fishing boat rounded the point, heading straight for him. At once he recognized the man in the boat. It was Nygren, the owner of a small boatyard on the next island, and their nearest neighbour. As there was no water on the Becks' island, they fetched their drinking water from him. Nygren also had a telephone.
Nygren turned off the motor and shouted:
‘Telephone. They want you to call back as soon as possible. I wrote the number down on a slip of paper by the telephone.’
‘Didn't he say who he was?’ said Martin Beck, although he in fact already knew.
‘I wrote that down too. I've got to go out to Skärholmen now, and Elsa's in the strawberry patch, but the kitchen door's open.’
Nygren started up the motor again and, standing in the stern, headed out towards the bay. Before he vanished around the point, he raised his hand in farewell.
Martin Beck watched him for a short while. Then he went down to the jetty, untied the rowboat and began to row toward Nygren's boathouse. As he rowed he thought: Hell. To hell with Kollberg, just when I'd almost forgotten he existed!
On the pad below the wall telephone in Nygren's kitchen was written, almost illegibly: Hammar 54 10 60.
Martin Beck dialled the number and not until he was waiting for the exchange to put him through did he begin to feel real alarm.
‘Hammar speaking,’ said Hammar.
‘Well, what's happened?’
‘I'm really sorry, Martin, but I've got to ask you to come in as soon as possible. You may have to sacrifice the rest of your holiday. Well, postpone it, that is.’
Hammar was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, ‘If you will.’
‘The rest of my holiday? I haven't even had a day of it yet.’
‘Awfully sorry, Martin, but I wouldn't ask you if it wasn't necessary. Can you get in today?’
‘Today? What's happened?’
‘If you can get in today, it'd be a good thing. It's really important. I'll tell you more about it when you're here.’
‘There's a boat in an hour,’ said Martin Beck, looking out through the fly-specked window at the glittering, sunlit bay. ‘What's so important about it? Couldn't Kollberg or Melander—’
‘No. You'll have to handle this. Someone seems to have disappeared.’
When Martin Beck opened the door to his chief's room it was ten to one and he had been on holiday for exactly twenty-four hours.
Chief Inspector Hammar was a heavily-built man with a bull-neck and bushy grey hair. He sat quite still in his swivel chair, his forearms resting on the top of his desk, completely absorbed in what malicious tongues maintained was his favourite occupation: namely, doing nothing whatsoever.
‘Oh, you've arrived,’ he said sourly. ‘Just in time too. You're due at the FO in half an hour.’
‘The Foreign Office?’
‘Precisely. You're to see this man.’
Hammar was holding a calling card by one corner, between his thumb and forefinger, as if it were a piece of lettuce with a caterpillar on it. Martin Beck looked at the name. It meant nothing to him.
‘A higher-up,’ said Hammar. ‘Considers himself very close to the Minister.’ He paused slightly, then said, ‘I've never heard of the fellow either.’
Hammar was fifty-nine and had been a policeman since 1927. He did not like politicians.
‘You don't look as angry as you ought to,’ said Hammar.
Martin Beck puzzled on this for a moment. He decided that he was much too confused to be angry.
‘What is this actually all about?’
‘We'll talk about it later. When you've met this nitwit here.’
‘You said something about a disappearance.’
Hammar stared in torment out through the window, then shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘The whole thing's quite idiotic. To tell you the truth, I've had … instructions not to give you any so-called further information until you've been to the FO.’
‘Have we started taking orders from them too?’
‘As you know, there are several departments,’ said Hammar dreamily.
His look became lost somewhere in the summer foliage. He said, ‘Since I began here we have had a whole regiment of Ministers. The overwhelming majority of them have known just about as much about the police as I know about the orange-shell louse. Namely, that it exists. G'bye,’ he said abruptly.
‘Bye,’ said Martin Beck.
When Martin Beck reached the door, Hammar returned to the present and said, ‘Martin.’
‘Yes.’
‘One thing I can tell you, anyhow. You needn't take this on if you don't want to.’
The man who was close to the Minister was large, angular and red-haired. He stared at Martin Beck with watery blue eyes, rose swiftly and expansively and rushed around his desk with his arm outstretched.
‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Splendid of you to come.’
They shook hands with great enthusiasm. Martin Beck said nothing.
The man returned to his swivel chair, grabbed his cold pipe and bit on the stem of it with his large, yellow, horse teeth. Then he heaved himself backward in his chair, jammed a thumb into the bowl of his pipe, lit a match and fixed his visitor with a cold, appraising look through the cloud of smoke.
‘No ceremony,’ he said. ‘I always begin a serious conversation this way. Spit in each other's faces. Things seem to go along more easily afterward. My name's Martin.’
‘So's mine,’ said Martin Beck gloomily.
A moment later, he added, ‘That's unfortunate. Perhaps it complicates the issue.’
This seemed to confound the man. He looked sharply at Martin Beck, as if sensing some treachery ahead. Then he laughed uproariously.
‘Of course. Funny. Ha ha ha.’
Suddenly he fell silent and threw himself at the intercom. Pressing the buttons nervously, he mumbled, ‘Yes, yes. Really damned funny.’
There was not a spark of humour in his voice.
‘May I have the Alf Matsson file,’ he called.
A middle-aged woman came in with a file and put it down on the desk in front of him. He did not even condescend to glance at her. When she had closed the door behind her, he turned his cold, impersonal fisheyes on Martin Beck, slowly opening the file at the same time. It contained one single sheet of paper, covered with scrawled pencil notes.
‘This is a tricky and damned unpleasant story,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ said Martin Beck. ‘In what way?’
‘Do you know Matsson?’
Martin Beck shook his head.
‘No? He's quite well known, actually. Journalist. Mainly in the weeklies. Television too. A clever writer. Here.’
He opened a drawer and rummaged around in it, then in another, finally lifting up his blotter and finding the object of his search.
‘I hate carelessness,’ he said, throwing a spiteful look in the direction of the door.
Martin Beck studied the object, which turned out to be a neatly typed index card containing certain