The Abominable Man (13 page)

Martin Beck nodded.

“Yes,” Rönn went on. “And all day tomorrow too and maybe the next day … and the next.”

“I wouldn’t guess there’s any point in digging any deeper than that,” said Martin Beck. “I suppose even what you’ve got there is pretty old.”

“Yes, I guess it is,” Rönn said.

He picked up his electric razor and left the room at a listless pace, dragging the cord behind him.

Martin Beck sat down at Rönn’s desk and with eyebrows knit began to decipher Rönn’s cramped and scraggly notations, which always gave him trouble and would probably continue to give him trouble through all eternity.

Afterwards he transferred the names, addresses and nature of the complaints to a lined stenographer’s tablet.

John Bertilsson, unskilled laborer, Götgatan 20, brutality.

And so forth.

When Rönn came back from the washroom, the list was finished. It included twenty-two names.

Rönn’s ablutions had not managed to affect his appearance, which was if possible even more wretched than before, but hopefully he felt a little less shabby. To expect him to feel less exhausted would have been an unreasonable demand.

Maybe some kind of encouragement would be in place. A “pep talk,” that’s what they called it these days.

“Okay, Einar, I know both of us ought to go home and go to bed. But if we stick with it for a while longer maybe we can come up with something conclusive. It’s worth the effort, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I guess it is,” said Rönn skeptically.

“For example, if you’ll take the first ten names and I take the rest, we can pretty quickly locate most of these people and cross them off the list, if nothing else. Okay?”

“Sure. If you say so.”

His voice didn’t carry an ounce of conviction, which is not even to mention clichés like resolve and fighting spirit.

Rönn blinked his eyes and shivered uncontrollably, but he sat down very nicely at his desk and pulled the telephone toward him.

In his own mind, Martin Beck had to admit that the whole thing seemed pointless.

In the course of his active career, Nyman had of course maltreated hundreds of people. Only a few of them had lodged written complaints and Rönn’s brief investigation had uncovered only a few of those.

But many years of experience had taught him that most of his work was in fact pointless, and that even the things that provided results in the long run almost always looked pointless to begin with.

Martin Beck went into the room next door and started to phone, but after only three calls he got sidetracked and ended up sitting passively with his hand on the receiver. He hadn’t succeeded in locating any of the people on the list and was now thinking about something entirely different.

After a while he took out his own notebook, shuffled through it and dialed Nyman’s home phone. It was the boy who answered.

“Nyman.”

The voice sounded earnestly grown-up.

“This is Inspector Beck. We met last night.”

“Yes?”

“How’s your mother now?”

“Oh, pretty good. She’s much better. Doctor
Blomberg was here and then she got a couple hours sleep. Now she seems pretty much okay and …”

The voice trailed off.

“Yes?”

“…  and I mean it wasn’t entirely unexpected,” said the boy uncertainly. “I mean that Papa’s gone. He was awful sick. For such a long time too.”

“Do you think your mother can come to the phone?”

“Yes, I’m sure she can. She’s out in the kitchen. Wait a moment, I’ll go tell her.”

“Thank you,” said Martin Beck.

He heard steps moving away from the phone.

What kind of a husband and father had a man like Nyman been? It had seemed like a happy home. There was nothing to say he couldn’t have been a loving and lovable family man.

His son, in any case, had been very close to tears.

“Yes, hello? This is Anna Nyman.”

“Inspector Beck. Just one thing I wanted to ask.”

“Yes?”

“How many people knew your husband was in the hospital?”

“There weren’t very many,” she said slowly.

“But he’d been sick for some time, hadn’t he?”

“Yes, that’s true. But Stig didn’t really want people to find out about it. Although …”

“Yes?”

“Some people knew, of course.”

“Who? Can you say?”

“The family, first of all.”

“Which means?”

“The children and I, of course. And Stig has, had, two younger brothers, one in Gothenburg and one in Boden.”

Martin Beck nodded to himself. The letters in the
hospital room had indeed been written by Nyman’s brothers.

“Anyone else?”

“I’m an only child myself. And my parents are dead, so I don’t have any close relatives alive. Except for an uncle, but he lives in America and I’ve never met him.”

“What about your friends?”

“We don’t have so many. Didn’t have, I mean. Gunnar Blomberg who was here last night, we saw a lot of him, and then he was Stig’s doctor too. He knew of course.”

“I see.”

“And then there’s Captain Palm and his wife, he was an old friend of my husband’s from his regiment. We saw them a good deal.”

“Any others?”

“No. There really aren’t. We had very few real friends. Only the ones I’ve named.”

She paused. Martin waited.

“Stig used to say …”

She left the sentence unfinished.

“Yes, what did he used to say?”

“That a policeman never really has many friends.”

That was God’s own truth. Martin Beck himself had no friends. Except for his daughter, and Kollberg. And a woman named Asa Torell. But she was also on the force.

And then maybe Per Månsson, a policeman in Malmö.

“And these people knew your husband had been admitted to Mount Sabbath?”

“Well, no, I wouldn’t say that. The only person who knew exactly where he was was Doctor Blomberg. Of our friends, that is.”

“Who visited him?”

“Stefan and I. We went every day.”

“No one else?”

“No.”

“Not even Doctor Blomberg?”

“No. Stig didn’t want anyone to come except me and our son. He didn’t really even want Stefan to come.”

“Why not?”

“He didn’t want anyone to see him. You understand …”

Martin Beck waited.

“Well,” she said finally. “Stig had always been an unusually strong and vigorous man. Now toward the end he’d grown quite thin and weak and I suppose he was ashamed for people to see him.”

“Mmm,” said Martin Beck.

“Although Stefan didn’t care about that. He worshipped his papa. They were very close.”

“What about your daughter?”

“Stig never cared for her the same way. Do you have children yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Both boys and girls?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know how it is. With fathers and sons, I mean.”

As a matter of fact he didn’t know. And he thought about it for such a long time that she finally broke in.

“Are you still there, Inspector Beck?”

“Yes, of course. Yes. What about the neighbors?”

“The neighbors?”

“Yes, did they know your husband was in the hospital?”

“Of course not.”

“How did you explain the fact that he wasn’t at home?”

“I didn’t explain it at all. We don’t see each other socially.”

“What about your son? Maybe he mentioned it to some of his friends?”

“Stefan? No, absolutely not. He knew what his father wanted. It would never occur to him to do anything Stig didn’t like. Except that he went with me to visit him every evening. And deep down I think Stig liked that.”

Martin Beck made some notes on the steno pad in front of him and then summed it up.

“That means, then, that only you, Stefan, Doctor Blomberg and Inspector Nyman’s two brothers knew exactly where your husband was—in which ward and in which room.”

“Yes.”

“Then that’s about all. Just one more thing.”

“Yes, what?”

“Which of his colleagues did your husband see outside of work?”

“I don’t understand.”

Martin Beck put down his pen and massaged the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Had he really put the question that badly?

“What I mean is this—what people in the police department did you and your husband see socially?”

“Why, none at all.”

“What?”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t your husband have any friends in the department? People he saw in his off-hours?”

“No. During the twenty-six years Stig and I were married, no policeman ever set foot in our home.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“Yes I do. You yourself and that man you had with
you last night would be the only ones. But Stig was already dead by then.”

“But there must have been messengers, even if they were only subordinates who came to fetch him or leave things for him.”

“Yes, that’s right. Orderlies.”

“Beg pardon?”

“That’s what my husband used to call them, the men who came here. That happened every now and then. But they were never allowed inside the door. Stig was very particular about that.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Always. If a patrolman came to pick him up or leave something or something else, we never let him in. If it was I or one of the children who went to the door, we always asked whoever it was to wait and then closed the door until Stig could come.”

“Was that his idea?”

“Yes. He told us quite distinctly that that’s the way it would be. Once and for all.”

“But after all he had colleagues he’d worked with for years and years. Was the same thing true of them?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t know any of them?”

“No. At least not more than their names.”

“But he used to talk about them at least?”

“Very seldom.”

“His superiors then?”

“As I said, very seldom. You see, one of Stig’s principles was that his job wasn’t to interfere with his private life in any way.”

“But you know some of them by name, you said. Which ones?”

“Well, some of the higher officials. The National
Chief of Police, and the Commissioner, naturally, and the Superintendent …”

“Of the regular metropolitan police?”

“Yes,” she said. “Is there more than one superintendent?”

Rönn came into the room with some papers. Martin Beck stared at him blankly. Then he gathered his wits and went on with the conversation.

“But he must have mentioned the names of some of the people he worked with directly.”

“Yes, one at least. I know he had a subordinate he set great store by. A man named Hult. Stig mentioned him now and then. They’d worked together for a long time even before we met.”

“So you know Hult?”

“No. As far as I know I’ve never even seen him.”

“No?”

“No. But I’ve talked to him on the telephone.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“Can you wait a moment, Mrs. Nyman?”

“Yes, of course.”

Martin Beck put the receiver down on the table in front of him. Thought hard while he rubbed his hairline with the tips of his fingers. Rönn yawned.

He put the receiver back to his ear.

“Mrs. Nyman?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know Captain Hult’s first name?”

“Yes, it just happens I do. Palmon Harald Hult. On the other hand, I didn’t know his rank.”

“It just happens, you say?”

“Yes, just by chance. I have the name written down right here in front of me. On the telephone pad. Palmon Harald Hult.”

“Who wrote it there?”

“I did.”

Martin Beck didn’t say anything.

“Mr. Hult phoned last evening and asked for my husband. He was very upset when he heard Stig was sick.”

“And you gave him the address of the hospital?”

“Yes. He wanted to send flowers. And as I said, I knew who he was. He was the only person I’d think of giving the address to, except …”

“Yes?”

“Well, the National Chief or the Commissioner or the Superintendent, of course …”

“I understand. And so you gave Hult the address?”

“Yes.”

She paused.

“What do you mean?” she said then, with dawning confusion.

“Nothing,” Martin Beck said soothingly. “I’m sure it doesn’t mean a thing.”

“But you seem so …”

“It’s just that we have to check out everything, Mrs. Nyman. You’ve been very helpful. Thank you.”

“Thank you,” she said bewilderedly.

“Thank you,” Martin Beck repeated, and hung up.

Rönn was leaning against the doorjamb.

“I think I’ve checked as far as I can for now,” he said. “Two of them are dead. And no one knows a thing about this damned Eriksson.”

“Uh-hunh,” said Martin Beck absently, and printed a name on the steno pad.

PALMON HARALD HULT.

If Hult was at work, then he ought to be at his desk. He was getting on in years and no longer did anything but paperwork, at least officially.

But the man who answered at Maria police station seemed utterly uncomprehending.

“Hult? No, he’s not here. He always has Saturdays and Sundays off.”

“Hasn’t he been in at all today?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Anyway I haven’t seen him.”

“Would you mind asking the others?”

“What others?”

“I hope we’re not so understaffed there’s only one man in the whole Second Precinct,” said Martin Beck, a little irritated. “You’re not at the station all alone, are you?”

“No, of course not,” the man said, somewhat dampened. “Wait a minute. I’ll ask.”

Martin Beck heard the clatter of the receiver on the table and the sound of footsteps clumping off.

And a distant voice.

“Hey everybody,” it shouted, “has anyone seen Hult today? That snob Beck from Homicide’s on the phone and …”

The rest of it was lost in noise and other voices. Martin Beck waited, throwing a weary glance at Rönn, who looked even more wearily at his wristwatch. Why did the man at Maria think he was a snob? Presumably
because he didn’t call people by their first names. Martin Beck had a hard time using first names to patrolmen who were hardly dry behind the ears, and he couldn’t get used to their calling him “Martin.”