Sidetracked kw-5

by Henning Mankell

  “There are four of us. And there’s Andersson, who takes care of the garden. We also have a full-time watchman, Sture Rosell. But he mainly stays out at our churches. Any of them could have taken some letterhead from here, of course. Plus anyone who visited the vicar’s office on business.”

  “You don’t recognise the handwriting?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not illegal to pick up hitchhikers,” said Wallander. “So why would someone write an anonymous letter? Because they wanted to hide the fact that they’d had been in Helsingborg? It’s puzzling.”

  “I could ask whether anyone here was in Helsingborg that day,” she said. “And try to match the handwriting.”

  “I’d appreciate your help,” said Wallander, standing up. “You can reach me at the Ystad police station.”

  He wrote his phone number down for her. She followed him out.

  “I’ve never met a female vicar before,” he said.

  “Many people are still surprised,” she replied.

  “In Ystad we have our first woman chief of police,” he said. “Everything changes.”

  “For the better, I hope,” she said and smiled.

  Wallander looked at her, deciding she was quite beautiful. He didn’t see a ring on her finger. He couldn’t help thinking forbidden thoughts. She really was terribly attractive.

  The man cutting the grass was now sitting on a bench smoking. Without really knowing why, Wallander sat down on the bench and started talking to him. He was about 60, and dressed in a blue work shirt, dirty corduroy trousers and a pair of ancient tennis shoes. Wallander noted that he was smoking unfiltered Chesterfields, the brand that his father had smoked when he was a child.

  “She doesn’t open the door when the office is closed,” the man said thoughtfully. “This is the first time it’s ever happened.”

  “The vicar is quite good-looking,” said Wallander.

  “She’s nice too,” said the man. “And she gives a good sermon. I don’t know whether we’ve ever had such a good vicar. But many people would still rather have a man.”

  “They would?” said Wallander absentmindedly.

  “Quite a few people would never think of having a woman. People in Skane are conservative. For the most part.”

  The conversation died. It was as if both men had run out of steam. Wallander listened to the birds. He could smell the freshly mown grass. He remembered that he should contact Hans Vikander at the Ostermalm police, and find out how the interview with Gustaf Wetterstedt’s mother had gone. He had a lot to do. He certainly didn’t have time to sit on a bench outside the parish offices in Smedstorp.

  “Were you here to get a change of address certificate?” the man asked suddenly.

  “I had a few questions to ask,” he said, getting up.

  The man squinted at him.

  “I recognise you,” he said. “Are you from Tomelilla?”

  “No,” said Wallander. “I’m originally from Malmo. But I’ve lived in Ystad for many years.”

  He was about to say goodbye when he noticed the white T-shirt showing under the man’s unbuttoned work shirt. It advertised the ferry line between Helsingborg and Helsingor, in Denmark. He knew it could be a coincidence, but decided that it wasn’t. He sat back down on the bench. The man stubbed out his cigarette in the grass, about to get up.

  “Just a moment,” said Wallander. “There’s something I’d like to ask you about.”

  The man heard the change in Wallander’s voice. He gave him a wary look.

  “I’m a police officer,” said Wallander. “I didn’t come here to talk to the vicar. I came to talk to you. Why didn’t you sign the letter you sent? About the girl you gave a lift from Helsingborg.”

  It was a reckless move, he knew, in defiance of everything he had been taught. It was a punch below the belt — the police didn’t have the right to lie to extract information, especially when no crime had been committed.

  But it worked. The man jumped, caught off guard. Wallander could see him wondering how he could know about the letter.

  “It’s not against the law to write anonymous letters,” he said. “Or to pick up hitchhikers. I just want to know why you did. And what time you picked her up and where you took her. The exact time. And whether she said anything during the journey.”

  “Now I recognise you,” muttered the man. “You’re the policeman who shot a man in the fog a few years ago. On the shooting range outside Ystad.”

  “You’re right,” said Wallander. “That was me. My name is Kurt Wallander.”

  “She was standing at the slip road of the southbound motorway,” said the man suddenly. “It was 7 p.m. I had driven over to Helsingborg to buy a pair of shoes. My cousin has a shoe shop there. He gives me a discount. I don’t usually pick up hitchhikers. But she looked so forlorn.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened. What do you mean?”

  “When you stopped the car. What language did she speak?”

  “I have no idea what language it was, but it certainly wasn’t Swedish. And I don’t speak English. I said I was going to Tomelilla. She nodded. She nodded to everything I said.”

  “Did she have any luggage?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Not even a handbag?”

  “Nothing.”

  “And then you drove off?”

  “She sat in the back seat. She didn’t speak. I thought there was something odd about the whole thing. I was sorry I’d picked her up.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Maybe she wasn’t going to Tomelilla at all. Who the hell goes to Tomelilla?”

  “So she didn’t say a word?”

  “Not a word.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Do?”

  “Did she sleep? Look out the window? What?”

  The man tried to remember.

  “There was one thing I worried about afterwards. Every time a car passed us she crouched down. As if she didn’t want to be seen.”

  “So she was frightened?”

  “Definitely.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I stopped at the roundabout on the outskirts of Tomelilla and let her out. To tell you the truth, I don’t think she had any idea where she was.”

  “So she wasn’t going to Tomelilla?”

  “I think she just wanted to get out of Helsingborg. I drove off. But when I was almost home I thought, I can’t just leave her there. So I drove back. But she was gone.”

  “How long did it take you to go back?”

  “Not more than ten minutes.”

  Wallander thought for a moment.

  “When you picked her up outside Helsingborg, she was standing at the slip road. Is it possible she’d had a lift to Helsingborg? Or was she coming from there?”

  The man thought for a while.

  “From Helsingborg,” he said. “If she’d had a lift down from the north, she wouldn’t have been standing where she was.”

  “And you never saw her again? You didn’t look for her?”

  “Why would I?”

  “What time was this?”

  “I let her off at 8 p.m. I remember the news came on the car radio just as she got out of the car.”

  Wallander thought about what he had heard. He knew he’d been lucky.

  “Why did you write to the police?” he asked. “Why anonymously?”

  “I read about the girl who’d burned herself to death,” he said. “And I had a feeling that it might have been her. But I decided not to identify myself. I’m a married man. The fact that I picked up a female hitchhiker might have been misinterpreted.”

  Wallander could see that he was telling the truth.

  “This conversation is off the record,” he said. “But I will still have to ask you for your name and telephone number.”

  “My name is Sven Andersson,” said the man. “I hope there won’t be any trouble.”

  “Not if you’ve told me the
truth,” Wallander replied.

  He wrote down the number.

  “One more thing,” he said. “Can you remember whether she was wearing a necklace?”

  Andersson thought. Then he shook his head. Wallander got up and shook his hand.

  “You’ve been a great help,” he said.

  “Was it her?” Andersson asked.

  “Possibly,” said Wallander. “The question we must answer is what she was doing in Helsingborg.”

  He left Andersson and walked to his car. Just as he opened the door his phone rang. His first thought was that the killer had struck again.

  CHAPTER 18

  Wallander answered the phone and spoke to Nyberg, who told him that the developed photos were on his desk. He felt great relief that it wasn’t news of a third killing. As he drove away from Smedstorp, he realised he should learn to control his anxiety. There was no knowing whether the man had more victims on his list, but Wallander couldn’t shake a sense of foreboding. They must continue the investigation as though nothing else was going to happen. Otherwise they’d waste their energy with fruitless worry. On the way back to Ystad, Wallander decided he would drive up to Hassleholm later that day to talk to Hugo Sandin.

  He went straight to his office and wrote up a report of his conversation with Andersson. He tried to get hold of Martinsson, but all Ebba could tell him was that he had left the station without saying where he was going. Wallander tried to reach him on his mobile phone, but it was turned off. He was annoyed that Martinsson was often impossible to contact. At the next meeting, he would state that everyone must be contactable at all times. Then he remembered the photos. He had put his notebook on top of the envelope without noticing it. He turned on his desk lamp and looked at them one by one. Although he didn’t really know what he had expected, he was disappointed. The photos showed nothing more than the view from Wetterstedt’s house. They were taken from upstairs. He could see Lindgren’s overturned boat and the sea, which was calm. There were no people in the pictures. The beach was deserted. Two of the pictures were blurry. He wondered why Wetterstedt had taken them — if, indeed, he had. He found a magnifying glass in a desk drawer, but still couldn’t see anything of interest. He put them back in the envelope, deciding he’d ask someone else on the team to have a look, just to confirm he hadn’t missed anything.

  He was just about to call Hassleholm when a secretary knocked on the door with a fax from Hans Vikander in Stockholm. It was a report, five single-spaced pages, of the conversation he had had with Wetterstedt’s mother. He read through it quickly. It was a precise report, but completely lacking in imagination. Every question was routine. An interview related to a criminal investigation should balance general enquiries with surprise questions. But perhaps he was being unfair to Hans Vikander. What was the chance that a woman in her 90s would say something unexpected about her son, whom she hardly ever saw and only exchanged brief phone calls with?

  As he got some coffee, he thought idly about the female vicar in Smedstorp. Back in his room, he called the number in Hassleholm. A young man answered. Wallander introduced himself. It took several minutes for Hugo Sandin to come to the phone. He had a clear, resolute voice. Sandin told Wallander that he would meet him that same day. Wallander grabbed his notebook and wrote down the directions.

  On the way to Hassleholm he stopped to eat. It was late afternoon when he turned off at the sign for the pottery shop and drove to the renovated mill. An old man was in the garden pulling up dandelions. When Wallander got out of the car the man came towards him, wiping his hands. Wallander couldn’t believe that this vigorous man was over 80, that Sandin and his own father were almost the same age.

  “I don’t get many visitors,” said Sandin. “All my friends are gone. I have one colleague from the old homicide squad who’s still alive. But now he’s in a home outside Stockholm and can’t remember anything that happened after 1960. Old age really is shitty.”

  Sandin sounded just like Ebba. His own father almost never complained about his age. In an old coach house that had been converted into a showroom for the pottery there was a table with a thermos and cups set out. Out of courtesy, Wallander spent a few minutes admiring the ceramics on display. Sandin sat down at the table and served coffee.

  “You’re the first policeman I’ve met who’s interested in ceramics,” he said.

  Wallander sat down. “Actually, I’m not,” he admitted.

  “Policemen usually like to fish,” said Sandin. “In lonely, isolated mountain lakes. Or deep in the forests of Smaland.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Wallander. “I never go fishing.”

  Sandin looked at him intently.

  “What do you do when you’re not working?”

  “I have a pretty hard time relaxing.”

  Sandin nodded in approval.

  “Being a policeman is a calling,” he said. “Just like being a doctor. We’re always on duty. Whether we’re in uniform or not.”

  Wallander said nothing, even though he disagreed. Once he might have believed that a policeman’s job was his calling. But not any more. At least he didn’t think so.

  “So,” Sandin prompted. “I read in the papers about what’s going on in Ystad. Tell me what they left out.”

  Wallander recounted the circumstances surrounding the two murders. Now and then Sandin would interrupt with a question, always pertinent.

  “So he may kill again,” he said when Wallander had finished.

  “We can’t ignore that possibility.”

  Sandin shoved his chair back from the table and stretched out his legs.

  “And you want me to tell you about Gustaf Wetterstedt,” he said. “I’ll be happy to. May I first ask you how you found out that a long time ago, I took a special interest in him?”

  “A journalist in Ystad told me. Lars Magnusson. Unfortunately, quite an alcoholic.”

  “I don’t recognise the name.”

  “Well, he’s the one who knew about you.”

  Sandin sat silently, stroking his lips with one finger. Wallander sensed that he was looking for the right place to begin.

  “The truth about Wetterstedt is straightforward,” said Sandin. “He was a crook. He may have appeared to be a competent minister of justice. But he was totally unsuitable for the role.”

  “Why?”

  “His activities were governed by attention to his career rather than the good of the country. That’s the worst testimonial you can give a government minister.”

  “And yet he was in line to be leader of the party?”

  Sandin shook his head vigorously.

  “That’s not true,” he said. “That was media speculation. Within the party it was obvious that he could never be their leader. It’s hard to see why he was even a member.”

  “But he was minister of justice for years. He couldn’t have been totally unsuitable.”

  “You’re too young to remember. But there was a change sometime in the 1950s. It was barely perceptible, but it happened. Sweden was sailing along on unbelievably fair winds. It seemed as though unlimited funds were available to obliterate poverty. At the same time a change occurred in political life. Politicians were turning into professionals. Career politicians. Before, idealism had been a dominant part of political life. Now this idealism began to be diluted. People like Wetterstedt began their ascent. Youth associations became the hatcheries for the politicians of the future.”

  “Let’s talk about the scandals,” said Wallander, afraid that Sandin would get lost in political reminiscences.

  “He used prostitutes,” said Sandin. “He wasn’t the only one, of course. But he had certain predilections that he subjected the girls to.”

  “I heard that one girl filed a complaint,” said Wallander.

  “Her name was Karin Bengtsson,” said Sandin. “She came from an unhappy background in Eksjo. She ran away to Stockholm and came to our notice for the first time in 1954. A few years later she wound up with the group from
which Wetterstedt picked his girls. In January 1957 she filed a complaint against him. He had slashed her feet with a razor blade. I met her myself at the time. She could hardly walk. Wetterstedt knew he’d gone too far. The complaint was dropped, and Bengtsson was paid off. She received money to invest in a clothing boutique in Vasteras. In 1959, money magically appeared in her bank account, enough to buy a house. In 1960, she started holidaying in Mallorca every year.”

  “Who came up with the money?”

  “Even then there were slush funds. The Swedish royal family had established a precedent by paying off women who had been intimate with the old king.”

  “Is Karin Bengtsson still alive?”

  “She died in 1984. She never married. I didn’t see her after she moved to Vasteras. But she called once in a while, right until the last year of her life. She was usually drunk.”

  “Why did she call?”

  “As soon as I heard that there was a prostitute who wanted to file a complaint against Wetterstedt, I got in touch with her. I wanted to help her. Her life had been destroyed. Her self-esteem wasn’t very high.”

  “Why did you get involved?”

  “I was pretty radical in those days. Too many policemen accepted the corruption. I didn’t. No more than I do now.”

  “What happened later, when Karin Bengtsson was out of the picture?”

  “Wetterstedt carried on as before. He slashed lots of girls. But none of them filed a complaint. Two of them did disappear.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sandin looked at Wallander in surprise.

  “I mean they were never heard from again. We searched for them, tried to trace them. But they were gone.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “They were killed, of course. Dissolved in lime, dumped in the sea. How do I know?”

  Wallander couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Can this be true?” he said doubtfully. “It sounds incredible.”

  “What is the saying? Amazing but true?”

  “You think Wetterstedt committed murder?”

  Sandin shook his head.

  “I’m not saying that. Actually I’m convinced he didn’t. I don’t know exactly what happened, probably never will. But we can still draw conclusions, even if there’s no real evidence.”