Sidetracked

by Henning Mankell

  Wallander sat with his third cup of coffee and gazed out over the Sound, filled with yachts and ferries.

  “We didn’t want this, but we’ve got it,” he said. “Another dead, scalped man. According to Ekholm our chances of identifying the killer will now increase dramatically. That’s according to the F.B.I. models. Now the similarities and differences should be much clearer.”

  “I think somehow the level of violence has increased,” she said hesitantly. “If you can grade axe murders and scalpings.”

  Wallander waited with interest for her to continue. Her hesitation often meant that she was on the trail of something important.

  “Wetterstedt was lying underneath a rowing boat,” she went on. “He had been hit once from behind. His scalp was sliced off, as if the killer had taken the time to do it carefully. Or maybe there was some uncertainty. The first scalp. Carlman was killed from the front. He must have seen his killer. His hair was torn off, not sliced. That seems to indicate more frenzy, or maybe rage, almost uncontrolled. Then Fredman. He apparently lay on his back. Probably tied up, or he’d have resisted. He had acid poured in his eyes. The killer forced open his eyelids. The blow to the head was tremendous. And now Liljegren, with his head stuck in an oven. Something is getting worse. Is it hatred? Or a sick person’s thrill at demonstrating his power?”

  “Outline this to Ekholm,” Wallander suggested. “Let him put it into his computer. I agree with you. Certain changes in his behaviour are evident. Something is shifting. But what does it tell us? Sometimes it seems as though we’re trying to interpret footprints that are millions of years old. What I worry about most is the chronology, which is based on the fact that we found the victims in a certain order, since they were killed in a certain order. So for us a natural chronology is created. But the question is whether there’s some other order among them that we can’t see. Are some of the murders more important than others?”

  She thought for a moment. “Was one of them closer to the killer than the others?”

  “Yes, that’s it,” said Wallander. “Was Liljegren closer to the heart of it than Carlman, for example? And which of them is furthest away? Or do they all have the same relationship to him?”

  “A relationship which may only exist in his mind?”

  Wallander pushed aside his empty cup. “At least we can be certain that these men were not chosen at random,” he said.

  “Fredman is different,” she said as they got up.

  “Yes, he is,” said Wallander. “But you can also turn it around and say that it’s the other three who are different.”

  They returned to Tågaborg, where they were given the message that Hansson was on his way to meet with the chief of police in Helsingborg.

  “Tomorrow the National Criminal Bureau will be here,” said Sjösten.

  “Has anyone talked to Ekholm?” asked Wallander. “He should come up here as soon as possible.”

  Höglund went to see to this, and Wallander made an examination of the house again with Sjösten. Nyberg was on his knees in the kitchen with the other technicians. When they were heading up the stairs to the top floor, Höglund caught up with them, saying that Ekholm was on his way with Hansson. They continued their inspection. None of them spoke. They were each following their own train of thought.

  Wallander was trying to feel the killer’s presence, as he had done at Wetterstedt’s house, and in Carlman’s garden. Not twelve hours ago the man had climbed these same stairs. Wallander moved more slowly than the others. He stopped often, sometimes sitting down to stare at a wall or a rug or a door, as if he were in a museum, deeply engrossed in the objects on display. Occasionally he would retrace his steps.

  Watching him, Höglund had the sense that Wallander was acting as though he were walking on ice. And in a sense, he was. Each step involved a risk, a new way of seeing things, a re-examination of a thought he’d just had. He moved as much in his mind as through the rooms. Wallander had never sensed the presence of the man he was hunting in Wetterstedt’s house. It had convinced him that the killer had never been inside. He had not been closer than the garage roof where he had waited, reading The Phantom and then ripping it to pieces. But here, in Liljegren’s house, it was different.

  Wallander went back to the stairs and looked down the hall towards the bathroom. From here he could see the man he was about to kill. If the bathroom door was open, that is. And why would it have been closed if Liljegren was alone in the house? He walked towards the bathroom door and stood against the wall. Then he went into the bathroom and assumed the role of Liljegren. He walked out of the door, imagining the axe blow strike him with full force from behind, at an angle. He saw himself fall to the floor. Then he switched to the other role, the man holding an axe in his right hand. Not in his left; they had determined in examining Wetterstedt’s body that the man was right-handed. Wallander walked slowly down the stairs, dragging the invisible corpse behind him. Into the kitchen, to the stove. He continued down to the basement and stopped at the window, which was too narrow for him to squeeze through. Only a slight man could use that window as a way of getting into Liljegren’s house. The killer must be thin.

  He went back to the kitchen and out into the garden. Near the basement window at the back of the house the technicians were looking for footprints. Wallander could have told them in advance that they wouldn’t find anything. The man had been barefoot, as before. He looked towards the hedge, the shortest distance between the basement window and the street, pondering why the killer had been barefoot. He’d asked Ekholm about it several times, but still didn’t have a satisfactory answer. Going barefoot meant taking a risk of injury. Of slipping, puncturing his foot, getting cut. And yet he still did it. Why did he go barefoot? Why choose to remove his shoes? This was another of the inexplicable details he had to keep in mind. He took scalps. He used an axe. He was barefoot. Wallander stopped in his tracks. It came to him in a flash. His subconscious had drawn a conclusion and relayed the message.

  An American Indian, he said to himself. A warrior. He knew he was right. The man they were looking for was a lone warrior moving along an invisible path. He was an impersonator. Used an axe to kill, cut off scalps, went barefoot. But why would an American Indian go around in the Swedish summertime killing people? Who was really committing these murders? An Indian or someone playing the role?

  Wallander held on tight to the thought so he wouldn’t lose it before he had followed it through. He travelled over great distances, he thought. He must have a horse. A motorcycle. Which had leant against the road workers’ hut. You drive in a car, but you ride a motorcycle.

  He walked back to the house. For the first time he’d caught a glimpse of the man he sought. The excitement of the discovery was immediate. His alertness sharpened. For the time being, however, he would keep his idea to himself.

  A window on the top floor opened. Sjösten leaned out.

  “Come up here,” he shouted.

  Wallander went in, wondering what they had found. Sjösten and Höglund were standing in front of a bookcase in a room that must have been Liljegren’s office. Sjösten had a plastic bag in his hand.

  “I’m guessing cocaine,” he said. “Could be heroin.”

  “Where was it?” Wallander asked.

  Sjösten pointed to an open drawer.

  “There may be more,” Wallander said.

  “I’ll see about getting a dog in here,” said Sjösten.

  “I wonder whether you shouldn’t send out a few people to talk to the neighbours,” said Wallander. “Ask if they noticed a man on a motorcycle. Not just last night, but earlier too. Over the last few weeks.”

  “Did he come on a motorcycle?”

  “I think so. It seems to be his means of getting around. You’ll find it in the investigative material.”

  Sjösten left the room.

  “There’s nothing about a motorcycle in the investigative material,” said Höglund, surprised.

  “There should be,”
said Wallander, sounding distracted. “Didn’t we confirm that it was a motorcycle that stood behind the road workers’ hut?”

  Wallander looked out the window. Ekholm and Hansson were on their way up the path, with another man whom Wallander assumed was the Helsingborg chief of police. Birgersson met them halfway.

  “We’d better go down,” he said. “Did you find anything?”

  “The house reminds me of Wetterstedt’s,” she replied. “The same gloomy bourgeois respectability. But at least here there are some family photos. Whether they make it more cheerful I don’t know. Liljegren seems to have had cavalry officers in his family, Scanian Dragoons if you can believe it.”

  “I haven’t looked at them,” Wallander apologised. “But I believe you. His scams undoubtedly had much in common with primitive warfare.”

  “There’s a photo of an old couple outside a cottage,” she said. “If I understood what was written on the back, the picture was of his maternal grandparents on the island of Öland.”

  They went down. Parts of the stairs were cordoned off to protect the blood traces.

  “Old bachelors,” said Wallander. “Their houses resemble each other’s because they were alike. How old was Åke Liljegren, anyway? Was he over 70?”

  Höglund didn’t know.

  A conference room was set up in the dining room. Ekholm, who didn’t have to attend, was assigned an officer to fill him in. When they had all introduced themselves and sat down, Hansson surprised Wallander by being quite clear-cut about what should happen. During the trip up from Ystad he had spoken with both Åkeson and the National Criminal Bureau in Stockholm.

  “It would be a mistake to state that our situation has changed significantly because of this murder,” Hansson began. “The situation has been dramatic enough ever since we realised that we were dealing with a serial killer. Now we might say that we have crossed a sort of boundary. There’s nothing to indicate that we will actually crack these murders. But we have to hope. As far as the Bureau is concerned, they are prepared to give us whatever help we request. The formalities involved shouldn’t present any serious difficulties either. I assume no-one has anything against Kurt being assigned leader of the new cross-boundary investigative team?”

  No-one had any objections. Sjösten nodded approval from his side of the table.

  “Kurt has a certain notoriety,” Hansson said, without a trace of irony. “The chief of the National Criminal Bureau regarded it as obvious that he should continue to lead the investigation.”

  “I agree,” said the chief of the Helsingborg police. That was the only thing he said during the meeting.

  “Guidelines have been drawn on how a collaboration such as this can be implemented as quickly as possible,” Hansson continued. “The prosecutors have their own procedures to follow. The key thing is to agree what type of assistance from Stockholm we actually require.”

  Wallander had been listening to what Hansson was saying with a mixture of pride and anxiety. At the same time he was self-assured enough to realise that no-one else was more suitable to lead the investigation.

  “Has anything resembling this series of murders ever occurred in Sweden?” asked Sjösten.

  “Not according to Ekholm,” said Wallander.

  “It’s just that it would be good to have some colleagues who have experience with this type of crime,” said Sjösten.

  “We’d have to get them from the continent, or the United States,” said Wallander. “And I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Not yet, at any rate. What we need, obviously, is experienced homicide investigators, who can add to our overall expertise.”

  It took them less than 20 minutes to make the necessary decisions. When they’d finished, Wallander hastily left the room in search of Ekholm. He found him upstairs and took him into a guest room that smelt musty. Wallander opened the window to air the stuffy room. He sat on the edge of the bed and told Ekholm what had occurred to him that morning.

  “You could be right,” Ekholm said. “A person with serious psychosis who has taken on the role of a lone warrior. There are many examples of that, though not in Sweden. Such a person generally metamorphoses into another before they go out to exact a revenge. The disguise frees them from guilt. The actor doesn’t feel the pangs of conscience for actions performed by his character. But don’t forget that there’s a type of psychopath who kills with no motive other than for his own intense enjoyment.”

  “That’s doesn’t seem to fit this case,” said Wallander.

  “The difficulty lies in the fact that the role the killer has adopted doesn’t tell us anything about the motive for the murder. If we assume that you’re right – a barefoot warrior who has chosen his disguise for reasons unknown to us – then he could just as easily have chosen to turn himself into a Japanese samurai or a tonton macoute from Haiti. There’s only one person who knows the reasons for the choice. The killer himself.”

  Wallander recalled one of the earliest conversations he had had with Ekholm.

  “That would mean that the scalps are a red herring,” he said. “That he’s taking them as a ritual act in the performance of the role he’s selected for himself. Not that he’s collecting trophies to reach some objective that serves as the basis for all the murders he has committed.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “Which means that we’re back to square one.”

  “The combinations have to be tested over and over,” said Ekholm. “We never return to the starting point once we have left it. We have to move the same way the killer does. He doesn’t stand still. What happened last night confirms what I’m saying.”

  “Have you formed any opinion?”

  “The oven is interesting.”

  Wallander flinched at Ekholm’s choice of words.

  “In what way?”

  “The difference between the acid and the oven is striking. In one case he uses a chemical agent to torture a man who’s still alive. It’s an element of the killing itself. In the second case it serves more as a greeting to us.”

  Wallander looked at Ekholm intently. He tried to interpret what he’d just heard.

  “A greeting to the police?”

  “It doesn’t really surprise me. The murderer is not unaffected by his actions. His self-image is growing. It may reach a point where he has to start looking for contact. He’s terribly pleased with himself. He has to seek confirmation of how clever he is from the outside world. The victim can’t applaud him. Sometimes he turns to the very ones who are hunting him. This can take various forms. Anonymous telephone calls or letters. Or why not a dead man arranged in a grotesque position?”

  “He’s taunting us?”

  “I don’t think he sees it that way. He sees himself as invulnerable. If it’s true that he selected the role of a barefoot warrior, the invulnerability might be one of the reasons. Warrior peoples traditionally smear themselves with salves to make themselves immune from swords and arrows. In our day and age the police might symbolise those swords.”

  Wallander sat silently for a while.

  “What’s our next move?” he asked. “He’s challenging us by stuffing Liljegren’s head in the oven. What about next time? If there is one.”

  “There are many possibilities. Psychopathic killers sometimes seek contact with individuals within the police force.”

  “Why is that?”

  Ekholm hesitated. “Policemen have been killed, you know.”

  “You mean this madman has his eye on us?”

  “It’s possible. Without our knowing it, he might be amusing himself by getting very close to us. And then vanishing again. One day this may not be enough of a thrill.”

  Wallander remembered the sensation that he’d had outside the cordon at Carlman’s farm, when he thought he’d recognised one of the faces among the onlookers. Someone who had also been on the beach beyond the cordon when they’d turned over the boat and revealed Wetterstedt.

  Ekholm looked at him gravely.
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  “You most of all should be aware of this,” he said. “I was thinking of talking to you about it anyway.”

  “Why me?”

  “You’re the most visible one of us. The search for the man who committed these four murders involves a lot of people. But the name and face that are most regularly seen are yours.”

  Wallander grimaced. “You can’t expect me to take this seriously?”

  “That’s for you to decide.”

  When Ekholm had left, Wallander stayed behind, trying to gauge his true reaction to Ekholm’s warning. It was like a cold wind blowing through the room, he thought. But nothing more.

  That afternoon Wallander drove back to Ystad with the others. It was decided that the investigation would continue to be directed from Ystad. Wallander sat in silence for the whole trip, giving only terse replies when Hansson asked him something. When they arrived they held a short briefing with Svedberg, Martinsson and Åkeson. Svedberg told them that it was now possible to speak with Carlman’s daughter. They decided that Wallander and Höglund would pay a visit to the hospital the next morning. When the meeting was over, Wallander called his father. Gertrud answered. All was back to normal. His father had no recollection of what had happened.

  Wallander also called home. No answer. Linda wasn’t there. On his way out of the station he asked Ebba whether there was any word on his keys. Nothing. He drove down to the harbour and walked along the pier, then sat down in the harbour café and had a beer. He sat and watched the people passing by. Depressed, he got up and went back out on the pier, and sat on a bench next to the sea rescue hut.

  It was a warm, windless evening. Someone was playing a concertina on a boat. One of the ferries from Poland was coming in. Without actually being conscious of it, he started to make a connection in his mind. He sat perfectly still and let his thoughts work. He was beginning to discern the contours of the drama. There were a lot of gaps still, but he could see where they should concentrate their investigation.