Faceless Killers - Wallander 01

by Henning Mankell

  Widén wrote his telephone number on a dirty scrap of paper.

  "Maybe," he said. "Call me in the morning." When they stepped outside, Wallander noticed that the wind had picked up. The girl came riding up on her horse. "Nice horse," he said.

  "Masquerade Queen," said Widén. "She'll never win a race in her life. The rich widow of a Trelleborg contractor owns her. I was actually honest enough to suggest that she sell the horse to a riding school. But she thinks it can win. And I get my training fee. But there's no way in hell this horse will ever win a race."

  They said goodbye at the car.

  "You know how my dad died?" asked Widén suddenly.

  "No."

  "He wandered off to the castle ruin one autumn night. He used to sit up there and drink. He stumbled into the moat and drowned. The algae are so thick there that you can't see a thing. But his cap floated to the surface. 'Live Life' the legend said on the cap. It was an ad for a travel bureau that sells sex holidays in Bangkok."

  "It was nice to see you," said Wallander. "I'll call you tomorrow."

  "Whatever," said Widénand went off towards the stable.

  Wallander drove away. In the rear-view mirror he could see Widén talking to the girl on the horse.

  Why did I come here? he thought again. Once, a long time ago, we were friends. We shared an impossible dream. When the dream evaporated like a phantom there was nothing left. It may be true that we both loved opera. But perhaps that was just a fantasy too.

  He drove fast, as if he were letting his agitation dictate the pressure he put on the accelerator. Just as he braked for the stop sign at the main road, his car phone rang. The connection was so bad he could hardly make out that it was Hansson.

  "You'd better come in," the voice yelled. "Can you hear what I'm saying?"

  "What happened?" Wallander yelled back.

  "There's a farmer from Hagestad here who says he knows who killed them," Hansson shouted.

  Wallander felt his heart beating quicker.

  "Who?" he shouted. "Who?"

  The connection abruptly died. The receiver hissed and squawked.

  "Damn," he said out loud.

  He drove back into Ystad. Much too fast, he thought. If Norén and Peters had been on traffic duty today, I'd have been in real trouble.

  Just as he was going down the hill into the centre of town, the engine started coughing. He had run out of petrol. The warning light was obviously on the blink.

  He managed to make it to the petrol station across from the hospital before the engine died completely. Getting out to put some money in the pump, he discovered that he didn't have any cash on him. He went next door to the locksmith in the same building and borrowed 20 kronor from the owner, who recognised him from an investigation of a break-in a few years back.

  He parked and hurried into the station. Ebba tried to tell him something, but he dismissed her with a wave.

  The door to Hansson's office was ajar, and Wallander went in without knocking. It was empty. In the corridor he found Martinsson, who was holding a handful of print-outs.

  "Just the man I'm looking for," said Martinsson. "I dug up some stuff that might be interesting. I'll be damned if some Finns might not be behind this."

  "When we don't have a lead, we usually say it's Finns," said Wallander. "I haven't time now. You know where Hansson is?"

  "He never leaves his office, you know that."

  "Then we'll have to put out an APB on him, because he's not there now."

  He poked his head into the canteen, but there was only an office clerk there making an omelette. Where the hell is that Hansson? he thought, flinging open the door to his own office. Nobody there either. He called Ebba at the switchboard.

  "Where's Hansson?" he asked.

  "If you hadn't been in such a rush, I could have told

  you when you came in," said Ebba. "He told me he had to go down to the Union Bank."

  "What was he going there for? Was anyone with him?"

  "Yes. But I don't know who it was."

  Wallander slammed down the phone. What the hell was he up to? He picked up the phone again.

  "Can you get Hansson on the phone for me?" he asked Ebba.

  "At the Union Bank?" "If that's where he is."

  He very rarely asked Ebba for help tracking people down. If he needed something done, he did it himself. In the past he'd put it down to his upbringing. Only rich, arrogant people sent others out to do their footwork. Not being able to look up a number in the phone book and pick up a receiver was indefensible laziness.

  The telephone rang, interrupting his thoughts. It was Hansson calling from the Union Bank.

  "I thought I'd get back before you did," said Hansson. "You're probably wondering what I'm doing here."

  "You could say that."

  "We're taking a look at Lövgren's bank account." "Who's we?"

  "His name is Herdin. But you'd better talk to him yourself. We'll be back in half an hour."

  Wallander finally met the man called Herdin an hour and a half later. He was almost six foot six, thin and wiry, and Wallander felt like he was shaking hands with a giant.

  "It took a while," said Hansson. "But we got results. You have to hear what Herdin has to say. And what we've discovered."

  Herdin was sitting erect and silent on a wooden chair. Wallander guessed that the man had put on his Sunday best before coming to the police station. Even if it was only a worn suit and a shirt with a frayed collar.

  "We'd better start at the beginning," said Wallander, picking up a pad.

  Herdin gave Hansson a bewildered look.

  "Should I start all over again?" he asked.

  "That would probably be best," said Hansson.

  "It's a long story," Herdin began hesitantly.

  "What's your name?" asked Wallander. "Let's start with that."

  "Lars Herdin. I have a farm of 40 acres near Hagestad. I'm trying to make ends meet raising livestock. But things are pretty tight."

  "I've got all his personal data," Hansson interrupted, and Wallander guessed that Hansson was in a hurry to get back to his form guides.

  "If I understand correctly, you came here because you think you may have information relating to the murder of Mr and Mrs Lövgren," said Wallander, wishing he had expressed himself more simply.

  "It's obvious that it was the money," Lars Herdin said.

  "What money?"

  "All the money they had!"

  "Could you clarify that a little?"

  "The German money."

  Wallander looked at Hansson, who shrugged slightly. Wallander took this to mean that he had to be patient.

  "I think we're going to need a little more detail on this," he said. "Do you think you could be more specific?"

  "Lövgren and his father made money during the war," said Herdin. "They kept livestock in secret on some forest pastures up in Smaland. And they bought up worn-out old horses. Then they sold them on the black market to

  Germany. They made an obscene amount of money on the meat. And nobody ever caught them. Lövgren was both greedy and clever. He invested the money, and it's been growing over the years." "You mean Lövgren's father?"

  "His father died straight after the war. I mean Lövgren himself."

  "So you're telling me that the Lövgrens were wealthy?"

  "Not the family. Just Lövgren. She didn't know a thing about the money."

  "Would he have kept his fortune a secret from his own wife?"

  Herdin nodded. "Nobody has ever been as foully cheated as my sister."

  Wallander raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  "Maria Lövgren was my sister. She was killed because he had stashed away a fortune."

  Wallander heard the barely concealed bitterness. So maybe it was a hate crime, he thought.

  "And this money was kept at home?"

  "Only sometimes," replied Herdin.

  "Sometimes?"

  "When he made the large withdrawals."

&n
bsp; "Could you give me a little more detail?"

  Suddenly something seemed to boil over inside the man in the worn-out suit.

  "Johannes Lövgren was a brute," he said. "It's better now that he's gone. But that Maria had to die, that I can never forgive."

  Lars Herdin's outburst came so suddenly that neither Hansson nor Wallander had time to react. He grabbed a solid glass ashtray from the table beside him and flung it full force at the wall, where it smashed close to Wallander's head. Splinters of glass flew in every direction, and Wallander felt a shard strike his upper lip.

  The silence after the outburst was deafening.

  Hansson had sprung out of his chair and seemed ready to throw himself at the rangy Herdin, but Wallander raised his hand to stop him, and Hansson sat back down.

  "I beg your pardon," said Herdin. "If you have a broom and dustpan I'll clean up the glass. I'll pay for it."

  "The cleaners will take care of it," said Wallander. "I think we should go on with our talk."

  Herdin now seemed perfectiy calm.

  "Johannes Lövgren was a beast," he repeated. "He pretended to be like everybody else. But the only thing he thought about was the money he and his father made from the war. He complained that everything was so expensive, and the farmers so poor. But he had his money, and it kept on growing and growing."

  "And he kept this money in the bank?"

  Herdin shrugged. "In the bank, in shares and bonds, who knows what else."

  "Why did he keep the money at home sometimes?"

  "Lövgren had a mistress," said Herdin. "There was a woman in Kristianstad whom he had a son with in the 1950s. Maria knew nothing about that either - not the woman, not the child. He gave his mistress more money every year than he spent on Maria in her whole life."

  "How much money are we talking about?"

  "Two or three times a year he gave her 25 or 30 thousand. He withdrew the money in cash. Then he would think up some excuse and go to Kristianstad."

  Wallander thought for a moment about what he had heard. He tried to decide which questions were the most important. It would take hours to work out all the details.

  "What did they say at the bank?" he asked Hansson.

  "If you don't have the search warrants all in order, the bank doesn't say anything," said Hansson. "They wouldn't let me look at his bank statements. But I did get the answer to one question: Had he been to the bank recently?"

  "Well?"

  Hansson nodded. "Last Thursday. Three days before he was killed."

  "Are they sure?"

  "One of the clerks recognised him."

  "And he withdrew a large sum of money?"

  "They wouldn't say exactly. But the clerk nodded when the bank manager turned his back."

  "We'll have to talk to the prosecutor when we have written up this statement," said Wallander. "Then we can look into his assets and see where we are."

  "Blood money," said Herdin.

  Wallander wondered whether he was going to start throwing things again.

  "There are plenty of questions left," he said. "But one is more important than all the others right now. How do you know about all this? You say that Lövgren kept it secret from his wife. So how come you know?"

  Herdin didn't answer the question. He stared mutely at the floor.

  Wallander looked at Hansson, who shook his head.

  "You really have to answer the question," said Wallander.

  "I don't have to answer at all," said Herdin. "I'm not the one who killed them. Would I murder my own sister?"

  Wallander tried to approach the question from another angle. "How many other people know what you just told us?"

  Herdin didn't answer.

  "Whatever you say won't go beyond this room," Wallander said.

  Herdin stared at the floor. Wallander knew instinctively that he must wait.

  "Would you get us some coffee?" he asked Hansson. "And see if you can find some pastries."

  While Hansson was gone, Herdin kept staring at the floor, and Wallander waited. Hansson brought in the coffee, and Herdin ate a stale pastry.

  Wallander thought it was time to ask the question again. "Sooner or later you'll have no choice but to answer," he said.

  Herdin raised his head and looked him straight in the eye.

  "When they got married I already had a feeling that there was another person behind Johannes Lövgren's friendly yet taciturn exterior. I thought there was something fishy about him. Maria was my little sister. I wanted the best for her. I was suspicious of Lövgren from the first time he came to our parents' house to court her. It took me 30 years to work out who he was. How I did it is my business."

  "Did you tell your sister what you found out?"

  "Never. Not a word."

  "Did you tell anyone else? Your own wife?" "I'm not married."

  Wallander looked at the man sitting in front of him. There was something hard and dogged about him. Like a man who had been brought up eating gravel.

  "One last question," said Wallander. "Now we know that Lövgren had plenty of money. Maybe he also had a large sum of money at home the night he was murdered. We'll have to find that out. But who would have known about it? Besides you."

  Herdin looked at him. Wallander saw a glint of fear in his eyes.

  "I didn't know about it," said Herdin. Wallander nodded.

  "We'll stop here," he said, shoving aside the pad on which he had been taking notes. "But we're going to be needing your help again."

  "Can I go now?" said Herdin, getting up.

  "You can go," replied Wallander. "But don't leave the district without talking to us first. And if you think of anything else, we'd like to hear from you."

  As he was leaving, Herdin hesitated as if there was something more he wanted to say. Then he pushed open the door and was gone.

  "Tell Martinsson to run a check on him," said Wallander. "Probably we won't find anything. But it's best to make sure."

  "What do you think about what he said?" Hansson wondered.

  Wallander thought before replying.

  "There was something convincing about him. I don't think he was lying or making things up. I believe he did discover that Johannes Lövgren was living a double life. I think he was protecting his sister."

  "Do you think he could have been involved?"

  Wallander was certain when he answered. "Herdin didn't kill them. Nor do I think he knows who did. I believe he came to us for two reasons. He wanted to help us find the people responsible so he can both thank them and spit in their faces. As far as he's concerned, whoever murdered Lövgren did him a favour. And whoever murdered Maria ought to be beheaded in the public square."

  Hansson got up. "I'll tell Martinsson. Anything else you need right now?"

  Wallander looked at his watch.

  "Let's have a meeting in my office in an hour. See if you can get hold of Rydberg. He was supposed to go to Malmö to find a man who makes sails."

  Hansson gave him a questioning look.

  "The noose. The knot. I'll fill you in later."

  Hansson left, and Wallander was alone. A breakthrough, he thought. All successful criminal investigations reach a point where we break through the wall. We don't know what we're going to find. But there's always a solution somewhere.

  He went over to the window and looked out into the twilight. A cold draught was seeping through the window frame, and he could see from the way a streetlight was swaying that the wind was blowing harder.

  He thought about Nyström and his wife. For a lifetime they had lived in close contact with a man who had not been the man he pretended to be at all.

  How would they react when the truth came out? With denial? Bitterness? Amazement?

  He went back to the desk and sat down. The first feeling of relief that followed a breakthrough like this one often faded quite rapidly. Now there was a possible motive, the most common of all: money. But so far there was no invisible finger pointing in a specific direction. No
murderer yet.

  Wallander cast another glance at his watch. If he hurried, he could drive down to the hot dog stand at the railway station and get a bite to eat before the meeting. This day too was going to pass without a change in his eating habits.

  He was just about to put on his jacket when the phone rang. At the same time there was a knock on the door. The jacket fell to the floor as he grabbed the phone and shouted, "Come in."

  Rydberg stood in the doorway. He was holding a large plastic bag.

  He heard Ebba's voice on the phone.

  "The TV people insist on speaking to you," she said.

  He quickly decided to talk to Rydberg before he had to deal with the media again.

  "Tell them I'm in a meeting and won't be available for half an hour," he said.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Sure of what?"

  "That you'll talk to them in half an hour? Swedish TV doesn't like to be kept waiting. They take it for granted that everyone will fall to their knees when they call."

  "That I will not do. But I can talk to them in half an hour."

  He hung up.

  Rydberg had sat down on the chair by the window. He was busy drying off his hair with a paper napkin.

  "I've got good news," said Wallander.

  Rydberg went on drying his hair.

  "I think we've got a motive. Money. And I think we should look for the killers among people who were close to the Lövgrens."

  Rydberg tossed the wet napkin into the wastebasket.

  "I've had a miserable day," he said. "Good news is welcome."

  Wallander spent 5 minutes recounting the meeting with the farmer, Lars Herdin. Rydberg stared gloomily at the shards of glass on the floor.

  "Strange story," said Rydberg when Wallander was finished. "It's strange enough to be true."

  "I'll try to sum it up," Wallander went on. "Someone knew that Johannes Lövgren from time to time kept large sums of money at home. This gives us robbery as a motive. And the robbery developed into a murder. If Herdin's description of Lövgren is right, that he was an unusually stingy man, he would naturally have refused to reveal where he had hidden the money. Maria Lövgren, who can't have understood much of what was happening on the last night of her life, was forced to accompany Johannes on his final journey. So the question is who besides Herdin knew about the irregular but substantial cash withdrawals. If we can answer that, we can probably answer everything."