Faceless Killers - Wallander 01

by Henning Mankell

  Hell, he thought. Why didn't you stay? Why did you change your mind?

  The telephone rang again and he snatched up the receiver.

  "This is Papa," said Wallander without thinking.

  "What do you mean?" said his father. "What do you mean by picking up the phone and saying Papa? I thought you were a policeman."

  "I don't have time to talk to you right now. Can I call you later?"

  "No, you can't. What's so important?"

  "Something serious happened this morning. I'll call later."

  "So what happened?"

  His elderly father called him almost every day. On several occasions Wallander had told the switchboard not to put through any calls from him. But then his father saw through his ruse and started giving false names and disguising his voice to fool the operators.

  Wallander saw only one possibility of evading him.

  "I'll come out and see you tonight," he said. "Then we can talk."

  His father reluctantly let himself be persuaded. "Come at seven. I'll have time to see you then."

  "I'll be there at seven. See you."

  Wallander hung up and pushed the button to block incoming calls. For a moment he considered taking the car and driving down to the train station to try and find his daughter. Talk to her, try to rekindle the contact that had been lost so mysteriously. But he knew that he wouldn't do it. He didn't want to risk her running away from him for good.

  The door opened and Näslund stuck his head in.

  "Hello," he said. "Should I show him in?"

  "Show who in?"

  Näslund looked at his watch.

  "It's nine o'clock. You told me yesterday that you wanted Klas Mansön here for an interview at nine." "Who's Klas Mansön?"

  Näslund looked at him quizzically. "The guy who robbed the shop on Österleden. Have you forgotten about him?"

  It came back to Wallander, and at the same time he realised that Näslund obviously hadn't heard about the murder that had been committed in the night.

  "You deal with Mansön," he said. "We had a murder last night out in Lunnarp. Maybe a double murder. An elderly couple. You can take over Mansön. But put it off for a while. The thing we have to do first is plan the investigation at Lunnarp."

  "Mansön's lawyer is already here," said Näslund. "If I send him away, he's going to raise hell."

  "Do a preliminary questioning," said Wallander. "If the lawyer makes a fuss later, it can't be helped. Set up a case meeting in my office for ten o'clock. Make sure everyone comes."

  Now he was in motion. He was a policeman again. His anxiety about his daughter and his wife would have to wait. Right now he had to begin the arduous hunt for a murderer. He removed the piles of paper from his desk, tore up a football lottery form he wouldn't get around to filling out anyway, and went out to the canteen and poured himself a cup of coffee.

  At 10 a.m. everyone gathered in his office. Rydberg had been called in from the scene of the crime and was sitting in a chair by the window. Seven police officers in all, sitting and standing, filled the room. Wallander phoned the hospital and managed to ascertain that Mrs Lövgren's condition was still critical. Then he told them what had happened.

  "It was worse than you could imagine," he said. "Wouldn't you say so, Rydberg?"

  "You're right," replied Rydberg. "Like an American movie. It even smelt like blood. That doesn't usually happen."

  "We have to find whoever did this," said Wallander, concluding his presentation. "We can't leave maniacs like this on the loose."

  The policemen fell silent. Rydberg was drumming his fingertips on the arm of his chair. A woman could be heard laughing in the corridor outside. Wallander looked around the room. All of them were his colleagues. None of them was his close friend. And yet they were a team.

  "Well," he said, "what are we waiting for? Let's get started."

  It was 10.40 a.m.

  CHAPTER 3

  At 4 p.m. that afternoon Wallander discovered that he was hungry. He hadn't had a chance to eat lunch. After the case meeting in the morning he had spent his time organising the hunt for the murderers in Lunnarp. He found himself thinking about them in the plural. He had a hard time imagining that one person could have been responsible for that blood bath.

  It was dark outside when he sank into the chair behind his desk to try and put together a statement for the press. There was a pile of messages, left by one of the women from the switchboard. After searching in vain for his daughter's name among the slips, he placed them all in his in-tray. To escape the unpleasantness of standing in front of the TV cameras of News South and telling them that at present the police had no leads on the criminal or criminals who had carried the heinous murder of Johannes Lövgren, Wallander had appealed to Rydberg to take on that task. But he had to write and give the press release himself. He took a sheet of paper from a desk drawer. But what would he write? The day's work had involved little more than collecting a large number of questions.

  It had been a day of waiting. In the intensive care unit the old woman who had survived the noose was fighting for her life. Would they ever find out what she had witnessed on that appalling night in the lonely farmhouse?

  Or would she die before she could tell them anything?

  Wallander looked out of the window, into the darkness. Instead of a press release he started writing a summary of what had been done that day and what the police actually had to go on. Nothing, he thought, when he was finished. Two elderly people with no enemies, no hidden cash, were brutally attacked and tortured. The neighbours heard nothing. Not until the attackers were gone had they noticed that a window had been broken and heard the old woman's cry for help. Rydberg had so far found no clues. That was it.

  Old people in the countryside have always been targets for robbery. They have been bound, beaten, and sometimes killed. But this is different, thought Wallander. The noose tells a gruesome story of viciousness or hate, maybe even revenge. Something about this attack doesn't add up.

  All they could do now was hope. All day long police patrols had been talking to the inhabitants of Lunnarp. Perhaps someone had seen something? In crimes of this nature those responsible had often cased the place in advance. Maybe Rydberg would find some clues at the farmhouse after all.

  Wallander looked at the clock. How long since he'd last called the hospital? 45 minutes? An hour? He decided to wait until after he had written his press release. He popped a cassette of Jussi Björling into his Walkman and put on the headphones. The scratchy sound of the 1930s recording could not detract from the magnificence of the music from Rigoletto.

  The press release ran to eight lines. Wallander took it to one of the clerks to type up and make copies. While this was being done he read through a questionnaire that was to be mailed to everyone living in the area around Lunnarp. Had anyone seen anything out of the ordinary? Anything that could be connected to the brutal attack? He didn't have much confidence that the questionnaire would produce anything but inconvenience. The telephones would ring incessandy and two officers would need to be assigned to listen to useless reports.

  Still, it has to be done, he thought. At least we can satisfy ourselves that no-one saw anything. He went back to his office and phoned the hospital. Nothing had changed. Mrs Lövgren was still fighting for her life. Just as he put down the phone, Näslund came in.

  "I was right," he said.

  "What about?"

  "Mansön's lawyer hit the roof."

  Wallander shrugged. "We'll just have to live with that."

  Näslund scratched his forehead and asked how the investigation was going.

  "Not a thing so far. We've started. That's about it."

  "I noticed that the preliminary forensic report came in."

  Wallander raised an eyebrow. "Why didn't I get it?"

  "It was in Hansson's office."

  "That's not where it's supposed to be, damn it!"

  Wallander got up and went out into the corridor. Always the
same, he thought. Papers never end up where they're supposed to. More and more police work was recorded on computers, but even so there was a tendency for important papers to get lost.

  Wallander knocked and went into Hansson's office. Hansson was talking on the phone. He saw that Hansson's desk had strewn all over it, hardly concealed, betting slips and form guides from racetracks around the country. It was common knowledge at the station that he spent the best part of his working day calling various horse trainers begging for tips. Then he spent his evenings figuring out all manner of betting systems that would guarantee him the maximum winnings. It was also rumoured that Hansson had hit it big on one occasion, but no-one knew this for certain. And Hansson wasn't exactly living the highlife.

  When Wallander came in, Hansson put his hand over the mouthpiece.

  "The forensic report," said Wallander. "Have you got it?"

  Hansson pushed aside a form guide from Jagersro. "I was just about to bring it over to you."

  "Number four in the seventh race is a sure thing," said Wallander, taking the plastic folder from the desk.

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "I mean it's a sure thing."

  Wallander walked out, leaving Hansson gaping. He saw by the clock in the corridor that there was half an hour left until the press conference. He went back to his office and read carefully through the doctor's report.

  The brutal nature of the murder of Johannes Lövgren was thrown into even sharper relief, if possible, than when he had arrived in Lunnarp that morning. In the preliminary examination of the body, the doctor had not been able to determine the actual cause of death. There were too many to choose from.

  The body had received eight deep stab wounds with a sharp, serrated implement. The report suggested a compass saw. In addition, the right femur was broken, as were the left upper arm and wrist. The body showed signs of burn wounds, the scrotum was swollen, and the forehead was bashed in.

  The doctor had made a note beside the official report. "An act of madness," he had written. "This man was subjected to injuries sufficient to kill him four or five times over."

  Wallander put down the report. He was feeling worse and worse. Something here was beyond reason. Robbers who attacked old people weren't full of hate. They were after money. Why this insane degree of violence?

  When Wallander realised that he couldn't come up with a satisfactory answer, he read again through the summary he had written. Had he forgotten something? Had he overlooked some detail that would later turn out to have been significant? Even though police work was mostly a matter of patiently searching for clues that could then be combined, he had also learnt from experience that the initial impression of the scene of a crime was important. More so when the officer was one of the first there after the crime had been committed.

  There was something in his summary that puzzled him. Had he left out an important detail? He sat for a long time without managing to think what it might be.

  A woman opened the door and handed him the typed press release and the copies. On the way to the press conference he went to the men's room and looked in the mirror. He saw that he needed a haircut. His brown hair was sticking out round his ears. And he ought to lose some weight too. In the three months since his wife had left him, he had put on seven kilos. In his apathetic loneliness he had eaten nothing but takeaways and pizza, greasy hamburgers and pastries.

  "You flabby piece of shit," he said out loud. "Do you really want to look like a pitiful old man?"

  He made a decision to change his eating habits at once. If it would help him lose weight, he might even consider taking up smoking again. He wondered why almost every policeman was divorced. Why their wives left them. Sometimes, when he read a crime novel, he discovered with a sigh that things were just as bad in fiction. Policemen were divorced. That's all there was to it.

  The room where the press conference was to be held was full. He recognised most of the reporters. But there were a few unfamiliar faces too, including a young girl with a pimply face, who seemed to be casting amorous glances at him as she adjusted her tape recorder.

  Wallander passed out the press release and sat down on the little dais at one end of the room. The Ystad chief of police should have been there too, but he was on his winter holiday in Spain. If Rydberg managed to finish with the TV crews, he had promised to attend. But otherwise Wallander was on his own.

  "You've received the press release," he began. "I don't have anything to add at present."

  "Can we ask questions?" said a reporter Wallander recognised as the local stringer for The Worker.

  "That's why I'm here," replied Wallander.

  "If you don't mind my saying so, this is an unusually poor press release," said the reporter. "You must be able to tell us more than this."

  "We have no leads on the offenders," said Wallander.

  "So there were more than one?"

  "Possibly."

  "Why do you think so?" "We think there were. But we don't know." The reporter made a face, and Wallander nodded to another reporter he recognised. "How was Mr Lövgren killed?" "By external force."

  "That can mean a lot of different things!"

  "Well, we don't know yet. The doctors haven't finished the forensic examination. It'll take a couple of days."

  The reporter had more questions, but he was interrupted by the pimply girl with the tape recorder. Wallander could see by the letters on the lid that she was from the local radio station.

  "What did the robbers take?"

  "We don't know," replied Wallander. "We don't even know if it was a robbery." "What else could it be?" "We don't know."

  "Is there anything that encourages you to believe that it wasn't a robbery?" "No."

  Wallander could feel that he was sweating in the overheated room. He remembered how as a young policeman he had dreamt of holding press conferences. But they had never been stuffy and sweaty in his dreams.

  "I asked a question," he heard one of the reporters say from the back of the room.

  "I didn't hear it," said Wallander.

  "Do the police regard this as an important crime?" asked the reporter.

  Wallander was surprised at the question.

  "Naturally it's important that we solve this murder," he said. "Why shouldn't it be?"

  "Will you be needing extra resources?"

  "It's too early to comment on that. Of course we're hoping for a quick solution. I don't understand your question."

  A very young reporter with the thick glasses pushed his way forwards. Wallander had never seen him before.

  "In my opinion, no-one in Sweden cares about the elderly these days."

  "We do," replied Wallander. "We will do eveiything we can to ensure that we arrest those responsible. In Skåne there are many elderly people living alone on isolated farms. We would like, above all, to reassure them that we are doing everything possible."

  He stood up. "We'll let you know when we have more to report," he said. "Thank you for coming."

  The young woman from the local radio station blocked his path as he was leaving the room.

  "I have nothing more to say," he told her.

  "I know your daughter Linda," she said.

  Wallander stopped. "You do? How?"

  "We've met a few times. Here and there."

  Wallander tried to think whether he knew her. Had the girls been classmates?

  She shook her head as if reading his mind.

  "You and I have never met," she said. "You don't know me. Linda and I ran into each other in Malmö."

  "I see," said Wallander. "That's nice."

  "I think she's great. Could I ask you some questions now?"

  Wallander repeated into her microphone what he had said earlier. Most of all he wanted to talk about Linda, but he didn't have a chance.

  "Say hello to her," she said, packing up her tape recorder. "Say hello from Cathrin. Or Cattis."

  "I will," said Wallander. "I promise."

  W
hen he went back to his office he could feel a gnawing in his stomach. But was it hunger or anxiety? I've got to stop this, he thought. I've got to accept that my wife has left me. I've got to admit that all I can do is wait for Linda to contact me herself. I've got to take life as it comes ...

  Just before 6 p.m. the investigative team gathered for another meeting. There was no news from the hospital. Wallander quickly drew up a roster for the night.

  "Is that necessary?" wondered Hansson. "Just put a tape recorder in the room, then any nurse can turn it on if the old lady wakes up."

  "It is necessary," said Wallander. "I can take midnight to six myself. Any volunteers until midnight?"

  Rydberg nodded. "I can sit at the hospital just as well as anywhere," he said.

  Wallander looked around. Everyone seemed pale in the glare from the fluorescent lights.

  "Did we get anywhere?" he asked.

  "We've checked out Lunnarp," said Peters, who had led the door-to-door inquiry. "Everybody says they didn't see a thing. But it usually takes a few days before people really think. People are pretty scared up there. It's damned unpleasant. Almost everyone is old. Except for a terrified young Polish family, who are probably here illegally. But I didn't bother them. We'll have to keep trying tomorrow."

  Wallander nodded and looked at Rydberg.

  "There were plenty of fingerprints at the scene," he said. "Maybe that will produce something. But I doubt it. It's mostly the knot that interests me."

  Wallander gave him a searching look. "What knot?"

  "The knot on the noose."

  "What about it?"

  "It's unusual. I've never seen a knot like it."

  "Have you ever seen a noose before?" interrupted Hansson, who was standing in the doorway, itching to leave.

  "Yes, I have," replied Rydberg. "We'll see what this knot can tell us."

  Wallander knew that Rydberg didn't want to say more. But if the knot interested him, it might be important.