suddenly.
Allwright was delighted.
‘Are you going to start questioning me?’ he said, laughing. ‘Now that's what I call thorough.’
‘Sorry,’ said Martin Beck. ‘Stupid thing to say. An irrelevant question.’
That was a lie. The question was not irrelevant.
‘But I don't mind answering it. I went with a lass from down in Abbekås one time. We were engaged. But I'll be damned, she was like a flesh-eating plant. After three months I'd had plenty, and after six months she still hadn't had enough. Since then I've stuck to dogs. Take it from someone who knows. A man doesn't need a wife. Once you get used to it, it's a huge relief. I feel it every morning when I wake up. She's made life miserable for three men. Of course, she's a grandmother several times over by now.’
He sat silently for a moment.
‘It does seem a little sad not having any children,’ he said then. ‘At times. But other times I feel just the opposite. Even if conditions are pretty good right here, still there's something wrong with society as a whole. I wouldn't have wanted to try and raise kids here. The question is whether it can be done at all.’
Martin Beck was silent. His own contribution to child-rearing had consisted mostly of keeping his mouth shut and letting his children grow up more or less naturally. The result had been only a partial success. He had a daughter who had become a fine, independent human being, and who seemed to like him. On the other hand, he had a son he had never understood. To be perfectly frank, he didn't like him much, and the boy, who was just eighteen, had never treated him with anything but mistrust, deception, and, in recent years, open contempt.
The boy's name was Rolf. Most of their attempts at conversation ended with the line, ‘Jesus Christ, Dad, there's just no point in talking to you, you never get what I mean anyway.’ Or: ‘If I were fifty years older, maybe we'd have a chance, but this isn't the nineteenth century any more, you know.’ Or: ‘If only you weren't a fucking cop!’
Allwright had been busy with the dog. Now he looked up.
‘May I ask you a question?’ he said with a little smile.
‘Sure.’
‘Why did you want to know if I'd ever been married?’
‘It was just a stupid question.’
For the second time since they met, the other man looked completely serious. And a little hurt.
‘That's not true. I know it's not true. And I think I know why you asked.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you think I don't understand women?’
Martin Beck put down the photographs. Since meeting Rhea, he found he had much less trouble being honest.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You're right.’
‘Good,’ said Allwright, lighting a new cigarette absent-mindedly. ‘Good enough. Thanks. You may very well be right. I'm a man who's had no women in his private life. Outside of my mother, of course, and the fishergirl from Abbekås. And I've always regarded women as regular people, essentially no different from me and men in general. So if there are any subtle differences, then it's possible they've passed me by. Since I know I'm ignorant on the subject, I've read a number of books and articles and things on women's lib, but most of it is nonsense. And the part that isn't nonsense is so obvious a Hottentot could understand it. Equal pay for equal work, for example, and sex discrimination.’
‘Why a Hottentot?’
Allwright laughed so loud the dog jumped up and started licking his face.
‘There was a guy on the town council who claimed the Hottentots were the only culture that in two thousand years never managed to invent the wheel. Bullshit, of course. I hardly have to tell you which party he represented.’
Martin Beck didn't want to know. Nor did he want to know what political persuasion Allwright represented. Whenever people started talking politics he always went as silent as a clam.
And he was still sitting there in clamlike silence when, thirty seconds later, the phone rang.
Allwright picked up the receiver.
‘Allwright?’ he said.
Whoever it was apparently made some amusing remark.
‘Yes, I am, sort of.’
And then, with a certain hesitation:
‘Yes, he's sitting right here.’
Martin Beck took the receiver.
‘Beck.’
‘Hi, this is Ragnarsson. We've made about a hundred calls trying to locate you. What's up?’
One of the drawbacks of being chief of the National Murder Squad was that the large newspapers had people who kept an eye on where you went and why. In order to do that, they needed paid informers inside the police department, which was irritating, but couldn't be helped. The National Police Commissioner was especially irritated, but he was also scared to death that it would get out. Nothing was ever supposed to get out.
Ragnarsson was a newspaperman, one of the better and more decent ones, which by no means meant that his paper was one of the better and more decent papers.
‘Are you still there?’ Ragnarsson said.
‘Someone has disappeared,’ said Martin Beck.
‘Disappeared? People disappear every day, and they don't call you in. What's more, I heard Kollberg is on his way down there. There's something fishy about all this.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
‘We're sending down a couple of men. You might as well be prepared. That's all I wanted to tell you. I didn't want to do anything behind your back, you know that. You can trust me. So long.’
‘So long.’
Martin Beck rubbed the edge of his scalp. He trusted Ragnarsson, but not his reporters, and least of all his newspaper.
Allwright was looking thoughtful.
‘Journalist?’
‘Yes.’
‘From Stockholm?’
‘Yes.’
‘That blows it wide open then.’
‘Definitely.’
‘We've got local correspondents here too. They know all about it. But they're obliging. A kind of loyalty. The Trelleborgs Allehanda is fine. But then there are the Malmö papers. Kvällsposten, that's the worst. And now we'll have Aftonbladet and Expressen.’
‘Yes, I'm afraid so.’
‘Balls!’
Balls was a mild, everyday expression in Skåne.
Further north, it sounded very bad.
Maybe Allwright didn't know that. Or maybe he didn't care.
Martin Beck liked Allwright very much.
A sort of obvious, natural friendship. Things were going to work out fine.
‘What do we do now?’
‘Up to you,’ said Martin Beck. ‘You're the expert.’
‘Anderslöv district. Yes, I ought to be. Shall I give you an orientation? By car? But let's not take the patrol car. Mine's better.’
‘The tomato-coloured one?’
‘Right. Everyone knows it, of course. But I feel more comfortable in it. Shall we go?’
‘Whatever you say.’
They talked about three things in the car.
The