The Man Who Smiled

by Henning Mankell

  He stopped by the steps and turned off his engine. The castle door opened as he climbed out of the car. When he was halfway up the steps a powerful gust made him stumble and he dropped his notebook. It was carried away by the wind. He shook his head and continued up the steps. A young woman with close-cropped hair was waiting to receive him.

  “Was that something important?” she asked.

  Wallander recognized her voice. “It was only a notebook,” he said.

  “We’ll send somebody out for it,” Jenny Lind said.

  Wallander contemplated her heavy earrings and the blue ribbons in her black hair.

  “There was nothing in it,” he said.

  She let him in and the door closed behind them.

  “You said you would have somebody with you,” she said.

  “They couldn’t make it.”

  Wallander noticed two men hovering in the shadows by the great staircase. He recalled the shadows he had seen on his first visit. He could not make out their faces, and wondered fleetingly if they really were alive, or just two suits of armor.

  “Dr. Harderberg will be here in a moment,” the girl said. “You can wait in the library.”

  She led him through a door to the left of the hall. Wallander could hear his footsteps echoing on the stone floor. He wondered how the woman in front of him could move so quietly, then he saw to his surprise that she was barefoot.

  “Isn’t it cold?” he said, indicating her feet.

  “There’s radiant floor heating,” she said impassively, and showed him into the library.

  “We’ll look for your notes,” she said, then left him and closed the door behind her.

  Wallander found himself in a large, oval-shaped room lined with bookshelves. In the middle was a group of leather chairs and a serving table. The lights were dim and, unlike the entrance hall, the library had oriental rugs on the floor. Wallander stood quite still and listened. He was surprised to hear no sound from the storm raging outside. Then he realized that the room was soundproof. This was where Gustaf Torstensson had spent the last evening of his life, where he had met his employer and several other, unknown, men.

  Wallander looked about him. Behind a column he discovered a large aquarium with strangely shaped fish slowly swimming around. He went closer to see if there was gold dust on the bottom: the sand certainly glittered. He continued his tour of the room. I am no doubt being observed, he thought. I can’t see any cameras, but they are there, hidden among the books, and they are sensitive enough to beam adequate pictures despite the dim lighting. There must be hidden tape recorders as well, of course. They expected me to have somebody with me. They would have left us alone together for a while in order to listen in on our conversation.

  Wallander did not hear Harderberg come into the room, but at a certain moment he knew he was no longer alone. He turned and saw a man standing beside one of the sumptuous leather chairs.

  “Inspector Wallander,” the man said, and smiled. What Wallander would remember afterward was that the smile never seemed to leave the man’s tanned face. He could never forget it.

  “Alfred Harderberg,” Wallander said. “I’m very grateful you were able to receive me.”

  “We all need to do our part when the police call,” Harderberg said.

  The voice was unusually pleasant. They shook hands. Harderberg was wearing an immaculate and no doubt very expensive pinstriped suit. Wallander’s first impression was that everything about him was perfect—his clothes, his way of moving, his way of speaking. And that smile never left his face.

  They sat down.

  “I’ve arranged for tea,” Harderberg said in a friendly tone. “I hope you take tea, Inspector?”

  “Yes, please,” Wallander said. “Especially in weather like this. The walls here at Farnholm must be very thick.”

  “You’re referring to the fact that we can’t hear the wind, I suppose,” Harderberg said. “You’re right. The walls are indeed very thick. They were built to offer resistance, both to enemy soldiers and to raging gales.”

  “It must have been rather difficult to land today,” Wallander said. “Did you arrive at Everöd or Sturup?”

  “I use Sturup,” Harderberg said. “You can go straight out into the international routes from there. But the landing was excellent. I have only the best pilots.”

  The African woman Wallander had met on his first visit emerged from the shadows. They sat in silence while she poured tea.

  “This is a very special tea,” Harderberg said.

  Wallander thought of something he had read that afternoon.

  “I expect it’s from one of your own plantations,” he said.

  The constant smile made it impossible to tell whether Harderberg was surprised that Wallander knew that he owned tea plantations.

  “I see you are well informed, Inspector Wallander,” he said. “It is true that we have a share in Lonrho’s tea plantations in Mozambique.”

  “It’s very good,” Wallander said. “It’s hard for me to imagine what is involved in doing business in all four corners of the world. A policeman’s existence is rather different. But then, I suppose you must have found it pretty hard yourself in the early days: from Vimmerby to tea plantations in Africa.”

  “They were indeed very long strides,” Harderberg said.

  Wallander noted that Harderberg ended the opening exchanges with an invisible full stop. He put down his teacup, feeling rather insecure. The man opposite radiated controlled but apparently unlimited authority.

  “I think we can keep this very brief,” Wallander said after a moment’s pause, during which he could not hear the slightest whisper from the storm outside. “The lawyer Gustaf Torstensson, who died in a car accident after visiting your castle, was in fact murdered. The accident was faked in order to conceal the crime. Besides whoever it was who killed him, you were the last person to see him alive.”

  “I must admit I find the whole business inconceivable,” Harderberg said. “Who on earth would want to kill poor old Gustaf Torstensson?”

  “That’s precisely the question we are asking ourselves,” Wallander said. “And who could be sufficiently cold-blooded to disguise it as a car accident?”

  “You must have some idea?”

  “Yes, we do, but I’m afraid I can say no more.”

  “I understand,” Harderberg said. “You will realize how disturbed we were by what happened. Old Torstensson was a trusted colleague.”

  “Things didn’t get any easier when his son, too, was murdered,” Wallander said. “Did you know him?”

  “I never met him. But I am aware of what happened, of course.”

  Wallander was feeling increasingly insecure. Harderberg seemed unmoved. Normally, Wallander could very quickly surmise whether or not a person was telling the truth, but this man, the man sitting opposite him, was different.

  “You have business interests all over the world,” Wallander said. “You preside over a empire with a turnover of billions. If I understand it correctly, yours is close to being listed among the world’s biggest enterprises.”

  “We shall overtake Kankaku Securities and Pechiney International next year,” Harderberg said. “And when we do, yes, we’ll be one of the top one thousand companies in the world.”

  “I’ve never heard of the companies you referred to.”

  “Kankaku is Japanese, and Pechiney is French,” Harderberg said.

  “It’s not a world I am at all familiar with,” Wallander said. “It must have been quite unfamiliar to Gustaf Torstensson too. For most of his life he was a simple provincial lawyer. But nevertheless you found a place for him in your organization.”

  “I freely admit that I was surprised myself. But when we decided to move our Swedish base to Farnholm Castle, I needed a lawyer with some local know-how. Torstensson was recommended to me.”

  “By whom?”

  “I’m afraid I can no longer remember that.”

  That’s it, Wallander though
t. He knows very well who it was, but he prefers not to say. A barely perceptible shift in his impassive features had not escaped Wallander’s notice.

  “I gather he dealt exclusively with financial advice,” Wallander said.

  “He made sure the transactions we had with the rest of the world were in accordance with Swedish law,” Harderberg said. “He was extremely meticulous. I had great faith in him.”

  “That last evening,” Wallander said. “I suppose you were sitting in this very room. What was the meeting about?”

  “We had made an offer for some properties in Germany that were owned by Horsham Holdings in Canada. I was due to meet Peter Munk a few days later to try to clinch the deal. We discussed whether there were any formal obstacles in the way. Our proposal was that we should pay partly in cash and partly in shares.”

  “Peter Munk? Who is he?”

  “The principal shareholder in Horsham Holdings,” Harderberg said. “He’s the one who runs the business.”

  “The discussions you had that night were routine?”

  “As I remember, yes.”

  “I understand that other persons were present,” Wallander said.

  “There were two directors from Banca Commerciale Italiana,” Harderberg said. “We had intended to pay for the German properties with some of our holdings in Montedison. The transaction was to be handled by the Italian bank.”

  “I’d be grateful for the names of those persons,” Wallander said. “In case it arises that we need to speak to them as well.”

  “Of course.”

  “Gustaf Torstensson left Farnholm Castle immediately after the meeting, I take it,” Wallander said. “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary about him that night?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “And you have no idea why he was murdered?”

  “I find it totally incomprehensible. An old man who led a solitary life. Who would want to kill him?”

  “That’s just it,” Wallander said. “Who would want to kill him? And who would want to shoot his son as well, a couple of weeks later?”

  “I thought you indicated that the police had a lead?”

  “We do have a lead,” Wallander said, “but we don’t have a motive.”

  “I wish I could help you,” Harderberg said. “If nothing else I’d like the police to keep me informed about developments in the case.”

  “It’s very possible that I may need to come back to you with some more questions,” Wallander said, getting to his feet.

  “I’ll answer them as best I can,” Harderberg said.

  They shook hands again. Wallander tried to look beyond the smile, beyond those ice-blue eyes. But somewhere along the line he came up against an invisible wall.

  “Did you buy those buildings?” Wallander asked.

  “Which buildings?”

  “In Germany.”

  The smile became even broader.

  “Of course. It was a very good deal. For us.”

  They took leave of each other at the door. Miss Lind was standing there in her bare feet, waiting to escort him out.

  “We’ve found your notebook,” she said as they walked through the big entrance hall, and she handed him an envelope.

  Wallander noticed that the shadows were no longer there. “This has the names of the two Italian bank directors,” Wallander said.

  She smiled.

  Everybody smiles, Wallander thought. Does that include the men in the shadows?

  Jenny Lind closed the door behind him. The gates opened silently, and Wallander felt relieved once he had passed through them. The gale hit him the moment he emerged from the castle grounds.

  This is where Gustaf Torstensson drove that night, he thought. At more or less the same time. He felt scared. He looked over his shoulder to make sure there was nobody in the backseat. But he was alone. A cold draft was forcing its way through the windows.

  He thought about Dr. Harderberg, the man who smiled. He’s the one, Wallander thought, the one who knows exactly what happened.

  12

  The hurricane-force gusts that had hit Skåne slowly moved away.

  Kurt Wallander had spent another sleepless night in his apartment. By dawn the storm seemed to be over. Several times during the night he had stood at his kitchen window, watching the light hanging over the street writhing around in the wind like a snake.

  Wallander had returned from the strange stage-set world of Farnholm Castle with the sense of having been put down. The smiling Dr. Harderberg had made him play the same obsequious role his father had performed before the Silk Knights when he was a child. As he watched the storm raging outside, he thought about how Farnholm Castle was but a variation of the sleek American cars that had swayed to a halt outside the house in Malmö where he had grown up. The loud-voiced Pole in his silk suit was a distant relation of the man in the castle with the soundproof library. Wallander had sat in Harderberg’s leather armchair, invisible cap in hand, and afterward he had the feeling of having been vanquished.

  OK, that was an exaggeration. He had done what he set out to do, asked his questions, met the man with so much power whom so few people had ever seen, and he had put Harderberg’s fears at rest, he was sure of that. Harderberg had no reason to think that he was considered anything but a prominent citizen beyond suspicion.

  At the same time Wallander was convinced now that they were on the right track, that they had overturned the stone which hid the secret of why the two lawyers had been murdered, and under that stone he had seen Alfred Harderberg’s image. What he would have to do now was not merely wipe that smile off the man’s face, he also had to slay a giant.

  Over and over through that sleepless night he had replayed his conversation with Harderberg. He had pictured his face and tried to interpret the slight shifts in that silent smile, the way one tries to crack a secret code. Once he had hovered on the brink of an abyss, he was certain of that. This was when he had asked Harderberg who had recommended Gustaf Torstensson to him. The smile had shown signs of cracking, if only for a second, no doubt about it. So there were moments when Harderberg could not avoid being human, vulnerable, exposed. But there again, it did not necessarily mean much. It might just have been the momentary and irresistible weariness of the ever-busy world traveler, the barely discernible weakness of a man who no longer had the strength to put on a polite front while allowing himself to be questioned by this insignificant police officer from Ystad.

  Wallander believed that this was where he would make the first move if he was going to slay the giant, wipe that smile off his face, and discover the truth behind the death of the two lawyers. He had no doubt that the skillful and persistent officers in the fraud squad would uncover information that would be useful to them in the investigation. But as the night wore on Wallander had become increasingly convinced that it was Harderberg himself who would put them on the right track. Somewhere, sometime, the man with the smile would leave a trail which would enable them to hunt him down and use what they found to finish him off.

  Wallander knew that it had not been Harderberg himself who had committed the murders. Nor had he planted the mine in Mrs. Dunér’s garden. Or been in the car that had followed Wallander and Höglund to Helsingborg. Nor put the explosives in the gas tank. Wallander had noticed that Harderberg had repeatedly said we and us. Like a king, or a crown prince. But also like a man who knew the importance of surrounding himself with loyal colleagues who never questioned the instructions they were given.

  It seemed to Wallander that this trait also applied to Gustaf Torstensson, and he could understand why Harderberg had chosen to include him among his staff. He could expect total loyalty from Torstensson. Torstensson would always understand that his place at table was below the salt. Harderberg had presented him with an opportunity he could never have imagined in his wildest dreams.

  Maybe it’s as simple as that, Wallander thought as he watched the swaying street light. Maybe Gustaf Torstensson had discovered somethin
g he would not or could not accept? Had he also discovered a crack in that smile? A crack which gave him occasion to confront himself with the unpleasant role he had in fact been playing?

  From time to time Wallander had left the window and sat at his kitchen table. Written his thoughts on a notepad and tried to make sense of them.

  At 5 A.M. he had made himself a cup of coffee. Then he had gone to bed and dozed until 6:30. Got up again, showered, and had another cup of coffee. Then he had made his way to the police station at 7:30. The storm had given way to a clear blue sky, and it felt distinctly colder. Although he had hardly slept, he felt full of energy as he stepped into his office. Second wind, he had thought on his way to the station. We’re no longer feeling our way into an investigation, we’re in the thick of it. He flung his jacket over the back of the visitor’s chair, got a cup of coffee, phoned Ebba in reception, and asked her to get hold of Nyberg for him. While he was waiting he read through his summary of the conversation with Harderberg. Svedberg stuck his head in the door and asked how it had gone.

  “You’ll hear all about it shortly,” Wallander said. “But I do think the murders and all the rest of it originate from Farnholm Castle.”

  “Ann-Britt phoned to say she would be going straight to Ängelholm,” Svedberg said. “To meet Lars Borman’s widow and children.”

  “How’s her progress with Harderberg’s jet?”

  “She didn’t mention that,” Svedberg said. “I suppose it will take a while.”

  “I feel so impatient,” Wallander said. “I wonder why?”

  “You always have been. And you’re the only one who doesn’t seem to be aware of it,” Svedberg said as he left.

  As soon as Nyberg came in, Wallander could see that something was up. He asked him to close the door behind him.

  “You were right,” Nyberg said. “The plastic container we were examining the other night is hardly the sort of thing that belongs in a lawyer’s car.”