Sidetracked

by Henning Mankell

  “Are you sure?”

  “At least half a million. Maybe more.”

  “Speak up a little, will you?”

  “We must have a bad connection.”

  “Where are they coming from?”

  “A house in Limhamn.”

  His father sounded less irritable. His interest was caught. Hoover had chosen stamps because his father had once taken his own collection – which Hoover had worked on for a long time – and sold it.

  “Can’t it wait until tomorrow? The match against Brazil is starting soon.”

  “I’m leaving for Denmark tomorrow. Either you take them tonight, or someone else will.”

  Hoover knew his father would never let such a large sum of money fetch up in someone else’s pocket. He waited, still completely calm.

  “All right, I’ll come,” his father said. “Where are you?”

  “At the boat club in Limhamn. The car park.”

  “Why aren’t you in Malmö?”

  “I told you it was a house in Limhamn, didn’t I?”

  “I’ll be there,” said his father.

  Hoover hung up and put on his helmet.

  He left the telephone card sitting in the phone. He had plenty of time to ride out to Limhamn. His father always got undressed before he started drinking. And he never did anything in a hurry. His laziness was as vast as his greed. He started up the moped and rode through the city until he came out on the road that led to Limhamn. There were only a few cars in the car park outside the boat club. He ditched the moped behind some bushes and threw away the keys. He pulled off his helmet and took out the axe. He put the helmet into his backpack carefully so he wouldn’t damage the glass bottle.

  Then he waited. His father usually parked his van in one corner of the car park when he was delivering stolen property. Hoover guessed that he would do so now. His father was a creature of habit. And he was already drunk, his judgement muddled and reactions dulled.

  After 20 minutes Hoover heard the van. The headlights swept across the trees before his father turned into the car park. Just as Hoover had expected, he stopped in the corner. Hoover ran barefoot across the car park until he reached the van. When he heard his father open the driver’s door, he moved quickly around to the other side. His father looked out towards the car park with his back to him. Hoover raised the axe and struck him on the back of the head with the blunt end. This was the most critical moment. He didn’t want to hit him so hard that he’d die, but hard enough that his father, who was big and very strong, would be knocked out.

  His father fell without a sound to the pavement. Hoover waited a moment with the axe raised, but he lay still. He reached for the car keys and unlocked the side doors of the van, dragging him over to it. It took Hoover several minutes to get the whole body inside. He got his backpack, climbed into the van, and shut the doors. He turned on the overhead light. His father was still unconscious. With the rope he tied his hands behind his back, and then his legs to a post supporting one of the seats. Next he taped his mouth shut and turned off the light. He climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. His father had taught him to drive a few years earlier. He pulled out of the car park and headed towards the ring road that skirted Malmö. Since his face was painted he didn’t want to drive where the streetlights could shine through the van’s windows. He drove out onto the E65 and continued east. It was just before 10 p.m. The game was about to begin.

  He had found the place by accident. He had been on his way back to Malmö after observing the police at work on the beach outside Ystad, the beach where he had carried out the first sacred task given to him by his sister. He was driving along the coast when he discovered the dock, which was almost impossible to see from the road. He realised at once that he had found the right place.

  An hour later he reached the place and turned off the road with his headlights off. His father was still unconscious but was moaning softly. He hurried to loosen the rope tied to the seat and pulled him out of the van. The man groaned as Hoover dragged his body down to the dock. He turned him over on his back and tied his arms and legs to its iron rings. His father looked like an animal skin stretched out to dry. He was dressed in a wrinkled suit, his shirt unbuttoned down to his belly. Hoover pulled off his shoes and socks. Then he got the backpack from the van. There was a light breeze. A few cars drove past up on the road, but their headlights missed the dock.

  When he returned, his father was conscious. His eyes were wide. He jerked his head back and forth, thrashing his arms and legs. Hoover couldn’t resist stopping in the shadows to watch him. He no longer saw a human being before him. His father had undergone the transformation he had planned for him. He was an animal.

  Hoover came out of the shadows and went out on the dock. His father stared at him. Hoover realised he didn’t recognise him. He thought about the fear he had felt when his father stared at him. Now the tables were turned. Terror had changed its shape. He leaned down close to his father’s face, so that he could see through the paint and realise it was his own son. This would be the last thing he would see. This would be the image he would carry with him when he died.

  Hoover had unscrewed the cap on the glass bottle and was holding it behind his back. Quickly he poured a few drops of hydrochloric acid into his father’s left eye. Somewhere underneath the tape the man started screaming. He struggled with all his might. Hoover pulled open his other eyelid and poured acid into that eye. Then he stood up and threw the bottle into the sea. Before him was a beast thrashing back and forth in its death throes. Hoover looked down at his own hands again. His fingers were quivering a little. That was all. The beast lying on the dock in front of him was twitching spasmodically. Hoover took his knife out of his backpack and cut off the skin from the top of the animal’s head. He raised the scalp to the night sky. Then he took his axe and smashed it straight through the beast’s forehead with such force that the blade stuck in the wood underneath.

  It was over. Soon his sister would be brought back to life.

  Just before 1 a.m. he drove into Ystad. The town was deserted. For a long time he had wondered whether he was doing the right thing. But Geronimo’s beating heart had convinced him. He had seen the police fumbling on the beach, he had watched them move as if in a fog outside the farm he had visited. Geronimo had exhorted him to defy them.

  He turned in at the railway station. He had already picked the spot. Work was under way to replace some old sewerage pipes. There was a tarpaulin covering the excavation. He turned off the headlights and rolled down the window. From a distance he could hear some men yelling drunkenly. He got out of the van and drew back part of the tarpaulin. Then he listened again. Silence. Quickly he opened the doors of the van, dragged his father’s body out, and shoved him into the hole. He replaced the tarpaulin, started the engine and drove off. It was just before 2 a.m. when he parked the van in the outdoor car park at Sturup Airport. He checked carefully to see if he had forgotten anything. There was a lot of blood in the van. He had blood on his feet. He thought about all the confusion he was going to cause, how the police would fumble even more.

  Suddenly he stopped and stood motionless.

  The man who had left the country might not return. He’d need a replacement. He thought about the policemen he had seen on the beach by the overturned boat. He thought about the ones he had seen outside the farmhouse where the Midsummer party was held. One of them. One of them would be sacrificed so that his sister could come back to life. He would choose one. He would find out their names and then toss stones onto a grid, just as Geronimo had done, and he would kill the one that chance selected for him.

  He pulled the helmet down over his head. Then he went over to his moped, which he had ridden there the day before and left parked under a lamppost, taking a bus back to Malmö. He started up the engine and rode off. It was already light when he buried his father’s scalp underneath his sister’s window.

  Carefully he unlocked the door to the flat in Rosen
gård. He stood still and listened. Then he peeked into the room where his brother lay sleeping. Everything was quiet. His mother’s bed was empty. She was lying on the sofa in the living-room, sleeping with her mouth open. Next to her on the table stood a half-empty wine bottle. He covered her gently with a blanket. Then he locked himself in the bathroom and wiped the paint from his face.

  It was almost 6 a.m. before he undressed and went to bed. He could hear a man coughing outside on the street. His mind was completely blank. He fell asleep at once.

  Skåne

  29 June – 4 July 1994

  CHAPTER 20

  The man who lifted the tarpaulin screamed. Then he fled.

  One of the ticket agents was standing outside the railway station smoking a cigarette. It was just before 7 a.m. on the morning of 29 June, and it was going to be a hot day. The agent was wrenched from his thoughts, which were focused less on selling tickets than on the trip he was about to take to Greece. He turned when he heard the scream. He saw the man drop the tarpaulin and run off towards the ferry terminal. The ticket agent flicked away his cigarette butt and walked over to the pit. He stared down at a bloody head for a moment, then dropped the tarpaulin as if it had burned him. He ran into the station, tripping over a couple of suitcases left in the middle of the floor, and grabbed one of the phones inside the stationmaster’s office.

  The call arrived at the Ystad station on the 90–000 line just after 7 a.m. Svedberg, who was in unusually early that morning, was summoned to take the call. When he heard the agent talking about a bloody head he froze. His hand shook as he wrote down a single word, station, and hung up. He dialled the wrong number twice before managing to get hold of Wallander.

  “I think it’s happened again,” said Svedberg.

  For a few brief seconds Wallander didn’t understand what Svedberg meant, even though every time the phone rang he feared that very thing. But now he experienced a moment of shock, or perhaps a desperate attempt at denial.

  He knew he would never forget this moment. Fleetingly he thought that it was like having a premonition of his own death, a moment when denial and escape were impossible. I think it’s happened again. He felt as if he were a wind-up toy. Svedberg’s stammered words were like hands twisting the key attached to his back. He was wrenched out of his sleep and his bed, out of dreams he couldn’t remember but which might have been pleasant. He got dressed in a desperate frenzy, buttons popping off, and his shoelaces flopped untied as he raced down the stairs and outside.

  When he came screeching to a stop in his car, which still needed its M.O.T., Svedberg was already there. Directed by Norén, some officers were busy rolling out the striped crime-scene tape. Svedberg was awkwardly patting the weeping ticket agent on the shoulder, while some men in blue overalls stared into the pit, now transformed into a nightmare. Wallander left his door open and ran over to Svedberg. Why he ran he didn’t really know. Maybe his internal police mechanism had started to speed up. Or maybe he was so afraid of what he was going to see that he simply didn’t dare approach it slowly.

  Svedberg was white in the face. He nodded towards the pit. Wallander walked slowly over and took several deep breaths before looking into the hole.

  It was worse than he could have imagined. He was looking straight into a dead man’s brain. Ann-Britt Höglund arrived next to Wallander. She flinched and turned away. Her reaction made him start to think clearly.

  “No doubt about it,” he said to Höglund, turning back to the pit. “It’s him again.”

  She was very pale. Wallander was afraid she was going to faint. He put his arm around her shoulders.

  “Are you OK?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  Martinsson arrived with Hansson. Wallander saw them both give a start when they looked in the hole. He was overcome with rage. The man who had done this had to be stopped.

  “It must be the same killer,” said Hansson in an unsteady voice. “Isn’t it ever going to end? I can’t take responsibility for this any more. Did Björk know about this before he left? I’m going to ask for reinforcements from the National Criminal Bureau.”

  “Do that,” said Wallander. “But first let’s get him out of there and see whether we can solve this ourselves.”

  Hansson stared in disbelief at Wallander, who realised that Hansson thought they were going to have to lift the dead man out themselves.

  A large crowd had gathered outside the cordon. Wallander remembered what he had sensed in connection with Carlman’s murder. He took Norén aside and asked him to borrow a camera from Nyberg and take pictures, as discreetly as possible, of the people standing outside the cordon. Meanwhile the emergency van from the fire department had arrived on the scene. Nyberg was directing his crew around the pit. Wallander went over to him, trying to avoid looking at the corpse.

  “Once again,” said Nyberg. He wasn’t being cynical. Their eyes met.

  “We’ve got to catch him,” said Wallander.

  “As soon as possible, I hope,” said Nyberg. He lay down on his stomach so he could study the dead man’s face. When he straightened up again he called to Wallander, who was just heading off to talk to Svedberg. He came back.

  “Did you see his eyes?” asked Nyberg.

  Wallander shook his head.

  “What about them?”

  Nyberg grimaced.

  “Apparently the murderer wasn’t content with taking a scalp this time,” said Nyberg. “It looks like he poked his eyes out too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The man in the pit doesn’t have any eyes,” said Nyberg. “There are two holes where they used to be.”

  It took them two hours to get the body out. Wallander talked to the workman who had lifted the tarpaulin and the ticket agent who had stood by the steps of the station dreaming of Greece. He noted the times that they had seen the body. He asked Nyberg to search the dead man’s pockets to see if they could establish his identity, but they were empty.

  “Nothing at all?” asked Wallander in surprise.

  “Not a thing,” said Nyberg. “But something may have fallen out. We’ll look around down there.”

  They hauled him up in a sling. Wallander forced himself to look at his face. Nyberg was right. The man had no eyes. The torn-off hair made it seem that it was a dead animal, not a human being lying on the plastic sheet at his feet.

  Wallander sat down on the steps of the station. He studied his notes. He called Martinsson, who was talking to a doctor.

  “We know he hasn’t been here long,” he said. “I talked to the workmen replacing the sewerage pipes. They put the tarpaulin down at 4 p.m. yesterday. So the body was put there between then and 7 a.m. this morning.”

  “There are a lot of people around here in the evenings,” said Martinsson. “People taking a walk, traffic to and from the station and the ferry terminal. It must have happened during the night.”

  “How long has he been dead?” asked Wallander. “That’s what I want to know. And who he is.”

  Nyberg hadn’t found a wallet. They had nothing to help establish the man’s identity. Höglund came over and sat down next to them.

  “Hansson’s talking about requesting reinforcements from the National Criminal Bureau,” she said.

  “I know,” said Wallander. “But he won’t do anything until I tell him to. What did the doctor say?”

  She looked at her notes.

  “About 45 years old,” she said. “Strong, well-built.”

  “That makes him the youngest one so far,” said Wallander.

  “Strange place to hide the body,” said Martinsson. “Did he think that work would stop during the summer holiday?”

  “Maybe he just wanted to get rid of it,” said Höglund.

  “Then why did he pick this pit?” asked Martinsson. “It must have been a lot of trouble to get him into it. And there was the risk that someone might see him.”

  “Maybe he wanted the body to be found,” Wallander said thoughtfully. “
We can’t rule out that possibility.”

  They looked at him in astonishment, waiting for him to explain, but he remained silent.

  The body was taken away to Malmö. They left for the police station. Norén had been taking pictures of the large crowd milling around outside the cordoned-off area.

  Mats Ekholm had shown up earlier that morning, and stared at the corpse for a long time. Wallander had gone over to him.

  “You got your wish,” he said. “Another victim.”

  “I didn’t wish for this,” replied Ekholm, shaking his head.

  Now Wallander regretted his remark. He would have to explain to Ekholm what he’d meant.

  Just after 10 a.m. they closed the door to the conference room, Hansson again giving instructions that calls weren’t to be put through. But they had barely started the meeting when the phone rang. Hansson snatched the receiver and barked into it, red with anger. But he sank slowly back in his chair. Wallander knew at once that someone very important was on the line. Hansson adopted Björk’s obsequiousness. He made some brief comments, answered questions, but mostly listened. When the call was over he placed the receiver back as if it were a fragile antique.

  “Let me guess – the national police board,” said Wallander. “Or the chief public prosecutor. Or a TV reporter.”

  “The commissioner of the national police,” replied Hansson. “He expressed as much dissatisfaction as encouragement.”

  “Sounds like a strange combination,” Höglund said drily.

  “He’s welcome to come down here and help,” said Svedberg.

  “What does he know about police work?” Martinsson spluttered. “Absolutely nothing.”

  Wallander tapped his pen on the table. Everyone was upset and uncertain of what to do next, and he knew they had very little time before they would be subjected to a barrage of criticism. They would never be totally immune from outside pressure. They could only counteract it by focusing their attention inward on the shifting centre of the search. He tried to collect his thoughts, knowing that they didn’t have a thing to go on.