The Man Who Smiled - Wallander 04

by Henning Mankell

  Wallander believed that this was where he should make the first move if he was going to slay the giant, wipe that smile off his face and discover the truth behind the death of the two solicitors. He had no doubt that the skilful and persistent officers in the fraud squad would uncover information that would be of use to them in the investigation. But as the night wore on Wallander had become increasingly convinced that it was Harderberg himself who would put them on the right track. Somewhere, sometime, the man with the smile would leave a trail which would enable them to hunt him down and use what they found to finish him off.

  Wallander knew that it had not been Harderberg himself who had committed the murders. Nor had he planted the mine in Mrs Dunér's garden. Or been in the car that had followed Wallander and Höglund to Helsingborg. Nor put the explosives in the petrol tank. Wallander had noticed that Harderberg had repeatedly said we and us. Like a king, or a Crown prince. But also like a man who knew the importance of surrounding himself with loyal colleagues who never questioned the instructions they were given.

  It seemed to Wallander that this trait also applied to Gustaf Torstensson, and he could understand why Harderberg had chosen to include him among his staff. He could expect total loyalty from Torstensson. Torstensson would always understand that his place at table was below the salt. Harderberg had presented him with an opportunity he could never have imagined in his wildest dreams.

  Maybe it's as simple as that, Wallander thought as he watched the swaying street light. Maybe Gustaf Torstensson had discovered something he would not or could not accept? Had he also discovered a crack in that smile? A crack which gave him occasion to confront himself with the unpleasant role he had in fact been playing?

  From time to time Wallander had left the window and sat at his kitchen table. Written his thoughts on a notepad and tried to make sense of them.

  At 5 a.m. he had made himself a cup of coffee. Then he had gone to bed and dozed until 6.30. Got up again, showered and had another cup of coffee. Then he had made his way to the police station at 7.30. The storm had given way to a clear blue sky, and it felt distinctly colder. Although he had hardly slept, he felt full of energy as he stepped into his office. Second wind, he had thought on his way to the station. We're no longer feeling our way into an investigation, we're in the thick of it. He flung his jacket over the back of the visitor's chair, fetched a coffee, phoned Ebba in reception and asked her to get hold of Nyberg for him. While he was waiting he read through his summary of the conversation with Harderberg. Svedberg stuck his head round the door and asked how it had gone.

  "You'll hear all about it shortly," Wallander said. "But I do reckon the murders and all the rest of it originate from Farnholm Castle."

  "Ann-Britt phoned to say she would be going straight to Angelholm," Svedberg said. "To meet Lars Borman's widow and children."

  "How's she getting on with Harderberg's jet?"

  "She didn't mention that," Svedberg said. "I suppose it will take a while."

  "I feel so impatient," Wallander said. "I wonder why?"

  "You always have been. And you're the only one who doesn't seem to be aware of it," Svedberg said, as he left.

  As soon as Nyberg came in, Wallander could see that something was up. He asked him to close the door behind him.

  "You were right," Nyberg said. "The plastic container we were examining the other night is hardly the sort of thing that belongs in a solicitor's car."

  Wallander waited expectantly.

  "You were also right in thinking it was a sort of cool box. But it's not for medicine or blood. It's for body organs intended for transplants. A kidney, for instance."

  Wallander looked at him thoughtfully. "Are you sure?"

  "If I'm not sure, I'll tell you," Nyberg said.

  "I know," Wallander said, brushing Nyberg's annoyance aside.

  "This is a very advanced kind of plastic container. There aren't a lot of them around, so it should be possible to track it down. If what I've managed to find out so far is correct, the sole importers into Sweden are a company based in Sodertalje called Avanca. I'm about to investigate further."

  "Good," Wallander said. "One other thing - don't forget to find out who owns the company."

  "I take it you want to know whether Avanca is a part of Harderberg's empire?"

  "That would be a start," Wallander said.

  Nyberg paused in the doorway. "What do you know about organ transplants?"

  "Not a lot," Wallander said. "I know they happen, that they're getting more common, and that more organs are being transplanted. For myself, I hope I never have to have one. It must be very strange to have somebody else's heart in your body."

  "I spoke to a Dr Strömberg in Lund," Nyberg said. "He gave me quite a bit of insight. He says there's a side to transplants that's murky, to say the least. It's not just that poor people in the Third World sell their own organs in desperation to survive - obviously that's a business with lots of grey areas, from a moral point of view anyway. He also hinted at something much worse."

  Wallander looked questioningly at Nyberg.

  "Go on," he said, "I've got time."

  "It was beyond me," Nyberg said, "but Strömberg persuaded me that there's no limit to what some people are prepared to do to earn money."

  "Surely you know that already?" Wallander said.

  Nyberg sat down on Wallander's visitor's chair.

  "Like so much else, there's no proof," he said, "but Strömberg maintains that there are gangs in South America and Asia who take orders for particular organs, then go out and commit murder to get them."

  Wallander said nothing.

  "He said this practice is more widespread than anybody suspects. There are even rumours that it goes on in Eastern Europe and in the US. A kidney doesn't have a face, it doesn't have an individual identity. Somebody kills a child in South America and extends the life of someone in the West whose parents can afford to pay and don't want to wait in the queue. The murderers earn serious money."

  "It can't be easy to extract an organ," Wallander said. "That means there must be doctors involved."

  "Who's to say that doctors are any different from the rest of us when it comes to morals?"

  "I find it difficult to believe," Wallander said.

  "I expect everybody does," Nyberg said. "That's why the gangs can continue to operate in peace and quiet."

  He took a notebook out of his pocket and thumbed through the pages.

  "The doctor gave me the name of a journalist who's digging into this," he said. "A woman. Her name's Lisbeth Norin. She lives in Gothenburg and writes for several popular-science magazines."

  Wallander made a note. "Let's think an outrageous thought," he said, looking Nyberg in the eye. "Let's suppose that Alfred Harderberg goes round killing people and selling their kidneys or whatever on the black market that apparently exists. And let's suppose that Gustaf Torstensson somehow or other discovered that. And took the cool box with him as proof. Let's think that outrageous thought."

  Nyberg stared at Wallander, eyebrows raised. "Are you serious?"

  "Of course not," Wallander said. "I'm just posing an outrageous thought."

  Nyberg stood up to leave. "I'll see if I can trace that container," he said. "I'll make that the number-one priority."

  When he had gone Wallander went to the window and thought over what Nyberg had said. He told himself that it really was an outrageous thought. Harderberg was a man who donated money for research. Especially for illnesses affecting children. Wallander also recalled that he had given money to support health care in several African and South American countries.

  The cool box in Torstensson's car must have some other significance, he concluded. Or no significance at all.

  Even so, he could not resist calling Directory Enquiries and getting

  Lisbeth Norin's number. When he called her, he found himself talking to an answering machine. He left his name and number.

  Wallander spent the rest of the
day waiting for things to happen. No matter what he did, what he was waiting for - reports from Höglund and Nyberg - was more important. He phoned his father and discovered that the studio had somehow survived the gales. Then he turned his wavering attention to everything he could find about Harderberg. He could not help but be fascinated by the brilliant career that had started inauspiciously in Vimmerby. Wallander appreciated that Harderberg's commercial genius had made itself felt very early on. At nine he had sold Christmas cards. He had also used his savings to buy previous years' leftovers. These he had snapped up for next to nothing. The boy had sold cards for a number of years, adjusting his prices to whatever the market would stand. Clearly, Harderberg had always been a trader. He bought and sold what other people made. He created nothing himself, but he bought cheap and sold less cheap. He discovered value where nobody else had found it. At 14 he had recognised that there was a demand for veteran cars. He had got on his bike, cycled round the Vimmerby area, poked his nose into sheds and backyards, and bought up any clapped-out vehicle he thought he might be able to sell on. Very often he got them for nothing, as people were too high-minded to think that they should exploit an inexperienced young chap who cycled round the country districts and seemed to be interested in old wrecks. All the while he had saved the money he did not need to plough back into the business. To celebrate his seventeenth birthday, he had travelled to Stockholm. He had been accompanied by an older friend from a village near Vimmerby, an amazing ventriloquist. Harderberg paid all their expenses, and appointed himself the ventriloquist's manager. It seemed that Harderberg had established himself early on as an efficient and unfailingly smiling aide who could further the careers of the up-and-coming. Wallander read several reports about Harderberg and the ventriloquist. They had often featured in Picture Parade, a magazine Wallander thought he could remember; and the articles kept referring to how well bred, well dressed and how capable of a friendly smile the young manager was. There were photographs of the ventriloquist, but not - even then - of his manager. It seemed he had shed his Småland dialect and adopted the way Stockholmers spoke. He paid for lessons from a speech therapist. After a while the ventriloquist was sent back to Vimmerby and anonymity, and Harderberg turned to new commercial projects. By the end of the 1960s his tax returns showed him to be a millionaire, but his big breakthrough came in the mid '70s. He had spent time in Zimbabwe, or Southern Rhodesia as it was then, and made some profitable investments in copper and gold mines together with a businessman called Tiny Rowland. Wallander assumed that this was when he had acquired the tea plantation.

  At the beginning of the 1980s Harderberg had been married to a Brazilian woman, Carmen Dulce da Silva, but they divorced without having had any children. All the time Harderberg had remained as invisible as possible. He had never put in an appearance when hospitals he had helped to finance were opened, nor did he ever send anybody to represent him. But he did write letters and telex messages in which he was modesty itself, expressing his thanks for all the kindness that had been extended to him. He was never present at the ceremony when he was awarded an honorary doctorate.

  His life is one long absence, Wallander thought. Until out of the blue he turned up in Skåne and installed himself behind the walls of Farnholm Castle, nobody had any idea where he was. He was constantly moving from one house to another, being driven in curtained cars, and from the early '80s he had owned a jet.

  But there were a few exceptions. One of them seemed to be more surprising and even stranger than the rest. According to something Mrs Dunér had said in a conversation with Höglund, Harderberg and Gustaf Torstensson had met for the first time over lunch at the Continental Hotel in Ystad. Torstensson had described Harderberg afterwards as likeable, suntanned and strikingly well dressed.

  Why had he chosen to meet Torstensson at a restaurant so openly? Wallander wondered. Well-known journalists specialising in international commerce have to wait for years before getting a glimpse of the man. Could that be significant? Does he sometimes change tack to create even more confusion? Uncertainty can be a hiding place, Wallander thought. The world is allowed to know he exists, but never where he is.

  Around midday Wallander went home for lunch. He was back by 1.30. He had just settled down to his files when Höglund knocked and came in.

  "Back so soon?" Wallander said in surprise. "I thought you were supposed to be in Angelholm?"

  "It didn't take long to talk to Borman's family," she said. "Unfortunately."

  Wallander could hear she was unhappy with the trip, and her mood immediately rubbed off on him. It's no good, then, he thought gloomily. Nothing here to help us break down the walls of Farnholm Castle.

  She had sat down on his visitor's chair and was leafing through her notebook.

  "How's the sick child?" Wallander said.

  "Children don't stay ill for long nowadays," she said. "I've found out quite a bit about Harderberg's jet, by the way. I'm glad Svedberg phoned and gave me that to keep me occupied. Women always have a guilty conscience when they can't work."

  "The Bormans first," Wallander said. "Let's start with them."

  "There really isn't much to say," she said. "There's no doubt they think he committed suicide. I don't think the widow's got over it, nor the son or daughter. I think it's the first time I've realised what it must mean to a family when somebody takes his own life, and for no reason."

  "He really hadn't left anything? No letter?"

  "Not a thing."

  "That doesn't fit with the picture we have of Borman. He wouldn't just drop his bike on the ground, and he wouldn't have taken his life without leaving some kind of explanation, or an apology."

  "I went over everything I thought was important. He wasn't in debt, he didn't gamble, and he hadn't been involved in any kind of swindle."

  "You mean you asked about that?" Wallander said, astonished.

  "Indirect questions can produce direct answers," she said.

  Wallander thought he understood what she meant. "People who know the police are coming make preparations," he said. "Is that it?"

  "All three of them had decided to defend his reputation," she said. "They listed all his good qualities without my needing to ask if he had any weaknesses."

  "The only question is whether what they said is true."

  "They weren't lying. I don't know what he might have got up to in private, but he does not seem to have been the kind of man who leads a double life."

  "Go on," Wallander said.

  "It came as a total shock to them," she said. "And they haven't come to terms with it yet. I think they spend night and day worrying about why he would have taken his own life. Without being able to find an answer."

  "Did you give any indication that it might not have been suicide?" "No."

  "Good. Go on."

  "The only thing of any interest to us is that Borman was in touch with Gustaf Torstensson. They were able to confirm that. They could also tell me why. Torstensson and Borman were members of a society for the study of icons. Gustaf Torstensson occasionally used to visit the Bormans. And Borman visited Torstensson in Ystad now and then."

  "You mean they were friends?"

  "I wouldn't say that. I don't think they were that close. And that's what's interesting, it seems to me." "I don't follow you," Wallander said.

  "What I mean is this," she said. "Torstensson and Borman were both loners. One was married, the other a widower, but they were loners even so. They didn't meet very often, and when they did, it was to talk about icons. But don't you think that these two solitary men, caught up in a difficult situation, might confide in each other? They didn't have any real friends, but they did have each other."

  "It's conceivable," Wallander said. "But it doesn't explain Borman's threatening letters to the whole firm of solicitors."

  "The filing clerk, Lundin, wasn't threatened," she objected. "That might be more significant than we think."

  Wallander leaned back in his chair and looked intentl
y at her. "You think you're on to something."

  "It's only speculation," she said. "Probably far-fetched."

  "We have nothing to lose by thinking," Wallander said. "I'm all ears."

  "Let's suppose that Borman told Torstensson what had happened at the County Council. Fraud. I mean, they can't have talked about nothing but icons all the time. We know that Borman was disappointed and offended because there was no proper police investigation into what happened. Let's suppose, too, that Torstensson knew there was a link between Harderberg and that swindling company STRUFAB. He might have mentioned that he worked for Harderberg. Let's go a step further and suppose that Borman saw in Torstensson a solicitor with the same feelings about justice as he had himself, a sort of guardian angel. He asked for help. But Torstensson did nothing. You can interpret threatening letters in different ways."

  "Can you?" Wallander said. "Threatening letters are threatening letters."

  "Some more serious than others," she said. "Perhaps we should not have overlooked that Torstensson did not in fact take them seriously. He did not record them, he did not turn to the police or to the Bar Council. He just hid them away. The most dramatic discovery can sometimes be finding that an incident wasn't really very dramatic. The fact that Lundin wasn't mentioned might be because he did not know she existed."

  "Good thinking," Wallander said. "Your speculations are no worse than any others. On the contrary. But there's just one thing you don't explain. The most important detail of all. Borman's murder. A carbon copy of Gustaf Torstensson's death. Executions disguised as something else."

  "I think you might have given the answer yourself," she said. "Their deaths were similar."

  Wallander thought for a moment. "You could be right," he said. "If we suppose that Gustaf Torstensson was already suspect in Alfred Harderberg's eyes. If he was being watched. Then what happened to Lars Borman could be a copy of what nearly happened to Mrs Dunér."

  "That's exactly what I was thinking," she said.

  Wallander stood up. "We can't prove any of this," he said.

  "Not yet," she said.