The Man Who Smiled

by Henning Mankell

  “There’s a police investigation going on here,” Wallander said, noting that his anger had subsided as quickly as it had broken out. “Torstensson, the lawyer who died in the car accident, lived here.”

  “If the alarm goes off, we show up,” the man from the security company said, bluntly.

  “Turn it off,” Wallander said. “You can turn it on again in a few hours’ time. But let’s all work our way through the house first.”

  “This is Chief Inspector Wallander,” Peters explained. “I expect you recognize him.”

  The security man was very young. He nodded, but Wallander could tell that he had not recognized him.

  “We don’t need you anymore. And get that dog out of here,” Wallander said.

  The guard withdrew, taking the reluctant Alsatian with him. Wallander shook Peters and Norén by the hand.

  “I’d heard you were back,” Norén said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Things haven’t been the same since you were on sick leave,” Peters said.

  “Well, I’m back in the saddle now,” Wallander said, hoping to steer the conversation back to the investigation.

  “The information we get isn’t exactly reliable,” Norén said. “We’d been told you were going to retire. After that we didn’t expect to find you in a house when the alarm went off.”

  “Life is full of surprises,” Wallander said.

  “Anyway, welcome back,” Peters said.

  Wallander had the feeling for the first time that the friendliness was genuine. There was nothing artificial about Peters: his words were straightforward and clear.

  “It’s been a difficult time,” Wallander said. “But it’s over now. I think so, at least.”

  He walked down to the car with them and waved as they drove off. He wandered around the garden, trying to sort out his thoughts. His personal feelings were intertwined with thoughts about what had happened to the two lawyers. In the end he decided to go and talk to Mrs. Dunér again. Now he had a few questions to ask her that needed answering.

  It was almost noon when he rang her doorbell and was let in. This time he accepted her offer of a cup of tea.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you again so soon,” he began, “but I do need help in building up a picture of both of them, father and son. Who were they? You worked with the older man for thirty years.”

  “And nineteen years with Sten Torstensson,” she said.

  “That’s a long time,” Wallander said. “You get to know people as time goes by. Let’s start with the father. Tell me what he was like.”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “And why not?”

  “I didn’t know him.”

  Her reply astonished him, but it sounded genuine. Wallander decided to feel his way forward, to take all the time his impatience told him he did not have.

  “You will not mind my saying that your response is a bit odd,” Wallander said. “I mean, you worked with him for a very long time.”

  “Not with him,” she said. “For him. There’s a big difference.”

  Wallander nodded. “Even if you didn’t know the man, you must know a lot about him. Please, tell me what you can. If you don’t I’m afraid we may never be able to solve the murder of his son.”

  “You’re not being honest with me, Inspector Wallander,” she said. “You haven’t told me what really happened when he died in that car crash.”

  She was evidently going to keep surprising him. He made his mind up on the spot to be straight with her.

  “We don’t know yet,” he said. “But we suspect it was more than just an accident. Something might have caused it, or happened afterward.”

  “He’d driven along that road lots of times,” she said. “He knew it inside out. And he never drove fast.”

  “If I understand it correctly, he’d been to see one of his clients,” Wallander said.

  “The man at Farnholm,” was all she said.

  “The man at Farnholm?”

  “Alfred Harderberg. The man at Farnholm Castle.”

  Wallander knew that Farnholm Castle was in a remote area to the south of the Linderöd Ridge. He had often driven past the turnoff, but had never been there.

  “He was our biggest client,” Mrs. Dunér went on. “For the last few years he’d been in effect Gustaf Torstensson’s only client.”

  Wallander wrote the name on a scrap of paper he found in his pocket.

  “I’ve never heard of him,” he said. “Is he a farmer?”

  “He’s the man who owns the castle,” Mrs Dunér said. “But he’s a businessman. Big business, international.”

  “I’ll be in touch with him, obviously,” Wallander said. “He must be one of the last people to see Mr. Torstensson alive.”

  A bundle of mail suddenly dropped through the mail slot. Wallander noticed that Mrs. Dunér gave a start.

  Three scared people, he thought. Scared of what?

  “Gustaf Torstensson,” he started again. “Let’s try again. Tell me what he was like.”

  “He was the most private person I have ever met,” she said, and Wallander detected a hint of aggression. “He never allowed anybody to get close to him. He was a pedant, never varied his routine. He was one of those people folks say you could set your watch by. That was absolutely true in Gustaf Torstensson’s case. He was a sort of bloodless, cutout silhouette, neither nice nor nasty. Just boring.”

  “According to Sten Torstensson, he was also cheerful,” Wallander said.

  “You could have fooled me,” Mrs. Dunér said.

  “How well did the two of them get along?”

  She did not hesitate, she answered directly to the point. “Gustaf Torstensson was annoyed that his son was trying to modernize the business,” she said. “And naturally enough, Sten Torstensson thought his father was a millstone around his neck. But neither of them revealed their true feelings to the other. They were both afraid of fighting.”

  “Before Sten Torstensson died he said something had been upsetting and worrying his father for several months,” Wallander said. “Can you comment on that?”

  This time she paused before answering.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Now that you mention it, there was something distant about him in the last months of his life.”

  “Have you any explanation for that?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing unusual that happened?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Please think carefully. This could be very important.”

  She poured another cup of tea while she was thinking. Wallander waited. Then she looked up at him.

  “I can’t say,” she said. “I can’t explain it.”

  Wallander knew she was not telling the truth, but he decided not to press her. Everything was still too vague and uncertain. The time wasn’t ripe.

  He pushed his cup to one side and rose to his feet. “I won’t disturb you any longer,” he said. “But I’ll be back, I’m afraid.”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Dunér said.

  “If you think of anything you’d like to say, just give me a ring,” Wallander said as he left. “Don’t hesitate. The slightest detail could be significant.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” she said as she closed the door behind him.

  Wallander sat in his car without starting the engine. He felt very uneasy. Without being able to say exactly why, he had the feeling there was something very serious and disturbing behind the deaths of the two lawyers. They were still only scratching the surface.

  Something is pointing us in the wrong direction, he thought. The postcard from Finland might not be a red herring, might be the thing we really should be looking into. But why?

  He was about to start the engine and drive off when he noticed that somebody was standing on the sidewalk across the street, watching him.

  It was a young woman, hardly more than twenty, of some Asian origin. When she saw that Wallander had notic
ed her, she hurried away. Wallander could see in his rearview mirror that she had turned right onto Hamngatan without looking back.

  He was certain he had never seen her before.

  That didn’t mean she had not recognized him. Over the years as a police officer he had often come up against refugees and asylum seekers in various contexts.

  He drove back to the police station. The wind was still gusty, and clouds were building up from the east. He had just turned onto Kristianstadvägen when he slammed his foot on the brake. A truck behind him sounded its horn.

  I’m reacting far too slowly, he thought. I’m not seeing the forest for the trees.

  He made an illegal U-turn, parked outside the post office on Hamngatan, and made his way swiftly onto the side street that led into Stickgatan from the north. He positioned himself so that he could see the pink building where Mrs. Dunér lived.

  It was getting chilly, and he started walking up and down while keeping an eye on the building. After an hour he wondered whether he should give up. But he was sure he was right. He kept on watching the building. By now Åkeson was waiting for him, but he would wait in vain.

  At 3:43 P.M. the door to the pink building suddenly opened. Wallander hid behind a wall. He was right. He watched that woman with the vaguely Asian appearance leave Berta Dunér’s house. Then she turned the corner and was gone.

  It had started raining.

  5

  The meeting of the investigation team started at 4 P.M. and finished exactly seven minutes later. Wallander was the last to arrive and flopped down on his chair. He was out of breath, and sweating. His colleagues around the table observed him in surprise, but no one made any comment.

  It took Björk a few minutes to establish that no one had any significant progress to report or matters to discuss. They had reached a point in the investigation where they had become “tunnel diggers,” as they used to say. They were all trying to break through the surface layer to find what might be concealed underneath. It was a familiar phase in criminal investigations, and no discussion was needed. The only one who came up with a question at the end of the meeting was Wallander.

  “Who is Alfred Harderberg?” he asked, after consulting a scrap of paper on which he’d written down the name.

  “I thought everybody knew that,” Björk said. “He’s one of Sweden’s most successful businessmen just now. Lives here in Skåne. When he’s not flying all over the world in his private jet, that is.”

  “He owns Farnholm Castle,” Svedberg said. “It’s said that he has an aquarium with genuine gold dust at the bottom instead of sand.”

  “He was a client of Gustaf Torstensson’s,” Wallander said. “His principal client, in fact. And his last. Torstensson had been to see him the night he met his death in the field.”

  “He organizes charity for the needy in parts of the Balkans ravaged by war,” Martinsson said. “But maybe that’s not so extraordinary when you have the limitless amounts of money he does.”

  “Alfred Harderberg is a man worthy of our respect,” Björk said.

  Wallander could see he was getting annoyed. “Who isn’t?” he wondered aloud. “I intend to pay him a visit even so.”

  “Phone first,” Björk said, getting to his feet.

  The meeting was at an end. Wallander fetched a cup of coffee and repaired to his office. He needed time on his own to think over the significance of Mrs. Dunér being visited by a young Asian woman. Maybe there was nothing to it at all, but Wallander’s instinct told him otherwise. He put his feet on his desk and leaned back in his chair, balancing his coffee cup between his knees.

  The telephone rang. Wallander stretched to answer it, lost his grip on the cup, and coffee spilled all over his pant leg as the cup fell to the floor.

  “Shit!” he shouted, the receiver halfway to his ear.

  “No need to be rude,” said his father. “I only wanted to ask why you never get in touch.”

  Wallander was instantly assailed by his bad conscience, and that in turn made him angry. He wondered if there would ever be a time when dealings with his father could be conducted on a less tense footing.

  “I spilled a cup of coffee,” he said, “and scalded my leg.”

  His father seemed not to have heard what he said. “Why are you in your office?” he asked. “You’re supposed to be on sick leave.”

  “Not anymore. I’ve started work again.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?”

  Wallander could tell that this conversation was going to be a very long one if he did not manage to cut it short. “I owe you an explanation, I know,” he said, “but I just don’t have time right now. I’ll come and see you tomorrow evening, and tell you what’s happened.”

  “I haven’t seen you for ages,” his father said, and hung up.

  Wallander sat for a moment with the receiver in his hand. His father would be seventy-five next year, and invariably managed to arouse in him contradictory emotions. Their relationship had been complicated for as long as he could remember. Not least on the day he told his father he intended to join the police. More than twenty-five years had passed since then and the old man never missed an opportunity for criticizing that decision. Nevertheless, Wallander had a guilty conscience about the time he devoted to him. The previous year, when he had heard the astonishing news that his father was going to marry a woman thirty years younger than himself, a home help who came to his house three times a week, he had figured his father would not lack for company anymore. Now, sitting there with the receiver in his hand, he realized that nothing had really changed.

  He replaced the receiver, picked up the cup, and wiped his pant leg with a sheet torn from his notepad. Then he remembered he was supposed to get in touch with Åkeson, the prosecutor. Åkeson’s secretary put him through right away. Wallander explained that he had been held up and Åkeson suggested a time for the next morning instead.

  Wallander went to fetch another cup of coffee. In the hallway he bumped into Höglund carrying a pile of files.

  “How’s it going?” Wallander said.

  “Slowly,” she said. “And I can’t shake off the feeling that there’s something fishy about those two dead lawyers.”

  “That’s exactly how I feel,” Wallander said. “What makes you think so?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” Wallander said. “Experience tells me you should never underestimate the significance of what you can’t put into words, can’t put your finger on.”

  He went back to his office, unhooked the phone, and pulled his notepad toward him. He went back in his mind to the freezing cold beach at Skagen, Sten Torstensson walking toward him out of the fog. That’s where this case started for me, he thought. It started while Sten was still alive.

  He went over everything he knew about the two lawyers. He was like a soldier cautiously retreating, keeping a close watch to his left and his right. It took him an hour to work his way through every one of the facts he and his colleagues had so far assembled.

  What is it I can see and yet do not see? He asked himself this over and over as he sifted through the case notes. But when he tossed aside his pen all he had managed to achieve was a highly decorative and embellished question mark.

  Two lawyers dead, he thought. One killed in a strange accident that was in all probability not an accident. Whoever killed Gustaf Torstensson was a cold, calculating murderer. That lone chair leg left in the mud was an uncharacteristic mistake. There’s a why and a who, but there may well be something else.

  It came to him that there was something he could and should do. He found Mrs. Dunér’s telephone number in his notes.

  “I’m sorry to trouble you,” he said. “Inspector Wallander here. I have a question I’d be grateful for an answer to right away.”

  “I’d be pleased to help if I can,” she said.

  Two questions in fact, Wallander thought, but I’ll sa
ve the one about the Asian woman for another time.

  “The night Gustaf Torstensson died he had been to Farnholm Castle,” he said. “How many people knew he was going to visit his client that evening?”

  There was a pause before she replied. Wallander wondered whether that was in order to remember, or to give herself time to think of a suitable answer.

  “I knew, of course,” she said. “It’s possible I might have mentioned it to Miss Lundin, but nobody else knew.”

  “Sten Torstensson didn’t know, then?”

  “I don’t think so. They kept separate engagement diaries.”

  “So most probably you were the only one who knew,” Wallander said.

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you. I apologize for disturbing you,” Wallander said, and hung up.

  He returned to his notes. Gustaf Torstensson drives out to see a client, and is attacked on the way home, murder disguised as a road accident.

  He thought about Mrs. Dunér’s reply. I’m sure she was telling the truth, he thought, but what interests me is what lies behind that truth. What she said means that apart from herself the only other person who knew what Gustaf Torstensson was going to do that evening was the man at Farnholm Castle.

  He continued his walk through the case. The landscape of the investigation constantly shifted. The cheerless house with its sophisticated security systems. The collection of icons hidden in the basement. When he thought he’d walked as far as he could go he switched to Sten Torstensson. The landscape shifted yet again and became almost impenetrable. Sten’s unexpected appearance in Wallander’s windswept haven, against a background of melancholy foghorns, and then the deserted café at the art museum—they seemed to Wallander like the ingredients of an unconvincing operetta. But there were moments in the plot when life was taken seriously. Sten had found his father restless and depressed. And the postcard from Finland, sent by an unknown hand but arranged by Sten: clearly there was a threat and a false trail was required. Always assuming that the false trail wasn’t in fact the right trail.

  Nothing takes us on to a next stage, Wallander thought, but these are facts that one can categorize. It’s harder to know what to do with the mystery ingredients—the Asian woman, for example, who doesn’t want anybody to see her visiting Berta Dunér’s pink house. And Mrs. Dunér herself, who’s a good liar, but not good enough to deceive a detective inspector from the Ystad police—or, at least, for him not to notice that something isn’t quite right.