Roseanna. Henning Mankell

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СКАЧАТЬ Ahlberg picked up the telephone. After a while there was a knock at the door and a girl in a blue dress and a red apron came in with a basket.

      After Martin Beck had eaten a ham sandwich and had a few swallows of coffee, he said:

      ‘How do you think she got there?’

      ‘I don't know. During the day there are always a lot of people at the locks so it could hardly have happened then. He could have thrown her in from the pier or the embankment and then later the backwash from the boats' propellers might have moved her further out. Or maybe she was thrown overboard from some vessel.’

      ‘What kind of boats go through the locks? Small boats and pleasure craft?’

      ‘Some. Not so terribly many. Most of them are freighters. And then there are the canal boats, of course, the Diana, the Juna and the Wilhelm Tham’

      ‘Can we drive down there and take a look?’ asked Martin Beck.

      Ahlberg got up, took the photograph that Martin Beck had chosen, and said: ‘We can get going right away. I'll leave this at the lab on the way out.’

      It was almost three o'clock when they returned from Borenshult. The traffic in the locks was lively and Martin Beck had wanted to stay there among the vacationers and the fishermen on the pier to watch the boats.

      He had spoken with the crew of the dredger, been out on the embankment and looked at the system of locks. He had seen a sailing canoe cruising in the fresh breeze far out in the water and had begun to long for his own canoe which he had sold several years ago. During the trip back to town he sat thinking about sailing in the archipelago in summers past.

      There were eight, fresh copies of the picture from the photo laboratory lying on Ahlberg's desk when they returned. One of the policemen, who was also a photographer, had retouched the picture and the girl's face looked almost as if she had been photographed alive.

      Ahlberg looked through them, laid four of the copies in the green folder and said:

      ‘Fine. I'll pass these out to the boys so that they can get started immediately.’

      When he came back after a few minutes Martin Beck was standing next to the desk rubbing his nose.

      ‘I'd like to make a few telephone calls,’ he said.

      ‘Use the office farthest down the corridor.’

      The room was larger than Ahlberg's and had windows on two walls. It was furnished with two desks, five chairs, a filing cabinet and a typewriter table with a disgracefully old Remington.

      Martin Beck sat down, placed his cigarettes and matches on the table, put down the green folder and began to go through the reports. They didn't tell him much more than he had already learned from Ahlberg.

      An hour and a half later he ran out of cigarettes. He had placed a few telephone calls without result and had talked to the Commissioner and to Superintendent Larsson who seemed tired and pressed. Just as he had crumpled the empty cigarette package, Kollberg called.

      Ten minutes later they met at the hotel.

      ‘God, you look dismal,’ Kollberg said. ‘Do you want a cigarette?’

      ‘No thank you. What have you been doing?’

      ‘I've been talking to a guy from the Motala Times. A local editor in Borensberg. He thought he had found something. A girl from Linköping was to have started a new job in Borensberg ten days ago but she never arrived. She was thought to have left Linköping the day before and, since then, no one has heard from her. No one thought to report her missing since she was generally unreliable. This newspaperman knew her employer and started making his own inquiries but never bothered to get a description of her. But I did. And it isn't the same girl. This one was fat and blonde. She's still missing. It took me the entire day.’

      He leaned back in his chair and picked his teeth with a match.

      ‘What do we do now?’

      ‘Ahlberg has sent out a few of his boys to knock on doors. You ought to give them a hand. When Melander gets here we'll have a run through with the Commissioner and Larsson. Go over to Ahlberg and he'll tell you what to do.’

      Kollberg straightened his chair and got up.

      ‘Are you coming too?’ he asked.

      ‘No, not now. Tell Ahlberg that I'm in my room if he wants anything.’

      When he got to his room Martin Beck took off his jacket, shoes, and tie and sat down on the edge of the bed.

      The weather had cleared and white puffs of cloud moved across the sky. The afternoon sun shone into the room.

      Martin Beck got up, opened the window a little, and closed the thin, yellow curtains. Then he lay down on the bed with his hands folded under his head.

      He thought about the girl who had been pulled out of Boren's bottom mud.

      When he closed his eyes he saw her before him as she looked in the picture, naked and abandoned, with narrow shoulders and her dark hair in a coil across her throat.

      Who was she? What had she thought? How had she lived? Whom had she met?

      She was young and he was sure that she had been pretty. She must have had someone who loved her. Someone close to her who was wondering what had happened to her. She must have had friends, colleagues, parents, maybe sisters and brothers. No human being, particularly a young, attractive woman, is so alone that there is no one to miss her when she disappears.

      Martin Beck thought about this for a long time. No one had inquired about her. He felt sorry for the girl whom no one missed. He couldn't understand why. Maybe she had said that she was going away? If so, it might be a long time before someone wondered where she was.

      The question was: how long?

       5

      It was eleven-thirty in the morning and Martin Beck's third day in Motala. He had got up early but accomplished nothing by it. Now he was sitting at the small desk thumbing through his notebook. He had reached for the telephone a few times, thinking that he really ought to call home, but nothing had come of the idea.

      Just like so many other things.

      He put on his hat, locked the door to his room, and walked down the stairs. The easy chairs in the hotel lobby were occupied by several journalists and two camera cases with folded tripods, bound by straps, lay on the floor. One of the press photographers stood leaning against the wall near the entrance smoking a cigarette. He was a very young man and he moved his cigarette to the corner of his mouth and raised his Leica to look through the viewer.

      When Martin Beck went past the group he drew his hat down over his face, ducked his head against his shoulder and walked straight ahead. This was merely a reflex action but it always seemed to irritate someone because one of the reporters said, surprisingly sourly:

      ‘Say, will there be a dinner with the leaders of the search this evening?’

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