The White Lioness kw-3

by Henning Mankell

What should he do now? It had not occurred to him that Wallander might simply withhold vital information.

  He replaced the receiver, convinced that while Wallander might not think he needed any help, Svedberg certainly did. The only question was who he could get to go with him.

  He went over to a window and looked out at the church tower half-hidden by the rooftops. When Wallander was on the run after that night at the military training ground, he had chosen to contact Sten Widen, he thought. Svedberg had never met the guy before. He had never even heard Wallander mention him. Nevertheless, they were obviously close friends who had known each other for a long time. He was the one Wallander turned to for help. Now Svedberg decided to do the same thing. He left the apartment and drove out of town. The rain had grown heavier, and a wind was getting up. He followed the coast road, thinking how all the things that had happened lately must come to an end soon. It was all too much for a little police district like Ystad.

  He found Sten Widen out in the stable. He was standing in front of a stall fitted with bars in which a horse was pacing up and down restlessly and occasionally delivering a vicious kick at the woodwork. Svedberg said hello and stood by his side. The restless horse was very tall and thin. Svedberg had never sat on a horse’s back in his whole life. He had a great fear of horses and could not understand how anyone would voluntarily spend his life training them and looking after them.

  “She’s sick,” said Sten Widen suddenly. “But I don’t know what’s matter with her.”

  “She seems a bit restless,” said Svedberg cautiously.

  “That’s the pain,” said Sten Widen.

  Then he drew the bolt and entered the stall. He grabbed the halter and the horse calmed down almost immediately. Then he bent down and examined her left foreleg. Svedberg leaned carefully over the edge of the stall to look.

  “It’s swollen,” said Sten Widen. “Can you see?”

  Svedberg could not see anything of the sort. But he muttered something in agreement. Sten Widen patted the horse for a while, then emerged from the stall.

  “I need to talk to you,” said Svedberg.

  “Let’s go in,” said Sten Widen.

  When they entered the house Svedberg saw an elderly lady sitting on a sofa in the untidy living room. She did not seem to fit in with Sten Widen’s surroundings. She was strikingly elegantly dressed, heavily made up, and wearing expensive jewelry. Sten Widen noticed he had seen her.

  “She’s waiting for her chauffeur to fetch her,” he said. “She owns two horses I have in training.”

  “So that’s it,” said Svedberg.

  “A master builder’s widow from Trelleborg,” said Sten Widen. “She’ll be on her way home soon. She comes occasionally and just sits there. I think she’s very lonely.”

  Sten Widen said the last words with a degree of understanding that surprised Svedberg.

  They sat in the kitchen.

  “I don’t really know why I’m here,” said Svedberg. “Or rather, I do know, of course. But what exactly is involved if I ask you to help, I have no idea.”

  He explained about the house he had discovered near the quarry outside Tomelilla. Sten Widen stood up and groped around in a drawer crammed full of papers and racing programs. Eventually he produced a dirty, torn map. He unfolded it on the table and Svedberg used a blunt pencil to point out where the house was situated.

  “I’ve no idea what Wallander intends to do,” said Svedberg. “All I know is that he intends to confront Konovalenko on his own. He can’t take any risks for the sake of his daughter. One can understand that, of course. The problem is simply that Wallander hasn’t a chance in hell of getting Konovalenko into safe custody on his own.”

  “So you’re intending to help him?” said Sten Widen.

  Svedberg nodded.

  “But I can’t do that on my own either,” he said. “I couldn’t think of anybody to talk to apart from you. It’s just not possible to take another cop. That’s why I came here. You know him, you’re his friend.”

  “Maybe,” said Sten Widen.

  “Maybe?” said Svedberg, puzzled.

  “It’s true we’ve known each other for a long time,” said Sten Widen. “But we haven’t been in close touch for over ten years.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Svedberg. “I thought things were different.”

  A car turned into the courtyard. Sten Widen got up and went out with the builder’s widow. It seemed to Svedberg he had made a mistake. Sten Widen was not as close a friend of Wallander’s as he thought.

  “What exactly are you thinking of?” asked Sten Widen when he returned to the kitchen.

  Svedberg told him. Some time after eight o’clock he would call Wallander. He would not be able to find out exactly what Konovalenko had said. Nevertheless, Svedberg hoped he might be able to persuade Wallander to tell him when the meeting was to take place, if nothing else. Once he knew the time of the meeting, he and preferably somebody else as well would go to the house during the night so they would be there on hand, invisible, in case Wallander needed help.

  Sten Widen listened, expressionless. When Svedberg had finished, he got up and left the room. Svedberg wondered if he had gone to the bathroom, perhaps. But when Sten Widen reappeared, he had a rifle in his hand.

  “We’d better try and help him,” he said abruptly.

  He sat down to examine the rifle. Svedberg put his pistol on the table to show that he was armed as well. Sten Widen made a face.

  “Not much to go hunting a desperate madman with,” he said.

  “Can you leave the horses?” asked Svedberg.

  “Ulrika sleeps here,” he said. “One of the girls who assist me.”

  Svedberg felt hesitant in Sten Widen’s presence. His taciturnity and odd personality made it hard for Svedberg to relax. But he was glad he would not be on his own.

  Svedberg went home at three in the afternoon. They agreed he would be in touch as soon as he had spoken to Wallander. On the way to Ystad he bought the evening papers that had just arrived. He sat in the car leafing through them. Konovalenko and Wallander were still big news, but they had already been relegated to the inside pages.

  Svedberg’s attention was suddenly caught by some headlines. The headlines he had been dreading more than anything else.

  And alongside them a photo of Wallander’s daughter.

  He called Wallander at twenty past eight.

  Konovalenko had made contact.

  “I know you won’t want to tell me what’s going to happen,” said Svedberg. “But at least tell me when.”

  Wallander hesitated before replying.

  “Seven o’clock tomorrow morning,” he said.

  “Not at the house, though,” said Svedberg.

  “No,” said Wallander. “Somewhere else. But no more questions now.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “He’s promised to release my daughter. That’s all I know.”

  You know all right, thought Svedberg. You know he’ll try to kill you.

  “Be careful, Kurt,” he said.

  “Sure,” said Wallander, and hung up.

  Svedberg was certain now the meeting would take place at the house by the quarry. Wallander’s reply had come a little bit too readily. He sat quite still.

  Then he called Sten Widen. They agreed to meet at Svedberg’s place at midnight, then drive out to Tomelilla.

  They drank a cup of coffee in Svedberg’s kitchen.

  It was still raining outside.

  They set out at a quarter to two in the morning.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The man outside her house in Bezuidenhout Park had come back again. It was the third morning in succession Miranda had seen him standing on the other side of the street, motionless, waiting. She could see him through the thin drapes in the living room window. He was white, dressed in a suit and tie, and looked like a lost soul in this world of hers. She had noticed him early in the morning, not long after Matilda l
eft for school. She reacted immediately, for people very rarely used her street. Every morning the men living in the detached houses drove off in their cars to the center of Johannesburg. Later on the womenfolk would set out in their own cars to do the shopping, go to the beauty parlor, or simply to get away. Bezuidenhout was the haunt of frustrated and restless members of the white middle class. The ones who could not quite make it into the very top white echelons. Miranda knew many of these people were thinking about emigrating. It had occurred to her that yet another fundamental truth was inevitably about to be revealed. For these people South Africa was not the natural fatherland where soil and blood had run in the same veins and furrows. Even if they had been born here, they did not hesitate to start thinking about running away as soon as de Klerk made his speech to the nation that February. Nelson Mandela had been released from prison, and a new age was dawning. A new age that might perhaps see other blacks as well as Miranda living in Bezuidenhout.

  But the man in the street was a stranger. He did not belong there, and Miranda wondered what he was after. Anyone standing still on a street at dawn must be looking for something, something lost or dreamed about. She had stood behind the thin curtains for a long time, watching him; in the end she concluded it was her house he was keeping under observation. At first that scared her. Was he from some unknown authority, one of those incomprehensible supervisory organizations that were still governing the lives of blacks in South Africa? She had expected him to announce his presence, to ring the doorbell. But the longer he stood there, motionless, the more she began to doubt that. Besides, he was not carrying a briefcase. Miranda was used to white South Africa always addressing blacks through the medium of dogs, police, swinging batons and armored cars, or papers. But he had no briefcase, and his hands were empty.

  The first morning Miranda kept returning to the window to check if he was still there. She thought of him as a sort of statue no one was sure where to place, or that nobody wanted. By shortly before nine, the street was empty. But the next day he was back again, in the same place, staring straight at her window. She had a nasty suspicion he might be there because of Matilda. He could be from the secret police; in the background, invisible to her eyes, there could be cars waiting, full of uniformed men. But something about his behavior made her hesitate. That was when she first had the idea he might be standing there precisely for her to see him, and realize he was not dangerous. He was not a threat, but was giving her time to get used to him.

  Now it was the third morning, Wednesday, May 20, and he was there again. Suddenly he looked around, then crossed the street, opened her gate and walked along the path to her front door. She was still behind the drapes when the bell rang. That particular morning Matilda had not gone to school. She had a headache and a temperature when she woke up, possibly malaria, and now she was asleep in her room. Miranda carefully closed her bedroom door before going to answer the front door. He had only rung once. He knew somebody was at home, and it seemed he was also sure somebody would answer.

  He’s young, thought Miranda when she confronted him in the doorway.

  The man’s voice was clear when he spoke.

  “Miranda Nkoyi? I wonder if I might come in for a moment? I promise not to disturb you for long.”

  Alarm bells were ringing somewhere inside her. But she let him in even so, showed him into the living room and invited him to take a seat.

  As usual, Georg Scheepers felt insecure when he was alone with a black woman. It did not happen often in his life. Mostly it would be one of the black secretaries that had appeared in the prosecutor’s office when the race laws were relaxed recently. This was in fact the first time he had ever sat with a black woman in her own home.

  He had the recurrent feeling that black people despised him. He was always looking for traces of enmity. The vague feeling of guilt was never so clear as when he was alone with a black. He could sense his feeling of helplessness growing, now that he was sitting opposite a black woman. It might have been different with a man. As a white man he normally had the upper hand. But now he had lost that advantage, and his chair sank beneath him until he felt like he was sitting on the floor.

  He had spent the last few days and previous weekend trying to delve as far as possible into Jan Kleyn’s secret. He knew now that Jan Kleyn was always visiting this house in Bezuidenhout. It was something that had been going on for many years, ever since Jan Kleyn moved to Johannesburg after graduating from the university. With the assistance of Wervey and some of his own contacts, he had also managed to get around the bank confidentiality regulations, and knew Jan Kleyn transferred a large sum of money to Miranda Nkoyi every month.

  The secret had opened up before his very eyes. Jan Kleyn, one of the most respected members of BOSS, an Afrikaner who carried his high esteem with pride, lived in secret with a black woman. For her sake he was prepared to take the greatest of risks. If President de Klerk was considered a traitor, Jan Kleyn was another.

  But Scheepers had the impression he was only just scraping the surface of the secret, and decided to visit the woman. He would not explain who he was, and it was possible she might never tell Jan Kleyn he had been there, the next time her lover came to visit. If she did, he would soon have identified the visitor as Georg Scheepers. But he would not be sure why; he would be afraid that his secret had been exposed and that Scheepers would have a hold over Jan Kleyn in the future. Of course, there was a risk that Jan Kleyn would decide to kill him. But Scheepers believed that he had insured himself against that possibility as well. He would not leave the house until Miranda understood quite clearly that several other people were aware of Jan Kleyn’s secret life outside the closed world of the intelligence service.

  She looked at him, looked through him. She was very beautiful. Her beauty had survived; it survived everything, subjugation, compulsion, pain, as long as the spirit of resistance was there. Ugliness, stunted growth, degeneration, all those things followed in the wake of resignation.

  He forced himself to tell her how things stood. That the man who paid her visits, paid for her house, and was presumably her lover, was a man under grave suspicion of conspiracy against the state and the lives of individuals. As he spoke he got the impression she knew some of what he was telling her, but that some parts were new to her. At the same time he had a strange feeling that she was somehow relieved, as if she had been expecting, or even fearing, something different. He immediately started wondering what that could be. He suspected it had something to do with the secret, the elusive impression that there was yet another secret door waiting to be opened.

  “I need to know,” he said. “I really don’t have any questions. You shouldn’t think either that I’m asking you to give testify against your own husband. But what is as stake is very big. A threat to the whole country. So big I can’t even tell you who I am.”

  “But you are his enemy,” she said. “When the herd senses danger, some animals run off on their own. And they are doomed. Is that how it is?”

  “Maybe,” said Scheepers. “It may be.”

  He was sitting with his back to the window. Just when Miranda was talking about the animals and the herd, he detected the slightest of movements at the door directly behind her. It was like someone had started to turn the handle but then had a change of heart. It dawned on him he had not seen the young woman leave the house that morning. The young woman who must be Miranda’s daughter.

  It was one of the strange circumstances he had discovered while doing his research these last few days. Miranda Nkoyi was registered as the single housekeeper for a man named Sidney Houston, who spent most of his time on his cattle ranch miles away in the vast plains east of Harare. Scheepers had no difficulty in seeing through this business of the absentee rancher, especially when he found out that Jan Kleyn and Houston had studied together at university. But the other woman, Miranda’s daughter? She did not exist. And now here she was, standing behind a door, listening to their conversation.

  H
e was overwhelmed by the thought. Afterwards, he would see his prejudices had misled him, the invisible racial barriers that organized his life. He suddenly realized who the listening girl was. Jan Kleyn’s big and well-preserved secret had been exposed. It was like a fortress finally giving way under siege. It had been possible to conceal the truth for so long because it was quite simply unthinkable. Jan Kleyn, the star of the intelligence service, the ruthless Afrikaner fighting for his rights, had a daughter with a black woman. A daughter he presumably loved above all else. Perhaps he imagined that Nelson Mandela would have to die so that his daughter could continue to live and be refined by her proximity to the whites of this country. As far as Scheepers was concerned, this hypocrisy deserved nothing more than scorn. He felt that all his own resistance had now been broken down. At the same time he thought he could understand the enormity of the task President de Klerk and Nelson Mandela had taken upon themselves. How could they possibly create a feeling of kinship among peoples if everybody regarded everybody else as traitors?

  Miranda did not take her eyes off him. He could not imagine what she was thinking, but he could see she was upset.

  He let his gaze wander, first to her face and then to a photograph of the girl, standing on the mantelpiece.

  “Your daughter,” he said. “Jan Kleyn’s daughter.”

  “Matilda.”

  Scheepers recalled what he had read about Miranda’s past.

  “Like your mother.”

  “Like my mother.”

  “Do you love your husband?”

  “He’s not my husband. He’s her father.”

  “What about her?”

  “She hates him.”

  “At this very moment she’s standing behind her door, listening to our conversation.”

  “She’s sick. She has a fever.”

  “But she’s listening even so.”

  “Why shouldn’t she listen?”

  Scheepers nodded. He understood.

  “I need to know,” he said. “Think carefully. The slightest little thing might help us to find the men who are plotting to throw our country into chaos. Before it’s too late.”