“She’s left on holiday.”
“Where to?”
“She’s bought an Interrail card. She could be anywhere.”
“Damn!”
“We can trace her through Interpol,” Ludwigsson said. “That’ll probably work.”
“Yes,” said Wallander. “I think we should do that. And this time we won’t wait. I want someone to contact Akeson about it tonight.”
“This is Malmo’s jurisdiction,” Svedberg pointed out.
“I don’t give a shit whose jurisdiction we’re in,” Wallander said. “Do it. It’ll have to be Akeson’s headache.”
Hoglund said she would get hold of him. Wallander turned to Ludwigsson and Hamren.
“I heard rumours about a moped,” he said. “A witness who saw something at the airport.”
“That’s right,” Ludwigsson said. “The timing fits. A moped drove off towards the E65 on the night in question.”
“Why is that of interest?”
“Because the night watchman is sure that the moped was driven off just about the same time Bjorn Fredman’s van arrived.”
Wallander recognised the significance of this.
“We’re talking about a time of night when the airport is closed,” Ludwigsson went on. “Nothing’s happening. No taxis, no traffic. Everything is quiet. A van comes up and stops in the car park. Then a moped drives off.”
The room grew still. If there were magic moments in a complex criminal investigation, this was definitely one of them.
“A man on a moped,” Svedberg said. “Can this be right?”
“Is there a description?” Hoglund asked.
“According to the watchman, the man was wearing a helmet that covered his whole head. He’s worked at Sturup for many years. That was the first time a moped left there at night.”
“How can he be sure that he headed towards Malmo?”
“He wasn’t. And I didn’t say that either.”
Wallander held his breath. The voices of the others were far away, like the distant, unintelligible noise of the universe. He knew that now they were very, very close.
CHAPTER 37
Somewhere in the distance Hoover could hear thunder. He counted the seconds between the lightning and the thunder. The storm was passing far away. It wouldn’t come in over Malmo. He watched his sister sleeping on the mattress. He had wanted to offer her something better, but everything had happened so fast. The policeman whom he now hated, the cavalry colonel with the blue trousers, whom he’d christened “Perkins” and “the Man with the Great Curiosity” when he drummed his message to Geronimo, had demanded pictures of Louise. He had also threatened to visit her.
Hoover had realised that he had to change his plans right away. He would pick up Louise even before the row of scalps and the last gift, the girl’s heart, were buried. That’s why he had only managed to take a mattress and a blanket down to the basement. He had planned to do something quite different. There was a big empty house in Limhamn. The woman who lived there alone went to Canada every summer to see her family. She had been his teacher and he sometimes ran errands for her, so he knew she was away. He had copied a key to her front door long ago. They could have lived in her building while they planned their future. But now Perkins had got in the way. Until he was dead, and that would be soon, they would have to settle for the mattress in the basement.
She was asleep. He had taken medicine from a cabinet when he went to get her. He had gone there without painting his face, but he had an axe and some knives with him, in case anyone tried to stop him. It had been strangely quiet at the hospital, with almost no-one around. Everything went more smoothly than he could have imagined. Louise hadn’t recognised him at first, but when she’d heard his voice she put up no resistance. He had brought some clothes for her. They walked across the hospital grounds and then took a taxi, without any problem. She didn’t say a word, never questioning the bare mattress, and she fell asleep almost at once. He had lain down and slept a while beside her. They were closer to the future than ever before. The power from the scalps had already started working. She was on her way back to life again. Soon everything would be changed.
He looked at her. It was evening, past 10 p.m. He had made his decision. At dawn he would return to Ystad for the last time.
In Helsingborg a great crowd of reporters besieged Birgersson’s outer perimeter. The chief of police was there. At Wallander’s stubborn insistence, Interpol was trying to trace Sara Pettersson. They had contacted the girl’s parents and tried to put together a possible itinerary. It was a hectic night at the station.
Back in Ystad, Hansson and Martinsson were handling the incoming calls. They sent over materials when Wallander needed them. Akeson was at home but was willing to be reached at any time.
Although it was late, Wallander sent Hoglund to Malmo to talk to the Fredman family. He wanted to make sure they weren’t the ones who had taken Louise from the hospital. He would rather have gone there himself, but he couldn’t be in two places at once. She had left at 10.30 p.m., after Wallander had phoned Fredman’s widow. He estimated she’d be back by 1 a.m.
“Who’s taking care of the children while you’re away?” he’d asked.
“Do you remember my neighbour who has children of her own?” she asked. “Without her I couldn’t do this job.”
Wallander called home. Linda was there. He explained as best he could what had happened. He didn’t know when he’d be home, maybe sometime that night, maybe not until dawn.
“Will you get here before I leave?” she asked.
“Leave?”
“Did you forget I’m going to Gotland? Kajsa and I. And you’re going to Skagen.”
“Of course I didn’t forget,” he said.”
“Did you talk to Baiba?”
“Yes,” Wallander said, hoping she couldn’t hear that he was lying.
He gave her the number in Helsingborg. Then he wondered whether he ought to call his father, but it was late. They were probably already in bed. He went to the command centre where Birgersson was directing the manhunt. Five hours had passed, and no-one had seen the stolen car. Birgersson agreed with Wallander that it could only mean that Logard, if it was him, had taken the car off the road.
“He had two boats at his disposal,” Wallander said. “And a house outside Bjuv that we could barely locate. I’m sure he has other hideouts.”
“We’ve got a man going over the boats,” said Birgersson.
“And Hordestigen. I told them to look for other possibilities.”
“Who is this damned Logard, anyway?” Wallander said.
“They’ve started checking the prints,” Birgersson said. “If he’s ever had a run-in with the police, we’ll know very soon.”
Wallander went over to where the four girls were being interviewed. It was a laborious process, since everything had to go through interpreters. Besides, the girls were terrified. Wallander had told the officers to explain that they weren’t accused of a crime. But he wondered how frightened they were. He thought about Dolores Maria Santana, about the worst fear he had ever seen. But now, at midnight, a picture had finally begun to take shape.
The girls were all from the Dominican Republic. They had each separately left their villages and gone to the cities to look for work as domestic helps or factory workers. They had been contacted by men, all very friendly, and offered work in Europe. They had been shown pictures of beautiful houses by the Mediterranean, and were promised wages ten times what they could hope to earn at home. They’d all said yes.
They were supplied with passports but were never allowed to keep them. First they were flown to Amsterdam — at least that was what they thought the city was called. Then they were driven to Denmark. A week ago they had been taken across to Sweden at night by boat. There were different men involved at each stage and their friendliness decreased as the girls travelled further from home. The fear had set in in earnest when they were locked up at the farm. They had been g
iven food, and a man had explained in poor Spanish that they would soon be travelling the last stretch of the way. But by now they had begun to understand that nothing would happen as promised. The fear had turned to terror.
Wallander asked the officers to question the girls carefully about the men they had met during the days at the farm. Was there more than one? Could they give a description of the boat that took them to Sweden? What did the captain look like? Was there a crew? He told them to take one of the girls down to the yacht club to see whether she recognised Logard’s launch. A lot of questions remained. Wallander needed an empty room where he could lock himself away and think.
He was impatient for Hoglund to return. And he was waiting for information on Logard. He tried to connect a moped at Sturup Airport, a man who took scalps and killed with an axe, and another who shot at people with a semi-automatic weapon. The myriad of details swam back and forth in his head. The headache he had felt coming earlier had arrived, and he tried unsuccessfully to fight it off with painkillers. It was very humid. There were thunderstorms over Denmark. In less than 48 hours he was supposed to be at Kastrup Airport.
Wallander was standing by a window, looking out at the light summer night and thinking that the world had dissolved into chaos, when Birgersson came stamping down the hall, triumphantly wielding a piece of paper.
“Do you know who Erik Sturesson is?” he asked.
“No, who?”
“Then do you know who Sture Eriksson is?”
“No.”
“They’re one and the same. And later he changed his name again. This time he didn’t settle for switching his first and last names. He took on a name with a more aristocratic ring to it. Hans Logard.”
“Great,” he said. “What have we got?”
“The prints we found at Hordestigen and in the boats are in our records, under Erik Sturesson and Sture Eriksson. But not Hans Logard. Erik Sturesson, if we start with him, since that was Hans Logard’s real name, is 47. Born in Skovde, father a career soldier, mother a housewife. The father was also an alcoholic. Both died in the late 1960s. Erik wound up in bad company, was first arrested at 14, downhill from there. He’s done time in Osteraker, Kumla and Hall prisons. And a short stretch at Norrkoping. He changed his name for the first time when he got out of Osteraker.”
“What type of crimes?”
“From simple jobs to specialisation, you might say. Burglaries and con games at first. Occasionally assault. Then more serious crimes. Narcotics. The hard stuff. He seems to have worked for Turkish and Pakistani gangs. This is an overview, mind. We’ll have more information through in the night.”
“We need a picture of him,” Wallander said. “And the fingerprints have to be cross-checked against the ones we found at Wetterstedt’s and Carlman’s. And the ones on Fredman too. Don’t forget the ones we got from the left eyelid.”
“Nyberg is onto it,” Birgersson said. “But he seems so pissed off all the time.”
“That’s just the way he is,” Wallander replied. “But he’s good at his job.”
They sat down at a table overflowing with used plastic coffee cups. Telephones rang all around them. They erected an invisible wall around themselves, admitting only Svedberg.
“The interesting thing is that Logard suddenly stopped paying visits to our prisons,” Birgersson said. “The last time he was inside was 1989. Since then he’s been clean. As if he found salvation.”
“That corresponds pretty well with when Liljegren got himself a house here in Helsingborg.”
Birgersson nodded. “We’re not too clear on that yet. But it seems that Logard bought Hordestigen in 1991. That’s a gap of a couple of years. But there’s nothing to prevent him from having lived somewhere else in the meantime.”
“We’ll need an answer to that one right away,” Wallander said, reaching for the phone. “What’s Elisabeth Carlen’s number? It’s on Sjosten’s desk. Have we still got her under surveillance, by the way?”
Birgersson nodded again. Wallander made a quick decision.
“Pull them off,” he said.
Someone put a piece of paper in front of him. He dialled the number. She answered almost immediately.
“This is Inspector Wallander,” he said.
“I won’t come to the station at this time of night,” she said.
“I don’t want you to. I just have one question: was Hans Logard hanging out with Liljegren as early as 1989? Or 1990?”
He could hear her lighting a cigarette and blowing smoke straight into the receiver.
“Yes,” she said, “I think he was there then. In 1990 anyway.”
“Good,” said Wallander.
“Why are you tailing me?” she asked.
“I was wondering myself,” Wallander said. “We don’t want anything to happen to you, of course. But we’re lifting the surveillance now. Just don’t leave town without telling us. I might get mad.”
“Fair enough,” she said, “I bet you can get mad.”
She hung up.
“Logard was there,” said Wallander. “It seems he appeared at Liljegren’s in 1989 or 1990. Then he acquired Hordestigen. Liljegren seems to have taken care of his salvation.”
Wallander tried to fit the different pieces together.
“And about then the rumours of the trade in girls surfaced. Isn’t that right?”
Birgersson nodded.
“Does Logard have a violent history?” Wallander asked.
“A few charges of aggravated assault,” Birgersson said. “But he’s never shot anyone, that we know of.”
“No axes?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“In any case, we’ve got to find him,” said Wallander, getting up.
“We’ll find him,” Birgersson said. “Sooner or later he’ll crawl out of his hole.”
“Why did he shoot at us?” Wallander asked.
“You’ll have to ask him that yourself,” Birgersson said, as he left the room.
Svedberg had taken off his cap. “Is this really the man we’re looking for?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Wallander. “Frankly I doubt it, although I could be wrong. Let’s hope I am.”
Svedberg left the room. Wallander was alone again. More than ever he missed Rydberg. There’s always another question you can ask. Rydberg’s words, repeated often. So what was the question he hadn’t asked yet? He searched and found nothing. All the questions had been asked. Only the answers were missing.
That was why it was a relief when Hoglund stepped into the room. It was just before 1 a.m. They sat down together.
“Louise wasn’t there,” she said. “Her mother was drunk. But her concern about her daughter seemed genuine. She couldn’t understand how it had happened. I think she was telling the truth. I felt really sorry for her.”
“You mean she actually had no idea?”
“Not a clue. And she’d been worrying about it.”
“Had it happened before?”
“Never.”
“And her son?”
“The older or the younger one?”
“The older one. Stefan.”
“He wasn’t there.”
“Was he out looking for his sister?”
“If I understood the mother correctly, he stays away occasionally. But there was one thing I did notice. I asked to have a look around. Just in case Louise was there. I went into Stefan’s room. The mattress was gone from his bed. There was just a bedspread. No pillow or blanket either.”
“Did you ask her where he was?”
“I don’t think she would have been able to tell me.”
“Did she say how long he’d been gone?”
She thought about it and looked at her notes.
“Since midday.”
“Not long before Louise disappeared.”
She looked at him in surprise.
“You think he was the one who went and got her? Then where are they now?”
“Two questi
ons, two answers. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Wallander felt a deep unease creep over him. He couldn’t tell what it meant.
“Did you happen to ask her whether Stefan has a moped?”
He saw that she immediately understood where he was heading.
“No.”
Wallander gestured towards the phone.
“Call her,” he said. “Ask her. She drinks at night. You won’t wake her up.”
It was a long time before she got an answer. The conversation was very brief. She hung up again.
“He doesn’t have a moped,” she said. “Besides, Stefan isn’t 15 yet, is he?”
“It was just a thought,” Wallander said. “We have to know. Anyway, I doubt that young people today pay much attention to what is permitted or not.”
“The little boy woke up when I was about to leave,” she said. “He was sleeping on the sofa next to his mother. That’s what upset me the most.”
“That he woke up?”
“I’ve never seen such frightened eyes in a child before.”
Wallander slammed his fist on the table. She jumped.
“I’ve got it,” he cried. “What it was I’ve been forgetting all this time. Damn it!”
“What?”
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. .”
Wallander rubbed his temples to squeeze out the image that had been bothering him for so long. Finally he captured it.
“Do you remember the doctor who did the autopsy of Dolores Maria Santana in Malmo?”
She tried to remember.
“Wasn’t it a woman?”
“Yes, it was. A woman. What was her name? Malm something?”
“Svedberg’s got a good memory,” she said. “I’ll get him.”
“That’s not necessary,” said Wallander. “I remember now. Her name was Malmstrom. We’ve got to get hold of her. And we need to get hold of her right now. I’d like you to take care of it. As fast as you can!”
“What is it?”
“I’ll explain later.”
She got up and left the room. Could the Fredman boy really be mixed up in this? Wallander picked up the phone and called Akeson. He answered at once.
“I need you to do me a favour,” he said. “Now. In the middle of the night. Call the hospital where Louise was a patient. Tell them to copy the page of the visitors’ book with the signature of the person who picked her up. And tell them to fax it here to Helsingborg.”
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