completely still and stared in front of him.
Things looked crooked in front of his eyes and he rubbed them with his thumb and index finger.
He reached for a pencil in the holder on the desk and wrote:
GOT HIM. CONFESSED ALMOST EMMEDIATELY, IMIDIAEMED…
He put the pencil back, crumpled up the paper and threw h in the wastebasket. He decided to telephone Kafka when he had gotten some sleep and was rested.
Martin Beck put on his hat and coat and left. It had begun to snow at two o'clock and by now the ground was covered with a blanket of snow several inches thick. The flakes were large and wet. They dipped down in long, listless swirls, tight and abundant, dampening all sound and making the surroundings remote and unattainable. The real winter had arrived.
Roseanna McGraw had come to Europe. At a place called Norsholm she had met a man who was travelling to Bohuslan to fish. She wouldn't have met him if the boat hadn't had an engine breakdown or if the waitress hadn't moved her to another table in the dining room. Later, he had happened to kill her. She could just as easily have been run over on King Street in Stockholm or fallen down her hotel stairs and broken her neck. A woman named Sonja Hansson might possibly never again feel completely calm or sleep soundly and dreamless with her hands between her knees as she did when she was a little girl. Even so, she had actually not had anything to do with all this. They had all sat in their offices in Motala and Stockholm and Lincoln, Nebraska, and solved this case by means that could never be made public. They would always remember it, but hardly with pride.
Round-shouldered and whistling Martin Beck walked through the pulsing, white mist to the subway station. People looking at him would probably have been surprised if they knew what he was thinking.
Here comes Martin Beck and it's snowing on his hat. He walks with a song; he walks with a sway! Hello friends and brothers; it squeaks underfoot. It is a whiter night Hello to you all; just give a call and we'll go home to southern Stockholm! By subway. To my part of town.
He was on the way home.
PER WAHLOO and MAJ SJOWALL, his wife and co-author, wrote ten Martin Beck mysteries. Mr. Wahloo, who died in 1975, was a reporter for several Swedish newspapers and magazines and wrote numerous radio and television plays, film scripts, short stories and novels. Maj Sjowall is also a poet.
