Sidetracked

by Henning Mankell

  “Aren’t those illegal in Sweden?” asked Höglund.

  “Yes, they are,” said Nyberg. “But there it was, in the sand just outside the cordon. We’re going to check it for prints. Maybe it’ll turn up something.”

  Nyberg put the plastic bag back in his case.

  “Could one man turn that boat over by himself?” asked Wallander.

  “Not unless he’s incredibly strong,” said Nyberg.

  “That means there were two of them,” Wallander replied.

  “The murderer could have dug out the sand under the boat,” said Nyberg hesitantly. “And then pushed it back in after he shoved Wetterstedt underneath.”

  “That’s a possibility,” said Wallander. “But does it sound plausible?”

  No-one at the table answered.

  “There’s nothing to indicate that the murder was committed inside the house,” Nyberg continued. “We found no traces of blood or other signs of a crime. No-one broke in. We can’t say whether anything was stolen, but it doesn’t appear so.”

  “Did you find anything else that seemed unusual?” asked Wallander.

  “I think the entire house is unusual,” said Nyberg. “Wetterstedt must have had a lot of money.”

  They thought about that for a moment. Wallander realised he should sum up.

  “It is important to find out when Wetterstedt was murdered,” he began. “The doctor who examined the body thought that it probably happened on the beach. He found grains of sand in the mouth and eyes. But we’ll have to wait to see what the doctors have to say. Since we don’t have any clues to go on or any obvious motive, we’ll have to proceed on a broad front. We have to find out what kind of man Wetterstedt was. Who did he associate with? What routines did he have? We have to understand his character, find out what his life was like. And we can’t ignore the fact that 20 years ago he was very famous. He was the minister of justice. He was very popular with some people, and he was hated by others. There were rumours of scandals that he was involved in. Could revenge be part of the picture? He was cut down with an axe and had his hair ripped off. He was scalped. Has anything like this happened before? Can we find any similarities with previous murders? Martinsson will have to get his computer going. And Wetterstedt had a housekeeper we’ll have to find and talk to, today.”

  “What about his political party?” asked Höglund.

  “I was just getting to that. Did he have any unresolved political disputes? Did he continue to see old party allies? We have to clear this up too. Is there anything in his background that might point to a conceivable motive?”

  “Since the news broke, two people have already called in to confess to the murder,” said Svedberg. “One of them called from a phone booth in Malmö. He was so drunk it was hard to understand what he said. We asked our colleagues in Malmö to question him. The other one who called was a prisoner at Österåker. His last leave was in February. So it’s quite clear that Gustaf Wetterstedt still arouses strong feelings.”

  “Those of us who have been around for a while know that the police hold a grudge too,” said Wallander. “During his tenure as minister of justice, a lot of things happened that none of us can forget. Of all the ministers of justice and national police chiefs, in my time anyway, Wetterstedt was the one who did the least for us.”

  They went over the various assignments and divided them up. Wallander himself was going to question Wetterstedt’s housekeeper. They agreed to meet again at 4 p.m.

  “A few more items,” said Wallander. “We’re going to be invaded by reporters. We’re going to be seeing headlines like ‘The Scalp Murderer’. So we might as well hold a news conference today. I would prefer not to have to run it.”

  “You must,” said Svedberg. “You have to take charge. Even if you don’t want to, you’re the one who does it best.”

  “All right, but I don’t want to do it alone,” said Wallander. “I want Hansson with me. And Ann-Britt. Shall we say 1 p.m.?”

  They were all about to leave when Wallander asked them to wait.

  “We can’t stop the investigation into the girl who burned herself to death,” he said.

  “You think there’s a connection?” Hansson asked in astonishment.

  “Of course not,” said Wallander. “But we still have to try and find out who she was, even though we’re busy working on Wetterstedt.”

  “We’ve no positive leads on our database search,” said Martinsson. “Not even on the combination of letters. But I promise to keep working on it.”

  “Someone must miss her,” said Wallander. “A young girl. I think this is very odd.”

  “It’s summer,” said Svedberg. “A lot of young people are on the road. It could take a couple of weeks before someone is missed.”

  “You’re right,” Wallander admitted. “We’ll have to be patient.”

  The meeting was over. Wallander had run it at a brisk pace since they all had a lot of work ahead of them. When he got to his office he went rapidly through his messages. Nothing looked urgent. He took a notebook out of a drawer, wrote “Gustaf Wetterstedt” at the top of the page, and leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

  What does his death tell me? What kind of person would kill him with an axe and scalp him? Wallander leaned over his desk again. He wrote:

  “Nothing indicates that Wetterstedt was murdered by a burglar, but of course that can’t be excluded yet. It wasn’t a murder of convenience either, unless it was committed by someone insane. The killer took the time to hide the body. So the revenge motive remains. Who would want to take revenge on Gustaf Wetterstedt, to see him dead?”

  Wallander put down his pen and read through the page with dissatisfaction. It’s too soon to draw conclusions, he thought. I have to know more. He got up and left the room. When he walked out of the station it had stopped raining. The meteorologist at Sturup was right. Wallander drove straight to Wetterstedt’s villa.

  The cordon on the beach was still there. Nyberg was already at work. Along with his crew he was busy removing the tarpaulins over a section of the beach. There were a lot of spectators standing at the edge of the cordon this morning.

  Wallander unlocked the front door with Wetterstedt’s key and then went straight to the study. Methodically he continued the search that Höglund had begun the night before. It took him almost half an hour to find the name of the woman Wetterstedt had called the “char-woman”. Her name was Sara Björklund. She lived on Styrbordsgången, which Wallander knew lay just past the big warehouses at the west end of town. He picked up the telephone on the desk and dialled the number. Eventually a harsh male voice answered.

  “I’m looking for Sara Björklund,” said Wallander.

  “She’s not home,” said the man.

  “Where can I get in touch with her?”

  “Who’s asking?” said the man evasively.

  “Inspector Kurt Wallander from the Ystad police.”

  There was a long silence at the other end.

  “Are you still there?” said Wallander, not bothering to conceal his impatience.

  “Does this have something to do with Wetterstedt?” asked the man. “Sara Björklund is my wife.”

  “I have to speak with her.”

  “She’s in Malmö. She won’t be back till this afternoon.”

  “When can I get hold of her? What time? Try to be exact!”

  “I’m sure she’ll be home by 5 p.m.”

  “I’ll come by your house then,” said Wallander and hung up.

  He left the house and went down to Nyberg on the beach.

  “Find anything?” he asked.

  Nyberg was standing with a bucket of sand in one hand.

  “Nothing,” he said. “But if he was killed here and fell into the sand, there has to be some blood. Maybe not from his back. But from his head. It must have spurted blood. There are some big veins in the scalp.”

  Wallander nodded.

  “Where did you find the spray can?” he asked.
/>   Nyberg pointed to a spot beyond the cordon.

  “I doubt it has anything to do with this,” said Wallander.

  “Me neither,” said Nyberg.

  Wallander was just about to go back to his car when he remembered that he had one more question for Nyberg.

  “The light by the gate to the garden is out,” he said. “Can you take a look at it?”

  “What do you want me to do?” Nyberg wondered. “Change the bulb?”

  “I just want to know why it’s not working,” said Wallander. “That’s all.”

  He drove back to the station. The sky was grey, but it wasn’t raining.

  “Reporters are calling constantly,” said Ebba as he passed the reception desk.

  “They’re welcome to come to the press conference at one o’clock,” said Wallander. “Where’s Ann-Britt?”

  “She left a while ago. She didn’t say where she was going.”

  “What about Hansson?”

  “I think he’s in Per Åkeson’s office. Should I find him for you?”

  “We have to get ready for the press conference. Get someone to bring more chairs into the conference room. There are going to be lots of people.”

  Wallander went to his office and started to prepare what he was going to say to the press. After about half an hour Höglund knocked on the door.

  “I was at Salomonsson’s farm,” she said. “I think I know where that girl got the petrol from.”

  “Salomonsson had petrol in his barn?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, that’s something,” said Wallander. “That means that she actually could have walked to the farm. She wouldn’t have had to come by car or bicycle.”

  “Could Salomonsson have known her?” she asked.

  Wallander thought for a moment before he answered.

  “No, Salomonsson wasn’t lying. He’d never seen her before.”

  “So the girl walks to the farm from somewhere. She goes into Salomonsson’s barn and finds a number of containers of petrol. She takes five of them with her out into the rape. Then she sets herself on fire.”

  “That’s about it,” said Wallander. “Even if we manage to find out who she was, we’ll probably never know the whole story.”

  They got coffee and discussed what they were going to say at the press conference. It was mid-morning when Hansson joined them.

  “I talked to Per Åkeson,” he said. “He told me he would contact the chief public prosecutor.”

  Wallander looked up from his papers in surprise.

  “Why?”

  “Wetterstedt was an important person. Ten years ago the prime minister of this country was murdered. Now we have a minister of justice murdered. I assume that he wants to know whether the investigation should be handled in any special way.”

  “If he were still in office I could understand it,” said Wallander. “But he was an old man who had left his public duties behind a long time ago.”

  “You’ll have to talk to Åkeson yourself,” said Hansson. “I’m just telling you what he said.”

  At 1 p.m. they took their seats on the little dais at one end of the conference room. They had agreed to keep the meeting with the press as brief as possible. The main thing was to head off too many wild, unfounded speculations. So they decided to be vague when it came to answering how Wetterstedt had actually been killed. They wouldn’t say anything at all about his having been scalped.

  The room was crowded with reporters. Just as Wallander had imagined, the national newspapers were regarding Wetterstedt’s murder as a major event. Wallander counted cameras from three different TV stations when he looked in the crowd.

  It went unusually well. They were as terse as possible with their answers, citing the requirements of the investigation for limiting candour and withholding detail. Eventually the press realised they weren’t going to get anything more. When the newspaper reporters had gone, Wallander allowed himself to be interviewed by the local radio station while Höglund answered questions for one of the TV stations. He looked at her and was relieved that for once he didn’t have to be the one on camera.

  At the end of the press conference Åkeson had slipped in unnoticed to the back of the room. Now he stood waiting for Wallander.

  “I heard you were going to call up the chief public prosecutor,” said Wallander. “Did he give you any directives?”

  “He wants to be kept informed,” said Åkeson. “The same way you keep me informed.”

  “You’ll get a daily summary,” said Wallander. “And hear as soon as we make a breakthrough.”

  “Nothing conclusive yet?”

  “No.”

  The investigative team had a quick meeting at 4 p.m. Wallander knew that this was the time for work, not reports. He went rapidly around the table before asking everyone to go back to their tasks. They agreed to meet again at 8 a.m. the next morning, provided nothing crucial happened before then.

  Just before 5 p.m. Wallander left the station and drove to Styrbordsgången, where Sara Björklund lived. It was a part of town that Wallander almost never visited. He parked and went in through the gate. The door was opened before he reached the house. The woman standing there was younger than he had expected. He guessed her to be around 30. And to Wetterstedt she had been a “charwoman”. He wondered fleetingly whether she knew what Wetterstedt had called her.

  “Good afternoon,” said Wallander. “I called earlier today. Are you Sara Björklund?”

  “I recognised you,” she said, nodding.

  She invited him in. She had set out a tray of buns and coffee in a thermos in the living-room. Wallander could hear a man upstairs scolding some children for making a racket. Wallander sat down in an armchair and looked around. He half expected one of his father’s paintings to be hanging on the wall. That’s all that’s missing, he thought. Here’s the old fisherman, the gypsy woman, and the crying child. My father’s landscape is all that’s needed. With or without the grouse.

  “Would you like coffee, sir?” she asked.

  “No need to call me sir,” said Wallander. “Yes, please.”

  “You had to be formal with Wetterstedt,” she said suddenly. “You had to call him Mr Wetterstedt. He gave strict instructions about that when I started working there.”

  Wallander was thankful to start right away on the matter in hand. He took out a notebook and pen.

  “So you know that Gustaf Wetterstedt has been murdered,” he began.

  “It’s terrible,” she said. “Who could have done it?”

  “We’re wondering the same thing,” said Wallander.

  “Was he really lying on the beach? Under that ugly boat? The one you could see from upstairs?”

  “Yes, he was,” said Wallander. “But let’s begin at the beginning. You cleaned the house for Mr Wetterstedt?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you been with him?”

  “Almost three years. I wasn’t working. This house costs money so I was forced to look for cleaning work. I found the job in the paper.”

  “How often did you go to his house?”

  “Twice a month. Every other Thursday.”

  Wallander made a note.

  “Always on Thursdays?”

  “Always.”

  “Did you have your own keys?”

  “No. He never would have given them to me.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “When I was in the house he watched every step I took. It was incredibly nerve-wracking. But he paid well.”

  “Did you ever come across anything odd?”

  “Such as?”

  “Was there ever anyone else there?”

  “No, never.”

  “He didn’t have people to dinner?”

  “Not that I know of. There were never any dishes waiting for me when I came.”

  Wallander paused for a moment before continuing.

  “How would you describe him as a person?”

  Her reply was swi
ft and firm.

  “He was the type you’d call arrogant.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “He patronised me. To him I was nothing more than a cleaning woman. Despite the fact that he once belonged to the party that supposedly represented our cause. The cleaning women’s cause.”

  “Did you know that he referred to you as a charwoman in his diary?”

  “That doesn’t surprise me in the least.”

  “But you stayed on with him?”

  “I told you, he paid well.”

  “Try to remember your last visit. You were there last week?”

  “Everything was as usual. He was just the way he always was.”

  “Over the past three years, then, nothing out of the ordinary happened?”

  She hesitated before she answered. He was immediately on the alert.

  “There was one time last year,” she began tentatively. “In November. I don’t know why, but I forgot what day it was. I went there on a Friday morning instead of Thursday. As I arrived, a big black car drove out of the garage. The kind with windows you can’t see through. Then I rang the bell at the front door as I always do. It took a long time before he came to open the door. When he saw me he was furious. He slammed the door. I thought I was going to get the sack. But when I came back the next time he said nothing about it, just pretended that nothing had happened.”

  Wallander waited for her to go on.

  “Was that all?”

  “Yes.”

  “A big black car leaving his house?”

  “That’s right.”

  Wallander knew that he wouldn’t get any further. He finished his coffee and stood up.

  “If you remember anything else that might be helpful to the enquiry, I’d appreciate it if you’d call me,” he said as he left.

  He drove back to Ystad.

  A big black car had visited Wetterstedt’s house. Who was in the car? A strong wind began to blow, and the rain started again.

  CHAPTER 9

  By the time Wallander returned to Wetterstedt’s house, Nyberg and his crew had moved back inside. They had carted off tons of sand without finding what they were looking for. When it started raining again, Nyberg immediately decided to lay out the tarpaulins. They couldn’t carry on until the weather improved. Wallander returned to the house feeling that what Sara Björklund had said about showing up on the wrong day and the big black car meant they had knocked a small hole in Wetterstedt’s shell. She had seen something that no-one was supposed to see. Wallander couldn’t interpret Wetterstedt’s rage in any other way, or the fact that he didn’t fire her and never spoke of it again. The anger and the silence were two sides of the same temperament.