The White Lioness kw-3

by Henning Mankell

  “Just read through this,” he said. “It’ll tell you a lot.”

  “I can go and see him myself,” said Wallander. “We don’t both need to go.”

  Loven shrugged.

  “I’m happy to get out of it,” he said. “Let’s face it, we have a lot more leads to follow up in this Tengblad business, even if there is no sign of a breakthrough yet. By the way, the technical guys think your woman in Skane was shot by the same weapon. But of course, they can’t be absolutely certain. It was probably the same weapon. There again, of course, we don’t know if it was wielded by the same hand.”

  It was nearly one o’clock by the time Wallander found his way out to Hallunda. He stopped off at a motel on the way and had lunch while reading through the material Loven had given him about Vladimir Rykoff. When he finally got to Hallunda and tracked down the apartment building, he paused for a while and observed the environment. It struck him that hardly any of the people who passed by were speaking Swedish.

  This is where the future is, he thought. A kid growing up here and maybe becoming a cop will have experiences very different from mine.

  He entered the hallway and found the name Rykoff. Then he took the elevator up.

  A woman opened the door. Wallander could see right away she was on her guard, despite the fact he had not yet explained he was a cop. He showed her his ID.

  “Rykoff,” he said. “I have a few questions for him.”

  “What about?”

  Wallander could hear she was foreign. She probably came from one of the eastern bloc countries.

  “That’s a matter for me and him.”

  “He’s my husband.”

  “Is he at home?”

  “I’ll go get him for you.”

  As the woman disappeared through a door that he assumed led into the bedroom, he took a look around. The apartment was expensively furnished. Even so, he got the feeling everything was temporary. As if whoever lived there was ready to pack up at any moment and move on.

  The door opened and Vladimir Rykoff entered the room. He was dressed in a robe that looked pretty expensive to Wallander. His hair was a mess. Wallander guessed he had been asleep.

  He got the distinct impression Rykoff was also on his guard.

  It suddenly dawned on him he was getting somewhere. Something was about to boost the investigation that had started almost two weeks ago when Robert Akerblom came to his office and reported his wife was missing. An investigation that had tended to get deeper and deeper bogged down in a maze of confusing tracks, criss-crossing without providing any coherent context he could come to grips with.

  He’d had a similar feeling in previous investigations. The sense of being on the verge of a breakthrough. It often turned out to be true.

  “I apologize for disturbing you,” he said, “but I have some questions I’d like to ask you.”

  “What about?”

  Rykoff had still not asked him to sit down. His tone was brusque and dismissive. Wallander decided to take the bull by the horns. He sat down in a chair and gestured to Rykoff and his wife to follow suit.

  “According to my information you came here as an Iranian refugee,” Wallander began. “You were granted Swedish citizenship in the 1970s. The name Vladimir Rykoff doesn’t sound especially Iranian.”

  “My name’s my business.”

  Wallander’s eyes were glued to Rykoff’s face.

  “Of course,” he said. “But in some circumstances the case for granting citizenship in this country can be reexamined. If it turns out that it was based on false information.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Not at all. What’s your job?”

  “I run a travel agency.”

  “Called?”

  “Rykoff’s Travel Service.”

  “What countries do you organize trips to?”

  “It varies.”

  “Can you give me some examples?”

  “Poland.”

  “More!”

  “Czechoslovakia.”

  “Keep going!”

  “What the hell! What are you getting at?”

  “Your travel agency is registered as an independent enterprise with the local authority. But according to the tax people you have made no declarations the last two years. As I naturally assume you’re not trying to evade taxes, I have to conclude that your travel business hasn’t being operating for the last few years.”

  Rykoff stared at him, dumbstruck.

  “We’re living on the profits from the good years,” said his wife all of a sudden. “There’s no law that says you have to keep working every year.”

  “Absolutely,” said Wallander. “Mind you, most people do. For whatever reason.”

  The woman lit a cigarette. Wallander could see she was nervous. Her husband stared at her disapprovingly. Demonstratively, she got up and opened a window. It was stuck, and Wallander was about to help her when it finally opened.

  “I have a lawyer who takes care of everything concerning the travel agency,” said Rykoff, who was beginning to look agitated. Wallander wondered if that was due to anger, or fear.

  “Let’s be frank,” said Wallander. “You have as many roots in Iran as I have. You come from Russia. It would probably be impossible to take your Swedish citizenship away from you. In any case, that’s not why I’m here. But you are Russian, Rykoff. And you know what’s going on in Russian immigrant circles. Not least among those of your countrymen who are on the wrong side of the law. A few days ago a cop was shot here in Stockholm. That’s the stupidest thing a guy can do. We get angry in a very special way. If you know what I mean.”

  Rykoff seemed to have regained his composure. But Wallander could see his wife was still uneasy, although she was trying to hide it. She kept looking at the wall behind him.

  Before sitting down he had noticed a clock hanging there.

  Something’s supposed to happen, he thought. And they don’t want me here when it does.

  “I’m looking for a man called Konovalenko,” said Wallander calmly. “Do you know anyone of that name?”

  “No,” said Rykoff. “Not that I can think of.”

  At that moment, three things became clear to Wallander. First, that Konovalenko existed. Second, that Rykoff knew exactly who he was. And third, that he was not at all happy about the cops asking after him.

  Rykoff denied everything. But Wallander had glanced at Rykoff’s wife as he asked the question, trying to make it look coincidental. Her face, the sudden twitch in her eye, had given him the answer he was looking for.

  “Are you absolutely sure? I thought Konovalenko was quite a common name.”

  “I don’t know anybody called that.”

  Then Rykoff turned to his wife.

  “We don’t know anybody of that name, do we?”

  She shook her head.

  Oh yes, thought Wallander. You know Konovalenko all right. We’re going to get to him through you.

  “That’s a pity,” said Wallander.

  Rykoff stared at him in surprise.

  “Was that all you wanted to know?”

  “For the time being,” said Wallander. “But I’ve no doubt you’ll be hearing from us again. We won’t give up until we’ve nailed whoever shot that policeman.”

  “I know nothing about that,” said Rykoff. “I think like everybody else, of course: it’s very sad when a young cop gets killed.”

  “Of course,” said Wallander, getting to his feet. “There was just one other thing,” he went on. “You might have read in the newspapers about a woman who was murdered in the south of Sweden a few weeks ago? Or maybe you saw something about it on the TV. We think Konovalenko was involved in that, too.”

  This time it was Wallander who reacted by stiffening up.

  He had noticed something about Rykoff that did not quite register right away.

  Then he realized what it was. The man was totally expressionless.

  That was the question he’d been expecting
, thought Wallander as his pulse quickened. He started prowling around the room in order to conceal his reaction.

  “Do you mind if I take a look around?” he asked.

  “Be my guest,” said Rykoff. “Tania, open all the doors for our visitor.”

  Wallander took a look through all the doors. But all his attention was focused on Rykoff’s reaction.

  Loven did not know how right he was, thought Wallander. We have a lead in this apartment in Hallunda.

  He was surprised at how calm he felt. He ought to have left the apartment right away, called Loven, and requested a full-scale raid. Rykoff would have been subjected to interrogation, and the police would not have relaxed until he had admitted the existence of Konovalenko, and preferably also revealed where he could be found.

  It was when he looked into the little room he assumed was reserved for guests that something attracted his attention, although he could not put his finger on it. There was nothing striking about the room. A bed, a desk, a Windsor-style chair, and blue drapes. A few ornaments and books occupied a bookcase on one wall. Wallander tried hard to figure out what it was he had seen, without having seen it. He memorized the details, then turned on his heel.

  “Time to leave you in peace,” he said.

  “We’ve nothing to hide from the police,” said Rykoff.

  “Then you have nothing to fear,” Wallander replied.

  He drove back to town.

  Now we’ll pounce, he thought. I’ll tell Loven and his boys this remarkable story, and we’ll get either Rykoff or his wife to spill the beans.

  But now we’ll get them, he thought. Now we’ll get them.

  Konovalenko had very nearly missed Tania’s signal. When he parked his car in front of the apartment block in Hallunda, he glanced up at the facade as usual. They had agreed that Tania would leave a window open if it was dangerous for him to come up, for some reason or other. The window was closed. As he was on the way to the elevator, it dawned on him he had left the carrier bag with the two bottles of vodka in the car. He went back to fetch them, and from pure habit happened to look up at the facade again. This time the window was open. He returned to the car, and sat behind the wheel to wait.

  When Wallander appeared, he realized immediately that this was the cop Tania had warned him about.

  Tania confirmed his suspicions later on. The man was called Wallander, and was a detective inspector. She had also noted that his ID revealed he came from Ystad.

  “What did he want?” asked Konovalenko.

  “He wanted to know if I knew anybody called Konovalenko,” said Rykoff.

  “Good,” said Konovalenko.

  Both Tania and Rykoff stared blankly at him.

  “Of course it’s good,” said Konovalenko. “Who could possibly have told him about me? If you haven’t? There’s only one possibility: Victor Mabasha. We can get to Mabasha through this cop.”

  Then he asked Tania for some glasses. They drank vodka.

  Without saying a word, Konovalenko toasted the cop from Ystad. He was suddenly very pleased with himself.

  Wallander went straight back to his hotel after the excursion to Hallunda. The first thing he did was to call his daughter.

  “Can we meet?” he asked.

  “Now?” she said. “I thought you were working.”

  “I’ve got a few hours off. If you can make it.”

  “Where do you want us to meet? You don’t know Stockholm at all.”

  “I know where the Central Station is.”

  “Why don’t we meet there, then? In the middle of the big hall? In forty-five minutes?”

  “Sounds great.”

  They hung up. Wallander went down to reception.

  “I’m incommunicado for the rest of the afternoon,” he said. “Whoever comes looking for me, in person or by telephone, gets the same message. I’m on important business and can’t be contacted.”

  “Until when?” asked the receptionist.

  “Until further notice,” said Wallander.

  He crossed over the road and walked to Central Station. When he saw Linda enter the big hall, he hardly recognized her. She had dyed her hair and cut it. She was also heavily made up. She was wearing black overalls and a bright red raincoat. Boots with high heels. Wallander saw how several men turned to look at her, and suddenly felt both angry and embarrassed. This was his daughter. But the lady who turned up was a self-assured young woman. No sign of the shyness so characteristic of her in the old days. He gave her a hug, but felt there was something about it that wasn’t quite right.

  She said she was hungry. It had started raining, and they ran to a cafe on Vasagatan, across from the main post office.

  He watched her eat. He shook his head when she asked if he wanted anything.

  “Mom was here last week,” she announced suddenly in between chews. “She wanted to show off her new man. Have you met him?”

  “I haven’t spoken with her for more than six months,” said Wallander.

  “I don’t think I like him,” she went on. “In fact, I got the impression he was more interested in me than he was in Mom.”

  “Really?”

  “He imports machine tools from France,” she said. “But he went on and on about playing golf. Did you know Mom had taken up golf?”

  “No,” said Wallander, taken aback. “I didn’t know that.”

  She stared at him for a moment before continuing.

  “It’s not right that you don’t know what she’s up to,” she said. “I mean, she is the most important woman in your life to date. She knows all about you. She knows about that woman in Latvia, for instance.”

  Wallander was surprised. He had never mentioned Baiba Liepa to his ex-wife.

  “How come she knows about her?”

  “Somebody must have told her.”

  “Who?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I just wondered.”

  She suddenly changed the subject.

  “What are you doing here in Stockholm?” she asked. “It can’t be just to see me.”

  He told her what had happened. Traced all the events back to the day two weeks ago when his father had announced he was going to get married, and Robert Akerblom came to his office to report that his wife was missing. She listened attentively, and for the very first time he had the impression his daughter was a grown-up. A person who undoubtedly had much more experience in certain fields than he did himself.

  “I’ve been missing somebody to talk to,” he said when he’d finished. “If only Rydberg were still alive. Do you remember him?”

  “Was he the one who always seemed so miserable?”

  “That’s the one. He could appear strict as well.”

  “I remember him. I hoped you’d never be like him.”

  Now it was his turn to change the subject.

  “What do you know about South Africa?” he asked.

  “Not a lot. Just that the blacks are treated like slaves. And I’m against that, of course. We had a visit at school by a black woman from South Africa. You just couldn’t believe what she had to say was true.”

  “You know more than I do in any case,” he said. “When I was in Latvia last year, I often used to wonder how I could have gotten to be over forty without having a clue about what was going on in the world.”

  “You just don’t keep in touch,” she said. “I remember when I was twelve, thirteen, and tried to ask you things. Neither you nor Mom had the slightest idea about what was going on beyond your own back yard. All you wanted to know about was the house and the flower beds and your work. Nothing else. Is that why you divorced?”

  “You think?”

  “You had made your lives a matter of tulip bulbs and new faucets in the bathroom. That’s all you ever talked about, when you did talk with each other, that is.”

  “What’s wrong with talking about flowers?”

  “The flower beds grew so high, you couldn’t see anything that was happening beyond them.�
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  He decided to put an end to that discussion.

  “How much time do you have?”

  “An hour, at least.”

  “No time at all, really. How about meeting tonight, if you feel like it?”

  They went out into the street when the rain had stopped.

  “Don’t you find those high heels difficult to walk in?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she replied. “But you get used to them. Like a try?”

  Wallander was just pleased that she existed. Something inside him eased up. He watched as she walked to the subway, waving to him.

  At that very moment it dawned on him what he had seen in the apartment in Hallunda earlier that day. What it was that had caught his attention, although he couldn’t say why.

  Now he knew.

  There was a shelf hanging on the wall, and on it was an ashtray. He’d seen an ashtray like that somewhere before. It might have been a coincidence. But he did not think so.

  He remembered his meal at the Continental Hotel in Ystad. He’d started out in the bar. On the table in front of him was a glass ashtray. Exactly the same as the one in the guest room in Tania’s and Vladimir’s guest room.

  Konovalenko, he thought.

  At some time or other, he’s been at the Continental Hotel. He might even have been sitting at the same table as me. He couldn’t resist the temptation to take home one of their heavy glass ashtrays. A human failing, one of the most common. He could never have imagined that a detective inspector from Ystad would ever take a look at the little room in Hallunda where he occasionally spends his nights.

  Wallander went up to his hotel room and thought he might not be such an incompetent cop after all. The times had not passed him by completely, not just yet. Maybe he was still capable of solving the pointless and brutal murder of a woman who happened to take a wrong turn not far from Krageholm.

  He synopsized what he thought he had established so far. Louise Akerblom and Klas Tengblad had been shot by the same weapon. Tengblad by a white man with a foreign accent. The black African who had been around when Louise Akerblom was killed had been chased by a man who also had a foreign accent, and was probably called Konovalenko. This Konovalenko was known to Rykoff, even though he denied it. To judge by his build, Rykoff could very well be the guy who had rented the house from Alfred Hanson. And in Rykoff’s apartment was an ashtray that proved somebody had been to Ystad. It was not a lot to go on, and had it not been for the bullets, the link would have been tenuous, to say the least. But he also had his hunches, and he knew it made sense to pay attention to them. A raid on Rykoff could provide the answers they were so eager to obtain.