The Man Who Went Up In Smoke (3 page)

'Well, good-bye then. Good-bye, Martin. And do what you can. This is important."

'It really is,' said the other man.

'Yes," said the redhead, "we might have another Wallenberg affair on our hands."

'That was the word we were told not to mention," said the other man in weary despair.

Martin Beck nodded and left.

'Are you going out there?" said Hammar.

'Don't know yet. I don't even know the language."

'Neither does anyone else on the force. You can be quite sure we checked. Anyhow, they say you can get by with German and English."

'Odd story."

'Stupid story," said Hammar. "But I know something that those people at the F.O. don't know. We've got a dossier on him."

'Alf Matsson?"

'Yes. The Third Section had 
it
. In the secret files."

'Counter-Espionage?"

'Exactly. The Security Division. An investigation was made on this guy three months ago."

There was a deafening thumping on the door and Kollberg thrust his head in. He stared at Martin Beck in astonishment

'What are you doing here?"

'Having my holiday."

'What's all this hush-hush you're up to? Shall I go away? As quietly as I came, without anybody noticing?"

'Yes," said Hammar. "No, don't. I'm tired of hush-hush. Come in and shut the door."

He pulled a file out of a desk drawer.

'This was a routine investigation," he said, "and it gave rise to no particular action. But parts of it might interest anyone who is thinking of looking into the case."

'What the hell are you up to?" said Kollberg. "Have you opened a secret agency or something?"

'If you don't pipe down, you can go," said Martin Beck. "Why was Counter-Espionage interested in Matsson?"

'The passport people have their own little eccentricities. At Arlanda airport, for instance, they write down the names of people who travel to those European countries that require visas. Some bright boy who looked in their books got it into his head that this Matsson traveled all too often. To Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Sofia, Bucharest, Constanta, Belgrade. He was great for using his passport."

'And?"

'So Security did a little hush-hush investigation. They went, for instance, to the magazine he works for and asked."

'And what did they reply?"

'Perfectly correct, said the magazine. Alf Matsson 
is
 a great one for using his passport. Why shouldn't he be? He's our expert on Eastern European affairs. The results are no more remarkable than that. But there are one or two things. Take this rubbish and read it for yourself. You can sit here. Because now I'm going to go home. And this evening I'm going to go to a James Bond film. Bye!"

Martin Beck picked up the report and began to read. When he had finished the first page, he pushed it over to Kollberg, who picked it up between the tips of his fingers and placed it down in front of him. Martin Beck looked question-ingly at him.

'I sweat so much," said Kollberg. "Don't want to mess up their secret documents."

Martin Beck nodded. He himself never sweated except when he had a cold.

They said nothing for the following half hour.

The dossier did not offer much of immediate interest, but it was very thoroughly compiled. Alf Matsson was not born in Gothenburg in 1934, but in Mölndal in 1933. He had begun as a journalist in the provinces in 1952 and been a reporter on several daily papers before going to Stockholm as a sports writer in 1955. As a sports reporter, he had made several trips abroad, among others to the Olympic Games, in Melbourne in 1956 and in Rome in 1960. A number of editors vouchsafed that he was a skillful journalist: "… adroit, with a speedy pen." He had left the daily press in 1961, when he was taken on by the weekly for which he still worked. During the last four years he had devoted more and more of his time to overseas reporting on a very wide variety of subjects, from politics and economics to sport and pop stars. He had taken his university entrance exam and spoke fluent English and German, passable Spanish and some French and Russian. He earned over 40,000 kronor a year and had been married twice. His first marriage took place in 1954 and was dissolved the following year. He had married again in 1961 and had two children, a daughter by his first marriage and a son by his second.

With praiseworthy diligence, the investigator now went over to the man's less admirable points. On several occasions he had neglected to pay maintenance for his elder child. His first wife described him as a "drunkard and a brutal beast." Parenthetically, it was pointed out that this witness appeared to be not entirely reliable. There were, however, several indications that Alf Matsson drank, among others a remark in a statement by an ex-colleague who said that he was "all right, but a bastard when he got drunk," but only one of these statements was supported by evidence. On the eve of Twelfth Day in 1966, a radio patrol in Malmö had taken him to the emergency room of General Hospital after he had been stabbed in the hand during a brawl at the home of a certain Bengt Jönsson, whom he had happened to be visiting. The case was investigated by the police but was not taken to court, as Matsson had not wished to press a charge. However, two policemen by the names of Kristiansson and Kvant described both Matsson and Jönsson as under the influence, so the case was registered at the Commission on Alcoholism.

The tone of the statement by his present boss, an editor called Eriksson, was snooty. Matsson was the magazine's "expert on Eastern Europe" (whatever use a publication of this kind could possibly have for such a person) and the editorial board found no cause to give the police any further information about his journalistic activities. Matsson was, they went on to say, very interested in and well-informed on Eastern European matters, often produced projects of his own, and had on several occasions proved himself ambitious by giving up holidays and days off without extra pay to be able to carry out certain reporting assignments that especially interested him.

Some previous reader had in turn appeared ambitious by underlining this sentence in red. It could hardly have been Hammar, who did not mess up other people's reports.

A detailed account of Matsson's published articles showed that they consisted almost exclusively of interviews with famous athletes and reportage on sports, film stars and other figures from the entertainment world.

The dossier contained several items in the same style. When he had finished reading, Kollberg said, "Singularly uninteresting person."

'There's one peculiar detail."

'That he's disappeared, you mean?"

'Exactly," said Martin Beck.

A minute later, he dialed the Foreign Office number and Kollberg, much to his surprise, heard him say, "Is that Martin? Yes, hi Martin—this is Martin."

Martin Beck seemed to listen for a moment, a tortured expression on his face. Then he said, "Yes, I'm going."

The building was old and had no elevator. Matsson was the top name on the list of tenants down in the entrance hall. When Martin Beck had climbed the five steep flights of stairs, he was out of breath and his heart was thumping. He waited for a moment before ringing the doorbell.

The woman who opened the door was small and fair. She was wearing slacks and a cotton-knit top and had hard lines around her mouth. Martin Beck guessed she was about thirty.

'Come in," she said, holding open the door.

He recognized her voice from the telephone conversation they had had an hour earlier.

The hall of the flat was large and unfurnished except for an unpainted stool along one wall. A small boy of about two or three came out of the kitchen. He had a half-eaten roll in his hand and went straight up to Martin Beck, stood in front of him and stretched up a sticky fist

'Hi," he said.

Then he turned around and ran into the living room. The woman followed him and lifted up the boy, who with a satisfied gurgle had sat down in the room's only comfortable armchair. The boy yelled as she carried him into a neighboring room and dosed the door. She came back, sat down on the sofa and lit a cigarette. You want to ask me about Alf. Has something happened to him?"

After a moment's hesitation, Martin Beck sat down on the armchair.

'Not so far as we know. It's just that he doesn't seem to have been heard from for a couple of weeks. Neither by the magazine, nor, so far as I can make out, by you, either. You don't know where he might be?"

'No idea. And the fact that he's not let me know anything isn't very strange in itself. He's not been here for four weeks, and before that I didn't hear from him for a month."

Martin Beck looked toward the closed door.

'But the boy? Doesn't he usually…"

'He hasn't seemed especially interested in his son since , we've separated," she said, with some bitterness. "He sends money to us every month. But that's only right, don't you think?"

'Does he earn a lot on the magazine?"

'Yes. I don't know how much, but he always had plenty of money. And he wasn't mean. I never had to go without, although he spent a lot of money on himself. In restaurants and on taxis and so on. Now I've got a job, so I earn a little myself."

'How long have you been divorced?"

'We're not divorced. It's not been granted yet. But he moved out of here almost eight months ago now. He got hold of a flat then. But even before that, he was away from home so much that it hardly made any difference."

'But I suppose you're familiar with his habits—who he sees and where he usually goes?"

'Not any longer. To be quite frank, I don't know what he's up to. Before, he used to hang around mostly with people from work. Journalists and the like. They used to sit around in a restaurant called the Tankard. But I don't know now. Maybe he's found some other place. Anyhow, that restaurant's moved or has been torn down, hasn't it?"

She put out her cigarette and went over to the door to listen. Then she opened it cautiously and went in. A moment later she came out and shut the door just as carefully behind her.

'He's asleep," she said.

'Nice little boy," said Martin Beck.

'Yes, he's nice."

They sat silent for a moment, and then she said, "But All was on an assignment in Budapest, wasn't he? At least, I heard that somewhere. Mightn't he have stayed there? Or have gone somewhere else?"

'Did he used to do that? When he was away on assignments?"

'No," she said hesitantly. "No, actually he didn't. He's not especially conscientious and he drinks a lot, but while we were together he certainly didn't neglect his work. For instance, he was awfully particular about getting his manuscripts in at the time he'd promised. When he lived here, he often sat up late at night writing to get things finished in time."

She looked at Martin Beck. For the first time during their conversation he noticed a vague anxiety in her eyes.

'It does seem peculiar, doesn't it? That he's never got in touch with the magazine. Supposing something really has happened to him."

'Have you any idea what might have happened to him?"

She shook her head.

'No, none at all."

'You said before that he drinks. Does he drink a lot?"

'Yes—sometimes, at least. Toward the end, when he lived here, he often came home drunk. If he generally ever came home at all."

The bitter lines around her mouth had returned.

'But didn't that affect his work?"

'No, it didn't really. Anyhow not much. When he began working for this weekly magazine, he often got special assignments. Abroad and that kind of thing. In between, he didn't have much to do and was often free. He didn't have to be at the office much. That was when he drank. Sometimes he sat around that café for days on end."

'I see," said Martin Beck. "Can you give me the names of anyone he used to go around with?"

She gave Martin Beck the names of three journalists who were unknown to him, and he wrote them down on a taxi receipt he found in his inside pocket. She looked at him and said:

'I thought the police always had little notebooks with black covers that they wrote everything down in. But maybe that's just in books and at the movies."

Martin Beck got up.

'If you hear anything from him, perhaps you'd be good enough to call me," she said. "Would you?"

'Naturally," said Martin Beck.

In the hall, he asked, "Where did you say he was living now?"

'On Fleminggatan. Number 34. But I didn't say." "Have you got a key to the apartment?" "Oh, no. I haven't even been there."

On the door was a piece of cardboard with MATSSON lettered on it in India ink. The lock was an ordinary one and caused Martin Beck no difficulties. Aware that he was overstepping his authority, he made his way into the flat. On the doormat was some mail—a few advertisements, a postcard from Madrid signed by someone called Bibban, a sports car magazine in English and an electricity bill amounting to 28:45 kronor.

The flat consisted of two large rooms, a kitchen, hall and toilet. There was no washroom, but two large wardrobes. The air in the flat was heavy and musty.

In the largest room, facing the street, were a bed, a night table, bookshelves, a low circular table with a glass top, a desk and two chairs. On the night table stood a record player and on the shelf below, a pile of long-playing records. Martin Beck read in English on the top sleeve: 
Blue Monk
. It meant nothing to him. On the desk were a sheaf of typing paper, a daily paper dated July twentieth, a taxi receipt for 6:50 kronor dated the eighteenth, a German dictionary, a magnifying glass and a stenciled information sheet from a youth club. There was a telephone too, and telephone directories and two ash trays. The drawers contained old magazines, magazine photographs, receipts, a few letters and postcards, and a number of carbon copies of manuscripts.

In the back room there was no furniture at all except a narrow divan with a faded red cover, a chair and a stool that served as a night table. There were no curtains.

Martin Beck opened the doors of both wardrobes. One of them contained an almost empty laundry bag and on the shelves lay shirts, sweaters and underclothes, some of them with the laundry's paper bands still unbroken around them. In the other hung two tweed jackets, a dark-brown flannel suit, three pairs of trousers and a winter overcoat. Three hangers were empty. On the floor stood a pair of heavy brown shoes with rubber soles, a pair of thinner black ones, a pair of boots and a pair of galoshes. There was a large suitcase in the cupboard above the one wardrobe, but the other cupboard was empty.

Martin Beck went out into the kitchen. There were no dirty dishes in the sink, but on the drainboard were two glasses and a mug. The pantry was empty except for a few empty wine bottles and two cans. Martin Beck thought about his own pantry, which he had quite unnecessarily cleaned out so thoroughly.

He walked through the flat one more time. The bed was made, the ash trays were empty, and there were neither passport, money, bankbooks nor anything else of value in the drawers of the desk. All in all, there was nothing to indicate that Alf Matsson had been home since he had left the flat and gone to Budapest two weeks previously.

Martin Beck left Alf Matsson's flat and stood for a moment by the deserted taxi stand down on Fleminggatan, but as usual at lunch time there were no taxis available and he took a trolley instead.

It was past one when he went into the dining room of the Tankard. All the tables were taken and the harassed waitresses took no notice of him. There was no headwaiter to be seen. He crossed over to the bar on the other side of the entrance hall. At that moment a fat man in a corduroy jacket gathered up his papers and rose from a round table in the corner next to the door. Martin Beck took his place. Here too, all the tables were full, but some of the customers were just paying their bills.

He ordered a sandwich and beer from the headwaiter and asked if any of the three journalists was there.

'Mr. Molin is sitting over there, but I haven't seen the others today. They'll probably be in later."

Martin Beck followed the headwaiter's glance toward a table where five men were sitting talking with large steins of beer in front of them.

'Which of the gentlemen is Mr. Molin?"

'The gentleman with the beard," said the headwaiter, and went away.

Confused, Martin Beck looked at the five men. Three of them had beards.

The waitress came with his sandwich and beer and gave him the chance to say, "Do you happen to know which of the gentlemen over there is Mr. Molin?"

'Of course, the one with the beard."

She followed his somewhat desperate look and added, "Nearest the window."

Martin Beck ate his sandwich very slowly. The man named Molin ordered another stein of beer. Martin Beck waited. The place began to empty. After a while Molin emptied his stein and was given another. Martin Beck finished eating his sandwich, ordered coffee, and waited.

Finally the man with the beard got up from his place by the window and walked toward the entrance hall. Just as he was passing, Martin Beck said, "Mr. Molin?"

The man stopped. "Just a moment," he said, and went on out.

A short while later, he returned, breathed heavily all over Martin Beck, and said, "Do we know each other?"

'No, not yet. But perhaps you'd like to sit down a moment and have a beer with me. There's something I'd like to ask you about."

He himself could hear that it didn't sound especially good. Smelled of police business a mile away. But it worked any" how. Molin sat down. He had fair, rather thin hair, combed forward onto his forehead. His beard was reddish and neat. He looked about thirty-five and was quite plump. He waved a waitress over to him.

'Say Stina, get me a round, will you?"

The waitress nodded and looked at Martin Beck.

'The same," he said.

A "round" turned out to be a bulbous and considerably larger stein than the cylindrical though quite large one he himself had drunk with his sandwich.

Molin took a large gulp and wiped his mustache with his handkerchief.

'Uh-huh," he said. "What was it you wanted to talk to me about? Hangovers?"

'About Alf Matsson," said Martin Beck. "You're good friends, aren't you?"

It still didn't sound quite right and he tried to improve on it by saying, "Buddies, aren't you?"

'Of course. What's up with him? Does he owe you money?"

Molin looked suspiciously and haughtily at Martin Beck.

'Well then, I'd first like to point out that I'm not any kind of collection agency."

Clearly, he would have to watch his tongue. Moreover, the man was a journalist.

'No, nothing like that at all," said Martin Beck.

'Then what do you want Alfie for?"

'Alfie and I've known each other for a long time. We worked on the same… well, we were on the same job together a number of years ago. I met him quite by chance a few weeks ago and he promised to do a job for me, and then I never heard another word from him. He talked about you quite a bit, so I thought perhaps you'd know where he was."

Somewhat exhausted by this strenuous oratorical effort, * Martin Beck took a deep gulp of his beer. The other man followed suit.

'Oh, hell. You're an old pal of Alfie's, are you? The fact is that I've been wondering where he was too. But I suppose he's stayed on in Hungary. He's not in town, anyhow. Or we'd have seen him here."

'In Hungary? What's he doing there?"

'On some trip for that gossip sheet he works for. But he should really be home by now. When he left, he said be was only going to be away for two or three days."

'Did you see him before he left?"

'Yes indeed. The night before. We were here in the daytime and then went to a couple of other places in the evening."

'You and him?"

'Yes, and some of the others. I don't really remember who. Per Kronkvist and Stig Lund were there, I think. We got really stoned. Yes, Åke and Pia were there too. Don't you know Åke, by the way?"

Martin Beck thought. It seemed somewhat pointless.

'Åke? I don't know. Which Åke?"

'Åke Gunnarsson," said Molin, turning around toward the table where he had been sitting before. Two of the men had left during their conversation. The two remaining were sitting silently over their beers.

'He's sitting over there," said Molin. "The guy with the beard.'"

One of the beards had gone, so there was no doubt which of them was Gunnarsson. The man looked quite pleasant.

'No," said Martin Beck. "I don't think I know him. Where does he work?"

Molin gave the name of a publication that Martin Beck had never heard of, but it sounded like some kind of auto magazine.

'Åke's all right. He got pretty high that night too, if I remember rightly. Otherwise, he doesn't get really drunk very often. No matter how much he pours into himself."

'Haven't you seen Alfie since then?"

'That's a hell of a lot of questions you're asking. Aren't you going to ask me how I am too?"

'Of course. How are you?"

'Absolutely god-damned awful. Hangover. Damned bad one, too."

Molin's fat face grew gloomy. As if to obliterate the last shreds of the pleasures of living, he drank the remains of his beer in one huge gulp. He took out his handkerchief, and with a brooding look in his eyes, mopped his foamy mustache.

'They ought to serve beer in mustache cups," he said. "There isn't much service left these days."

After a brief pause he said, "No, I haven't seen Alfie since he left. The last I saw of him was when he was pouring his drink over some gal in the Opera House bar. Then he went to Budapest the next morning. Poor devil, having to sit up flying right across half of Europe with a hangover like that. Hope he didn't fly Scandinavian Airlines anyhow."

'And you've not heard anything from him since then?"

'We don't usually write letters when we're on overseas trips," said Molin haughtily. "What the hell kind of rag do you work for, anyhow? The 
Kiddy Krib
? Well, what about another round?"

Half an hour and two more rounds later, Martin Beck managed to escape from Mr. Molin, after having first lent him ten kronor. As he left, he heard the man's voice behind him, "Fia, old thing, get me a round, will you?"