Sidetracked kw-5

by Henning Mankell

  Wallander got home in the afternoon and found a note from Linda saying that she would be out that evening. He was tired, and slept for a few hours. When he awoke, he called Baiba twice without success. He talked to Gertrud, who told him everything was fine with his father. He was talking a lot about the trip to Italy. Wallander hoovered the flat and mended a broken window latch. The whole time the thought of the unknown killer occupied his thoughts. At 7 p.m. he made himself a supper of cod fillet and boiled potatoes. Then he sat on the balcony with a cup of coffee and absentmindedly leafed through an old issue of Ystad Recorder. When Linda got home they drank tea in the kitchen. The next day Wallander would be allowed to see a rehearsal of the revue she was working on with Kajsa, but Linda was very secretive and didn’t want to tell him what it was about. At 11.30 p.m. they both went to bed.

  Wallander fell asleep almost at once. Linda lay awake in her room listening to the night birds. Then she fell asleep too, leaving the door to her room ajar.

  Neither of them stirred when the front door was opened very slowly at 2 a.m. Hoover was barefoot. He stood motionless in the hall, listening. He could hear a man snoring in a room to the left of the living-room. He stepped into the flat. The door to another room stood ajar. A girl who might have been his sister’s age was in there sleeping. He couldn’t resist the temptation to go in and stand right next to her. His power over the sleeper was absolute. He went on towards the room where the snoring was coming from. The policeman named Wallander lay on his back and had kicked off all but a small part of the sheet. He was sleeping heavily. His chest heaved with his deep breathing.

  Hoover stood utterly still and watched him. He thought about his sister, who would soon be freed from all this evil. Who would soon return to life. He looked at the sleeping man and thought about the girl in the next room, who must be his daughter. He made his decision. In a few days he would return.

  He left the flat as soundlessly as he had come, locking the door with the keys he had taken from the policeman’s jacket. A few moments later the silence was broken by a moped starting up. Then all was quiet again, except for the night birds singing.

  CHAPTER 27

  When Wallander awoke on Sunday morning he felt that he had slept enough for the first time in a long while. It was past 8 a.m. Through a gap in the curtains he could see a patch of blue. He stayed in bed and listened for Linda. Then he got up, put on his newly washed dressing gown, and peeked into her room. She was still asleep. He felt transported back to her childhood. He smiled at the memory and went to the kitchen to make coffee. The thermometer outside the kitchen window showed 19 °C. When the coffee was ready he laid a breakfast tray for Linda. He remembered what she liked. One three-minute egg, toast, a few slices of cheese, and a sliced-up tomato. Only water to drink.

  He drank his coffee and waited a while longer. She was startled out of her sleep when he called her name. When she saw the tray she burst out laughing. He sat at the foot of the bed while she ate. He hadn’t thought of the investigation except briefly when he’d woken.

  Linda set the tray aside, leaned back in bed, and stretched.

  “What were you doing up last night?” she asked. “Did you have trouble sleeping?”

  “I slept like a rock,” said Wallander. “I didn’t even get up to go to the bathroom.”

  “Then I must have been dreaming,” she said, yawning. “I thought you opened my door and came into my room.”

  “You must have been,” he said. “For once I slept the whole night through.”

  They agreed that they would meet at Osterport Square at 7 p.m. Linda asked him if he knew that Sweden would be playing Saudi Arabia in the quarter-finals at that time. Wallander said he didn’t give a damn, although he had bet that Sweden would win it 3–1 and advanced Martinsson another hundred kronor. The girls had managed to borrow an empty shop for their rehearsals.

  After she left, Wallander took out his ironing board and started ironing his clean shirts. After doing a passable job on two of them, he got bored and called Baiba. She was glad to hear from him, he could tell. He told her that Linda was visiting and that he felt rested for the first time in weeks. Baiba was busy finishing her work at the university before the summer break. She talked about the trip to Skagen with childlike anticipation. After they hung up, Wallander went into the living-room and put on Aida, the volume turned up high.

  He felt happy and full of energy. He sat out on the balcony and read through the newspapers from the past few days, skipping reports on the murders. He had granted himself half a day off, total escape until midday. Then he was going to get cracking again. But Akeson called him at 11.15 a.m. He had been in touch with the chief prosecutor in Malmo and they had discussed Wallander’s request. Akeson thought it would be possible for Wallander to get answers to some of his questions about Louise Fredman within the next few days. But he had one reservation.

  “Wouldn’t it be simpler to get the girl’s mother to give you the answers you need?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure I’d get the truth from her,” Wallander answered.

  “Which is what?”

  “The mother is protecting her daughter,” said Wallander. “It’s only natural. I would do the same. No matter what she told me, it would be coloured by the fact that she’s protecting her. Medical records and doctors’ reports speak another language.”

  “You know best,” said Akeson, promising that he’d be in touch again as soon as he had something concrete to tell him.

  The talk with Akeson set Wallander thinking about the case again. He decided to take a notebook and sit on the balcony to go over the plan of the investigation for the coming week. He was getting hungry, though, and thought he’d allow himself to eat out. Just before noon he left the flat, dressed all in white like a tennis player, wearing sandals. He drove east out of town along Osterleden, thinking that he could drop in on his father later on. If he hadn’t had the investigation hanging over his head, he could have taken Gertrud and his father to lunch somewhere. But right now he needed time to himself. Over the past few weeks he had been constantly surrounded by people, involved in team meetings, and in discussions with others. Now he wanted to be alone.

  Hardly aware of where he was going, he drove all the way to Simrishamn. He parked by the marina and took a walk. He found a corner table to himself at the Harbour Inn, and sat watching the holiday makers all around him. One of these people could be the man I’m looking for, he thought. If Ekholm’s theories are right — that the killer lives a completely normal life, with no outward signs that he subjects his victims to the worst violence imaginable — then he could be sitting right here eating lunch. And at that instant the summer day slipped out of his hands. He went over everything one more time. He didn’t know why, but he began with the girl who died in the rape field. She had nothing to do with the other events; it had been a suicide, prompted by some as yet unknown cause. Still, that’s where Wallander began each time he started one of his reviews of the case.

  But on this particular Sunday, in the Harbour Inn in Simrishamn, something started churning in his subconscious. It came to him that someone had said something in connection with the girl’s death. He sat there with his fork in his hand and tried to coax the thought to the surface. Who had said it? What had been said? Why was it important? After a while he gave up. Sooner or later he’d remember what it was. His subconscious always demanded patience. As if to prove that he actually possessed that patience, he ordered dessert. With satisfaction he noted that the shorts he’d put on for the first time that summer weren’t quite as tight as they had been the year before. He ate his apple pie and ordered coffee.

  He tried to follow his thoughts the way a discerning actor reads through his part for the first time. Where were the gaps? Where were the faults? Where did he combine fact and circumstance too sloppily and draw a wrong conclusion? He went through Wetterstedt’s house again, through the garden, out onto the beach; he imagined Wetterstedt in front of him, and Wallander
became the killer stalking Wetterstedt like a silent shadow. He climbed onto the garage roof and read a torn comic book while he waited for Wetterstedt to settle at his desk and maybe leaf through his collection of pornographic photographs.

  Then he did the same thing with Carlman; he put a motorcycle behind the road workers’ hut and followed the tractor path up to the hill where he had a view over Carlman’s farm. Now and then he made a note on his pad. The garage roof. What did he hope to see? Carlman’s hill. Binoculars? He went over everything that had happened, deaf to the noise around him. He paid another visit to Hugo Sandin, he talked once more with Sara Bjorklund, and he made a note that he ought to get in touch with her again. Maybe the same questions would provoke different, fuller answers. What would the difference be? He thought for a long time about Carlman’s daughter. He thought about Louise Fredman, and her polite brother. He was rested, his fatigue was gone, and his thoughts rose easily and soared on the updraughts inside him.

  He glanced at what he had scribbled on his pad, as if it were magic, automatic writing, and left the Harbour Inn. He sat on one of the benches in the park outside the Hotel Svea and looked out over the sea. There was a warm, gentle breeze blowing. The crew of a yacht with a Danish flag was struggling with an unruly spinnaker. Wallander read his notes again.

  The connection was always shifting, from parents to children. He thought about Carlman’s daughter and Louise Fredman. Was it just a coincidence that one of them had tried to commit suicide after her father died and the other had been in a psychiatric clinic for a long time?

  Wetterstedt was the exception. He had two adult children. Wallander recalled something Rydberg had once said. What happens first is not necessarily the beginning. Could that be true in this case? He tried to imagine that the killer they were looking for was a woman. But it was impossible. He thought of the physical strength needed for the scalpings, the axe blows, and the acid in Fredman’s eyes. It had to be a man. A man who kills men. While women commit suicide or suffer mental illness.

  He got up and moved to another bench, as if to register the fact that there were other conceivable explanations. Gustaf Wetterstedt was involved in shady deals. There was a vague but still unexplained connection between him and Carlman. It had to do with art, art theft, maybe forgery. It all had to do with money. It wasn’t inconceivable that Bjorn Fredman could also be involved in the same area. He hadn’t found anything useful in the dossier on his life, but he couldn’t write it off yet. Nothing could be written off yet; that presented both a problem and an opportunity.

  Wallander watched the Danish yacht. The crew had begun folding up the spinnaker. He took out his pad and looked at the last word he had written. Mystery. There was a hint of ritual to the murders. He had thought so himself, and Ekholm had pointed it out at the last meeting. The scalps were a ritual, as trophy collecting always was. The significance was the same as that of a moose’s head mounted on a hunter’s wall. It was the proof. The proof of what? For whom? For the killer alone, or for someone else as well? For a god or a demon conjured up in a sick mind? For someone else, whose demeanour was just as inconspicuous as the killer’s?

  Wallander thought about what Ekholm had said about invocations and initiation rites. A sacrifice was made so that another could obtain grace. Become rich, make a fortune, get well? There were many possibilities. There were motorcycle gangs with rules about how new members proved themselves worthy. In the United States it wasn’t unusual to have to kill someone, whether picked at random or specially chosen, to be deemed worthy of membership. This macabre rite had spread, even to Sweden. Wallander thought of the motorcycle gangs in Skane, and he remembered the road workers’ hut at the bottom of Carlman’s hill. The thought was dizzying — that the tracks might lead them to motorcycle gangs. Wallander put aside this idea for the moment, although he knew that nothing could be ruled out.

  He walked back to the other bench where he had sat before. He was back at the starting point. He realised that he couldn’t go any further without discussing it with someone. He thought of Ann-Britt Hoglund. Could he bother her on a Sunday? He got up and went over to his car to call her. She was at home. He was welcome to drop by. Guiltily, he postponed his visit to his father. He had to have someone else confront his ideas, and if he waited, there was a good chance he would get lost among multiple trains of thought. He drove back towards Ystad, keeping just above the speed limit. He hadn’t heard about any speed traps planned for this Sunday.

  It was 3 p.m. when he pulled up in front of Hoglund’s house. She was in a light summer dress. Her two children were playing in a neighbour’s garden. She offered Wallander the porch swing while she sat in a wicker chair.

  “I really didn’t want to bother you,” he said. “You could have said no.”

  “Yesterday I was tired,” she replied. “As we all were. Are, I mean. But today I feel better.”

  “Last night was definitely the night of the sleeping policemen,” said Wallander. “It reaches a point where you can’t push yourself any further. All you get is empty, grey fatigue. We’d reached that point.”

  He told her about his trip to Simrishamn, about how he went back and forth between the benches in the park down by the harbour.

  “I went over everything again,” he said. “Sometimes it’s possible to make unexpected discoveries. But you know that already.”

  “I’m hoping something will come of Ekholm’s work,” she said. “Computers that are correctly programmed can cross-reference investigative material and come up with links that you wouldn’t have dreamed were there. They don’t think. But sometimes they combine better than we can.”

  “My distrust of computers is partly because I’m getting old,” said Wallander. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t want Ekholm to succeed with his behavioural method. For me, of course, it’s of no importance who sets the snare that catches the killer just as long as it happens. And soon.”

  She gave him a sombre look.

  “Do you think that he will strike again?”

  “I do. Without being able to get a handle on why, I think there’s something unfinished about this murder scenario. If you’ll pardon the expression. There’s something missing. It scares me. And yes, it makes me think he’ll strike again.”

  “How are we going to find where Fredman was killed?” she asked.

  “Unless we’re lucky, we won’t,” said Wallander. “Or unless somebody heard something.”

  “I’ve been checking up on whether there have been any calls coming in from people who heard screams,” she said. “But I have found nothing.”

  The unheard scream hung over them. Wallander rocked slowly back and forth on the swing.

  “It’s rare that a solution comes clean out of the blue,” he said when the silence had lasted too long. “I was walking back and forth between the benches in the park, and I wondered whether I had already had the idea that would give me the solution. I might have got something right without being aware of it.”

  She was thinking about what he had said. Now and then she glanced over at the neighbour’s garden.

  “We didn’t learn anything at the police academy about a man who takes scalps and pours acid into the eyes of his victims,” she said. “Life really turns out to be as unpredictable as I imagined.”

  Wallander nodded without replying. Then he started, unsure whether he could pull it off, and went over what he had been thinking about by the sea. He knew that telling someone else would shed a different light on it. But even though Ann-Britt listened intently, almost like a student at her master’s feet, she didn’t stop him to say that he had made a mistake or drawn a wrong conclusion. All she said when he had finished was that she was bowled over by his ability to dissect and then summarise the whole investigation, which seemed so overwhelming. But she had nothing to add. Even if Wallander’s equations were correct, they lacked the crucial components. Hoglund couldn’t help him, no-one could.

  She went inside and brought out some cups an
d a thermos of coffee. Her youngest girl came and crept onto the porch swing next to Wallander. She didn’t resemble her mother, so he assumed she took after her father, who was in Saudi Arabia. Wallander realised he still hadn’t met him.

  “Your husband is a puzzle,” he said. “I’m starting to wonder if he really exists. Or if he’s just someone you dreamed up.”

  “I sometimes ask myself the same question,” she answered, laughing.

  The girl went inside.

  “What about Carlman’s daughter?” asked Wallander, watching the girl. “How is she?”

  “Svedberg called the hospital yesterday,” she said. “The crisis isn’t over. But I had the feeling that the doctors were more hopeful.”

  “She didn’t leave a note?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It matters most that she’s a well human being,” said Wallander. “But I can’t help thinking of her as a witness.”

  “To what?”

  “To something that might have a bearing on her father’s death. I don’t believe that the timing of the suicide attempt was coincidental.”

  “What makes me think that you’re not convinced of what you’re saying?”

  “I’m not,” said Wallander. “I’m groping and fumbling my way along. There’s only one incontrovertible fact in this investigation, and that is that we have no concrete evidence to go on.”

  “So we have no way of knowing if we’re on the right track?”

  “Or if we’re going in circles.”

  She hesitated before she asked the next question.

  “Do you think that maybe there aren’t enough of us?”

  “Until now I’ve dug my heels in on that issue,” said Wallander. “But I’m beginning to have my doubts. The question will come up tomorrow.”