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

Publishing House or its magazines!
    It is forbidden to fix pictures or objects of any kind whatsoever to the outsides of the doors!
    Always act as an ambassador for the company. Even in Your time off! Remember that the Publishing House always behaves fittingly: with judgement, dignity and responsibility!
    Rise above unwarranted criticism. Escapism and Dishonesty are just other names for poetry and imagination!
    Always be aware that You represent the Publishing House and Your magazine! Even in Your time off!
    The truest features and stories are not always the best! Truth is a commodity that needs very cautious handling in modern journalism. You cannot be sure that everyone can take as much of it as You can!
    Your task is to entertain our readers, to stimulate them to dream
.
    Your task is not to shock, agitate or alarm, nor to rouse or educate!
    There were further exhortations, all with similar content and expressed in a similar way. Most of them were signed by the company management or those responsible for the building,a few of them by the publisher himself. Inspector Jensen read them all, then continued working his way down.
    The next floors he came to were evidently where the bigger, more elegant magazines were produced. They were decorated rather differently, with pale carpets in the corridors, steel chairs and chrome ashtrays. The closer he got to the eighteenth floor, the greater the cool elegance grew, only to fade away again further down. The directorate occupied four floors; below that there were offices for general administration, advertising, distribution and much more. The corridors grew bare again and the clatter of typewriters intensified. The light was cold, white and searing.
    Inspector Jensen toured floor after floor. When he got down to the vast lobby, it was almost five. He had used the stairs the whole way down and felt a vague weariness in his calves and at the backs of his knees.
    Approximately two minutes later, the man in grey came down the stairs. Inspector Jensen hadn’t seen him since they parted by the paternoster lift on the tenth floor an hour earlier. The man went into the security desk at the front entrance. He could be seen saying something to the men in uniform behind the wall of glass. Then he wiped the sweat from his brow and cast a fleeting, indifferent glance round the lobby.
    The clock in the big hall struck five and exactly one minute later, the automatic doors of the first fully loaded high-speed elevator opened.
    The steady stream of people continued for more than half an hour before it began to thin out. Inspector Jensen, his hands clasped behind his back, stood rocking gently to and fro on the balls of his feet as he watched the people hurry past. On the far side of the revolving doors they dispersed and disappeared, timid and hunched, in the direction of their cars.
    By a quarter to six, the lobby was empty. The lifts stood still. The men in the white uniforms locked the front entrance and left. Only the man in grey was left there behind the wall of glass. It was almost dark outside.
    Inspector Jensen stepped into one of the aluminium-lined lifts and pressed the top button on the control panel. The lift came to a swift, stomach-lurching stop at the eighteenth floor, the doors opened and closed, and then it continued upwards.
    The corridors of the comic department were still as brightly lit, but the sounds behind the doors had stopped. He stood still, listening, and after about thirty seconds he heard a lift stop somewhere nearby, presumably one floor below. He waited a bit longer but could not hear any footsteps. There was nothing to be heard at all, and yet the silence was not complete. Only when he leaned sideways and pressed his ear to the concrete wall could he make out the roar and throb of distant machine halls. When he had listened long enough, the sound became more tangible, acute and insistent like an unidentified sensation of pain.
    He straightened up and walked the