“Don’t forget Ludwigsson and Hamren,” Wallander said. “They’re also part of the team now.”
Wallander hung up. Sjosten had gone to get coffee. Wallander dialled his own number in Ystad. Linda answered at once.
“I just got home,” she said. “Where are you?”
“In Helsingborg. I’m staying here overnight.”
“Has something happened?”
“We went over to Helsingor and had dinner.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“We’re working.”
“We are too,” Linda said. “We rehearsed the whole thing again tonight. We had an audience too.”
“Who?”
“A boy who asked if he could watch. He was standing outside on the street and said he’d heard we were working on a play. I think the people at the hot dog stand must have told him about it.”
“So it wasn’t anyone you know?”
“He was just a tourist here in town. He walked home with me afterwards.”
Wallander felt a pang of jealousy.
“Is he in the flat now?”
“He walked me home to Mariagatan. Then he went home.”
“I was only wondering.”
“He had a funny name. He said it was Hoover. But he was very nice. I think he liked what we were doing. He said he’d come back tomorrow if he had time.”
“I’m sure he will,” Wallander said.
Sjosten came in with two cups of coffee. Wallander asked him for his home number, which he gave to Linda.
“My daughter,” he said, after he hung up. “The only child I have. She’s going to Visby shortly to take a theatre course.”
“One’s children give life a glimmer of meaning,” Sjosten said, handing the coffee cup to Wallander.
They went over the conversation with Heineman. Wallander could tell that Sjosten was not convinced that Wetterstedt’s connection to Liljegren meant they were closer to finding the killer.
“Tomorrow I want you to find all the material about the traffic in girls that mentions Helsingborg. Why here, anyway? How did they get here? There must be an explanation. Besides, this vacuum surrounding Liljegren is unbelievable. I don’t get it.”
“That stuff about the girls is mostly speculation,” said Sjosten. “We’ve never done an investigation of it. We simply haven’t had any reason to. One time Birgersson brought it up with one of the prosecutors, but he said we had more important things to do. He was right too.”
“I still want you to check it out,” Wallander said. “Do a summary for me tomorrow. Fax it to me in Ystad as soon as you can.”
It was late by the time they drove to Sjosten’s flat. Wallander knew he had to call Baiba. There was no escaping it. She would be packing. He couldn’t postpone telling her the news any longer.
“I have to make a phone call to Latvia,” he said. “Just a couple of minutes.”
Sjosten showed him where the phone was. Wallander waited until Sjosten had gone into the bathroom before he dialled the number. When it rang the first time he hung up. He had no idea what to say. He didn’t dare tell her. He would wait until tomorrow night and then make up a story: that the whole thing had come up suddenly and now he wanted her to come to Ystad instead. He couldn’t think of a better solution. At least for himself.
They talked for another half hour over a glass of whisky. Sjosten made a call to check that Elisabeth Carlen was still under surveillance.
“She’s asleep,” he said. “Maybe we ought to go to bed too.”
Sjosten gave him sheets and Wallander made up a bed for himself in a room with children’s drawings on the walls. He turned off the light and was asleep immediately.
He woke drenched in sweat. He must have had a nightmare, although he remembered nothing. He had only slept for a couple of hours. He wondered why he’d woken, and turned over to go back to sleep. But he was wide awake. Where the feeling came from he had no idea. He was gripped with panic.
He had left Linda alone in Ystad. She shouldn’t be there by herself. He had to go home. Without another thought he got up, dressed, and quickly scribbled a note to Sjosten. He drove out of town. Perhaps he should call her. But what would he say? She’d just be frightened. He drove as fast as he could through the light summer night. He didn’t understand where the panic had come from. But it was definitely there, and it wouldn’t let go.
It was light when he parked on Mariagatan. He unlocked the door carefully. The terror had not abated. Not until he pushed open Linda’s door gently, saw her head on the pillow and heard her breathing, did he calm down.
He sat on the sofa. Now fear had been replaced by embarrassment. He wrote a note to her, which he left on the coffee table in case she got up, saying that his plans had changed and that he’d come home. He set the alarm clock for 5 a.m, knowing that Sjosten got up early to work on his boat. He had no idea how he was going to explain his departure in the middle of the night. He lay in bed and wondered what lay behind his panic, but he couldn’t find an answer. It took a long time before he fell asleep.
CHAPTER 34
When the doorbell rang he knew at once that it had to be Baiba. Oddly, he wasn’t nervous at all, even though it wasn’t going to be much fun explaining to her why he hadn’t told her that their holiday had to be postponed. Then he started and sat up in bed. Of course she wasn’t there. It was only the alarm clock ringing, the hands positioned like a gaping mouth at 5.03 a.m. The confusion passed, he put his hand over the alarm button and then sat motionless. Reality slowly dawned. The town was quiet. Few sounds other than birdsong penetrated his room. He couldn’t remember whether he’d dreamed about Baiba or not. The flight from the child’s room in Sjosten’s flat now seemed wildly irrational. Not like him at all.
With a yawn he got up and went into the kitchen. On the table he found a note from Linda. I communicate with my daughter through a series of notes, he thought. When she makes one of her occasional stops in Ystad. He read over what she had written and realised that the dream about Baiba, waking up and believing that she was standing outside his door, had contained a warning. Linda’s note said that Baiba had called and would he call right away. Baiba’s irritation was recognisable from the note.
He couldn’t call her, not now. He’d call her tonight, or maybe tomorrow. Or should he have Martinsson do it? He could give her the unfortunate news that the man she was intending to go to Skagen with, the man she assumed would be standing at Kastrup Airport to meet her, was up to his neck in a hunt for a maniac who smashed axes into the heads of his fellow human beings and then cut off their scalps. What he might tell Martinsson to say was true, and yet not true. It could never explain or excuse the fact that he was too weak to do the decent thing and call Baiba himself.
He picked up the phone, not to call Baiba, but Sjosten in Helsingborg, to explain why he had left during the night. What could he possibly say? The truth was one option: sudden concern for his daughter, a concern all parents feel without being able to explain. But when Sjosten answered he said something quite different, that he’d forgotten about a meeting he had arranged with his father for early that morning. It was something that couldn’t be revealed by accident, since Sjosten and his father would never cross paths. They agreed to talk later, after Wallander had been to Malmo.
Then everything seemed much easier. It wasn’t the first time in his life he had started his day with a bunch of white lies, evasions and self-deceptions. He took a shower, had some coffee, wrote a new note to Linda, and left the flat just after 6.30 a.m. Everything was quiet at the station. It was this early, lonely hour, when the weary graveyard shift was on its way home and it was still too early for the daytime staff, that Wallander took pleasure in. Life took on a special meaning in this solitude. He never understood why this was so, but he could remember the feeling from deep in his past, maybe as far back as 20 years.
Rydberg, his old friend and mentor, had been the same way. Everyone has small but extremely personal sacred moments,
Rydberg had told him on one of the few occasions when they had sat in either his or Wallander’s office and split a small bottle of whisky behind a locked door. No alcohol was permitted in the station. But sometimes they had something to celebrate. Or to grieve over, for that matter. Wallander sorely missed those brief and strangely philosophical times. They had been moments of friendship, of irreplaceable intimacy.
Wallander read quickly through a stack of messages. In a memo he saw that Dolores Maria Santana’s body had been released for burial and now rested in a grave in the same cemetery as Rydberg. This brought him back to the investigation; he rolled up his sleeves as though going out into the world to do battle, and skimmed as fast as he could through the copies of investigative material his colleagues had prepared. There were papers from Nyberg, laboratory reports on which Nyberg had scrawled question marks and comments, and charts of the tip-offs that had come in from the public. Tyren must be an extraordinarily zealous young man, Wallander thought, without being able to decide whether that meant he would be a good policeman in the field in the future, or whether he was already showing signs that he belonged somewhere in the hunting grounds of the bureaucracy. Wallander read quickly, but nothing of value escaped him. The most important thing seemed to be that they had established that Fredman had indeed been murdered on the dock below the side road to Charlottenlund.
He pushed the stacks of papers aside and leaned back pensively in his chair. What do these men have in common? Fredman doesn’t fit the picture, but he belongs just the same. A former minister of justice, an art dealer, a criminal fraudster and a petty thief. They’re all murdered by the same killer, who takes their scalps. Wetterstedt, the first, is barely hidden, just shoved out of sight. Carlman, the second, is killed in the middle of a summer party in his own arbour. Fredman is kidnapped, taken to an out-of-the-way dock and then dumped in the middle of Ystad, as if being put on display. He lies in a pit with a tarpaulin over his head, like a statue waiting to be unveiled. Finally, the killer moves to Helsingborg and murders Liljegren. Almost immediately we pin down a connection between Wetterstedt and Liljegren. Now we need the links between the others. After we know what connected them, we have to discover who might have had reason to kill them. And why the scalps? Who is the lone warrior?
Wallander sat for a long time thinking about Fredman and Liljegren. There was a similarity there. The kidnapping and the acid in the eyes on the one hand, and the head in the oven on the other. It hadn’t been enough to kill these two. Why? He took another step. The water got deeper around him. The bottom was slippery. Easy to lose his footing. There was a difference between Fredman and Liljegren, a very clear one. Fredman had hydrochloric acid poured into his eyes while he was alive. Liljegren was dead before he was stuck in the oven. Wallander tried to conjure up the killer again. Thin, in good condition, barefoot, insane. If he hunts evil men, Fredman must have been the worst. Then Liljegren. Carlman and Wetterstedt in about the same category.
Wallander got up and went to the window. There was something about the sequence that bothered him. Fredman was the third. Why not the first? Or the last — at least so far? The root of evil, the first or the last to be punished, by a killer who was insane but canny and well-organised. The dock must have been chosen because it was handy. How many docks did he look at before he chose that one? Is this a man who is always near the sea? A well-behaved man; a fisherman, or someone in the coast guard? Or why not a member of the sea rescue service, which has the best bench for meditating on in Ystad? Someone who also managed to drive Fredman away, in his own van. Why did he go to all that trouble? Because it was his only way to get to him? They met somewhere. They knew each other. Peter Hjelm had been quite clear. Fredman travelled a lot and always had plenty of money afterwards. It was rumoured that he was an enforcer. But Wallander only knew of parts of Fredman’s life. They must try to bring the unknown past to light.
Wallander sat down again. The sequence didn’t make sense. What could the explanation be? He went to get some coffee. Svedberg and Hoglund had arrived. Svedberg had a new cap on. His cheeks were a blotchy red. Hoglund was more tanned, and Wallander was paler. Hansson arrived with Mats Ekholm in tow. Even Ekholm had managed to get a tan. Hansson’s eyes were bloodshot with fatigue. He looked at Wallander with astonishment, and at the same time he seemed to be searching for some misunderstanding. Hadn’t Wallander said he’d be in Helsingborg? It wasn’t even 7.30 a.m. yet. Had something happened? Wallander shook his head almost imperceptibly. No-one had misunderstood anything. They hadn’t planned to have a meeting of the investigative team. Ludwigsson and Hamren had already driven out to Sturup, Hoglund was going to join them, while Svedberg and Hansson were busy with follow-up work on Wetterstedt and Carlman. Someone stuck in his head and said that Wallander had a phone call from Helsingborg. Wallander took the call on the phone next to the coffee machine. It was Sjosten, who told him that Elisabeth Carlen was still sleeping. No-one had visited her, and no-one except some curiosity-seekers had been seen near Liljegren’s villa.
“Did Liljegren have no family?” Martinsson asked angrily, as if he’d behaved inappropriately by not marrying.
“He left behind only a few grieving, plundered companies,” Svedberg said.
“They’re working on Liljegren in Helsingborg,” Wallander said. “We’ll get the information in time.”
Wallander knew that Hansson had been meticulous about passing on the latest developments. They agreed that it was likely that Liljegren had been supplying women to Wetterstedt on a regular basis.
“He’s living up to the old rumour about him,” said Svedberg.
“We have to find a similar link to Carlman,” Wallander went on. “It’s there, I know it is. Forget about Wetterstedt for the time being. Let’s concentrate on Carlman.”
Everyone was in a hurry. The link that had been established was like a shot in the arm for the team. Wallander took Ekholm to his office. He told him what he had been thinking earlier that morning. Ekholm was an attentive listener, as always.
“The acid and the oven,” Wallander said. “I’m trying to interpret the killer’s language. He talks to himself and he talks to his victims. What is he actually saying?”
“Your idea about the sequence is interesting,” said Ekholm. “Psychopathic killers often have an element of pedantry in their bloody handiwork. Something may have happened to upset his plans.”
“Like what?”
“He’s the only one who can answer that.”
“Still, we have to try.”
Ekholm didn’t answer. Wallander got the feeling that he didn’t have a lot to say at the moment.
“Let’s number them,” Wallander said. “Wetterstedt is number one. What do we see if we rearrange them?”
“Fredman first or last,” Ekholm said. “Liljegren just before or after, depending on which variant is correct. Wetterstedt and Carlman in positions which tie them to the others.”
“Can we assume that he’s finished?” asked Wallander.
“I have no idea,” Ekholm answered.
“What does your programme say? What combinations has it managed to come up with?”
“Not a thing, actually.” Ekholm seemed surprised by his own answer.
“How do you interpret that?” Wallander said.
“We’re dealing with a serial killer who differs from his predecessors in crucial ways.”
“And what does that tell us?”
“That he’ll provide us with totally new data. If we catch him.”
“We must,” said Wallander, knowing how feeble he sounded.
He got up and they both left the room.
“Criminal psychologists at both the F.B.I. and Scotland Yard have been in touch,” said Ekholm. “They’re following our work with great interest.”
“Have they got any suggestions? We need all the help we can get.”
“I’m supposed to let them know if anything comes in.”
They parted at the reception desk. Wallan
der took a moment to exchange a few words with Ebba. Then he drove straight to Sturup. He found Ludwigsson and Hamren in the office of the airport police. Wallander was disconcerted to meet a young policeman who had fainted the year before when they were arresting a man trying to flee the country. But he shook his hand and tried to pretend that he was sorry about what had happened.
Wallander realised he had met Ludwigsson before, during a visit to Stockholm. He was a large, powerful man with high colour from blood pressure, not the sun. Hamren was his diametrical opposite: small and wiry, with thick glasses. Wallander greeted them a little offhandedly and asked how it was going.
“There seems to be a lot of rivalry between the different taxi companies out here,” Ludwigsson began. “Just like at Arlanda. So far we haven’t managed to pin down all the ways he could have left the airport during the hours in question. And nobody noticed a motorcycle. But we’ve only just begun.”
Wallander had a cup of coffee and answered a number of questions the two men had. Then he left them and drove on to Malmo. He parked outside the building in Rosengard. It was very hot. He took the lift up to the fifth floor and rang the doorbell. This time it wasn’t the son but Bjorn Fredman’s widow who opened the door. She smelled of wine. At her feet cowering close by was a little boy. He seemed extremely shy. Or afraid, rather. When Wallander bent down to greet him he seemed terrified. A fleeting memory entered Wallander’s mind. He couldn’t catch it, but filed the thought away. It was something that had happened before, or something someone had said, that had been imprinted on his subconscious.
She asked him to come in. The boy clung to her legs. Her hair wasn’t combed and she wore no make-up. The blanket on the sofa told him she had spent the night there. They sat down, Wallander in the same chair for the third time. Stefan, the older son, came in. His eyes were as wary as the last time Wallander had visited. He came forward and shook hands, again with adult manners. He sat down next to his mother on the sofa. Everything was as before. The only difference was the presence of the younger brother, curled up on his mother’s lap. Something didn’t seem quite right about him. His eyes never left Wallander.
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