Martin Beck to pass.
Inside the entrance, Stenstrom was standing gloomily looking at Kollberg's list.
'What are you hanging around here for?' said Kollberg.
'She's not home. And she wasn't at the Tankard. I was just wondering where to go next. But if you're thinking of taking over, then I can go home.'
'Try the Opera House bar,' said Kollberg.
'Why are you on your own, by the way,' said Martin Beck.
'I've had Ronn with me. He'll be back in a minute. He's just gone home to his old lady with some flowers. It's her birthday and she lives right here on the corner.'
'How's it going?' said Martin Beck.
'We've checked Lund and Kronkvist. They left the Opera House bar about midnight and went straight to the Hamburger Exchange. There they met two gals they knew, and at about three they went back home with one of them.'
He looked at the list.
'Her name is Svensson and she lives in Lidingo. They stayed there until eight o'clock on Friday morning and then took a taxi together to work. At one o'clock, they went to the Tankard and sat there until five, when they went to Karlstad on a reporting job. I haven't got around to the others yet.'
'I realize that,' said Martin Beck. 'Just carry on. We'll be at the station after seven. Phone if you've finished before too late.'
The rain grew heavier as they drove toward Hagalund. When Kollberg stopped the car outside the low block of flats in which Gunnarsson had lived until two months ago, the water was pouring down the windowpanes and the drumming on the car roof was deafening.
They put up their coatcollars and ran across the pavement into the entrance. The building was three-storied and on one of the doors on the second floor there was a calling card fastened on with a thumbtack. The name on the calling card was also on the list of tenants in the entrance hall, and the white plastic letters looked newer and whiter than the others.
They walked back to the car and drove around the block, then stopped in front of the building. The flat where Gun-narsson had presumably lived had only two windows and appeared to consist of only one room.
'It must be a pretty small flat,' said Kollberg. 'He's going to get married now since he's got a bigger one.'
Martin Beck looked out into the rain. He wanted to smoke and felt cold. There was a field and wooded slope on the other side of the street. At the far end of the field was a newly built highrise building and another one was in the process of being built beside it. The whole field was probably going to be built on with a row of identical highrises. From the dismal block where Gunnarsson had lived, one at least had an open, country-like view, but now that, too, would be spoiled.
In the middle of the field stood the charred remains of a burnt-out house.
'A fire?' he said, pointing.
Kollberg leaned forward and peered through the rain.
'That's an old farm,' he said. 'I remember seeing it last summer. A fine old wooden house, but no one lived there. I think the fire department burned it down. You know—to practice. They set it alight and then put the fire out, and then they set it alight again and put it out again, and they go on like that until there's nothing left. Pity with such a fine old place. But they probably need the land to build on.'
He looked at his watch and started the engine.
'We'll have to step on it if we're going to get your call,' he said.
The rain poured down the windshield and Kollberg had to drive carefully. They sat in silence all the way back. When they got out of the car it was five to seven and already dark.
The telephone rang so precisely on the dot of seven that it seemed almost unnatural. It was unnatural.
'Where the hell's Lennart?' said Kollberg's wife.
Martin Beck handed over the receiver and tried not to listen to Kollberg's replies in the dialogue that followed.
'Yes, I'm coming soon now… Yes, in a little while, I said… Tomorrow? That'll be hard, I expect…'
Martin Beck retired to the bathroom and did not come back until he had heard the receiver being replaced.
'We should have children,' said Kollberg. 'Poor thing, sitting out there on her own, waiting for me.'
They had only been married six months, so things would probably work out all right.
A bit later the call came through.
'I'm sorry to have kept you waiting,' said Szluka. 'It's more difficult to get hold of people here on Saturday. However, you were right.'
'About the passport?'
'Yes. A Belgian student lost his passport at Hotel Ifjusag.'
'When?'
'That hasn't been determined at the moment. He came to the hotel on Friday the twenty-second of July in the afternoon. Alf Matsson came in the evening of the same day.'
'So it fits.'
'Yes, it does, doesn't it? The difficulty is this. This man, whose name is Roeder, is visiting Hungary for the first time and doesn't know the regulations here. He himself claims that he found it quite natural to hand in his passport and not get it back until he had left the hotel. As he was to stay for three weeks, he didn't give the matter a thought and did not ask for his passport before Monday, in other words the day we met for the first time. He needed it to apply for a visa to Bulgaria. All this is, of course, according to the man's own statement.'
'It could be right.'
'Yes, of course. At the hotel reception they at once said that Roeder had been given back his passport on the morning after he had arrived, that is, the twenty-third, or the same day Matsson moved to Hotel Duna—and disappeared. Roeder swears he was never given his passport, and the hotel staff are equally certain his passport was put in his pigeonhole on the Friday evening and that, consequently, he should have received it back when he came down on the Saturday morning. That's the routine.'
'Does anyone remember that he actually received it?'
'No. But that would be too much to ask. At this time of year, it often happens that people at the reception desk receive up to fifty foreign passports a day and hand out the same number. Also, the people who sort the passports into the pigeonholes are not the same ones who hand them out the next morning.'
'Have you seen this Roeder?'
'Yes, he's still staying at the hotel. His embassy is arranging for his journey home.'
'And? I mean, does it fit?'
'He has a beard. Otherwise they aren't especially alike, judging from the pictures. But unfortunately people don't often look like their passport photos either. Someone could well have stolen the passport out of the pigeonhole during the night. Nothing could be simpler. The night porter is alone and naturally has to turn his back sometimes, or leave his place. And the officials who check passports haven't time to study faces when tourists are pouring back and forth across the border. If we work on the theory that your fellow countryman took Roeder's passport, then he might well have left the country with its help.'
There was a short silence. Then Szluka said:
'Someone has done it, anyway.'
Martin Beck sat up.
'Do you know that?'
'Yes. We heard about it twenty minutes ago. Roeder's exit permit is in our files. It was handed in to the border police in Hegyeshalom on the afternoon of Saturday the twenty-third of July. One of the passengers on the Budapest-Vienna express. And that passenger can't have been Roeder as he's still here.'
Szluka paused again. Then he said hesitantly, 'I suppose this means that Matsson has left Hungary.'
'No,' said Martin Beck. 'He's never been there at all.'
28
Martin Beck slept badly and got up early. The flat in Bagarmossen was dismal and lifeless and the familiar
