The Man Who Smiled (1994) kw-4

by Henning Mankell

  It was a number in Malmo, not Gothenburg. Wallander went to his office and dialled the number. An old man's voice answered. After a pause Lisbeth Norin came to the phone, and Wallander introduced himself.

  "I happen to be in Malmo for a few days," she said. "I'm visiting my father, he's broken his femur. I checked my answering machine and heard you'd been trying to reach me."

  "Yes, I'd be grateful for a word with you," Wallander said. "Preferably not over the phone."

  "What's it about?"

  "I have some questions in connection with a case we're investigating at the moment," Wallander said. "I heard about you from a Dr Stromberg in Lund."

  "I have some free time tomorrow," she said. "But it will have to be here in Malmo."

  "I'll drive over," Wallander said. "Would 10 a.m. suit you?"

  "That will do fine."

  She gave him the address in central Malmo.

  Wallander wondered how an old man with a broken femur could get to answer the phone. Then he realised he was extremely hungry. It was already late afternoon. He decided to work at home. He had a lot of material on Harderberg's business empire that he had not yet read. He found a plastic carrier bag in a drawer and filled it with files. He told Ebba that he would be working at home for the rest of the day.

  He stopped at a grocer's and bought some food, and went into a tobacconist's to buy five lottery scratch cards. When he got home he cooked himself some blood pudding and had a beer with it. He looked in vain for the jar of lingonberry jam he thought he had. Then he washed up and checked his lottery cards. No luck. He decided he had had enough coffee for one day and lay on his unmade bed for a little rest before starting to go through the files.

  He was woken up by the telephone ringing. He looked at the clock by his bed. It was 9.10 p.m.

  He picked up the phone and recognised Widen's voice.

  "I'm ringing from a phone box," he said. "I thought you'd like to know that Sofia got the job. She starts tomorrow."

  Wallander was wide awake immediately.

  "Good," he said. "Who gave her the job?"

  "A woman called Karlen."

  Wallander recalled his first visit to Farnholm Castle. "Anita Karlen," he said.

  "A couple of cobs," Widen said. "Very valuable. That's what she'll be looking after. Nothing wrong with the wages either. The stables are small, but there's a one-room flat attached. I think Sofia has a much higher opinion of you now that she's had this opportunity."

  "That's good," Wallander said.

  "She's going to phone me in a few days' time. Just one problem: I can't remember your name."

  Wallander also had to think hard before remembering. "Roger Lundin," he said.

  "I'll write it down."

  "I'd better do the same. Incidentally, better if she doesn't phone from the castle, tell her to use a call box the same as you're doing."

  "There's a telephone in her flat. Why shouldn't she use that?"

  "It could be bugged."

  Wallander could hear Widen taking a deep breath at the other end of the line.

  "I think you're out of your mind."

  "I ought to be careful with my own phone, in fact," Wallander said. "But we keep a regular check on our police lines."

  "Who is this Harderberg? A monster?"

  "He's a friendly, suntanned man who's always smiling," Wallander said. "He's also elegantly dressed. There are lots of ways a monster can look."

  Pips were sounding at the other end of the line. "I'll call you," Widen said, then he was cut off.

  Wallander wondered if he ought to phone Hoglund and tell her what had happened, but decided not to. It was getting late. He spent the rest of the evening poring over the contents of the plastic carrier bag. At midnight he took out his old school atlas and looked up some of the exotic places to which the tentacles of Harderberg's empire reached. It was clear that it was a huge operation. Wallander also had a nagging worry that he was pointing the investigation and his colleagues in the wrong direction. Perhaps there was another solution to the deaths of the two solicitors after all.

  It was 1 a.m. by the time he went to bed. It struck him that it was a long time since Linda had been in touch. On the other hand, he should have phoned her ages ago.

  Tuesday, November 23 was a fine, clear autumn day.

  He had taken the liberty of lying in that morning. He had phoned the station a little before 8.00 and told them he was going to Malmo. He had made coffee and stayed in bed for another hour. Then he had had a quick shower and set off. The address Norin had given him was near the Triangle in the centre of the city. He left his car in the multi-storey car park behind the Sheraton Hotel, and rang the doorbell at dead on 10.00. A woman of about his own age answered. She was wearing a brightly coloured tracksuit, and he wondered if he had got the wrong address. She did not fit the image he had of her after hearing her voice on the telephone, nor did it correspond to the general and no doubt prejudiced idea he had of journalists.

  "So you're the police officer," she said cheerfully. "I'd expected a man in uniform."

  "Sorry to disappoint you," Wallander said.

  She invited him in. It was an old flat with high ceilings. She introduced him to her father, who was sitting in a chair with his leg in plaster. Wallander noticed the cordless telephone on his knee.

  "I recognise you," the man said. "There was quite a bit about you in the newspapers a year or so ago. Or am I mixing you up with somebody else?"

  "No, that was probably me," Wallander said.

  "And something to do with a car that burned out on Oland Bridge," the man said. "I remember it because I used to be a sailor before the bridge was built, getting in the way of the ships."

  "Newspapers exaggerate things," Wallander said.

  "I remember you were described as an exceptionally successful police officer."

  "That's right," the daughter said. "Now you mention it, I recognise Inspector Wallander from the photos in the papers. Weren't you on some television discussion programme too?"

  "You must be mixing me up with somebody else."

  "Let's go and sit in the kitchen," she said.

  The autumn sun was shining through the high window. A cat was curled up asleep among the plant pots. He accepted the offer of a cup of coffee, and sat down.

  "My questions are not going to be very precise," Wallander said. "Your answers are likely to be far more interesting. Let me just say that the Ystad police are currently investigating a murder, possibly two murders, and there are certain indications to suggest that the transportation and illegal selling of body organs might be involved. I can't say for certain if that is the case, and I'm afraid I can't go into any more detail for technical reasons associated with the case."

  Why can't I express myself more simply? he wondered, crossly. I speak like a parody of a police officer. I sound like a machine.

  "I see why Lasse Stromberg gave you my name," she said, and Wallander could tell that her interest had been aroused.

  "If I understand it rightly you're doing work on this horrific traffic," he said. "It would be a big help to me if you could give me an overview."

  "It would take all day to do that," she said. "Possibly all night as well. Besides, you'd soon find there was an invisible question mark behind every word I said. It's a gruesome activity that practically nobody has dared look into, apart from a handful of American journalists. I'm probably the only journalist in Scandinavia who's started digging into it."

  "I take it that's a pretty risky business."

  "Maybe not here, and maybe not for me," she said. "But I know personally one of the American journalists involved, Gary Becker from Minneapolis. He went to Brazil to look into rumours about a gang said to be operating in Sao Paulo. He wasn't just threatened - one night as his taxi stopped outside his hotel someone fired a whole magazine at it. He booked the next flight and got the hell out of there."

  "Have you come across any suggestion that Swedes could be involved in the t
rafficking?"

  "No. Should I have done?"

  "I was only asking," Wallander said.

  She studied him without speaking, then leaned across the table towards him. "If you and I are going to have a conversation, you have to be honest with me," she said. "Don't forget that I'm a journalist. You don't have to pay for this visit because you're a police officer, but the least I can ask is that you tell me the truth."

  "You're right," Wallander said. "There is a slight possibility that there might be a connection. That's the nearest I can go to telling you the truth."

  "OK," she said. "Now we understand each other. But I want just one more thing from you. If in fact there does turn out to be a connection, I want to be the first journalist who knows about it."

  "I can't promise you that," Wallander said. "It's against our regulations."

  "No doubt it is. But killing people to take their body parts goes against something much more important than regulations."

  Wallander considered what she had said. He was citing regulations that he had long since ceased to observe uncritically himself. In recent years his experiences as a police officer had taken place in a no man's land where any good he might have been able to do had always involved his having to decide which regulations to abide by, and which not. Why should he change now?

  "You'll be the first to know," he said. "But you'd better not quote me. I'll have to remain anonymous."

  "That's good," she said again. "Now we understand each other even better."

  *

  When Wallander looked back over all the hours he spent in that hushed kitchen, with the cat asleep among the pot plants and the rays of the sun moving slowly over the plastic tablecloth before disappearing altogether, he was surprised at how quickly the time had passed. They had started talking at 10 a.m. and it was evening by the time they finished. They had had a few breaks, she had prepared lunch for him, and her father had entertained Wallander with stories about his life as captain of various ships plying the Baltic coast, with occasional voyages to Poland and the Baltic States. Otherwise they had been alone in the kitchen, and she had talked about her research. Wallander envied her. They both worked on investigations, they both spent their time constantly up against crime and human suffering. The difference was that she was trying to expose crime to prevent it happening, while Wallander was always occupied in clearing up crimes that had already been committed.

  What he remembered most from his time in that kitchen was a journey into an unimagined world where human beings and body parts had been reduced to market commodities, with no sign of any moral consideration. If she was correct in her assumptions, the trade in body parts was so vast that it was almost beyond comprehension. What shook him most, however, was her claim that she could understand the people who killed healthy human beings in order to sell parts of their bodies.

  "It's a reflection of the world," she said. "This is how things are, whether we like it or not. When a person is sufficiently poor, he's ready to do anything at all to keep body and soul together, no matter how squalid his life might be. How can we presume to make moral judgments about what they do? When their circumstances are so far beyond our understanding? In the slums on the edge of cities like Rio or Lagos or Calcutta or Madras, you can hold up 30 dollars and announce that you want to meet somebody who's prepared to kill another human being. Within a minute you have a queue of willing assassins. And they don't ask who they're going to be required to kill, nor do they wonder why. And they're prepared to do it for 20 dollars. Maybe even ten. I'm aware of a sort of abyss in the middle of what I'm working on. I get shocked, I feel desperate, but as long as the world continues as it is, I recognise that everything I do could be regarded as meaningless."

  Wallander had sat in silence for most of the time. From time to time he asked a question the better to understand what she was saying. But he could see that she really was trying to pass on everything she knew - or suspected, because there was so little anybody could be 100 per cent certain about.

  And then, hours later, they had come to a stop.

  "I don't know any more," she said. "But if what I've said is of help to you, I'm glad of it."

  "I don't even know if I'm on the right track," Wallander said. "But if I am, I know we've identified a Swedish link to this abominable trade. And if we can put a stop to it, that surely has to be a good thing."

  "Of course it does," she said. "One plundered corpse fewer in a South American ditch - that makes it all worthwhile."

  It was almost 7 p.m. by the time Wallander left Malmo. He knew he ought to have phoned Ystad and told them what he was doing, but he had been too taken up by his conversation with Norin.

  She had accompanied him to the car park where they had said their goodbyes.

  "You've given me an awful lot to think about," Wallander said. "I can't thank you enough."

  "Who knows," she said, "perhaps I'll get payment in kind one of these days."

  "You'll be hearing from me."

  "I'm counting on that. You'll normally find me in Gothenburg. Unless I'm on my travels."

  Wallander stopped at a grill bar near Jagersro for something to eat. He was thinking all the time about what she had told him, and how he could fit Harderberg into that picture. But he couldn't.

  He wondered if they would ever find an answer to the question of why the two solicitors had been killed. In all his years as a police officer, he had so far been spared the experience of being involved in an unsolved murder case. Was he standing now outside a door that would never open?

  He drove home to Ystad that evening feeling the weariness seep through his body. The only thing he had to look forward to was phoning Linda when he got in.

  But the moment Wallander stepped into his flat he knew that something was not as it had been when he left that morning. He paused in the hall, listening intently. Maybe it was his imagination. Yet the feeling would not go away. He switched on the light in the living room, sat down on a chair and looked around him. Nothing was missing, nothing seemed to have been moved. He went into the bedroom. The unmade bed was exactly as he had left it. The half-empty coffee cup was still on his bedside table next to the alarm clock. He went into the kitchen.

  Only when he opened the refrigerator to get out the margarine and a piece of cheese was he sure that he was right. He looked hard at the opened packet of blood pudding. He had an almost photographic memory and he knew he had put it on the third of the four shelves. It was on the second shelf now.

  The packet of blood pudding had been at the very edge and could easily have fallen out on to the floor - it had happened to him before. Then somebody had put it back on the wrong shelf.

  He had no doubt at all that he remembered it rightly. Somebody had been in his flat during the day. And whoever had been there had opened his refrigerator, either to look for something or to hide something.

  His first reaction was to laugh. Then he closed the fridge door and walked quickly out of the flat. He was scared. He had to force himself to think clearly. They're not far away, he thought. I'll let them think I'm still in the flat.

  He went down the stairs to the basement. There was a door at the back leading to the rubbish room. He unlocked and opened it. He looked out at the parking places lined up along the back of the building. There was no-one about. He closed the door behind him and edged his way through the shadows along the wall. When he came to where it opened out into Mariagatan, he kneeled down and peered at waist height from behind the drainpipe.

  The car was parked about ten metres behind his own. The engine was not running and the lights were off. He could make out a man behind the wheel, but could not be sure if there was anybody else in the car.

  He pulled back his head and stood up. From somewhere he could hear the sound of a TV set. He wondered feverishly what to do next. Then he made up his mind.

  He started running across the empty car park, turned left at the first corner and was gone.

  Chapter 14


  He was gasping for breath before he had got as far as Blekegatan. Once more Wallander thought he was about to die. He had taken Oskarsgatan from Mariagatan, it was not very far, and he had not been running flat out. Even so, the raw autumn air was tearing at his lungs and his pulse was racing. He forced himself to slow down, fearful that his heart would stop. The feeling of lacking the strength to do anything worried him more than the discovery that someone had been in his flat and was now sitting in a car in the street, keeping watch on him. He struggled to suppress the thought, but what was upsetting him was really his fear, the fear he recognised so clearly from the previous year, and he did not want it back. It had taken him almost twelve months to shake it off, and he thought he had succeeded in burying it once and for all on the beaches at Skagen - but here it was, back to haunt him.

  He started running again. It wasn't far to the block of flats in Lilla Norregatan where Svedberg lived. He had the hospital on his right, then he turned downhill towards the town centre. A torn poster outside the kiosk in Stora Norregatan caught his eye, then he turned right and almost immediately left and could see that the lights were on in the top-floor flat where Svedberg lived.

  Wallander knew the lights were often on all night. Svedberg was afraid of the dark; indeed, that might have been why he chose to become a police officer, to try to cure his fear. But he still left the lights on in his flat at night, so his career had not been any help.

  Everyone is frightened of something, Wallander thought, police officers or not. He stumbled through the front door and ran up the stairs, then paused when he reached the top floor to get his breath back. He rang Svedberg's bell. The door was opened almost immediately. Svedberg had a pair of reading glasses pushed up on to his forehead, and was holding a newspaper. Wallander knew he would be surprised to see him. During all the years they had known each other, Wallander had only been in Svedberg's flat two or three times, and then only after making an arrangement to meet there.

  "I need your help," Wallander said when the astonished Svedberg had let him in and closed the door.