The Abominable Man - Maj Sjowall

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toilet and rinsed off his hands in cold water and started back, then stopped in the corridor to listen. The muffled sound of the night nurse's radio could be heard a long way off. He was in pain again and his fear came back and he thought after all he could go in and ask for a couple of painkillers. They wouldn't have any particular effect, but anyway she'd have to unlock the medicine cabinet and take out the bottle and then give him some juice, and that way at least someone would have to fuss over him for a little while.

      The distance to the office was about sixty feet and he took his time. Shuffled along slowly with the sweaty nightshirt slapping against his calves.

      The light was on in the duty room but there was no one there. Only the transistor radio, which stood serenading itself between two half-emptied coffee cups.

      The night nurse and the orderly were busy someplace else of course.

      The room began to swim and he had to support himself against the door. It felt a little better after a minute or two, and he walked slowly back towards his room through the darkened corridor.

      The doors were the way he'd left them, slightly ajar. He closed them carefully, took the few steps to the bed, stepped out of his slippers, lay down on his back and pulled the blanket up to his chin with a shiver. Lay still with wide-open eyes and felt the express train rushing through his body.

      Something was different. The pattern on the ceiling had changed in some slight way.

      He was aware of it almost at once.

      But what was it that had made the pattern of shadows and reflections change?

      His gaze ran over the bare walls, then he turned his head to the right and looked towards the window.

      The window had been open when he left the room, he was certain of that.

      Now it was closed.

      Terror overwhelmed him immediately and he lifted his hand to the call button. But it wasn't in its place. He'd forgotten to pick up the cord and the switch from the floor.

      He held his fingers tightly around the iron pipe where the buzzer ought to have been and stared at the window.

      The gap between the long curtains was still about two inches wide, but they weren't hanging quite the way they had been, and the window was closed.

      Could someone from the staff have been in the room?

      It didn't seem likely.

      He felt the sweat bursting from his pores, and his nightshirt cold and clammy against his sensitive skin.

      Completely at the mercy of his fear and unable to tear his eyes from the window, he began to sit up in bed.

      The curtains hung absolutely motionless, yet he was certain someone was standing behind them.

      Who, he thought.

      Who?

      And then with a last flash of common sense: This must be a hallucination.

      Now he stood beside the bed, ill and unsteady, his bare feet on the stone floor. Took two uncertain steps towards the window. Came to a stop, slightly bent, his lips twitching.

      The man in the window alcove threw aside the curtains with his right hand as he simultaneously drew the bayonet with his left.

      Reflections glittered on the long broad blade.

      The man in the lumber jacket and the chequered tweed cap took two quick steps forward and stopped, legs apart, tall, straight, with the weapon at shoulder height.

      The sick man recognized him at once and started to open his mouth to bellow.

      The heavy handle of the bayonet hit him across the mouth and he felt his lips being torn to shreds and his dental plate breaking.

      And that was the last thing he felt.

      The rest of it went too fast. Time rushed away from him.

      The first blow caught him on the right side of his diaphragm just below his ribs, and the bayonet sank in to its hilt.

      The sick man was still on his feet, his head thrown back, when the man in the lumber jacket raised the weapon for the third time and sliced open his throat, from the left ear to the right.

      A bubbling, slightly hissing noise came from the open windpipe.

      Nothing more.

       3

      It was Friday evening and Stockholm's cafés should have been full of happy people enjoying themselves after the drudgery of the week. Such, however, was not the case, and it wasn't hard to work out why. In the course of the preceding five years, restaurant prices had as good as doubled, and very few ordinary wage-earners could afford to treat themselves to even one night out a month. The restaurant owners complained and talked crisis, but the ones who had not turned their establishments into pubs or discotheques to attract the easy-spending young managed to keep their heads above water by means of the increasing number of businessmen with credit cards and expense accounts who preferred to conduct their transactions across a laden table.

      The Golden Peace in the Old City was no exception. It was late, to be sure – Friday had turned into Saturday – but during the last hour there had been only two guests in the ground-floor dining room. A man and a woman. They'd eaten steak tartare and were now drinking coffee and punsch as they talked in low voices across the table in the alcove.

      Two waitresses sat folding napkins at a little table opposite the entrance. The younger, who was red-haired and looked tired, stood up and threw a glance at the clock above the bar. She yawned, picked up a napkin and walked over to the guests in the alcove.

      ‘Will there be anything else before the bar closes?’ she said, using the napkin to sweep some crumbs of tobacco from the tablecloth. ‘Would you care for some more hot coffee, Inspector?’

      Martin Beck noticed to his own surprise that he was flattered at her knowing who he was. He was normally irritated by any reminder that as chief of the National Murder Squad he was a more or less public personage, but it was a long time now since he'd had his picture in the papers or appeared on television, and he took the waitress's recognition only as an indication that the Peace was beginning to regard him as a regular customer. Rightly so, for that matter. He'd been living not far away for two years now, and when he now and again went out to eat he gave his custom mostly to the Peace. Having a companion, as he did this evening, was less usual.

      The girl across from him was his daughter, Ingrid. She was nineteen years old, and if you overlooked the fact that she was very blonde and he very dark, they were strikingly similar.

      ‘Do you want more coffee?’ asked Martin Beck.

      Ingrid shook her head and the waitress withdrew to prepare the bill. Martin Beck lifted the little bottle of punsch from its ice bucket and poured what remained into the two glasses. Ingrid sipped at hers.

      ‘We ought to do this more often,’ she said.

      ‘Drink punsch?’

      ‘Mmm, it is good. No, I mean get together. Next time I'll invite you to dinner. At my place on Klostervägen. You haven't seen it yet.’

      Ingrid had moved away from home three months before her parents separated. Martin Beck sometimes wondered if he ever would have had the strength to break out of his stagnant marriage to Inga if Ingrid hadn't encouraged him. She hadn't been happy at home and moved in with a friend even before she was out of school. Now she was studying sociology at the university and had just recently found a one-room apartment in Stocksund. For the time being she was still subletting, but she had prospects of eventually getting the lease on her own.

      ‘Mama and Rolf were out to visit the day before yesterday,’ she said. ‘I was hoping you'd come too, but I couldn't get hold of you.’

      ‘No, I was in

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