The Abominable Man

‘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.

6 (#u5e30c45d-08ae-50fd-af46-5ecc8877180e)

The room was fifteen feet long, ten feet wide, and almost twelve feet high. The colours were very drab – ceiling a dirty white and the plastered walls an indefinite greyish yellow. Grey-white marble tiles on the floor. Light grey window-frames and door. In front of the window hung heavy pale-yellow damask curtains and, behind them, thin white cotton nets. The iron bed was white, likewise the sheets and pillowcase. The night table was grey and the wooden chair light brown. The paint on the furniture was worn, and on the rough walls it was crackled with age. The plaster on the ceiling was flaking and in several places there were light brown spots where moisture had seeped through. Everything was old but very clean. On the table was a nickel silver vase with seven pale red roses. Plus a pair of glasses and a glasses case, a transparent plastic beaker containing two small white tablets, a little white transistor radio, a half-eaten apple, and a tumbler half full of some bright yellow liquid. On the shelf below lay a pile of magazines, four letters, a tablet of lined paper, a shiny Waterman pen with ballpoint cartridges in four different colours, and some loose change – to be exact, eight ten-öre pieces, two twenty-five-öre pieces, and six one-krona coins. The table had two drawers. In the upper one were three used handkerchiefs, a bar of soap in a plastic box, toothpaste, toothbrush, a small bottle of after-shave, a box of cough drops, and a leather case with a nail clipper, file and scissors. The other contained a wallet, an electric razor, a small folder of postage stamps, two pipes, a tobacco pouch and a blank picture postcard of the Stockholm city hall. There were some clothes hanging over the back of the straight chair – a grey cotton coat, trousers of the same colour and material, and a knee-length white shirt. Underwear and socks lay on the seat, and next to the bed stood a pair of slippers. A beige bathrobe hung on the clothes hook by the door.

There was only one completely dissident colour in the room. And that was a shocking red.

The dead man lay partly on his side between the bed and the window. The throat had been cut with such force that the head had been thrown back at an angle of almost ninety degrees and lay with its left cheek against the floor. The tongue had forced its way out through the gaping incision and the victim's broken false teeth stuck out between the mutilated lips.

As he fell backwards a thick stream of blood had pumped out through the carotid artery. This explained the crimson streak across the bed and the splashes of blood on the flower vase and night table.

On the other hand it was the wound in the midriff that had soaked the victim's shirt and provided the enormous pool of blood around the body. A superficial inspection of this wound indicated that someone, with a single blow, had cut through the liver, bile ducts, stomach, spleen and pancreas. Not to mention the aorta.

Virtually all the blood in the body had welled out in the course of a few seconds. The skin was bluish white and seemed almost transparent, where, that is, it could be seen at all, for example on the forehead and parts of the shins and feet.

The lesion on the torso was about ten inches long and wide open; the lacerated organs had pressed out between the sliced edges of the peritoneum.

The man had virtually been cut in two.

Even for people whose job it was to linger at the scenes of macabre and bloody crimes, this was strong stuff.

But Martin Beck's expression hadn't changed since he entered the room. To an outside observer it would have seemed almost as if everything were part of the routine – going to the Peace with his daughter, eating, drinking, getting undressed, pottering with a ship model, going to bed with a book. And then suddenly rushing off to inspect a slaughtered chief inspector of police. The worst part was that he felt that way himself. He never allowed himself to be taken aback, except by his own emotional coolness.

It was now three ten in the morning and he sat on his haunches beside the bed and surveyed the body, coldly and appraisingly.

‘Yes, it's Nyman,’ he said.

‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

Rönn stood poking among the objects on the table. All at once he yawned and put his hand guiltily to his mouth.