Roseanna

'Are their addresses listed?'

'No, only nationalities. It's going to be one hell of a job to find all these people. We can cross off some of them, of course. Children and old women, for example. Then too, we have the crew and other personnel to get hold of. That makes eighteen more but I have their addresses.'

'You said that Kafka thought that she was traveling alone. What do you think?'

'It doesn't seem as if she was with anyone. She had a single cabin. According to the deck plan it was the one farthest back toward the stern on the middle deck.'

'I must admit that it doesn't tell me very much,' said Ahlberg. 'In spite of the fact that I see that boat several times a week every summer I don't really know what it looks like. I've never been on board any of them. All three seem alike to me.'

'Actually, they are not really alike. I think we ought to try and get a look at the Diana. Ill find out where she is,' said Martin Beck.

He told Ahlberg about his visit to the Hotel Gillet, gave him the address of the pilot and chief engineer both of whom lived in Motala, and promised to call again when he found out where the Diana was now.

After he had finished the conversation with Ahlberg, he went into his chief's office with the passenger list.

Hammar congratulated him on the progress and asked him to go and have a look at the boat as soon as possible. Kollberg and Melander would have to worry about the passenger list for the time being.

Melander didn't seem very enthusiastic about the task of locating the addresses of sixty-seven unknown people spread out over the entire globe. He sat in Martin Beck's office with a copy of the passenger list in his hand and made a fast tabulation:

'Fifteen Swedes, of which five are named Andersson, three named Johansson, and three named Petersson. That sounds promising! Twenty-one Americans, minus one, of course. Twelve Germans, four Danes, four Englishmen, one Scot, two Frenchmen, two South Africans—we can look for them with tom-tom drums—five Dutchmen and two Turks.'

He tapped his pipe against the wastepaper basket and put the list into his pocket.

'Turks. On the Gota Canal,' he mumbled and left the room.

Martin Beck telephoned the canal boat office. The Diana was at Bohus for the winter, a community on the Gota River about twelve miles from Gothenburg. A man from the Gothenburg office would meet them there and show them the boat.

He called Ahlberg and informed him that he would take the afternoon train to Motala. They agreed that they would leave Motala at seven o'clock the following morning in order to be in Bohus around ten o'clock.

For once he missed the rush hour going home and the subway car was almost empty.

His wife had begun to understand how important this case was to him and only ventured a mild protest when he told her that he was leaving. She packed his suitcase in sullen silence but Martin Beck pretended not to notice her demonstrable sulkiness. He kissed her absentmindedly on the cheek and left home a full hour before train time.

'I didn't bother to reserve a room for you at the hotel,' said Ahlberg, who was waiting with his car in front of the railroad station in Motala. 'We have a formidable sofa you can sleep on.'

They sat up late and talked that evening and when the alarm clock rang the next morning they felt anything but rested. Ahlberg telephoned S.K.A.* [* Statens Kriminal Teknista Anstalt—the federal criminal technical bureau.] and they promised to send two men to Bohus. Then they went down to the car.

The morning was cold and gray and after they had driven a while it began to rain lightly.

'Did you get hold of the pilot and the chief engineer? Martin Beck asked, when they had left the city behind them.

'Only the chief engineer,' said Ahlberg. 'He was a tough guy. I had to drag every word out of him. In any case he had very little to do with the passengers. And on this particular trip he was obviously fully occupied due to the trouble with the motor… sorry, the engine. He was in a bad mood the minute I mentioned that trip. But he said that there had been two boys helping him and that as far as he knew, they had signed on a boat which was going to England and Germany right after the Diana's last trip.'

'Oh, well.' Martin Beck replied. 'We'll get hold of them. We'll have to go through all the shipping company lists.'

The rain increased and by the time they reached Bohus the water was pouring over the windshield. They didn't see very much of the town because the heavy rain blocked their view but it looked rather small with a few factories and a large building which stretched out along the river. They found their way to the edge of the river and after they had driven slowly for a while, they caught sight of the boats. They looked deserted and spooky and the men couldn't make out the names of the boats until they were almost on top of the pier.

They remained in the car and watched for the man from the shipping office. There was no one in sight but another car was parked not too far from them. When they drove over to it, they saw a man sitting behind the wheel, looking in their direction.

They pulled up and parked their car next to the other one. The man rolled down his side window and shouted something. Through the noise of the rain they could make out their names and Martin Beck nodded 'yes' while he opened his window.

The man introduced himself and suggested that they go on board immediately in spite of the heavy rain.

He was short and heavy and when he hurried off ahead of them toward the Diana, he almost seemed to be rolling forward. With a certain amount of trouble, he got over the railing and waited while Martin Beck and Ahlberg climbed after him.

The little man unlocked a door on the starboard side and they walked into some kind of a coatroom. On the other side there was a similar door which led out to the port promenade deck.

On the right there were two glass doors leading into the dining room and between the doors was a large mirror. Directly in front of the mirror a flight of stairs led to a lower deck. They followed them and then went down still another flight of stairs which led to four large cabins and a large lounge with lace-covered sofas. The little man showed them how the sofas could be hidden by a curtain.

'When we have deck passengers they can usually sleep here,' he said.

The climbed back up the stairs to the next deck where there were cabins for passengers and crew, toilets and bathrooms. The dining room was on the middle deck. There were sk round tables which could each accommodate six persons, a buffet toward the stern, a reading and writing room where one could look out through a large window, and a small serving room, with a dumbwaiter, leading to the galley below.

When they went out on the promenade deck again the rain had nearly stopped. They walked toward the stern. On the starboard side there were three doors, the first one led to the serving room and the other two to cabins. On the other side there was a ladder going to the upper deck and on up to the bridge. Next to the ladder was Roseanna McGraw's cabin.

The door to that cabin opened directly toward the stern. The cabin was small, no more than twelve feet long, and lacked ventilation. The back rest on the bed could be lifted up and turned into a top bunk. There was also a wash basin with a mahogany cover which, when down, provided some counter space. On the bulkhead over the wash basin was a mirror with a holder for a glass and toilet articles. The cabin floor was covered with a rug which was tacked down and there was a place for luggage under the bunk. At the end of the bed there was an empty space with some clothing hooks on the bulkhead.

There was hardly room for three people in there which was soon obvious to the man from the shipping office. He went out and sat on a box containing life jackets and looked anxiously at his soaking wet shoes which dangled a good bit above the deck.

Martin Beck and Ahlberg examined the small cabin. They hadn't hoped to find any traces of Roseanna since they knew that the cabin had been cleaned a good number of times since she had occupied it. Ahlberg lay down on the bed carefully and stated that there was hardly enough room in it for an adult person.

They left the cabin door open and went out and sat down beside the man on the life jacket box.

After they had been sitting quietly for a while, looking into the cabin, a large, black car drove up. It was the men from the S.K.A. They carried a large, black case between them and it didn't take long before they had begun to work.