Sidetracked kw-5

by Henning Mankell

  Sometimes he imagined himself as an image in a mirror that was both concave and convex at the same time. No-one had ever seen anything but the surface: the eminent jurist, the respected minister of justice, the kindly retiree strolling along the beach in Skane. No-one would have guessed at his double-sided self. He had greeted kings and presidents, he had bowed with a smile, but in his head he was thinking, if you only knew who I really am and what I think of you. When he stood in front of the TV cameras he always held that thought — if you only knew who I really am and what I think of you — foremost in his mind. His secret. That he hated and despised the party he represented, the policies that he defended, and most of the people he met. His secret would stay hidden until he died. He had seen through the world, identified all its frailties, understood the meaninglessness of existence. But no-one knew about his insight, and that was the way it would stay.

  He felt a growing pleasure at what was to come. Tomorrow evening his friends would arrive at the house just after 9 p.m., in the black Mercedes with tinted windows. They would drive straight into his garage and he would wait for them in the living-room with the curtains drawn, just as now. He could feel his expectation swell as he started to fantasise about what the girl they delivered to him this time would look like. He had told them there had been far too many blondes lately. Some of them had also been much too old, over 20. This time he wanted a younger one, preferably of mixed race. His friends would wait in the basement where he had installed a TV; he would take the girl with him to his bedroom. Before dawn they would be gone, and he would already be daydreaming about the girl they would bring the following week.

  The thought of the next evening made him so excited that he got up from the sofa and went into his study. Before he turned on the light he drew the curtains. For a moment he thought he saw the shadow of someone down on the beach. He took off his glasses and squinted. Sometimes late-night strollers would stop on the edge of his property. On several occasions he had had to call the police in Ystad to complain of young people lighting bonfires on the beach and making noise.

  He had a good relationship with the Ystad police. They came right away and moved anyone disturbing him. He never could have imagined the knowledge and contacts he had gained as minister of justice. Not only had he learned to understand the special mentality that prevails inside the police force, but he had methodically acquired friends in strategic places in the Swedish machinery of justice. As important were all the contacts he had made in the criminal world. There were intelligent criminals, individuals who worked alone as well as leaders of great crime syndicates, whom he had made his friends. Even though much had changed since he left office, he still enjoyed his old contacts. Especially the friends who saw to it that each week he had a visit from a girl of a suitable age.

  He had imagined the shadow on the beach. He straightened the curtains and unlocked one of the cabinets in the desk he had inherited from his father, a distinguished professor of jurisprudence. He took out an expensive and beautifully decorated portfolio and opened it before him on the desk. Slowly, reverently, he leafed through his collection of pornographic pictures from the earliest days of photography. His oldest picture was a rarity, a daguerreotype from 1855 that he had acquired in Paris, of a naked woman embracing a dog. His collection was renowned in the discreet circle of men who shared his interest. His collection of pictures from the 1890s by Lecadre was surpassed only by the collection owned by an elderly steel magnate in the Ruhr. Slowly he turned the plastic-covered pages of the album. He lingered longest over the pages where the models were very young and one could see by their eyes that they were under the influence of drugs. He had often regretted that he himself had not begun to devote himself to photography earlier. Had he done so, he would today be in possession of an unrivalled collection.

  When he had finished, he locked the album in the desk again. He had extracted a promise from his friends that upon his death they would offer the pictures to an antiquities dealer in Paris who specialised in the sale of such items. The money would be donated to a scholarship fund he had already established for young law students, which would be announced after his death. He switched off the desk lamp and remained sitting in the dark room. The sound of the surf was very faint. Once again he thought he heard a moped passing.

  In spite of his age, he still found it difficult to imagine his own death. During trips to the United States, he had managed twice to be present anonymously at executions, the first by electric chair, the second in the gas chamber, which even then was rather rare. It had been a curiously pleasurable experience to watch people being killed. But his own death he could not contemplate. He left the study and poured a little glass of liqueur from the bar in the living-room. It was already approaching midnight. A short walk down to the sea was all that remained for him to do before he went to bed. He put on a jacket out in the hall, slipped his feet into a pair of worn clogs, and left the house.

  Outside it was dead calm. His house was so isolated that he could not see the lights of any of his neighbours. The cars on the road to Kaseberga roared by in the distance. He followed the path that led through the garden and down to the locked gate to the beach. To his annoyance he discovered that the light on a pole next to the gate was out. The beach awaited him. He fished out his keys and unlocked the gate. He walked the short distance onto the sand and stopped at the water’s edge. The sea was still. Far out on the horizon he saw the lights of a boat heading west. He unbuttoned his fly and peed into the water as he continued to fantasise about the visit he would have the next day.

  Although he heard nothing, suddenly he knew that someone was standing behind him. He stiffened, seized with terror. Then he spun round.

  The man standing there looked like an animal. Apart from a pair of shorts he was naked. The old man looked into his face with dread. He couldn’t see if it was deformed or hidden behind a mask. In one hand the man held an axe. In his confusion the old man noticed that the hand around the shaft of the axe was very small, that the man was like a dwarf.

  He screamed and started to run, back towards the garden gate.

  He died the instant the edge of the axe severed his spine, just below the shoulder blades. And he knew no pain as the man, who was perhaps an animal, knelt down and slit an opening in his forehead and then with one violent wrench ripped most of the scalp from his skull.

  It was a little after midnight. It was Tuesday, 21 June.

  The motor of a moped started up somewhere nearby, and moments later died away.

  Everything was once again very still.

  CHAPTER 2

  Around noon on 21 June, Kurt Wallander left the police station in Ystad. So that no-one would notice his going, he walked out through the garage entrance, got into his car, and drove down to the harbour. Since the day was warm he had left his sports jacket hanging over his chair at his desk. Anyone looking for him in the next few hours would assume he must be somewhere in the building. Wallander parked by the theatre, walked out on the inner pier and sat down on the bench next to the red hut belonging to the sea rescue service. He had brought along one of his notebooks, but realised that he hadn’t brought a pen. Annoyed, he nearly tossed the notebook into the harbour. But this was impossible. His colleagues would never forgive him.

  Despite his protests, they had appointed him to make a speech on their behalf at 3 p.m. that day for Bjork, who was resigning his post as Ystad chief of police.

  Wallander had never made a formal speech in his life. The closest he had come were the innumerable press conferences he had been obliged to hold during criminal investigations.

  But how to thank a retiring chief of police? What did one actually thank him for? Did they have any reason to be thankful? Wallander would have preferred to voice his uneasiness and anxiety at the vast, apparently unthoughtout reorganisations and cutbacks to which the force was increasingly subjected. He had left the station so he could think through what he was going to say in peace. He’d sat at his kitche
n table until late the night before without getting anywhere. But now he had no choice. In less than three hours they would gather and present their farewell gift to Bjork, who was to start work the next day in Malmo as head of the district board of immigration affairs.

  Wallander got up from the bench and walked along the pier to the harbour cafe. The fishing boats rocked slowly in their moorings. He remembered idly that once, seven years ago, he had been involved in fishing a body out of this harbour. But he pushed away the memory. Right now, the speech he had to make for Bjork was more important. One of the waitresses lent him a pen. He sat down at a table outside with a cup of coffee and forced himself to write a few sentences. By 1 p.m. he had put together half a page. He looked at it gloomily, knowing that it was the best that he could do. He motioned to the waitress, who came and refilled his cup.

  “Summer seems to be taking its time,” Wallander said to her.

  “Maybe it won’t get here at all,” replied the waitress.

  Apart from the difficulty of Bjork’s speech, Wallander was in a good mood. He would be going on holiday in a few weeks. He had a lot to be happy about. It had been a long, gruelling winter. He knew that he was in great need of a rest.

  At 3 p.m. they gathered in the canteen of the station and Wallander made his speech to Bjork. Svedberg gave him a fishing rod as a present, and Ann-Britt Hoglund gave him flowers. Wallander managed to embellish his scanty speech on the spur of the moment by recounting a few of his escapades with Bjork. There was great amusement as he recalled the time when they had both fallen into a pool of liquid manure after some scaffolding they were climbing collapsed. In his reply Bjork wished his successor, a woman named Lisa Holgersson, good luck. She was from one of the bigger police districts in Smaland and would take over at the end of the summer. For the time being Hansson would be the acting chief in Ystad. When the ceremony was over and Wallander had returned to his office, Martinsson knocked on his half-open door, and came in.

  “That was a great speech,” he said. “I didn’t know you could do that sort of thing.”

  “I can’t,” said Wallander. “It was a lousy speech. You know it as well as I do.”

  Martinsson sat down cautiously in the broken visitor’s chair.

  “I wonder how it’ll go with a woman chief,” he said.

  “Why wouldn’t it go well?” replied Wallander. “You should be worrying instead about what’s going to happen with all these cutbacks.”

  “That’s exactly why I came to see you,” said Martinsson. “There’s a rumour going round that staff numbers are going to be cut back on Saturday and Sunday nights.”

  Wallander looked at Martinsson sceptically.

  “That won’t work,” he said. “Who’s going to deal with the people we’ve got in the cells?”

  “Rumour has it that they’re going to take tenders for that job from private security companies.”

  Wallander gave Martinsson a quizzical look.

  “Security companies?”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  Wallander shook his head. Martinsson got up.

  “I thought you ought to know about it,” he said. “Do you have any idea what’s going to happen within the force?”

  “No,” said Wallander. “Cross my heart.”

  Martinsson lingered in the office.

  “Was there something else?”

  Martinsson took a piece of paper out of his pocket.

  “As you know, the World Cup has started. Sweden was 2–2 in the game against Cameroon. You bet 5–0 in favour of Cameroon. With this score, you came in last.”

  “How could I come in last? Either I bet right or wrong, didn’t I?”

  “We run statistics that show where we are in relation to everyone else.”

  “Good Lord! What’s the point of that?”

  “An officer was the only one who picked 2–2,” said Martinsson, ignoring Wallander’s question. “Now for the next match. Sweden against Russia.”

  Wallander was totally uninterested in football, although he had occasionally gone to watch Ystad’s handball team, which had several times been ranked as one of the best in Sweden. But lately the entire country seemed to be obsessed by the World Cup. He couldn’t turn on the TV or open a newspaper without being bombarded with speculation as to how the Swedish team would fare. He knew that he had no choice but to take part in the football pool. If he didn’t, his colleagues would think he was arrogant. He took his wallet out of his back pocket.

  “How much?”

  “A hundred kronor. Same as last time.”

  He handed the note to Martinsson, who checked him off on his list.

  “Don’t I have to guess the score?”

  “Sweden against Russia. What do you think?”

  “4–4,” said Wallander.

  “It’s pretty rare to have that many goals scored in football,” Martinsson said, surprised. “That sounds more like ice hockey.”

  “All right, let’s say 3–1 to Russia,” said Wallander. “Will that do?”

  Martinsson wrote it down.

  “Maybe we can take the Brazil match while we’re at it,” Martinsson went on.

  “3–0 to Brazil,” said Wallander quickly.

  “You don’t have very high expectations for Sweden,” said Martinsson.

  “Not when it comes to football, anyway,” replied Wallander, handing him another 100-krona note.

  Martinsson left and Wallander began to mull over what he had been told, but then he dismissed the rumours with irritation. He would find out soon enough what was true and what wasn’t. It was already 4.30 p.m. He pulled over a folder of material about an organised crime ring exporting stolen cars to the former Eastern-bloc countries. He had been working on the investigation for several months. So far the police had only succeeded in tracking down parts of the operation. He knew that this case would haunt him for many more months yet. During his leave, Svedberg would take over, but he suspected that very little would happen while he was gone.

  There was a knock on the door, and Ann-Britt Hoglund walked in. She had a black baseball cap on her head.

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  “Like a tourist,” replied Wallander.

  “This is what the new caps are going to look like,” she said. “Just imagine the word POLICE above the peak. I’ve seen pictures of it.”

  “They’ll never get one of those on my head,” said Wallander. “I suppose that I should be glad I’m not in uniform any more.”

  “Someday we might discover that Bjork was a really good chief,” she said. “I think what you said in there was great.”

  “I know the speech wasn’t any good,” said Wallander, starting to feel annoyed. “But you are all responsible for having picked me.”

  Hoglund stood up and looked out of the window. She had managed to live up to the reputation that preceded her when she came to Ystad the year before. At the police academy she had shown great aptitude for police work, and had developed even more since. She had filled part of the void left by Rydberg’s death a few years ago. Rydberg was the detective who had taught Wallander most of what he knew, and sometimes Wallander felt that it was his task to guide Hoglund in the same way.

  “How’s it going with the cars?” she asked.

  “They keep on being stolen,” said Wallander. “The organisation seems to have an incredible number of branches.”

  “Can we punch a hole in it?” she asked.

  “We’ll crack it,” replied Wallander. “Sooner or later. There’ll be a lull for a few months. Then it’ll start up again.”

  “But it’ll never end?”

  “No, it’ll never end. Because of Ystad’s location. Just 200 kilometres from here, across the Baltic, there’s an unlimited number of people who want what we’ve got. The only problem is they don’t have the money to pay for it.”

  “I wonder how much stolen property is shipped with every ferry,” she mused.

  “You don’t want to know
,” said Wallander.

  Together they went and got some coffee. Hoglund was supposed to go on holiday that week. Wallander knew that she was going to spend it in Ystad, since her husband, a machinery installer with the whole world as his market, was currently in Saudi Arabia.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked when they started talking about their upcoming breaks.

  “I’m going to Denmark, to Skagen,” said Wallander.

  “With the woman from Riga?” Hoglund wondered with a smile.

  Wallander was taken aback.

  “How do you know about her?”

  “Oh, everybody does,” she said. “Didn’t you realise? You might call it the result of an ongoing internal investigation.”

  Wallander had never told anyone about Baiba, whom he had met during a criminal investigation. She was the widow of a murdered Latvian policeman. She had been in Ystad over Christmas almost six months ago. During the Easter holiday Wallander had visited her in Riga. But he had never spoken about her or introduced her to any of his colleagues. Now he wondered why not. Even though their relationship was new, she had pulled him out of the melancholy that had marked his life since his divorce from Mona.

  “All right,” he said. “Yes, we’ll be in Denmark together. Then I’m going to spend the rest of the summer with my father.”

  “And Linda?”

  “She called a week ago and said she was taking a theatre class in Visby.”

  “I thought she was going to be a furniture upholsterer?”

  “So did I. But now she’s got it into her head that she’s going to do some sort of stage performance with a girlfriend of hers.”

  “That sounds exciting, don’t you think?”

  Wallander nodded dubiously.

  “I hope she comes here in July,” he said. “I haven’t seen her in a long time.” They parted outside Wallander’s door.

  “Drop in and say hello this summer,” she said. “With or without the woman from Riga. With or without your daughter.”