Faceless Killers - Wallander 01

by Henning Mankell

  He felt his heart pounding. So he had been right after all. It had to be the same man. They were talking in low voices. Too low to hear what they were saying. The man in the dressing gown disappeared through a door and at the same moment Bergman looked straight at Wallander.

  Caught, he thought, as he pulled back his head. Those bastards won't hesitate to shoot me. He was paralysed with fear. I'm going to die, he thought desperately. They're going to blow my head off. But nothing happened.

  Finally he got up the nerve to peer inside again. The man in the dressing gown was standing there, eating an apple. Bergman was holding two shotguns. He laid one of them on a table. The other one he stuffed under his coat. Wallander realised he had seen more than enough. He turned and crept back the way he had come.

  How it happened, he would never know.

  He lost his footing in the dark. When he reached for the scaffolding, his hand grabbed at empty space. He fell. He had no time to think that he was going to die. One of his legs caught between two planks. He jerked to a halt, the pain excruciating. He was hanging upside down with his head a metre above the ground.

  He tried to wriggle loose. But his foot was wedged tight. He was hanging in midair, unable to do anything. The blood was pounding in his temples. The pain was so bad that he had tears in his eyes. At that moment he heard the outside door open.

  Bergman had left the flat. Wallander bit his knuckles to keep from screaming. Through the sacking he saw the man stop suddenly. Right in front of him. He saw a flash. The shot, thought Wallander. Now I'm going to die.

  He realised that Bergman had lit a cigarette. The footsteps moved away. Wallander was about to pass out. An image of Linda flickered before him.

  With enormous effort he swung his body and with one hand managed to grab hold of one of the uprights on the scaffolding. He pulled himself up far enough to get a grip on the planks where his foot was wedged tight. He gathered all his remaining strength. Then he tugged hard. His foot broke loose, and he lost his grip. He landed on his back in a mound of gravel. He lay perfectly still, trying to feel if anything was broken.

  When he stood up, he was so dizzy that he had to hold on to the wall so he wouldn't fall. It took him almost 20 minutes to make his way back to the car. He saw the hands of the station clock pointing to 4.30 a.m.

  Wallander sank into the driver's seat and closed his eyes. Then he drove back to Ystad. I have to get some sleep, he thought. Tomorrow is another day. Then I'll do what has to be done.

  He groaned when he saw his face in the bathroom mirror. He rinsed his wounds with warm water.

  It was almost 6 a.m. by the time he crawled between the sheets. He set the alarm clock for 6.45. He didn't dare sleep any later than that.

  He tried to find the position that hurt the least. Just as he was falling asleep, he was jerked awake by a bang on the front door. The morning paper. Then he stretched out again. In his dreams Anette Brolin was coming towards him. Somewhere a horse neighed.

  It was Sunday, 14 January. The day dawned with increased wind from the northeast.

  Kurt Wallander slept.

  CHAPTER 12

  He thought he had slept for a long time, but when he woke up and looked at the clock, he realised that he had been asleep only briefly. The telephone had woken him. Rydberg was calling from a phone box in Malmö.

  "Come on back," said Wallander. "You don't have to stand there freezing. Come here, to my place."

  "What happened?"

  "It's him."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Absolutely positive."

  "I'm on my way."

  Wallander climbed painfully out of bed. His body ached and his temples were throbbing. While the coffee was brewing, he sat at the kitchen table with a pocket mirror and a piece of cotton wool. With great difficulty he succeeded in fastening a gauze pad over the wound on his forehead. His whole face was a palette of shades of blue and purple.

  Rydberg appeared in the doorway less than an hour later. While they drank coffee, Wallander told him his story.

  "Good," Rydberg said afterwards. "Excellent work. Now we'll bring in those bastards. What was the name of the guy in Lund?"

  "I forgot to look at the name in the doorway. And we're not the ones who'll bring them in. That's Björk's job."

  "Is he back?"

  "He was supposed to get in last night."

  "Then let's haul him out of his bed."

  "The prosecutor too. And we'll have to co-ordinate with Malmö and Lund, right?"

  While Wallander was dressing, Rydberg was on the phone. Wallander was gratified to hear that he wasn't taking no for an answer. He wondered whether Anette Brolin's husband was visiting this weekend.

  Rydberg stood in the bedroom doorway and watched him knot his tie.

  "You look like a boxer," he said, laughing. "A punch-drunk boxer."

  "Did you get Björk?"

  "He seems to have spent the evening catching up with everything that's happened. He was relieved to hear that we had solved one of the murders, at least."

  "The prosecutor?"

  "She'll come right away."

  "Was she the one who answered the phone?"

  Rydberg looked at him in surprise. "Who else would have answered?"

  "Her husband, for instance."

  "What difference would that have made?"

  Wallander didn't feel like answering. "God, I feel like shit," he said instead. "Let's go."

  They went out into the early dawn. A gusty wind was still blowing and the sky was overcast with dark clouds.

  "You think it's going to snow?" asked Wallander.

  "Not before February," said Rydberg. "I can feel it. But then it'll be a hard winter."

  A Sunday calm prevailed at the station. Norén had been relieved by Svedberg. Rydberg gave him a swift run down of what had happened during the night.

  "Well, I'll be damned," said Svedberg. "A policeman?"

  "An ex-policeman."

  "Where did he hide the car?"

  "We don't know yet."

  "Is the case airtight?"

  "I think so."

  Björk and Anette Brolin arrived at the station at the same moment. Björk, who was 54 and originally from Vastmanland, had a nice tan. Wallander had always imagined him to be the ideal chief for a medium-sized police district. He was friendly, not too intelligent, and at the same time extremely concerned with the good name and reputation of the police.

  He gave Wallander a dismayed look. "You look really terrible."

  "They beat me up," said Wallander. "Beat you up? Who?"

  "The other officers. That's what happens when you're acting chief. They let you have it." Björk laughed.

  Anette Brolin looked at him with what seemed to be genuine sympathy.

  "That must hurt," she said.

  "I'll be all right," replied Wallander.

  He turned his face away when he answered, remembering that he had forgotten to brush his teeth. They all went into Björk's office. Since there was no written report, Wallander gave a summary of the case. Björk and Anette Brolin both asked a lot of questions.

  "If it had been anyone but you who dragged me out of bed on Sunday morning with this kind of cops-and-robbers story, I wouldn't have believed it," said Björk.

  Then he turned to Anette Brolin. "Do we have enough to detain them? Or should we just bring them in for questioning?"

  "I'll get the detention order on them based on the interrogation results," said Anette Brolin. "Then, of course, it would be good if that Romanian woman could identify the man in Lund in a line-up."

  "We'll need a court order for that," said Björk.

  "Yes " said Anette Brolin. "But we could do a provisional identification."

  Wallander and Rydberg looked at her with interest.

  "We could bring in the woman," she went on. "Then they could pass each other in the corridor by chance."

  Wallander nodded in approval. Anette Brolin was a prosecutor who was Per Akeson's equa
l when it came to taking a flexible view of the rules.

  "Right," said Björk. "I'll get in touch with our colleagues in Malmö and Lund. Then we'll pick up the suspects in two hours. At ten o'clock."

  "What about the woman in the bed?" asked Wallander. "The one in Lund?"

  "We'll bring her in too," said Björk. "How should we divide up the interrogations?"

  "I want Bergman," said Wallander. "Rydberg can talk to the man who munches on apples."

  "At 3 p.m. we'll decide about the detention order," said Anette Brolin. "I'll be at home until then."

  Wallander accompanied her out to the reception. "I was thinking about asking you to dinner last night," he said. "But something came up."

  "There'll be plenty more evenings," she said. "I think you've done a good job on this case. How did you work out that he was the one?"

  "I didn't. It was just a hunch."

  He watched her as she headed towards town. It came to him that he hadn't thought of Mona at all since the evening they had had dinner together.

  Everything started to move very fast. Hansson was wrenched out of his Sunday peace and told to collect the Romanian woman and an interpreter.

  "Our colleagues don't sound happy," Björk said with concern. "It's never anyone's idea of fun to bring in someone from your own force. It's going to be a wretched winter because of this."

  "What do you mean by wretched?" asked Wallander.

  "Fresh attacks on the police force."

  "He'd retired early, hadn't he?"

  "Even so. The papers will be screaming about the fact that the murderer was a policeman. There will be new persecution of the force."

  Shortly before 10 a.m. Wallander arrived at the building that was covered in scaffolding and sacking. He had four plain clothes policemen from Lund with him.

  "He has guns," said Wallander while they were still sitting in the car. "And he has committed a cold-blooded execution. Still, I think we can take it easy. He's certainly not anticipating us. Two guns drawn should be enough."

  Wallander had brought along his revolver. On the way to Lund he tried to remember when he had last taken it out. He'd realised that it was more than three years earlier, in the course of the capture of an escaped convict from Kumla prison who had barricaded himself in a summer-house near Mossby beach.

  Now they were sitting in a car outside the building in Lund. Wallander realised that he had climbed much higher than he had thought. If he had fallen all the way to the ground, he would have crushed his spine.

  That morning the police in Lund had sent out an inspector pretending to do the paper round to case the flat.

  "Let's review the situation," said Wallander. "No back stairs?"

  The officer sitting next to him shook his head. "No scaffolding on the rear side?" "Nothing."

  According to the officer, the flat was occupied by a man named Valfrid Ström. He wasn't listed in any police files. Nor did anyone know how he made his living.

  At 10 a.m. on the dot they got out of the car and crossed the street. One officer stayed at the main door of the building. There was an intercom system, but it wasn't working. Wallander jemmied the door open with a screwdriver.

  "One man should stay in the stairwell," he said. "You and I will go upstairs. What's your name?"

  "Enberg."

  "You've got a first name, haven't you?" "Kalle."

  "OK, Kalle, let's go."

  They listened in the dark outside the door. Wallander drew his revolver and nodded to Enberg to do the same. Then he rang the doorbell.

  The door was opened by a woman wearing a dressing gown. Wallander recognised her. It was the same woman who had been asleep in the double bed. He hid his revolver behind his back.

  "We're with the police," he said. "We're looking for your husband, Valfrid Ström."

  The woman, who was in her 40s and had a harried expression, looked scared. She stepped aside and let the policemen in.

  Suddenly Valfrid Ström was standing in front of them. He was dressed in a green tracksuit.

  "Police," said Wallander. "We need to ask you to come with us."

  The man with the half-moon-shaped bald patch looked at him tensely. "Why?" "For questioning." "About what?"

  "You'll find out at the station."

  Wallander turned to the woman. "You'd better come along too. Put on some clothes."

  The man seemed completely calm. "I'm not going anywhere if you don't tell me why," he said. "Perhaps you could start by showing me some identification."

  When Wallander put his right hand in his inside pocket, he couldn't hide the fact that he was carrying a gun. He switched it over to his left hand and fumbled for his wallet, where he kept his identity card.

  In the same instant Ström leapt straight at him. He butted Wallander right in the forehead, smack in the middle of his wound. Wallander went sailing backwards, and the revolver flew out of his hand. Enberg didn't have time to react before the man in the green tracksuit had disappeared out the door. The woman shrieked, and Wallander fumbled for his revolver. He dashed down the stairs after the man, yelling a warning to the two officers posted below.

  Ström was fast. He gave the policeman standing inside the door an elbow to the chin. The man outside was rammed by the front door when Ström flung himself out into the street. Wallander, who could hardly see for the blood streaming into his eyes, stumbled over the unconscious policeman in the stairwell. He pulled at the safety catch on his revolver, which was stuck.

  Then he was out on the street.

  "Which way did he go?" he called to the bewildered policeman who was entangled in the sacking. "Left."

  Wallander ran. He caught sight of Ström's tracksuit just as he disappeared into an underpass. He tore off his cap and wiped his face. Several elderly women, who looked as though they were on their way to church, jumped aside in fright. He ran into the underpass just as a train rumbled overhead.

  When he reached street level again, he just had time to see Ström stop a car, drag the driver out, and drive off.

  The only vehicle nearby was a large horsebox. The driver was pulling a pack of condoms from a vending machine on a shop wall. When Wallander came racing up, his gun drawn and blood streaming down his face, the man dropped the condoms and ran for his life.

  Wallander climbed into the driver's seat. He heard a horse whinny behind him. The engine was still running, and he threw it into first gear.

  He thought he had lost sight of Ström, but then he saw the car again. It drove through a red light and continued down a narrow street straight towards the cathedral. Wallander was changing gears fast, trying not to lose sight of the car. Horses were whinnying behind him, and he smelled the odour of warm manure.

  In a tight curve he almost lost control. He bounced off two parked cars, but finally managed to straighten up.

  The chase proceeded towards the hospital and then through an industrial area. Wallander saw that the horsebox was equipped with a phone. He tried dialling the emergency number with one hand while struggling to keep the heavy vehicle on the road.

  Just as the emergency operator answered, he had to negotiate a curve. The phone fell from his grasp, and he realised that he wouldn't be able to recover it without stopping.

  This is crazy, he thought in desperation. Stark raving mad. And then he remembered his sister. He was supposed to be meeting her at Sturup airport right now.

  In the roundabout by the entrance to Staffanstorp the chase ended.

  Ström was forced to brake hard to avoid a bus that was heading across his path. He lost control, and the car ran straight into a concrete pillar. Wallander, about 100 metres behind him, saw flames shooting out of the car. He braked so hard that the horsebox slid into the ditch and toppled over. The back doors flew open and two horses disentangled themselves and galloped away across the fields.

  Ström had been flung out of the car on impact. One foot was sliced off. His face had been gashed by shards of glass. Even before he reached him Wal
lander could tell that he was dead.

  People came running from the nearby houses. Cars pulled over to the side of the road. Too late he realised that he had his gun in his hand. A few minutes later the first squad car arrived. Then an ambulance. Wallander showed his identity card and made a call from the squad car. He asked to be put through to Björk.

  "Did it go all right?" asked Björk. "Bergman has been picked up and is on the way here. Everything went without a hitch. And the Yugoslav woman is waiting here with her interpreter."

  "Send them over to the morgue at Lund General Hospital," said Wallander. "She'll have to identify a corpse. By the way, she's Romanian."

  "What the hell do you mean by that?" said Björk.

  "Just what I said," replied Wallander and hung up.

  At that moment he saw one of the horses come galloping back across the field. It was a beautiful white stallion. He didn't think he'd ever seen such a beautiful horse.

  When he got back to Ystad the news of Ström's death had already made the rounds. The woman who was his wife had collapsed, and a doctor refused to let the police interrogate her.

  Rydberg told Wallander that Bergman denied everything. He hadn't stolen his own car and then ditched it. He hadn't been at Hageholm. He hadn't visited Ström the night before. He demanded to be taken back to Malmö at once.

  "What a damned weasel," said Wallander. "I'll crack him."

  "Nobody is doing any cracking here," said Björk. "That ludicrous high-speed chase through Lund has caused enough trouble already. I don't understand why five full-grown policemen can't manage to bring in one unarmed man for questioning. By the way, do you know that one of those horses was run over? Its name was Super Nova, and its owner put a value of a hundred thousand kronor on it."

  Wallander felt anger welling up inside him. Why couldn't Björk grasp that it was support he needed? Not this officious whining.

  "Now we're going to wait for the Romanian woman's identification," said Björk. "Nobody talks to the press or the media except me."