Sidetracked kw-5

by Henning Mankell

  “Me,” said Wallander. “I can go to Italy with my father.”

  It was already Wednesday, 6 July. He was supposed to meet Baiba at Kastrup Airport in three days. For the first time he faced up to the fact that their holiday would have to be cancelled, or at least postponed. He had avoided thinking about it during the last hectic weeks, but he couldn’t continue to do so. He would have to cancel flights and the hotel reservations. He dreaded Baiba’s reaction. He sat at his desk feeling his stomach begin to ache with the stress. There must be some alternative, he thought. Baiba can come here. Maybe we could still catch this damned killer soon. This man who kills people and then scalps them.

  He was terrified of her disappointment. Even though she had been married to a policeman, she probably imagined that everything was different in Sweden. But he couldn’t wait any longer to tell her that they wouldn’t be going to Skagen. He should pick up the phone and call Riga straight away. But he put off the unpleasant conversation. He wasn’t ready yet. He took his notebook and listed all the calls he’d have to make.

  Then he turned into a policeman again. He put the summary he had written the day before on the desk in front of him and read it through. The notes made sense. He picked up the phone and asked Ebba to get hold of Sjosten in Helsingborg. A few minutes later she called back.

  “He seems to spend his mornings scraping barnacles off a boat,” she said. “But he was on his way in. He’ll call you in the next ten minutes.”

  When Sjosten called back, he told Wallander that they’d located some witnesses, a couple, who claimed to have seen a motorcycle on Aschebergsgatan on the evening Liljegren was murdered.

  “Check carefully,” said Wallander. “It could be very important.”

  “I thought I’d do it myself.”

  Wallander leaned forward over his desk, as if he had to brace himself before tackling the next question.

  “I’d like to ask you to do one more thing,” he said. “Something that should take the highest priority. I want you to find some of the women who worked at the parties that were held at Liljegren’s villa.”

  “Why?”

  “I think it’s important. We have to find out who was at those parties. You’ll understand when you go through the investigative material.”

  Wallander knew very well that his question wouldn’t be answered in the material they had assembled for the other three murders. But he needed to hunt alone for a while longer.

  “So you want me to pick out a whore,” said Sjosten.

  “I do. If there were any at those parties.”

  “It was rumoured that there were.”

  “I want you to get back in touch with me as soon as possible. Then I’ll come up to Helsingborg.”

  “If I find one, should I bring her in?”

  “I just want to talk to her, that’s all. Make it clear she has nothing to worry about. Someone who’s afraid and says what she thinks I want to hear won’t help at all.”

  “I’ll try,” said Sjosten. “Interesting assignment in the middle of summer.”

  They hung up. Wallander concentrated on his notes from the night before until Hoglund called. They met in reception and walked down to the hospital so they could plan what they would say to Carlman’s daughter. Wallander didn’t even know the name of this young woman who had slapped his face.

  “Erika,” said Hoglund. “Which doesn’t suit her.”

  “Why not?” asked Wallander, surprised.

  “I get the impression of a robust sort when I hear that name,” she said. “The manager of a hotel smorgasbord or a crane operator.”

  “Is it OK that my name is Kurt?” he asked.

  She nodded cheerfully.

  “It’s nonsense that you can match a personality to a name of course,” she said. “But it amuses me. And you could hardly imagine a cat called Fido. Or a dog called Kitty.”

  “There probably are some,” said Wallander. “So what do we know about Erika Carlman?”

  They had the wind at their backs as they walked towards the hospital. Hoglund told him that Erika Carlman was 27 years old. That for a while she had been a stewardess for a small British charter airline. That she had dabbled in many different things without ever sticking to them for long. She had travelled all over the world, no doubt supported by her father. A marriage with a Peruvian football player had been quickly dissolved.

  “A normal rich girl,” said Wallander. “One who had everything on a silver platter from the start.”

  “Her mother says she was hysterical as a teenager. That’s the word she used, hysterical. It would probably be more accurate to describe it as a neurotic predisposition.”

  “Has she attempted suicide before?”

  “Not that anyone knows of, and I didn’t think the mother was lying.”

  “She really wanted to die,” Wallander said.

  “That’s my impression too.”

  Wallander knew that he had to tell Ann-Britt that Erika had slapped him. It was very possible that she might mention the incident. And there wouldn’t be any explanation for his not having done so, other than masculine vanity, perhaps. As they reached the hospital, Wallander stopped and told her. He could see that she was surprised.

  “I don’t think it was more than a manifestation of the hysteria her mother spoke of,” he said.

  “This might cause a problem,” Ann-Britt said. “She may be in bad shape. She must know that she nearly died. We don’t even know if she regrets the fact that she didn’t manage to kill herself. If you walk into the room, her fragile ego might collapse. Or it might make her aggressive, scared, unreceptive.”

  Wallander knew she was right. “You should speak to her alone. I’ll wait in the cafeteria.”

  “First we’ll have to go over what we actually want to learn from her.”

  Wallander pointed to a bench by the taxi rank. They sat down.

  “We always hope that the answers will be more interesting than the questions,” he said. “What did her suicide attempt have to do with her father’s death? How you get to that question is up to you. You’ll have to draw your own map. Her answers will prompt more questions.”

  “Let’s assume that she says she was so crushed by grief that she didn’t want to go on living.”

  “Then we’ll know that much.”

  “But what else do we actually know?”

  “That’s where you have to ask other questions, which we can’t predict. Was it a normal loving relationship between father and daughter? Or was it something else?”

  “And if she denies it was something else?”

  “Then you have to start by not believing her. Without telling her so.”

  “In other words,” said Hoglund slowly, “a denial would mean that I should be interested in the reasons she might have for not telling the truth?”

  “More or less.” Wallander answered. “But there’s a third possibility, of course. That she tried to commit suicide because she knew something about her father’s death that she couldn’t deal with in any other way except by taking the information with her to the grave.”

  “Could she have seen the killer?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “And doesn’t want him to be caught?”

  “Also conceivable.”

  “Why not?”

  “Once again, there are at least two possibilities. She wants to protect him. Or she wants to protect her father’s memory.”

  Hoglund sighed hopelessly. “I don’t know if I can handle this.”

  “Of course you can. I’ll be in the cafeteria. Or out here. Take as long as you need.”

  Wallander accompanied her to the front desk. A few weeks earlier he had been here and found out that Salomonsson had died. How could he have imagined then what havoc was in store for him? Hoglund disappeared down the hall. Wallander went towards the cafeteria, but changed his mind and went back outside to the bench. Once again he went over his thoughts from the night before. He was interrupted by his
mobile phone ringing in his jacket pocket. It was Hansson, and he sounded harried.

  “Two investigators from the National Criminal Bureau are arriving at Sturup this afternoon. Ludwigsson and Hamren. Do you know them?”

  “Only by name. They’re supposed to be good. Hamren was involved in solving that case with the laser man, wasn’t he?”

  “Could you possibly pick them up?”

  “I don’t think that I can,” said Wallander. “I have to go back to Helsingborg.”

  “Birgersson didn’t mention that. I spoke to him a little while ago.”

  “They probably have the same communication problems that we do,” Wallander said patiently. “I think it would be a nice gesture if you went to pick them up yourself.”

  “What do you mean by gesture?”

  “Of respect. When I went to Riga I was picked up in a limousine. An old Russian one, but even so. It’s important for people to feel that they’re being welcomed and taken care of.”

  “All right,” said Hansson. “I’ll do it. Where are you now?”

  “At the hospital.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “Carlman’s daughter. Did you forget about her?”

  “To tell you the truth, I did.”

  “We should be glad we don’t all forget the same things,” Wallander said. He didn’t know whether Hansson had recognised that he was being ironic. He put the phone down on the bench and watched a sparrow perched on the edge of a rubbish bin. Ann-Britt had been gone for almost half an hour. He closed his eyes and raised his face to the sun, rehearsing what he would say to Baiba. A man with his leg in a cast sat down with a thud next to him. After five minutes a taxi arrived. The man with the cast left. Wallander paced back and forth in front of the hospital entrance. Then he sat down again.

  After more than an hour Ann-Britt came out and sat down next to him. He couldn’t tell from the expression on her face how it had gone.

  “I think we missed one reason why a person would want to commit suicide,” she said. “Being tired of life.”

  “Was that her answer?”

  “I didn’t even have to ask. She was sitting in a white room, in a hospital gown, her hair uncombed, pale, out of it. Still immersed in a mixture of her own crisis and heavy medication. ‘Why go on living?’ That was her greeting. To be honest, I think she’ll try to kill herself again. Out of sheer loathing.”

  Wallander had overlooked the most common motive for committing suicide. Simply not wanting to go on living.

  “But did you talk about her father?”

  “She despised him, but I’m quite sure that she wasn’t abused by him.”

  “Did she say so?”

  “Some things don’t have to be actually said.”

  “What about the murder?”

  “She was strangely uninterested in it. She wondered why I had come. I told her the truth. We’re searching for the killer. She said there were probably plenty of people who wanted her father dead. Because of his ruthlessness in business. Because of the way he was.”

  “She didn’t say anything about him having another woman?”

  “No.”

  Wallander watched the sparrow despondently.

  “Well, at least we know that much,” he said. “We know that we don’t know anything else.”

  When they were halfway back to the station, Wallander’s phone rang. He turned away from the wind to answer it. It was Svedberg.

  “We think we found the place where Fredman was killed,” he said. “At a dock just west of town.”

  Wallander felt his spirits rise.

  “Great news,” he said.

  “A tip-off,” Svedberg continued. “The person who called mentioned blood stains. It could have been somebody cleaning fish, of course. But I don’t think so. The caller was a laboratory technician. He’s worked with blood samples for 35 years. And he said that there were tyre tracks nearby. A vehicle had been parked there. Why not a Ford van?”

  “We can drive over there and work it out very shortly,” said Wallander.

  They continued up the hill, much more quickly now. Wallander told Hoglund the news. Neither of them was thinking about Erika Carlman any more.

  Hoover got off the train in Ystad just after 11 a.m. He had decided to leave his moped at home today. When he came out of the railway station and saw that the cordon around the pit where he had dumped his father was gone, he felt a twinge of disappointment and anger. The policemen who were hunting him were much too weak. They would never have passed the easiest entrance exam to the F.B.I.’s academy. He felt Geronimo’s heart start to drum inside him. He understood the message, simple and clear. He was going to fulfil the mission he had been chosen for. He would bring his sister two final sacrifices before she returned to life. Two scalps beneath her window. And the girl’s heart. As a gift. Then he would walk into the hospital to get her and they would leave together. Life would be very different. One day they might even read her diary together, remembering the events that had led her back, out of the darkness.

  He walked into Ystad. He was wearing shoes so as not to attract attention, but his feet didn’t like it. He turned right at the square and went to the house where the policeman lived with the girl who must be his daughter. He had come to take a closer look. The action itself he was planning for the next evening. Or at the latest, one day later. Not more. His sister shouldn’t have to stay in that hospital any longer. He sat down on the steps of one of the neighbouring buildings. He practised forgetting time. Just sitting, empty of thought, until he again took hold of his mission. He still had a lot to learn before he mastered the art to perfection, but he had no doubt that one day he would succeed.

  His wait lasted for two hours. Then she came out of the front door, obviously in a hurry, and set off towards the town centre. He followed her and never let her out of his sight.

  CHAPTER 32

  When they got to the dock, ten kilometres west of Ystad, Wallander was immediately sure that it was the right place. It was just as he had imagined it. They had driven along the coast road and stopped where a man in shorts and a T-shirt advertising the golf course in Malmberget waved them down and directed them to a barely visible dirt road. They stopped just short of the dock, so they wouldn’t disturb the tyre marks.

  The laboratory technician, Erik Wiberg, told them that in the summer he lived in a cabin on the north side of the coast road. He often came down to this dock to read his morning paper, as he had on 29 June. He’d noticed the tyre tracks and the dark spots on the brown wood, but thought nothing of it. He left that same day for Germany with his family, and it wasn’t until he saw in the paper on his return that the police were looking for a murder site, probably near the sea, that he remembered those dark spots. Since he worked in a laboratory, he knew that what was on the dock at least looked like blood. Nyberg, who had arrived just after Wallander and the others, was on his knees by the tyre tracks. He had toothache and was more irritable than ever. Wallander was the only one he could bear to talk to.

  “It could be Fredman’s van,” he said, “but we’ll have to do a proper examination.”

  They walked out on the dock together. Wallander knew they had been lucky. The dry summer helped. If it had rained there wouldn’t have been tracks. He looked for confirmation from Martinsson, who had the best memory for the weather.

  “Has it rained since 28 June?” he asked.

  “It drizzled on the morning of Midsummer Eve,” he said. “Ever since then it’s been fine.”

  “Arrange to cordon off the whole place,” said Wallander, nodding to Hoglund. “And be careful where you put your feet.”

  He stood near the land end of the dock and looked at the patches of blood. They were concentrated in the middle of the dock, which was four metres long. He turned around and looked up towards the road. He could hear the noise, but he couldn’t see the cars, just the roof of a tall lorry flashing by. He had an idea. Hoglund was on the phone to Ystad.

  “And t
ell them to bring me a map,” he said. “One that includes Ystad, Malmo, and Helsingborg.” Then he walked to the end of the dock and looked into the water. The bottom was rocky. Wiberg was standing on the beach.

  “Where’s the nearest house?” asked Wallander.

  “A couple of hundred metres from here,” replied Wiberg. “Across the road.”

  Nyberg had come out onto the dock.

  “Should we call in divers?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Wallander. “Start with a radius of 25 metres around the dock.”

  Then he pointed at the rings set into the wood.

  “Prints,” he said. “If Fredman was killed here he must have been tied down. Our killer goes barefoot and doesn’t wear gloves.”

  “What are the divers looking for?”

  Wallander thought.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s see if they come up with anything. But I think you’re going to find traces of kelp on the slope, from the place where the tyre tracks stop all the way down to the dock.”

  “The van didn’t turn around,” said Nyberg. “He backed it all the way up to the road. He couldn’t have seen whether any cars were coming. So there are only two possibilities. Unless he’s totally crazy.”

  Wallander raised his eyebrows.

  “He is crazy,” he said.

  “Not in that way,” said Nyberg.

  Wallander understood what he meant. He wouldn’t have been able to back up onto the road unless he had an accomplice who signalled when the road was clear. Or else it happened at night. When he’d see headlights and know when it was safe to back out onto the road.

  “He doesn’t have an accomplice,” said Wallander. “And we know that it must have happened at night. The only question is why did he drive Fredman’s body to the pit outside the railway station in Ystad?”

  “He’s crazy,” said Nyberg. “You said so yourself.”

  When a car arrived with the map, Wallander asked Martinsson for a pen and then sat on a rock next to the dock. He drew circles around Ystad, Bjaresjo and Helsingborg. Then he marked the dock. He wrote numbers next to his marks. He waved over Hoglund, Martinsson and Svedberg, who had arrived last, wearing a dirty sun hat instead of his cap for a change. He pointed at the map on his knee.