Читать книгу The Abominable Man - Maj Sjowall, Per Wahloeoe - Страница 11

Rönn felt almost ghostlike in the blue light flashing from the roof of the patrol car. But it would soon get worse.

‘What's happened?’ he said.

‘Don't know for sure. Something ugly.’ The constable looked very young. His face was open and sympathetic, but his glance wandered and he seemed to be having trouble standing still. He was holding on to the car door with his left hand and fingering the butt of his pistol a little hesitantly with his right. Ten seconds earlier he'd made a sound that could only have been a sigh of relief.

The boy's scared, Rönn thought. He made his voice reassuring.

‘Well, we'll see. Where is it?’

‘It's a bit tricky to get there. I'll drive in front.’

Rönn nodded and went back to his own car. Started the engine and followed the blue flashes in a wide swing around the central hospital and into the grounds. In the course of thirty seconds the patrol car made three right turns, two left turns, then braked and stopped outside a long low building with yellow plaster walls and a black mansard roof. It looked ancient. Above the weathered wooden door a single flickering bulb in an old-fashioned milkglass globe was fighting what was pretty much a losing battle against the darkness. The constable climbed out and assumed his former stance, fingers on car door and pistol butt as a kind of shield against the night and what it might be presumed to conceal.

‘In there,’ he said, glancing guardedly at the double wooden door.

Rönn stifled a yawn and nodded.

‘Shall I call for more men?’

‘Well, we'll see,’ Rönn repeated good-naturedly.

He was already on the steps pushing open the right-hand half of the door, which creaked mournfully on un-oiled hinges. Another couple of steps and another door and he found himself in a sparsely lit corridor. It was broad and high-ceilinged and stretched the entire length of the building.

On one side were private rooms and wards, the other was apparently reserved for lavatories and linen closets and examination rooms. On the wall was an old black pay phone of the kind that only cost ten öre to use. Rönn stared at an oval white enamel plate with the laconic inscription ENEMA and then went on to study the four people he could see from where he stood.

Two of them were uniformed policemen. One of these was stocky and solid and stood with feet apart and his arms at his sides and his eyes straight ahead. In his left hand he was holding an open notebook with a black cover. His colleague was leaning against the wall, head down, his gaze directed into an enamelled cast-iron washbasin with an old-fashioned brass tap. Of all the young men Rönn had encountered during his nine hours of overtime, this one looked to be easily the youngest. In his leather jacket and shoulder belt and apparently indispensable weaponry, he looked like a parody of a policeman. An older grey-haired woman with glasses sat collapsed in a wicker chair, staring apathetically at her white wooden clogs. She was wearing a white smock and had an ugly case of varicose veins on her pale calves. The quartet was completed by a man in his thirties. He had curly black hair and was biting his knuckles in irritation. He too was wearing a white coat and wooden-soled shoes.

The air in the corridor was unpleasant and smelled of disinfectant, vomit, or medicine, or maybe all three at once. Rönn sneezed suddenly and unexpectedly and, a little late, grabbed his nose between thumb and forefinger.

The only one to react was the policeman with the notebook. Without saying anything, he pointed to a tall door with light yellow crackled paint and a typewritten white card in a metal frame. The door was not quite closed. Rönn plucked it open without touching the handle. Inside there was another door. That one too was ajar, but opened inwards.

Rönn pushed it with his foot, looked into the room and gave a start. He let go of his reddish nose and took another look, this one more systematic.

‘My, my,’ he said to himself.

Then he took a step backwards, let the outer door swing back to its former position, put on his glasses and examined the name-plate.

‘Jesus,’ he said.

The policeman had put away the black notebook and had taken out his badge instead, which he now stood fingering as if it had been a rosary or an amulet.

Police badges were soon to be eliminated, Rönn remembered, irrationally. And with that, the long battle as to whether badges should be worn on the chest as forthright identification or hidden away in a pocket somewhere had come to a disappointing as well as surprising conclusion. They were simply done away with, replaced by ordinary ID cards, and policemen could safely go on hiding behind the anonymity of the uniform.

‘What's your name?’ he said out loud.

‘Andersson.’

‘What time did you get here?’

The policeman looked at his wristwatch.

‘At two sixteen. Nine minutes ago. We were in the area. At Odenplan.’

Rönn took off his glasses and glanced at the uniformed boy, who was light green in the face and vomiting helplessly into the sink. The older constable followed his look.

‘He's just a cadet,’ he said under his breath. ‘It's his first time out.’

‘Better give him a hand,’ said Rönn. ‘And send out a call for five or six men from the Fifth.’

‘The emergency bus from Precinct Five, yes sir,’ Andersson said, looking as if he were about to salute or snap to attention or some other inane thing.

‘Just a moment,’ Rönn said. ‘Have you seen anything suspicious around here?’

He hadn't put it too well perhaps, and the constable stared bewilderedly at the door to the sickroom.

‘Well, ah …’ he said evasively.

‘Do you know who that is? The man in there?’

‘Chief Inspector Nyman, isn't it?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Though you can't hardly tell by looking.’

‘No,’ Rönn said. ‘Not hardly.’

Andersson went out.

Rönn wiped the sweat from his forehead and considered what he ought to do.

For ten seconds. Then he walked over to the pay phone and dialled Martin Beck's home number.

‘Hi. It's Rönn. I'm at Mount Sabbath. Come on over.’

‘Okay,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Quick.’

‘Okay.’

Rönn hung up the receiver and went back to the others. Waited. Gave his handkerchief to the cadet, who self-consciously wiped his mouth.

‘I'm sorry,’ he said.

‘It can happen to anyone.’

‘I couldn't help it. Is it always like this?’

‘No,’ Rönn said. ‘I wouldn't say that. I've been a policeman for twenty-one years and to be honest I've never seen anything like this before.’

Then he turned to the man with the curly black hair.

‘Is there a psychiatric ward here?’

‘Nix verstehen,’ the doctor said.

Rönn put on his glasses and examined the plastic name badge on the doctor's white coat. Sure enough, there was his name.

DR ÜZK ÜKÖCÖTÜPZE.

‘Oh,’ he said to himself.

Put away his glasses and waited.