One Step Behind

by Henning Mankell

  No one had any comments. Everyone seemed eager to leave.

  Wallander went to his office to get his coat. There was something he wanted to follow up on even though it would most likely lead nowhere. He was just about to leave when Thurnberg appeared.

  "Do we really have the resources to manipulate that photograph here?" he asked.

  "Martinsson knows the most about that sort of thing," Wallander said. "If he has any doubts about his ability to do the job properly, he'll turn it over to the technicians, don't worry."

  Thurnberg nodded. "I just wanted to make sure." But he clearly had something else to say. "I don't think you should blame yourself for letting him slip away in the bar. You couldn't have been expected to see through his disguise."

  It seemed as if he really meant it. Was this his way of making amends? Wallander decided to accept him at face value.

  "I appreciate your opinion," he said. "This investigation has been far from clear-cut."

  "I'll get in touch if I think of anything that might be helpful," Thurnberg said.

  Wallander left the station. He hesitated for a moment in the car park before deciding to walk. All he had to do was walk downtown, and he had to keep moving or else sleep would overtake him.

  It took him ten minutes to reach the red building that was the central postal depot. Post was being unloaded from yellow postal vans. Wallander had never been down here before. He looked around for an entrance and found one. It was locked. He pressed a small buzzer and was let in.

  The man who greeted him was the manager, a young man hardly more than 30 years old. His name was Kjell Albinsson, and he made a good impression. Albinsson escorted him to his office, where a fan placed on top of a filing cabinet was going at high speed. Wallander got out a pen and paper, wondering how he should go about phrasing his questions, such as "Do your postal workers ever open other people's post?" It was an impossible question to ask, an insult to the profession. Wallander thought of Westin, who would no doubt have been deeply offended. He decided instead to start from the beginning.

  It was 10.43 a.m. on Monday, 19 August.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  A map hung on the wall in Albinsson's room. Wallander started there, asking him about the rural postal routes. Albinsson wanted to know why the police were so interested in this information, and Wallander came close to telling him. Then he realised how preposterous it would sound if he said that the police suspected one of his staff of being a mass murderer, so he kept his explanations as vague as possible, making sure that Albinsson knew not to expect further clarification.

  Albinsson described the various routes to him with great enthusiasm. Wallander took occasional notes.

  "How many postmen work here?" Wallander asked after Albinsson had finished with the map and sat down at his desk.

  "Eight."

  "Do you have their names written down anywhere? Photographs would be helpful too."

  "The Post Office is a proactive business these days," Albinsson said. "We have an information brochure that I think is just what you're looking for."

  As Albinsson left the room, Wallander thought to himself that he had just had a stroke of luck. From the photographs of the postal workers he would immediately be able to determine if the man in Copenhagen worked here or not. Then he would have identified the killer in a single stroke.

  Albinsson came back with the brochure, and Wallander looked around for his glasses, to no avail.

  "Maybe mine will work," Albinsson suggested. "What's your prescription?"

  "I don't know, around ten-point-five, I think."

  Albinsson looked at him curiously. "That would mean you were blind," he said. "I take it you mean one-point-five. I'm a two, so go ahead and try them."

  Wallander put on the glasses and found that they helped. He unfolded the brochure and looked closely at the pictures of the eight postal workers. There were four men and four women. Wallander studied the men's faces, but none of them bore any likeness to Louise. He hesitated for a moment at the face of a man called Lars-Goran Berg, but quickly realised that it couldn't be him. He looked briefly at the women, and recognised one who regularly delivered post to his father's house in Löderup.

  "Can I keep this?" he asked.

  "You can have more copies if you like."

  "Just one will do."

  "Have I answered all your questions?"

  "Not quite. There's one more point I need to cover. All of the post is sorted here in this building, right? Do the postmen sort their own post?"

  "Yes."

  He gave the glasses back to Albinsson. "That's all. I won't keep you from your work any longer."

  He stood up. "What is it you're trying to find out?" Albinsson asked.

  "Just what I said. This is a routine check."

  Albinsson shook his head. "I don't believe that. Why would the chief inspector on a pressing murder case drop by as a matter of routine? You're trying to solve the murder of one of your colleagues, as well as that of those youngsters in the Hagestad nature reserve, and the newly-weds. Your visit here has something to do with all that, doesn't it?"

  "That wouldn't change the fact that this is still a routine check," Wallander said.

  "I think you're looking for something in particular," Albinsson said.

  "I've told you as much as I can."

  Albinsson didn't ask any more questions. They parted at the front door, and Wallander walked out into the sunny yard. What a strange August this is, he thought. The heat just won't let up, and there's never even a hint of a breeze.

  He walked back to the station, wondering whether to wear his uniform at Svedberg's funeral. He also wondered whether Höglund was regretting having promised to give a speech, let alone one she hadn't written herself.

  When he walked into reception, Ebba said that Holgersson wanted to speak to him. Ebba seemed depressed.

  "How are things with you these days?" he asked. "We never have time to talk any more."

  "Things are as they are," she said.

  It was the kind of thing his father used to say when he spoke of getting old.

  "As soon as all this is over, we'll talk," he said.

  She nodded. Wallander sensed that something was different about her, but he had no time to ask more. He went to Holgersson's office. Her door was wide open as usual.

  "This is a significant breakthrough," she said as soon as he had sat down in the comfortable armchair across from her. "Thurnberg is impressed."

  "Impressed by what?"

  "You'll have to ask him that. But you're living up to your reputation."

  Wallander was surprised. "Are things really so bad?"

  "I'd say just the opposite."

  Wallander made an impatient gesture with his hand. He didn't want to talk about his own performance, especially since he knew it was seriously flawed.

  "The national chief of police will officiate at the funeral tomorrow," she said, "together with the minister of justice. They're landing at Sturup tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. I'll be there to greet them and escort them back here. They have both requested a briefing on the state of our investigation, so I've scheduled that for 11.30 a.m., in the large conference room. It'll be you, me, and Thurnberg."

  "Could you handle it on your own, or with Martinsson? He can speak more eloquently than I can."

  "You're the one in charge of the investigation," she said. "It'll only take half an hour, then we'll break for lunch. They fly back to Stockholm straight after the funeral."

  "I'm dreading this funeral," Wallander said. "It's different when the dead person has been brutally murdered."

  "You're thinking about your old friend Rydberg?"

  "Yes."

  The phone rang and she picked it up, listened for a moment, and then asked the caller to get back to her later.

  "Have you chosen the music?" Wallander asked.

  "We let the cantor choose it for us. I'm sure it'll be appropriate. What is it usually? Bach and Buxtehude? And then
the old standard hymns, of course."

  Wallander got up to leave. "I hope you'll make the most of this opportunity," he said. "What with the national chief of police and the minister of justice here."

  "What opportunity?"

  "To tell them they can't let things go on like this. The cuts in staff and funding are starting to look like a conspiracy to make us unable to do our jobs, not like a matter of fiscal responsibility. The criminal element is taking over. Tell them it will be the end of all of us if they don't do something to stop it. We're not quite there yet, but we will be soon."

  Holgersson shook her head in amazement. "I don't think we see eye to eye on this."

  "I know you've noticed it too."

  "Why don't you tell them yourself?"

  "I probably will. But I have a killer to track down in the meantime."

  "Not you," she corrected him. "We."

  Wallander went to Martinsson's office. Höglund was with him and they were studying a picture on the computer screen: Louise's face. Martinsson had erased her hair.

  "I'm using a programme developed by the FBI," Martinsson told him. "We can add details such as hairstyles, beards and moustaches. You can even add pimples."

  "I don't think he had any of those," Wallander said. "The only thing I'm interested in is what was under his wig."

  "I called a wigmaker in Stockholm about that," Höglund said. "I asked him how much hair you could hide under a wig, but it was hard to get a clear answer from him."

  "So he could have bushy hair for all we know," Wallander said.

  "The programme can do other things, too," Martinsson said "We can fold out the ears and flatten the nose."

  "We don't have to fold out or flatten anything," Wallander said. "The photograph is already so similar to his face."

  "What about the eye colour?" Martinsson asked.

  Wallander thought for a moment. "Blue," he answered.

  "Did you see her teeth?"

  "Not her teeth. His teeth."

  "Did you see them?"

  "Not very closely. But I think they were white and well kept."

  "Psychopaths are often fanatics about oral hygiene," Martinsson said.

  "We don't know if he's a psychopath," Wallander said.

  Martinsson entered the information about eyes and teeth into the computer.

  "How old was she?" Höglund asked.

  "You mean he," Wallander said.

  "But the person you saw was a woman. You only realised later that she had to be a man."

  She was right. He had seen a woman, not a man, and that was the image he had to return to in order to judge the person's age.

  "It's always hard to tell with women who wear a lot of make-up," he said. "But the photograph we have must be fairly recent. I would say around 40 years old."

  "How tall was she?" Martinsson asked.

  Wallander tried hard to remember. "I'm not sure," he answered. "But I think she was quite tall, between 170 and 175 centimetres."

  Martinsson entered in the numbers. "What about her body?" he said. "Was she wearing falsies?"

  Wallander realised he hadn't noticed very much about her at all.

  "I don't know," he said.

  Höglund looked at him with a hint of a smile. "The latest studies indicate that the first thing a man notices about a woman is her breasts," she said. "He registers whether they are small or large, then usually proceeds to her legs, and finally her behind."

  Martinsson chuckled from his place at the computer. Wallander saw the absurdity of the situation. He was supposed to describe a woman who was actually a man, but who should still be regarded as a woman, at least until Martinsson had finished entering the data into the computer.

  "She was wearing a jacket," he said. "Maybe I'm an unusual male, but I really didn't notice her breasts. And the bar hid most of her body. I didn't see much of her when she stood up and went to the ladies' room, because she was swallowed up by the crowd. It was a full house."

  "We have quite a lot already," Martinsson said reassuringly. "We just have to work out what kind of hairstyle he had under the wig."

  "There must be a hundred different styles," Wallander said. "Let's try circulating the face without any hair. Someone may recognise his features."

  "According to the FBI, that's almost impossible."

  "Let's do it anyway."

  Something else occurred to Wallander. "Who questioned the nurse who received the call from the man pretending to be Erik Lundberg?"

  "I did," Höglund said.

  "What did she remember about his voice?"

  "Not very much. He had a Scanian accent."

  "Did it sound real?"

  She looked at him with surprise. "Actually, no. She said there was something funny about his dialect, although she couldn't put her finger on it."

  "So it could have been fake?"

  "Yes."

  "Was it a low or high voice?"

  "Low."

  Wallander thought back to his time in the Amigo. Louise had smiled at him, then excused herself, and her voice had been deep, although she had tried to make it sound feminine.

  "I think we can assume it was him," Wallander said. "Even though we have no proof."

  He told them about his visit to the postal depot. "I've only been able to find one common denominator so far," he said. "Isa Edengren and Sture Björklund had the same postman. The other people in this investigation bring the number of postmen involved to three, in addition to someone who works outside of Ystad altogether. It therefore seems reasonable to ditch this theory, since it's absurd to think there's a conspiracy between postal workers."

  He sat back in his chair and looked at the other two. "I see no pattern yet," he said. "We have costumes and secrets, but nothing more."

  "What happens if we ignore the costumes?" Höglund said. "What do we have then?"

  "Young people," Wallander said. "Happy people, having a party or getting married."

  "You don't think Haag is a target?"

  "No. He falls outside the parameters."

  "What about Isa Edengren?"

  "She was supposed to have been there."

  "That changes our picture," Höglund said. "A new motive emerges. She's not allowed to escape, but escape what? Is it revenge, or hatred? There also doesn't seem to be any point of connection between the young people and the wedding couple. And then there's Svedberg. What lead was he following?"

  "I think I can answer the last question," Wallander said. "At least for now. Svedberg knew this man who dresses as a woman. Something made him suspicious. Over the course of the summer, his investigation confirmed his suspicion. That's why he was killed – he knew too much. But he didn't have time to tell us what he knew."

  "But what does it all add up to?" Martinsson said. "Svedberg told his cousin he was involved with a woman called Louise. Now it turns out she's a man. Svedberg must have known that after all these years, so where does that lead us? Was Svedberg a transvestite? Was he homosexual after all?"

  "A number of explanations are possible," Wallander said. "I doubt that Svedberg had a passion for dressing up in women's clothing, but he may very well have been homosexual without any of us knowing about it."

  "One person in our investigation seems to be growing in importance," Höglund said.

  Wallander knew to whom she was referring: Bror Sundelius.

  "I agree," he said. "We need to maintain that end of the investigation, not as an alternative but as part of our search for the killer. We need to know more about the people involved in charges filed against Svedberg. He may very well have been the victim of blackmail or had some other reason to keep Stridh quiet."

  "If Bror Sundelius has deviant tendencies then it all starts to make sense," Martinsson said.

  Wallander bristled at Martinsson's words. "In this day and age, homosexuality can hardly be regarded as 'deviant'," he said. "Maybe in the 1950s, but not now. That people might still want to conceal their sexual preferences is another
matter entirely."

  Martinsson registered Wallander's disapproval, but said nothing.

  "The question is what connected these three men, Sundelius, Stridh, and Svedberg," Wallander said. "A bank director, a petty criminal and a policeman, whose surnames all start with the letter 'S'."

  "I wonder if Louise was in the picture at that point," Höglund said.

  Wallander made a face. "We have to call him something else," he said. "Louise disappeared in the lavatory of that bar back in Copenhagen. We'll confuse ourselves if we don't use another name."

  "What about Louis?" Martinsson said. "That would make it easy."

  They all agreed, and Louise was renamed. Now they were looking for a man called Louis. They decided that Martinsson should spend part of his time keeping an eye on Sundelius. Wallander left the room and went back to his office. He bumped into Edmundsson on his way.

  "We didn't find anything in that area of the nature reserve you wanted us to search," he said. It took Wallander a moment to remember what this had been about.

  "Nothing?"

  "We found a wad of chewing tobacco by a tree," Edmundsson said. "That was it."

  Wallander looked closely at him. "I hope you collected that wad of chewing tobacco, or at least alerted Nyberg."

  Edmundsson surprised him with his answer. "Actually, I did."

  "This could be more important than you realise," he said.

  He kept walking towards his office. He was right. The killer had been there that night, hiding where he had the best view of their comings and goings. He had spat out a wad of chewing tobacco, just like on the beach. And later he had turned up outside the police barricades at Nybrostrand, although this time he was disguised as a woman.

  He's following us, Wallander thought. He's somewhere close by, both a step ahead and a step behind. Is he trying to find out what we know? Or is he trying to prove to himself that we can't find him?

  Something occurred to him and he called Martinsson. "Is there anyone who has shown an unexpected interest in our investigation?"

  "You mean like a journalist?"

  "Let people know to be on the lookout for someone who takes an interest in the case, something out of the ordinary. I don't think I can give you a more precise description – just someone who seems odd."