named Alf Matsson.'

The youth stared at the ceiling and chewed his nail. Then he shook his head.

'I can't remember any Swede. We get very few Swedes here. What did he look like?'

Martin Beck showed him Alf Matsson's passport photograph. The youth looked at it for a moment and said hesitantly, 'I don't know. Perhaps I've seen him before. I can't really remember.'

'Do you have a ledger? A guest register?'

The young man pulled out a card-file drawer and began to search. Martin Beck waited. He felt an urge to smoke and hunted through his pockets, but his cigarettes were irrevocably at an end.

'Here it is,' said the youth, taking a card out of the drawer. 'Alf Matsson. Swedish, yes. He stayed here the night of July twenty-second, just as you say.'

'And he didn't stay here after that night?'

'No, not afterward. But he did stay here for a few days at the end of May. But that was before I came here. I was taking my exams then.'

Martin Beck took the card and looked at it. Alf Matsson had stayed at the hotel from the twenty-fifth to the twenty-eighth of May.

'Who was on duty here then?'

The youth thought about it. Then he said, 'It must have been Stefi. Or else the man who was here before me. I really can't remember what his name is.'

'Stefi,' said Martin Beck. 'Does he still work here?'

'She,' said the young man. 'It's a girl—Stefania. Yes, she and I work in shifts.'

'When is she coming in?'

'She's bound to be here already. I mean in her room. She lives here at the hotel, you see. But she has the night shift this week, so she's probably asleep.'

'Could you find out?' asked Martin Beck. 'If she's awake, I'd like to speak to her.'

The youth lifted the receiver and dialed a number. After a while he replaced the receiver.

'No answer.'

He lifted the flap door in the desk and came out.

'I'll see if she's in,' he said. 'Just a moment.'

He got into one of the elevators and Martin Beck saw from the signal light that he had stopped at the second floor. After a while he came down again.

'Her roommate says she's out sunbathing. Wait a moment and I'll go get her.'

He disappeared into the lounge and returned a moment later with a girl. She was small and chubby, wearing sandals on her feet and a checkered cotton robe over her bikini. She was buttoning up the robe as she came toward Martin Beck.

'I'm sorry to bother you,' he said.

'It doesn't matter,' said the girl called Stefi. 'Can I help you with anything?'

Martin Beck asked her if she had been on duty during the particular days in May. She went behind the desk, looked in the black book and nodded.

'Yes,' she said. 'But only in the daytime.'

Martin Beck showed her Alf Matsson's passport.

'Swedish?' she asked without looking up.

'Yes,' said Martin Beck. 'A journalist.'

He looked at her and waited. She looked at the passport photograph and cocked her head.

'Ye-es,' she said hesitantly. 'Yes, I think I remember him. He was alone at first in a room with three beds, and then we had a Russian party, so I needed the room and had to move him. He was awfully angry that he didn't get a telephone in the new room. We haven't got telephones in all the rooms. He made such a fuss about not having one, I was forced to let him exchange rooms with someone who didn't need a telephone.'

She closed the passport and put it down on the desk.

'If it was him,' she said, 'that photo's not very good.'

'Do you remember if he had any visitors?' said Martin Beck.

'No,' she said. 'I don't think so. Not so far as I can remember, anyhow.'

'Did he use the phone a lot? Or did he receive any calls which you can remember?'

'It seems to me that a lady rang several times, but I'm not certain,' said Stefi.

Martin Beck pondered awhile and then said, 'Do you remember anything else about him?'

The girl shook her head.

'He had a typewriter with him, I'm sure. And I remember that he was well dressed. Otherwise I can't remember anything special about him.'

Martin Beck put the passport back in his pocket and recalled that he had run out of cigarettes.

'May I buy a pack of cigarettes here?' he said.

The girl bent forward and looked in a drawer.

'Certainly,' she said. 'But I've only got Tervs.'

'That's fine,' said Martin Beck, taking the pack made of gray paper, with a picture of a factory with tall smokestacks on it. He paid with a note and told her to keep the change. Then he took a pen and a pad from the desk, wrote down his own name and that of his hotel, tore off the sheet and handed it to Stefi.

'If you can think of anything else, perhaps you'd call me, would you?'

Stefi looked at the piece of paper with a frown.

'I've just remembered something else when you were writing that note,' she said. 'I think it was that Swede who asked how you got to an address in Ujpest. It might not have been him, I'm not certain. Perhaps it was a different guest I drew a little map for him.'

She fell silent and Martin Beck waited.

'I remember the street he was asking about, but not the number. My aunt lives on that street, so that's why I remembered it.'

Martin Beck pushed the pad toward her.

'Would you be good enough to write down the name of the street for me?'

As Martin Beck came out of the hotel, he looked at the slip of paper. Venetianer ut.

He put the paper into his pocket, lit a Terv and began strolling down toward the river.

10

It was Monday the eighth of August and Martin Beck was waked by the telephone. He propped himself sleepily up on his elbow, fumbled with the receiver a moment and heard the telephone operator say something he did not understand. Then a familiar voice said:

'Hullo.'

Out of sheer astonishment, Martin Beck forgot to reply.

'Hulloo-o-o, is anyone there?'

Kollberg could be heard as clearly as if he had been in the room next door.

'Where are you?'

'At the office, of course. It's already quarter past nine. Don't tell me you're still lying snoring in bed.'

'What's the weather like up your way?' said Martin Beck, then falling silent, paralyzed himself by the idiocy of the remark.

'It's raining,' said Kollberg suspiciously, 'but that wasn't why I called. Are you sick or something?'

Martin Beck managed to sit up on the edge of the bed and light one of those unfamiliar Hungarian cigarettes from the pack with the factory on it.

'No. What d'you want?'

'I've been digging around a bit up here. Alf Matsson doesn't seem to be a very nice guy.'

'How so?'

'Well. Mostly just an impression I've got. He just seems to be one big all-round ass.'

'Did you call to tell me that?'

'No, actually, I didn't. But there was one thing I thought you ought to know. I didn't have anything to do on Saturday so I went and sat around in that bar place. The Tankard.'

'Listen, don't go poking your nose in too much. Officially you've never even heard about this case. And you

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