Faceless Killers: A Mystery

by Henning Mankell

  “Would you be able to sleep?” asked Nyström. “Would you be able to sleep if your neighbors had been slaughtered like dumb animals?”

  Since Wallander couldn’t think of a good answer, he said nothing.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” he said, got in his car, and drove off.

  This is all going to hell, he thought. Not a clue, nothing. Only Rydberg’s strange knot, and the word “foreign.” Two old people with no money under the bed, no antique furniture, are murdered in such a way that there seems to be something more than robbery behind it. A murder of hate or revenge.

  There must be something, he thought. Something out of the ordinary about these two people.

  If only the horse could talk!

  There was something about that horse that made him uneasy. Something that was just a vague hunch. But he was too experienced a policeman to ignore his uneasiness. There was something about that horse.

  At four minutes to eight he braked to a stop outside the police station in Ystad. The wind had died down to light gusts. Still, it felt a few degrees warmer today.

  Just so we don’t get snow, he thought. He nodded to Ebba at the switchboard. “Did Rydberg show up yet?”

  “He’s in his office,” replied Ebba. “They’ve all started calling already. TV, radio, and the papers. And the county police commissioner.”

  “Stall them a while,” said Wallander. “I have to talk with Rydberg first.”

  He hung up his jacket in his office before he went in to see Rydberg, whose office was a few doors down the hall. He knocked and heard a grunt in reply.

  Rydberg was standing looking out the window when Wallander came in. It was obvious that he hadn’t had enough sleep.

  “Hi,” said Wallander. “Shall I bring in some coffee?”

  “Sure. But no sugar. I’ve cut it out.”

  Wallander left to get two plastic mugs of coffee and then went back to Rydberg’s office.

  Outside the door he suddenly stopped.

  What’s my plan, anyway? he thought. Should we keep her last words from the press for so-called investigative reasons? Or should we release them? What exactly is my plan?

  I don’t have any plan, he thought, annoyed, and pushed open the door with his foot.

  Rydberg was sitting behind his desk combing his sparse hair. Wallander sank into a visitor’s easy chair with worn-out springs.

  “You ought to get a new chair,” he said.

  “There’s no money for it,” said Rydberg, putting away his comb in a desk drawer.

  Wallander set his coffee cup on the floor beside his chair.

  “I woke up so damned early this morning,” he said. “I drove out and talked with the Nyströms again. The old man was waiting in a bush and took a shot at me with a shotgun.”

  Rydberg pointed at his cheek.

  “Not from buckshot,” said Wallander. “I hit the deck. He claimed he had a permit for the gun. Who the hell knows?”

  “Did they have anything new to say?”

  “Not a thing. Nothing unusual. No money, nothing. Provided they’re not lying, of course.”

  “Why would they be lying?”

  “No, why would they?”

  Rydberg took a slurp of coffee and made a face.

  “Did you know that cops are unusually susceptible to stomach cancer?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “If it’s true, it’s because of all the bad coffee we drink.”

  “But we solve our cases over our coffee mugs.”

  “Like now?”

  Wallander shook his head. “What do we really have to go on? Nothing.”

  “You’re too impatient, Kurt.” Rydberg looked at him while he stroked his nose.

  “You’ll have to excuse me if I seem like an old schoolteacher,” he went on. “But in this case I think we have to trust in patience.”

  They went over the progress of the investigation again. The police technicians had taken fingerprints and were checking them against the national centralized records. Hanson was busy investigating the location of all known criminals with records of assault on old people, to find out whether they were in prison or had alibis. Questioning of the residents of Lenarp would continue, and maybe the questionnaire they sent out would produce something. Both Rydberg and Wallander knew that the police in Ystad carried out their work precisely and methodically. Sooner or later something would turn up. A trace, a clue. It was just a matter of waiting. Of working methodically and waiting.

  “The motive,” Wallander persisted. “If the motive isn’t money. Or the rumor of money hidden away. Then what is it? The noose? You must have thought the same thing I did. This double murder has revenge or hate in it. Or both.”

  “Let’s imagine a couple of suitably desperate robbers,” said Rydberg. “Let’s assume that they were convinced that Lövgren had money squirreled away. Let’s assume that they were sufficiently desperate and indifferent to human life. Then torture isn’t out of the question.”

  “Who would be that desperate?”

  “You know as well as I do that there are plenty of drugs that create such a dependency that people are ready to do anything at all.”

  Wallander knew that. He had seen the accelerating violence at first hand, and narcotics trafficking and drug dependency almost always lurked in the background. Even though Ystad’s police district was seldom hit by visible manifestations of this increasing violence, he harbored no illusions that it was not steadily creeping closer and closer.

  There were no protected zones anymore. A little insignificant town like Lenarp was confirmation of that fact.

  He sat up straight in the uncomfortable chair.

  “What are we going to do?” he said.

  “You’re the boss,” replied Rydberg.

  “I want to hear what you think.”

  Rydberg got up and went over to the window. With one finger he felt the dirt in a flowerpot. It was dry.

  “If you want to know what I think, I’ll tell you. But you should know that I’m by no means positive that I’m on the right track. I think that no matter what we decide to do, there’s going to be a big fuss. But maybe it would be a good idea to keep at it for a few days anyway. There are plenty of things to investigate.”

  “Like what?”

  “Did the Lövgrens have any foreign acquaintances?”

  “I asked about that this morning. They may have known some Danes.”

  “There, you see.”

  “It couldn’t be Danes camped out in tents, could it?”

  “Why not? No matter what, we’ll have to check it out. And there are more people than just the neighbors to question. If I understood you correctly yesterday, you said that the Lövgrens had a big family.”

  Wallander realized that Rydberg was right. There were investigative reasons to keep quiet about the fact that the police were searching for a person or persons with foreign connections.

  “What do we actually know about foreigners who have committed crimes in Sweden?” he asked. “Do the National Police have special files on that?”

  “There are files on everything,” Rydberg replied. “Put someone in front of a computer and hook into the central criminal database, and then maybe we’ll find something.”

  Wallander stood up.

  Rydberg gave him a quizzical look. “Aren’t you going to ask about the noose?”

  “I forgot.”

  “There’s supposed to be an old sailmaker in Limhamn who knows all about knots. I read about him in a newspaper sometime last year. I thought I’d spend some time trying to track him down. Not because I’m sure anything will come of it. But just in case.”

  “I want you to come to the meeting first,” said Wallander. “Then you can drive over to Limhamn.”

  At ten o’clock they were all gathered in Wallander’s office.

  The run-through was very brief. Wallander told them what the woman had said before she died. For the time being, this piece of informat
ion was not to be disclosed. No one seemed to have any objections.

  Martinson was put on the computer to search for foreign criminals. The officers who were going to continue with the questioning in Lenarp went on their way. Wallander assigned Svedberg to concentrate on the Polish family, who were presumably in the country illegally. He wanted to know why they were living in Lenarp. At quarter to eleven Rydberg left for Limhamn to look up the sailmaker.

  When Wallander was alone in his office, he stood for a while looking at the map hanging on the wall. Where had the killers come from? Which way did they go afterwards?

  Then he sat down at his desk and asked Ebba to start putting through calls. For over an hour he spoke with various reporters. But there was no word from the girl from the local radio station.

  At quarter past twelve Norén knocked on the door.

  “I thought you were going to Lenarp,” Wallander said, surprised.

  “I was,” said Norén. “But I just thought of something.”

  Norén sat on the edge of a chair, since he was wet. It had started to rain. The temperature had now risen to +1° Celsius.

  “This might not mean anything,” said Norén. “It was just something that crossed my mind.”

  “Most things mean something,” said Wallander.

  “You remember that horse?” asked Norén.

  “Sure, I remember the horse.”

  “You told me to give it some hay.”

  “And water.”

  “Hay and water. But I never did.”

  Wallander wrinkled his brow. “Why not?”

  “It wasn’t necessary. The horse already had hay. Water too.”

  Wallander sat in silence for a moment, looking at Norén.

  “Go on,” he said. “You’re getting at something.”

  Norén shrugged his shoulders.

  “We had a horse when I was growing up,” he said. “When the horse was in its stall and was given hay, it would eat all of it. I just mean that someone must have given the horse some hay. Maybe just an hour or so before we got there.”

  Wallander reached for the phone.

  “If you’re thinking of calling Nyström, don’t bother,” said Norén.

  Wallander let his hand drop.

  “I talked to him before I came here. And he hadn’t given the horse any hay.”

  “Dead men don’t feed their horses,” said Wallander. “Who did?”

  Norén stood up. “It seems weird,” he said. “First they kill a man. Then they put a noose on somebody else. And then they go out to the stable and give the horse some hay. Who the hell would do anything that weird?”

  “You’re right,” said Wallander. “Who would do that?”

  “It might not mean anything,” said Norén.

  “Or maybe it does,” replied Wallander. “It was good of you to tell me.”

  Norén said goodbye and left.

  Wallander sat and thought about what he had just heard.

  The hunch he had been carrying around with him had proved to be right. There was something about that horse.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the telephone.

  Another reporter who wanted to talk with him.

  At quarter to one he left the police station. He had to visit an old friend he hadn’t seen in many, many years.

  Chapter Five

  Kurt Wallander turned off the E14 where a sign pointed toward the ruins of Stjärnsund Castle. He got out of the car and unzipped to take a leak. Through the noise of the wind he could hear the sound of accelerating jet engines at Sturup airport. Before he got back in the car, he scraped off the mud that had stuck to his shoes. The change in the weather had been abrupt. The thermometer in his car that showed the outside temperature indicated -5° Celsius. Ragged clouds were racing across the sky as he continued down the road.

  Right outside the castle ruin the gravel road forked, and he kept to the left. He had never driven this route before, but he was positive it was the right way. Despite the fact that almost ten years had passed since the road had been described to him, he remembered the route in detail. He had a mind that seemed programmed for landscapes and roads.

  After about a kilometer the road deteriorated. He crept forward, wondering how large vehicles ever managed to negotiate it.

  The road suddenly sloped sharply downward, and a large farm with long wings of stables lay spread out before him. He drove into the large farmyard and stopped. A flock of crows was cawing overhead as he climbed out of the car.

  The farm seemed strangely deserted. A stable door stood flapping in the wind. For a brief moment he wondered whether he had taken the wrong road after all.

  What desolation, he thought.

  The Scanian winter with its screeching flocks of black birds.

  The clay that sticks to the soles of your shoes.

  A teenage blonde girl suddenly emerged from one of the stable doors. For a moment he thought she looked like Linda. She had the same hair, the same thin body, the same ungainly movements as she walked. He watched her intently.

  The girl started tugging at a ladder that led to the stable loft.

  When she caught sight of him she let go of the ladder and wiped her hands on her gray riding pants.

  “Hi,” said Wallander. “I’m looking for Sten Widen. Is this the right place?”

  “Are you a cop?” asked the girl.

  “Yes,” Wallander replied, surprised. “How did you know?”

  “I could hear it in your voice,” said the girl, once more pulling at the ladder, which seemed to be stuck.

  “Is he home?” asked Wallander.

  “Help me with the ladder,” the girl said.

  He saw that one of the rungs had caught on the wainscoting of the stable wall. He grabbed hold of the ladder and twisted it until the rung came free.

  “Thanks,” said the girl. “Sten is probably in his office.”

  She pointed to a red brick building a short distance from the stable.

  “Do you work here?” asked Wallander.

  “Yes,” said the girl, climbing quickly up the ladder. “Now move!”

  With surprisingly strong arms she began heaving bales of hay out through the loft doors. Wallander walked over toward the red building. Just as he was about to knock on the heavy door, a man came walking around the end of the building.

  It was at least ten years since Wallander had seen Sten Widen, yet the man did not seem to have changed. The same tousled hair, the same thin face, the same red eczema near his lower lip.

  “Well, this is a surprise,” said the man with a nervous laugh. “I thought it was the blacksmith. And it’s you instead. How long has it been, anyway?”

  “Eleven years,” said Wallander. “Summer of seventy-nine.”

  “The summer all our dreams fell apart,” said Sten Widen. “Would you like some coffee?”

  They went inside the red brick building. Wallander noticed a smell of oil coming from the walls. A rusty combine harvester stood inside in the darkness. Widen opened another door. A cat ran out as Wallander entered a room that seemed to be a combination of office and residence. An unmade bed stood along one wall. There were a TV and a VCR, and a microwave stood on a table. An old armchair was piled high with clothes. The rest of the room was taken up by a large desk. Sten Widen poured coffee from a thermos next to a fax machine in one of the wide window recesses.

  Kurt Wallander was thinking about Widén’s lost dreams of becoming an opera singer. About how in the late seventies the two of them had imagined a future for themselves that neither of them would be able to achieve. Wallander was supposed to become the impresario, and Sten Widén’s tenor would resound from the opera stages of the world.

  Wallander had been a cop back then. And he still was.

  When Widen realized that his voice wasn’t good enough, he had taken over his father’s run-down stables for training race horses. Their earlier friendship had not been able to withstand the shared disappointment. At one time they had
seen each other every day, but now eleven years had passed since their last meeting. Although they lived no more than fifty kilometers apart.

  “You’ve put on weight,” said Widen, moving a stack of newspapers from a spindle-backed chair.

  “And you haven’t,” said Wallander, aware of his own annoyance.

  “Race-horse trainers seldom get fat,” said Widen, giving his nervous laugh once more. “Skinny legs and skinny wallets. Except for the big-time trainers, of course. Khan or Strasser. They can afford it.”

  “So how’s it going?” asked Wallander, sitting down in the chair.

  “So-so,” said Widen. “I get by. I’ve always got some horse in training that does well. I get in a few new colts and manage to keep the whole place going. But actually—” He broke off without finishing his sentence.

  Then he stretched, opened a desk drawer, and pulled out a half-empty bottle of whiskey.

  “You want some?” he asked.

  Wallander shook his head. “It wouldn’t look good if a cop got caught for DWI,” he replied. “Even though it does happen once in a while.”

  “Well, skål, anyway,” said Widen, drinking from the bottle.

  He took a cigarette from a crumpled pack and rummaged through the papers and racing forms before he found a lighter.

  “How’s Mona doing?” he asked. “And Linda? And your dad? And your sister, what’s her name, Kerstin?”

  “Kristina.”

  “That’s it. Kristina. I’ve never had a very good memory, you know that.”

  “You never forgot the music.”

  “Didn’t I?”

  He drank from the bottle again, and Wallander noticed that something was eating him. Maybe he shouldn’t have dropped by. Maybe Sten didn’t want to be reminded of what once had been.

  “Mona and I broke up,” Wallander said, “and Linda’s got her own place. Dad is the same as always. He keeps painting that picture of his. But I think he’s becoming a little senile. I don’t really know what to do with him.”

  “Did you know that I got married?” said Widen.

  Wallander got the feeling he hadn’t heard a word he’d said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “I took over these goddamn stables, after all. When Dad finally realized that he was too old to take care of the horses, he started doing some serious drinking. Before, he always had control over how much he guzzled down. I realized that I couldn’t handle him and his drinking buddies. I married one of the girls who worked here at the stables. Mostly because she was so good with Dad, I guess. She treated him like an old horse. Refused to go along with his habits, and set limits for him. Took the rubber hose and rinsed him off when he got too filthy. But when Dad died, it seemed as if she started to smell like him. So I got a divorce.”