The Man Who Went Up In Smoke by Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö Page B

souvenir stand (which was closed), elevator doors, a couple of groups of chairs and a reception desk. The reception desk was empty and there was not a soul in the foyer.
    Adjoining the foyer was a big lounge with armchairs and low tables and large windows all along the far wall. This room was empty too.
    Martin Beck went across to the wall with the windows and looked out.
    A few young people were lying on the lawn outside, sunning themselves in bathing suits.
    The hotel was situated on a hill with a view across to the Pest side. The houses on the slope between the hotel and the river appeared old and shabby. From the taxi Martin Beck had seen bullet holes in most of the façades, and on a number of houses the plastering had been almost entirely shot away.
    He looked out into the foyer, which was still just as deserted, and sat down in one of the armchairs in the lounge. He did not expect much from his visit to the Ifjusåg. Alf Matsson had stayed here one night, there was a shortage of hotel rooms in Budapest in the summer, and the fact that this particular hotel had a room free was probably sheer chance. It was hardly plausible that anyone would remember a guest who had come late in the evening and left the next morning, at the height of the summer season.
    He extinguished his last Florida cigarette and looked gloomily at the sunburned youngsters out on the lawn. It suddenly seemed to him quite ridiculous that he should be gadding about Budapest trying to find a person to whom he was completely indifferent. He could not remember ever being given such a hopeless, meaningless assignment.
    Steps could be heard out in the foyer, and Martin Beck got up and went out after them. A young man was standing behind the reception desk with a telephone receiver in his hand, staring up at the ceiling and biting his thumbnail as he listened. Then he began to speak and at first Martin Beck thought the man was speaking Finnish, but then remembered that Finnish and Hungarian stemmed from the same linguistic stock.
    The young man put down the receiver and looked inquiringly at Martin Beck, who hesitated while trying to decide which language he should begin with.
    'What can I do for you?" said the youth in perfect English, to Martin Beck's relief.
    'It's about a guest who stayed at this hotel the night of July twenty-second. Have you any idea who was on duty here that night?"
    The young man looked at a wall calendar.
    'I really don't remember," he said. "It's more than two weeks ago. One moment, and I'll have a look."
    He hunted around for a while on a shelf under the desk, retrieved a little black book and leafed through it. Then he said, "It was me, in fact. Friday night, yes… What kind of person? Did he stay just one night?"
    'Yes, as far as I know," said Martin Beck. "He might have stayed here later, of course. A Swedish journalist named Alf Matsson."
    The youth stared at the ceiling and chewed his nail. Then he shook his head.
    'I can't remember any Swede. We get very few Swedes here. What did he look like?"
    Martin Beck showed him Alf Matsson's passport photograph. The youth looked at it for a moment and said hesitantly, "I don't know. Perhaps I've seen him before. I can't really remember."
    'Do you have a ledger? A guest register?"
    The young man pulled out a card-file drawer and began to search. Martin Beck waited. He felt an urge to smoke and hunted through his pockets, but his cigarettes were irrevocably at an end.
    'Here it is," said the youth, taking a card out of the drawer. "Alf Matsson. Swedish, yes. He stayed here the night of July twenty-second, just as you say."
    'And he didn't stay here after that night?"
    'No, not afterward. But he did stay here for a few days at the end of May. But that was before I came here. I was taking my exams then."
    Martin Beck took the card and looked at it. Alf Matsson had stayed at the hotel from the twenty-fifth to the twenty-eighth of May.
    'Who was on duty here then?"
    The youth thought about