Roseanna. Henning Mankell

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      ‘Interpol, the devil with them,’ said Kollberg.

      Martin Beck said nothing. Kollberg looked over his shoulder.

      ‘Do those louses write in French too?’

      ‘Yes. This is from the police in Toulouse. They have a missing person.’

      ‘French police,’ said Kollberg. ‘I made a search with them through Interpol last year. A little gal from Djursholm section. We didn't hear a word for three months and then got a long letter from the police in Paris. I didn't understand a word of it and turned it in to be translated. The next day I read in the newspaper that a Swedish tourist had found her. Found her, hell. She was sitting in that world-famous cafe where all the Swedish beatniks sit…’

      ‘Le Dôme.’

      ‘Yes, that one. She was sitting there with some Arab that she was living with and she had been sitting there every day for nearly six months. That afternoon I got the translation. The letter stated that she hadn't been seen in France for at least three months and absolutely was not there now. In any case, not alive. “Normal” disappearances were always cleared up within two weeks, they wrote, and in this case, unfortunately, one would have to assume some kind of crime.’

      Martin Beck folded the letter and placed it in one of his desk drawers.

      ‘What did they write?’ asked Kollberg.

      ‘About the girl in Toulouse? The Spanish police found her in Mallorca a week ago.’

      ‘Why the devil do they need so many official stamps and so many strange words to say so little.’

      ‘You're right,’ said Martin Beck.

      ‘Anyway, your girl must be Swedish. As everyone thought from the beginning. Strange.’

      ‘What's strange?’

      ‘That no one has missed her, whoever she is. I sometimes think about her too.’

      Kollberg's tone changed gradually.

      ‘It irritates me,’ he said. ‘It irritates me a lot. How many blanks have you drawn now?’

      ‘Twenty-seven with this one.’

      ‘That's a lot.’

      ‘You're right.’

      ‘Don't think too much about the mess.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Well meant advice is easier to give than to take,’ thought Martin Beck. He got up and walked over to the window.

      ‘I'd better be getting back to my murderer,’ said Kollberg. 'He just grins and gnashes his teeth. What behaviour! First he drinks a bottle of soda water and then he kills his wife and children with an axe. Then he tries to set fire to the house and cuts his throat with a saw. On top of everything else he runs to the police crying and complains about the food. I'm sending him to the nut house this afternoon.

      ‘God, life is strange,’ he added and slammed the door after him as he left the room.

      The trees between the police station and Kristineberg's Hotel had begun to turn and to lose some of their leaves. The sky lay low and grey with trailing rain curtains and storm-torn clouds. It was the twenty-ninth of September and autumn was definitely on the way. Martin Beck looked distastefully at his half-smoked cigarette and thought about his sensitivity to temperature change and of the six months of winter's formidable colds which would soon strike him.

      ‘Poor little friend, whoever you are,’ he said to himself.

      He was conscious of the fact that their chances were reduced each day that passed. Maybe they would never even find out who she was, not to speak of getting the person who was guilty, unless the same man repeated the crime. The woman who had lain out there on the breakwater in the sun at least had a face and a body and a nameless grave. The murderer was nothing, totally without contours, a dim figure, if that. But dim figures have no desires and no sharp pointed weapons. No strangler's hands.

      Martin Beck straightened up. ‘Remember that you have three of the most important virtues a policeman can have,’ he thought. ‘You are stubborn and logical, and completely calm. You don't allow yourself to lose your composure and you act only professionally on a case, whatever it is. Words like repulsive, horrible, and bestial belong in the newspapers, not in your thinking. A murderer is a regular human being, only more unfortunate and maladjusted.’

      He hadn't seen Ahlberg since that last evening at the City Hotel in Motala but they had talked on the telephone often. He had spoken to him last week and he remembered Ahlberg's final comment: ‘Vacation? Not before this thing is solved. I'll have all the material collected soon but I'm going to continue even if I have to drag all of Boren myself.’

      These days Ahlberg wasn't much more than merely stubborn, Martin Beck thought.

      ‘Damn, damn, damn,’ he mumbled and rapped his forehead with his fist.

      Then he went back to his desk and sat down, swung his chair a quarter turn to the left and stared listlessly at the paper in the typewriter. He tried to remember what it was he wanted to write before Kollberg had come in with the letter from Interpol.

      Six hours later, at two minutes to five he had put on his hat and coat and already begun to hate the crowded subway train to the south. It was still raining and he could already perceive both the musty odour of wet clothing and the frightening feeling of having to stand hemmed in by a compact mass of strange bodies.

      One minute before five, Stenström arrived. He opened the door without knocking as usual. It was irritating but endurable in comparison with Melander's woodpecker signals and Kollberg's deafening pounding.

      ‘Here's a message for the department of missing girls. You'd better send a thank you letter to the American Embassy. They sent it up.’

      He studied the light red telegram sheet.

      ‘Lincoln, Nebraska. What was it the last time?’

      ‘Astoria, New York.’

      ‘Was that when they sent three pages of information but forgot to say that she was a Negro?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Martin Beck.

      Stenström gave him the telegram and said:

      ‘Here's the number of some guy at the embassy. You ought to call him.’

      With guilty pleasure at every excuse to postpone the subway torture, he went back to his desk but it was too late. The embassy staff had gone home.

      The next day was a Wednesday and the weather was worse than ever. The morning paper had a late listing of a missing twenty-five year old housemaid from a place called Räng which seemed to be in the south of Sweden. She had not returned after her vacation.

      During the morning registered copies of Kollberg's description and the retouched photographs were sent to the police in southern Sweden and to a certain Detective Lieutenant Elmer B. Kafka, Homicide Squad, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.

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