One Step Behind

by Henning Mankell

  "We can't give up," Wallander replied.

  They started again. It was past 4 p.m. Wallander's stomach ached from hunger and anxiety. He was so tired it was starting to feel like his natural state. He sensed the same desperate fatigue in the other two.

  "In broad strokes," Wallander prompted, "what do we have? Happy people. Joyful people. What else?"

  "Young people," Martinsson said.

  "People in costume," Höglund added.

  "I don't think he repeats himself," Wallander said. "But we can't be sure of that. The question then is where we can find out about happy, young people in costume who are gathering for some reason today, other than for a wedding or a midnight picnic in a nature reserve."

  "Perhaps someone's having a masquerade?" Martinsson suggested.

  "The newspaper," Wallander said suddenly. "What's going on in Ystad tonight?"

  He had hardly finished the sentence before Martinsson had rushed out of the room.

  "Should we return to the conference room?" Höglund asked.

  "Not just yet. We'll go back soon enough. But I'd like to have something to bring to the table, even if it's just a red herring."

  Martinsson stormed back into the office with the Ystad Allehanda in his hand. They laid it on the table and leaned over it. There was a fashion show in Skurup that immediately drew Wallander's attention.

  "Models are dressed up," he said. "And we can assume they're generally feeling good about themselves."

  "That's not until next Wednesday," Höglund said. "You misread it."

  They kept flipping the pages, then all three of them saw it at the same time. That evening there was going to be an event at the Continental Hotel for the "Friends of Ystad" Society. Members were asked to attend in 17th-century dress. Wallander was doubtful from the start. Something told him it wasn't right, but Martinsson and Höglund didn't share his doubts.

  "This must have been planned in advance," Martinsson said. "He's had a long time to make his preparations."

  "The members of this type of society are rarely very young," Wallander said.

  "The ages are often quite mixed," Höglund said. "That's my impression, anyway."

  Wallander couldn't shake off his doubts, but they didn't have anything to lose. The dinner was scheduled for 7.30 p.m. They had a couple of hours to go. Just in case, they finished looking through the paper to see if there were any other events to consider, but found nothing.

  "It's up to you," Martinsson said. "Do we focus on this or not?"

  "It's not my decision," Wallander said. "It's ours. And I agree with you: what do we have to lose?"

  They returned to the conference room. Wallander wanted both Thurnberg and Holgersson to be present, so someone was sent to get them. While they were waiting, Martinsson was trying to find out who was responsible for arranging the party that evening.

  "Call the hotel," Wallander said. "They'll know who made the reservation."

  Although Martinsson was standing right next to him, Wallander heard himself raise his voice. The fatigue and tension were taking their toll.

  When Thurnberg and Holgersson entered the room, Wallander made a point of closing the door, underscoring the seriousness of the moment. He described the reasoning that had led them to the conclusion that Åke Larstam was planning to strike at a party at the Continental Hotel later that evening. They could be wrong in their assumptions; it might turn out to be another dead end. But it was all they had. The alternative was simply to wait. He thought Thurnberg would have strong objections and might dismiss the plan out of hand, but to his great surprise Thurnberg approved. He used the same argument they had: what else was there to do?

  At these words they were under way. It was 5.15 p.m. and they had two hours to make their preparations. Wallander took Martinsson and went down to the Continental, while Höglund remained in the conference room. They called in reinforcments for the evening and Wallander insisted everyone be equipped with the highest level of protection. Åke Larstam was a dangerous man.

  "I don't think I've ever worn a bulletproof vest," Wallander said. "Except during training exercises."

  "It'll help, if he's still using his gun," Martinsson said. "The only problem is that he shoots people in the head."

  Martinsson was right. Wallander made a call from the car and ordered helmets to go with the vests. They parked outside the main entrance to the hotel.

  "The manager of the restaurant is called Orlovsky," Martinsson said.

  "I've met him before," Wallander said.

  Orlovsky had been notified of their visit and was waiting for them in the lobby. He was a tall, trim man in his 50s. Wallander decided to tell him exactly what was going on. Together they walked into the room where preparations for the evening's festivities were under way.

  "We need to be as efficient as possible," Wallander said. "Could someone show Martinsson around while you and I talk?"

  Orlovsky beckoned to a waiter who was setting the table. "He's been here for 20 years."

  The waiter's name was Emilsson. He looked surprised at the request but obediently accompanied Martinsson out of the room. Wallander told Orlovsky enough to let him know what was going on.

  "Wouldn't it be best to cancel the event altogether?" Orlovsky asked when Wallander had finished.

  "Perhaps. But we won't do that unless we decide that the security of the guests will be compromised, and we're not quite there yet."

  Wallander wanted to know how the guests would be seated and asked to see the seating arrangement. They were expecting 34 people. Wallander paced around the room and tried to imagine Larstam's preparations. He doesn't want to be caught, Wallander thought. He'll have his avenue of escape well prepared. I doubt he's planning to kill all 34 people, but he'll need to get close to the tables.

  A thought struck him. "How many waiters will be working tonight?" he asked.

  "Six altogether."

  "Do you know them all personally?"

  "All except one who's been hired for this evening."

  "What's his name?"

  Orlovsky pointed to a small, pudgy man of around 65 who was setting out the glasses.

  "His name is Leijde and he's often called in to help with larger dinners. Would you like to talk to him?"

  Wallander shook his head. "What about the kitchen staff? The bartender? Who's working the coat check?"

  "They're all permanent employees."

  "Do you have any guests staying at the hotel?"

  "A couple of German families."

  "Will anyone else be here tonight?"

  "No, the whole dining area has been reserved for the party, although we have room for more. That leaves only the receptionist."

  "Is it still Hallgren?" Wallander said. "I've met him before."

  Orlovsky confirmed that Hallgren still worked there. Martinsson and the waiter Emilsson returned from the kitchen. Emilsson went back to setting the table, while Martinsson sat down to sketch an approximation of the dining area, lavatories, and kitchen with Orlovsky's help. Wallander wondered briefly if the staff should be given protective gear as well, but decided against it. It would tip Larstam off. All of a sudden Wallander had the distinct impression that he was somewhere close by, that he was surveying the comings and goings at the hotel.

  Time was running out. Wallander and Martinsson returned to the station, where they were told that reinforcements were on their way. Höglund and Holgersson had moved quickly.

  Martinsson's sketch was put onto a transparency. "Here's what we're going to do," Wallander said. "At some point Larstam will try to enter the hotel. Meanwhile we have to surround the entire building, although I want our men to be invisible, hard as I know that is. Otherwise we'll scare him off."

  He looked around, but no one had any comments. He continued. "If he somehow manages to break through our outer ring of officers, we'll have a team placed inside the dining room. I suggest Martinsson and Höglund dress up as members of the waiting staff."

  "With a
bulletproof vest and helmet?" Martinsson said.

  "No. If he enters the dining room, we have to get him at once. All exits from the dining room have to be blocked. I'm going to be circulating the entire area, since I'm the only person who can actually identify him."

  Wallander paused. Before the meeting broke up he had one more thing to add.

  "We can't overlook the fact that he may be dressed up as a woman. Not Louise, but someone else. We can't even know he's going to turn up for sure."

  "What if he doesn't?"

  "Then we go home and get a good night's sleep. That's what we need most, after all."

  They took up their positions at the hotel a little after 7 p.m. Martinsson and Höglund put on waiters' uniforms, and Wallander positioned himself behind the reception desk. He was in radio contact with eight other officers outside the building, as well as one stationed in the kitchen. He had his gun in his pocket. The guests started arriving. Höglund was right. Many of them were quite young, as young as Isa Edengren. They were dressed up and the atmosphere was joyful. Laughter filled the lobby and dining room. Åke Larstam would have hated this display of happiness.

  It was now 8 p.m. Wallander checked continually with the other officers, but no one saw anything suspicious. At 8.23 p.m. there was an alarm from Supgränd, just south of the hotel. A man had stopped on the footpath and was looking up at the hotel windows. Wallander rushed to the spot but the man was gone before he arrived. One of the police officers identified him as the owner of an Ystad shoe shop. Wallander returned to the lobby, where he heard drinking songs coming from the dining room. Someone got up and made a toast.

  Still nothing happened. Martinsson showed up at the entrance to the dining room. Wallander felt the constant grip of tension. It showed no sign of letting up. There were more drinking songs, more toasts. At 10.40 p.m., the party was beginning to come to a close. Larstam hadn't showed up. We were wrong, Wallander thought. He didn't show up. Or else he saw our men.

  He felt a mixture of disappointment and relief. The ninth person, whoever he was, was still alive. Tomorrow they would go through the evening's guest list one by one and try to identify the intended victim. But Larstam was still on the loose somewhere.

  At 11.30 p.m. the streets were deserted once more. The guests had gone home, all the officers were back at the station. Wallander made sure that the marina and the flat on Harmonigatan would be kept under surveillance all night. He returned to the station along with Martinsson and Höglund, but none of them had the energy to discuss what had happened. They decided to meet at 8 a.m. the next morning. Thurnberg and Holgersson agreed. They would have to figure out why Larstam hadn't shown up the next day.

  "We've gained some time," Thurnberg said. "If nothing else, this manoeuvre gave us that."

  Wallander went back to his office and locked his gun in one of the drawers. Then he drove back to Mariagatan. It was just before midnight when he started up the stairs to his flat.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Wallander put his key in the lock and turned it. From the back of his mind came Ebba's words about the lock having been stiff. The door was hard to open if it was locked from the other side with the key still in it, which only happened if someone was already there. Linda did this. When he came home and the lock was stiff, it was a reminder that she was staying with him.

  His exhaustion was slowing down his thought processes. He unlocked the door, thinking about what Ebba had said, but now the lock was working smoothly. The reason for this dawned on him as he opened the door. He sensed more than saw the figure at the end of the hall. He threw himself to one side and felt a searing pain as something tore open his right cheek. He then flung himself down the stairs, thinking each moment was about to be his last.

  Larstam.

  This was not the situation Hansson and the Malmö officer had encountered earlier in the day. Nor was it the situation Ebba had been in, although Larstam must have been there when she entered the flat. I am the ninth victim, Wallander thought. He reached the bottom of the stairs, ripped open the front door, and ran. When he reached the end of the street he stopped and turned. There was no one there. The street was deserted. Blood gushed from the wound on his cheek. His whole head thudded with pain. He reached for the gun in his pocket, then remembered he had locked it in his desk. The whole time, he kept his eyes on the door to his building, waiting for Larstam to come out. He took cover in the shadows of another doorway. The only thing he could do when Larstam showed up was to keep running. Now he finally knew where he was, and this time there was no back door for Larstam to use for his escape. There was only one way out, and that was through the front door.

  Wallander fumbled for his mobile phone with his bloody hands. Was it in his car? But then he remembered putting the phone down on his desk at work. He let out a stream of curses under his breath. No gun and no phone. He couldn't call anyone for help. His mind worked frantically to find a solution, but nothing came to him. How long he stood there in the shadows, his coat collar pressed against his bleeding cheek, he didn't know. He kept his eyes on the door the whole time. Every once in a while he cast a glance at the dark windows of his flat. Larstam is up there, he thought. He can see me down here, but he doesn't know I'm unarmed. After a while, when no police cars show up he'll get the picture. That's when he'll make his move.

  He looked up at the sky. There was nearly a full moon, although clouds obscured it. What am I doing, he thought, and what is going through Larstam's mind? He looked at his watch. It was 12.07 a.m., on Thursday, 22 August. The fact that it was past midnight wasn't likely to help him now. Larstam had trapped him. Had he guessed Wallander and his colleagues would be distracted by the masquerade party at the hotel?

  Wallander tried to work out how Larstam had broken into his flat. Suddenly he saw what must have happened, and it gave him a sense of how Larstam worked. He took advantage of opportunity. The day before, during Svedberg's funeral, every police officer in town had been at the church. That would have given Larstam plenty of time to work on the lock. Once inside, he had probably found the spare keys.

  Wallander's thoughts were racing, his cheek burned, and fear still throbbed in his body. The most important question was why Larstam had chosen him as his victim, but he pushed it aside for the time being.

  I have to do something, he thought. Without merely attracting enough attention for someone to call the police. If they do, I won't have a chance to explain to the patrol officers the situation they're heading into. Chaos will result.

  He heard footsteps. A man came around the corner and walked straight towards Wallander, who emerged from his shadowy doorway. He was youngish, probably in his 30s. His hands were pushed deep into the pockets of his suede jacket. When he saw Wallander, he pulled them out with a start and took a step back, looking frightened.

  "I'm a police officer," Wallander said. "There's been an accident. I need your help."

  The man looked at him, uncomprehending.

  "Don't you understand what I'm saying? I'm a police officer and I need you to contact the station. Tell them Larstam is in Wallander's flat on Mariagatan. Tell them to be careful. Understood?"

  The man shook his head, then said something in a foreign language. It sounded like Polish. Oh, hell, Wallander thought. That's just my luck. He tried his speech in English, but the man said only a few broken words in reply. Wallander, about to lose his patience, moved closer to the man and raised his voice, and the man fled.

  Wallander was alone again. Larstam was still up there behind the dark windows, and soon, very soon, he would guess why no one was showing up. Then Wallander's only option would be to run. He tried to gather his thoughts. There had to be something he could do. He lifted his hand as if signalling to someone across the street. He pointed up to his flat and yelled a few words. Then he walked around the corner, out of sight of the dark windows where he presumed Larstam was standing. He can't know there's no one there, Wallander thought. Maybe it'll buy me some time, although there'
s also a chance he'll just take off.

  Then something he hadn't even been hoping for happened. A car turned onto the street. Wallander jumped out in front of it, waving his arms. The driver seemed reluctant to have anything to do with him, especially after he saw Wallander's bloody face. But Wallander thrust his hand in through the half-open window and opened the door. A man in his 50s was driving the car, a much younger woman at his side. Wallander immediately had a bad feeling about them, but pushed these thoughts aside.

  "I'm a police officer," he said. "There's been an accident and I need to use your phone." He managed to get his police badge out to show them.

  "I don't have a phone."

  Doesn't everybody have mobile phones these days? Wallander thought desperately. "What's happened?" the man asked anxiously.

  "Never mind that. I need you to drive straight down to the police station. Do you know where that is?"

  "No, I'm not from around here," the man said.

  "I know where it is," the woman said.

  "Just go there and tell them that Larstam is in Wallander's flat. Can you repeat that for me?"

  The man nodded. "Larstam is in Wallgren's flat."

  "It's Wallander, damn it."

  "Larstam is in Wallander's flat."

  "Tell them Wallander needs assistance, but that they must approach carefully."

  The man repeated his words, then they drove off. Wallander hurried back to the corner of Mariagatan and surveyed the scene. He couldn't have been gone more than a minute, hardly enough time for Larstam to get away. Wallander looked down at his watch. It would take ten minutes at most for the first police car to arrive. How long was Larstam planning to wait?

  A quarter of an hour went by with no sign of the police. Wallander finally realised the couple had lied. They had no intention of delivering his message. That put him back where he had started. He was trying to think of another solution when he heard a noise.

  It was the sound of a car engine and it came from the back of the building. Without being able to explain why, he immediately knew it was Larstam. How had he escaped without being seen? He must have gone over the roof. There was a window leading to the roof in the stairwell just above his flat. Larstam must have seen it and climbed down to street level from the back of the house.