The Man Who Smiled

by Henning Mankell

  Wallander had just decided to declare the meeting closed when Åkeson put his hand up. “We must talk about the state of play in the investigation,” he said. “I have allowed you to concentrate on Alfred Harderberg for another month, but at the same time I can’t ignore the fact that we have only extremely thin evidence to justify it. It’s as if we’re drifting further away from something crucial with every day that passes. I think we’d all benefit from making one more clear and simple summary of how far we’ve gotten, based exclusively on the facts. Nothing else.”

  Everybody looked at Wallander. Åkeson’s comments came as no surprise, even if Wallander would have rather not been confronted by them.

  “You’re right,” he said. “We need to see where we are. Even without any results from the fraud squads’ analyses.”

  “Unraveling a financial empire doesn’t necessarily identify a murderer, let alone several,” Åkeson said.

  “I know that,” Wallander said, “but nevertheless, the picture is not complete without their information.”

  “There is no complete picture,” Martinsson said glumly. “There’s no picture at all.”

  Wallander could see he would need to get a grip on the situation before it slid out of control. To give himself time to gather his thoughts he suggested they should take a short break and clear the room. When they reassembled, he was firm and decisive.

  “I can see a possible pattern,” he began, “just as you all can. But let’s approach it from a different angle and begin by taking a look at what this case isn’t. There’s nothing to convince us that we’re dealing with a madman. It’s true, of course, that a clever psychopath could have planned a murder disguised as a car accident, but there are no apparent motives, and what happened to Sten Torstensson doesn’t seem to hang together with what happened to his father, from a psychopathic point of view. Nor do the attempts to blow up Mrs. Dunér and me. I say me rather than Höglund because I think that’s the way it was. Which brings me to the pattern that revolves around Farnholm Castle and Alfred Harderberg. Let’s go back in time. Let’s start with the day about five years ago when Gustaf Torstensson was first approached by Alfred Harderberg.”

  At that moment Björk came into the conference room and sat at the table. Wallander suspected that Åkeson had spoken to him during the short pause and asked him to be there for the rest of the meeting.

  “Gustaf Torstensson starts working for Harderberg,” Wallander began again. “It’s an unusual arrangement—one wonders how on earth a provincial lawyer can be of use to an international industrial magnate. One might suspect that Harderberg intended to use Torstensson’s shortcomings to his own advantage, expecting that he would be able to manipulate him if necessary. We don’t know that, it’s guesswork on my part. But somewhere along the way something unexpected happens. Torstensson starts to appear uneasy, or maybe I should say he appears to be depressed. His son notices, and so does his secretary. She even talks about him seeming to be afraid. Something else happens at about the same time. Torstensson and Lars Borman have gotten to know each other through a society devoted to the study of icons. Their relationship suddenly becomes strained, and we may assume that this has a connection with Harderberg because he’s somehow in the background of the fraud executed on the Malmöhus County Council. But the key question is: why did old man Torstensson start behaving in unexpected ways?

  “I suspect that he discovered something that upset him in the work he was doing for Harderberg. Perhaps it was the same thing that upset Borman. We don’t know what it was. Then Torstensson is killed in a stage-managed accident. Thanks to what Kurt Ström has told us, we can picture roughly what happened. Sten Torstensson comes to see me at Skagen. A few days later, he too is dead. He, no doubt, felt that he was in danger because he tries to set a false trail in Finland when in fact he went to Denmark. I’m convinced that somebody followed him to Denmark. Somebody watched our meeting on the beach. The people who killed Gustaf Torstensson were snapping at the heels of Sten Torstensson. They could not have known whether the father had discussed his discoveries with his son. Nor could they know what Sten said to me. Or what Mrs. Dunér knew. That’s why Sten dies, that’s why they try to kill Mrs. Dunér and why my car is torched. It’s also the reason why I am being watched and not the rest of you. But everything leads us back to the question of what old man Torstensson had discovered. We are trying to establish whether it has anything to do with the plastic container we found on the backseat of his car. It could also be something else that the financial analysts will be able to tell us. Come what may, there is a pattern here that starts with the cold-blooded killing of Gustaf Torstensson. Sten Torstensson sealed his fate when he came to see me in Skagen. In the background of the pattern all we have is Alfred Harderberg and his empire. Nothing else—not that we can see, at least.”

  When Wallander had finished, no one had a question.

  “You paint a very plausible picture,” Åkeson said when the silence began to feel oppressive. “You could conceivably be totally right. The only problem is that we don’t have a shred of proof, no forensic evidence at all.”

  “That’s why we must speed up the work that’s being done on the plastic container,” Wallander said. “We have to take the lid off Avanca and see what’s underneath. There must be a thread we can start to pull somewhere inside there.”

  “I wonder if we ought to have a down-to-earth talk with Kurt Ström,” Åkeson said. “Those men hanging around Harderberg all the time—who are they?”

  “That thought had occurred to me too,” Wallander said. “Ström might be able to throw some light on matters. But the moment we contact Farnholm Castle and ask to speak to Ström, Harderberg will realize we suspect him of being directly involved. And once that happens, I doubt that we will ever solve these murders. With the resources he has at his disposal he can sweep the ground clean all around him. On the other hand, I think I’ll pay him one more visit to lay our own false trail.”

  “You’ll have to be very convincing,” Åkeson said, “or he’ll see through you immediately.” He put his briefcase on the table and began putting away his files. “Kurt has described where we stand. It’s plausible, but it’s vague. However, let’s see what the fraud squads have to say for themselves on Monday.”

  The meeting broke up. Wallander felt uneasy. His own words were resounding inside his head. Perhaps Åkeson was right. Wallander’s summary had sounded plausible, but nevertheless would the course they were on end up leaving them unable to prove anything?

  Something has to happen, he thought. Something has to happen very soon.

  When Wallander looked back on the weeks that followed, he would think of them as among the worst he had ever experienced in all his years as a police officer. Contrary to his expectations, nothing at all happened. The financial experts went through everything over and over again, but all they had to say was that they needed more time. Wallander managed to curb his impatience—or perhaps what really happened was that he managed to suppress his disappointment, because he could see that the fraud squads were working as hard as they could. When Wallander tried to contact Ström again, he found that he had left for Västerås to bury his mother. Rather than chase him there, Wallander elected to wait. He never managed to make contact with the two Gulfstream pilots since they were always away with Harderberg. The only thing the team did achieve during this grim period was to get access to the flight plans of the private jet. Alfred Harderberg had an astonishing itinerary. Svedberg calculated that the fuel bill alone would come to many millions of kronor per year. The financial analysts copied the flight plans and tried to fit them in with Harderberg’s hectic schedule of business deals.

  Wallander met Sofia twice, on both occasions at the café in Simrishamn, but she had nothing more to report.

  It was December, and it seemed to Wallander that the investigation was close to collapse. Perhaps it had collapsed already.

  Nothing of any use to them happened. Nothing at all. />
  On Saturday, December 4, Höglund invited him for dinner. Her husband was at home, a brief pause between his unending trips around the globe looking for broken water pumps. Wallander had way too much to drink. The investigation was not mentioned once during the evening. It was very late by the time Wallander realized he should go home. He decided to walk. When he got to the post office on Kyrkogårdsgatan, he had to lean against a wall and throw up. When eventually he got home to Mariagatan, he sat with his hand on the telephone, meaning to call Baiba in Riga. But common sense prevailed and he called Linda in Stockholm instead. When she gathered who it was she was annoyed, and told him to call back the next morning. It was only after the brisk exchange was over that Wallander realized that she was probably not alone. That thought worried him, and he felt guilty as a result, but when he telephoned her the next day he did not refer to the matter. She told him about her work as an apprentice at an upholstery factory, and he could hear that she was happy with what she was doing. But he was disappointed that she made no mention of coming to visit him in Skåne for Christmas. She and a few friends had rented a cottage in the Västerbotten mountains. Eventually she asked him what he was up to.

  “I’m chasing a Silk Knight,” he said.

  “A Silk Knight?”

  “One of these days I’ll explain to you what a Silk Knight is.”

  “It sounds very attractive.”

  “But it isn’t. I’m a police officer. We rarely chase anybody or anything attractive.”

  Still nothing happened. On Thursday, December 9, Wallander was well on his way to giving up. The next day he would suggest to Åkeson that they should start looking at some other leads.

  But on Friday, December 10, something actually did happen. He did not know it at the time, but the wilderness days were over. When Wallander got to his office, there was a note on his desk asking him to phone Kurt Ström without delay. He hung up his jacket, sat at his desk, and dialed the number. Ström answered immediately.

  “I want to see you,” he said.

  “Here or at your home?” Wallander asked.

  “Neither,” Ström said. “I’ve got a cottage in Svartavägen in Sandskogen. Number 12. Can you be there in an hour?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Wallander put down the receiver and looked out of the window. Then he stood up, put on his jacket, and hurried out of the police station.

  16

  Rain clouds scudded across the sky.

  Wallander was nervous. Leaving the police station he had headed east, turned right down Jaktpaviljongsvägen, and stopped when he came to the youth hostel. Despite the cold and the wind he walked down to the deserted beach. He felt as if he had been transported back a few months in time. The beach was Jutland and Skagen, and he was once more on patrol, pacing up and down his territory.

  But that feeling passed just as quickly as it had come. He had no time for unnecessary daydreams. He tried to figure out why Ström had made contact with him. His restlessness was due to the hope that Ström might be able to give him something that would lead to the breakthrough they so badly needed. But he knew that was wishful thinking. Ström not only hated him personally, he had no time at all for the force that had cast him out. They could not count on receiving help from Ström. Wallander had no idea what the man wanted.

  It started raining. The raging wind sent him retreating to his car. He started the engine and turned up the heat. A woman walked past with her dog, heading for the beach. Wallander recalled the woman he kept seeing on the beach at Skagen. There was still almost half an hour to go before he was due to meet Ström in Svartavägen. He drove slowly back toward town and inspected the summer cottages at Sandskogen. He had no difficulty in identifying the red house Ström had described. He parked and walked into the little garden. The house looked like a magnified doll’s house. It was in a poor state of repair. As there was no car outside, Wallander thought he must have arrived first. But the front door opened and Ström was standing there.

  “I didn’t see a car,” Wallander said. “I thought you hadn’t come yet.”

  “But I had. You can forget about my car.”

  Wallander went in as directed. He was met by a faint smell of apples. The curtains were drawn and the furniture was covered by white sheets.

  “A nice house you have here,” Wallander said.

  “Who said it was mine?” Ström said, taking off two of the sheets.

  “I have no coffee,” he said. “You’ll have to make do without.”

  Wallander sat down in one of the chairs. The house felt raw and damp. Ström sat down opposite him. He was wearing a crumpled suit and a long, heavy overcoat.

  “You wanted to see me,” Wallander said. “Well, here I am.”

  “I thought we could strike a deal, you and me,” Ström said. “Let’s say that I have something you want.”

  “I don’t do deals,” Wallander said.

  “You’re too quick out of the gate,” Ström said. “If I were you I’d at least listen to what I have to say.”

  Wallander conceded the point. He should have waited before rejecting the offer. He gestured to Ström to continue.

  “I’ve been away from work for a couple of weeks, burying my mother,” he said. “That gave me a lot of time to think. Not least about why the police were interested in Farnholm Castle. After you’d been to my place I could see of course that you suspected the murder of those two lawyers had something to do with the castle. The problem is simply that I can’t understand why. I mean, the son had never been there. It was the old man who was dealing with Harderberg. The one we thought had died in a car accident.”

  He looked at Wallander, as if he were waiting for a reaction.

  “Go on,” Wallander said.

  “When I came back and started work again, I suppose I’d forgotten all about your visit,” he said. “But then something happened to put it in a new light.”

  Ström produced a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from an overcoat pocket. He offered the pack to Wallander, who shook his head.

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life,” Ström said, “it’s that you should keep your friends at arm’s length. But you can let your enemies get as close to you as they can.”

  “I take it that’s why I’m here,” Wallander said.

  “Could be,” Ström said. “You should know that I don’t like you, Wallander. As far as I’m concerned you represent the worst kind of upright bourgeois values the Swedish police force is stuffed so full of. But you can do deals with your enemies, or people you don’t like. Pretty good deals, even.”

  Ström disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a saucer to use as an ashtray. Wallander waited.

  “A new light,” Ström said again. “I came back to find out that I was going to be let go after Christmas. I hadn’t expected anything like that to happen. But it was obvious that Harderberg had decided to leave Farnholm.”

  It used to be Dr. Harderberg, Wallander noted. Now it’s plain Harderberg, and he has trouble spitting even that out.

  “Needless to say I was shattered,” Ström said. “When I accepted the job of security chief, I was assured that it was permanent. Nobody mentioned the possibility of Harderberg leaving the place. The wages were good, and I’d bought a house. Now I was going to be out of work again. I didn’t like it.”

  Wallander had been wrong. It was only possible that Ström had something important to tell him.

  “Nobody likes being let go,” Wallander said.

  “What would you know about that?”

  “Not as much as you do, obviously.”

  Ström stubbed out his cigarette. “Let’s spell it out,” he said. “You need inside information about the castle. Information you can’t get without advertising the fact that you’re interested. And you don’t want to do that. If you did you’d have just driven up and demanded an interview with Harderberg. I don’t care why you want information without anybody knowing about it. What is impor
tant, though, is that I’m the only one who can supply you with it. In exchange for something I want from you.”

  Wallander wondered if this was a trap. Was Harderberg pulling Ström’s strings? He decided not. Too risky, too easy for Wallander to see through it.

  “You’re right,” he said. “There are things I want to know, and without it being noticed. What do you want in return?”

  “Very little,” Ström said. “A piece of paper.”

  “A piece of paper?”

  “I have to think about my future,” Ström said. “If I have one, it’s not going to be in the private sector security service. When I got the job at Farnholm Castle, I had the impression that it was an advantage to be on bad terms with the Swedish police force. But, unfortunately, that can be a disadvantage in other circumstances.”