The White Lioness

by Henning Mankell

  “That hardly seems likely,” said Wallander. “What could have kept Louise Åkerblom out until that time? Don’t forget she left a message on her answering machine to say she’d be home by five. We’ve got to believe that. Something happened before five o’clock.”

  Nobody spoke.

  Wallander looked around.

  “I’ll have to talk to the prosecutor,” he said. “If nobody has anything to say, I’m going to let Stig Gustafson go.”

  Nobody had any objection.

  Wallander walked over to the other end of the police station, where the prosecution authorities had their offices. He was admitted to Per Akeson and gave him a report of the interrogation. Every time Wallander visited his office, he was struck by the astonishing disorder all around him. Papers were stacked up haphazardly on desks and chairs; the garbage bin was overflowing. But Per Akeson was a skillful prosecutor. Moreover, no one had ever accused him of losing a single paper of significance.

  “We can’t hold him,” he said when Wallander had finished. “I take it you can check his alibi pretty quickly?”

  “Yes,” said Wallander. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think he did it.”

  “Do you have any other leads?”

  “It’s all very vague,” said Wallander. “We wondered if he might have hired somebody else to kill her. We’ll make a thorough check this afternoon before we go any further. But we have no other individual to go after. We’ll have to keep going on a broad basis for the time being. I’ll be in touch.”

  Per Akeson nodded, and stared at Wallander, frowning.

  “How much sleep are you getting?” he asked. “Or rather, how little? Have you seen yourself in a mirror? You look terrible!”

  “That’s nothing compared to how I feel,” said Wallander, getting to his feet.

  He went back down the corridor, opened the door to the interview room, and went in.

  “We’ll arrange transport to take you to Lomma,” he said. “But you can bet we’ll be in touch again.”

  “Am I free?” asked Gustafson.

  “You’ve never been anything else,” said Wallander. “Being interrogated isn’t the same as being accused.”

  “I didn’t kill her,” said Stig Gustafson. “I can’t understand how you could think such a thing.”

  “Really?” said Wallander. “Even though you’ve been chasing after her on and off?”

  Wallander saw a shadow of unease flit over Stig Gustafson’s face.

  Just so he knows we know, thought Wallander.

  He accompanied Stig Gustafson out to reception, and arranged for him to be taken home.

  I won’t be seeing him again, he thought. We can write him off.

  After an hour for lunch, they reassembled in the conference room. Wallander had been home for a few sandwiches in his kitchen.

  “Where are all the honest thieves nowadays?” asked Martinson with a sigh. “This case seems to have come out of a storybook. All we have is a dead woman from a low-church sect, dumped in a well. And a severed black finger.”

  “I agree with you,” said Wallander. “But we can’t get away from that finger, no matter how much we’d like to.”

  “There are too many loose ends flying around out of control,” said Svedberg, scratching his bald head in irritation. “We have to collect together everything we have. And we must do it now. Otherwise we’ll never get anywhere.”

  Wallander could detect in Svedberg’s words indirect criticism of the way he was leading the investigation. But he had to concede even now that it was not totally unjustified. There was always a danger of concentrating too soon on a single line of investigation. Svedberg’s imagery reflected all too accurately the confusion he felt.

  “You’re right,” said Wallander. “Let’s see how far we’ve come. Louise Åkerblom is murdered. We don’t know exactly where and we don’t know who did it. But we do know roughly when. Not far from where we found her, a house that had been standing empty explodes. In the ruins of the fire, Nyberg finds parts of an advanced radio transmitter and the charred remains of a pistol butt. The pistol is manufactured in South Africa. In addition, we find a severed black finger in the yard outside the house. Then somebody tries to hide Louise Åkerblom’s car in a pond. It’s pure coincidence we find it as quickly as we do. The same applies to her body. We also know she was shot in the middle of her forehead, and the whole setup gives the impression of an execution. I called the hospital before we started this meeting. There are no signs of sexual assault. She was just shot.”

  “We have to get all this sorted out,” said Martinson. “We have to find more evidence. About the finger, the radio transmitter, the handgun. That lawyer in Varnamo who was looking after the house has to be contacted immediately. There must obviously have been somebody in the house.”

  “We’ll sort out who does what before we close the meeting,” said Wallander. “I just have two more thoughts I’d like to put forward.”

  “We’ll kick off with them,” said Björk.

  “Who could possibly have wanted to shoot Louise Åkerblom?” said Wallander. “A rapist would have been a possibility. But she was evidently not raped, according to preliminary medical reports. There are no signs of her being beaten up or held prisoner. She has no enemies. That all makes me wonder if the whole business could have been a mistake. She was killed instead of somebody else. The other possibility is that she happened to witness something she ought not to have seen or heard.”

  “The house could fit in there,” said Martinson. “It wasn’t far from the property she was due to look over. Something has definitely been going on in that house. She might have seen something, and been shot. Peters and Norén went to the house she was going to examine. The one that belongs to a widow by the name of Wallin. They both said it was easy to go astray on the way there.”

  Wallander nodded.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “There’s not much more to say,” said Martinson. “For some reason or other, a finger gets cut off. Unless that happened when the house blew up. But it doesn’t look that way. An explosion like that turns a man into pulp. The finger was whole, apart from having been cut off.”

  “I don’t know much about South Africa,” said Svedberg. “Except that it’s a racist country with lots of violence. Sweden has no diplomatic relations with South Africa. We don’t even play tennis or do business with them. Not officially, at least. What I can’t understand for the life of me is why something from South Africa should end up in Sweden. You’d think Sweden would be the last place to be involved.”

  “Maybe that’s exactly why,” muttered Martinson.

  Wallander homed in on Martinson’s comment immediately.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” said Martinson. “I just think we have to start thinking in a completely different way if we’re going to get anywhere with this case.”

  “I agree entirely,” said Björk, interrupting the exchange. “I want a written report on this business from every one of you by tomorrow. Let’s see if a little quiet contemplation might get us somewhere.”

  They divided up the assignments among themselves. Wallander took over the lawyer in Varnamo from Björk, who was going to concentrate on producing a preliminary report on examinations of the finger.

  Wallander punched in the number to the lawyer’s office, and asked to speak to Mr. Holmgren on urgent business. There was such a long delay before Holmgren answered that Wallander grew annoyed.

  “It’s about the property you are looking after in Skåne,” he said. “The house that burned down.”

  “Completely inexplicable,” said Holmgren. “But I have checked to make sure the insurance policy arranged by the late owner covers the incident. Do the police have any explanation for what happened?”

  “No,” said Wallander. “But we’re working on it. I have some questions I need to ask you on the telephone.”

  “I hope this won’t take long,” said the lawyer.
“I’m very busy.”

  “If you can’t take the questions by telephone, the police in Varnamo will have to take you down to the station,” said Wallander, ignoring the fact that he sounded brusque.

  There was a pause before the lawyer responded.

  “OK, fire away. I’m listening.”

  “We’re still waiting for a fax with the names and addresses of the joint heirs to the estate.”

  “I’ll make sure that’s sent.”

  “Then I wonder who is directly responsible for the property.”

  “I am. I’m not sure what you mean by the question.”

  “A house needs attention occasionally. Roof tiles need replacing, mice keeping under control. Do you do that as well?”

  “One of the beneficiaries of the estate lives in Vollsjö. He usually looks after the house. His name is Alfred Hanson.”

  Wallander noted his address and telephone number.

  “So the house has been empty for a year?”

  “For more than a year. There’s been some disagreement as to whether it should be sold or not.”

  “In other words, nobody’s been living in the house?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Are you quite sure?”

  “I don’t understand what you’re getting at. The house has been boarded up. Alfred Hanson has been calling me at regular intervals to report that all is in order.”

  “When did he call last?”

  “How on earth am I supposed to remember that?”

  “I don’t know. But I’d like an answer to my question.”

  “Some time around New Year’s, I believe. But I can’t swear to it. Why is that important?”

  “Everything is important for the moment. But thank you for the information.”

  Wallander hung up, opened his telephone directory, and checked Alfred Hanson’s address. Then he got up, grabbed his jacket and left the office.

  “I’m off to Vollsjö,” he said as he passed the door to Martinson’s office. “There’s something odd about the house that blew up.”

  “I think there’s something odd about everything,” said Martinson. “I was just talking to Nyberg before you came, by the way. He maintains that radio transmitter could well have been made in Russia.”

  “Russia?”

  “That’s what he said. Don’t ask me.”

  “Another country,” said Wallander. “Sweden, South Africa, Russia. Where’s it all going to end?”

  Just over half an hour later, he drove up to the house where Alfred Hanson supposedly lived. It was a relatively modern house, very much different from the original building. Some German shepherds started barking frenziedly as Wallander got out of his car. It was half past four by now, and he was feeling hungry.

  A man in his forties opened the door and came out onto the steps in his stocking feet. His hair was in a mess, and as Wallander approached he could smell strong liquor.

  “Alfred Hanson?” he enquired.

  The man nodded.

  “I’m from the police in Ystad,” said Wallander.

  “Oh, hell!” said the man even before Wallander had given his name.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Who’s squealed? Is it that shit Bengtson?”

  Wallander thought rapidly before saying anything.

  “I can’t comment on that,” he said. “The police protect all their informers.”

  “It’s gotta be Bengtson,” said the man. “Am I under arrest?”

  “We can talk about that,” said Wallander.

  The man let Wallander into the kitchen. He immediately detected the faint but unmistakable smell of fusel oil. Something clicked. Alfred Hanson was running an illegal still, and thought Wallander had come to arrest him.

  The man had flopped down on a kitchen chair and was scratching his head.

  “Just my luck,” he sighed.

  “We’ll talk about the moonshine later,” said Wallander. “There’s something else I want to talk about.”

  “What?”

  “The property that burned down.”

  “I know nothing about that,” said the man.

  Wallander noticed immediately that he was worried.

  “You know nothing about what?”

  The man lit a crumpled cigarette with trembling fingers.

  “I’m really a paint sprayer,” said the man. “But I can’t face starting work at seven o’clock every morning. So I thought I might as well rent out that little shack, if anybody was interested. I mean, I want to sell the thing. But the family’s making such a damned fuss.”

  “Who was interested?”

  “Some guy from Stockholm. He’d been driving around the area, looking for something suitable. Then he found this house, and liked the location. I’m still wondering how he managed to trace it to me.”

  “What was his name?”

  “He said he was called Nordström. I took that with a pinch of salt, though.”

  “Why?”

  “He spoke good Swedish, but he had a foreign accent. You show me a goddamned foreigner called Nordström!”

  “But he wanted to rent the house?”

  “Yeah. And he paid well. I was gonna get ten thousand kronor a month. You don’t turn your nose up at a deal like that. It wasn’t doing anybody any harm, I thought. I get a bit of a reward in return for looking after the house. No need for the heirs or Holmgren in Värnamo to know anything about it.”

  “How long was he going to rent the house?”

  “He came at the beginning of April. Said he wanted it till the end of May.”

  “Did he say what he was going to use it for?”

  “For people who wanted to be left in peace to do some painting.”

  “Painting?”

  Wallander thought of his father.

  “Artists, that is. And he offered cash up front. Damn right I was going to take it.”

  “When did you meet him next?”

  “Never.”

  “Never?”

  “It was a sort of unspoken condition. That I should keep my nose out of it. And I did. He got the keys, and that was that.”

  “Have you got the keys back?”

  “No. He was going to mail them to me.”

  “And you have no address?”

  “No.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “He was extremely fat.”

  “Anything else?”

  “How the hell do you describe a fat guy? He was balding, red-faced and fat. And when I say fat, do I mean fat! He was like a barrel.”

  Wallander nodded.

  “Have you any of the money left?” he asked, thinking of possible fingerprints.

  “Not an öre. That’s why I started distilling again.”

  “If you stop that as of today, I won’t take you in to Ystad,” said Wallander.

  Alfred Hanson could hardly believe his ears.

  “I mean what I say,” said Wallander. “But I’ll check up that you really have stopped. And you must pour away everything you’ve made already.”

  The man was sitting open-mouthed at the kitchen table when Wallander left.

  Dereliction of duty, he thought. But I haven’t time to bother with moonshiners just now.

  He drove back to Ystad. Without really knowing why, he turned into the parking lot by Krageholm Lake. He got out of the car and walked down to the water’s edge.

  There was something about this investigation, about the death of Louise Åkerblom, that scared him. As if the whole thing had barely started yet.

  I’m scared, he thought. It’s like that black finger were pointing straight at me. I’m in the middle of something I can’t understand.

  He sat down on a rock, even though it was damp. Suddenly his weariness and depression threatened to overwhelm him.

  He gazed out over the lake, thinking there was a fundamental similarity between this case he was up to his neck in and the feelings he had inside. He seemed to have as little control over himself as
he had chance of solving the case. With a sigh even he thought was pathetic, he decided he was as much at sea with his own life as he was with the search for Louise Åkerblom’s murderer.

  “Where do I go from here?” he said aloud to himself. “I don’t want anything to do with ruthless killers with no respect for life. I don’t want to get involved in a kind of violence that will be incomprehensible to me as long as I live. Maybe the next generation of cops in this country will have a different kind of experience and have a different view of their work. But it’s too late for me. I’ll never be any different than what I am. A pretty good cop in a medium-sized Swedish police district.”

  He stood up and watched a magpie launching itself from a treetop.

  All questions remain unanswered in the end, he thought. I devote my life to trying to catch and then put away crooks who are guilty of various crimes. Sometimes I succeed, often I don’t. But when I eventually pass away one of these days, I’ll have failed in the biggest investigation of all. Life will still be an insoluble riddle.

  I want to see my daughter, he thought. I miss her so much at times, it hurts. I have to catch a black man missing a finger, especially if he’s the one who killed Louise Åkerblom. I have a question for him I need an answer to: why did you kill her?

  I must follow up on Stig Gustafson, not let him slide out of the picture too soon, even though I’m already convinced he’s innocent.

  He walked back to his car.

  The fear and repugnance would not go away. The finger was still pointing.

  The Man from Transkei

  Chapter Eight

  You could hardly see the man squatting in the shadow of the wrecked car. He did not move a muscle, and his black face was indistinguishable from the dark bodywork.

  He had chosen his hiding place carefully. He had been waiting since early afternoon, and now the sun was beginning to sink beyond the dusty silhouette of the suburban ghetto that was Soweto. The dry, red earth glowed in the setting sun. It was April 8, 1992.

  He had traveled a long way to get to the meeting place on time. The white man who sought him out had said he would have to set off early. For security reasons they preferred not to give him a precise pickup time. All he as told was that it would be shortly after sunset.