Faceless Killers: A Mystery

by Henning Mankell

  They drank cognac. Talked some, or sat in silence. Not until midnight did Wallander get up to leave. He promised to come back the following evening. After he left, Rydberg stayed where he was, sitting on the balcony in the dark.

  On Wednesday morning, July twenty-fifth, Wallander told Hanson and Martinson what had happened after the meeting the day before. Since the press conference was set for that afternoon, they decided to pay a visit to the Kivik market after all. Hanson took on the task of writing the press release along with Björk. Wallander figured that he and Martinson would be back no later than noon.

  They drove by way of Tomelilla and joined a long line of cars just south of Kivik. They pulled in and parked in a field where a greedy landowner demanded a fee of twenty kronor.

  Just as they reached the market area, which stretched before them with a view of the sea, it started to rain. In dismay they stared at the throngs of stalls and people. Loudspeakers were screeching, drunken youths were bellowing, and they were shoved back and forth by the crowd.

  “Let’s try to meet somewhere in the middle,” said Wallander.

  “We should have brought walkie-talkies in case something happens,” said Martinson.

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” said Wallander. “Let’s meet in an hour.”

  He watched Martinson shamble off and vanish into the crowd. He turned up the collar of his jacket and headed off in the opposite direction.

  After a little more than an hour they met up again. Both of them were soaked and feeling annoyed with the throngs of people and the jostling.

  “To hell with this,” said Martinson. “Let’s go someplace and get some coffee.”

  Wallander pointed at a cabaret tent in front of them.

  “Have you been in there?” he asked.

  Martinson grimaced. “Some tub of lard doing a striptease. The audience roared like it was some kind of sexual revival meeting. Jesus.”

  “Let’s walk around the tent,” said Wallander. “I think there are a few stalls over there too. Then we can go.”

  They trudged through the mud, pushing their way between a house trailer and rusty tent stakes.

  A few stalls were selling various goods. They all looked the same, their awnings pitched above red-painted metal poles.

  Wallander and Martinson saw the two men at exactly the same moment.

  They were standing inside a stall, its counter covered with leather jackets. A sign showed the price, and Wallander had time to think that the jackets were unbelievably cheap.

  The two men were behind the counter.

  They stared at the two police officers.

  Much too late Wallander realized that they recognized him. His face had appeared so often in pictures in the papers and on television. Kurt Wallander’s description had been spread all over the country.

  Then everything happened very fast.

  One of the men, the one they had started calling Lucia, stuck his hand under the leather jackets on the counter and pulled out a gun. Both Martinson and Wallander dove to the side. Martinson got tangled up in the ropes of the cabaret tent, while Wallander hit his head on the back end of the house trailer. The man behind the counter fired at Wallander. The shot could hardly be heard amid the commotion from the tent where the “death riders” were tearing around on their roaring motorcycles. The bullet struck the trailer, just a few inches from Wallander’s head. In the next instant he saw that Martinson was holding a pistol. Even though Wallander was unarmed, Martinson had brought along his service revolver.

  Martinson fired. Wallander saw Lucia jerk back and put his hand up to his shoulder. The gun flew out of his hand and landed outside the counter. With a bellow Martinson yanked himself free from the tent ropes and threw himself at the counter, straight at the wounded man. The counter broke in two, and Martinson landed in a jumble of leather jackets. By this time Wallander had lunged forward and grabbed the gun, which was lying in the mud. At the same time he saw Baldy dash away and vanish in the throng. No one seemed to have noticed the exchange of gunfire. The vendors in the surrounding stalls had watched in amazement as Martinson made his furious tiger pounce.

  “Go after the other guy,” shrieked Martinson from the heap of leather jackets. “I’ll take care of this one.”

  Wallander ran with the pistol in his hand. Baldy was somewhere in the crowd. Terrified people pulled away as Wallander came running with mud on his face and the gun in his hand. He thought he had lost the man when suddenly he caught sight of him again, in wild and reckless flight through the market crowds. He shoved aside an elderly woman who stepped in front of him and crashed into a stall selling cakes. Wallander stumbled over the mess, knocked over a candy cart, and then took off after him.

  Suddenly the man disappeared.

  Shit, thought Wallander. Shit.

  Then he saw him again. He was running toward the outskirts of the market area, on his way down to the steep cliff. Wallander raced after him. A couple of security guards came running toward him, but they leaped aside when he waved the gun and yelled at them to stay away. One of the guards crashed into a tent serving beer, while the other one knocked over a stall selling homemade candlesticks.

  Kurt Wallander ran. His heart was pounding like a piston in his chest.

  Suddenly the man vanished over the steep cliff. Wallander was about thirty meters behind him. When he reached the edge he stumbled and fell headlong down the slope. He lost his grip on the gun in his hand. For a moment he hesitated, wondering whether he should stop and search for the weapon. Then he saw Baldy running along the shore, and he took off after him.

  The chase ended when neither of them had any energy left to keep running. Baldy leaned against a black-tarred rowboat that lay turned over on the shore. Wallander stood ten meters away, so out of breath that he thought he was going to fall over.

  Then he noticed that Baldy had drawn a knife and was coming toward him.

  That’s the knife he cut off Johannes Lövgren’s nose with, he thought. That’s the knife he used to force Lövgren to tell him where the money was hidden.

  He looked around for a weapon. A broken oar was the only thing he could find.

  Baldy made a lunge with the knife. Wallander parried with the heavy oar.

  The next time the man jabbed with the knife, Wallander hit him. The oar struck the man on the collarbone. Wallander could hear the bone crack. The man stumbled, and Wallander let go of the oar and slammed his right fist into the man’s chin. His knuckles hurt like hell.

  But the man fell.

  Wallander collapsed onto the wet sand.

  A second later Martinson came running.

  The rain was suddenly pouring down.

  “We got them,” said Martinson.

  “Yes,” said Wallander. “I guess we did.”

  He walked over to the edge of the water and rinsed off his face. In the distance he saw a freighter heading south.

  He thought about how glad he was to be able to give Rydberg some good news in the midst of his misery.

  Two days later the man named Andreas Haas confessed that they had committed the murders. He confessed but blamed it all on the other man. When Lothar Kraftczyk was confronted with the confession, he gave up too. But he blamed the violence on Andreas Haas.

  Everything had happened just as Wallander had imagined. On several occasions the two men had gone into various banks to exchange money and to try to find a customer who was withdrawing a large sum. They had followed Johannes Lövgren when Lundin, the chimney sweep, had driven him home. They had tailed him along the dirt road, and two nights later they had returned in the car from the refugee camp.

  “There’s one thing that puzzles me,” said Wallander, who was heading the interrogation of Lothar Kraftczyk. “Why did you give hay to the horse?”

  The man looked at him in surprise.

  “The money was hidden in the hay,” he said. “Maybe we threw some of the hay over to the horse when we were looking for the briefcase.”


  Wallander nodded. The solution to the mystery of feeding the horse was that simple.

  “One more thing,” said Wallander. “Why the noose?”

  He got no answer. Neither of the two men wanted to admit to being the one behind the insane violence. He repeated his question but never got an answer.

  The Czech police informed them, however, that both Haas and Kraftczyk had done time for assault in their native country.

  After fleeing from the refugee camp, the two men had rented a little dilapidated house outside of Höör. The leather jackets they were selling came from the burglary of a leather-goods shop in Tranås.

  The detention hearing was over in a matter of minutes.

  No one doubted that the evidence would be airtight, even though the two men were still accusing each other.

  Kurt Wallander sat in the courtroom and stared at the two men he had been tracking for such a long time. He remembered that early morning in January when he stepped inside the house in Lenarp. Even though the double murder had now been solved and the criminals would receive their punishment, he still wasn’t satisfied. Why had they put a noose around Maria Lövgren’s neck? Why so much violence for its own sake?

  He shuddered. He had no answers. And that made him uneasy.

  Late in the evening on Saturday, August fourth, Wallander took a bottle of whiskey and went over to see Rydberg. On the following day Anette Brolin was going to go with him to visit his father.

  Wallander thought about the question he had asked her.

  Whether she would consider getting a divorce for his sake.

  Of course she had said no.

  But he knew that she hadn’t been offended by the question.

  As he drove over to Rydberg’s place, he listened to Maria Callas on the tape deck. He was taking the next week off, as comp time for the extra hours he had worked. He was going to go to Lund to visit Herman Mboya, who had come back from Kenya. He was planning to spend the rest of the time repainting his apartment.

  Maybe he would even treat himself to a new stereo.

  He parked outside the building where Rydberg lived.

  He caught a glimpse of the yellow moon overhead. He could feel that autumn was on the way.

  As usual, Rydberg was sitting in the dark on the balcony.

  Wallander filled two glasses with whiskey.

  “Do you remember when we sat around worrying about what Maria Lövgren had whispered?” said Rydberg. “That we would be forced to search for some foreigners? Then, when Erik Magnusson came into the picture, he was the most sought-after murderer imaginable. But he wasn’t the one. Now we’ve got a couple of foreigners after all. And a poor Somali who died needlessly.”

  “You knew all along,” said Wallander. “Didn’t you? You were sure the whole time that it was foreigners.”

  “I wasn’t positive,” said Rydberg. “But I thought so.”

  Slowly they went over the investigation, as if it were already a distant memory.

  “We made lots of mistakes,” said Wallander thoughtfully. “I made lots of mistakes.”

  “You’re a good cop,” said Rydberg emphatically. “Maybe I never told you that. But I think you’re a damned fine cop.”

  “I made too many mistakes,” replied Wallander.

  “You kept at it,” said Rydberg. “You never gave up. You wanted to catch whoever committed those murders in Lenarp. That’s the important thing.”

  The conversation gradually petered out.

  I’m sitting here with a dying man, thought Kurt Wallander in confusion. I don’t think I ever realized that Rydberg is actually going to die.

  He remembered the time in his youth when he was stabbed.

  He also thought about the fact that a little less than six months ago he had driven his car while intoxicated. In reality he should have been dismissed from the police force.

  Why don’t I tell Rydberg about that? he wondered. Why don’t I say anything? Or does he already know?

  The incantation flashed through his mind.

  A time to live, a time to die.

  “How are you doing?” he asked cautiously.

  Rydberg’s face was invisible in the darkness.

  “Right now I don’t have any pain,” he said. “But tomorrow it’ll be back. Or the next day.”

  It was almost two in the morning when Wallander left Rydberg, who stubbornly remained sitting on his balcony.

  Wallander left his car where it was and walked home.

  The moon had disappeared behind a cloud.

  Now and then he took a little hop.

  The voice of Maria Callas resounded in his head.

  Before he went to sleep, he lay in bed for a while in the dark of his apartment with his eyes open.

  Again he thought about the senseless violence. The new times, which might demand a different kind of cop.

  We’re living in the time of the noose, he thought. Fear will be on the rise.

  Then he forced himself to push these thoughts aside and started looking for the black woman in his dreams.

  The investigation was over.

  Now he could finally get some rest.

  © 1991 by Henning Mankell

  English translation © 1997 by Steven T. Murray

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Mankell, Henning, 1948—

  [Mördare utan ansikte. English]

  Faceless killers: a mystery / Henning Mankell;

  translated from the Swedish by Steven T. Murray.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-595-58610-0

  I. Murray, Steven T. II. Title.

  PT9876.23.A49M6713 1997

  839.7’374—dc20

  96—26260

  Originally published in Sweden as Mördare utan ansikte by Ordfronts Förlag.

  Published in the United States by The New Press, New York

  Distributed by W W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York

  The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit alternative to the large,

  commercial publishing houses currently dominating the book publishing industry.

  The New Press operates in the public interest rather than for private gain,

  and is committed to publishing, in innovative ways, works of educational, cultural,

  and community value that are often deemed insufficiently profitable.

  The New Press is deeply grateful to the Swedish Institute for its generous support.