The Man Who Smiled

by Henning Mankell

  Gertrud was preparing the evening meal when they went in. As always, she was delighted to welcome him. He apologized for not being able to join them for supper, blaming work. Instead, he went with his father to the studio, where they drank a cup of coffee that they made on the filthy hot plate.

  “I saw one of your pictures on a wall in Helsingborg the other night,” Wallander said.

  “There have been quite a few over the years,” his father said.

  “How many have you made?”

  “I could add it up if I wanted to,” his father said. “But I don’t.”

  “It must be thousands.”

  “I’d rather not think about it. It would be inviting the Reaper into the parlor.”

  The comment surprised Wallander. He had never heard him refer to his age, never mind his death. It struck him that he had no idea how frightened his father might be of dying. After all these years, I know nothing at all about my father, he thought. And he probably knows equally little about me.

  His father was peering at him short-sightedly.

  “So, you’re well again, are you?” he said. “You’ve started work again. The last time you were here, before you went to that guesthouse at Skagen, you said you were going to quit being a police officer. You’ve changed your mind, have you?”

  “Something happened,” Wallander said. He would rather not get involved in a discussion about his job. They always ended up arguing.

  “I gather you’re a pretty good police officer,” his father said suddenly.

  “Who told you that?” Wallander said.

  “Gertrud. They’ve been writing about you in the newspapers. I don’t read them, but she claims they say you’re a good police officer.”

  “Newspapers say all kinds of things.”

  “I’m only repeating what she says.”

  “What do you say?”

  “That I tried to talk you out of joining, and I still think you should be doing something else.”

  “I don’t suppose I’ll ever stop,” Wallander said. “I’m nearing fifty. I’ll be a police officer as long as I work.”

  They heard Gertrud shouting that the food was on the table.

  “I’d never have thought you’d have remembered Anton and the Pole,” said his father as they walked over to the house.

  “It’s one of the most vivid memories I have of my childhood,” Wallander said. “Do you know what I used to call all those strange people who came to buy your paintings?”

  “They were art dealers,” his father said.

  “I know,” Wallander said. “But to me they were the Silk Knights.”

  His father stopped in his tracks and stared at him. He burst out laughing.

  “That’s an excellent name,” he said. “That’s exactly what they were. Knights in silk suits.”

  They said good-bye at the bottom of the steps.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to stay?” Gertrud asked. “There’s plenty of food.”

  “I’ve got work to do,” Wallander said.

  He drove back to Ystad through the dark autumn countryside. He tried to think what it was about his father that reminded him of himself.

  But he could not find the answer.

  On Friday, November 5, Wallander arrived at the station shortly after 7:00, feeling that he had caught up on his sleep and was raring to go. He made himself coffee, then spent the next hour preparing for the meeting of the investigation team that was due to start at 8:00. He drew up a schematic and chronological presentation of all the facts and tried to plan where they should go from there. He was keeping in mind that one or more of his colleagues might have come up with something the previous day that would throw new light on existing facts.

  He still had the feeling that there was no time to spare, that the shadows behind the two dead lawyers were growing and becoming more frightening.

  He put down his pen, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. He was at once back at Skagen, the beach stretching away in front of him, shrouded in fog. Sten Torstensson was there somewhere. Wallander tried to see past him to catch a glimpse of the people who must have followed him and were watching his meeting with the police officer on sick leave. They must have been close; for all that they were invisible, hidden among the dunes.

  He thought of the woman walking her dog. Could it have been her? Or the girl working in the art museum café? That seemed impossible. There must have been somebody else there in the fog, somebody neither Sten nor he had seen.

  He glanced at the clock. Time for the meeting. He gathered up his papers.

  The meeting went on for more than four hours, but by the end of it Wallander felt that they had made a breakthrough, that a pattern was now beginning to appear, although there was much that was still obscure and the evidence of the involvement of any particular individuals was as yet inconclusive. Nevertheless, they had agreed that there could hardly be any doubt that what they were dealing with was not a string of unassociated events, but a deliberate chain of acts, even if at this stage they could not be clear about the links. By the time Wallander was able to summarize their conclusions, the atmosphere was stuffy and Svedberg had started to complain of a headache, and they were all exhausted.

  “It’s possible, even probable, that this investigation will take a long time, but we’ll get all the bits of the jigsaw sooner or later. And that will lead to the solution. We must exercise the greatest care: we’ve already met with one booby trap, a mine. There may be more, metaphorically speaking. But now is the time to start ferreting away.”

  They had spent the morning going over their material—point by point—discussing it, evaluating it. They had scrutinized every detail from all possible points of view, tested various interpretations, and then agreed on how to proceed. They had reached a crucial moment in the investigation, one of the most critical stages at which it could so easily go wrong if any one of them had a lapse of concentration. All contradictory evidence had to be taken as the starting point of a positive and constructive reexamination, not as grounds for automatic oversimplification or too-swift judgments. It’s like being at the exploratory stage of designing a house, Wallander thought. We’re constructing many of different models, and we must not dismantle any one of them too hastily. All the models are built on the same foundation.

  It was almost a month ago that Gustaf Torstensson had died in the muddy field near Brösarp Hills. It was ten days since his son had been in Skagen and then murdered in his office. They kept coming back to those starting points.

  The first to give their report that morning was Martinsson, supported by Nyberg.

  “We’ve received the forensic analysis on the weapon and ammunition used to kill Sten Torstensson,” Martinsson said, holding up the documents. “There’s at least one point which we need to pay attention to.”

  Nyberg took over. “Sten Torstensson was hit by three nine millimeter rounds. Standard ammunition. But the most interesting thing is that the experts believe the weapon used was an Italian pistol known as a Bernadelli Practical. I won’t go into technical details as to why they think so. It could have been a Smith & Wesson 3914 or 5904, but it’s more likely to have been a Bernadelli. That pistol is rather rare in Sweden. There are no more than fifty or so registered. Of course, nobody knows how many illegal ones there might be floating about, but an informed guess would be about thirty.”

  “Who would want to use that Italian pistol?” Wallander said.

  “Somebody who knows a lot about guns,” Nyberg said. “Somebody who chose it for specific reasons.”

  “Are you saying it could be a foreign professional hit man?”

  “We shouldn’t disregard that possibility,” Nyberg said.

  “We’re going to go through the list of Bernadelli owners,” Martinsson said. “From first checks, no registered owner of a Bernadelli pistol has reported it missing.”

  They moved to the next point.

  “The license plate on one of the cars that followe
d you was stolen,” Svedberg said. “From a Nissan in Malmö. Malmö are looking into it. They’ve found lots of fingerprints, but we shouldn’t set our hopes very high.”

  Wallander agreed. “Anything else?” he said.

  “You asked me to dig out some facts about Kurt Ström,” Svedberg said.

  Wallander gave a brief account of his visit to Farnholm Castle and his meeting with the former policeman at the castle gates.

  “Kurt Ström was not a good advertisement for the police force,” Svedberg said. “He had dealings with several fences. What they never managed to prove but was almost certainly the case was that he tipped them off about police raids. He was kicked out, but there was no publicity.”

  Björk spoke for the first time. “This sort of thing is deplorable. We can’t afford to have people like Ström in the force. What’s troubling is that they then turn up in one of these security firms, no problem. The checks made on them are obviously nowhere near thorough enough.”

  Wallander refrained from commenting on Björk’s outburst. He knew from experience the risk of being sidetracked into a discussion that had no direct bearing on the case.

  “As for the explosion in your car,” Nyberg said, “we can be sure that the device was planted in your gas tank. I gather that this method of using the gas to eat its way through a fuse and delay the explosion is common in Asia.”

  “An Italian pistol,” Wallander said, “and an Asian car bomb. Where does that leave us?”

  “With a false conclusion, if we’re not careful,” Björk said firmly. “It needn’t be people from the other end of the world behind all this. Nowadays Sweden is a crossroads and a meeting place for everything you can think of.”

  “What did you find at the lawyers’ offices, Ann-Britt?”

  “Nothing yet that could be considered significant,” Höglund said. “It will take us a long time to take stock of all the material. The only thing that’s already definite is that Gustaf Torstensson’s clients diminished in number drastically over the last years. And that he seemed to spend all his time setting up companies, on financial advice, and drawing up contracts. I wonder whether we might need some help from the national CID, a specialist on financial crime. Even if no crime has been committed it’s probably beyond us to make out what may be behind all the various transactions.”

  “Make use of Åkeson,” Björk said. “He knows a lot about financial matters and crime. Then he can decide if he’s sufficiently on top of it or whether we need to send for reinforcements.”

  Wallander agreed and returned to his checklist.

  “What about the cleaner?” he said.

  “I’m going to meet her,” Höglund said. “I’ve spoken to her on the phone. She speaks Swedish well enough for an interpreter to be unnecessary.”

  Then it was Wallander’s turn. He told the meeting of his visit to Martin Oscarsson and the drive to Klagshamn and the birch woods where Borman was supposed to have hanged himself. As so often before, Wallander felt he had discovered new details when he reported to his colleagues on what had happened. Retelling the story sharpened his concentration.

  When he had finished, the atmosphere in the conference room was tense. We’re close to making significant progress, Wallander thought. “We have to find the link between Borman and the Torstensson law firm. What upset Borman so much that he sent threatening letters to the Torstenssons and even involved Mrs. Dunér? He accused them of what he called a serious injustice. We can’t be certain that it had anything to do with the scam inflicted on the county council, but I think we would do well to assume that, for the time being, this is what it was. In any case, this is the black hole in our investigation, and we must dredge our way into it with as much energy as we can muster.”

  The discussion was tentative at first. Everybody needed time for what Wallander had described to sink in.

  “I’m thinking about those threatening letters,” Martinsson said hesitantly. “I can’t get away from the feeling that they are so naive. So childish, almost innocent. I can’t get a clear sense of Borman’s nature.”

  “We’ll have to find out more,” Wallander said. “Let’s start by tracing his children. We should also telephone his widow in Marbella.”

  “I’d be happy to do that,” Martinsson said. “Borman interests me.”

  “The whole business of that investment firm Smeden will have to be thoroughly investigated,” Björk said. “I suggest we contact the fraud squad in Stockholm. Or maybe it would be better for Åkeson to do that. There are people there who know as much about the business world as the most skillful investment analysts.”

  “I’ll speak to Per,” Wallander said.

  They went backward and forward through the case all morning. Eventually they reached a point where everybody was losing their sharpness, and nobody seemed to have anything else to say. Björk had already left for one of his countless meetings with the district chief of police. Wallander decided it was time to bring the meeting to an end.

  “Two lawyers murdered,” he said. “Plus Lars Borman’s suicide, if that is what it was. We have the mine in Mrs. Dunér’s garden, and we have my car. Let no one forget that we’re dealing with extremely dangerous people, people who are keeping a close watch on everything we do. That means we all have to be tirelessly watchful ourselves.”

  They gathered their papers and left.

  Wallander drove to a restaurant nearby for lunch. He needed to be by himself. He was back at the police station just after 1:00, and spent the rest of the afternoon talking to the national CID and their fraud specialists. At 4:00 he went over to the prosecutor’s offices and spoke at length to Åkeson. Then he returned to his own office, and did not leave until nearly 10:00.

  He felt the need for fresh air. He was missing his long walks at Skagen, so he left his car at the station and walked home to Mariagatan. It was a mild evening, and he occasionally paused to look in store windows. He was home by 11:00.

  Half an hour later he was surprised by the phone ringing. He had just poured himself a glass of whiskey and settled in to watch a film on television. He went out to the hall and answered. It was Höglund.

  “Am I disturbing you?” she said.

  “Not in the least.”

  “I’m at the station,” she said. “I think I’m onto something.”

  Wallander did not hesitate. She would not have called if it hadn’t been very important. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said.

  She was in the hallway, waiting for him.

  “I need a cup of coffee,” she said. “There’s nobody in the canteen just now. Peters and Norén left a few minutes ago. There’s been an accident at the Bjäresjö crossroads.”

  They sat down at a table with their mugs of coffee.

  “There was a fellow student at college who paid his way through his studies by dealing on the stock exchange,” she said.

  Wallander looked at her in surprise.

  “I phoned him,” she said, almost apologetically. “It can be quicker to do things through personal contacts, if you have them. Anyway, I told him about STRUFAB, Sisyphus, and Smeden. I gave him the names Fjällsjö and Holmberg. He called me at home an hour ago. I came straight here.”

  Wallander could hardly wait to hear what was coming next.

  “I made notes of everything he said. The investment company Smeden has undergone a lot of changes in recent years. Boards of directors have come and gone, and on several occasions their shares have been suspended because of suspicions of insider trading and other infringements of stock exchange regulations. Substantial shareholdings have been changing hands with bewildering frequency, and it’s difficult to keep track of them. Smeden seems to have been a prime example of the irresponsible goings-on in the financial world. Until a few years ago. Then a number of foreign brokers, including firms in Britain, Belgium, and Spain, started buying shares, very discreetly. At first there was nothing to suggest that the same purchaser was acting through these various brokerage firms
. It was all done stealthily, and the brokers did nothing to attract attention to themselves. By this time everybody was so fed up with Smeden that nobody was taking the company seriously anymore, least of all the mass media. Every time the secretary-general of the Stockholm Stock Exchange met reporters, he would begin by asking them not to ask questions about Smeden because he was so irritated by everything about the company. Then one day such substantial holdings were acquired by the same group of brokers that it was no longer possible to avoid wondering who was so interested in this shady company with such a bad reputation. It transpired that Smeden had fallen into the hands of a not-exactly-unknown Englishman called Robert Maxwell.”

  “The name means nothing to me,” Wallander said. “Who is he?”

  “Was. He’s dead. He fell overboard from his luxury yacht off the Spanish coast a couple of years ago. There were rumors that he had been murdered. Something to do with Mossad, the Israeli secret service, and shadowy but large-scale arms deals. He owned newspapers and publishing houses, all registered in Liechtenstein, but when he died his empire collapsed like a house of cards. It was all built on borrowings, borrowings and embezzled pension funds. The bankruptcy was instantaneous and set off a tremendous crash.”

  “An Englishman?” Wallander said in astonishment. “What does that tell us?”

  “That it didn’t end there. The shares were passed on to somebody else.”

  “Who?”

  “There was something going on behind the scenes,” Höglund said. “Maxwell had been acting on behalf of somebody else who preferred to remain invisible. And that person was a Swede. A mysterious circle was finally closed.” She stared intently at him. “Can you guess who that person is?”