Martin Beck: The Locked Room Part 1

Maj Sjowall, Per Wahloo.

Martin Beck.

The Locked Room.

INTRODUCTION.

What I don't like about writing an introduction is that you can't give anything away. You can only tease. You can say to the reader that you are in for a great ride, a great set of characters and a great story but you can't really make your case. You don't want to ruin it for the reader, so you can't exactly say why. So an introduction is sort of a 'trust me' proposition. I am here to tell you that if you are about to hop aboard and ride this story, then you are in for a great ride. Trust me.

I first took this ride about thirty years ago. A child of the movies and television, I have come to most of the masters of crime fiction through the visual medium. I read Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald and Joseph Wambaugh after seeing their work on the screen first In each case I found the written stories that sp.a.w.ned the screen stories to be much deeper, more detailed and more gripping as they took the reader to the place no movie or television show can go; inside a character's thoughts.

So too was the case with the work of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. The movie came first. My father and I both loved cop flicks. We went together often. One night in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, we went to see The Laughing Policeman with Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern. I didn't know it was based on a book until I saw the credits. I liked the movie, with the deeply brooding Detective Martin played by Matthau and the more reactive, loose cannon Detective La.r.s.en played by Dern.

Not long after, I bought the book and quickly learned that the original story was not set in San Francisco, California, but in Stockholm, Sweden, and that the film's Detective Jake Martin was actually Detective Martin Beck in the book. No matter, I had invested. I read the book and there begun one of the best lessons a writer in waiting could ever have. In the next several years I moved from book to book in the Martin Beck series. I found it to be one of the most authentic, gripping and profound collection of police procedurals ever accomplished.

Sjowall and Wahloo set out to write a ten book, ten year glimpse of Swedish society, using the detective novel as the magnifying gla.s.s through which they would conduct their examination. They achieved their goal with great mastery. As a young reader with the intention - hope of writing crime novels someday, there were no better teachers when it came to showing how the detective story could rise above mere entertainment to the point of holding a mirror up to ourselves and the societies we build. Their work constantly reminds me of something the great writer Richard Price once said when questioned about his repeated forays into the realms of crime and detection. He said that he liked writing about detectives because when you circle around a murder long enough, you get to know a city. Long before he said that, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo knew it and practised it. The Martin Beck books tell us so much more than just how a crime is solved. Beautifully structured, textured and rendered, they tell us how a crime happens and how a city, country and society can often be complicit. They take us beneath the surface. They tell it like it is. Though the series now ages past thirty years, there is both a timeliness and timelessness to the books that make them just as important now as the days they first came out of the bindery.

The Locked Room is flat out one of my favourites in the series.

I am blown away by the authors' wonderful and original take on a standard mystery contraption - a locked room murder. I am in awe of the novel as a showcase of Martin Beck at his brooding best The authors avoid the norms by weaving two seemingly separate investigations through the book; the story of a bank robbery gone bad and the story of Beck's investigation into, what appears to be an unsolvable case, a man found shot to death in a room with the door and window locked. The case has been all but given up on until the detective returns to the job after recovering from wounds received in an earlier story. As he deals with his physical and mental recovery he works the locked room case over like a child works on a loose tooth with his tongue.

From the standpoint of a writer who has some experience attempting such things, there is no finer example of how to do it. Sjowall and Wahloo do it with completely convincing detail, humour and that most important ingredient; momentum. The book never lags. It never fails to keep the reader in his seat All the while the book carries the vivid imagery of Stockholm and its underbelly of crime that Beck traverses. I read this book long before I ever visited Stockholm but the sense of the city, its smells, its sounds, its hidden dangers and beauties are vibrantly alive. The city is as much a character in the book as any person who appears in its pages.

What's more, the book carries a dark irony: the idea of justice in which we are all guilty of something, and if we are not punished for the crimes we have committed then we are punished for those we have not. It is a daring proposition and one I have seen in a number of other books. But I have not seen it played out so well as in these pages.

As with the entire series of ten books, Martin Beck is the pole that holds the tent up in The Locked Room. His presence looms over every page whether he is actually on it or not. To me Beck is the original grinder, an empathist who takes it all in and grinds it constantly in his head. He grinds the case down to powder and only then does he see the solution. He operates with a certain melancholy that is just right He is alone but not lonely. He is the thinking man's detective. The writer Joseph Wambaugh once said that the best crime stories are not about how a cop works on a case, but how a case works on a cop. Martin Beck is a most fitting example of the accuracy of this. And The Locked Room is a most fitting case for him to work and be worked upon.

Michael Connelly.

1.

The bells of St Maria struck two as she came out from the metro station on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan. Before hurrying on towards the Maria Square she halted and lit a cigarette.

The din of the church bells reverberated through the air, reminding her of the dreary Sundays of her childhood. She'd been born and grown up only a few blocks from the Church of St Maria, where she'd also been christened and confirmed - the latter almost twelve years ago. All she could remember about her confirmation cla.s.ses was having asked the vicar what Strindberg had meant when he'd written of the "melancholy descant of the St Maria bells. But she couldn't recall his answer.

The sun was beating down on her back. After crossing St Paulsgatan she eased her pace, not wishing to break into a sweat All of a sudden she realized how nervous she was and regretted not having taken a tranquillizer before leaving home.

Reaching the fountain in the middle of the square, she dipped her handkerchief in the cool water and, walking away, sat down on a bench in the shade of the trees. She took off her gla.s.ses and rubbed her face with the wet handkerchief, polished her gla.s.ses with the hem of her light-blue shirt, and put them on again. The large lenses reflected the light, concealing the upper half of her face. She took off her wide-rimmed blue denim hat, lifted up her straight blonde hair, so long it brushed against her shoulders, and wiped the nape of her neck. Then, putting on her hat, she pulled it down over her brow and sat quite still, her handkerchief crumpled up into a ball between her hands.

After a while she spread the handkerchief out beside her on the bench and wiped the palms of her hands on her jeans. She looked at her watch: half past two. A few minutes to calm down before she had to go.

When the clock struck 2.45 she opened the flap of the dark-green canvas shoulder bag that lay in her lap, picked up her handkerchief, which by now was completely dry, and without folding it slipped it into the bag. Then she got up, slung the leather strap of the bag over her right shoulder, and started walking.

Approaching Hornsgatan she grew less tense; everything, she persuaded herself, would work out fine.

It was Friday, the last day of June, and for many people the summer holidays had just begun. On Hornsgatan, both on the street itself and on the pavements, the traffic was lively. Emerging from the square, she turned off to the left and went into the shadow of the houses.

She hoped today had been a wise choice. She'd weighed the pros and cons and realized she might have to put off her project until next week. No harm in that, though she wasn't too keen on exposing herself to such mental stress.

She got there earlier than she'd planned and halted on the shady side of the street, observing the big window opposite her. Its shiny gla.s.s reflected the sunshine, and the heavy traffic partially blocked her view. But one thing she noticed. The curtains were drawn.

Pretending to be window shopping, she walked slowly up and down the pavement, and although there was a large clock hanging outside a watchmaker's shop nearby she kept looking at her watch. And all the while she kept an eye on the door on the other side of the street.

At 2.55 she walked over to the pedestrian crossing at the crossroads. Four minutes later she was standing outside the door of the bank.

Before pushing it open, she lifted the flap of her bag. Walking in, she let her gaze sweep over the office, a branch of one of Sweden's major banks. It was long and narrow; the front wall consisted of the door and the only window. To her right a counter ran all the way from the window to the short wall at the other end, and on her left four desks were fixed to the long wall. Beyond them were a low, round table and two stools upholstered in red-chequered material. Furthest away were some stairs, rather steep, disappearing below to what presumably was the bank's safe-deposit vault.

Only one customer had come in before her - a man. He was standing at the counter, stuffing banknotes and doc.u.ments into his briefcase. Behind the counter two female cashiers were sitting. Further away a male cashier stood leafing through a card index.

Going up to one of the desks, she fished out a pen from the outer pocket of her bag, meanwhile watching out of the corner of her eye as the customer with the briefcase went out through the street door. Taking a deposit slip out of the holder, she began doodling on it. After a little while she saw the male cashier go over to the door and lock it. Then he bent down and flicked the hook holding open the inner door. As it swung closed with a hissing sound, he resumed his place-behind the counter.

She took her handkerchief out of her bag. Holding it in her left hand and the deposit slip in her right, as she approached the counter, she pretended to blow her nose.

Then she stuffed the deposit slip into her bag, brought out an empty nylon shopping bag, and laid it on the counter. Clutching her pistol, she pointed it at the female cashier and, holding her handkerchief in front of her mouth, said: 'This is a hold-up. The gun's loaded and if you make any trouble I'll shoot. Put all the money you've got into this bag.'

The woman behind the counter stared at her and, slowly taking the nylon bag, laid it down in front of her. The other woman stopped combing her hair. Her hands sank slowly She opened her mouth as if to say something, but couldn't get a sound out. The man, who was still standing behind his desk, gave a violent start Instantly she pointed the pistol at him and yelled: 'Stay where you are! And put your hands where I can see them.'

Impatiently waving the barrel of the pistol at the woman in front of her, who was obviously paralysed with fright, she went on: 'Hurry up with the money! All of it!'

The cashier began stuffing wads of banknotes into the bag. When she'd finished, she laid it on the counter.

Suddenly the man at the desk said: "You'll never get away with this. The police will - 'Shut up!' she screamed.

Then she threw her handkerchief into her open bag and grabbed the nylon shopping bag. It felt nice and heavy. Backing slowly towards the door, she pointed the pistol at each of the bank's employees in turn.

All of a sudden someone came running towards her from the stairway at the far end of the room: a tall, blond man in well-pressed pants and a blue blazer with shiny b.u.t.tons and a big gold emblem st.i.tched to the breast pocket A loud bang filled the room and went on thundering between the walls. As her arm jerked upward to the ceiling she saw the man in the blazer being flung backwards. His shoes were brand new and white, with thick, grooved, red rubber soles. Only as his head hit the stone floor with a horrible dull thud did she realize she'd shot him.

Dropping the pistol into her bag, she stared wild-eyed at the three horror-stricken people behind the counter. Then she rushed for the door. Fumbling with the lock, she had time to think before emerging into the street 'Calm now, I must walk perfectly calmly.' But once out on the pavement, she started half-running towards the crossroads.

She didn't see the people around her - she was only aware of b.u.mping against several of them and of the pistol shot which went on thundering in her ears.

She rounded the corner and started running, the shopping bag in her hand and the heavy satchel b.u.mping against her hip. Jerking open the door of the building where she'd lived as a child, she took the old familiar way out into the courtyard, checked herself, and fell to a walk. Pa.s.sing straight through the porch of a gazebo she came out into another back yard. She descended the steep stairway into a cellar and sat down on the bottom step.

She tried to cram the nylon bag down on top of the automatic in her shoulder bag, but there wasn't enough room. She took off her hat, gla.s.ses, and blonde wig, and stuffed them all into the shoulder bag. Her own hair was dark and short. She stood up, unb.u.t.toned her shirt, took it off, and put that too into the bag. Under her shirt she was wearing a short-sleeved black cotton jumper. Slinging the shoulder bag over her left shoulder, she picked up the nylon shopping bag and went up the stairs to the yard again. She climbed over a couple of walls before at last finding herself in a street at the far end of the block.

Then she entered a small grocery, bought two litres of milk, put the cartons into a large paper bag, and laid her nylon shopping bag on top of them.

After which she walked down to Slussen and took the metro home.

2.

Gunvald Larsson arrived at the scene of the crime in his own strictly private car. It was a red BMW, which is unusual in Sweden and in many people's eyes far too grand for a detective inspector, especially when he uses it on the job.

This beautiful Friday afternoon he'd just settled down behind the wheel to drive home, when Einar Ronn had come rushing out into the yard of police headquarters and dashed all his plans for a quiet evening at home in Bollmora. Einar Ronn too was a detective inspector in the National Murder Squad and very likely the only friend Gunvald Larsson had; so when he said he was sorry but Gunvald Larsson would have to sacrifice his free evening, he really meant it.

Ronn drove to Hornsgatan in a police car. When he got there, several cars and some people from the South Precinct were already on the spot, and Gunvald Larsson was already inside the bank.

A little group of people had gathered outside the bank, and as Ronn crossed the pavement one of the uniformed constables who stood there glaring at the spectators came up to him and said: 'I've a couple of witnesses here who said they heard the shot What shall I do with them?'

'Hold 'em a moment,' Ronn said. 'And try to disperse the others.'

The constable nodded and Ronn went on into the bank.

On the marble floor between the counter and the desks the dead man, his arms flung wide and his left knee bent, lay on his back. One trouser leg had slipped up, baring a chalk-white Orion sock with a dark blue anchor on it and a deeply sunburned leg covered with gleaming blond hairs. The bullet had hit him right in the face, and blood and brain matter had exuded from the back of his head.

The staff of the bank were sitting together in the far corner of the room, and in front of them Gunvald Larsson half stood, half sat, one thigh across the edge of a desk. He was writing in a notebook while one of the women spoke in a shrill, indignant voice.

Seeing Ronn, Gunvald Larsson held up his right palm at the woman, who immediately broke off in the middle of a sentence. Gunvald Larsson got up, went behind the counter, and, notebook in hand, walked over to Ronn. With a nod at the man on the floor he said: 'He doesn't look too good. If you stay here I can take the witnesses somewhere, maybe to the old police station on Rosenlundsgatan. Then you can work here undisturbed.'

Ronn nodded. 'They say it was a girl who did it,' he said. 'And she got away with the cash. Did anyone see where she went?'

'None of the bank staff at any rate,' Gunvald Larsson said. 'Apparently there was a guy standing outside who saw a car drive off, but he didn't see the number and wasn't too sure of the make, so that's not much to go on. I'll talk with him later.'

'And who's this?' asked Ronn with a curt nod at the dead man.

'Some idiot wanting to play the hero. He tried to fling himself at the robber, and then of course, in sheer panic, she fired. He was one of the bank's customers and the staff knew him. He'd been in here going through his safe-deposit box and came up the stairway over there, right in the middle of it all.' Gunvald Larsson consulted his notebook. 'He was director of a gymnastics inst.i.tute, and his name was Grdon. With an "".'

'I guess he thought he was Flash Gordon Ronn said.

Gunvald Larsson threw him a questioning look.

Ronn blushed, and to change the subject said: 'Well, I expect there are some photos of her in that thing.' He pointed to the camera fixed beneath the ceiling.

'If it's properly focused and also has some film in it,' Gunvald Larsson said sceptically. 'And if the cashier remembered to press the b.u.t.ton.'

Nowadays most Swedish banks are equipped with cameras that shoot when the cashier on duty steps on a b.u.t.ton on the floor. This was the only thing the staff had to do in the event of a holdup. With armed bank robberies becoming ever more frequent, banks had issued orders to their staff to hand over any money demanded of them and in general not to do anything to stop robbers or to prevent them getting away that might risk their own lives. This order did not, as one might be led to believe, derive from any humanitarian motives or any consideration for bank personnel It was the fruit of experience. It is cheaper for banks and insurance companies to allow robbers to get away with their haul than to be obliged to pay out damages and maybe even support the victims' families for the rest of their lives - which can so easily be the case if someone gets injured or killed.

Now the police surgeon arrived, and Ronn went out to his car to fetch the murder kit He used old-fashioned methods, not infrequently with success. Gunvald Larsson left for the old police station on Rosenlundsgatan, together with the staff of the bank and four other people who had identified themselves as witnesses.

He was lent an interrogation room, where he took off his suede jacket and hung it over the back of a chair before beginning the preliminary examinations. The first three statements given by the bank personnel were as good as identical; the four others diverged widely.

The first of these four witnesses was a forty-two-year-old man who, when the shot had gone off, had been standing in a doorway five yards from the bank. He'd seen a girl in a black hat and sungla.s.ses hurry past, and when, according to his own statement, half a minute later, he'd looked down the street, he'd seen a green pa.s.senger car, probably an Opel, pull out from the kerb fifteen yards away. The car had disappeared quickly in the direction of Hornsplan, and he thought he'd seen the girl with the hat in the back seat He hadn't caught the car's registration number but believed it to be an 'AB' plate.

The next witness, a woman, was a boutique owner. When she heard a shot she'd been standing in the open door of her shop, which shared a party wall with the bank. First she thought the sound had come from the pantry inside her boutique. Afraid that the gas stove had exploded, she dashed inside. Finding it hadn't, she returned to the door. Looking down the street, she'd seen a big blue car swing out into the traffic - tyres squealing. At the same instant a woman had come out of the bank and shouted that someone had been shot. She hadn't seen who had been sitting in the car or what its number was, but she thought it looked more or less like a taxi.

The third witness was a thirty-two-year-old metal worker. His account was more circ.u.mstantial. He hadn't heard the shot, or at least hadn't been aware of it When the girl emerged from the bank he'd been walking along the pavement. She was in a hurry, and as she pa.s.sed had pushed him aside. He hadn't seen her face but guessed her age to be about thirty. She was wearing blue trousers, a shirt, and a hat and was carrying a dark bag. He'd seen her go up to an A'-reg car with two threes on its number plate. The car was a pale beige Renault 16. A thin man, who looked something between twenty and twenty-five, had been sitting at the wheel. He had long, lank, black hair and wore a short-sleeved cotton T-shirt He was strikingly pale. Another man, who looked a little older, had stood on the pavement and opened the back door for the girl. After closing the door behind her, he sat down beside the driver in the front seat This man was strongly built, about five foot ten, tall, and had ashen hair - fuzzy arid very thick. He had a florid complexion and was dressed in black flares and a black shirt of some shiny material. The car had made a U-turn and disappeared in the direction of Slussen.

After this evidence Gunvald Larsson felt somewhat confused. Before calling in the last witness he carefully read through his notes.

This last witness turned out to be a fifty-year-old watchmaker who'd been sitting in his car right outside the bank, waiting for his wife who was in a shoe shop on the other side of the street. He'd had his window open and had heard the shot, but hadn't reacted since there's always so much noise on a busy street like Hornsgatan. It had been five past three when he'd seen the woman come out of the bank. He'd noticed her because she seemed to be in too much of a hurry to apologize for b.u.mping into an elderly lady, and he'd thought it was typical of Stockholmers to be in such a rush and so unfriendly. He himself came from Sodertalje. The woman was dressed in long trousers, and on her head she'd been wearing something reminiscent of a cowboy hat and had had a black shopping bag in her hand. She'd run to the crossroads and disappeared around the corner. No, she hadn't got into any car, nor had she halted on her way, but had gone straight on up to the corner and disappeared.

Gunvald Larsson phoned in the description of the two men in the Renault, got up, gathered his papers, and looked at the clock. Six already.

Presumably he'd done a lot of work in vain. The presence of the various cars had long since been reported by the first officers to arrive on the scene. Besides which none of the witnesses had given a coherent overall picture. Everything had gone to h.e.l.l, of course. As usual.

For a moment he wondered whether he ought to detain the last witness, but dropped the idea. Everyone appeared eager to get home as quickly as possible. To tell the truth, he was the most eager of all, though probably that was hoping too much. So he let all the witnesses go.

Putting on his jacket, he went back to the bank.

The remains of the courageous gymnastics teacher had been removed, and a young constable stepped out of his car and informed him politely that Detective Inspector Ronn was waiting for him in his office. Gunvald Larsson sighed and went over to his car.

3.

He awoke astonished at being alive. This was nothing new. For exactly the last fifteen months he'd opened his eyes every day with the same confused question: How is it I'm alive?

Just before waking he'd had a dream. This too was fifteen months old. Though it shifted constantly, it always followed the same pattern. He was riding. A cold wind tearing at his hair,, he was galloping, leaning forward. Then he was running along a station platform. In front of him he saw a man who'd just raised a gun. He knew who the man was and what was going to happen. The man was Charles J. Guiteau; the weapon was a marksman's pistol, a Hammerli International.

Just as the man fired he threw himself forward and stopped the bullet with his body. The shot hit him like a hammer, right in the middle of his chest Obviously he had sacrificed himself; yet at the same moment he realized his action had been in vain. The President was already lying crumpled on the ground, the shiny top hat had toppled from his head and was rolling around in a semicircle.

As always, he'd woken up just as the bullet hit him. At first everything went black, a wave of scorching heat swept over his brain. Then he opened his eyes.

Martin Beck lay quietly in his bed, looking up at the ceiling. It was light in the room. He thought about his dream. It didn't seem particularly meaningful, at least not in this version. Besides which it was full of absurdities. The weapon for example; it ought to have been a revolver or possibly a derringer; and how could Garfield be lying there, fatally wounded, when it was he himself who demonstrably had stopped the bullet with his chest?

He had no idea what the murderer had looked like in reality. If ever he'd seen a photo of the man, the mental image had been wiped out long ago. Usually Guiteau had blue eyes, a blond moustache, and sleek hair, combed back; but today he'd mostly resembled an actor in some famous role. Immediately he realized which: John Carradine as the gambler in Stagecoach. The whole thing was amazingly romantic A bullet in your chest, however, can easily lose its poetic qualities. That much he knew from experience. If it perforates the right lung and then lodges near the spine, the effect is intermittently painful and in the long run very tedious.

But there was also much in his dream that agreed with his own reality. The marksman's pistol, for example. It had belonged to a dismissed police constable with blue eyes, a blond moustache, and hair combed diagonally back. They'd met on the roof of a house under a cold, dark, spring sky. No words had been exchanged. Only a pistol shot.

That evening he'd woken up in a bed in a room with white walls - more precisely in the thorax clinic of Karolinska Hospital. They'd told him there his life was in no danger. Even so, he'd asked himself how it was he was still alive.

Later they'd said the injury no longer const.i.tuted a threat to his life, but the bullet wasn't sitting too well. He'd grasped, though not appreciated, the finesse of that little 'no longer'. The surgeons had examined the X-ray plates for weeks before removing the foreign object from his body. Then they'd said his injury definitely no longer const.i.tuted any danger to his life. On the contrary, he'd make a complete recovery - providing he took things very easy. But by that stage he'd stopped believing them.

All the same, he had taken things pretty easy. He'd had no choice.

Now they said he'd made a complete recovery. This time too, however, there was an addition: 'Physically.' Furthermore he shouldn't smoke. His windpipe had never been too good, and a shot through the lung hadn't improved matters. After it had healed, mysterious marks had appeared around the scars.

Martin Beck got up. He went through his living room out into the hallway and, picking up his newspaper, which lay on the doormat, went on into the kitchen, meanwhile running his eyes over the front-page headlines. Beautiful weather, and it would hold, according to the weatherman. Apart from that, everything seemed, as usual, to be taking a turn for the worse. Setting down the newspaper on the kitchen table, he took a yoghurt out of the fridge. It tasted as it usually did, not good and not exactly bad, just a trifle musty and artificial. The carton was probably too old. Probably it had already been old when he'd bought it - the days were long gone when a Stockholmer could buy anything fresh without having to make a particular effort or pay an outrageous price. Next stop was the bathroom. After washing and brushing his teeth he returned to the bedroom, made the bed, took off his pyjama trousers, and began to dress.