Faceless Killers kw-1

by Henning Mankell

  "I don't know," said Rydberg. "But you'll figure out something."They sat for a couple of hours on Rydberg's balcony. In the early evening Wallander went back to his car. The stones under his feet were no longer so cold.

  CHAPTER 15

  Wallander would always remember the following days as the time when the chart was drawn. He started with what Britta-Lena Bodén remembered and an illegible signature. A possible scenario existed, and the last word Maria Lövgren spoke before she died was a piece of the puzzle that had finally fallen into place. He also had the oddly-knotted noose to consider.

  He drew the chart. On the day he had talked with Britta-Lena Bodén in the warm sand dunes at Sandhammaren he had gone to Björk's house, interrupted his dinner, and extracted from him a promise there and then to assign Hansson and Martinsson back to the investigation, which was once again given top priority.

  On Wednesday, 11 July, before the bank opened for business, they reconstructed the scene. Britta-Lena Bodén took her place behind the window, Hansson assumed the role of Lövgren, and Martinsson and Björk played the two men who came in to change their money. Wallander insisted that everything should be exactly as it was on that day six months earlier. The anxious bank manager eventually agreed to allow Britta-Lena Bodén to hand over 27,000 kronor notes of mixed, large denominations to Hansson, who had borrowed an old briefcase from Ebba.

  Wallander stood to one side, watching everything. Twice he ordered them to begin again when Britta-Lena Bodén remembered some detail that didn't seem right.

  Wallander set up this reconstruction in order to trigger her memory. He was hoping that she could open a door to yet another room in her exceptional memory.

  When it was over, she shook her head. She had told him everything she could remember. There was nothing more she could say. Wallander asked her to postpone her journey to Oland another couple of days and then left her in an office where she could look through photographs of foreign criminals who, for one reason or another, had been caught in the net of the Swedish police. When this produced no results, she was put on a flight to Norrkoping to go through the extensive photo archives at the Immigration Service. After 18 hours spent studying countless pictures, she returned to Sturup, where Wallander himself went to meet her. The results were negative.

  The next step was to link up with Interpol. The scenario of how the crime might have occurred was fed into their computers, which then made comparative studies at European headquarters. Again, nothing turned up to change the situation significantly.

  While Britta-Lena Bodén was sitting puzzling over the endless rows of photographs, Wallander conducted three long interviews with Arthur Lundin, the chimney sweep from Slimminge. The drives between Lunnarp and Ystad were reconstructed, clocked, and repeated. Wallander continued to draw up his chart.

  Now and then he went to see Rydberg, who sat on his balcony, weak and pale, and went over the investigation with him. Rydberg insisted that these visits were not a burden for him. But Wallander left him each time with a nagging feeling of guilt.

  Anette Brolin returned from her holiday, which she had spent with her husband and children in a summerhouse in Grebbestad on the west coast. Her family came back to Ystad with her, and Wallander adopted his most formal tone when he called to report his breakthrough in the hitherto stalled investigation.

  After a week of intensive activity, everything came to a standstill. Wallander stared at his chart. They were stuck again.

  "We'll just have to wait," said Björk. "Interpol's dough rises slowly."

  Wallander winced at the strained metaphor, but realised that Björk was right.

  When Britta-Lena Bodén came back from Oland, Wallander asked the bank to give her a few more days off. He took her to the refugee camps around Ystad. They also visited the floating camps on ships in Malmö's Oil Harbour. But nowhere did she see a face that she recognised. Wallander arranged for a police artist to come down from Stockholm, but after coundess sketches, Britta-Lena Bodén was not satisfied with any of the faces the artist produced.

  Wallander began to have doubts. Björk forced him to give up Martinsson and make do with Hansson as his only colleague on the case.

  On Friday, 20 July, Wallander was once more ready to give up. Late in the evening he sat down and wrote a memo suggesting that the investigation be put on hold for the time being because no pertinent material that would move the case forward could be found.

  He put the paper on his desk and decided to leave the decision to Björk and Anette Brolin on Monday morning.

  He spent Saturday and Sunday on the Danish island of Bornholm. It was windy and rainy, and something he ate on the ferry made him ill. He spent Sunday night in bed. At regular intervals he had to get up and vomit.

  When he woke on Monday morning, he was feeling better, but he was still undecided about whether to stay in bed or not. At last he got up and left the flat. A few minutes before 9 a.m. he was at the station. Since it was Ebba's birthday, they all had cake in the canteen. It was almost 10 a.m. before Wallander finally had a chance to read through his memo to Björk. He was about to deliver it when the phone rang. It was Britta-Lena Bodén.Her voice was barely a whisper."They've come back. Get here as fast as you can!""Who's come back?" asked Wallander.

  "The men who changed the money. Don't you understand?"

  In the corridor he ran into Norén, just come back from traffic duty."Come with me!" shouted Wallander.

  "What the hell's going on?" said Norén biting into a sandwich."Don't ask. Just come!"

  When they reached the bank Norén was still clutching the half-eaten sandwich. On the way over, Wallander had gone through a red light and driven over a flower bed. He left the car right in the middle of some market stalls in the square by the town hall. But still they got there too late. The two men had disappeared. Britta-Lena Bodén had been so shaken to see them again that it hadn't occurred to her to ask anyone to follow them. But she had had the presence of mind to activate the security camera.

  Wallander studied the signature on the receipt. The name was again illegible, but the signature was the same. No address was given this time either.

  "Good," said Wallander to Britta-Lena Bodén, who was standing in the bank manager's office, shaking. "What did you say when you left to call me?"

  "That I had to go and get a stamp." "Do you think they suspected anything?" She shook her head.

  "Good," Wallander repeated. "You did exactly the right thing.""Do you think you'll catch them now?" she asked."Yes," said Wallander. "This time we're going to get them."

  The video tape from the camera showed two men who did not look particularly Mediterranean. One of them had short blond hair, the other was balding. The first was at once dubbed Lucia and the other Skinhead.

  Britta-Lena Bodén listened to samples of recorded languages and finally decided that the men had spoken to each other in Czech or Bulgarian. The $50 note they had exchanged was immediately sent to the laboratory for examination.Björk called a meeting in his office.

  "After six months they turn up again," said Wallander. "Why did they go back to the same small bank? First, because they live somewhere in the region. Second they made a lucky catch after their earlier visit. This time they weren't so lucky. The man ahead of them in line was depositing money, not making a withdrawal. But he was an old man like Johannes Lövgren. Maybe they think that old men who look like farmers always make large cash withdrawals.""Czechs?" asked Björk. "Or Bulgarians?"

  "That's not positively confirmed," said Wallander. "The girl could have been mistaken. But it fits with their appearance."

  They watched the video four times and decided which pictures to copy and enlarge."Every Eastern European who lives in town and the surrounding area will have to be investigated," said Björk. "It's not going to be pleasant. It will be regarded as discrimination, but we'll have to say to hell with that. They've got to be here somewhere. I'll talk to the police chiefs in Malmö and Kristianstad and see what they think we
should do on the county level."

  "Show the video to every police officer," said Hansson. "They might turn up on the streets."

  Wallander had a vision of the slaughterhouse that had been the Lövgren's farm.

  "After what they did in Lunnarp," he said, "we have to treat them as dangerous."

  "If they were the ones," said Björk. "We don't know that yet.""That's true," said Wallander. "But even so."

  "We're going to move into high gear now," said Björk. "Kurt is in charge and will divide up the work as he sees fit. Anything that doesn't have to be done straight away should be put aside. I'll call the prosecutor; she'll be glad to hear that something's happening."

  But nothing did happen. In spite of massive police effort and the relatively small size of the town, the men had vanished.

  The next few days passed without result. The two county police chiefs gave the go-ahead to implement special measures in their districts. The video tape was distributed. Wallander had doubts as to whether the pictures should be released to the press. He was afraid that the men would make themselves even scarcer. He asked for Rydberg's advice.

  "You have to drive foxes out into the open," he said. "Wait a few days. But then publish the pictures."

  For a long time he sat staring at the copies that Wallander had brought along.

  "There's no such thing as a murderer's face," he said. "You imagine something: a profile, a hairline, a set of the jaw. But it never matches up."

  On Tuesday, 31 July, ragged clouds raced across the sky, and the wind was gusting up to gale force. After waking at dawn, Wallander lay in bed for a long time and listened to the wind. When he stood on the scales in the bathroom, he saw that he had lost another kilo. This cheered him up so much that when he drove into the car park at the station he had shed the gloom he'd felt of late.

  This investigation is turning into a personal defeat, he had been thinking. I'm driving my colleagues hard, we've fetched up in a dead end again. But those two men are out there, he thought angrily as he slammed the car door. Somewhere.

  In the reception he stopped to chat to Ebba. There was an old-fashioned music box next to the switchboard.

  "I haven't seen one of those in ages," he said. "Where did you get it?"

  "I bought it at a stall in the Sjobo market," she replied. "Sometimes you can actually find something wonderful amongst all the junk."

  Wallander smiled and moved on. On the way to his office he stopped to see Hansson and Martinsson and asked them to come along with him. Still no trace of Skinhead or Lucia.

  "Two more days," said Wallander. "If we don't come up with something by Thursday, we'll call a press conference and release the pictures.""We should have done that right away," said Hansson.Wallander said nothing.They went over the chart again. Martinsson would go on organising the search of camping grounds where the two men might be hiding out.

  "Check the youth hostels," said Wallander. "And all the rooms rented in private homes for the summer."

  "It was easier in the old days," said Martinsson. "People used to stay put in the summer. Now they scatter all over the place."

  Hansson would go on to looking into a number of smaller, less particular building firms that were known to hire workers from various Eastern European countries without work permits. Wallander would go out to the strawberry fields. The two men might be hiding at one of the big fruit farms.

  But their searches were in vain. When they gathered again late in the afternoon, they had drawn only blanks.

  "I found one Algerian pipefitter," said Hansson, "two Kurdish bricklayers and a huge number of Polish manual labourers. I feel like writing a note to Björk. If we hadn't had this damned double murder to solve, we could have cleaned up that shit. They're making the same wages as kids with summer jobs. They have no insurance. If there's an accident, the companies will say that the workers were living without permission at the sites."Martinsson had no good news either.

  "I found a bald Bulgarian," he said. "With a little luck he could have been Skinhead. But he's a doctor at the clinic in Mariestad and would have no trouble producing an alibi."

  It was stuffy in the room. Wallander got up and opened the window. For some reason he thought of Ebba's music box. Though he hadn't heard its tune, the music box had been playing in his subconscious all day.

  "The markets," he said, turning around. "We should look there. Which market is open next?"

  Both Hansson and Martinsson knew the answer. The one in Kivik."It's open today and tomorrow," said Hansson."I'll go there tomorrow," said Wallander.

  "It's a big one," said Hansson. "You should take somebody with you."I can go," said Martinsson.

  Hansson looked relieved to be spared the assignment. Wallander thought that there probably were races on Wednesday nights. The meeting over, they said goodbye to one another, and Hansson and Martinsson left. Wallander remained at his desk and sorted through a pile of phone messages. He arranged them in order of priority for the following day and got ready to leave. Then he caught sight of a note that had fallen under the desk. He bent to pick it up and saw that it was a message to call the director of a refugee camp.

  He dialled the number. It rang ten times and he was about to hang up when someone answered.

  "This is Wallander at the Ystad police. I want to speak to Mr Modin.""Speaking.""I'm returning your call.""I think I have something important to tell you."Wallander held his breath.

  "It's about the two men you're looking for. I came back from holiday today. The photographs the police sent were on my desk. I recognise those two men. They lived at this camp for a while."

  "I'm on my way," said Wallander. "Don't leave your office before I get there."

  The camp was outside Skurup, and Wallander was there in 19 minutes. It was housed in an old vicarage, and was only used as a temporary shelter when all the permanent camps were full.

  Modin, the director, was a short man, maybe 60. He was in the drive when Wallander's car skidded to a stop.

  "The camp is empty at the moment," Modin said. "But we're expecting a number of Romanians next week."They went into his small office."Start at the beginning," Wallander said.

  "They were here from December of last year to the middle of February," said Modin, leafing through some papers. "Then they were transferred to Malmö. To Celsius House, to be exact."

  Modin pointed to the photo of Skinhead. "That one is Lothar Kraftczyk. He's a Czech seeking political asylum on the grounds that he was persecuted as a member of an ethnic minority."

  "Are there minorities in Czechoslovakia?" wondered Wallander."I think he claims he is a gypsy.""Claims?"

  Modin shrugged. "I don't believe he is. Refugees who know they don't have a strong enough case to be permitted to stay in Sweden quickly learn that one excellent way to improve their chances is to say that they're gypsies."

  Modin picked up the photo of Lucia. "Andreas Haas. Also a Czech. I don't really know what his grounds for seeking asylum were. The paperwork went with them to Celsius House."

  "And you're positive that they're the men in the photographs?""Yes. I'm sure of it.""OK," said Wallander. "Tell me more."

  "About what?"

  "What were they like? Did anything unusual happen while they were here? Did they have plenty of money? Anything you can remember."

  "I've been trying," said Modin. "By and large they kept to themselves. You should know that life in a refugee camp is extremely stressful. I do remember that they played chess. Day in, day out.""Did they have money?""Not that I recall.""What were they like?""They kept to themselves, but they weren't unfriendly." "Anything else?"Wallander noticed that Modin hesitated."What are you thinking?" he asked.

  "This is a small camp," said Modin. "I'm not here at night, and neither is anyone else. On certain days it was also unstaffed. Except for a cook to prepare the meals. Usually we keep a car here. The keys are locked in my office. But sometimes when I got here in the morning I had the feeling that someone had been in my offic
e, taken the keys, and used the car.""And you suspected these two?"

  Modin nodded. "I don't know why. It was just a feeling I had."Wallander pondered this.

  "So at night no-one was here," he said. "Or on certain days either. Is that right?" "Yes."

  "January the 4th to January the 6th," said Wallander. "That's more than six months ago. Is there any way of knowing whether anyone was on duty those days?"Modin paged through his desk calendar.

  "I was at emergency meetings in Malmö," he said. "There was such a backlog of refugees that we had to find more temporary camps."

  Wallander had goose bumps. The chart had come alive. Now it was speaking to him."So nobody was here on those days?"

  "Only the cook. The kitchen is in the back so she might not have seen if anyone had driven away in the car.""None of the refugees would have said anything?"

  "Refugees don't get involved. They're scared. Even of each other."Wallander stood up. Suddenly he was in a big hurry.

  "Call your colleague at Celsius House and tell him I'm on my way," he said. "But don't say anything about these two men. Just make sure that the director is available."Modin stared at him."Why are you looking for them?" he asked."They may have committed a crime. A serious crime.""The murders in Lunnarp? Is that what you mean?"

  Wallander saw no reason not to tell him. "Yes. I think they're the ones."

  He reached Celsius House in central Malmö at a few minutes past 7 p.m. He parked on a side street and walked to the main entrance, where there was a security guard. After several minutes a man came to get him. His name was Larson, a retired seaman, and he smelled of beer.

  "Haas and Kraftczyk," said Wallander when they were in Larson's office. "Two Czech asylum seekers.""The chess players," he said. "Yes, they live here."Damn it thought Wallander. We've finally got them."Are they here, in the building?""Yes," said Larson. "I mean, no.""No?"

  "They live here. But they're not here.""Where the hell are they?""I really don't know.""But they do live here?""They ran away.""Ran away?""It happens all the time - people running away.""But aren't they trying to get asylum?"