handkerchief, and with a brooding look in his eyes, mopped his foamy moustache.
‘They ought to serve beer in moustache cups,’ he said. ‘There isn't much service left these days.’
After a brief pause he said, ‘No, I haven't seen Alfie since he left. The last I saw of him was when he was pouring his drink over some gal in the Opera House bar. Then he went to Budapest the next morning. Poor devil, having to sit up flying right across half of Europe with a hangover like that. Hope he didn't fly Scandinavian Airlines anyhow.’
‘And you've not heard anything from him since then?’
‘We don't usually write letters when we're on overseas trips,’ said Molin haughtily. ‘What the hell kind of a rag do you work for, anyhow? The Kiddy Krib? Well, what about another round?’
Half an hour and two more rounds later, Martin Beck managed to escape from Mr Molin, after having first lent him ten kronor. As he left, he heard the man's voice behind him, ‘Fia, old thing, get me a round, will you?’
The plane was an Ilyushin 18 turboprop from Czechoslovak Airlines. It rose in a steep arc over Copenhagen and Saltholm, and an Öresund that glittered in the sun.
Martin Beck sat by the window and looked down at Ven Island below, with Backafall Cliffs, the church and the little harbour. He had just had time to see a tugboat rounding the harbour pier before the plane turned south.
He liked travelling, but this time disappointment over his spoiled holiday overshadowed most of his pleasure. Moreover, his wife had not seemed to understand at all that his own choice in the matter had not been very great. He had called the evening before and tried to explain, but had not been particularly successful.
‘You don't care a bit about me or the children,’ she had said.
And a moment later:
‘There must be other policemen besides you. Do you have to take on every assignment?’
He had tried to convince her that he would in fact have preferred to go out to the island, but she had gone on being unreasonable. In addition, she had demonstrated varied evidence of faulty logic.
‘So you're going to Budapest to enjoy yourself while the children and I are stuck by ourselves out on this island.’
‘I am not going for fun.’
‘Hmm-mph.’
In the end she had put down the receiver in the middle of a sentence. He knew she would calm down eventually, but he had not attempted to call again.
Now, at an altitude of 16,000 feet, he tipped his seat back, lit a cigarette and let his thoughts of the island and his family sink into the back of his mind.
During their stopover at Schönefeld airport in East Berlin, he drank a beer in the transit lounge. He noted that the beer was called Radeberger. It was excellent beer, but he didn't think he would have cause to remember the name. The waiter entertained him in Berlin German. He did not understand very much of it and wondered gloomily how he was going to manage in the future.
In a basket by the entrance lay a few pamphlets in German and he took one out at random to have something to read while he waited. Clearly he needed to practise his German.
The leaflet was published by the German journalists' union and dealt with the Springer concern, one of the most powerful newspaper and magazine publishers in West Germany, and its chief, Axel Springer. It gave examples of the company's menacing fascist politics and quoted several of its more prominent contributors.
When his flight was called, Martin Beck noted that he had read almost the whole pamphlet without difficulty. He put the pamphlet into his pocket and boarded the plane.
After an hour in the air, the plane again came down to land, this time in Prague, a city that Martin Beck had always wanted to visit. Now he had to be content with a brief glimpse, from the air, of its many towers and bridges and of the Moldau; the stopover was too short to give him time to get into the city from the airport.
His red-haired namesake in the Foreign Office had apologized for the connections between Stockholm and Budapest which were not the world's best, but Martin Beck had no objections to the delays, although he was not able to see more of Berlin and Prague than their transit lounges.
Martin Beck had never been to Budapest and when the plane had taken off again, he read through a couple of leaflets he had received from the redhead's secretary. In one dealing with the geography of Hungary, he read that Budapest had two million inhabitants. He wondered how he was going to find Alf Matsson if the man had decided to disappear in this metropolis.
In his mind he reviewed what he knew about Alf Matsson. It was not a great deal, but he wondered whether there was really anything else to know. He thought of Kollberg's comment: ‘Singularly uninteresting person.’ Why should a man like Alf Matsson want to disappear? That is, if he had disappeared of his own free will? A woman? It seemed hardly credible that he should sacrifice a well-paid position – one that he seemed to be happy with, moreover – for that reason. He was still married, of course, but perfectly free to do as he wished. He had a home, work, money and friends. It was hard to think of any plausible reason why he should voluntarily leave all that.
Martin Beck took out the copy of the personal file from the Security Division. Alf Matsson had become an object of interest to the police simply because of his many and frequent trips to places in Eastern Europe. ‘Behind the Iron Curtain,’ the redhead had said. Well, the man was a reporter, and if he preferred to undertake assignments in Eastern Europe, then that in itself wasn't so peculiar. And if he had anything on his conscience now, why should he disappear? The Security Division had consigned the case to oblivion after a routine investigation. ‘A new Wallenberg affair,’ the man at the FO had said, thinking of the famous case of a well-known Swede last seen in Budapest in 1945: ‘Spirited away by the Communists.’ ‘You see too many James Bond movies,’ Kollberg would have said if he had been there.
Martin Beck folded up the copy and put it into his briefcase. He looked out the window. It was completely dark now but the stars were out, and way down there he could see small dots of light from villages and communities and pearl strings of light where the street lamps were on.
Perhaps Matsson had started to drink, abandoning the magazine and everything else. When he sobered up again he would be broke and full of remorse and would have to make his presence known. But that didn't sound likely either. True, he drank occasionally, but not to that degree, and normally he never neglected his job.
Perhaps he had committed suicide, had an accident, fallen into the Danube and drowned or been robbed and killed. Was this more likely? Hardly. Somewhere or other, Martin Beck had read that, of all the capitals in the world, Budapest had the lowest crime rate.
Perhaps he was sitting in the hotel dining room right now, having his dinner, and Martin Beck would be able to take the plane back the next day and continue his holiday.
The signs lit up. No smoking. Please fasten your seatbelts. And then they repeated the same thing in Russian.
When the plane stopped taxiing, Martin Beck picked up his briefcase and walked the short stretch towards the airport buildings. The air was soft
