Faceless Killers - Wallander 01

by Henning Mankell

  Now and then Wallander felt vaguely uneasy; afraid that they were going down yet another blind alley. But it was mosdy Rydberg who showed signs of doubt. Time after time he asked himself whether a lone individual could have carried out the murders.

  "There was something that hinted at teamwork in that slaughterhouse," he said. "I can't get the idea out of my mind."

  "There's nothing to say Magnusson didn't have an accomplice," replied Wallander. "We have to take one thing at a time."

  "If he committed the murder to pay a gambling debt, he wouldn't want an accomplice," Rydberg objected.

  "I know," said Wallander. "But we have to keep at it."

  Thanks to some quick work by Martinsson, they obtained a photograph of Magnusson, which was dug up from the county council's archives. It was taken from a brochure in which the county council presented its activities to a populace that was clearly assumed to be ignorant. Björk was of the opinion that all national and municipal government bodies needed public relations teams, which when necessary could highlight the colossal significance of that institution. He thought the brochure was excellent. In any case, there was Magnusson, standing next to his yellow fork-lift truck, dressed in dazzling white overalls. He was smiling.

  The police officers looked at his face and compared it with some black-and-white photos of Johannes Lövgren. One of the pictures showed Lövgren standing next to a tractor in a newly-ploughed field.

  Could they be father and son? The tractor driver and the fork-lift operator? Wallander had a hard time focusing on the pictures and making them blend together. The only thing he could see was the bloody face of an old man with his nose cut off.

  By n p.m. on Friday they had completed their plan of attack. Björk had left them to go to a dinner organised by the local country club.

  Wallander and Rydberg were going to spend Saturday paying a visit to Ellen Magnusson in Kristianstad. Martinsson, Näslund, and Hansson would split up the surveillance of Erik Magnusson and also confront his fiancee with the alibi. Sunday would be devoted to surveillance and an additional run-through of all the investigative material. On Monday Martinsson, who had been appointed computer expert in spite of his lack of any real interest in the subject, would examine Erik Magnusson's records. Did he have other debts? Had he ever been mixed up in any kind of criminal activity before?

  Wallander asked Rydberg to go over all of the material. He wanted Rydberg to do what they called a treasure hunt. He would try to match up events and individuals who appeared to have nothing in common. Were there points of contact that they had previously missed? That was what he would try to discover.

  Rydberg and Wallander walked out of the station together. Wallander was suddenly aware of Rydberg's fatigue and remembered that he had been to the hospital.

  "How are you?" he asked.

  Rydberg shrugged his shoulders and mumbled something unintelligible in reply.

  "How's your leg, I mean," said Wallander.

  "Same old thing," replied Rydberg, obviously not wanting to talk about his ailments.

  Wallander drove home and poured himself a glass of whisky. But he left it untouched on the coffee table and went into the bedroom to lie down. His exhaustion got the upper hand. He fell asleep at once and escaped the thoughts that were whirling around in his head.

  That night he dreamed about Sten Wid£n. Together they were attending an opera in which the performers were singing in an unfamiliar language. Later, when he awoke, Wallander couldn't remember which opera it had been.

  As soon as he woke up the next day he remembered something they had talked about the day before. Johannes Lövgren's will. The missing will. Rydberg had spoken with the estate administrator who had been engaged by the two surviving daughters, a lawyer who was often called on by the farmers' organisations in the area. No will existed. That meant that the two daughters would inherit all of Lövgren's hidden fortune.

  Could Erik Magnusson have known that Lövgren had huge assets? Or had Lövgren kept this secret from everyone?

  Wallander got out of bed intending not to let this day pass before he knew definitively whether Ellen Magnusson had given birth to Johannes Lövgren's son.

  He ate a hasty breakfast and met Rydberg at the station just after 9 a.m. Martinsson, who had spent the night in a car outside Magnusson's flat in Rosengard was relieved by Näslund, and reported that absolutely nothing had happened during the night. Magnusson was in his flat. All had been quiet.

  The January day was hazy. Hoarfrost covered the fields. Rydberg sat exhausted and uncommunicative in the front seat next to Wallander. They didn't say a word to each other until they were approaching Kristianstad.

  At 10.30 a.m. they met Boman at the police station, and went through the transcript of the initial interview with Ellen Magnusson, which Boman had conducted himself.

  "We've got nothing on her," said Boman. "We ran the vacuum cleaner over her and the people she knows. Not a thing. Her whole story fits on one sheet of paper. She has worked at the same chemist for 30 years. She belonged to a choral group for a few years but eventually quit. She takes a lot of books out of the library. She spends her holidays with a sister in Vemmenhog, never travels abroad, never buys new clothes. She's a person who, at least on the surface, lives a completely undramatic life. Her habits are regular almost to the point of pedantry. The most surprising thing is that she can stand to live this way."

  Wallander thanked him for his work. "Now we'll take over," he said.

  They drove to Ellen Magnusson's flat.

  When she opened the door, Wallander thought that Eric looked a lot like his mother. He couldn't tell whether she had been expecting them. The look in her eyes was remote, as if she were somewhere else.

  Wallander looked around the living room. She asked if they wanted a cup of coffee. Rydberg declined, but Wallander said yes.

  Every time Wallander stepped into someone's home, he felt as though he were looking at the front cover of a book that he had just bought. The flat, the furniture, the pictures on the walls, and the smells were the title. Now he had to start reading. But Ellen Magnusson's flat was odourless, as if uninhabited. He breathed in the smell of hopelessness, resignation. Against a background of pale wallpaper hung coloured prints of abstract motifs. The furniture crammed into the room was heavy and old-fashioned. Doilies were decoratively arranged on several mahogany drop-leaf tables. On a little shelf stood a photograph of a child sitting in front of a rosebush. Wallander noticed that the only picture of her son on display was one from his childhood. The grown man was not present at all.

  Next to the living room was a small dining room. Wallander nudged the half-open door with his foot. To his amazement, one of his father's paintings hung on the wall. It was the autumn landscape without the grouse. He stood looking at it until he heard the rattie of a tray behind him. It was as if he were looking at his father's painting for the first time.

  Rydberg had sat down in a chair by the window. Someday Wallander would ask him why he always sat by a window.

  Where do our habits come from? he wondered. What secret factory produces our habits, both good and bad? Ellen Magnusson served him coffee. He decided he'd better begin.

  "Goran Boman from the Kristianstad police was here and asked you a number of questions," he said. "Please don't be surprised if we ask you some of the same ones."

  "Just don't be surprised if you get the same answers," said Ellen Magnusson.

  At that moment Wallander realised that the woman sitting across from him was the mystery woman with whom Johannes Lövgren had had a child. Wallander knew it without knowing how.

  In a rash moment he decided to lie his way to the truth. If he wasn't mistaken, Ellen Magnusson had had very little experience with the police. She would assume that they searched for the truth by being honest themselves. She was the one who would lie, not the police.

  "Mrs Magnusson," said Wallander. "We know that Johannes Lövgren is the father of your son Erik. There's no use denyin
g it."

  She looked at him, terrified. The absent look in her eyes was suddenly gone. Now she was with them again.

  "That's not true," she said.

  A lie that begs for mercy, thought Wallander. She's going to break soon.

  "Of course it's true," he said. "You and I both know it's true. If Johannes Lövgren hadn't been murdered, we would never have had to worry about asking these questions. But now we have to know. And if we don't find out now, you'll be forced to answer these questions under oath in court."

  It was easier than he thought. Suddenly she cracked.

  "Why do you want to know?" she shrieked. "I haven't done anything. Why can't a person be allowed to keep her secrets?"

  "No-one is denying that right, " said Wallander carefully. "But when people are murdered, we have to search for those responsible. This means we have to ask questions. And we have to get answers."

  Rydberg sat motionless on his chair by the window. His tired eyes watched the woman. Together they listened to her story. Wallander thought it inexpressibly dreary. Her life, as it was laid out before him, was just as hopeless as the frosty landscape he had driven through that morning.

  She had been born the daughter of an elderly farming couple in Yngsjo. She had torn herself free from the land and had eventually got a job in a chemist. Johannes Lövgren had come into her life as a customer there. She told Wallander and Rydberg that they first met when he was buying bicarbonate of soda. He had returned and started to court her.

  He had described himself as a lonely farmer. Not until the baby was born did she find out that he was married. Her feelings had been resigned, never angry. He had bought her silence with money, which was paid to her several times a year. But she had raised the son alone. He was hers.

  "What did you think when you found out that he had been murdered?" asked Wallander when she fell silent.

  "I believe in God," she said. "I believe in righteous vengeance."

  "Vengeance?"

  "How many people did Johannes betray?" she asked. "He betrayed me, his son, his wife, and his daughters. He betrayed everyone."

  And soon she will learn that her son is a murderer, thought Wallander. Will she imagine that he was an archangel who was carrying out a divine decree for vengeance? Will she be able to bear it?

  He continued asking his questions. Rydberg shifted his position on the chair by the window. A bell went off in the kitchen. When they finally left, Wallander felt that he had got all the answers he needed.

  He had discovered who the mystery woman was. The secret son. He knew that she was expecting money from Lövgren. But he had never shown up.

  One question, however, had an unexpected answer. Ellen Magnusson didn't give any of Lövgren's money to her son. She put it into a savings account. He wouldn't inherit the money until she was gone. Perhaps she was afraid that he would gamble it away.

  But Erik Magnusson knew that Johannes Lövgren was his father. He had lied about that. Did he also know that his father had a huge fortune?

  Rydberg was silent during the entire interview. Just as they were about to leave, he had asked her how often she saw her son. Whether they got along well with each other. Did she know about his fiancee?

  Her reply was evasive. "He's grown now," she said. "He lives his own life. But he's good about coming to visit. And of course I know that he is engaged."

  Now she's lying again, thought Wallander. She didn't know.

  They stopped at an inn at Degeberga and ate. Rydberg seemed to have revived.

  "Your interrogation was perfect," he said. "It should be used as a training exercise at the police academy."

  "Still, I did he," said Wallander. "And that's not considered kosher."

  During the meal they discussed their strategy. Both of them agreed that they should wait for the report on Erik Magnusson's records to be compiled before they picked him up for questioning.

  "Do you think he's the one?" asked Rydberg.

  "Of course he is," replied Wallander. "Alone or with an accomplice. What do you think?"

  "I hope you're right."

  They arrived back at the police station in Ystad at 3.15 p.m. Näslund was sitting in his office, sneezing. He had been relieved by Hansson at midday. Erik Magnusson had spent the morning buying new shoes and turning in some betting slips at a tobacco shop. Then he had gone home.

  "Does he seem on guard?" asked Wallander.

  "I don't know," said Näslund. "Sometimes I think so. But then I think I'm imagining things."

  Rydberg went home, and Wallander shut himself in his office. He leafed absentmindedly through a stack of papers that someone had put on his desk. He was having a hard time concentrating. Ellen Magnusson's story had made him uneasy. He imagined that his own life wasn't that different from hers. His own unstable life.

  I'm going to take some time off when this is over, he thought. With all my overtime I could probably be gone for a week. I'm going to devote seven whole days to myself. Seven days like seven lean years. Then I'll emerge a new man.

  He pondered whether he ought to go to one of those health spas where he could get help losing weight. But the thought depressed him. He would rather get in his car and drive south. Maybe to Paris or Amsterdam. He knew a policeman in Arnhem whom he had met once at a narcotics seminar. Maybe he could visit him.

  But first we have to solve these murders, he thought. We'll do that next week. Then I'll decide where I'm going to go.

  On Thursday, 25 January, Erik Magnusson was picked up by the police for questioning. Rydberg and Hansson nabbed him right outside the block of flats where he lived, while Wallander sat in the car and watched. Magnusson got into the squad car without protest. They had timed it for morning, when he was on his way to work. Since Wallander was anxious for the first interview to take place without notice, he let Magnusson call his work and give a reason for not coming in. Björk, Wallander and Rydberg were present in the room when Magnusson was interviewed. Björk and Rydberg stayed in the background while Wallander asked the questions.

  During the days before Magnusson was taken to Ystad, the police had grown even more certain that he was guilty of the murders. The investigations had shown that Magnusson had huge debts. On several occasions he had just avoided being beaten up for not paying his gambling debts. Hansson had watched Magnusson wagering large sums at Jagersro. His financial situation was catastrophic.

  The year before, he had been the suspect in a bank robbery at Eslov, but it had not been possible to pin the crime on him. It was also conceivable that Magnusson was mixed up in narcotics smuggling. His fiancee, who was now unemployed, had been convicted of drug-related offences on several occasions and in one instance for postal fraud. Erik Magnusson had huge debts, but at times, however, he had enormous sums of money. And his salary from the county council was tiny.

  Wallander had woken early on Thursday morning feeling great tension. This day would see the final breakthrough in the investigation. The murders in Lunnarp would be solved.

  The next day, Friday, 26 January he realised that he was wrong.

  The assumption that Erik Magnusson was the guilty party, or at least one of them, was completely obliterated. They had indeed gone down a blind alley. On Friday afternoon they realised that Magnusson was innocent.

  His alibi for the night of the murder had been corroborated by his fiancee's mother, who was visiting. Her credibility was beyond reproach. She was an elderly lady who suffered from insomnia. Erik Magnusson had snored all night long the night that Johannes and Maria Lövgren were brutally murdered.

  The money with which he had paid his debt to the Junkman came from the sale of a car. Magnusson was able to produce a receipt for the Chrysler he had sold. And the buyer, a cabinetmaker in Lomma, told them that he had paid cash, with 1,000-krona and 500-krona notes.

  Magnusson was also able to give a satisfactory explanation for lying about Johannes Lövgren being his father. He had done it for his mother's sake, since he thought she would wa
nt it that way. When Wallander told him that Lövgren was a wealthy man, he had looked truly astonished.

  In the end there was nothing left.

  Björk asked whether anyone was opposed to sending Erik Magnusson home, dropping him from the case until further notice. No-one had any objections. Wallander felt a crushing guilt at having steered the entire investigation in the wrong direction. Only Rydberg seemed unaffected. He was also the one who had been the most sceptical from the beginning.

  They had run aground. All that was left was a wreck. There was nothing to do but start over again.

  And then the snow arrived. In the early hours of Saturday, 27 January, a violent snowstorm came in from the southwest. After a few hours, the E65 was closed. The snow fell steadily for six hours. The heavy wind made the efforts of the snowploughs futile. As fast as they scraped the snow off the roads, it would collect in drifts again. For 24 hours the police were busy preventing the mess from developing into chaos. Then the storm moved on, as quickly as it had come.

  To Wallander's great delight, his daughter Linda called him few days later. She was in Malmö and had decided to enroll at a college outside Stockholm. She promised to come and see him before she left.

  Wallander arranged his schedule so that he could visit his father at least three times a week. He wrote a letter to his sister in Stockholm, telling her that the home help had done wonders with their father. The confusion that had driven him out on that desolate night-time promenade towards Italy had gone. Having the woman come regularly to his house had been his salvation.

  One evening, Wallander called up Anette Brolin and offered to show her around wintry Skåne. He apologised again for his behaviour. She thanked him and said yes, and the following Sunday, 4 February, he took her out to see the ancient stones at Ales Stenar and the medieval castle of Glimmingehus. They had dinner in Hammenhog at the inn, and Wallander started to think that she really had decided that he was not the man who had pulled her down onto his knee.