Roseanna Page 7

  ‘I knew that I was right,’ Ahlberg said. ‘I had a feeling. How many passengers were there on the boat?’

  ‘According to the list there were sixty-eight,’ said Martin Beck and filled in the number on the paper in front of him with a pen.

  ‘Are their addresses listed?’

  ‘No, only nationalities. It's going to be one hell of a job to find all these people. We can cross off some of them, of course. Children and old women, for example. Then too, we have the crew and other personnel to get hold of. That makes eighteen more but I have their addresses.’

  ‘You said that Kafka thought that she was travelling alone. What do you think?’

  ‘It doesn't seem as if she was with anyone. She had a single cabin. According to the deck plan it was the one farthest back towards the stern on the middle deck.’

  ‘I must admit that it doesn't tell me very much,’ said Ahlberg. ‘In spite of the fact that I see that boat several times a week every summer I don't really know what it looks like. I've never been on board any of them. All three seem alike to me.’

  ‘Actually, they are not really alike. I think we ought to try and get a look at the Diana. I'll find out where she is,’ said Martin Beck.

  He told Ahlberg about his visit to the Hotel Gillet, gave him the address of the pilot and chief engineer both of whom lived in Motala, and promised to call again when he found out where the Diana was now.

  After he had finished the conversation with Ahlberg, he went into his chief's office with the passenger list.

  Hammar congratulated him on the progress and asked him to go and have a look at the boat as soon as possible. Kollberg and Melander would have to worry about the passenger list for the time being.

  Melander didn't seem very enthusiastic about the task of locating the addresses of sixty-seven unknown people spread out over the entire globe. He sat in Martin Beck's office with a copy of the passenger list in his hand and made a fast tabulation:

  ‘Fifteen Swedes, of which five are named Andersson, three named Johansson, and three named Petersson. That sounds promising! Twenty-one Americans, minus one, of course. Twelve Germans, four Danes, four Englishmen, one Scot, two Frenchmen, two South Africans — we can look for them with tom-tom drums — five Dutchmen and two Turks.’

  He tapped his pipe against the wastepaper basket and put the list into his pocket.

  ‘Turks. On the Göta Canal,’ he mumbled and left the room.

  Martin Beck telephoned the canal boat office. The Diana was at Bohus for the winter, a community on the Göta River about twelve miles from Gothenburg. A man from the Gothenburg office would meet them there and show them the boat.

  He called Ahlberg and informed him that he would take the afternoon train to Motala. They agreed that they would leave Motala at seven o'clock the following morning in order to be in Bohus around ten o'clock.

  For once he missed the rush hour going home and the subway car was almost empty.

  His wife had begun to understand how important this case was to him and only ventured a mild protest when he told her that he was leaving. She packed his suitcase in sullen silence but Martin Beck pretended not to notice her demonstrable sulkiness. He kissed her absentmindedly on the cheek and left home a full hour before train time.

  ‘I didn't bother to reserve a room for you at the hotel,’ said Ahlberg, who was waiting with his car in front of the railway station in Motala. ‘We have a formidable sofa you can sleep on.’

  They sat up late and talked that evening and when the alarm clock rang the next morning they felt anything but rested. Ahlberg telephoned the SKA* and they promised to send two men to Bohus. Then they went down to the car.

  The morning was cold and grey and after they had driven a while it began to rain lightly.

  ‘Did you get hold of the pilot and the chief engineer?’ Martin Beck asked, when they had left the city behind them.

  ‘Only the chief engineer,’ said Ahlberg. ‘He was a tough guy. I had to drag every word out of him. In any case he had very little to do with the passengers. And on this particular trip he was obviously fully occupied due to the trouble with the motor … sorry, the engine. He was in a bad mood the minute I mentioned that trip. But he said that there had been two boys helping him and that as far as he knew, they had signed on a boat which was going to England and Germany right after the Diana's last trip.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ Martin Beck replied. ‘We'll get hold of them. We'll have to go through all the shipping company lists.’

  The rain increased and by the time they reached Bohus the water was pouring over the windscreen. They didn't see very much of the town because the heavy rain blocked their view but it looked rather small with a few factories and a large building which stretched out along the river. They found their way to the edge of the river and after they had driven slowly for a while, they caught sight of the boats. They looked deserted and spooky and the men couldn't make out the names of the boats until they were almost on top of the pier.

  They remained in the car and watched for the man from the shipping office. There was no one in sight but another car was parked not too far from them. When they drove over to it, they saw a man sitting behind the wheel, looking in their direction.

  They pulled up and parked their car next to the other one. The man rolled down his side window and shouted something. Through the noise of the rain they could make out their names and Martin Beck nodded ‘yes’ while he opened his window.

  The man introduced himself and suggested that they go on board immediately in spite of the heavy rain.

  He was short and heavy and when he hurried off ahead of them towards the Diana, he almost seemed to be rolling forward. With a certain amount of trouble, he got over the railing and waited while Martin Beck and Ahlberg climbed after him.

  The little man unlocked a door on the starboard side and they walked into some kind of a coatroom. On the other side there was a similar door which led out to the port promenade deck.

  On the right there were two glass doors leading into the dining room and between the doors was a large mirror. Directly in front of the mirror a flight of stairs led to a lower deck. They followed them and then went down still another flight of stairs which led to four large cabins and a large lounge with lace-covered sofas. The little man showed them how the sofas could be hidden by a curtain.

  ‘When we have deck passengers they can usually sleep here,’ he said.

  They climbed back up the stairs to the next deck where there were cabins for passengers and crew, toilets and bathrooms. The dining room was on the middle deck. There were six round tables which could each accommodate six persons, a buffet towards the stern, a reading and writing room where one could look out through a large window, and a small serving room, with a dumbwaiter, leading to the galley below.

  When they went out on the promenade deck again the rain had nearly stopped. They walked towards the stern. On the starboard side there were three doors, the first one led to the serving room and the other two to cabins. On the other side there was a ladder going to the upper deck and on up to the bridge. Next to the ladder was Roseanna McGraw's cabin.

  The door to that cabin opened directly towards the stern. The cabin was small, no more than twelve feet long, and lacked ventilation. The back rest on the bed could be lifted up and turned into a top bunk. There was also a wash basin with a mahogany cover which, when down, provided some counter space. On the bulkhead over the wash basin was a mirror with a holder for a glass and toilet articles. The cabin floor was covered with a rug which was tacked down and there was a place for luggage under the bunk. At the end of the bed there was an empty space with some clothing hooks on the bulkhead.

  There was hardly room for three people in there which was soon obvious to the man from the shipping office. He went out and sat on a box containing life jackets and looked anxiously at his soaking wet shoes which dangled a good bit above the deck.

  Martin Beck and Ahlberg examined the small cabin. Th
ey hadn't hoped to find any traces of Roseanna since they knew that the cabin had been cleaned a good number of times since she had occupied it. Ahlberg lay down on the bed carefully and stated that there was hardly enough room in it for an adult person.

  They left the cabin door open and went out and sat down beside the man on the life-jacket box.

  After they had been sitting quietly for a while, looking into the cabin, a large, black car drove up. It was the men from the SKA. They carried a large, black case between them and it didn't take long before they had begun to work.

  Ahlberg poked Martin Beck in the ribs and nodded his head towards the ladder. They climbed up to the upper deck. There were two lifeboats there, one on each side of the smokestack, and several large containers for deck chairs and blankets, but otherwise the deck was quite empty. Up on the bridge deck were two passenger cabins, a storeroom, and the captain's cabin which was behind the pilot room.

  At the foot of the ladder Martin Beck stopped and took out the deck plans which he had received from the canal boat office. Following this, they went through the boat one more time. When they returned to the stern of the middle deck, the little man was still sitting on the box, looking sorrowfully at the men from the SKA who were on their knees in the cabin pulling tacks out of the rug.

  It was two o'clock by the time the large, black police car drove off towards the Gothenburg road with a shower of mud spraying from its wheels. The technicians had taken everything that was loose in the cabin with them, although it wasn't very much. They didn't think it would take long for them to have the results of their analysis finished.

  Martin Beck and Ahlberg thanked the man from the shipping office and he shook their hands with exaggerated enthusiasm, clearly grateful to be finally getting away from there.

  When his car had disappeared round the first bend in the road, Ahlberg said: ‘I am tired and rather hungry. Let's drive down to Gothenburg and spend the night there. Okay?’

  About half an hour later they parked outside a hotel on Post Street. They took single rooms, rested for an hour, and then went out to eat dinner.

  While they were eating Martin Beck talked about boats and Ahlberg talked about a trip he had taken to the Faeroe islands.

  Neither of them mentioned Roseanna McGraw.

  *Statens Kriminal Teknista Anstalt — the federal criminal technical bureau.

  11

  To get from Gothenburg to Motala one takes Route 40 eastward via Borås and Ulricehamn to Jönköping. There, one turns northward onto the European Route 3 and continues on to Ödeshög, and follows Route 50 from there past Tåkern and Vadstena into Motala. It is a distance of approximately 165 miles and on this particular morning it took Ahlberg only about three and a half hours to cover it.

  They had started at five-thirty in the morning, just at day-break, while the garbage trucks were loading and newspaper women and one or two policemen were the only people to be seen on the rain-cleaned streets. A good many flat, grey miles disappeared behind the car before Ahlberg and Martin Beck broke the silence. After they had passed Hindås, Ahlberg cleared his throat and said:

  ‘Do you really think it happened there? Inside that crowded cabin?’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘With other people only a few inches away, behind the wall in the next cabin?’

  ‘Bulkhead.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Behind the bulkhead, not the wall.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ahlberg.

  Six miles later Martin Beck said:

  ‘With others so close by, he would have to keep her from screaming.’

  ‘But how could he stop her? He must have … been at it rather long?’

  Martin Beck did not answer. Each of them was thinking about the small cabin with its few spartan conveniences. Neither of them could keep their imagination from entering the picture. Both of them were experiencing the same feeling of helpless, creeping unpleasantness. They reached in their pockets for cigarettes and smoked in silence.

  When they drove into Ulricehamn, he said: ‘She could have received some of the injuries after she was already dead, or at least, unconscious. There are things in the autopsy statement that suggest it could have happened that way.’

  Ahlberg nodded. Without having to talk about it they both knew that such a thought made them feel better.

  In Jönköping they stopped at a cafeteria and got some coffee. It didn't sit well with Martin Beck as usual, but at the same time it perked him up a little.

  At Gränna, Ahlberg said what they had both been thinking for the last few hours:

  ‘We don't know her.’

  ‘No,’ replied Martin Beck without taking his eyes from the hazy but pretty view.

  ‘We don't know who she was. I mean …’

  He was silent.

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘You do, don't you? How she lived. How she acted. What kind of people she went around with. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  All that was true. The woman on the breakwater had received a name, an address and an occupation. But nothing more …

  ‘Do you think that the technical boys will find something?’

  ‘We can always hope.’

  Ahlberg gave him a quick look. No, they didn't need fancy phrases. The only thing they could conceivably hope for from the technical report was that it would, at least, not contradict their assumption that cabin A 7 was the scene of the crime. The Diana had made twenty-four trips on the canal since the woman from Lincoln had been on board. That would mean that the cabin had been well cleaned at least as many times; that the bedclothes, towels and other paraphernalia which had been there had been washed over and over again and were hopelessly mixed together by now. It also meant that between thirty and forty people had occupied the cabin after Roseanna McGraw. All of them had naturally left their traces.

  ‘We still haven't heard the records of witnesses' examinations,’ said Ahlberg.

  ‘Yes.’

  Eighty-five people, one of whom was presumably guilty, and the rest of whom were possible witnesses, each had their small pieces that might fit into the great jig-saw puzzle. Eighty-five people, spread over four different continents. Just to locate them was a Herculean task. He didn't dare think about the process of getting testimony from all of them and collecting the reports and going through them.

  ‘And Roseanna McGraw,’ said Ahlberg.

  ‘Yes,’ said Martin Beck.

  And after a while:

  ‘I can only see one way.’

  ‘The guy in America?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What's his name?’

  ‘Kafka.’

  ‘That's a strange name. Does he seem competent?’

  Martin Beck thought about the absurd telephone conversation a few days earlier and produced the first smile of that dismal day.

  ‘Hard to say,’ he replied.

  Halfway between Vadstena and Motala Martin Beck said, more or less to himself:

  ‘Suitcases. Clothing. Toilet articles, the toothbrush. Souvenirs she had bought. Her passport, money, traveller's cheques.’

  Ahlberg's hands gripped the wheel harder.

  ‘I'll comb the canal carefully,’ he said. ‘First between Borenshult and the harbour. Then east of Boren. The locks have already been covered, but…’

  ‘Lake Vättern?’

  ‘Yes. We have almost no chance there and maybe not even in Boren if the dredger has buried everything there by now. Sometimes I dream about that damned apparatus and wake up in the middle of the night swearing. My wife thinks that I've gone mad. Poor thing,’ he said and drove to a stop in front of the police station.

  Martin Beck looked at him with a quick, passing feeling of envy, disbelief, and respect.

  Ten minutes later Ahlberg was sitting at his desk in his shirtsleeves as usual, talking to the lab. While he was talking, Larsson entered the room, shook hands with Martin Beck and raised his eyebrow questioningly. A
hlberg hung up the receiver.

  ‘There were some traces of blood on the mattress and the rug. Fourteen counting carefully. They are analysing them.’

  If these traces of blood had not been found, the theory of cabin number A 7 as the scene of the crime would not have been likely.

  The Superintendent didn't seem to notice their relief. Their wordless communication was carried on wave-lengths that were unfamiliar to him. He raised his eyebrow again and said: ‘Was that all?’

  ‘A few old fingerprints,’ said Ahlberg. ‘Not particularly many. They must have cleaned pretty well.’

  ‘The Public Prosecutor is on his way here,’ said Larsson.

  ‘He's most welcome, of course,’ Ahlberg responded.

  Martin Beck left on a 5.20 p.m. train via Mjölby. The trip took four and a half hours and he worked on a letter to America the entire time. When he got to Stockholm, the draft was finished. He wasn't completely satisfied with it but it would have to do. To save time he took a taxi to Nikolai Station, borrowed an examining room, and typed up the letter. While he was reading the finished copy, he heard brawling and swearing nearby and heard a constable say: ‘Take it easy, boys, take it easy.’

  For the first time in a long while he remembered his own days as a patrolman and how deeply he had disliked the results of Saturday nights.

  At a quarter to eleven he stood in front of the mailbox on Vasa Street. The metal top closed with a bang.

  He walked southward in the light rain, past the Hotel Continental and the new, tall department stores. On the escalator down to the subway, he thought about Kafka and wondered if this man, whom he didn't know, would understand what he meant.

  Martin Beck was tired and fell asleep soon after he got into the subway, safe in the knowledge that he wouldn't be getting off before the end of the line.

  12

  Ten days later Martin Beck received a reply from America. He saw it on his desk when he arrived in the morning, even before he had shut the door behind him. While he hung up his coat he glanced at his face in the mirror. He was pale and looked sallow and he had dark circles under his eyes. This was no longer due to the flu but to the fact that he had gone without much sleep. He tore open the large brown envelope and took out two transcripts of examinations, a typewritten letter and a card with biographical data. He thumbed through the papers with curiosity but thwarted his impulse to begin reading them immediately. Instead, he went into the administrative office and asked for a rapid translation with three copies.