Roseanna. Henning Mankell

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СКАЧАТЬ the fact that she had gained a good deal of weight in the last few years, the skin on her throat was beginning to sag a little.

      She had given up her job in an architect's office when their daughter was born twelve years ago and since then had not thought about working again. When the boy started school, Martin Beck had suggested she look for some part-time work, but she had figured it would hardly pay. Besides, she was comfortable with her own nature and pleased with her role as a housewife.

      ‘Oh, yes,’ thought Martin Beck and got up. He placed the blue-painted stool under the table quietly and stood by the window looking out at the drizzle.

      Down below the parking place and lawn, the highway lay smooth and empty. Not many windows were lit in the apartments on the hill behind the subway station. A few seagulls circled under the low, grey sky. Otherwise there was not another living thing to be seen.

      ‘Where are you going?’ she said.

      ‘Motala.’

      ‘Will you be gone long?’

      ‘I don't know.’

      ‘Is it that girl?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Do you think you'll be gone long?’

      ‘I don't know any more about it than you do. Only what I've seen in the newspapers.’

      ‘Why do you have to take the train?’

      ‘The others took off yesterday. I wasn't supposed to go along.’

      ‘They'll drive with you, of course, as usual?’

      He took a patient breath and gazed outside. The rain was letting up.

      ‘Where will you stay?’

      ‘The City Hotel.’

      ‘Who will be with you?’

      ‘Kollberg and Melander. They went yesterday.’

      ‘By car?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And you have to sit and get shaken up on the train?’

      ‘Yes.’

      Behind him he heard her washing the cup with the chip in the rim and the blue roses.

      ‘I have to pay the electric bill and also Little One's riding lessons this week.’

      ‘Don't you have enough money for that?’

      ‘I don't want to take it out of the bank, you know that.’

      ‘No, of course not.’

      He took his wallet out of his inner pocket and looked into it. Took out a 50 crown note, looked at it, put it back and placed the wallet back in his pocket.

      ‘I hate to draw out money,’ she said. ‘It's the beginning of the end when you start that.’

      He took the bill out again, folded it, turned around and laid it on the kitchen table.

      ‘I've packed your bag, Martin.’

      ‘Thanks.’

      ‘Take care of your throat. This is a treacherous time of the year, particularly the evenings.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Are you going to take that awful pistol with you?’

      ‘Yes, no. Yes, no. What's the difference?’ Martin Beck thought to himself.

      ‘What are you laughing at?’ she asked.

      ‘Nothing.’

      He went into the living room, unlocked a drawer in the secretary and took out the pistol. He put it in his suitcase and locked the drawer again.

      The pistol was an ordinary 7.6 millimetre Walther, licensed in Sweden. It was useless in most situations and he was a pretty poor shot anyway.

      He went out into the hall, put on his trenchcoat, and stood with his dark hat in his hands.

      ‘Aren't you going to say goodbye to Rolf and the Little One?’

      ‘It's ridiculous to call a twelve-year-old girl “Little One”.’

      ‘I think it's sweet.’

      ‘It's a shame to wake them. And anyway, they know that I am going.’

      He put his hat on.

      ‘So long. I'll call you.’

      ‘Bye bye, and be careful.’

      He stood on the platform and waited for the subway and thought that he really didn't mind leaving home in spite of the half-finished planking on the model of the training ship Danmark.

      Martin Beck wasn't chief of the Homicide Squad and had no such ambitions. Sometimes he doubted if he would ever make superintendent although the only things that could actually stand in his way were death or some very serious error in his duties. He was a First Detective Inspector with the National Police and had been with the Homicide Bureau for eight years. There were people who thought that he was the country's most capable examining officer.

      He had been on the police force half of his life. At the age of twenty-one he had begun at Jakob Police Station and after six years as a patrol officer in different districts in central Stockholm he was sent to the National Police College. He was one of the best in his class and when the course was finished he was appointed a Detective Inspector. He was twenty-eight years old at the time.

      His father had died that year and he moved from his furnished room in the middle of the city back to the family home in southern Stockholm to take care of his mother. That summer he met his wife. She had rented a cottage with a friend out in the archipelago where he happened to be with his sailing canoe. He fell very much in love. Then, in the autumn, when they were expecting a child, they got married at City Hall and moved to her small apartment back in the city.

      One year after the birth of their daughter, there wasn't much left of the happy and lively girl he had fallen in love with and their marriage had slipped into a fairly dull routine.

      Martin Beck sat on the green bench in the subway car and looked out through the rain-blurred window. He thought about his marriage apathetically, but when he realized that he was sitting there feeling sorry for himself, he took his newspaper out of his trenchcoat pocket and tried to concentrate on the editorial page.

      He looked tired and his sunburned skin seemed yellowish in the grey light. His face was lean with a broad forehead and a strong jaw. His mouth, under his short, straight nose, was thin and wide with two deep lines near the corners. When he smiled, you could see his healthy, white teeth. His dark hair was combed straight back from the even hairline and had not yet begun to grey. The look in his soft blue eyes was clear and calm. He was thin but not especially tall and somewhat round-shouldered. Some women would say he was СКАЧАТЬ