Sidetracked kw-5

by Henning Mankell

  Wallander hung up. Nyberg didn’t say a word. But Wallander knew he had been listening carefully.

  They were met by a squad car at the exit to Helsingborg. Wallander realised that it must have been somewhere nearby that Sven Andersson had stopped to give Dolores Maria Santana a lift on her last journey. They followed the car up to Tagaborg and stopped outside Liljegren’s villa. Wallander and Nyberg passed through the police cordon and were met by Sjosten at the bottom of the steps to the villa, which Wallander guessed had been built around the turn of the century. They said hello and exchanged a few words. Sjosten introduced Nyberg to the forensic technician from Helsingborg. The two of them went inside.

  Sjosten put out his cigarette and buried the butt in the gravel with his heel.

  “It’s your man who did this,” he said.

  “What do you know about the victim?”

  “Ake Liljegren was famous.”

  “Infamous, you mean.”

  Sjosten nodded. “There are probably plenty of people who have dreamt of killing him,” he said. “With a criminal justice system that worked better, with fewer loopholes in the laws on financial fraud, he would have been locked up.”

  Sjosten took Wallander into the house. The air was thick with the stench of burnt flesh. Sjosten gave Wallander a mask, which he put on reluctantly. They went into the kitchen where the body still lay under the plastic sheet. Wallander nodded to Sjosten to let him see, thinking that he might as well get it over with. He didn’t know what he had expected, but he flinched involuntarily. Liljegren’s face was gone. The skin was burnt away and large sections of the skull were clearly visible. There were just two holes where the eyes had been. The hair and ears were also burnt off. Wallander nodded to Sjosten to put back the sheet. Sjosten quickly described how Liljegren had been found leaning into the oven. Wallander got some Polaroids from the photographer. It was almost worse to see the pictures. Wallander shook his head with a grimace and handed them back. Sjosten took him upstairs, pointing out the blood, and describing the apparent sequence of events. Wallander occasionally asked a question about a detail, but Sjosten’s scenario seemed convincing.

  “Were there any witnesses?” asked Wallander. “Clues left by the murderer? How did he get into the house?”

  “Through a basement window.”

  They returned to the kitchen and went down to the basement that extended under the whole house. A little window stood ajar in a room where Wallander smelt the faint aroma of apples stored for the winter.

  “We think he got in this way,” said Sjosten. “And left that way too. Even though he could have walked straight out the front door. Liljegren lived alone.”

  “Did he leave anything behind?” Wallander wondered. “So far he has been careful to leave no clues. On the other hand, he hasn’t been excessively meticulous. We have a whole set of fingerprints. According to Nyberg, we’re missing only the left little finger.”

  “Fingerprints he knows the police don’t have on file,” said Sjosten.

  Wallander nodded. Sjosten was right.

  “We found a footprint in the kitchen next to the stove,” said Sjosten.

  “So he was barefoot again,” said Wallander.

  “Barefoot?”

  Wallander told him about the footprint they had found in the blood in Fredman’s van. He would have to provide Sjosten and his colleagues with all the material they had on the first three murders.

  Wallander inspected the basement window. He thought he could see faint scrape marks near one of the latches, which had been broken off. When he bent down he found it, although it was hard to see against the dark floor. He didn’t touch it.

  “It looks as though it might have been loosened in advance,” he said.

  “You think he prepared for his visit?”

  “It’s conceivable. It fits with his pattern. He puts his victims under surveillance. He stakes them out. Why, and for how long, we have no idea. Our psychologist from Stockholm, Mats Ekholm, claims this is characteristic of serial killers.”

  They went into the next room. The windows were the same. The latches were intact.

  “We should probably search for footprints in the grass outside that window,” Wallander said. He regretted his words immediately. He had no right to tell an experienced investigator like Sjosten what to do. They returned to the kitchen. Liljegren’s body was being removed.

  “What I’ve been looking for the whole time is the connection,” said Wallander. “First I looked for one between Gustaf Wetterstedt and Arne Carlman. I finally found it. Then I looked for one between Bjorn Fredman and the two others. We haven’t been able to find a link yet, but I’m convinced there is one. Perhaps this is one of the first things we should do here. Is it possible to find some connection between Ake Liljegren and the other three? Preferably to all of them, but at least to any one of them.”

  “In a way we already have a very clear connection,” said Sjosten quietly.

  Wallander gave him a questioning glance.

  “What I mean is, the killer is an identifiable link,” Sjosten went on. “Even if we don’t know who he is.”

  Sjosten nodded towards the door to the garden. Wallander realised that Sjosten wanted to speak privately. Outside in the garden, they both squinted in the bright light. It was going to be another hot day. Sjosten lit a cigarette and led Wallander over to a table and chairs a little way from the house. They moved the chairs into the shade.

  “There are plenty of rumours about Ake Liljegren,” Sjosten began. “His shell companies are only a part of his operations. Here in Helsingborg we’ve heard about a lot of other things. Low-flying Cessnas making drops of cocaine, heroin and marijuana. Pretty hard to prove, and I have difficulty associating this type of activity with Liljegren. It may just be my limited imagination, of course. I go on thinking that it’s possible to sort crimes into categories. Criminals are supposed to stay within those boundaries and not encroach on other people’s territory, which messes up our classifications.”

  “I’ve sometimes thought along those same lines,” Wallander admitted. “But those days are gone. The world we live in is becoming more comprehensible and more chaotic at the same time.”

  Sjosten waved his cigarette at the huge villa.

  “There have been other rumours too,” he said. “These ones more concrete. About wild parties in this house. Women, prostitution.”

  “Wild?” asked Wallander. “Have you ever had to get involved?”

  “Never,” said Sjosten. “Actually I don’t know why I called the parties wild. But people used to come here a lot. And disappear just as quickly as they came.”

  Wallander didn’t answer. A dizzying image flitted through his mind. He saw Dolores Maria Santana standing at the southern motorway entrance from Helsingborg. Could there be a connection? Prostitution? But he pushed the thought away. There was no evidence for this, he was confusing two different investigations.

  “We’re going to have to work together,” Sjosten said. “You and your colleagues have several weeks on us. Now that we add Liljegren to the picture, how does it look? What’s changed? What seems clearer?”

  “The National Criminal Bureau will certainly get involved now,” Wallander answered. “That’s good, of course. But I’m afraid that we’ll have problems working together, that information won’t get to the right person.”

  “I have the same concern,” Sjosten agreed. “That’s why I want to suggest something. That you and I become an informal team, so we can step aside for discussion when we need to.”

  “That’s fine by me,” Wallander said.

  “We both remember the days of the old national homicide commission,” Sjosten said. “Something that worked very efficiently was dismantled. And things have never really been the same since.”

  “Times were different. Violence had a different face, and there were fewer murders. Criminals operated in patterns that were recognisable in a way that they aren’t today. I’m not sure that the co
mmission would have been as effective now.”

  Sjosten stood up. “But we’re in agreement?”

  “Of course,” Wallander replied. “Whenever we think it’s necessary, we’ll talk.”

  “You can stay with me,” Sjosten said, “if you have to be here overnight. It’s no pleasure to have to stay at a hotel.”

  “I’d like that,” Wallander thanked him. But he didn’t mind staying at a hotel when he was away. He needed to have at least a few hours to himself every day.

  They walked back to the house. To the left was a large garage with two doors. While Sjosten went inside, Wallander decided to take a look in the garage. With difficulty he lifted one of the doors. Inside was a black Mercedes. The windows were tinted. He stood there thinking.

  Then he went into the house, called Ystad, and asked to speak with Hoglund. He told her briefly what had happened.

  “I want you to contact Sara Bjorklund,” he said. “Do you remember her?”

  “Wetterstedt’s housekeeper?”

  “Right. I want you to bring her here to Helsingborg. As soon as you can.”

  “Why?”

  “I want her to take a look at a car. And I’ll be standing next to her hoping that she recognises it.”

  Hoglund asked no more questions.

  CHAPTER 30

  Sara Bjorklund stood for a long time looking at the black car. Wallander stayed in the background. He wanted his presence to give her confidence, but didn’t want to stand so close to her that he would be a disturbing factor. He could tell that she was doing her best to be absolutely certain. Was this the car she had seen on the Friday morning that she’d come to Wetterstedt’s house, thinking it was a Thursday? Had it looked like this one, could it even be the very same car she had seen drive away from the house where the old minister of justice lived?

  Sjosten agreed with Wallander when he explained his idea. Even if the “charwoman” held in such contempt by Wetterstedt said that it could have been a car of the same make, that wouldn’t prove a thing. All they would get was an indication, a possibility. But it was important even so; they both realised that.

  Sara Bjorklund hesitated. Since there were keys in the ignition, Wallander asked Sjosten to drive it once round the block. If she closed her eyes and listened, did she recognise the sound of the engine? Cars had different sounds. She listened.

  “Maybe,” she said afterwards. “It looks like the car I saw that morning. But whether it was the same one I can’t say. I didn’t see the number plate.”

  Wallander nodded.

  “I didn’t expect you to,” he said. “I’m sorry I had to ask you to come all the way here.”

  Hoglund had brought Noren with her, who would now drive Sara Bjorklund back to Ystad. Hoglund wanted to stay. It was barely midday, yet the whole country seemed to know already what had happened. Sjosten held an impromptu press conference out on the street, while Wallander and Hoglund drove down to the ferry terminal and had lunch. He told her all that he had learned.

  “Ake Liljegren appeared in our investigative material on Alfred Harderberg,” she said when he’d finished. “Do you remember?”

  Wallander let his mind travel back to the year before. He remembered the businessman and art patron who lived behind the walls of Farnholm Castle with distaste. The man they had eventually prevented from leaving the country in a dramatic scene at Sturup Airport. Liljegren’s name had indeed come up in the investigation, but he had been on the periphery. They had never considered questioning him.

  Wallander sat with his third cup of coffee and gazed out over the Sound, filled with yachts and ferries.

  “We didn’t want this, but we’ve got it,” he said. “Another dead, scalped man. According to Ekholm our chances of identifying the killer will now increase dramatically. That’s according to the F.B.I. models. Now the similarities and differences should be much clearer.”

  “I think somehow the level of violence has increased,” she said hesitantly. “If you can grade axe murders and scalpings.”

  Wallander waited with interest for her to continue. Her hesitation often meant that she was on the trail of something important.

  “Wetterstedt was lying underneath a rowing boat,” she went on. “He had been hit once from behind. His scalp was sliced off, as if the killer had taken the time to do it carefully. Or maybe there was some uncertainty. The first scalp. Carlman was killed from the front. He must have seen his killer. His hair was torn off, not sliced. That seems to indicate more frenzy, or maybe rage, almost uncontrolled. Then Fredman. He apparently lay on his back. Probably tied up, or he’d have resisted. He had acid poured in his eyes. The killer forced open his eyelids. The blow to the head was tremendous. And now Liljegren, with his head stuck in an oven. Something is getting worse. Is it hatred? Or a sick person’s thrill at demonstrating his power?”

  “Outline this to Ekholm,” Wallander suggested. “Let him put it into his computer. I agree with you. Certain changes in his behaviour are evident. Something is shifting. But what does it tell us? Sometimes it seems as though we’re trying to interpret footprints that are millions of years old. What I worry about most is the chronology, which is based on the fact that we found the victims in a certain order, since they were killed in a certain order. So for us a natural chronology is created. But the question is whether there’s some other order among them that we can’t see. Are some of the murders more important than others?”

  She thought for a moment. “Was one of them closer to the killer than the others?”

  “Yes, that’s it,” said Wallander. “Was Liljegren closer to the heart of it than Carlman, for example? And which of them is furthest away? Or do they all have the same relationship to him?”

  “A relationship which may only exist in his mind?”

  Wallander pushed aside his empty cup. “At least we can be certain that these men were not chosen at random,” he said.

  “Fredman is different,” she said as they got up.

  “Yes, he is,” said Wallander. “But you can also turn it around and say that it’s the other three who are different.”

  They returned to Tagaborg, where they were given the message that Hansson was on his way to meet with the chief of police in Helsingborg.

  “Tomorrow the National Criminal Bureau will be here,” said Sjosten.

  “Has anyone talked to Ekholm?” asked Wallander. “He should come up here as soon as possible.”

  Hoglund went to see to this, and Wallander made an examination of the house again with Sjosten. Nyberg was on his knees in the kitchen with the other technicians. When they were heading up the stairs to the top floor, Hoglund caught up with them, saying that Ekholm was on his way with Hansson. They continued their inspection. None of them spoke. They were each following their own train of thought.

  Wallander was trying to feel the killer’s presence, as he had done at Wetterstedt’s house, and in Carlman’s garden. Not twelve hours ago the man had climbed these same stairs. Wallander moved more slowly than the others. He stopped often, sometimes sitting down to stare at a wall or a rug or a door, as if he were in a museum, deeply engrossed in the objects on display. Occasionally he would retrace his steps.

  Watching him, Hoglund had the sense that Wallander was acting as though he were walking on ice. And in a sense, he was. Each step involved a risk, a new way of seeing things, a re-examination of a thought he’d just had. He moved as much in his mind as through the rooms. Wallander had never sensed the presence of the man he was hunting in Wetterstedt’s house. It had convinced him that the killer had never been inside. He had not been closer than the garage roof where he had waited, reading The Phantom and then ripping it to pieces. But here, in Liljegren’s house, it was different.

  Wallander went back to the stairs and looked down the hall towards the bathroom. From here he could see the man he was about to kill. If the bathroom door was open, that is. And why would it have been closed if Liljegren was alone in the house? He walked towards the
bathroom door and stood against the wall. Then he went into the bathroom and assumed the role of Liljegren. He walked out of the door, imagining the axe blow strike him with full force from behind, at an angle. He saw himself fall to the floor. Then he switched to the other role, the man holding an axe in his right hand. Not in his left; they had determined in examining Wetterstedt’s body that the man was right-handed. Wallander walked slowly down the stairs, dragging the invisible corpse behind him. Into the kitchen, to the stove. He continued down to the basement and stopped at the window, which was too narrow for him to squeeze through. Only a slight man could use that window as a way of getting into Liljegren’s house. The killer must be thin.

  He went back to the kitchen and out into the garden. Near the basement window at the back of the house the technicians were looking for footprints. Wallander could have told them in advance that they wouldn’t find anything. The man had been barefoot, as before. He looked towards the hedge, the shortest distance between the basement window and the street, pondering why the killer had been barefoot. He’d asked Ekholm about it several times, but still didn’t have a satisfactory answer. Going barefoot meant taking a risk of injury. Of slipping, puncturing his foot, getting cut. And yet he still did it. Why did he go barefoot? Why choose to remove his shoes? This was another of the inexplicable details he had to keep in mind. He took scalps. He used an axe. He was barefoot. Wallander stopped in his tracks. It came to him in a flash. His subconscious had drawn a conclusion and relayed the message.

  An American Indian, he said to himself. A warrior. He knew he was right. The man they were looking for was a lone warrior moving along an invisible path. He was an impersonator. Used an axe to kill, cut off scalps, went barefoot. But why would an American Indian go around in the Swedish summertime killing people? Who was really committing these murders? An Indian or someone playing the role?

  Wallander held on tight to the thought so he wouldn’t lose it before he had followed it through. He travelled over great distances, he thought. He must have a horse. A motorcycle. Which had leant against the road workers’ hut. You drive in a car, but you ride a motorcycle.