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  Praise for

  MAJ SJÖWALL and

  PER WAHLÖÖ

  “The first great series of police thrillers.… Sjöwall and Wahlöö caught the color of the political times and are above all truly exciting.”

  —Michael Ondaatje

  “Ingenious.… Their mysteries don’t just read well; they reread even better.… The writing is lean, with mournful undertones.”

  —The New York Times

  “The whole series has an immediacy to it that is both honest and awesome. These are the kind of books you can’t help but read in one sitting.”

  —Minnesota Daily

  “The Sjöwall-Wahlöö style and stories are dramas that expose fascinating truths about modern life.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “No one is more convincing than [Sjöwall and Wahlöö] in transmitting the actual shock of brutal murder.”

  —Buffalo News

  MAJ SJÖWALL and

  PER WAHLÖÖ

  MURDER AT THE SAVOY

  Maj Sjöwall and her husband, Per Wahlöö, wrote ten Martin Beck mysteries. Mr. Wahlöö, who died in 1975, was a reporter for several Swedish newspapers and magazines and wrote numerous radio and television plays, film scripts, short stories, and novels. Maj Sjöwall is a poet. The books, together known as “The Story of Crime,” remain one of the greatest series of crime stories ever written.

  THE MARTIN BECK MYSTERY SERIES

  by

  MAJ SJÖWALL and

  PER WAHLÖÖ

  Roseanna

  The Man Who Went Up in Smoke

  The Man on the Balcony

  The Laughing Policeman

  The Fire Engine That Disappeared

  Murder at the Savoy

  The Abominable Man

  The Locked Room

  Cop Killer

  The Terrorists

  SECOND VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EDITION, JUNE 2009

  Translation copyright © 1971 by Random House, Inc.

  Introduction copyright © 2009 by Arhe Dahl

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Sweden as Polis, Polis, Potatismos! by P.A. Norstedt & Söners Förlag, Stockholm, in 1970. Copyright © 1970 by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. This translation originally published in hardcover in slightly different form in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1971, and in paperback by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1977.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  Sjowall, Maj, 1935–

  [Polis, Polis, Potatismos! English]

  Murder at the Savoy / by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö ; translated from the Swedish by Amy and Ken Knoespel.—1st Vintage crime/Black lizard ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Beck, Martin (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Police—Sweden—

  Stockholm—Fiction. I. Wahlöö, Per, 1926–1975. II. Title. III. Series.

  PZ4.S61953

  839.7′3′74—dc22

  76042999

  eISBN: 978-0-307-74430-2

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  INTRODUCTION

  It’s unusual to be able to point to the actual parents of a literary tradition. It’s even more unusual when we speak of an entire genre. But that is actually the case for the Swedish crime fiction genre that is still the strongest today: the police procedural that has a perspective of social criticism. Before Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö appeared on the scene, the Swedish detective novel looked completely different. With them all the naïveté of the classic murder mystery was irrevocably lost.

  Almost all Swedish authors who write police procedurals have at one time or another been hailed as successors to Sjöwall and Wahlöö. In my case, it has happened rather more often than for other writers. And I have never objected. When people ask me about my role models, I usually say: Sjöwall and Wahlöö. This is the honest truth, even though in life I’m generally not particularly dependent on role models—whether I sink or swim, I believe in going my own way. It’s always better for an author to speak in his own voice.

  Writers of detective novels are almost always expected to say that they don’t read detective novels. And I have tended to live up to these expectations. When I took my first stumbling steps toward writing crime fiction nearly a decade ago, I could in all honesty say: I don’t read detective novels.

  But it wasn’t always like that. In fact, I readily admit that the very opposite was true. The books that I read as an adolescent were to an absurdly high degree based on suspense fiction: nail-biting cliff-hangers, action stories, classic murder mysteries, spy thrillers—you name it. I read absolutely everything that contained even the slightest hint of suspense.

  You might well ask when the adolescent mind is at its most receptive, at which age in particular and under which mental conditions the most indelible impressions are made. Fifteen is a strong candidate. It could be deemed the most manic-depressive age in anyone’s life. On the one hand, life seems an almost incessant torment; on the other hand, you are starting to realize who you are and, in spite of everything, what possibilities life has to offer.

  Sjöwall and Wahlöö came into my life after I had actually given up all those childish suspense books. And so I was ready for completely different literary impressions (precociously ready, that is). But when those two authors appeared, not only did they make use of all the various suspense traditions in which I had immersed myself, they also added two elements that I had been missing up until then: humor and a critical view of contemporary society.

  And one more thing: an incredibly nuanced and meticulously chiseled use of language.

  It’s always risky to return to a reading experience that had once proved so decisive in your life. Disappointment is the rule; relief is the exception. Yet I feel no disappointment when I reread the ten books that make up the series called “The Story of Crime.” I may feel a bit surprised by the brief format and the relatively simple plots—and perhaps also by the unrelenting plight of Martin Beck’s weary attitude toward life. And yet—what I really feel is relief. Relief that the books are still so good. That they actually are good role models. And for that I will always be grateful.

  The books in the series know
n collectively as “The Story of Crime” were published in Sweden between 1965 and 1975, with one book appearing each year except in 1973. But it was in that year that Per Wahlöö said in an interview: “In the beginning we tried to keep a low profile in order to reach an audience, but the socialist elements have undoubtedly become more prominent.” As early as 1966 Wahlöö stated their goal with great clarity: “The basic idea is, via one long novel of approximately three thousand pages—divided into ten freestanding parts, or chapters, if you will—to present a cross-section of a society that possesses a specific structure and to analyze criminality as a social function as well as its relationship to both society and the various types of moral lifestyles that encompass the society in question.”

  In other words: literature emblematic of the 1968 generation. It ranges from the period of dawning political consciousness in 1965 up to what might be considered the most dogmatic of years, 1975. It was supposed to be like much of the fiction coming out of 1968: so politically doctrinaire that all forms of literary tension were lost and the whole thing fell flat.

  The remarkable thing was that this didn’t happen. Not even in the last novel, The Terrorists, which was more or less completed by cutting and pasting it together after Wahlöö’s death. This novel is truly ideological down to the smallest detail. The final scene is significant. Martin Beck and his new lover, Rhea, are visiting the home of his former colleague Lennart Kollberg and his wife, Gun. Here the entire series is supposed to be summed up, the threads from all ten books drawn together. There is also, in a rudimentary fashion, a political summation of the preceding ten years. But it happens in a relaxed and clear context. The four characters are sitting together playing a game as they chat. The game is called Crossword. One person says a letter of the alphabet and the others have to try to place it in a grid on their piece of paper. Kollberg keeps winning, and they keep starting over. He brings the scene to a close with the words: “It’s my turn to start. So I say ‘x,’ ‘x’ as in ‘Marx.’ ”

  But the point is that the literary creation is never allowed to be subsumed by political proselytizing. The authors never forget the conventions of time and space; they never forget that the novel has to place the characters in a particular setting and that it has to be done with a certain vitality—a vitality that always comes before ideology. Which is what you will discover if you read the books closely.

  With the sixth novel, Murder at the Savoy, from 1970, the ideological perspective moves to the forefront. From a purely literary point of view, the book is among the very best in the series—the technical skill of the authors is at its peak, and the humor is most fully developed—and yet the novel is also problematic. Both amazing and problematic.

  It’s amazing because the literary creation has never been better. It’s problematic because the book personifies the least appealing side of the leftist politics of 1968. I think that in some ways we can talk about the dehumanizing side of the Left. The extremely predictable depiction of the capitalist circles criticized by the book is unrelenting. The corporate executive who is assassinated at the Savoy in Malmö in the opening chapter is given virtually no redeeming or even human qualities. Although there is a satirical power in the portrayal, it leaves the reader with a bitter aftertaste. So this was what the dehumanizing side of the Left looked like when ideology took precedence over humanism, and when the end was allowed to justify the means.

  But if you’re prepared to accept this point of view, Murder at the Savoy makes for thoroughly fascinating reading. The book presents an incomparable picture of a social climate during a critical period in both Swedish and world history—a social climate that was in many ways idiotic and inhumane, and we are still living on the fringes of it today. If you read all ten books in order, you will actually discover that together they do form the story of crime. An enormous crime.

  What was it that Sjöwall and Wahlöö accomplished with their series of books? What was it that struck such a chord in a fifteen-year-old boy that twenty years later it triggered his own production of crime fiction? I think it was the sense of suppressed rage. A fire—but at the same time a strictly disciplined fire. The slowly emerging awareness that rage which is uncontrolled and without direction will fall flat. Yet at the same time, the fire must be present, and it must be preserved.

  Maybe it was the desire to find a form for their anger.

  —Jan Arnald/Arne Dahl—

  Translated from the Swedish by Tiina Nunnally

  1

  The day was hot and stifling, without a breath of air. There had been a haze quivering in the atmosphere, but now the sky was high and clear, its colors shifting from rose to dusky blue. The sun’s red disk would soon disappear beyond the island of Ven. The evening breeze, which was already rippling the smooth mirror of the Sound, brought weak puffs of agreeable freshness to the streets of Malmö. With the gentle wind came fumes of the rotting garbage and seaweed that had been washed up on Ribersborg Beach and in through the mouth of the harbor into the canals.

  The city doesn’t resemble the rest of Sweden to a very great degree, largely because of its location. Malmö is closer to Rome than to the midnight sun, and the lights of the Danish coast twinkle along the horizon. And even if many winters are slushy and windblown, summers are just as often long and warm, filled with the song of the nightingale and scents from the lush vegetation of the expansive parks.

  Which is exactly the way it was that fair summer evening early in July 1969. It was also quiet, calm and quite deserted. The tourists weren’t noticeable to any extent—they hardly ever are. As for the roaming, unwashed hash-smokers, only the first bands had arrived, and not so many more would show up either, since most of them never get past Copenhagen.

  It was rather quiet even in the big hotel across from the railroad station near the harbor. A few foreign businessmen were deliberating over their reservations at the reception desk. The checkroom attendant was reading one of the classics undisturbed in the depths of the cloakroom. The dimly lit bar contained only a couple of regular customers speaking in low voices and a bartender in a snow-white jacket.

  In the large eighteenth-century dining room to the right of the lobby there wasn’t much going on either, even if it was somewhat livelier. A few tables were occupied, mostly by people who were sitting alone. The pianist was taking a break. In front of the swinging doors leading to the kitchen stood a waiter, hands behind his back, looking contemplatively out of the big open windows, probably lost in thoughts of the sand beaches not too far away.

  A dinner party of seven, a well dressed and solemn gathering of varying sexes and ages, was sitting in the back of the dining room. Their table was cluttered with glasses and fancy dishes, surrounded by champagne coolers. The restaurant personnel had discreetly withdrawn, for the host had just risen to speak.

  He was a tall man in late middle age, with a dark-blue shantung suit, iron gray hair and a deep suntan. He spoke calmly and skillfully, modulating his voice in subtly humorous phrases. The other six at the table sat watching him quietly; only one of them was smoking.

  Through the open windows came the sounds of passing cars, trains switching tracks at the station across the canal, a switchyard that is the largest in northern Europe, the abrupt hoarse tooting of a boat from Copenhagen, and somewhere on the bank of the canal a girl giggling.

  This was the scene that soft warm Wednesday in July, at approximately eight-thirty in the evening. It’s essential to use the expression “approximately,” for no one ever managed to pin down the exact time when it happened. On the other hand, what did happen is quite easy to describe.

  A man came in through the main entrance, cast a glance at the reception desk with the foreign businessmen and the uniformed attendant, passed the checkroom and the long narrow lobby outside of the bar, and walked into the dining room calmly and resolutely, with steps that weren’t notably rapid. There was nothing remarkable about this man so far. No one looked at him; he did not bother to look around eithe
r.

  He passed the Hammond organ, the grand piano and the buffet with its array of glistening delicacies and continued past the two large pillars supporting the ceiling. With the same resolve he walked directly toward the party in the corner, where the host stood talking with his back turned to him. When the man was about five steps away, he thrust his right hand inside his suit coat. One of the women at the table looked at him, and the speaker half turned his head to see what was distracting her. He gave the approaching man a quick, indifferent glance, and started to turn back toward his guests, without a second’s interruption in the comments he was making. At the same instant the newcomer pulled out a steel-blue object with a fluted butt and a long barrel, aimed carefully and shot the speaker in the head. The report was not shattering. It sounded more like the peaceful pop of a rifle in a shooting gallery at a fair.

  The bullet struck the speaker just behind the left ear, and he fell forward onto the table, his left cheek in the crenelated mashed potatoes around an exquisite fish casserole à la Frans Suell.

  Sticking the weapon into his pocket, the gunman turned sharply to the right, walked the few steps to the nearest open window, placed his left foot on the sill, swung himself over the low window, stepped into the flower box outside, hopped down onto the sidewalk and disappeared.