The Man Who Smiled

by Henning Mankell

  “It’s not necessary,” he said.

  “But I’d like to, even so.”

  He nodded. They agreed to meet at the police station at 9:00.

  Wallander drove to his father’s house at Löderup shortly before 7 P.M. He stopped on the way to buy some buns to eat with the coffee. When he got there his father was in his studio, painting the same old picture: an autumn landscape, with or without a grouse in the foreground.

  My father’s what people call a “kitsch” artist, Wallander thought. I sometimes feel like a kitschy police officer.

  His father’s wife, who used to be his home help, was visiting her parents. Wallander expected his father to be annoyed when he heard that his son could only stay an hour, but to his surprise, he simply nodded. They played cards for a little while and Wallander told him in detail why he returned to work. His father did not seem interested in his reasons. It was an evening when, just for once, they did not argue. As Wallander drove back to Ystad, he racked his brains to remember when that had last happened.

  At 8:55 they were in Wallander’s car, heading for the Malmö road. It was still windy, and Wallander could feel a draft coming from the ill-fitting rubber strip around the windshield. He could smell the faint aroma of Höglund’s discreet perfume. When they emerged onto the E65 he sped up.

  “Do you know your way around Helsingborg?” she said.

  “No.”

  “We could call our colleagues in Helsingborg and ask.”

  “Best to keep them out of it for the time being,” Wallander said.

  “Why?”

  “When police officers intrude into others’ territory there are always problems,” Wallander said. “No point in making things difficult for ourselves unnecessarily.”

  They drove on in silence. Wallander thought reluctantly about the conversation he would have to have with Björk. When they came to the road for Sturup Airport, Wallander turned. A few kilometers further on he turned again, toward Lund.

  “Tell me why you became a police officer,” Wallander said.

  “Not yet,” she said. “Another time.”

  There was not much traffic. The wind seemed to be getting worse all the time. They passed the rotary outside Staffanstorp and saw the lights from Lund. It was 9:25.

  “That’s odd,” she said suddenly.

  Wallander immediately noticed there was something different about her voice. He glanced at her face, which was lit up by the glow from the dashboard. He could see she was staring intently into the mirror on her side. He looked in his rearview mirror. There were headlights some way behind.

  “What’s odd?” he asked.

  “I’ve never experienced this before,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Being chased,” she said. “Or, at least, being followed.”

  Wallander could see that she was serious. He looked again at the lights in his mirror.

  “How can you be so sure the car is following us?” he said.

  “That’s easy. It’s been behind us ever since we started driving.”

  Wallander looked at her doubtfully.

  “I’m positive,” she said. “That car has been following us ever since we left Ystad.”

  7

  Fear was like a beast of prey.

  Afterward, Wallander remembered it as being like a claw clamped around his neck—an image that seemed even to him childish and inadequate, but it was the comparison he eventually used even so. Who would he describe the fear to? His daughter Linda, and perhaps also Baiba, in one of the letters he sent regularly to Riga. But hardly to anyone else. He never discussed with Höglund what he had felt in that car; she never asked, and he was never sure whether she had noticed he was frightened. Nevertheless, he had been so terrified that he was shaking, and was convinced he would lose control of the car and plunge into the ditch at high speed, perhaps even hurtle to his death. He remembered with crystal clarity that he wished he had been alone in the car. That would have made everything much simpler for him. A large part of his fear, the weight of the giant beast, was the worry that something might happen to her, the woman in the passenger seat. Superficially, he had played the role of the experienced police officer who was unmoved by a minor matter like discovering that he was being followed from Staffanstorp to Lund, but he had been scared out of his wits until they reached the outskirts of the city. Shortly after crossing the boundary, when she had announced that the car was still following them, he had pulled into one of the big gas stations that had twenty-four-hour service. They had seen the car drive past, a dark blue Mercedes, but had been unable to catch the registration number or make out how many people were inside. Wallander had stopped by one of the pumps.

  “I think you’re wrong,” he said.

  She shook her head. “The car was following us,” she said. “I can’t swear that it was waiting for us outside the police station, but I noticed it early on. It was there when we passed the rotary on the E65. It was just a car then, any old car. But when we’d turned a couple of times and it still hadn’t passed us, it started to be something else.”

  Wallander got out and unscrewed the gas cap. She stood by his side, watching him. He was thinking as hard as he could.

  “Who would want to follow us?” he asked as he replaced the nozzle.

  She remained standing by the car while he went to pay. She couldn’t possibly be right, he thought. His fear had started to wear off.

  They continued through the town. The streets were deserted, and the traffic lights seemed very reluctant to change. Once they had left Lund behind them and Wallander increased speed along the motorway heading north, they started to check the traffic behind them once again. But the Mercedes had gone, and it didn’t reappear. When they took the exit for Helsingborg south, Wallander slowed down. A dirty truck overtook them, then a dark red Volvo. Wallander pulled up at the side of the road, released his seat belt, and got out. He walked around to the back of the car and crouched down, as if he were inspecting one of the back wheels. He knew she would keep an eye on every car that passed. He counted four cars overtaking them, and a bus which had something wrong one of its cylinders, judging by the sound of its engine. He got back into the car and turned to her.

  “No Mercedes?”

  “A white Audi,” she said. “Two men in front, maybe another in the back.”

  “Why pick on that one?”

  “They were the only ones who didn’t look at us. They also picked up speed.”

  Wallander pointed to the car phone. “Call Martinsson,” he said. “I take it you made a note of the registration number. Not just the Audi, the others as well. Give them to him. Tell him it’s urgent.”

  He gave her Martinsson’s home number and drove on, keeping his eye open for a phone booth where he hoped he might find a phone book with a map of the area. He heard her speaking to one of Martinsson’s children, probably his little daughter. After a short pause Martinsson came on the line and she gave him the registration numbers. Then she handed the phone to Wallander.

  “He wants to speak to you,” she said.

  Wallander braked and pulled over before taking the phone.

  “What’s going on?” Martinsson asked. “Can’t these cars wait until tomorrow?”

  “If Ann-Britt calls you and says it’s urgent, then it’s urgent,” he said.

  “What have they done, these cars?”

  “It would take too long now. I’ll tell you tomorrow. When you’ve got the information you can call us here in the car.”

  He brought the call to an end, so as to give Martinsson no chance to ask any more questions. He saw that Höglund had been offended.

  “Why can’t he trust me? Why does he have to check with you?”

  Her voice had become shrill. Wallander wondered if she could not control her disappointment, or did not want to.

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “It takes time to get used to changes. You are the most shattering thing that’s happened to the pol
ice station in Ystad for years. You’re surrounded by a pack of old dogs who haven’t the slightest desire to learn new tricks.”

  “Does that include you?”

  “Of course it does,” Wallander said.

  Wallander failed to find a phone booth before they had reached the ferry terminal. There was no sign of the white Audi. Wallander parked outside the railway station, and found a dirty map on the wall inside showing Gjutargatan on the eastern edge of the town. He memorized the route, and returned to the car.

  “Who could it be that’s following us?” she said as they turned left and passed the white theater building.

  “I don’t know,” Wallander said. “There’s too much about Gustaf and Sten Torstensson that’s odd. I get the feeling we’re always going off in the wrong direction.”

  “I have the feeling we’re standing still,” she said.

  “Or that we’re going around in circles,” Wallander said. “And we don’t see that we’re walking in our own footsteps.”

  Still no sign of the Audi. They drove into a housing estate. There was no one about. Wallander parked at number twelve, and they got out of the car. The wind threatened to blow the doors off their hinges. The house was a red-brick bungalow with an attached garage and a modest garden. Wallander thought he could see the outline of a boat under a tarpaulin.

  The door opened before he had chance to ring the bell. An elderly white-haired man in a tracksuit eyed them up and down with an inquisitive smile.

  Wallander produced his ID.

  “My name’s Wallander,” he said. “I’m a detective inspector, and this is Ann-Britt Höglund, a colleague. We’re from the Ystad police.”

  The man took Wallander’s ID and scrutinized it—he was obviously short-sighted. His wife appeared in the hall, and welcomed them inside. Wallander had the impression he was standing on the threshold of a contented couple’s home. They invited them into their living room, where coffee and cakes were prepared. Wallander was about to sit down when he noticed a picture on one of the walls. He could not believe his eyes at first—it was one of his father’s paintings, one without a grouse. He saw that Höglund had noticed what he was looking at, and she gave him a questioning look. He shook his head, and sat down. This was the second time in his life he had gone into a strange house and discovered one of his father’s paintings. Four years ago he had found one in an apartment in Kristianstad, but there had been a grouse in the foreground of that one.

  “I apologize for visiting you so late,” Wallander said, “but I’m afraid we have some questions that simply can’t wait.”

  “I hope you have time for a cup of coffee,” said the lady of the house.

  They said that of course they did. It occurred to Wallander that Höglund had been eager to accompany him so that she could find out how he conducted an interview of this nature, and he felt insecure. There’s been a lot of water under this bridge, he thought. It’s not a case of me teaching her, but of me relearning how to do it, trying to remember all that I had written off as the end of an era in my life, until a couple of days ago.

  His mind went back to those limitless beaches at Skagen. His private territory. Just for a moment, he wished he were back there. But that was history. More water under the bridge.

  “Until a year ago you ran a hotel, the Linden Hotel,” he began.

  “For forty years,” Bertil Forsdahl said, and Wallander could hear he was proud of what he had achieved.

  “That’s a long time,” he said.

  “I bought it in 1952,” Forsdahl said. “It was called the Pelican Hotel in those days, a bit on the scruffy side—it didn’t have a good reputation. I bought it from a man called Markusson. He was an alcoholic, and just didn’t want to be bothered. The last year of his tenancy the rooms were used mainly by his drunken cronies. I have to admit I got the hotel cheaply. Markusson died the following year. His wake was a drunken orgy in Elsinore. We renamed the hotel. In those days there was a linden tree outside. It was next to the old theater—that’s been demolished now, of course, like everything else. The actors used to stay with us sometimes. Inga Tidblad was our overnight guest on one occasion. She wanted an early-morning cup of tea.”

  “I expect you’ve kept the ledger with her name in it,” Wallander said.

  “I’ve kept all of them,” Forsdahl said. “I’ve got forty years of history tucked away downstairs.”

  “We sometimes sit down after dinner,” Forsdahl’s wife said, “and we leaf through them all, remembering the good old days. You see the names and you remember the people.”

  Wallander exchanged glances with Höglund. They already had the answer to one of their key questions.

  A dog started barking in the street outside.

  “Next door neighbor’s guard dog,” Forsdahl explained apologetically. “He keeps an eye on the whole street.”

  Wallander took a sip of the coffee, and noticed that it said Linden Hotel on the cup.

  “I’ll explain why we’re here,” he said. “You have the name of your hotel on the coffee cups, and you had printed letterheads and envelopes. In July and August last year, two letters were mailed from here in Helsingborg. One was in one of your printed envelopes. That must have been during the last few weeks you were open.”

  “We closed on September 15,” Forsdahl said. “We made no charge for the final night.”

  “Might I ask why you closed down?” Höglund said.

  Wallander was irritated by her intervention, but he hoped she would not notice his reaction. As if it were natural for a woman to be answered by another woman, it was Forsdahl’s wife who responded.

  “What else could we do?” she said. “The building was condemned, and the hotel wasn’t making any money. No doubt we could have kept going for another year or two if we’d wanted, and if we’d been allowed. But that wasn’t how it turned out.”

  “We tried to maintain the highest standards for as long as we could,” Forsdahl said. “But in the end it was just too expensive for us. Color TV in every room and that kind of thing. It was just too much outlay.”

  “It was a very sad day, September 15,” his wife said. “We still have all the room keys. We had number seventeen. The site’s a parking lot now. And they’ve cut the linden tree down. They said it was rotten. I wonder if a tree can die of a broken heart.”

  The dog was still barking. Wallander thought about the tree that no longer existed.

  “Lars Borman,” he said eventually. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

  The response was a complete surprise. “Poor man,” Forsdahl said.

  “A very sad story,” his wife said. “Why are the police interested in him now?”

  “So you know who he is?” Wallander said. He saw that Höglund had produced a notebook from her handbag.

  “Such a nice man,” Forsdahl said. “Calm, quiet. Always friendly, always polite. They don’t make them like him anymore.”

  “We’d very much like to get in touch with him,” Wallander said.

  Forsdahl exchanged looks with his wife. Wallander had the impression they were ill at ease.

  “Lars Borman’s dead,” Forsdahl said. “I thought the police knew that.”

  Wallander thought for a while before answering. “We know next to nothing about Borman,” he said. “All we do know is that last year he wrote two letters, and one of them was in one of your hotel’s envelopes. We wanted to get in touch with him. Obviously that isn’t possible now. But we’d like to know what happened. And who he was.”

  “A regular customer,” Forsdahl said. “He stayed with us about every four months for many years. Usually two or three nights.”

  “What was his line of work? Where was he from?”

  “He worked at the county offices,” Mrs Forsdahl said. “Something to do with finance.”

  “An accountant,” Forsdahl said. “A very conscientious and honest civil servant at the Malmöhus county offices.”

  “He lived in Klagshamn,” his wife
added. “He had a wife and children. It was a terrible tragedy.”

  “What happened?” Wallander said.

  “He committed suicide,” Forsdahl said. Wallander could see it pained him to revive the memory. “If there was one person we never would have expected to take his own life it was Lars Borman. Evidently he had some kind of secret we never imagined.”

  “What happened?” Wallander asked again.

  “He’d been in Helsingborg,” Forsdahl said. “It was a few days before we closed down. He did whatever he had to do during the day and spent the evenings in his room. He would read a lot. That last morning he paid his bill and checked out. He promised to keep in touch even though the hotel was closing. Then he drove away. A few weeks later we heard that he’d hanged himself in a clearing outside Klagshamn, a few kilometers from his house. There was no explanation, no letter to his wife and children. It came as a shock to us all.”

  Wallander nodded slowly. He had grown up in Klagshamn, and wondered which clearing it was Borman had hanged himself in. Perhaps it was somewhere he had played as a child?

  “How old was he?”

  “He’d passed fifty, but he can’t have been much older than that,” Mrs Forsdahl said.

  “So he lived in Klagshamn,” Wallander said, “and worked as an accountant at the county offices. It seems a little unusual to me, staying in a hotel. It’s not that far between Malmö and Helsingborg.”

  “He didn’t like driving,” Forsdahl said. “Besides, I think he enjoyed it here. He could shut himself away in his room in the evening and read his books. We used to leave him in peace, and he appreciated that.”

  “You have his address in your ledgers, of course,” Wallander said.

  “We heard his wife sold the house and moved,” Mrs Forsdahl said. “She couldn’t cope with staying there after what had happened. And his children are grown up.”

  “Do you know where she moved to?”

  “To Spain. Marbella, I think it’s called.”

  Wallander looked at Höglund, who was making copious notes.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a question now?” Forsdahl said. “Why are the police interested in Borman so long after his death?”