Sidetracked kw-5

by Henning Mankell

  Then she started pummelling Wallander, who managed to fend her off as he tried to get up. Mrs Carlman came to his rescue. She did the same thing as the girl had just done to Wallander. She slapped her daughter hard in the face. When the girl calmed down, her mother led her over to the sofa. Then she returned to Wallander, who was standing there with his burning cheek, torn between rage and astonishment.

  “Erika’s been so depressed about what happened,” said Anita Carlman. “She’s lost control. The inspector must forgive her.”

  “Maybe she should see a doctor,” said Wallander, noticing that his voice was shaking.

  “She already has.”

  Wallander nodded and went out of the door. He tried to remember the last time he had been struck. It was more than ten years ago. He was interrogating a man suspected of burglary. Suddenly the man had jumped up from the table and slugged him in the mouth. That time Wallander struck back. His rage was so fierce that he broke the man’s nose. Afterwards the man tried to sue Wallander for police brutality, but he was found innocent. The man later sent a complaint to the ombudsman about Wallander, but that too was dropped with no measures taken.

  He had never been hit by a woman before. When his wife Mona had lost control, she had thrown things at him. But she had never tried to slap him. He often wondered what would have happened if she had. Would he have hit back? He knew there was a good chance he would.

  He stood in the garden touching his stinging cheek. All the energy he had felt that morning had evaporated. He was so tired that he couldn’t even manage to hold on to the feeling the girls’ visit had given him.

  He walked back to his car. The officer was slowly rolling up the yellow tape.

  He put The Marriage of Figaro in the cassette deck. He turned up the volume so high that it thundered inside the car. His cheek stung. In the rear-view mirror he could see that it was red. When he got to Ystad he turned into the big car park by the furniture shop. Everything was closed, the car park deserted. He opened the car door and let the music flow. Barbara Hendricks made him forget about Wetterstedt and Carlman for a moment. But the girl in flames still ran through his mind. The field seemed endless. She kept running and running. And burning and burning.

  He turned down the music and started pacing back and forth in the car park. As always when he was thinking, he walked along staring at the ground. And so Wallander didn’t notice the photographer who saw him by chance, and took a picture of him through a telephoto lens as he paced around the empty car park. A few weeks later, when an astonished Wallander saw the picture, he’d even forgotten that he’d stopped there to try and clear his head.

  The team met very briefly that afternoon. Mats Ekholm joined them and ran through what he had discussed earlier with Hansson and Wallander. Hoglund told the team about the fax, and Wallander reported that Anita Carlman had confirmed the information it contained. He didn’t mention being slapped. When Hansson asked tentatively whether he’d consider talking to the reporters camped out around the station who seemed to know when a meeting had taken place, he refused.

  “We have to teach these reporters that we’re working on a legal matter,” Wallander said, and could hear how affected he sounded. “Ann-Britt can take care of them. I’m not interested.”

  “Is there anything I shouldn’t say?” she asked.

  “Don’t say we have a suspect,” said Wallander. “Because we don’t.”

  After the meeting Wallander exchanged a few words with Martinsson.

  “Has anything more been discovered about the girl?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” said Martinsson.

  “Let me know as soon as something happens.”

  Wallander went to his room. The telephone rang immediately, making him jump. Every time it rang he expected to be told of another murder. But it was his sister. She told him that she had talked to Gertrud. There was no doubt that their father had Alzheimer’s disease. Wallander could hear how upset she was.

  “He’s almost 80,” he consoled her. “Sooner or later something had to happen.”

  “But even so,” she said.

  Wallander knew what she meant. He could have used the same words himself. All too often life was reduced to those powerless words of protest, but even so.

  “He won’t be able to handle a trip to Italy,” she said.

  “If he wants to, then he will,” said Wallander. “Besides, I promised him.”

  “Maybe I should come with you.”

  “No. It’s our trip.”

  He hung up, wondering whether she was offended that he didn’t invite her to join them. But he put aside those thoughts and decided that he really had to go and visit his father. He located the scrap of paper on which he had written Linda’s phone number and called her. He was surprised when Kajsa answered at once, expecting them to be outside on such a beautiful day. When Linda came on he asked whether she’d leave her rehearsal and drive out with him to see her grandfather.

  “Can Kajsa come too?” she asked.

  “Normally I’d say yes,” replied Wallander. “But today I’d prefer it if it was just you and me. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  He picked her up in Osterport Square. On the way to Loderup he told her about his father’s visit to the station, and that he was ill.

  “No-one knows how fast it will progress,” said Wallander. “But he will be leaving us. Sort of like a ship sailing farther and farther out towards the horizon. We’ll still be able to see him clearly, but for him we’ll seem more and more like shapes in the fog. Our faces, our words, our common memories, everything will become indistinct and finally disappear altogether. He might be cruel without realising he’s doing it. He could turn into a totally different person.”

  Wallander could tell that she was upset.

  “Can’t anything be done?” she asked after sitting for a long time in silence.

  “Only Gertrud can answer that,” he said. “But I don’t think there is a cure.”

  He also told her about the trip that he and his father wanted to take to Italy.

  “It’ll be just him and me,” said Wallander. “Maybe we can work out all the problems we’ve had.”

  Gertrud met them on the steps when they pulled into the courtyard. Linda ran to see her grandfather, who was painting out in the studio he had made in the old barn. Wallander sat down in the kitchen and talked to Gertrud. It was just as he thought. There was nothing to be done but try to live a normal life and wait.

  “Will he be able to travel to Italy?” asked Wallander.

  “That’s all he talks about,” she said. “And if he should die while he’s there, it wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

  She told him that his father had taken the news of his illness calmly. This surprised Wallander, who had known his father to fret about the slightest ailment.

  “I think he’s come to terms with old age,” said Gertrud. “He probably thinks that by and large he would live the same life again if he had the chance.”

  “But in that life he would have stopped me from becoming a policeman,” said Wallander.

  “It’s terrible, what I read in the papers,” she said. “All the horrible things you have to deal with.”

  “Someone has to do it,” said Wallander. “That’s just the way it is.”

  They stayed and ate dinner in the garden. Wallander could see that his father was in an unusually good mood. He assumed that Linda was the reason. It was already 11 p.m. by the time they left.

  “Adults can be so childlike,” Linda said suddenly. “Sometimes because they’re showing off, trying to act young. But Grandpa can seem childlike in a way that seems totally unaffected.”

  “Your grandpa is a very special person,” said Wallander.

  “Do you know you’re starting to look like him?” she asked. “You two are becoming more alike every year.”

  “I know,” said Wallander. “But I don’t know if I like it.”

  He dropped her off where he
’d picked her up. They decided that she would call in a few days. He watched her disappear past Osterport School and realised to his astonishment that he hadn’t thought about the investigation once the whole evening. He immediately felt guilty, then pushed the feeling away. He knew that he couldn’t do any more than he had already done today.

  He drove to the station. None of the detectives were in. There weren’t any messages important enough to answer that evening. He drove home, parked his car, and went up to his flat.

  Wallander stayed up for a long time that night. He had the windows open to the warm summer air. On his stereo he played some music by Puccini. He poured himself the last of the whisky. He felt some of the happiness he had felt the afternoon he was driving out to Salomonsson’s farm, before the catastrophe had struck. Now he was in the middle of an investigation that was marked by two things. First, they had very little to help them identify the killer. Second, it was quite possible that he was busy carrying out his third murder at that very moment. Still, Wallander tried to put the case out of his mind. And for a short time the burning girl disappeared from his thoughts too. He had to admit that he couldn’t single-handedly solve every violent crime that happened in Ystad. He could only do his best. That’s all anyone could do.

  He lay down on the sofa and dozed off to the music and the summer night with the whisky glass within reach.

  But something drew him back to the surface again. It was something that Linda had said in the car. Some words that suddenly took on a whole new meaning. He sat up on the sofa, frowning. What was it she had said? Adults can be so childlike. There was something there that he couldn’t grasp. Adults can be so childlike.

  Then he realised what it was. And he couldn’t understand how he could have been so sloppy. He put on his shoes, found a torch in one of the kitchen drawers, and left the flat. He drove out along Osterleden, turned right, and stopped outside Wetterstedt’s house, which lay in darkness. He opened the gate to the front yard. He gave a start when a cat vanished like a shadow among the bushes. He shone the torch along the base of the garage, and didn’t have to search long before he found what he was looking for. He took the torn-out pages of the magazine between his thumb and forefinger and shone the light on them. They were from an issue of The Phantom. He searched in his pockets for a plastic bag and put the pages inside.

  Then he drove home. He was still annoyed that he had been so sloppy.

  Adults can be so childlike.

  A grown man could very well have sat on the garage roof reading an issue of The Phantom.

  CHAPTER 16

  When Wallander awoke just before 5 a.m., on Monday 27 June, a cloud bank had drifted in from the west and reached Ystad, but there was still no rain. Wallander lay in bed and tried in vain to go back to sleep. At 6 a.m. he got up, showered and made coffee. The fatigue was like a dull pain. Ten or 15 years ago he’d almost never felt tired in the morning, no matter how little sleep he’d got, he thought with regret. But those days were gone forever.

  Just before 7 a.m. he walked into the station. Ebba had already arrived, and she smiled at him as she handed him some phone messages.

  “I thought you were on holiday,” said Wallander in surprise.

  “Hansson asked me to stay a few extra days,” said Ebba. “Now that there’s so much happening.”

  “How’s your hand?”

  “Like I said. It’s no fun getting old. Everything just starts to fall apart.”

  Wallander couldn’t recall ever having heard Ebba make such a dramatic statement. He wondered whether to tell her about his father and his illness, but decided against it. He got some coffee and sat down at his desk. After looking through the phone messages and stacking them on top of the pile from the night before, he called Riga, feeling a pang of guilt at making a personal call. He was still old-fashioned enough not to want to burden his employer. He remembered how a few years ago Hansson had been consumed by a passion for betting on the horses. He had spent half his working day calling racetracks all over the country for tips. Everyone had known about it, but no-one had complained. Wallander had been surprised that only he had thought someone should talk to Hansson. But then one day all the form guides and half-completed betting slips vanished from Hansson’s desk. Through the grapevine Wallander heard that Hansson had decided to stop before he wound up in debt.

  Baiba picked up the phone after the third ring. Wallander was nervous. Each time he called he was afraid that she’d tell him they shouldn’t see each other again. He was as unsure of her feelings as he was sure of his own. But she sounded happy, and her happiness was infectious. Her decision to go to Tallinn had been made quite hastily, she explained. One of her friends was going and asked Baiba to go with her. She had no classes at the university that week, and the translation job she was working on didn’t have a pressing deadline. She told him about the trip and then asked how he was. Wallander decided not to mention that their trip to Skagen might be jeopardised. He said that everything was fine. They agreed that he would call her that evening. Afterwards, Wallander sat worrying about how she’d react if he had to postpone their holiday.

  Worry was a bad habit, which seemed to grow worse the older he got. He worried about everything. He worried when Baiba went to Tallinn, he worried that he was going to get sick, he worried that he might oversleep or that his car might break down. He wrapped himself in clouds of anxiety. With a grimace he wondered whether Mats Ekholm might be able to do a psychological profile of him and suggest how he could free himself from all the problems he created.

  Svedberg knocked on his half-open door and walked in. He hadn’t been careful in the sun the day before. The top of his head was completely sunburnt, as were his forehead and nose.

  “I’ll never learn,” Svedberg complained. “It hurts like hell.”

  Wallander thought about the burning sensation he’d felt after being slapped the day before. But he didn’t mention it.

  “I spent yesterday talking to the people who live near Wetterstedt,” Svedberg said. “He went for walks quite often. He was always polite and said hello to the people he met. But he didn’t socialise with anyone in the neighbourhood.”

  “Did he also make a habit of taking walks at night?”

  Svedberg checked his notes. “He used to go down to the beach.”

  “So this was a routine?”

  “As far as I can tell, yes.”

  Wallander nodded. “Just as I thought,” he said.

  “Something else came up that might be of interest,” Svedberg continued. “A retired civil servant named Lantz told me that a reporter had rung his doorbell on Monday 20 June, and asked for directions to Wetterstedt’s house. Lantz understood that the reporter and a photographer were going there to do a story. That means someone was at his house on the last day of his life.”

  “And that there are photographs,” said Wallander. “Which newspaper was it?”

  “Lantz didn’t know.”

  “You’ll have to get someone to make some calls,” said Wallander. “This could be important.”

  Svedberg nodded and left the room.

  “And you ought to put some cream on that sunburn,” Wallander called after him. “It doesn’t look good.”

  Wallander called Nyberg. A few minutes later he came in.

  “I don’t think your man came on a bicycle,” said Nyberg. “We found some tracks behind the hut from a moped or a motorcycle. And every worker on the road team drives a car.”

  An image flashed through Wallander’s mind, but he couldn’t hold on to it. He wrote down what Nyberg had said.

  “What do you expect me to do with this?” asked Nyberg, holding up the bag with the pages from The Phantom.

  “Check for fingerprints,” said Wallander. “Which may match other prints.”

  “I thought only children read The Phantom,” said Nyberg.

  “No,” replied Wallander. “There you’re wrong.”

  When Nyberg had gone, Wallander hesitated. Rydberg
had taught him that a policeman must always tackle what was most important at a given moment. But what was now? No one thing could yet be assumed to be more important than another. Wallander knew that what mattered now was to trust his patience.

  He went out into the hall, knocked on the door of the office that had been assigned to Ekholm and opened the door. Ekholm was sitting with his feet on the desk, reading through some papers. He nodded towards the visitor’s chair and tossed the papers on the desk.

  “How’s it going?” asked Wallander.

  “Not so good,” said Ekholm evenly. “It’s hard to pin down this person. It’s a shame we don’t have a little more material to go on.”

  “He needs to have committed more murders?”

  “To put it bluntly, that would make the case easier,” said Ekholm. “In many investigations into serial murders conducted by the F.B.I., a breakthrough comes only after the third or fourth crime. Then it’s possible to sift out the things that are particular to each killing, and start to see an overall pattern. And a pattern is what we’re looking for, one that enables us to see the mind behind the crimes.”

  “What can you say about adults who read comic books?” asked Wallander.

  Ekholm raised his eyebrows.

  “Does this have something to do with the case?”

  “Maybe.”

  Wallander told him about his discovery. Ekholm listened intently.

  “Emotional immaturity or abnormality is almost always present in individuals who commit serial murders,” said Ekholm. “They don’t value other human beings. That’s why they don’t comprehend the suffering they cause.”

  “But all adults who read The Phantom aren’t murderers,” said Wallander.

  “Just as there have been examples of serial killers who were experts on Dostoevsky,” replied Ekholm. “You have to take a piece of the puzzle and see whether it fits anywhere.”

  Wallander was starting to get impatient. He didn’t have time to get into a theoretical discussion with Ekholm.

  “Now that you’ve read through our material,” he said, “what sort of conclusions have you made?”