The White Lioness kw-3

by Henning Mankell

  “The very same day,” Wallander had insisted. “And it must be burned.”

  Wallander bought a cheap camera and took passport photographs. The big problem that could not be resolved until the last minute was how Victor Mabasha would get through Swedish passport control. Even if he had a Swedish passport that was technically genuine and did not appear on the blacklist held by the border police, there was a big risk that something could go wrong. After a lot of thought Wallander decided to get Victor Mabasha out via the hovercraft terminal in Malmo. He would buy him a first-class ticket. He assumed the embarkation card might help to ensure that passport officials were not especially interested in him. Linda would play the role of his girlfriend. They would kiss goodbye right under the noses of the immigration officials, and Wallander would teach him a few phrases of perfect Swedish.

  The connections and the confirmed tickets meant he would be leaving Sweden on the morning of May 15. Wallander would have to produce a false passport for him by then.

  On Tuesday afternoon he completed a passport application form for his father, and took with him two photographs. The whole procedures for issuing passports had recently been revised. The document was now produced while the applicant waited. Wallander hung around until the woman dealing with passports had finished with the last of her customers and was about to close.

  “Excuse me for being a little late,” said Wallander. “But my dad is going on a senior citizens trip to France. He managed to burn his passport when he was sorting some old papers.”

  “These things happen,” said the woman, whose name was Irma. “Does he have to have it today?”

  “If possible,” said Wallander. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “You can’t solve the murder of that woman either,” she said, taking the photos and the application form.

  Wallander watched closely as she created the passport. Afterwards, when he had the document in his hand, he was confident he could repeat exactly what she had done.

  “Impressively simple,” he said.

  “But boring,” said Irma. “Why is it that all jobs get more boring when they’re made easier?”

  “Become a cop,” said Wallander. “What we do is never boring.”

  “I am a cop,” she said. “Besides, I don’t think I’d want to change places with you. It must be awful, pulling a body out of a well. What does it feel like, in fact?”

  “I don’t really know,” said Wallander. “I suppose it feels so awful you get numb and so you don’t feel anything at all. But you can bet your boots there’ll be some committee in the Ministry of Justice looking into what policemen feel when they pull dead women out of wells.”

  He stayed chatting while she locked up. All the things you needed to make a passport were locked away in a cupboard. But he knew where the keys were kept.

  They had decided Victor Mabasha would leave the country as the Swedish citizen Jan Berg. Wallander had tried out endless combinations of names to find out which ones Victor Mabasha found easiest to pronounce. They went for Jan Berg. Victor Mabasha asked what the name meant. He was satisfied with the translation he was given. Wallander had realized during their conversations these last few days that the man from South Africa lived in close contact with a spirit world that was completely alien to him. Nothing was coincidental, not even a chance change of name. Linda had been able to help him with some explanations of why Victor Mabasha thought as he did. Even so, he thought he was looking at a world he had absolutely no basis for understanding. Victor Mabasha talked about his ancestors as if they were alive. Wallander was sometimes unsure whether incidents had taken place a hundred years ago, or yesterday. He could not help but be fascinated by Victor Mabasha. It became more and more difficult to comprehend that this man was a criminal preparing to commit a serious crime in his home country.

  Wallander stayed in his office until late that Tuesday evening. To help the time pass he began a letter to Baiba Liepa in Riga. But when he read through what he had written, he tore it up. One of these days he would write a letter and send it to her. But it would take some time, he realized that.

  By about ten o’clock only those on night duty were still at the station. As he did not dare to switch the light on in the room where the passports were assembled, he had acquired a flashlight that produced a blue light. He walked along the corridor, wishing he was on his way to someplace quite different. He thought of Victor Mabasha’s spirit world, and wondered briefly if Swedish cops had a special patron saint who would watch over them when they were about to do something forbidden.

  The key was hanging on its hook in the filing cabinet. He paused for a moment, staring at the machine that transformed the photographs and the application forms with all their completed answers and crosses into a passport.

  Then he put on his rubber gloves and started work. At one point he thought he heard footsteps approaching. He ducked down behind the machine and turned off his flashlight. When the footsteps died away, he started once again. He could feel sweat streaming down under his shirt. In the end, though, he had a passport in his hand. He switched off the machine, returned the key to its rightful place in the cabinet, and locked the door. Sooner or later some check would show that a passport template had disappeared. Bearing the registration numbers in mind, it could even happen the very next day, he thought. That would cause Bjork some sleepless nights. But nothing could be traced to Wallander.

  Not until he was back in his office and slumped down behind his desk did it occur to him that he had forgotten to stamp the passport. He cursed himself, and flung the document down on the desk in front of him.

  Just then the door burst open and Martinson marched in. He gave a start when he saw Wallander in his chair.

  “Oh, excuse me,” he said. “I didn’t think you were here. I was just going to see if I could find my cap.”

  “Cap?” asked Wallander. “In the middle of May?”

  “I can feel a cold coming on,” said Martinson. “I had it with me when we were sitting here yesterday.”

  Wallander could not remember Martinson having a cap with him the previous day when he and Svedberg had been in Wallander’s office to go through the latest developments in the investigation and the hitherto fruitless search for Konovalenko.

  “Look on the floor under the chair,” said Wallander.

  When Martinson bent down Wallander hastily stuffed the passport into his pocket.

  “Nothing,” said Martinson. “I’m always losing my caps.”

  “Ask the cleaner,” Wallander suggested.

  Martinson was about to leave when something struck him.

  “Do you remember Peter Hanson?” he asked.

  “How could I ever forget him?” wondered Wallander.

  “Svedberg called him a few days ago and asked about a few details in the interrogation report. Then he told Peter Hanson about the break-in at your apartment. Thieves generally know what each other is up to. Svedberg thought it might be worth a try. Peter Hanson called in today and said maybe he knew who did it.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” said Wallander. “If he can arrange for me to get back my records and tapes, I’ll forget about the hi-fi.”

  “Have a word with Svedberg tomorrow,” said Martinson. “And don’t stay here all night.”

  “I was just about to leave,” said Wallander, getting to his feet.

  Martinson paused in the doorway.

  “Do you think we’ll get him?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said Wallander. “Of course we’ll get him. Konovalenko isn’t going to get away.”

  “I wonder if he’s still in the country,” said Martinson.

  “We have to assume that,” said Wallander.

  “What about the African who’s missing a finger?”

  “No doubt Konovalenko can explain that.”

  Martinson nodded doubtfully.

  “One other thing,” he added. “It’s Louise Akerblom’s funeral tomorrow.”

  Wallander looked at him.
But he said nothing.

  The funeral was at two o‘clock on Wednesday afternoon. Wallander wondered whether or not he should go right to the last minute. He had no personal connections with the Akerblom family. The woman they were burying had been dead when he first came into contact with her. On the other hand, might it be misunderstood if somebody from the police was there? Not least in view of the fact that the killer had not yet been nailed. Wallander had trouble figuring out why he was thinking of going. Was it curiosity? Or a guilty conscience? All the same, at one o’clock he changed into a dark suit and spent some time looking for his white necktie. Victor Mabasha sat watching him tying the knot in front of the hall mirror.

  “I’m going to a funeral,” said Wallander. “The woman Konovalenko killed.”

  Victor Mabasha stared at him in astonishment.

  “Only now?” he asked in surprise. “Back home we bury our dead as soon as possible. So they don’t walk.”

  “We don’t believe in ghosts,” said Wallander.

  “Spirits aren’t ghosts,” said Victor Mabasha. “I sometimes wonder how it’s possible for white folk to understand so little.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Wallander. “Or maybe you’re wrong. It could be the other way around.”

  Then he went out. He noticed that Victor Mabasha’s question had annoyed him.

  Does that black bastard think he can come here and tell me what to think? he thought irreverently. Where would he be without me and the help I’ve given him?

  He parked his car some way from the chapel at the crematorium and waited while the bells were ringing and the black-clad congregation entered. Only when a janitor started closing the doors did he go in himself and sit in the back. A man a couple of rows in front of him turned round and greeted him. He was a journalist from the Ystad Chronicle.

  Then he listened to the organ music and felt a lump in his throat. Funerals were a great strain as far as he was concerned. He dreaded the day he would have to follow his father to the grave. His mother’s funeral eleven years ago could still conjure up unpleasant memories. He was supposed to make a short speech over the bier, but had broken down and rushed out of the church.

  He tried to control his emotions by contemplating the rest of the congregation. Robert Akerblom was on the front row with his two daughters, both wearing white dresses. Next to them was Pastor Tureson, who would be in charge of the burial.

  He suddenly started thinking about the handcuffs he found in a desk drawer at the Akerbloms’ house. It was over a week since he last thought about them.

  He thought how policemen have a sort of curiosity that goes beyond the immediate investigative work. Maybe it’s a kind of occupational hazard brought on by having to spend so many years delving into the most private parts of peoples’ lives. I know those handcuffs can be excluded from the murder investigation. They have no significance. All the same I’m ready to spend time and effort trying to figure out why they were in that drawer. Trying to figure out what they meant to Louise Akerblom, and maybe also her husband.

  He shuddered at the unpleasant implications of his train of thought, and concentrated on the funeral service. At one point during Pastor Tureson’s homily he caught the eye of Robert Akerblom. Despite the distance he could sense the depths of sorrow and forlornness. The lump came back into his throat, and tears started to flow. In order to regain control of his emotions he started thinking about Konovalenko. Like most of the other cops in Sweden, no doubt, Wallander was secretly pro death penalty. Quite apart from the scandal that it had been enforced against traitors during the war, it was not that he saw it as a knee-jerk reaction to a certain kind of crime. It was rather that certain murders, certain assaults, certain drug offenses were so appallingly immoral, so crass in their disregard of human dignity, that he could not help feeling the perpetrators had forfeited all right to life themselves. He could see that his thinking was riddled with contradictions, and that laws to introduce it would be impossible and unjust. It was just his raw experience speaking, unrefined yet painful. What he was forced to come up against because he was a cop. Things that caused reactions, irrational and excruciating.

  After the interment he shook hands solemnly with Robert Akerblom and the other principal mourners. He avoided looking at the two daughters, afraid of bursting into tears.

  Pastor Tureson took him to one side outside the chapel. “Your presence was very much appreciated,” he told Wallander. “Nobody had expected the police to send a representative to the funeral.”

  “I’m representing nobody but myself,” said Wallander.

  “So much the better that you came,” said Pastor Tureson. “Are you still looking for the man behind the tragedy?”

  Wallander nodded.

  “But you will catch him?”

  Wallander nodded again.

  “Yes,” he said. “Sooner or later. How’s Robert Akerblom taking it? And the daughters?”

  “The support they’re getting from the church is all-important to them just now,” said Pastor Tureson. “And then, he has his God.”

  “You mean he still believes?” wondered Wallander quietly.

  Pastor Tureson frowned.

  “Why should he abandon his God for something human beings have done to him and his family?”

  “No,” said Wallander quietly. “Why should he do that?”

  “There’ll be a meeting at the church in an hour,” said Pastor Tureson. “You’re welcome to come.”

  “Thanks,” said Wallander. “But I’ve got to get back to work.”

  They shook hands and Wallander returned to his car. It suddenly dawned on him that spring had really arrived.

  Just wait till Victor Mabasha has left, he thought. Just wait till we’ve caught Konovalenko. Then I can devote myself to spring.

  On Thursday morning Wallander drove his daughter out to his father’s house in Loderup. When they got there, she suddenly decided to stay overnight. She took one look at the overgrown yard and announced her intention to tidy it up before returning to Ystad. That would take her at least two days.

  “If you change your mind, just give me a call,” said Wallander.

  “You should thank me for cleaning up your apartment,” she said. “It looked awful.”

  “I know,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “How much longer do I have to stay?” she asked. “I’ve got lots to do in Stockholm, you know.”

  “Not much longer,” said Wallander, aware that he did not sound very convincing. But to his surprise, she seemed satisfied with his reply.

  Afterwards he had a long talk with the prosecutor, Akeson. When he got back, Wallander gathered together all the investigation material with the help of Martinson and Svedberg.

  At about four in the afternoon he went shopping and bought some food before driving home. Outside the apartment door was an unusually big stack of leaflets from some store or other. Without looking to see what they were, he shoved them into the garbage sack. Then he made dinner and went through all the practical details of the journey with Victor Mabasha one more time. The lines he had memorized sounded better every time he pronounced them.

  After dinner they went through the finer points. Victor Mabasha would have an overcoat over his left arm to hide the bandage he still had on his injured hand. He practiced taking his passport from his inside pocket while keeping the coat over his left arm. Wallander was satisfied. Nobody would be able to see the injury.

  “You’ll be flying to London with a British airline,” he said. “SAS would be too risky. Swedish air hostesses will probably read the newspapers and see the TV news. They’d notice your hand and sound the alarm.”

  Later that evening, when there were no more practical details to discuss, silence fell and neither seemed inclined to break it for a long time. In the end Victor Mabasha got up and stood in front of Wallander.

  “Why have you been helping me?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” answered Wallander. “I often think I ou
ght to slip the handcuffs on you. I can see I’m taking a big risk in letting you go. Maybe it was you who killed Louise Akerblom after all? You say yourself how good a liar everybody becomes back home in your country. Maybe I’m letting a murderer go?”

  “But you’re doing it even so?”

  “I’m doing it even so.”

  Victor Mabasha took off his necklace and handed it to Wallander. He could see that it featured the tooth of a wild animal.

  “The leopard is the solitary hunter,” said Victor Mabasha. “Unlike the lion, the leopard goes its own way and only crosses its own tracks. During the day when the heat is at its height, it rests in the trees alongside the eagles. At night it hunts alone. The leopard is a skillful hunter. But the leopard is also the biggest challenge for other hunters. This is a canine tooth from a leopard. I want you to have it.”