with a tall, straight funnel and open decks. As it calmly and comfortably chugged up the river past the Parliament building and green Margaret Island, Martin Beck stood at the railing philosophizing about the accursed cult of the combustion engine. He walked over to the engine room and peered down. The heat came out like a column from the boiler room. The fireman was dressed in bathing trunks, and his muscular back was shiny with sweat. The coal shovel rattled. What was this man thinking about down in that infernal heat? In all probability, about the blessing of the combustion engine: he no doubt saw himself sitting reading the newspaper beside a diesel engine, cotton waste and an oil can within easy reach. Martin Beck returned to studying the boat, but the fireman had spoiled his enjoyment. It was the same with most things. You couldn't have your cake and eat it too.
The boat slid past spacious, open-air parks and bathing places, edged its way through a swarm of canoes and pleasure boats, passed two bridges and continued through a narrow sound into quite a small tributary of the river. It gave a short hoarse toot of triumph and tied up in Ujpest.
After Martin Beck had gone ashore, he turned around and looked at the steamer, so exquisite in form and so functional—in its day. The fireman came up on deck, laughed at the sun and leaped straight into the water.
This part of the city was of a different character from the sections of Budapest he had seen previously. He walked diagonally across the large, bare square and made a few feeble attempts to ask his way, but could not make himself understood. Despite the map, he went astray and wound up in a yard behind a synagogue, evidently a home for elderly Jews. Frail survivors from the days of great evil nodded cheerfully at him from their wicker chairs in the narrow strip of shade along the walls.
Five minutes later he was standing outside the building Venetianer ut Number 6. It was built in two stories and nothing about its exterior gave the impression that it was a boarding house, but out on the street stood two cars with foreign license plates. He met the landlady as soon as he got into the hall.
'Frau Boeck?'
'Yes—we're full up I'm afraid.'
She was a stout woman of fifty years. Her German sounded extraordinarily fluent.
'I am looking for a lady named An Boeck.'
'That's my niece. One flight up. Second door to the right.'
With that, she went away. Simple as that. Martin Beck stood for a moment outside the white-painted door and heard someone moving about inside. Then he knocked quite lightly. The door was opened at once.
'Fraulein Boeck?'
The woman seemed surprised. Very likely, she had been expecting someone. She was wearing a dark-blue, two-piece bathing suit and in her right hand she was carrying a green rubber diving mask and a snorkel. She was standing with her feet wide apart and her left hand still on the lock, quite still, as if paralyzed in the middle of a movement. Her hair was dark and short, and her features were strong. She had thick black eyebrows, a broad straight nose and full lips. Her teeth were good but somewhat uneven. Her mouth was half-open and the tip of her tongue was resting against her lower teeth, as if she was just about to say something. She was hardly taller than five foot one, but strongly and harmoniously built, with well-developed shoulders, broad hips and quite a narrow waist. Her legs were muscular and her feet short and broad, with straight toes. She had a very deep suntan and her skin appeared soft and elastic, especially across her diaphragm and stomach. Shaved armpits. Large breasts and curved stomach with thick down that seemed very light against her tanned skin. Here and there, long and curly black hairs had made their way out from under the elastic at her loins. She might have been twenty-two or twenty- three years old, at the most. Not beautiful in the conventional sense of the word, but a highly functional specimen of the human race.
A questioning look in large, dark-brown eyes. Finally she said, 'Yes, that's me. Were you looking for me?'
Not quite such fluent German as her aunt's, but almost.
'I'm looking for Alf Matsson.'
'Who is that?'
Her general attitude was that of a child in a state of shock. It made him incapable of discerning any definite reaction to the name. Quite possibly it was completely new to her.
'A Swedish journalist. From Stockholm.'
'Is he supposed to be living here? There's no Swede here at the moment. You must have made a mistake.'
She thought for a moment, frowning.
'But how did you know my name?'
The room behind her was an ordinary boarding-house room. Clothes lay carelessly strewn about on the furniture. Only women's clothing, as far as he could see.
'He gave me this address himself. Matsson is a friend of mine.'
She looked suspiciously at him and said: 'How odd.'
He took the passport out of his pocket and turned to the page with Matsson's photo on it. She looked at it carefully. 'No. I've never seen him before.' After a while she said, 'Have you lost each other?' Before Martin Beck had time to reply, he heard a padding sound behind him and took a step to one side. A man in his thirties went past him into the room. Wearing bathing trunks, below average height, blond, very strongly built, with the same formidable tan as the woman. The man took a position behind her and to one side and peered inquisitively at the passport.
'Who's that?' he said in German.
'I don't know. This gentleman has lost him. Thought he'd moved here.'
'Lost,' said the blond man. 'That's not good. And without his passport too. I know what a bother that can be. I'm in that line myself.'
Playfully, he pulled the elastic of the woman's bathing suit as far as he could and let it go with a smack. She gave him a quick look of annoyance.
'Aren't we going out for a swim?' said the man. 'Yes, I'm ready.'
'Ari Boeck,' said Martin Beck. 'I recognize the name. Aren't you the swimmer?'
For the first time, the girl's eyes wavered. 'I don't compete any longer.' 'Haven't you done some swimming in Sweden?' 'Yes, once. Two years ago. I was last. Funny that he gave you my address.'
The blond man looked inquiringly at her. No one said anything. Martin Beck put the passport away. 'Well, good-bye, then. Sony to have troubled you.' 'Good-bye,' said the woman, smiling for the first time. 'Hope you find your friend,' said the blond man. 'Have you tried the camping site by the Roman Baths? It's up here, on the other side of the river. A huge number of people there. You can take a boat over.' 'You're German, aren't you?' 'Yes, from Hamburg.'
The man rumpled the girl's short dark hair. Lightly she brushed his chest with the back of her left hand. Martin Beck turned around and went away.
The entrance hall was empty. On a shelf behind the table that served as a reception desk lay a little stack of passports. The top one was Finnish, but underneath it lay two in that familiar moss-green color. As if in passing, he stretched out his hand and took one of them. He opened it and the man he had met in Ari Boeck's doorway stared glassily up at him. Tetz Radeberger, Travel Agency Official, Hamburg, born in 1935. Evidently no one had taken the trouble to lie to him.
He had bad luck on his journey home and ended up on a modern fast-moving ferryboat with roofed decks and growling diesel engines. There were only a few passengers on board—nearest to him sat two old women in gaudily colored shawls and bright dresses. They were carrying large white bundles and presumably had come from the country. Farther away in the saloon sat a serious, middle-aged man in a brown felt hat who was carrying a briefcase and wearing the facial expression of a civil servant. A tall man in a blue suit was whittling listlessly at a stick. By the landing stage stood a uniformed police officer, eating figure-eight-shaped cookies out of a paper cornet and talking sporadically to a small, well-dressed man with a bald head and a black mustache. A young couple with two doll-like children completed the assemblage.
Martin Beck inspected his fellow passengers gloomily. His expedition had been a failure. There was nothing to indicate that Ari Boeck had not been telling the truth.
Inwardly he cursed the strange impulse that had made him take on this pointless assignment. The possibilities of his solving the case became more and more remote. He was alone and without an idea in his head. And if, on the other hand, he had had any ideas, he would have lacked resources to implement them.
