Faceless Killers - Wallander 01

by Henning Mankell

  He showed her his identity card.

  "We'd like to talk to you," he said.

  Wallander could see that she was frightened.

  "I can't leave right now," she said.

  "We'd be happy to wait," said Boman.

  "You can wait in the back room," said Margareta Velander. "I won't be long."

  It was a very small room. A table covered with oilcloth and a couple of chairs took up practically all the space. Between some coffee cups and a grimy coffee maker on a shelf there was a stack of tabloid newspapers. Wallander studied a black-and-white photograph pinned to the wall. It was a blurred and faded image of a young man in a sailor's uniform. Wallander could read the word Holland on the band around the cap.

  "Holland? he said. "Was that a cruiser or a destroyer?"

  "A destroyer. Scrapped ages ago."

  Margareta Velander came into the room. She was drying her hands on a towel.

  "I've got a few minutes now," she said. "What's it about?"

  "We wonder whether you know a man named Johannes Lövgren," began Wallander.

  "Is that so?" she said. "Would you like some coffee?"

  They both declined, and Wallander was annoyed that she had turned her back to him when he asked the question.

  "Johannes Lövgren," he repeated. "A farmer from a village outside of Ystad. Did you know him?"

  "The man who was murdered?" she asked, looking him straight in the eye.

  "Yes," he said. "The man who was murdered. That's the one."

  "No," she replied, pouring coffee into a plastic cup. "Why should I know him?"

  The police officers exchanged glances. There was something about her voice that suggested she felt pressured.

  "In December 1958 you gave birth to a son who was christened Nils," said Wallander. "You listed the father as unknown."

  The instant he mentioned the name of her son, she started to cry. The coffee cup tipped over and fell to the floor.

  "What has he done?" she asked. "What has he done now?" They waited until she had calmed down.

  "We're not here to bring you bad news," Wallander assured her. "But we'd like to know whether Johannes Lövgren was Nils's father."

  "No."

  Her answer was not convincing. "Then we'd like you to tell us the name of his father." "Why do you want to know?" "It's important for our investigation." "I've told you that I don't know anybody named Johannes Lövgren." "What's the name of Nils's father?" "I can't tell you."

  "It won't go any further than this room." She paused a little too long before she answered. "I don't know who Nils's father was." "Women usually know."

  "I was sleeping with more than one man at the time. I don't know who it was. That's why I listed the father as unknown."

  She stood up quickly.

  "I've got to get back to work," she said. "The old ladies are going to be boiled alive under those dryers." "We can wait."

  "But I don't have anything else to tell you!" She seemed more and more upset.

  "We have some more questions."

  Ten minutes later she was back. She was holding some notes that she stuffed into her purse, which was hanging on the back of a chair. She now seemed composed and ready for an argument.

  "I don't know anyone called Lövgren," she said.

  "And you insist that you don't know who was the father of your son, born in 1958?"

  "That's correct."

  "Do you realise that you may have to answer these questions under oath?" "I'm telling the truth." "Where can we find Nils?" "He travels a lot."

  "According to our records, his place of residence is in Solvesborg."

  "So go out there then!" "That's what we plan to do." "I have nothing more to say."

  Wallander hesitated for a moment. Then he pointed at the photograph pinned on the wall.

  "Is that Nils's father?" he asked.

  She had just lit a cigarette. When she exhaled, it sounded like a hiss.

  "I don't know any Lövgren. I don't know what you're talking about."

  "All right then," said Boman. "We'll be off now. But you may be hearing from us again."

  "I have nothing more to say. Why can't you leave me alone?"

  "Nobody gets left alone when the police are looking for a murderer," said Boman. "That's the way it goes."

  When they came outdoors, the sun was shining. They stood next to the car for a moment.

  "What do you think?" asked Boman.

  "I don't know. But there's something there."

  "Shall we try to find the son before we move on to the third woman?"

  "I think so."

  They drove over to Solvesborg and with great difficulty located what appeared to be the right address: a dilapidated wooden house outside the centre of the town, surrounded by wrecked cars and pieces of machinery. A ferocious German shepherd was barking and pulling on its iron chain. The house looked deserted. Boman leaned forwards and looked at a sign with sloppy lettering that was nailed to the door.

  "Nils Velander," he said. "This is the place."

  He knocked several times, but no-one answered. They walked all the way around the house.

  "What a bloody rat hole," said Boman.

  When they got back to the door, Wallander tried the handle. The house wasn't locked. Wallander looked at Boman, who shrugged.

  "If it's open, it's open," he said. "Let's go in."

  They stepped into a musty hallway and listened. Silence. They both jumped when a hissing cat leaped out of a dark corner and vanished up the stairs to the first floor. The room on the left seemed to be some sort of office. There were two battered filing cabinets and an exceedingly messy desk with a phone and an answering machine. Wallander lifted the top of a box sitting on the desk. Inside was a set of black leather underwear and a mailing label.

  "Fredrik Aberg of Dragongatan in Alingsas ordered this stuff," he said with a grimace. "Plain brown wrapper, no doubt."

  They moved on to the next room, which was a storeroom for Nils Velander's novelty underwear. There were also a number of whips and dog collars. Everything was jumbled up, with no appearance of organisation.

  The next room was the kitchen, with dirty dishes stacked by the sink. A half-eaten chicken lay on the floor. The room stank of cat piss. Wallander threw open the door to the pantry. Inside was a home distillery and two large vats. Boman sniggered and shook his head.

  They went upstairs and peeked into the bedroom. The sheets were dirty and clothes lay in heaps on the floor. The curtains were drawn, and together they counted seven cats scurrying off.

  "What a pigsty," repeated Boman. "How can anybody live like this?"

  The house looked as if it had been abandoned in a hurry.

  "Maybe we'd better leave," said Wallander. "We'll need a search warrant before we can give the place a thorough going-over."

  They went back downstairs. Boman stepped into the office and punched the button on the answering machine. A man they assumed was Nils Velander stated that no-one was in the Raff-Sets office at the moment, but you were welcome to leave your order on the answering machine.

  The German shepherd jerked on its chain as they came out into the courtyard. At the corner, on the left-hand side of the house, Wallander discovered a basement door almost hidden behind the remains of an old mangle.

  He opened the unlocked door and stepped into the darkness. He fumbled his way over to a fuse box. An old oil furnace stood in the corner. The rest of the basement room was filled with empty birdcages. He called to Boman, who joined him.

  "Leather underpants and empty birdcages," said Wallander. "What exactly is this guy up to?"

  "I think we'd better find out," replied Boman.

  As they were about to leave, Wallander noticed a small steel cabinet behind the furnace. He bent down and pressed on the handle. It was unlocked, like everything else in the house. He put his hand in and grabbed hold of a plastic bag. He pulled it out and opened it.

  "Look at this," he said to Boman.
r />   The plastic bag contained a bundle of 1,000-krona notes. Wallander counted 23.

  "I think we're going to have to have a talk with this chap," said Boman.

  They stuffed the money back and went outside. The German shepherd was still barking.

  "We'll have to talk to our colleagues here in Solvesborg," said Boman. "They can check him out for us."

  At the Solvesborg police station they found an officer who was quite familiar with Velander.

  "He's probably mixed up in all kinds of illegal activities," said the policeman. "But the only thing we have on him is suspicion of illegally importing caged birds from Thailand. And operating a distillery."

  "He was once sentenced for assault and battery," said Boman.

  "He doesn't usually get into fights," replied the officer. "But I'll try to check up on him for you. Do you really think he's graduated to murdering people?"

  "We don't know," said Wallander. "But we need to find him."

  They set off for Kristianstad. It was raining again. They had formed a good impression of the police officer in Solvesborg and were counting on him to find Velander for them. But Wallander had doubts.

  "We don't know anything," he said. "1,000-krona notes in a plastic bag aren't proof of anything."

  "But something is going on there," said Boman.

  Wallander agreed. There was something about the owner of the beauty salon and her son.

  They stopped for lunch at a hotel restaurant. Wallander thought he ought to check in with the station in Ystad, but the pay phone he tried was broken.

  It was 1.30 p.m. by the time they got back to Kristianstad. Before they went to find the third woman on their list, Boman wanted to check in at his office. The young woman at the reception desk flagged them down.

  "There was a call from Ystad," she said. "They want Inspector Wallander to call back."

  "Let's go to my office," said Boman.

  Full of foreboding, Wallander dialled the number while Boman went to get some coffee. Without a word Ebba connected him to Rydberg.

  "You'd better come back," said Rydberg. "Some idiot has shot a Somali refugee at Hageholm."

  "What the hell do you mean by that?"

  "Exactly what I said. This Somali was out taking a stroll. Someone blasted him with a shotgun. I've had a hell of a time tracking you down. Where have you been?"

  "Is he dead?"

  "His head was blown off."

  Wallander felt sick to his stomach. "I'm on my way," he said.

  He hung up the phone just as Boman came in, balancing two mugs of coffee. Wallander gave him a rundown of what had happened.

  "I'll get you emergency transport," said Boman. "I'll send your car over later with one of the boys."

  Everything happened fast. In a few minutes Wallander was on his way to Ystad in a car with sirens wailing. Rydberg met him at the station and they drove at once to Hageholm.

  "Do we have any leads?" asked Wallander.

  "None. But the newsroom at Sydsvenskan got a call only a few minutes after the murder. A man said that it was revenge for the murder of Johannes Lövgren. And that next time they would take a woman for Maria Lövgren."

  "This is insane," said Wallander. "We don't have foreign suspects any more, do we?"

  "Somebody seems to have a different opinion. Thinks that we're shielding some foreigners."

  "But I've already denied that."

  "Whoever did this doesn't give a shit about your denials. They see a perfect case for pulling out a gun and shooting foreigners."

  "This is crazy!"

  "You're damn right it's crazy. But it's true!"

  "Did the newspaper tape the phone conversation?"

  "Yes."

  "I want to hear it. To see if it's the same person who's been calling me."

  The car raced through the landscape of Skåne.

  "What are we going to do now?" asked Wallander.

  "We've got to catch the Lunnarp killers," said Rydberg. "And damned fast."

  At Hageholm everything was in chaos. Distressed and weeping refugees had gathered in the dining hall, reporters were interviewing people, and phones were ringing. Wallander stepped out of the car onto a muddy dirt road several hundred metres from the residential buildings. The wind was blowing again, and he turned up the collar of his jacket. An area near the road had been cordoned off. The dead man was lying face down in the mud.

  Wallander cautiously lifted the sheet covering the body.

  Rydberg hadn't been exaggerating. There was almost nothing left of the head.

  "Shot at close range," said Hansson who was standing nearby. "Whoever did this must have jumped out of hiding and fired the shots from a few metres away." "Shots?" said Wallander.

  "The camp director says that she heard two shots, one after the other." Wallander looked around.

  "Car tracks?" he asked. "Where does this road go?" "Two kilometres further along you come out on the E65. "And no-one saw anything?"

  "It's hard to question refugees who speak 15 different languages. But we're working on it."

  "Do we know who the dead man is?"

  "He had a wife and nine children."

  Wallander stared at Hansson in disbelief. "Nine children?"

  "Just imagine the headlines tomorrow morning," said Hansson. "Innocent refugee murdered taking a walk. Nine children left without a father."

  Svedberg came running from one of the police cars.

  "The police chief is on the phone," he said.

  Wallander looked surprised.

  "I thought he wasn't due back from Spain until tomorrow."

  "Not him. The chief of the national police."

  Wallander got into the car and picked up the phone. The chief's voice was emphatic, and Wallander was immediately annoyed by what he said.

  "This looks very bad," said the chief. "We don't need racist murders in this country."

  "No," said Wallander.

  "This investigation must be given top priority." "Yes. But we already have the murders in Lunnarp on our hands."

  "Are you making any progress there?" "I think so. But it takes time."

  "I want you to report to me personally. I'm going to take part in a discussion programme on TV tonight, and I need all the information I can get."

  ‘I’ll see to it."

  He hung up.

  Wallander remained sitting in the car. Näslund will have to handle this, he thought. He'll have to feed the paperwork to Stockholm. He felt depressed. His hangover was gone, and he remembered what had happened the night before, as he saw Peters approaching from a police car that had just arrived.

  He thought about Mona and the man who had picked her up. And Linda laughing, the black man at her side. His father, painting his everlasting landscape. He thought about himself too.

  A time to live, and a time to die.

  Wallander forced himself out of the car to take charge of the criminal investigation. Nothing else had better happen, he thought. We can't handle anything else.

  It was still raining.

  CHAPTER 10

  Wallander stood in the driving rain, freezing. It was late afternoon, and the police had rigged floodlights around the murder scene. He watched two ambulance attendants squishing through the mud with a stretcher. They were taking away the dead Somali. When he looked at the sea of mud he wondered whether even as skilful a detective as Rydberg would be able to find any tracks.

  Still, he felt slightly relieved. Until ten minutes ago the officers had been surrounded by a hysterical woman and nine howling children. The wife of the dead man had thrown herself down in the mud, and her wails were so piercing that several of the policemen couldn't tolerate the sound and had moved away. To his surprise, Wallander saw that the only one who was able to handle the grieving woman and the anguished children was Martinsson. The youngest policeman on the force, who so far in his career had never even been forced to notify someone of a relative's death. He had held the woman, kneeling in the mud, and in
some way the two were able to understand each other across the language barrier. A priest who had been called out was unable to do anything, of course. But gradually Martinsson succeeded in getting the woman and the children back to the main building, where a doctor was ready to take care of them.

  Rydberg came tramping through the mud. His trousers were splattered all the way up his thighs.

  "What a hell of a mess," he said. "But Hansson and Svedberg have done a fantastic job. They managed to find two refugees and an interpreter who actually think they saw something."

  "What did they see?"

  "How should I know? I don't speak either Arabic or Swahili. But they're on their way to Ystad right now. The Immigration Service has promised us some interpreters. I thought it would be best if you handled the interviews."

  Wallander nodded. "Have we got anything to go on?"

  Rydberg took out his grimy notebook.

  "He was killed at 1 p.m. precisely," he said. "The director was listening to the news on the radio when she heard the noise. There were two shots. But you know that already. He was dead before he hit the ground. It seems to have been regular buckshot. Gyttorp brand, I think. Nytrox 36, probably. That's about all."

  "That's not much."

  "It's absolutely nothing. But maybe the eyewitnesses will have something to tell us."

  "I've authorised overtime for everyone," said Wallander. "Now we'll have to bust our guts night and day if necessary."

  Back at the station, the first interview almost drove him to despair. The interpreter, who was supposed to know Swahili, could barely understand the dialect spoken by the witness, a young man from Malawi. It took him almost 20 minutes to discover that the man for some strange reason knew Luvale, a language spoken in parts of Zaire and Zambia. One of the Immigration Service people knew a former missionary who spoke fluent Luvale. She was close to 90 and lived in sheltered accommodation in Trelleborg. After calling his colleagues there, he was promised that the missionary would be given police transport to Ystad. Wallander suspected that a 90-year-old missionary might not be very sharp, but he was wrong. A little white-haired lady with lively eyes appeared at the door of his office, and before he knew it she was involved in an intense conversation with the young man.