The Man Who Went Up in Smoke

‘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 information about a person by the name of Alf Matsson. The man did indeed appear to be a journalist, employed by one of the larger weeklies, one which Martin Beck himself never read but sometimes saw – with unspoken anxiety and distrust – in the hands of his children. In addition, Alf Sixten Matsson was said to have been born in Gothenburg in 1934. Clipped to the card was also an ordinary passport photograph. Martin Beck cocked his head and looked at a fairly young man with a moustache, a short neat beard and round steel-rimmed glasses. His face was so utterly expressionless that the picture must have come from one of those photo booths around town. Martin Beck put the card down and looked questioningly at the red-haired man.

‘Alf Matsson has disappeared,’ said the man with great emphasis.

‘Oh, yes? And your inquiries haven't produced any results?’

‘No inquiries have been made. And none are going to be made either,’ said the man, staring like a maniac.

Martin Beck, who did not realize at first that that watery look testified to a steely determination, frowned slightly.

‘How long has he been gone?’

‘Ten days.’

The reply did not especially surprise him. If the man had said ten minutes or ten years, it would not have moved him particularly either. The only thing that surprised Martin Beck at that moment was the fact that he was sitting here and not in a rowing boat out at the island. He looked at his watch. He would probably have time to catch the evening boat back.

‘Ten days isn't very long,’ he said mildly.

Another official came in from a nearby room and entered into the conversation so directly that he must have been listening at the door. Apparently some kind of caretaker, thought Martin Beck.

‘In this particular case, it's more than enough,’ said the new arrival. ‘The circumstances are highly exceptional. Alf Matsson flew to Budapest on the twenty-second of July, sent there by his magazine to write some articles. On the next Monday, he was to call the office here in Stockholm and read the text of a kind of regular column he writes every week. He didn't. It's relevant that Alf Matsson always delivered on time, as newspaper people say. In other words, he doesn't miss a deadline when it comes to turning in manuscripts. Two days later, the office phoned his hotel in Budapest, where they said that he was staying there, but he didn't seem to be in at that moment. The office left a message to say that Matsson should immediately inform Stockholm the moment he came in. They waited for two more days. Nothing was heard. They checked with his wife here in Stockholm. She hadn't heard anything either. That in itself wouldn't necessarily mean anything, as they're getting a divorce. Last Saturday the editor called us up here. By then they had contacted the hotel again and been told that no one there had seen Matsson since they called last, but that his things were still in his room and his passport was still at the reception desk. Last Monday, the first of August, we communicated with our people down there. They knew nothing about Matsson, but put out a feeler, as they called it, to the Hungarian police, who appeared “not interested.” Last Tuesday we had a visit from the editor in chief of the magazine. It was a very unpleasant meeting.’

The redheaded man had definitely been upstaged. He bit on the stem of his pipe in annoyance and said, ‘Yes, exactly. Damned unpleasant.’