The White Lioness kw-3

by Henning Mankell

  When he arrived in Bezuidenhout, Borstlap was standing waiting by his car. Miranda opened the door. They went into the living room. Scheepers put his hand on Borstlap’s shoulder.

  “The man lying dead in there is Jan Kleyn,” he said.

  Borstlap stared at him in astonishment.

  Jan Kleyn was dead. It was striking how pale he looked, and how thin his face seemed to be, almost skeleton-like. Scheepers tried to make up his mind whether what he was witnessing was the end of an evil story, or a tragic one. He did not yet know the answer.

  “He hit me,” said Miranda. “I shot him.”

  When she said that, Scheepers happened to have Matilda in eyeshot. He could see she was surprised to hear what her mother said. Scheepers realized she was the one who had killed him, had shot her father. He could see Miranda had been beaten from her bloodstained face. Did Jan Kleyn have time to realize what was happening, he wondered. That he was going to die, and it was his daughter who was holding the last gun that would ever be pointed at him.

  He said nothing, but indicated to Borstlap he should accompany him into the kitchen. He shut the door behind them.

  “I don’t care how you do it,” he said, “but I want you to get that body out of here and make it look like a suicide. Jan Kleyn has been arrested and interrogated. That hurt his pride. He defended his honor by committing suicide. That’ll do as a motive. Covering up incidents involving the intelligence service doesn’t usually seem to be all that difficult. I’d like you to take care of this right now, or at least before tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll be putting my job on the line,” said Borstlap.

  “I give you my word that you’re not risking anything at all,” said Scheepers.

  Borstlap stared at him for what seemed like an eternity.

  “Who are these women?” he asked.

  “People you’ve never met,” replied Scheepers.

  “Of course, it’s all about the security of South Africa,” said Borstlap, and Scheepers appreciated his weary irony.

  “Yes,” he said. “Exactly.”

  “That’s another lie.” said Borstlap. “Our country is a production line for lies, twenty-four hours a day. What’ll happen when the whole thing collapses?”

  “Why are we trying to prevent an assassination?” said Scheepers.

  Borstlap nodded slowly.

  “OK, I’ll do it,” he said.

  “On your own.”

  “Nobody will see me. I’ll leave the body somewhere out in the countryside. And I’ll make sure I’m in charge of the investigation.”

  “I’ll tell them,” said Scheepers. “They’ll open the door for you when you come back.”

  Borstlap left the house.

  Miranda had spread a blanket over Jan Kleyn’s body. Scheepers suddenly felt tired of all the lies surrounding him, lies that were partly within himself as well.

  “I know it was your daughter who shot him,” he said. “But that doesn’t matter. Not as far as I’m concerned, at least. If it matters to you, I’m afraid that’s something you’ll have to deal with yourselves. But the body will disappear later tonight. The police officer who came here with me will pick it up. He’s going to refer to it as suicide. Nobody will know what actually happened. I can guarantee that for you.”

  Scheepers detected a gleam of surprised gratitude in Miranda’s eyes.

  “In a sense, maybe it was suicide,” he said. “A man who lives like him maybe shouldn’t expect anything else.”

  “I can’t even cry over him,” said Miranda. “There’s nothing there.”

  “I hated him,” said Matilda suddenly.

  Scheepers could see she was crying.

  Killing a human being, he thought. However much you hate somebody, no matter how desperate you were, there will be a wound in your soul that will never heal. He was her father after all, the father she didn’t choose, but couldn’t get rid of.

  He did not stay long, as he could see they needed each other more than anything else. But when Miranda asked him to return, he promised to do so.

  “We’re going to move out,” she said.

  “Where to?”

  She threw her arms wide.

  “That’s something I can’t decide alone. Maybe it’s best if Matilda decides?”

  Scheepers drove home for dinner. He was thoughtful and distant. When Judith asked how much longer this special assignment was going to go on, he felt guilty.

  “It’ll be over soon,” he said.

  Borstlap called just before midnight.

  “I thought I’d better tell you Jan Kleyn has committed suicide,” he said. “They’ll find him tomorrow morning in a parking lot somewhere between Johannesburg and Pretoria.”

  Who is the strong man now, wondered Scheepers. Who will be directing the Committee now?

  Inspector Borstlap lived in the suburb of Kensington, one of the oldest in Johannesburg. His wife was a nurse on permanent night duty at the big army camp in town. As their three children had left the nest, Borstlap spent most weekday evenings alone in the house. He was generally so tired when he came home from work, he did not have the strength to do anything but watch television. He sometimes went down to a little hobby room he had made for himself in the basement. He cut out silhouettes. It was an art he had learned from his father, although he had never managed to be as skillful as he was. But it was a restful occupation, carefully but boldly cutting out faces in black paper. That particular evening, when he had transported Jan Kleyn to the dimly lit parking lot he knew about because there had been a murder there not long ago, he found it difficult to relax when he got back home. He was going to cut out silhouettes of his children, but he was also thinking about the work he had been doing these last few days with Scheepers. His first reaction was that he enjoyed working with the young lawyer. Scheepers was intelligent and energetic, and he had imagination to boot. He listened to what others had to say, and he did not hesitate to admit he was wrong when appropriate. But Borstlap wondered what his assignment really was. He realized it was something serious, a conspiracy, a threatened assassination of Nelson Mandela that had to be prevented. But apart from that, his knowledge was pretty scanty. He suspected there was a gigantic conspiracy, but the only one he knew was involved was Jan Kleyn. He sometimes had the impression he was taking part in an investigation with a blindfold on. He said that to Scheepers, who told him he understood. But there was nothing he could do to help. His hands were tied by the level of secrecy he was working under.

  When the strange telex message from Sweden landed on his desk that Monday morning, Scheepers had immediately gone into high gear. After a couple of hours they tracked down Victor Mabasha in the register and felt the tension increase when it was established that he had frequently been suspected of being a professional killer engaged in contract murders. He had never been convicted. Reading between the lines of the case histories, it was clear that he was very intelligent and always went about his business with skillfully set-up camouflage and security arrangements. His most recent known address was the township of Ntibane just outside Umtata, not far from Durban. That had immediately increased the credibility of Durban, July 3, as the crucial setting. Borstlap had contacted his colleagues in Umtata without delay, and they confirmed that they kept an eye on Victor Mabasha all the time. That same afternoon Scheepers and Borstlap drove there. They joined up with local detectives and raided Victor Mabasha’s shack at dawn. It was empty. Scheepers had trouble in concealing his disappointment, and Borstlap wondered what they could do next. They returned to Johannesburg and mobilized all available resources to track him down. Scheepers and Borstlap agreed that the official excuse, for the moment, should be that Victor Mabasha was wanted for violent attacks on white women in the province of Transkei.

  Strong warnings were also issued that no word of Victor Mabasha should reach the mass media. They were working around the clock now. But they still failed to find any trace of the man they were looking for. And now Jan Kleyn
was dead.

  Borstlap yawned, put down his scissors and stretched.

  The following day they would have to start all over again, he thought. But there was still time, whether the crucial date was June 12 or July 3.

  Borstlap was not as convinced as Scheepers that the evidence pointing to Cape Town was a red herring. It seemed to him he ought to act as devil’s advocate with regard to Scheepers’ conclusions, and keep a close eye on the trail leading to Cape Town.

  On Thursday, May 28, Borstlap met Scheepers at eight in the morning.

  “Jan Kleyn was found at just after six this morning,” said Borstlap. “Some motorist stopped to take a leak. He informed the cops right away. I spoke to a patrol car that was first on the scene. They said it was obviously a suicide.”

  Scheepers nodded. He could see he had made a good choice when he asked for Inspector Borstlap as his assistant.

  “There are two weeks to go before June 12,” he said. “Just over a month to July 3. In other words, we still have time to track down Victor Mabasha. I’m not a cop, but I would think that gives us plenty of time.”

  “It all depends,” said Borstlap. “Victor Mabasha is an experienced criminal. He can remain hidden for long periods. He could disappear in some township or other, and then we would never find him,”

  “We have to,” objected Scheepers. “Don’t forget that the authority I’ve been given means I can demand practically unlimited resources.”

  “That’s not the way to find him,” said Borstlap. “You could get the army to besiege Soweto and then send in the paratroops, but you’d still never find him. On the other hand, you’d have a revolt to deal with.”

  “What do you think?” asked Scheepers.

  “Announce discreetly a reward of fifty thousand rand,” said Borstlap. “A similarly discreet message to the underworld that we’d be prepared to pay for information enabling us to nail Victor Mabasha. That’ll give us a chance of tracking him down.”

  Scheepers eyed him doubtfizlly.

  “Is that how the police go about their business?”

  “Not often. But it happens, sometimes.”

  Scheepers shrugged.

  “You’re the one who knows about these things,” he said. “I’ll take care of the money.”

  “The word will be out tonight.”

  Scheepers turned his attention to Durban. As soon as possible they should take a look at the stadium where Nelson Mandela was due to address a large crowd. They must find out now what security measures the local police intended to take. They needed a strategy for how to proceed if they did not manage to find Victor Mabasha. Borstlap was worried that Scheepers was not taking the other alternative as seriously as Durban. He said nothing, but made up his mind to get in touch with a colleague in Cape Town and ask him to do some leg-work on his behalf.

  That same night Borstlap contacted some of the police informers he regularly received more or less useful rumors from.

  Fifty thousand rand was a lot of cash.

  He knew the hunt for Victor Mabasha had now started in earnest.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  On Wednesday, June 10, Kurt Wallander was given sick leave, effective immediately. According to the doctor, who regarded Wallander as taciturn and very uptight, he was vague and not sure exactly what was pestering him. He talked about nightmares, insomnia, stomach pains, nocturnal panic attacks when he thought his heart was about to stop beating-in other words, all the well-known symptoms of stress that could easily lead to a breakdown. At this point, Wallander was seeing the doctor every other day. His symptoms varied, and on every visit he had a different opinion as to which ones were worst. He had also started having sudden bouts of violent sobbing. The doctor who finally ordered him to take sick leave on grounds of acute depression, and prescribed anti-depressants for him, had no reason to doubt the seriousness of the situation. Within a short space of time he had killed one human being and actively contributed to another being burned alive. Nor could he wash his hands of responsibility for the woman who died while helping his daughter to escape. But most of all he felt guilty about the death of Victor Mabasha. It was natural that the reaction should set in with the death of Konovalenko. There was no longer anyone to chase, and no one hunting him. Paradoxically, the onset of depression indicated that the pressure on Wallander had eased. Now he would have the time to set his own house in order, and so his melancholy broke through all the barriers he had managed to erect thus far. After a few months, many of his colleagues began to doubt whether he would ever return. Occasionally, when news reached the police station of his peculiar journeys to places near and far, to Denmark and the Caribbean islands, there were some who thought he ought to be granted early retirement. The very thought caused much gloom. But in fact, it did not happen. He did come back, even though it took a very long time.

  Nevertheless, the day after he had been ordered to take sick leave was a hot, windless summer day in southern Skane, and Wallander was sitting in his office. He still had some paperwork to attend to before he could clear his desk and go off in search of a cure for his depression. He felt a nagging sense of uncertainty, and wondered when he would be able to go back to work.

  He had arrived at the office at six in the morning, after a sleepless night in his apartment. During the silent hours of the morning he had at last completed his comprehensive report on the murder of Louise Akerblom and everything that followed in its wake. He read through what he had written, and it was like descending into the underworld yet again, repeating the journey he wished he had never needed to undertake. Moreover, he was about to submit a report that was in some respects untruthful. It was still a mystery to him why some parts of his strange disappearance and his secret collaboration with Victor Mabasha had not been exposed. His extremely weak and in some parts contradictory explanations of some of his remarkable behavior had not, as he expected, aroused widespread skepticism. He could only think it was because he was surrounded by sympathy mixed with a rather vague esprit de corps, because he had killed a fellow human being.

  He put the fat report on his desk and opened the window. Somewhere out there he could hear a child laughing.

  What about my own summary, he thought. I found myself in a situation where I had no control over what happened. I made every mistake a cop can make, and the worst of all was that I put my own daughter’s life at risk. She has assured me she doesn’t blame me for those horrific days when she was chained up in a cellar. But do I really have any right to believe her? Have I not caused her suffering which might only come to the surface sometime in the future, in the form of angst, nightmares, a ruined life? That’s where my report has to begin, the one I’ll never write. The one which ends today with me being so shattered that a doctor has put me on sick leave indefinitely.

  He went back to his desk and flopped down onto his chair. He had not slept a wink all night, it was true, but his weariness came from somewhere else, from the depths of his depression. Could it be that his fatigue was in fact depression? He thought about what would happen to him now. The doctor had suggested he should immediately start confronting his experiences through counseling. Wallander had taken that as an order that had to be obeyed. But what would he actually be able to say?

  In front of him was an invitation to his father’s wedding. He did not know how many times he had read it since it came in the mail a few days before. His father was going to marry his home aide the day before Midsummer Eve. That was in ten days. He had talked several times to his sister, Kristina, who had come on a short visit some weeks earlier, when the chaos had been at its worst, and thought she had managed to put an end to the whole idea. Now Wallander had no more doubts about whether or not it would happen. Nor could he deny that his father was in a better mood now than he could ever remember, no matter how hard he tried. He had painted a gigantic backdrop in the studio, where the ceremony was to take place. To Wallander’s amazement it was exactly the same motif as he had been painting all his life, the stat
ic, romantic woodland landscape. The only difference was that he had now reproduced it giant-sized. Wallander had also talked with Gertrud, the woman he was going to marry. It was actually she who had wanted to speak with him, and he realized she had a genuine affection for his father. He had felt quite touched, and said he was happy about what was going to happen.

  His daughter had returned to Stockholm over a week ago. She would come back for the wedding, and then go straight to Italy. That had brought home to Wallander the frightening realization of his own solitude. Wherever he turned, things seemed to be just as bleak. The night after Konovalenko’s death he visited Sten Widen and drank up nearly all his whiskey. He got very drunk, and started talking about the feeling of hopelessness that was getting him down. He thought it was something he shared with Sten Widen, even if his old friend had his stable girls to go to bed with occasionally, thus creating a superficial glimmer of what might be called companionship. Wallander hoped the renewed contact with Sten Widen would turn out to be lasting. He had no illusions about being able to return to the friendship they had shared in their youth. That was gone forever, and could not be resurrected.

  His train of thought was interrupted by a knock at the door. He started. He had noticed last week at the police station that he was scared of being with people. The door opened and Svedberg looked in, hoping he wasn’t disturbing him.

  “I hear you’re going away for a while,” he said.

  Wallander immediately felt a lump in his throat.

  “It seems to be necessary,” he said, blowing his nose.

  Svedberg could see he was emotional. He changed the subject immediately.

  “Do you remember those handcuffs you found in a drawer at Louise Akerblom’s house?” he asked. “You mentioned them once in passing. Do you remember?”

  Wallander nodded. To him, the handcuffs had represented the mysterious side of everybody’s character. Only the day before he had been wondering what his own invisible handcuffs were.