Murder on the Thirty-First Floor by Per Wahlöö Read Free Book Online Page A

himself.
    ‘Rather unique,’ he said.
    He went out to the toilets for a paper cup of water, put in three teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda, stirred it with his pen and drank.
    He fished out the key. It was long and flat, and the complicated key-bit was a strange shape. He weighed the key in his hand and took a quick glance at the clock.
    It was twenty past three, and still Wednesday.

CHAPTER 10
    From the lobby of the Skyscraper, Inspector Jensen turned left and took the paternoster lift down. The stack of lift compartments sank slowly and creakily, and he kept an observant eye out to see what was on each floor as he passed it. First came a vast space in which electric trucks moved along narrow corridors between walls of brand-new, bundled magazines; then men in overalls pushing curved moulds on trolleys and the deafening racket of the rotary presses. Another floor down he saw shower rooms, toilets and changing rooms with benches and rows of green metal lockers. On the benches sat people who seemed to be on their break or had finished their shift. Most of them were leafing apathetically through colourful magazines that had presumably just come off the presses. Then his ride was at an end; he got out and was in the paper warehouse. It was quiet down there, but not entirely silent, because the collected sounds of the immense building above penetrated down as a powerful, pulsating roar. He wandered around randomly for a while in the gloom, between rows of bales and rolls of paper standing on end. The only person he saw was a pale little man in a white warehouseman’s coat, who stared at him in alarm and crushed a burning cigarette in his closed hand.
    Inspector Jensen left the paper store and took the lift back up. At street level he was joined by a middle-aged man in a grey suit. The man stepped into the same compartment andwent with him up to the tenth floor, where they had to change. He said nothing, and did not once look at his fellow passenger. In the paternoster lift from the tenth floor, Jensen just had time to see the man in grey getting into the compartment below his own.
    On the twentieth floor he changed to a third paternoster lift, and four minutes later he was at the top.
    He found himself in a narrow, windowless concrete corridor, which was uncarpeted. It ran in a rectangle round a core of staircases and lift systems, and around its outer sides there were white-painted doors. To the left of each door was a little plate with one, two, three or four names. The corridor was flooded with cold, blue-white light from the banks of skylights in the roof.
    It was clear from the metal plates that these were the editorial offices of the comic section. He went down five flights of stairs and was still in the same section. There were very few people to be seen in the corridors, but he heard voices and the clatter of typewriters through the doors. On every floor there were noticeboards, mainly used for notices from the management to the staff. There were also time clocks, clocking in machines for the nightwatchmen and, on the ceiling, an automatic sprinkler system in case of fire.
    On the twenty-fourth floor there was a total of four editorial offices. He recognised the names of the magazines and recalled that they were all of simple, basic design, their content consisting mainly of stories with gaudy illustrations.
    Inspector Jensen slowly worked his way down. On every floor he did a circuit of the four corridors, two longer and two shorter, joined into a rectangle. Here, too, the doors were white and the walls bare. Apart from the names on the doors, thetop seven floors were all identical. Everything was very neat and tidy; there were no signs of carelessness or neglect and the cleaning service seemed immaculate. From behind the doors, voices and ringing telephones could be heard, with the sound of a typewriter here and there.
    He stopped by one of the noticeboards and read:
    Do not make derogatory comments about the