The Abominable Man. Maj Sjowall

the kind that only cost ten öre to use. Rönn stared at an oval white enamel plate with the laconic inscription ENEMA and then went on to study the four people he could see from where he stood.

      Two of them were uniformed policemen. One of these was stocky and solid and stood with feet apart and his arms at his sides and his eyes straight ahead. In his left hand he was holding an open notebook with a black cover. His colleague was leaning against the wall, head down, his gaze directed into an enamelled cast-iron washbasin with an old-fashioned brass tap. Of all the young men Rönn had encountered during his nine hours of overtime, this one looked to be easily the youngest. In his leather jacket and shoulder belt and apparently indispensable weaponry, he looked like a parody of a policeman. An older grey-haired woman with glasses sat collapsed in a wicker chair, staring apathetically at her white wooden clogs. She was wearing a white smock and had an ugly case of varicose veins on her pale calves. The quartet was completed by a man in his thirties. He had curly black hair and was biting his knuckles in irritation. He too was wearing a white coat and wooden-soled shoes.

      The air in the corridor was unpleasant and smelled of disinfectant, vomit, or medicine, or maybe all three at once. Rönn sneezed suddenly and unexpectedly and, a little late, grabbed his nose between thumb and forefinger.

      The only one to react was the policeman with the notebook. Without saying anything, he pointed to a tall door with light yellow crackled paint and a typewritten white card in a metal frame. The door was not quite closed. Rönn plucked it open without touching the handle. Inside there was another door. That one too was ajar, but opened inwards.

      Rönn pushed it with his foot, looked into the room and gave a start. He let go of his reddish nose and took another look, this one more systematic.

      ‘My, my,’ he said to himself.

      Then he took a step backwards, let the outer door swing back to its former position, put on his glasses and examined the name-plate.

      ‘Jesus,’ he said.

      The policeman had put away the black notebook and had taken out his badge instead, which he now stood fingering as if it had been a rosary or an amulet.

      Police badges were soon to be eliminated, Rönn remembered, irrationally. And with that, the long battle as to whether badges should be worn on the chest as forthright identification or hidden away in a pocket somewhere had come to a disappointing as well as surprising conclusion. They were simply done away with, replaced by ordinary ID cards, and policemen could safely go on hiding behind the anonymity of the uniform.

      ‘What's your name?’ he said out loud.

      ‘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

      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