Sidetracked kw-5

by Henning Mankell

  “You’ll never get old,” said Wallander.

  “That’s a nice thing to say,” she said. “But it’s not true.”

  On the way to his office Wallander stopped to see Martinsson, who was sitting in front of his computer.

  “They got it up and running 20 minutes ago,” he said. “I’m just checking the description to see whether there are any missing persons who fit.”

  “Add that she was 163 centimetres tall,” said Wallander. “And that she was between 15 and 17 years old.”

  Martinsson gave him a baffled look.

  “Only 15? That can’t be possible, can it?”

  “I wish it weren’t true,” said Wallander. “But for now we have to consider it a possibility. How’s it going with the initials?”

  “I haven’t got that far yet,” said Martinsson. “But I was planning to stay late this evening.”

  “We’re trying to make an identification,” said Wallander. “We’re not searching for a fugitive.”

  “There’s no-one at home tonight anyway,” said Martinsson. “I don’t like going back to an empty house.”

  Wallander left Martinsson and looked in on Hoglund’s room, which was empty. He went back down the hall to the operations centre, where the emergency alerts and phone calls were received. Hoglund was sitting at a table with a senior officer, going through a pile of papers.

  “Any leads?” he asked.

  “We’ve got a couple of tip-offs we have to look into more closely,” she said. “One is a girl from Tomelilla Folk College who’s been missing for two days.”

  “Our girl was 163 centimetres tall,” said Wallander. “She had perfect teeth. She was between 15 and 17 years old.”

  “That young?” she asked in amazement.

  “Yep,” said Wallander. “That young.”

  “Then it’s not the girl from Tomelilla, anyway,” said Hoglund, putting down the paper in her hand. “She’s 23 and tall.”

  She searched through the stack of papers for a moment.

  “Here’s another one,” she said. “A 16-year-old girl named Mari Lippmansson. She lives here in Ystad and works in a bakery. She’s been missing from her job for three days. It was the baker who called. He was furious. Her parents evidently don’t care about her at all.”

  “Take a look at her,” Wallander said encouragingly. But he knew she wasn’t the one.

  He got a cup of coffee and went to his room. The folder on the car thefts was still lying on the floor. He’d better turn the case over to Svedberg now. He hoped no serious crimes would be committed before he started his holiday.

  Later that afternoon they met in the conference room. Nyberg was back from the farm, where he had finished his search. It was a short meeting. Hansson had excused himself because he had to read an urgent memo from national headquarters.

  “Let’s be brief,” said Wallander. “Tomorrow we’ll go over all the cases that can’t wait.”

  He turned to Nyberg, sitting at the end of the table.

  “How’d it go with the dog?” he asked.

  “He didn’t find a thing,” Nyberg replied. “If there was ever anything to give him a scent, it was covered up by the odour of petrol.”

  Wallander thought for a moment.

  “You found five melted petrol containers,” he said. “That means that she must have come to Salomonsson’s field in some sort of vehicle. She couldn’t have carried all that petrol by herself. Unless she walked there several times. There’s one more possibility, of course. That she didn’t come alone. But that doesn’t seem reasonable, to say the least. Who would help a young girl commit suicide?”

  “We could try to trace the petrol containers,” said Nyberg dubiously. “But is it really necessary?”

  “As long as we don’t know who she was, we have to trace her by any leads we have,” Wallander replied. “She must have come from somewhere, somehow.”

  “Did anyone look in Salomonsson’s barn?” asked Hoglund. “Maybe the petrol containers came from there.”

  Wallander nodded.

  “Someone had better drive out there and check,” he said.

  Hoglund volunteered.

  “We’ll have to wait for Martinsson’s results,” Wallander said, winding up the meeting. “And the pathologists’ work in Malmo. They’re going to give us an exact age tomorrow.”

  “And the gold medallion?” asked Svedberg.

  “We’ll wait until we have some idea of what the letters on it might mean,” said Wallander.

  He suddenly realised something he had completely overlooked earlier. Behind the dead girl there were other people. Who would mourn her. Who would forever see her running like a living flare in their heads, in a totally different way from him. The fire would stay with them like scars. It would gradually fade away from him like nightmare.

  They went their separate ways. Svedberg went with Wallander to get the papers on the car thefts. Wallander gave him a brief run-down. When they were done, Svedberg didn’t get up, and Wallander sensed that there was something he wanted to talk about.

  “We ought to get together and talk,” said Svedberg hesitantly. “About what’s going on.”

  “You’re thinking about the cuts? And security companies taking over the custody of suspects?”

  Svedberg nodded glumly. “What use are new uniforms if we can’t do our jobs?”

  “I don’t really think it’ll help to talk about it,” Wallander said warily. “We have a union that’s paid to take care of these matters.”

  “We ought to protest, at least,” said Svedberg. “We ought to talk to people on the street about what’s going to happen.”

  “People have their own troubles,” replied Wallander, and at the same time it occurred to him that Svedberg was quite right. The public was prepared to bend over backwards to save their police stations.

  Svedberg stood up. “That’s about it,” he said.

  “Set up a meeting,” Wallander said. “I promise I’ll come. But wait until summer’s over.”

  “I’ll think about it,” said Svedberg and left the room with the files under his arm.

  It was late afternoon. Through the window Wallander could see that it was about to rain. He decided to have a pizza before he drove out to see his father in Loderup. On the way out he stopped in on Martinsson.

  “Don’t stay there too long,” he said.

  “I haven’t found anything yet,” said Martinsson.

  “See you tomorrow.”

  Wallander went out to his car, which was already spattered with raindrops. He was just about to drive away when Martinsson ran out waving his arms. We’ve got her, he thought, and felt a knot in his stomach. He rolled down the window.

  “Did you find her?” he asked.

  “No,” said Martinsson.

  Wallander realised something serious had happened. He got out of the car.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Someone phoned in,” said Martinsson. “A body has been found on the beach out past Sandskogen.”

  Damn, thought Wallander. Not now. Not that.

  “It sounds like a murder,” Martinsson went on. “It was a man that called. He was unusually lucid, even though I think he was in shock.”

  “Get your jacket,” said Wallander. “It’s raining.”

  Martinsson didn’t move.

  “The man who called seemed to know who the victim was.”

  Wallander could tell by Martinsson’s face that he ought to dread what would come next.

  “He said it was Wetterstedt. The former minister of justice.”

  Wallander stared at Martinsson.

  “What?”

  “Gustaf Wetterstedt. The minister of justice. And he said it looked as if he’d been scalped.”

  It was Wednesday, 22 June.

  CHAPTER 6

  The rain was coming down harder by the time they got to the beach. On the way there they had spoken very little. Martinsson gave directions. They turned off onto a narr
ow road past the tennis courts. Wallander tried to picture what awaited them. What he wanted least of all had happened. If the man who called the station turned out to be right, his leave was in danger. Hansson would appeal to him to postpone it, and eventually he would have to give in. What he had been hoping for — that his desk would be cleared of pressing matters at the end of June — was not going to happen.

  They saw the dunes ahead of them and stopped. A man came forward to meet them. To Wallander’s surprise, he didn’t seem older than 30. If it was Wetterstedt who had died, this man couldn’t have been more than ten when the minister of justice had retired and vanished from public view. Wallander had been a young detective at the time. In the car he had tried to remember Wetterstedt’s face. He wore his hair cropped short, and glasses without frames. Wallander vaguely recalled his voice: blaring, invariably self-confident, never willing to admit a mistake.

  The young man introduced himself as Goran Lindgren. He was dressed in shorts and a thin sweater, and he seemed very agitated. They followed him down to the beach, deserted now that it had started to rain. Lindgren led them over to a big rowing boat turned upside down. On the far side there was a wide gap between the sand and the boat’s gunwale.

  “He’s under there,” said Lindgren in an unsteady voice.

  Wallander and Martinsson looked at each other, still hoping the man had imagined it. They knelt down and peered in under the boat. In the dim light they could see a body lying there.

  “We’ll have to turn the boat over,” said Martinsson in a low voice, as if afraid the dead man would hear him.

  “No,” said Wallander, “we’re not turning anything over.” He got up quickly and turned to Goran Lindgren.

  “I assume you have a torch,” he said. “Otherwise you couldn’t have described the body in such detail.”

  The man nodded in surprise and pulled a torch out of a plastic bag near the boat. Wallander bent down again and shone the light inside.

  “Holy shit,” said Martinsson at his side.

  The dead man’s face was covered with blood. But they could see that the skin from the forehead up over his skull was torn off, and Lindgren had been right. It was Wetterstedt under the boat. They stood up. Wallander handed back the torch.

  “How did you know it was Wetterstedt?” he asked.

  “He lives here,” said Lindgren, pointing up towards a villa to the left of the boat. “Besides, everyone knows him. You don’t forget a politician who was on TV all the time.”

  Wallander nodded doubtfully.

  “We’ll need a full team out here,” he said to Martinsson. “Go and call. I’ll wait here.”

  Martinsson hurried off. It was raining harder now.

  “When did you find him?” asked Wallander.

  “I don’t have a watch on me,” said Lindgren. “But it couldn’t have been more than half an hour ago.”

  “Where did you call from?”

  Lindgren pointed to the plastic bag.

  “I have a mobile phone.”

  Wallander regarded him with interest.

  “He’s lying under an overturned boat,” he said. “He’s invisible from outside. You must have bent down to be able to see him?”

  “It’s my boat,” said Lindgren simply. “Or my father’s, to be exact. I usually walk here on the beach when I finish work. Since it was starting to rain, I thought I’d put my things under the boat. When I felt the bag bump into something I bent down. At first I thought it was a plank, but then I saw him.”

  “It’s really none of my business,” said Wallander, “but I wonder why you had a torch with you?”

  “We have a summer cottage in the woods at Sandskogen,” replied Lindgren. “Over by Myrgangen. We’re in the process of rewiring it, so it has no lights. My father and I are electricians.”

  Wallander nodded. “You’ll have to wait here,” he said. “We’ll have to ask you these questions again in a while. Have you touched anything?”

  Lindgren shook his head.

  “Has anyone other than you seen him?”

  “No.”

  “When did you or your father last turn over this boat?”

  Lindgren thought for a moment.

  “It was over a week ago,” he said.

  Wallander had no more questions. He stood there thinking for a moment and then left the boat and walked in a wide arc up towards the villa where Wetterstedt lived. He tried the gate. It was locked. He waved Lindgren over.

  “Do you live nearby?” he asked.

  “No,” he said. “I live in Akesholm. My car is parked on the road.”

  “But you knew that Wetterstedt lived in this house?”

  “He used to walk along the beach here. Sometimes he stopped to watch while we were working on the boat, Dad and I. But he never spoke to us. He was rather arrogant.”

  “Was he married?”

  “Dad said that he’d read in a magazine that he was divorced.”

  Wallander nodded.

  “That’s fine,” he said. “Don’t you have a raincoat in that bag?”

  “It’s up in the car.”

  “Go ahead and get it,” Wallander said. “Did you call anyone besides the police and tell them about this?”

  “I think I ought to call Dad. It’s his boat, after all.”

  “Hold off for the time being,” said Wallander. “Leave the phone here, and go and get your raincoat.”

  Lindgren did as he was told. Wallander went back to the boat. He stood looking at it and tried to imagine what had happened. He knew that the first impression of a crime scene was often crucial. During an investigation that was long and difficult, he would return to that first moment.

  Some things he was already sure of. It was out of the question that Wetterstedt had been murdered underneath the boat. Someone had wanted to hide him. Since Wetterstedt’s villa was so close, there was a good chance that he had died there. Besides, Wallander had a hunch that the killer couldn’t have acted alone. The boat must have been lifted to get the body underneath. And it was the old-fashioned kind, clinker-built and heavy.

  Wallander turned his mind to the torn-off scalp. What was it that Martinsson had said? Lindgren had told him on the phone that the man had been “scalped”. Wallander tried to imagine what other reasons there might be for the wound to the head. They didn’t know how Wetterstedt had died. It wasn’t natural to think that someone would intentionally have torn off his hair. Wallander felt uneasy. The torn-off skin disturbed him.

  Just then the police cars started to arrive. Martinsson had been smart enough to tell them not to turn on their sirens and lights. Wallander walked about ten metres away from the boat so that the others wouldn’t trample the sand around it.

  “There’s a dead man underneath the boat,” said Wallander when the police had gathered. “Apparently it’s Gustaf Wetterstedt, who was once our top boss. Anyone as old as I am, at least, will remember the days when he was minister of justice. He was living here in retirement. And now he’s dead. We have to assume that he was murdered. So we’ll start by cordoning off the area.”

  “It’s a good thing the game isn’t on tonight,” said Martinsson.

  “No doubt the person who did this is a football fan too,” said Wallander. He was getting annoyed at the constant references to the World Cup, but he hid his irritation from Martinsson.

  “Nyberg is on his way,” said Martinsson.

  “We’ll have to work on this all night,” said Wallander. “We might as well get started.”

  Svedberg and Ann-Britt Hoglund were in one of the first cars. Hansson showed up right after they did. Lindgren reappeared in a yellow raincoat. He explained again how he had found the dead man while Svedberg took notes. It was raining hard now, and they gathered under a tree at the top of one of the dunes. When Lindgren had finished, Wallander asked him to wait. Since he still didn’t want to turn the boat over, the doctor had to dig out some sand to get far enough in under the boat to confirm that Wetterstedt was indee
d dead.

  “Apparently he was divorced,” said Wallander. “But we’ll have to get confirmation on that. Some of you will have to stay here. Ann-Britt and I will go up to his house.”

  “Keys,” said Svedberg.

  Martinsson went down to the boat, lay on his stomach, and reached in. After a minute or so he managed to find a key ring in Wetterstedt’s jacket pocket. Covered in wet sand, Martinsson handed Wallander the keys.

  “We’ve got to put up a canopy,” Wallander said testily. “Where is Nyberg? Why the delay?”

  “He’s coming,” said Svedberg. “Today is his sauna day.”

  Wallander and Hoglund made their way up to Wetterstedt’s villa.

  “I remember him from the police academy,” she said. “Somebody put up a photo of him on the wall and used it as a dartboard.”

  “He was never popular with the police,” Wallander said. “It was during his administration that we noticed something new was coming, a change that snuck up on us. I remember it felt like someone had pulled a hood over our eyes. It was almost shameful to be a policeman then. People seemed to worry more about how the prisoners were doing than the fact that crime was steadily on the rise.”

  “There’s a lot I can’t recall,” said Hoglund. “But wasn’t he mixed up in some sort of scandal?”

  “There were a lot of rumours,” said Wallander. “About one thing and another. But nothing was ever proven. A number of police officers in Stockholm were said to be quite upset.”

  “Maybe time caught up with him,” she said.

  Wallander looked at her in surprise. But he said nothing.

  They had reached the gate.

  “I’ve been here before, you know,” she said suddenly. “He used to call the police and complain about young people sitting on the beach and singing on summer nights. One of those young people wrote a letter to the editor of Ystad Recorder to complain. Bjork asked me to look into it.”

  “Look into what?”

  “I’m not really sure,” she answered. “But Bjork was very sensitive to criticism.”

  “That was one of his best traits,” said Wallander. “He always defended us and that isn’t always the case.”

  They found the key and opened the gate. Wallander noticed that the light was burned out. The garden they stepped into was well tended. There were no fallen leaves on the lawn. There was a little fountain with two nude plaster children squirting water at each other from their mouths. A swing hung in the arbour. On a flagstone patio stood a marble-topped table and chairs.