The Man Who Smiled

by Henning Mankell

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you saw a car?”

  “I’ve already answered more than one question.”

  “Quit the bullshit, Ström. It’s the same question. What make of car was it? And who was in it?”

  “It was one of the cars that belong to the castle. A BMW.”

  “Who was in it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your life will turn extremely unpleasant if you don’t answer!”

  Wallander discovered that he did not need to pretend to be furious. He was already furious.

  “I honestly don’t know who was in the car.”

  Wallander could see that Ström was telling the truth. He should have realized.

  “Because the windows were tinted,” Wallander said. “So you can’t see who’s inside. Is that right?”

  Ström nodded. “You’ve got your answer,” he said. “Now get the hell out of here.”

  “Always a pleasure to bump into former colleagues,” Wallander said. “And you’re absolutely right, it is time I left. Nice talking to you.”

  The dogs started barking as soon as he turned his back. As he drove off Ström was still standing in the doorway, watching him go. Wallander could feel the sweat inside his shirt. He remembered that Ström could be violent.

  But he had gotten a plausible answer to a question that had been troubling him. The starting point for what happened that October night when Gustaf Torstensson died, alone in his car. He had a good idea now how it had occurred. While Torstensson sat back in one of the sumptuous leather armchairs chatting to Harderberg and the Italian bankers, a car had left Farnholm Castle to lie in wait for the old man as he drove home. Somehow, by a display of force or cunning or convincing friendliness, they had gotten him to stop his car on that remote, carefully chosen stretch of road. Wallander had no idea if the decision to prevent Torstensson from reaching home had been made that same night or earlier, but at least he could now see the makings of an explanation.

  He thought about the men lurking in the shadows in the entrance hall. Then he shuddered as he thought about what had happened the previous night.

  Without realizing it, he pressed harder on the accelerator. By the time he came to Sandskogen he was going so fast that if he had been stopped he would have had his license suspended on the spot. He slowed down. When he reached Ystad he stopped at Fridolf ’s Café and had a cup of coffee. He knew what advice Rydberg would have given him.

  Patience, he would have said. When stones start rolling down a slope, it’s important not to start running after them right away. Stay where you are and watch them rolling, see where they come to a stop. That’s what he would have said.

  And he would have been right, Wallander thought. That’s how we’re going to proceed.

  In the days to come Wallander had evidence once more of how he was surrounded by colleagues who did not stint on effort when it was really needed. They had already been working intensively, but nobody protested when Wallander announced that they were going to have to work even harder. It had started that Wednesday afternoon when Wallander called the team to the conference room; Åkeson attended despite his diarrhea and high temperature. They all agreed that Harderberg’s business empire should be unraveled and mapped out with the greatest possible speed. While the meeting was in progress Åkeson contacted the fraud squads in Malmö and Stockholm. The others present listened in admiration as he described how the need for them to work harder and give the job the highest priority was more or less essential if the country were to survive. When he hung up, the meeting burst into spontaneous applause.

  On Åkeson’s advice they had decided that they would continue to concentrate on Avanca themselves without worrying about running into conflict with the work being done by the fraud squads. Wallander also established that Höglund was the best qualified officer for this task. Nobody objected, and from that moment on she was no longer a raw recruit but a fully fledged member of the investigative team. Svedberg took over some of the work she had been doing before, including the efforts to obtain the flight plans of Harderberg’s aircraft. There was some discussion between Wallander and Åkeson about whether this was a sufficiently valuable source of information to warrant the effort. Wallander argued that sooner or later they would have to establish Harderberg’s movements, not least on the day Sten Torstensson died. Åkeson maintained that if it really did now seem likely that Harderberg was behind what had happened, he would have access to state-of-the-art resources and could be in contact with Farnholm Castle even if he were crossing the Atlantic in his Gulfstream, or in the Australian outback, where the financial experts claimed he had substantial mining interests. Wallander could see Åkeson’s point and was just about to cave in when Åkeson threw up his hands and said he had only been adding a personal point of view and did not want any obstacles in the way of work that was ongoing.

  When it came to the recruitment of the stable girl Sofia, Wallander made a presentation that Höglund went out of her way to congratulate him on in private afterward. Wallander knew that not only might Björk and Åkeson protest, but that Martinsson and Svedberg might object to involving a complete outsider in the investigation. Without actually lying, although perhaps he was economical with the truth, Wallander explained that by chance they had acquired a source of information at Farnholm Castle, somebody Wallander happened to know, who was looking after the horses there. He provided this information more or less in passing, just as a tray of sandwiches had been delivered and nobody was listening with more than half an ear to what he was saying. He exchanged glances with Höglund, and could tell that she had seen through his tactic.

  Afterward, when they had finished the sandwiches and aired the room, Wallander described how his apartment had been watched the previous night. He did not mention, however, that the man in the car had actually been inside his place. He was afraid that information would lead Björk to apply the brakes and put restrictions on what they could or could not do for security reasons. Svedberg was able to supply the astonishing news that the car was registered to a person who lived in Östersund and was the manager of a holiday camp in the Jämtland mountains. Wallander insisted that the man be investigated, the holiday camp as well. If Harderberg had interests in Australian mines there was no reason why he should not also be involved in a winter sports establishment in the north of Sweden. The meeting ended with Wallander telling them about his meeting with Ström. On hearing his account the room fell silent.

  “That was the detail we needed,” Wallander said afterward to Höglund. “Police officers are practical people. The little fact that a car left Farnholm Castle before old man Torstensson began his final journey means that all the vague and obscure aspects of the sequence of events now have a little detail to rest on at last. If that is what happened, and it could very well have been, we’ve also got confirmation of the fact that Torstensson was murdered in a cold-blooded and well-planned operation. That means we know we’re looking for a solution to something where nothing is coincidental. We can forget accidents and dramatic passions. We know now where we don’t need to look.”

  The meeting had ended in a mood Wallander interpreted as resolute determination. That was what he had been hoping for. Before Åkeson went home to bed he had joined in a discussion with Björk and Wallander. They talked about the press conference the following day. Wallander had urged that, without actually telling lies, they could maintain that they had a lead to follow, but that they could not yet give any details for reasons associated with the investigation.

  “But,” Åkeson wondered, “how are you going to describe the lead without Harderberg realizing that it points to Farnholm Castle?”

  “A tragedy arising from somebody’s private life,” Wallander said.

  “That doesn’t sound particularly credible,” Åkeson objected. “It’s also a suspiciously thin basis on which to call a press conference. Make sure you’re fully prepared. You need to have detailed and definite answers to
every likely question.”

  Wallander drove home after the meeting.

  He examined his telephone to see if there was any sign of a bug. He found nothing, but nevertheless decided that from now on he would not discuss anything to do with Harderberg on the phone from home.

  Then he took a shower and changed his clothes.

  He had dinner at the pizzeria on Hamngatan. Then he spent the rest of the evening preparing for the press conference. Now and then he went to the kitchen window and looked down into the street, but there was only his own car parked outside.

  The press conference went more smoothly than Wallander had expected. The murder of the two lawyers was apparently not considered by the media to be of great public interest, and so there were not many newspapers represented, no television, and the local radio station only ran a short item.

  “That should keep Harderberg calm,” Wallander said to Björk when the reporters had left the police station.

  “Unless he can read our minds,” Björk said.

  “He can speculate, of course,” Wallander said, “but he can’t be completely sure.”

  When he got back to his office he found a message on his desk to phone Mr. S. Widén. He dialed the number and after it had been ringing for a very long time, Widén answered.

  “You called,” Wallander said.

  “Hi there, Roger,” Widén said. “Our friend called me a few minutes ago. She was in Simrishamn. She had something to say that I think might be of interest to you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That her job is evidently going to be short-lived.”

  “What does she mean by that?”

  “It looks as if her employer is preparing to leave his castle.”

  Wallander was struck dumb.

  “Are you still there?” Widén said, eventually.

  “Yes,” Wallander said. “I’m still here.”

  “That was all,” Widén said.

  15

  By the time Ove Hanson returned to work in Ystad on the afternoon of November 25, he had been away for more than a month. He had been in Halmstad attending a course on computerized crime-solving arranged by the National Police Board. After Sten Torstensson’s murder he had contacted Björk and asked if he should abandon the course and return to duty in Ystad, but Björk had told him to stay. That was when he first heard Wallander had come back to work. The same evening he had telephoned Martinsson from his hotel to check whether it could really be true. Martinsson had confirmed it, and added that personally he thought that Wallander seemed more energetic than ever.

  Even so, Hanson had not been prepared for what was in store for him when he returned and paused outside the office he had been using while Wallander had been away. He tapped on the door and went right in without waiting to be asked, but almost jumped out of his skin at what he saw, and started to leave again immediately. Wallander was standing in the middle of the room holding a chair over his head, and staring at Hanson with a look on his face that could only be described as lunatic. It all happened very quickly and Wallander put the chair down, his expression returning to normal. But the image had burned itself into Hanson’s memory. For a long time afterward Hanson kept it to himself, and he wondered when Wallander would finally break down and go insane.

  “I see I’ve come at a bad moment,” Hanson said. “I was just going to say hello and tell you I’m back on duty.”

  “Did I scare you?” Wallander asked. “That wasn’t the intention. I’ve just had a phone call that made me furious. It’s a good thing you came in when you did, or I’d have smashed the chair against the wall.”

  Then they sat down, Wallander behind his desk and Hanson on the chair he had inadvertently saved from destruction. Hanson was one of the detectives Wallander knew least well, although they’d been working together for many years. They were like chalk and cheese in character and approach, and often got into awkward discussions that turned into screaming arguments. Nevertheless, Wallander respected Hanson’s ability. He could be abrupt and obstinate and difficult to work with, but he was thorough and persistent, and could occasionally surprise his colleagues with cleverly worked-out analyses that could make a breakthrough in a seemingly insoluble case. Wallander had at times missed Hanson over the past month. He had seriously considered asking Björk to call him back, but had never gotten around to doing anything about it.

  He knew too that Hanson was probably the colleague who would have had fewest regrets if Wallander had never come back to work. Hanson was ambitious, which was not of itself a bad thing for a police officer, but he had never been able to accept that Wallander had taken over Rydberg’s invisible mantle. Hanson thought he was the one who should have assumed it. But it was not to be, and as a result Hanson had never managed to overcome his antagonism.

  From Wallander’s side there were other factors, such as his irritation at Hanson spending so much of his time betting on horses. His desk was always piled high with racing cards and betting systems. Wallander was persuaded that Hanson sometimes spent half his working day trying to figure out how hundreds of horses at courses up and down the country were going to perform at their next outings. And Wallander knew that Hanson couldn’t bear opera.

  But now they were facing each other across the desk, and Hanson was back on duty. He would strengthen the team, extend their scope. That was all that mattered.

  “So you came back,” Hanson said. “The last I heard you were about to resign.”

  “Sten’s murder made me reconsider,” Wallander said.

  “And then you found out that his father had been murdered as well,” Hanson said. “We had that down as an accident.”

  “It was cleverly disguised,” Wallander said. “My finding that chair leg in the mud was pure luck.”

  “Chair leg?” Hanson sounded surprised.

  “You’ll have to set aside time to get up to speed on the details of the case,” Wallander said. “You’re going to be crucial, make no mistake about it. Not least after that call I’d just received when you came in.”

  “What was it about?” Hanson said.

  “It looks as if the man we’re putting all our resources into pinning down intends to move away. That would cause us enormous problems.”

  “I’d better start reading.”

  “I would have liked to give you a thorough rundown myself,” Wallander said, “but I don’t have the time. Talk to Ann-Britt. She’s good at summarizing what matters and leaving out what doesn’t.”

  “Is she really?” Hanson asked.

  Wallander stared at him. “Is she what?”

  “Good. Is Höglund good?”

  Wallander remembered something Martinsson had said when he had first come back to work, to the effect that Hanson thought his position was threatened by Höglund’s arrival on the scene.

  “Yes,” Wallander said. “She’s a good police officer already, and she’s going to get even better.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Hanson said, getting to his feet.

  “You’ll see,” Wallander said. “Let me put it this way: Ann-Britt Höglund’s here to stay.”

  “I think I’d prefer to talk to Martinsson,” Hanson said.

  “You do as you wish,” Wallander said.

  Hanson was already halfway out of the door when Wallander asked him another question.

  “What did you do in Halmstad?”

  “Thanks to the National Police Board, I had an opportunity to look into the future,” Hanson said. “When police officers all over the world will be sitting at their computers, tracking down criminals. We’ll be part of a communications network covering the whole world and all the information collected by forces in different countries will be available to everybody by means of cleverly constructed databases.”

  “Sounds frightening,” Wallander said. “And boring.”

  “But probably also very efficient,” Hanson said. “Of course, I imagine we’ll both be retired by then.”

  “Höglund
will see it,” Wallander said. “Is there a racecourse in Halmstad, by the way?”

  “One night a week,” Hanson said.

  “How did you do?”

  Hanson shrugged. “Up and down,” he said. “Usual thing. Some horses run as they should. Others don’t.”

  Hanson left, closing the door behind him. Wallander thought of the fury that had welled up inside him when he heard that Harderberg was making preparations to move out. He rarely lost his temper completely, and he could not remember the last time he had so lost control that he had started throwing things around.

  Now that he was alone again in his office, he tried to think calmly. The apparent fact that Harderberg intended to leave Farnholm Castle did not necessarily mean anything more than that he had decided to do what he had done many times before: move on to new pastures. There was no good reason to think that he was running away. What was there for him to run away from? And where would he run to? At worst it would make the investigation more complicated. Other police districts would have to be involved, depending on where he decided to settle.

  It was a possibility that Wallander needed to look into without delay. He phoned Widén. One of the girls answered. She sounded very young.

  “Sten’s in the stables,” she said. “The blacksmith’s here.”

  “He has a telephone out there,” Wallander said. “Put me through.”

  “The stables phone is out of order,” the girl said.

  “Then you’ll have to go and get him. Tell him Roger Lundin wants to speak to him.”

  It was almost five minutes before he came to the phone.

  “What is it now?” he asked. He was obviously annoyed at having been disturbed.

  “Sofia didn’t happen to say where Harderberg was going to move to, did she?”

  “How the hell would she know?”

  “I’m only asking. She didn’t say anything about him intending to leave the country?”

  “She only said what I told you. Nothing more.”