery.

Again and again in her thoughts she turned over the various ways of getting some capital. She found the problem insoluble. To earn it by honest work was out of the question. Even when she was working she had never managed to make her after-tax earnings suffice for much more than rent and food.

Her chances of winning the football pools seemed improbable, but every week she went on handing in her thirty-two-line coupon, if only to be able to go on hoping. There was no one she could expect to leave her a fortune. Nor was it likely that some mortally ill millionaire would propose marriage and then give up the ghost on their wedding night There were girls, of course, who earned a lot of money as prost.i.tutes. She even knew one personally. Nowadays there was no need to walk the streets; you just called yourself a model and rented a studio or took work in some ma.s.sage parlour or elegant s.e.x club. But she found the mere thought of it repulsive.

The only way left, then, was to steal it. But how, and where? Anyway, she was certainly too honest to carry it off. So for the time being she decided to try to get herself a decent job. This proved easier than she'd dared hope.

She got a job as a waitress in a busy well-known city-centre restaurant. Her hours were short and convenient, and there were excellent prospects of doing well out of tips. One of this restaurant's many habitues was Filip Faithful Mauritzon.

One day he was sitting, an insignificant but decent-looking little man, at one of Monita's tables, where he ordered pork and mashed turnips. He had said some friendly words to her and joked as she took his order; but there was nothing about him to merit Monita's particular attention. Neither, on the other hand, was there anything about Monita to arouse Mauritzon's special interest, at least not that time.

Monita's appearance, as she herself had gradually come to realize, was commonplace. People she'd met only once or twice rarely recognized her the next time. She had dark hair, grey-blue eyes, good teeth, and regular features. She was of medium height - five feet five inches - normal physique, and weighed about one hundred and twenty pounds. There were men who thought her beautiful, but that was only after they had come to know her well.

When Mauritzon, for the third time in a week, sat down at one of her tables, Monita recognized him and guessed that he was going to order the plat du jour: sausages and boiled potatoes. Last time he'd opted for pork pancakes.

He did order the sausages, and a gla.s.s of milk to drink. When she brought him his food, he looked up at her and said: 'You must be new here, miss?'

She nodded. It wasn't the first time he'd spoken to her, but she was used to anonymity, and her waitress's uniform did nothing to facilitate recognition.

When she brought him his bill he gave her a substantial tip and said: 'I hope you'll like it here, miss, because I do. And the food's good, so watch your figure.' Before leaving he winked at her in an amiable manner.

During the following weeks Monita noticed how the tidy little fellow who always ate the simplest of food and never drank anything but milk began to select one of her tables. Before sitting down, it became his habit to stand over by the door and look to see which tables she was serving. This astonished her, but she also felt faintly flattered.

She did not regard herself as any great shakes as a waitress. She found it hard to maintain a mask of impa.s.sivity towards querulous or impatient customers, and whenever anyone annoyed her, she'd snap back. She also had the habit of getting lost in her own thoughts and was often distraught and forgetful. On the other hand she was strong and worked quickly, and to such customers as she thought deserved it she was friendly without being obsequious or silly like some of the other girls.

Each time Mauritzon came in she'd exchange a few words with him. Gradually she came to regard him as an old acquaintance. His polite, slightly old-fas.h.i.+oned manners - which seemed in some way out of synch with the pithy views on everything between heaven and earth that he often expressed - fascinated her.

Though Monita was not happy in her new job, she did not find it altogether a bad one. She finished before the day-care centre closed, so she was able to pick Mona up on time. And she no longer felt so desperately isolated and lonely, though she still entertained the same wild hope that one day she'd be able to leave Sweden for some other more friendly climate. By now Mona had found several new playmates in the day-care centre and could hardly wait to get there every morning. Her best friend lived in the same building, and Monita had got to know the parents - who were young and friendly. With them she had made a mutual arrangement whereby they each looked after the other's daughter at nights, when an evening out became imperative. Several times she had had Mona's playmate as her overnight guest, and Mona had twice slept at her friend's place - even though Monita had found nothing better to do on those occasions than to go into town to the cinema. Even so, it was an arrangement that gave her a sense of freedom and that was later to prove a most practical one.

One April day, when she'd been working at her new job for a little more than two months, she was standing there with her hands clasped under her ap.r.o.n, dreaming, when Mauritzon summoned her over to his table. She went up to him, nodded at his plate of pea soup, which he'd barely had time to taste, and asked: 'Is there something wrong with it?'

'Excellent, as usual,' Mauritzon said. 'But something has occurred to me. Here I sit stuffing myself day after day while you just run about working. I was going to ask whether I could invite you out to have a bite to eat with me, for a change. In the evening, of course, when you're free. Tomorrow, for instance?'

Monita didn't hesitate long. She had long ago summed him up as honest, sober, and hard-working, a trifle eccentric but certainly not dangerous, even quite nice. Besides, this move of his had long been in the air, and she'd already made up her mind what she'd answer when he asked her. So she said: 'Oh well, why not?'

After pa.s.sing that Friday evening in Mauritzon's company Monita only needed to revise her opinion in two respects. He was not a teetotaller, and presumably he wasn't very hard-working either; but neither of these facts made him any less nice. Indeed, she found him really interesting.

Several times that spring they went out to restaurants together. Each time Monita, in a friendly but firm manner, turned down Mauritzon's invitation to come home with him for a nightcap, nor did she allow him to see her home to Hokarangen.

In the early summer she saw nothing at all of him and for two weeks in July was herself away on holiday with her sister in Norway.

The first day after her return Mauritzon came in and sat down at his usual table. The same evening they met again. This time Monita went home with him to Armfeldtsgatan. It was the first time they went to bed together. Monita found he was as sociable in bed as elsewhere.

Their relations.h.i.+p developed to their mutual satisfaction. Mauritzon was not too demanding and did not insist on meeting her more often than she herself wished, namely a couple of times a week. He was considerate toward her, and each found the other's company agreeable.

For her part she showed him the same delicacy. He was extremely taciturn, for instance, about his occupation, about how he earned his living; but though she wondered a good deal about this she was never inquisitive. Neither did she want him interfering too much in her own life, least of all where Mona was concerned. So she took care not to poke her nose into his affairs. He didn't seem particularly jealous - no more than she was. Either he realized he was her only lover, or else he was indifferent to whether she went with other men. Nor did he ever ask her about her earlier affairs.

When autumn came they went out on the town together less frequently, preferring to stay at his place, where they had something nice to eat and pa.s.sed the greater part of their evenings and nights together in bed.

Now and again Mauritzon vanished on some business trip, though he never said where or what sort of business it was. Monita was not stupid. She'd quite soon come to realize his activities must be criminal in some way, but having satisfied herself that he was basically decent and honest she a.s.sumed his criminality to be of an innocuous kind. She thought of him as a Robin Hood who stole from the rich to give to the poor. That he was a white slaver or that he sold drugs to children was something that never occurred to her. As soon as the opportunity presented itself she tried in a veiled way to let him know that she was not disposed to moralize about crime aimed at the rich or against an exploitative society in general. She did this to get him, if possible, to reveal some of his secrets.

And indeed, around Christmas, Mauritzon found himself obliged to initiate Monita to some small extent into his affairs. Christmas was always a busy time in Mauritzon's line of work, and now, in his enthusiasm not to let slip any opportunity to make money, he had taken on many more jobs than he could handle. Indeed, it was a physical impossibility. A highly complicated transaction required his presence in Hamburg the day after Christmas, though he had also promised that same day to make a delivery at Fornebu Airport outside Oslo. Since Monita was to spend Christmas in Oslo as usual, the temptation to ask her to act as his standin and courier was more than he could resist. No great risks were attached to the job, but the arrangements in connection with the delivery were so unusual and so involved that he could hardly fool her into thinking it was just an ordinary Christmas present. He gave her detailed instructions but, knowing she took a dim view of the drug business, told her that the package contained some forged forms to be used in a post office job.

Monita had nothing against acting as his a.s.sistant and carried out her task without complications. He paid for her journey and gave her a few hundred kronor by way of a fee.

Though this extra income, so easily earned but so sorely needed, should have whetted her appet.i.te, Monita, after she'd had time to think the matter over, was very much of two minds about undertaking anything similar in the future.

She had nothing against the money. But if it entailed a risk of ending up in jail, she at least wanted to know what it was all about. She regretted not having taken a look at the contents of the package and began to suspect Mauritzon had fooled her. Next time he asked her to act as his emissary she'd made up her mind to refuse. To run about with mysterious parcels containing anything from opium to time bombs was quite simply not up her alley.

Mauritzon must have understood this intuitively, for he asked no more services of her. Though his att.i.tude remained the same, as time went by she began to become aware of aspects of his nature that she'd not perceived before. She discovered that he often told her lies - quite unnecessarily, since she never asked him what he was up to or tried to put him on the spot. She also began to suspect that he was not a gentleman thief - rather, a petty retailer in crime who would do virtually anything for money.

During the first months of the year they met less frequently, not so much because Monita was resisting him but because Mauritzon was unusually busy and was often away.

Monita did not think he'd grown tired of her; any evening he had to himself he was only too glad to spend with her. On one occasion when she was at his place he had some visitors. It was an evening in early March. His visitors, whose names were Malmstrom and Mohren, were somewhat younger than Mauritzon and seemed to be business a.s.sociates of his. She had taken a particular liking to one of them, but they'd not seen each other again.

For Monita the winter of 1971 was grim. The restaurant where she'd been working changed hands. Converted into a pub, it lost its former customers without managing to attract new ones, and in the end the staff had been fired and the place turned into a bingo hall. Now she was out of work again, and, with Mona in the day-care centre by day and out playing with her friends on weekends, she felt more lonely than ever.

She found it irritating not to be able to put an end to her affair with Mauritzon, an irritation that increased during his absences. When they were together she still enjoyed his company. Besides being the only person in the world apart from Mona who seemed to have any need for her, he was obviously in love with her - and this of course was flattering.

Sometimes, having nothing to do in the daytime, she'd go up to the Armfeldtsgatan flat at times when she knew he wouldn't be at home. She liked to sit there alone, reading, listening to records, or just being among his things, which still seemed strange to her though by now she should have got used to them. Apart from a couple of books and some records, there was nothing in his flat she would ever have dreamed of possessing in her own home. Nevertheless, in some strange way, she felt at home there.

He'd never given her a key to his flat. It was she who had a copy made one time when he'd lent her his. This was the only liberty she'd ever taken with him, and at first it had given her a bad conscience.

She always made sure to leave no telltale traces and only went there when she was quite sure he was away. How would he react if he knew? Sometimes, of course, she snooped about his belongings but never found anything that seemed particularly incriminating. She'd had the extra key made not in order to pry, but just to be able to go there in privacy - not that anyone was looking for her or had any interest in her whereabouts. Even so, it gave her a feeling of inaccessibility, a sense of sovereignty reminiscent of what she had known when playing hide-and-seek as a child. She would always choose such a good hiding place that no one in the whole world could ever find her. If she'd asked him, he'd probably have given her a key of her own. But then there'd have been no fun in it One day in mid-April Monita, feeling unusually restless and troubled, went to the flat in Armfeldtsgatan. She was going to sit in Mauritzon's ugliest and most comfortable armchair, play some Vivaldi on the gramophone, and hope that that wonderful feeling of peace and total indifference to everything would come over her.

Mauritzon was away in Spain, and wasn't due back until the next day.

She hung up her coat and shoulder bag on a hook in the hall and after taking out her cigarettes and matches went into the living room. It was its usual tidy self. Mauritzon did his own cleaning. When they had first become acquainted she'd asked him why he didn't hire a cleaning woman. He'd answered that he liked tidying up and had no desire to hand over that pleasure to someone else.

Putting down her cigarettes and matches on the broad arm of the armchair, she went into the other room and set the record player going. She put on The Four Seasons. Listening to the first notes of Vivaldi, she went out into the kitchen to get an ashtray from the closet, then went back with it into the living room. Curling up in the armchair, she placed the ashtray on its arm.

She thought about Mauritzon and their poverty-stricken relations.h.i.+p. Though they'd known each other for a year it had grown no deeper, nor had it matured. Rather the contrary. She could never remember what they talked about when they met, presumably because they never talked about anything of importance.

Sitting there now in his favourite chair and looking at the bookcase with all its silly little pots and vases, she thought him an unusually absurd character. And for the hundredth time she asked herself why she even bothered with him, why she didn't get herself a proper man instead?

She lit a cigarette, blew the smoke out in a thin jet up at the ceiling, and reflected that she must stop thinking about that halfwit before she fell into a really bad mood.

Making herself comfortable in the chair she closed her eyes and tried to stop thinking, slowly moving her hand meanwhile in time with the music. In the middle of the largo she knocked over the ash tray, which fell to the floor and smashed.

'Dammit,' she muttered. She got up, went out into the kitchen, and opened the closet under the sink - fumbling for the brush, which normally stood to the right of the rubbish bag. It wasn't there. So she bent down and looked inside. The brush was lying on the bottom, and as she reached for it she caught sight of a briefcase. The briefcase stood behind the rubbish bag. Old and worn; she'd never seen it before. He must have put it in there intending to take it down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. It looked too bulky to go into the refuse chute.

At that moment she noticed that a thick piece of string was wound around it many times and that it had been tied in several efficient knots. Lifting out the briefcase, she put it down on the kitchen floor. It was heavy.

Now she was curious. Cautiously, she undid the knots, trying to remember how they had been tied. Then she unwound the string and opened the briefcase.

It was full of stones; flat pieces of black shale, which she recognized. It seemed to her she'd recently seen them somewhere. She furrowed her brow, straightened her back, flung her cigarette b.u.t.t into the sink, and stared thoughtfully at the briefcase. Why should he have packed an old briefcase with stones, tied it up with string, and put it under the sink?

Now she examined the briefcase more carefully. Genuine leather - it had certainly been elegant and rather expensive when new. She inspected the inside of the flap: no name. Then she noticed something peculiar: someone had cut off the four bottom corners with a sharp knife or razor blade. What was more, it had been done quite recently. The slashed surfaces of the leather were quite fresh.

All at once she realized what he'd intended to do with this briefcase: throw it into the sea. Why? Bending down, she began picking out the slabs of shale. As she laid them out in a heap on the floor she remembered where she'd seen such stones. Down in the hall, just inside the door to the backyard, there'd been a heap of these slabs. Presumably they were to be used for surfacing the yard at the rear of the building. That's where he must have gotten them.

Just as she was thinking there couldn't be many left in the briefcase, her fingertips touched something hard and polished. She took it out and stood there holding it in her hand, contemplating it. Slowly a thought that had long been gnawing away in the depths of her mind took shape.

In this black steel thing, perhaps, she had the solution - the freedom she'd been dreaming of.

The pistol was about seven and a half inches long, of big calibre, and had a heavy b.u.t.t. On the blueish s.h.i.+ning steel above the breach was engraved the name: Llama. She weighed the weapon in her hand. It was heavy.

Monita went out into the hall and put the pistol in her bag. Then she went back into the kitchen, replaced all the stones in the briefcase, rewound the string around it - trying to duplicate the original knots - and finally put the briefcase back where she'd found it.

She took the brush, swept up the fragments of the ashtray in the living room, went out into the hallway, and poured them down the refuse chute. When she came in again she turned off the record player, put the record back where it belonged, and went out into the kitchen. She took her cigarette b.u.t.t out of the sink and flushed it down the toilet. Then she put on her coat, snapped her bag closed, and hung it over her shoulder. Before leaving the flat she made a quick tour of the rooms to make sure everything was in its place. She felt for the key in her pocket, slammed the door behind her, and went downstairs.

As soon as she got home she planned to do some serious thinking.

25.

On Friday morning, 7th July, Gunvald Larsson got up very early. Not precisely at sunrise, that would have been excessive. The name of the day in the Swedish calendar was 'Klas', and the rim of the sun appeared over the Stockholm horizon as early as eleven minutes to three.

By half past six he had taken a shower, eaten his breakfast, and dressed, and half an hour later he was already on the front steps of the little house on Sngarvagen, in Sollentuna, already visited by Einar Ronn four days before.

This was the Friday when everything was going to happen. Once again Mauritzon was to be confronted by Bulldozer Olsson, it was to be hoped under less cordial circ.u.mstances than last time. Perhaps, too, the moment had arrived for them to lay their hands on Malmstrom and Mohren and intervene in their big coup.

But before the special squad went into action Gunvald Larsson had it in mind to solve a little problem that had been irritating him all week. Seen in a broader context, perhaps, it was a mere trifle, yet an annoying one. Now he wanted to dispose of it once and for all and also to prove to himself that his own thinking had been correct, and that he'd drawn the right conclusion.

Sten Sjogren had not gotten up with the sun. Five minutes pa.s.sed before, yawning and fumbling with the belt of his dressing gown, he came down and opened the door.

Gunvald Larsson was not unfriendly, but he came straight to the point. 'You've been lying to the police,' he said.

'Have I?'

'A week ago you twice described a bank robber, who at first glance appeared to be a woman. Further, you gave a detailed description of the car that person used in the getaway, and of two men who were also in the car, a Renault 16.'

'Quite right.'

'And on Monday you repeated the same story, word for word, to a detective inspector who came here and talked to you.' 'That's true, too.'

'What is also true is that the whole thing was nothing but a pack of lies.'

'But I described that blonde as best I could.'

Yes, because you knew several other people had seen the robber. You were also smart enough to figure out that a film had probably been taken inside the bank.'

'But I'm certain it was a woman!'

'Oh? Why?'

'I'm not sure, but I've got a kind of instinct where ladies are concerned.'

'This time, as it happens, your instinct has failed you. But that's not what I've come here about I want you to admit that your tale about the car and those two men was made up.'

'Why do you want me to do that?'

'My reasons have no bearing on the matter. Anyway, they're of a purely private nature.'

Sjogren was no longer half-asleep. With a curious look at Gunvald Larsson he said slowly: 'As far as I know it's not a crime to give incomplete or inaccurate information, as long as one isn't under oath.'

'Quite right'

'In which case this conversation is meaningless.'

'Not to me. I very much want to check upon this matter. Let us say I've reached a certain conclusion, and I want to be sure it's the right one.'

'And what conclusion is that?'

'That you conned the police with a bunch of lies for your own advantage.'

'Plenty of people in this society think only of their own advantage.'

'But not you?'

'At least I try not to. Not many people understand. My wife, for instance. Which is why I haven't got her any longer.'

'So you think it's right to break into banks? And regard the police as the natural enemy of the people?'

'Something of that sort, yes. Though not quite so simple.'

'To rob a bank and shoot the director of a gymnastics inst.i.tute isn't a political act.'

'No, not here and now, it isn't. But one can take an ideological view of the matter. Look at it in its historical perspective. Sometimes bank robberies have been politically motivated - during the Irish troubles, for instance. But the protest can also be unconscious.'

'So - it's your view that common criminals can be regarded as revolutionaries?'

'That's a thought,' Sjogren said, 'though it's one that most prominent so-called socialists reject. Ever read Artur Lundkvist?'

'No.' Gunvald Larsson mostly read Jules Regis and similar authors. At the moment he was ploughing through S. A. Duse's output However, this had nothing to do with the matter. His literary habits were dictated by a need for amus.e.m.e.nt he had no longing for a literary education.