The Man Who Went Up in Smoke

‘What the hell are you up to?’ said Kollberg. ‘Have you opened a secret agency or something?’

‘If you don't pipe down, you can go,’ said Martin Beck. ‘Why was Counter-Espionage interested in Matsson?’

‘The passport people have their own little eccentricities. At Arlanda airport, for instance, they write down the names of people who travel to those European countries that require visas. Some bright boy who looked in their books got it into his head that this Matsson travelled all too often. To Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Sofia, Bucharest, Constanta, Belgrade. He was great for using his passport.’

‘And?’

‘So Security did a little hush-hush investigation. They went, for instance, to the magazine he works for and asked.’

‘And what did they reply?’

‘Perfectly correct, said the magazine. Alf Matsson is a great one for using his passport. Why shouldn't he be? He's our expert on Eastern European affairs. The results are no more remarkable than that. But there are one or two things. Take this rubbish and read it for yourself. You can sit here. Because now I'm going to go home. And this evening I'm going to go to a James Bond film. Bye!’

Martin Beck picked up the report and began to read. When he had finished the first page, he pushed it over to Kollberg, who picked it up between the tips of his fingers and placed it down in front of him. Martin Beck looked questioningly at him.

‘I sweat so much,’ said Kollberg. ‘Don't want to mess up their secret documents.’

Martin Beck nodded. He himself never sweated except when he had a cold.

They said nothing for the following half hour.

The dossier did not offer much of immediate interest, but it was very thoroughly compiled. Alf Matsson was not born in Gothenburg in 1934, but in Mölndal in 1933. He had begun as a journalist in the provinces in 1952 and been a reporter on several daily papers before going to Stockholm as a sports writer in 1955. As a sports reporter, he had made several trips abroad, among others to the Olympic Games, in Melbourne in 1956 and in Rome in 1960. A number of editors vouchsafed that he was a skilful journalist: ‘… adroit, with a speedy pen.’ He had left the daily press in 1961, when he was taken on by the weekly for which he still worked. During the last four years he had devoted more and more of his time to overseas reporting on a very wide variety of subjects, from politics and economics to sport and pop stars. He had taken his university entrance exam and spoke fluent English and German, passable Spanish and some French and Russian. He earned over 40,000 kronor a year and had been married twice. His first marriage took place in 1954 and was dissolved the following year. He had married again in 1961 and had two children, a daughter by his first marriage and a son by his second.

With praiseworthy diligence, the investigator now went over to the man's less admirable points. On several occasions he had neglected to pay maintenance for his elder child. His first wife described him as a ‘drunkard and a brutal beast.’ Parenthetically, it was pointed out that this witness appeared to be not entirely reliable. There were, however, several indications that Alf Matsson drank, among others a remark in a statement by an ex-colleague who said that he was ‘all right, but a bastard when he got drunk,’ but only one of these statements was supported by evidence. On the eve of Twelfth Night in 1966, a radio patrol in Malmö had taken him to the emergency room of General Hospital after he had been stabbed in the hand during a brawl at the home of a certain Bengt Jönsson, whom he had happened to be visiting. The case was investigated by the police but was not taken to court, as Matsson had not wished to press a charge. However, two policemen by the names of Kristiansson and Kvant described both Matsson and Jönsson as under the influence, so the case was registered at the Commission on Alcoholism.

The tone of the statement by his present boss, an editor called Eriksson, was snooty. Matsson was the magazine's ‘expert on Eastern Europe’ (whatever use a publication of this kind could possibly have for such a person) and the editorial board found no cause to give the police any further information about his journalistic activities. Matsson was, they went on to say, very interested in and well-informed on Eastern European matters, often produced projects of his own, and had on several occasions proved himself ambitious by giving up holidays and days off without extra pay to be able to carry out certain reporting assignments that especially interested him.

Some previous reader had in turn appeared ambitious by underlining this sentence in red. It could hardly have been Hammar, who did not mess up other people's reports.

A detailed account of Matsson's published articles showed that they consisted almost exclusively of interviews with famous athletes and reportage on sports, film stars and other figures from the entertainment world.

The dossier contained several items in the same style. When he had finished reading, Kollberg said, ‘Singularly uninteresting person.’

‘There's one peculiar detail.’

‘That he's disappeared, you mean?’

‘Exactly,’ said Martin Beck.

A minute later, he dialled the Foreign Office number and Kollberg, much to his surprise, heard him say, ‘Is that Martin? Yes, hi, Martin – this is Martin.’

Martin Beck seemed to listen for a moment, a tortured expression on his face. Then he said, ‘Yes, I'm going.’

5 (#ulink_bec61ff4-9913-5fec-9540-0e301267e623)

The building was old and had no elevator. Matsson was the top name on the list of tenants down in the entrance hall. When Martin Beck had climbed the five steep flights of stairs, he was out of breath and his heart was thumping. He waited for a moment before ringing the doorbell.

The woman who opened the door was small and fair. She was wearing slacks and a cotton-knit top and had hard lines around her mouth. Martin Beck guessed she was about thirty.

‘Come in,’ she said, holding open the door.

He recognized her voice from the telephone conversation they had had an hour earlier.

The hall of the flat was large and unfurnished except for an unpainted stool along one wall. A small boy of about two or three came out of the kitchen. He had a half-eaten roll in his hand and went straight up to Martin Beck, stood in front of him and stretched up a sticky fist.

‘Hi,’ he said.

Then he turned around and ran into the living room. The woman followed him and lifted up the boy, who with a satisfied gurgle had sat down in the room's only comfortable armchair. The boy yelled as she carried him into a neighbouring room and closed the door. She came back, sat down on the sofa and lit a cigarette.

‘You want to ask me about Alf. Has something happened to him?’

After a moment's hesitation, Martin Beck sat down on the armchair.

‘Not so far as we know. It's just that he doesn't seem to have been heard from for a couple of weeks. Neither by the magazine, nor, so far as I can make out, by you, either. You don't know where he might be?’

‘No idea. And the fact that he's not let me know anything isn't very strange in itself. He's not been here for four weeks, and before that I didn't hear from him for a month.’

Martin Beck looked towards the closed door.

‘But the boy? Doesn't he usually …’

‘He hasn't seemed especially interested in his son since we've separated,’ she said, with some bitterness. ‘He sends money to us every month. But that's only right, don't you think?’

‘Does he earn a lot on the magazine?’

‘Yes. I don't know how much, but he always had plenty of money. And he wasn't mean. I never had to go without, although he spent a lot of money on himself. In restaurants and on taxis and so on. Now I've got a job, so I earn a little myself.’

‘How long have you been divorced?’

‘We're not divorced. It's not been granted yet. But he moved out of here almost eight months ago now. He got hold of a flat then. But even before that, he was away from home so much that it hardly made any difference.’

‘But I suppose you're familiar with his habits – who he sees and where he usually goes?’

‘Not any longer. To be quite frank, I don't know what he's up to. Before, he used to hang around mostly with people from work. Journalists and the like. They used to sit around in a restaurant called the Tankard. But I don't know now. Maybe he's found some other place. Anyhow, that restaurant's moved or has been torn down, hasn't it?’

She put out her cigarette and went over to the door to listen. Then she opened it cautiously and went in. A moment later she came out and shut the door just as carefully behind her.

‘He's asleep,’ she said.

‘Nice little boy,’ said Martin Beck.

‘Yes, he's nice.’

They sat silent for a moment, and then she said, ‘But Alf was on an assignment in Budapest, wasn't he? At least, I heard that somewhere. Mightn't he have stayed there? Or have gone somewhere else?’

‘Did he used to do that? When he was away on assignments?’

‘No,’ she said hesitantly. ‘No, actually he didn't. He's not especially conscientious and he drinks a lot, but while we were together he certainly didn't neglect his work. For instance, he was awfully particular about getting his manuscripts in at the time he'd promised. When he lived here, he often sat up late at night writing to get things finished in time.’