The Man Who Smiled

by Henning Mankell

  Wallander nodded without replying. Höglund emerged from the kitchen, notebook in hand. Somewhat to his surprise, Wallander noticed that she was an attractive woman. It had not occurred to him before. She sat on a chair opposite him.

  “Nothing,” she said. “She hadn’t heard a thing during the night, but she is certain the lawn hadn’t been messed up by nightfall. She’s an early riser and as soon as it was light she saw that somebody had been in her garden. She says she has no idea why anybody would want to kill her. Or at the very least blow her legs off.”

  “Is she telling the truth?” Martinsson said.

  “It’s not easy to tell if a person in shock is telling the truth,” Höglund said, “but I am positive she thinks the mine was put in her lawn during last night. And that she doesn’t have a clue why.”

  “Something about it worries me,” Wallander said. “I’m not sure if I can get a handle on it.”

  “Try,” Martinsson said.

  “She looks out of the window this morning and sees that somebody has been digging up her lawn. So what does she do?”

  “What doesn’t she do?” Höglund said.

  “Precisely,” Wallander said. “The natural thing for her to do would have been to open the French windows and go out and investigate. But what does she do instead?”

  “She calls the police,” Martinsson said.

  “As if she’d suspected there was something dangerous out there,” said Höglund.

  “Or known,” Wallander said.

  “An antipersonnel mine, for instance,” Martinsson said. “She was quite upset when she phoned the police station.”

  “She was upset when I got here,” Wallander said. “In fact, I’ve had the impression that she was nervous every time I’ve spoken to her. Which could be explained by all that’s happened over the last week or two, of course, but I’m not convinced.”

  The front doorbell rang and in marched Nyberg ahead of two men in uniform carrying an implement that reminded Wallander of a vacuum cleaner. It took the soldiers a quarter of an hour to go over the little garden with the mine detector. The police officers stood at the window watching intently as the men worked. Then they announced that it was all clear, and prepared to leave. Wallander accompanied them out into the street where their car was waiting for them.

  “What can you say about the mine?” he asked them. “Size, explosive power? Can you guess where it might have been made? Anything at all could be of use to us.”

  LUNDQVIST, CAPTAIN, it said on the badge attached to the uniform of the older of the two soldiers. He was also the one who replied to Wallander’s question.

  “Not a particularly powerful mine,” he said. “A few hundred grams of explosive at most. Enough to kill a man, though. We usually call this kind of mine a Four.”

  “Meaning what?” Wallander said.

  “Somebody walks on a mine,” Captain Lundqvist said. “You need three men to carry him out of battle. Four people removed from active duty.”

  “And the origin?”

  “Mines aren’t made the same way as other weapons,” Lundqvist said. “Bofors makes them, as do all the other major arms manufacturers. But nearly every industrialized country has a factory making mines. Either they’re manufactured openly under license, or they’re pirated. Terrorist groups have their own models. Before you can say anything about where the mine comes from, you have to have a fragment of the explosive and preferably also a bit of the material the casing was made from. It could be iron or plastic. Even wood.”

  “We’ll see what we can find,” Wallander said. “Then we’ll get back to you.”

  “Not a nice weapon,” Captain Lundqvist said. “They say it’s the world’s cheapest and most reliable soldier. You put him somewhere and he never moves from the spot, not for a hundred years if that’s how what you want. He doesn’t require food or drink or wages. He just exists, and waits. Until somebody comes and walks on him. Then he strikes.”

  “How long can a mine remain active?” Wallander asked.

  “Nobody knows. Land mines that were laid in the First World War still go off now and then.”

  Wallander went back into the house. Nyberg was in the garden and had already started his meticulous investigation of the crater.

  “The explosive and if possible also a piece of the casing,” Wallander said.

  “What else do you suppose we’re looking for?” Nyberg snarled. “Bits of bone?”

  Wallander wondered whether he should let Mrs. Dunér calm down for a few more hours before talking to her, but he was getting impatient again. Impatient at never seeming to be able to see any sign of a breakthrough, or finding any clear starting point for this investigation.

  “You two had better go and fill Björk in,” he said to Martinsson and Höglund. “This afternoon we’ll go through the whole case in detail, to see where we’ve gotten.”

  “Have we gotten anywhere at all?” Martinsson said.

  “We’ve always gotten somewhere,” Wallander said, “but we don’t always know exactly where. Has Svedberg been talking to the lawyers going through the Torstensson archives?”

  “He’s been there all morning,” Martinsson said. “But I expect he’d rather be doing something else. He’s not really one for reading papers.”

  “Go and help him,” Wallander said. “I have an idea that it’s urgent.”

  He went back into the house, hung up his jacket, and went to the bathroom in the hall. He gave a start when he saw his face in the mirror. He was unshaven and red-eyed, and his hair was standing on end. He wondered about the impression he must have made at Farnholm Castle. He rinsed his face in cold water, asking himself where he was going to start in order to get Mrs. Dunér to understand that he knew she was holding back information—and he did not know why. I must be friendly, he decided. Otherwise she’ll close herself off completely.

  He went to the kitchen where she was still slumped on a chair. The forensic team was busy in the garden. Occasionally Wallander heard Nyberg’s agitated voice. He had the sense of having experienced exactly what he was now seeing, feeling, a moment before, the bewildering sensation of having gone around in a circle and returned to a point far in the distant past. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he sat at the kitchen table and looked at the woman facing him. Just for a moment he thought she reminded him of his long-dead mother. The gray hair, the thin body that seemed to have been compressed inside a tiny frame. He could not conjure up a picture of his mother’s face, though: it had faded from his memory.

  “You’re very upset, I know,” he began, “but we have to have a talk.”

  She nodded without replying.

  “Let’s see, this morning you discovered that somebody had been in your garden during the night,” Wallander said.

  “I could see it right away,” she said.

  “What did you do then?”

  She looked at him in surprise. “I’ve already told you,” she said. “Do I have to go through everything again?”

  “Not everything,” Wallander said, patiently. “You only need to answer the questions I ask you.”

  “The sun was coming up,” she said. “I’m an early riser. I looked out at the garden. Somebody had been there. I called the police.”

  “Why did you call the police?” Wallander said, watching her carefully.

  “What else was I supposed to do?”

  “You might have gone out to see what damage had been done, for instance.”

  “I didn’t dare.”

  “Why not? Because you knew there was something out there that could be dangerous?”

  She didn’t answer. Wallander waited. Nyberg shouted angrily in the garden.

  “I don’t think you’ve been completely honest with me,” Wallander said. “I think there is something that you ought to tell me.”

  She put a hand over her eyes, as if the light in the kitchen was affecting her. Wallander waited. The clock on the kitchen wall showed 11 A.M.


  “I’ve been frightened for so long,” she said suddenly, peering up at Wallander as if it were his fault. He waited for more, but in vain.

  “People aren’t usually frightened unless there is a cause,” Wallander said. “If the police are going to be able to find out what happened to Gustaf and Sten Torstensson, you have got to help us.”

  “I can’t help you,” she said.

  Wallander could see that she was liable to break down at any moment. But he pressed on nevertheless.

  “You can answer my questions,” he said. “Start by telling me why you’re frightened.”

  “Do you know what’s the most scary thing there is?” she said. “It’s other people’s fear. I’d worked thirty years for Gustaf Torstensson. I wasn’t close to him, but I couldn’t avoid noticing the change. There came to be a strange smell about him. His fear.”

  “When did you first notice it?”

  “Three years ago.”

  “Had anything specific happened?”

  “Everything was exactly as usual.”

  “It’s very important that you try to remember.”

  “What do you think I’ve been trying to do all this time?”

  Wallander tried to think how best to keep Mrs. Dunér going—despite everything she seemed willing to answer his questions now.

  “You never spoke to Mr. Torstensson about it?”

  “Never.”

  “Not to his son either?”

  “I don’t think he’d noticed anything.”

  She could be right, Wallander thought. She was Gustaf Torstensson’s secretary, after all.

  “Do you really have no explanation for what happened today? You realize that you could have been killed if you had gone into the garden. I think you suspected as much and that’s why you called the police. You’ve been expecting something to happen. But you have no explanation?”

  “People started coming to the office during the night,” she said. “Both Gustaf and I noticed. A pen lying differently on a desk, a chair somebody had been sitting on and put back almost in its proper place but not quite.”

  “You must have asked him about it,” Wallander said.

  “I wasn’t allowed to. He forbade me.”

  “So he did speak about these nocturnal visits, then?”

  “You can see by looking at a person what you’re not allowed to mention.”

  The conversation was interrupted by Nyberg tapping on the window.

  “I’ll be back in a moment,” Wallander said. Nyberg was standing outside the kitchen door, holding out his hand. Wallander could see something badly burned, hardly half a centimeter across.

  “A plastic land mine,” Nyberg said. “I can confirm that even at this stage. We might possibly be able to find out what type it is, even where it was made. But it’ll take time.”

  “Can you say anything about whoever it was who laid the mine?”

  “I might have been able to if you hadn’t thrown a directory at it,” Nyberg said.

  “It was easy to see,” Wallander said.

  “A person who knows what he’s doing can plant a mine so that it’s invisible,” Nyberg said. “Both you and that woman in the kitchen could see that somebody had been digging up the lawn. We’re dealing with amateurs.”

  Or somebody who wants us to think that, Wallander thought. But he didn’t say so and went back to the kitchen. He only had one more question.

  “Yesterday afternoon you had a visit from an Asian woman,” he said. “Who was she?”

  She looked at him in astonishment. “How do you know that?”

  “Never mind how,” Wallander said. “Just answer the question.”

  “She’s a cleaner, she works at the Torstensson offices,” Mrs Dunér said.

  So that was it! Wallander was disappointed.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Kim Sung-Lee.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “I have her address at the office.”

  “What did she want?”

  “She was wondering if she could keep her job.”

  “I’d be grateful if you could let me have her address,” Wallander said, standing up.

  “What will happen now?”

  “You don’t need to be afraid anymore,” Wallander said. “I’ll make sure there’s a police officer on hand. For as long as it’s necessary.”

  He told Nyberg he was leaving and went back to the police station. On the way there he stopped at Fridolf’s Café and bought some sandwiches. He shut himself in his office and prepared for his meeting with Björk. But when he went to his office, Björk was not there. The conversation would have to wait.

  It was 1 P.M. by the time Wallander knocked on the door of Åkeson’s office at the other end of the long, narrow police station. Every time he was there he was surprised by the chaos that seemed to prevail. The desk was piled high with paper, files were strewn around the floor and on the visitors’ chairs. Along one wall was a barbell and a hastily rolled-up mattress.

  “Have you started working out?”

  “Not only that,” Åkeson replied with a self-satisfied grin, “I’ve also acquired the good habit of taking a nap after lunch. I’ve just woken up.”

  “You mean you sleep here on the floor?”

  “A thirty-minute nap,” Åkeson confirmed. “Then I get back to work full of energy.”

  “Maybe I should try that,” Wallander said doubtfully.

  Åkeson made room for him on one of the chairs by dumping a stack of files onto the floor. Then he sat down and put his feet on the desk.

  “I’d almost given up on you,” he said with a smile, “but deep down I always knew you’d be back.”

  “It’s been a hell of a time,” Wallander said.

  Åkeson became serious. “I really can’t imagine what it must be like killing a man. Never mind if it was self-defense. It must be the only human act from which there’s no going back. I don’t have enough imagination to conjure up anything except a vague image of the abyss.”

  “You can never get away from it,” Wallander said. “But maybe you can learn to live with it.”

  They sat without speaking. Somebody in the corridor was complaining that the coffee machine had broken down.

  “We’re the same age, you and me,” Åkeson said. “Six months ago I woke up one morning and thought: Good God! Was that all it was, life? Was there no more to it than that? I felt panic-stricken. But now, looking back, I have to acknowledge that it was useful. It made me do something I ought to have done ages ago.”

  He fished a sheet of paper out of one of the piles on his desk and handed it to Wallander. It was an advertisement from various UN organizations for legally qualified people to fill a variety of posts abroad, including refugee camps in Africa and Asia.

  “I sent in an application,” Åkeson said. “Then I forgot all about it. But a month ago I was called for an interview in Copenhagen. There’s a chance I might be offered a two-year contract in a big camp for Ugandan refugees who are going to be repatriated.”

  “Jump at it if the offer comes,” Wallander said. “What does your wife say?”

  “She doesn’t know about it,” Åkeson said. “I don’t honestly know what will happen.”

  “I need you to give me some information,” Wallander said.

  Åkeson took his feet off the desk and cleared aside some of the papers in front of him. Wallander told him about the explosion in Mrs. Dunér’s back garden. Åkeson shook his head incredulously.

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Nyberg was positive,” Wallander said. “And he’s usually right, as you know.”

  “What do you think about the whole business?” Åkeson said. “I’ve spoken to Björk, and of course I go along with you tearing up the previous investigation into Gustaf Torstensson’s accident. Do we really have nothing to go on?”

  Wallander thought before replying. “The one thing we can be completely sure about is that it’s no strange coincidence that
two lawyers are dead and a mine is planted in Mrs. Dunér’s garden. It was all planned. We don’t know how it started, and we don’t know how it will end.”

  “You don’t think what happened to Mrs. Dunér was just meant to frighten her?”

  “Whoever put that mine in her garden intended to kill her,” Wallander said. “I want her protected. Perhaps she needs to move out of the house.”

  “I’ll arrange for that,” Åkeson said. “I’ll have a word with Björk.”

  “She’s scared,” Wallander said. “But I can see now, after talking to her again, that she doesn’t know what she’s scared of. I thought she was holding something back, but I now realize she knows as little as the rest of us. Anyway, I thought you might be able to help by telling me about Gustaf and Sten Torstensson. You must have run into them a lot over the years.”

  “Gustaf was an odd duck,” Åkeson said. “And his son was well on the way to becoming one too.”

  “Gustaf Torstensson,” Wallander said. “I think that’s the starting point. But don’t ask me why.”

  “I didn’t have that much to do with him,” Åkeson said. “It was before my time when he used to appear in court as a defense lawyer. These last few years he seems to have been busy exclusively with financial consultancy.”

  “For Alfred Harderberg,” Wallander said. “Of Farnholm Castle. Which also strikes me as odd. A run-of-the-mill lawyer from Ystad. And a businessman with a global business empire.”

  “As I understand it, that’s one of Harderberg’s chief attributes,” Åkeson said. “His knack of finding and surrounding himself with just the right associates. Perhaps he noticed something about Gustaf that nobody else had suspected.”

  “Are there any skeletons in Harderberg’s closet?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Åkeson said. “Which in itself might seem odd. They say there’s a crime behind every fortune. But Harderberg appears to be a model citizen. And he does his part for Sweden as well.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “He doesn’t channel all his investments abroad. He’s even set up businesses in other countries and moved the actual manufacturing to Sweden. That’s pretty unusual nowadays.”