He took another slug from the bottle, and Wallander could see that he was beginning to get drunk.
“Every day I think about selling this place,” he said. “I own the farm itself. I could probably get a million kronor for the whole thing. After the mortgage is paid off, I might have four hundred thousand left over. Then I’ll buy an RV and hit the road.”
“Where to?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know. There’s nowhere I want to go.”
Kurt Wallander felt uncomfortable listening to all this. Even though Widen was outwardly the same as ten years ago, inwardly he had gone through some big changes. It was the voice of a ghost talking to him, cracked and despairing. Ten years ago Sten Widen had been happy and high-spirited, the first one to invite you to a party. Now all his joy in life seemed to be gone.
The girl who had asked if Wallander was a cop rode past the window.
“Who’s she?” he asked. “She could tell I was a cop.”
“Her name is Louise,” said Widen. “She could probably smell that you’re a cop. She’s been in and out of institutions since she was twelve years old. I’m her guardian. She’s good with the horses. But she hates cops. She claims she was raped by a cop once.”
He took another hit from the bottle and gestured toward the unmade bed.
“She sleeps with me sometimes,” he said. “At least that’s how it feels. That she’s the one taking me to bed, and not the other way around. I suppose that’s against the law, right?”
“Why should it be? She isn’t a minor, is she?”
“She’s nineteen. But do guardians have the right to sleep with their wards?”
Wallander thought he heard a hint of aggression in Widén’s voice.
All of a sudden he was sorry he had come.
Even though he actually had a reason for the visit that was connected with the investigation, he now wondered whether it was merely an excuse. Had he come to visit Widen to talk about Mona? To seek some sort of consolation?
He no longer knew.
“I came here to ask you about horses,” he said. “Maybe you saw in the paper that there was a double murder in Lenarp last night?”
“I don’t read the papers,” said Widen. “I read racing forms and starting lists. That’s all. I don’t give a damn about what’s happening in the world.”
“An old couple was killed,” Wallander continued. “And they had a horse.”
“Was it killed too?”
“No. But I think the killers gave it some hay before they left. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. How fast does a horse eat an armload of hay?”
Widen emptied the bottle and lit another cigarette.
“Are you kidding?” he asked. “You came all the way out here to ask me how long it takes a horse to eat a load of hay?”
“Actually, I was thinking about asking you to come with me and take a look at the horse,” said Wallander, making a quick decision. He could feel himself starting to get mad.
“I don’t have time,” said Widen. “The blacksmith is coming today. I’ve got sixteen horses that need vitamin shots.”
“Tomorrow, then?”
Widen gave him a glazed look. “Is there money involved?”
“You’ll be paid.”
Widen wrote his telephone number on a dirty scrap of paper.
“Maybe,” he said. “Call me early 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 Widen. “She’ll never win a race in her life. The rich widow of a contractor in Trelleborg owns her. I was actually honest enough to suggest that she sell the horse to a riding school. But she thinks the horse 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 Widen suddenly.
“No.”
“He wandered off to the castle ruin one autumn night. He used to sit up there and drink. Then 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,’ it said on the cap. It was an ad for a travel bureau that sells sex trips to Bangkok.”
“It was nice to see you,” said Wallander. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Whatever,” said Widen and went off toward the stable.
Wallander drove away. In the rearview mirror he could see Sten Widen talking with 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 burst like a phantom there was nothing left. It may be true that we both loved opera. But maybe that was just our imagination too.
He drove fast, as if he were letting his agitation control the pressure he put on the gas pedal.
Just as he braked for the stop sign at the main road, his car phone rang. The connection was so bad that he could hardly make out that it was Hanson on the line.
“You’d better come in,” yelled Hanson. “Can you hear what I’m saying?”
“What happened?” Wallander yelled back.
“There’s a farmer from Hagestad sitting here who says he knows who killed them,” Hanson shouted.
Wallander could feel his heart beating faster.
“Who?” he shouted. “Who?”
The connection was abruptly cut off. The receiver hissed and squealed.
“Damn,” he said out loud.
He drove back to Ystad. And much too fast, he thought. If Norén and Peters had been on traffic duty today, I would have kept to the speed limit.
On the way down the hill into the center of town, the engine suddenly started coughing.
He had run out of gas.
The dashboard light that was supposed to warn him was evidently on the blink.
He managed to make it to the gas 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 shop in the same building and borrowed twenty kronor from the owner, who recognized him from an investigation of a break-in a few years back.
He pulled into his parking spot and hurried into the police station. Ebba tried to tell him something, but he dismissed her with a wave.
The door to Hanson’s office was ajar, and Wallander went in without knocking.
It was empty.
In the hall he ran into Martinson, who was holding a stack of printouts.
“Just the man I’m looking for,” said Martinson. “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 don’t have time right now. You know where Hanson is?”
“He never leaves his office, you know that.”
“Then we’ll have to put out an APB on him. Anyway, he’s not there now.”
He poked his head in the lunchroom, but there was only an office clerk in there making an omelet.
Where the hell is that Hanson? he thought, flinging open the door to his own office.
Nobody there either. He called Ebba at the switchboard.
“Where’s Hanson?” 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 was Hanson up to?
He picked up the phone again.
“Can you page Hanson for me?” he asked Ebba.
“At the Union Bank?”
“If that’s where he is.”
He very seldom asked Ebba for help in tracking people down. He could never get used to the idea of having a secretary. If he needed something done, he was the one who had to do it. In the past he had thought it was a bad habit he carried with him from his upbringing. It was only rich, arrogant people who sent others out to do their footwork. Not being able to look up a number in the phone book and pick up the receiver was indefensible laziness.
The telephone rang, interrupting his thoughts. It was Hanson calling from the Union Bank.
“I thought I’d get back before you did,” said Hanson. “You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here.”
“You can say that again.”
“We were 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.”
It was almost an hour and a quarter later before Wallander got to meet the man called Herdin. He was almost six foot six, thin and wiry, and when Wallander was introduced it was like shaking hands with a giant.
“It took a while,” said Hanson. “But we got results. You’ve got to hear what Herdin has to say. And what we discovered at the bank.”
Herdin was sitting erect and silent in a captain’s chair.
Wallander had a feeling that the man had dressed up in his Sunday best before coming to the police station. Even if it was only a worn suit and a shirt with a frayed collar.
“It’s probably best if we start at the beginning,” said Wallander, grabbing a notebook.
Herdin gave Hanson a bewildered look.
“Should I start all over?” he asked.
“That would probably be best,” said Hanson.
“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 forty acres near Hagestad. I’m trying to make ends meet by raising livestock. But things are a little slim.”
“I’ve got all his personal data,” Hanson interjected, and Wallander guessed that Hanson was in a hurry to get back to his racing forms.
“If I understand the matter 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 it was the money,” said Lars Herdin.
“What money?”
“All the money they had!”
“Could you clarify that a little?”
“The German money.”
Wallander looked at Hanson, who shrugged discreetly. Wallander interpreted that as meaning 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 secretly kept livestock on some forest pastures up in Småland. 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?”
“He died right 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?”
Lars Herdin nodded. “Nobody has ever been as badly deceived 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 murder, he thought.
“And this money was kept at home?”
“Only sometimes,” replied Herdin.
“Sometimes?”
“When he made his large withdrawals.”
“Could you try and give me a little more detail?”
Suddenly something seemed to spill 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, I can never forgive that.”
Lars Herdin’s outburst came so suddenly that neither Hanson nor Wallander had time to react. Herdin grabbed a thick glass ashtray that was on the table near him and flung it full force against the wall, right next 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.
Hanson had sprung out of his chair and seemed ready to throw himself at the rangy Lars Herdin. But Wallander raised his hand to stop him, and Hanson 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 cleaning women will take care of it,” said Wallander. “I think we should continue talking.”
Herdin now seemed totally 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 had made off the war. He complained that everything was so expensive and the farmers were so poor. But he had his money, which kept on growing and growing.”
“And he kept this money in the bank?”
Herdin shrugged. “In the bank, in stocks and bonds, who knows what else.”
“Why did he keep the money at home sometimes?”
“Johannes Lövgren had a mistress,” said Herdin. “There was a woman in Kristianstad he had a child with in the fifties. Maria knew nothing about that either—the woman or the child. He probably spent more money on her every year than he gave Maria in her whole life.”
“How much money are we talking about?”
“Twenty-five, thirty thousand. Two or three times a year. 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 figure out all the details.
“What did they say at the bank?” he asked Hanson.
“If you don’t have all the search warrants in order, the bank usually doesn’t say anything,” said Hanson. “They wouldn’t let me look at his account balances. But I did get the answer to one question: Whether he had been to the bank recently.”
“And he had?”
Hanson nodded. “Last Thursday. Three days before someone slaughtered him.”
“Are you sure?”
“One of the tellers recognized him.”
“And he withdrew a large sum of money?”
“They wouldn’t say exactly. But the teller nodded when the bank director turned his back.”
“We’ll have to talk to the prosecutor after we write up this deposition,” said Wallander. “Then we can look into his assets and get an idea of the situation.”
“Blood money,” said Lars Herdin.
Wallander wondered for a moment 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 come you know about all this? You claim that Johannes Lövgren kept all this secret from his wife. So how do you know about it?”
Herdin didn’t answer the question. He stared mutely at the floor.
Wallander looked at Hanson, 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 an
gle. “How many people know about what you just told us?”
Herdin didn’t answer.
“Whatever you say won’t go beyond this room,” Wallander continued.
Herdin stared at the floor.
Wallander knew instinctively that he ought to wait.
“Would you get us some coffee?” he asked Hanson. “See if you can find some pastries too.”
Hanson vanished out the door.
Lars Herdin kept staring at the floor, and Wallander waited.
Hanson 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 be forced 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 somebody else behind Johannes Lövgren’s friendly and taciturn front. I thought there was something fishy about him. Maria was my little sister. I wanted the best for her. I was suspicious of Johannes Lövgren from the first time he started coming around and courting her at our parents’ house. It took me thirty years to figure 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 for now,” said Wallander. “Now we know that Johannes 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.”
Lars Herdin looked at him. Wallander suddenly noticed a glint of fear in his eyes.
Faceless Killers: A Mystery Page 7