Sidetracked

by Unknown

  “I’m not much for remembering dates,” said Heineman. “But it’s true that one of the cars used to leave the villa in the evening. And return the next morning.”

  “It’s crucial that we ascertain that it was on Thursdays,” Wallander said.

  “My wife and I have never observed the idiotic Swedish tradition of eating pea soup on Thursdays,” Heineman said. Wallander waited while Heineman tried to remember. Larsson sat looking at the ceiling, and Sjösten tapped his notebook lightly on one knee.

  “It’s possible,” said Heineman all of a sudden. “Perhaps I can piece together an answer. I recall definitely that my wife’s sister was here on one occasion last year when the car left on one of its regular trips. Why I’m so certain of this I don’t know. But I’m positive. She lives in Bonn and doesn’t visit very often.”

  “Why do you think it was a Thursday?” asked Wallander. “Did you write it down on the calendar?”

  “I’ve never had much use for calendars,” Heineman said with distaste. “In all my years at the foreign office I never wrote down a single meeting. But during 40 years of service I never missed one either, unlike people who did nothing but write notes on their calendars.”

  “Why Thursday?” Wallander repeated.

  “I don’t know whether it was a Thursday,” said Heineman. “But it was my wife’s sister’s name day. I know that for sure. Her name is Frida.”

  “What month?” asked Wallander.

  “February or March.”

  Wallander patted his jacket pocket. His pocket calendar didn’t have the previous year in it. Sjösten shook his head. Larsson couldn’t help.

  “Might there be an old calendar somewhere in the house?” asked Wallander.

  “It’s possible that one of the grandchildren’s Christmas calendars is still in the attic,” Heineman said. “My wife has the bad habit of saving a lot of old junk. I’m the opposite. Also a trait I picked up at the ministry. On the first day of each month I threw out everything that didn’t need to be saved from the previous one. My rule was, better to throw out too much than too little. I never missed a thing I had discarded.”

  Wallander turned to Larsson. “Call and find out what day is the name day for Frida,” he said. “And what day of the week it was in 1993.”

  “Who would know that?” Larsson asked.

  “Damn it,” said Sjösten. “Call the station. You have five minutes to get the answer.”

  “There’s a telephone in the hall,” said Heineman.

  Larsson left the room.

  “I must say that I appreciate it when clear orders are given,” Heineman said contentedly. “That ability seems to have been lost.”

  To fill in time, Sjösten asked where Heineman had been stationed abroad. It turned out that he had been posted to many places.

  “It got better towards the end,” he said. “But when I started my career, the people who were sent overseas to represent this country were often of a deplorably low calibre.”

  When Larsson reappeared, almost ten minutes had passed. He was holding a piece of paper.

  “Frida has her name day on February 17th,” he said. “In 1993 it fell on a Thursday.”

  Police work was just a matter of refusing to give up until a crucial detail was confirmed in writing, Wallander thought.

  He decided to ask Heineman the other questions he had for him later, but for appearances’ sake he raised a few more queries: whether Heineman had observed that anything could have indicated a “possible traffic in girls” as Wallander chose to describe it.

  “There were parties,” Heineman said stiffly. “From our top floor, seeing into some of the rooms was unavoidable. Of course there were women involved.”

  “Did you ever meet Åke Liljegren?”

  “Yes,” replied Heineman, “I met him once in Madrid. It was during one of my last years as an active member of the foreign office. He had requested introductions to some large Spanish construction companies. We knew quite well who Liljegren was, of course. His shell company scam was in full swing. We treated him as politely as we could, but he was not a pleasant man to deal with.”

  “Why not?”

  Heineman paused for a moment. “To put it bluntly, he was disagreeable. He treated everyone around him with undisguised contempt.”

  Wallander brought the interview to an end.

  “My colleagues will be contacting you again,” he said, getting to his feet.

  Heineman followed them to the gate. The police car opposite was still there. The house was dark. After saying goodbye to Heineman, Wallander went across the street. One of the officers in the car got out and saluted. Wallander raised his hand in response to the exaggerated deference.

  “Anything going on?” he asked.

  “All’s calm here. A few curiosity-seekers is about it.”

  Larsson dropped them off at the station. Wallander started by calling Hansson, who told him that Ludwigsson and Hamrén from the National Criminal Bureau had arrived. He had put them up at the Hotel Sekelgården.

  “They seem to be good men,” said Hansson. “Not at all as arrogant as I feared.”

  “Why would they have been arrogant?”

  “Stockholmers,” said Hansson. “You know how they are. Don’t you remember that prosecutor who filled in for Per? What was her name? Bodin?”

  “Brolin,” said Wallander. “But I don’t remember her.”

  In fact Wallander remembered quite well. Embarrassment crept over him when he recalled totally losing control when drunk and making a pass at her. It was one of the things he was most ashamed of. And it didn’t help that she had later spent the night with him in Copenhagen.

  “They’re going to start working the airport tomorrow,” said Hansson.

  Wallander told him what had happened at Heineman’s house.

  “So we’ve got a break,” said Hansson. “So you think that Liljegren sent a prostitute to Wetterstedt in Ystad once a week?”

  “I do.”

  “Could it have been going on with Carlman too?”

  “Maybe not in the same way. But I should think that Carlman’s and Liljegren’s circles have overlapped. We still don’t know where.”

  “And Fredman?”

  “He’s the exception. He doesn’t fit in anywhere. Least of all in Liljegren’s circles. Unless he was one of his enforcers. I’m going to go back to Malmö tomorrow to talk to his family. I especially want to meet his daughter.”

  “Åkeson told me about your conversation. You’ll have to tread carefully. We don’t want it to end as badly as your meeting with Erika Carlman, do we?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’ll get hold of Höglund and Svedberg tonight,” Hansson said. “You’ve finally found a real lead.”

  “Don’t forget Ludwigsson and Hamrén,” Wallander said. “They’re also part of the team now.”

  Wallander hung up. Sjösten had gone to get coffee. Wallander dialled his own number in Ystad. Linda answered at once.

  “I just got home,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “In Helsingborg. I’m staying here overnight.”

  “Has something happened?”

  “We went over to Helsingør and had dinner.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “We’re working.”

  “We are too,” Linda said. “We rehearsed the whole thing again tonight. We had an audience too.”

  “Who?”

  “A boy who asked if he could watch. He was standing outside on the street and said he’d heard we were working on a play. I think the people at the hot dog stand must have told him about it.”

  “So it wasn’t anyone you know?”

  “He was just a tourist here in town. He walked home with me afterwards.”

  Wallander felt a pang of jealousy.

  “Is he in the flat now?”

  “He walked me home to Mariagatan. Then he went home.”

  “I was only wondering.”

 
“He had a funny name. He said it was Hoover. But he was very nice. I think he liked what we were doing. He said he’d come back tomorrow if he had time.”

  “I’m sure he will,” Wallander said.

  Sjösten came in with two cups of coffee. Wallander asked him for his home number, which he gave to Linda.

  “My daughter,” he said, after he hung up. “The only child I have. She’s going to Visby shortly to take a theatre course.”

  “One’s children give life a glimmer of meaning,” Sjösten said, handing the coffee cup to Wallander.

  They went over the conversation with Heineman. Wallander could tell that Sjösten was not convinced that Wetterstedt’s connection to Liljegren meant they were closer to finding the killer.

  “Tomorrow I want you to find all the material about the traffic in girls that mentions Helsingborg. Why here, anyway? How did they get here? There must be an explanation. Besides, this vacuum surrounding Liljegren is unbelievable. I don’t get it.”

  “That stuff about the girls is mostly speculation,” said Sjösten. “We’ve never done an investigation of it. We simply haven’t had any reason to. One time Birgersson brought it up with one of the prosecutors, but he said we had more important things to do. He was right too.”

  “I still want you to check it out,” Wallander said. “Do a summary for me tomorrow. Fax it to me in Ystad as soon as you can.”

  It was late by the time they drove to Sjösten’s flat. Wallander knew he had to call Baiba. There was no escaping it. She would be packing. He couldn’t postpone telling her the news any longer.

  “I have to make a phone call to Latvia,” he said. “Just a couple of minutes.”

  Sjösten showed him where the phone was. Wallander waited until Sjösten had gone into the bathroom before he dialled the number. When it rang the first time he hung up. He had no idea what to say. He didn’t dare tell her. He would wait until tomorrow night and then make up a story: that the whole thing had come up suddenly and now he wanted her to come to Ystad instead. He couldn’t think of a better solution. At least for himself.

  They talked for another half hour over a glass of whisky. Sjösten made a call to check that Elisabeth Carlén was still under surveillance.

  “She’s asleep,” he said. “Maybe we ought to go to bed too.”

  Sjösten gave him sheets and Wallander made up a bed for himself in a room with children’s drawings on the walls. He turned off the light and was asleep immediately.

  He woke drenched in sweat. He must have had a nightmare, although he remembered nothing. He had only slept for a couple of hours. He wondered why he’d woken, and turned over to go back to sleep. But he was wide awake. Where the feeling came from he had no idea. He was gripped with panic.

  He had left Linda alone in Ystad. She shouldn’t be there by herself. He had to go home. Without another thought he got up, dressed, and quickly scribbled a note to Sjösten. He drove out of town. Perhaps he should call her. But what would he say? She’d just be frightened. He drove as fast as he could through the light summer night. He didn’t understand where the panic had come from. But it was definitely there, and it wouldn’t let go.

  It was light when he parked on Mariagatan. He unlocked the door carefully. The terror had not abated. Not until he pushed open Linda’s door gently, saw her head on the pillow and heard her breathing, did he calm down.

  He sat on the sofa. Now fear had been replaced by embarrassment. He wrote a note to her, which he left on the coffee table in case she got up, saying that his plans had changed and that he’d come home. He set the alarm clock for 5 a.m, knowing that Sjösten got up early to work on his boat. He had no idea how he was going to explain his departure in the middle of the night. He lay in bed and wondered what lay behind his panic, but he couldn’t find an answer. It took a long time before he fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 34

  When the doorbell rang he knew at once that it had to be Baiba. Oddly, he wasn’t nervous at all, even though it wasn’t going to be much fun explaining to her why he hadn’t told her that their holiday had to be postponed. Then he started and sat up in bed. Of course she wasn’t there. It was only the alarm clock ringing, the hands positioned like a gaping mouth at 5.03 a.m. The confusion passed, he put his hand over the alarm button and then sat motionless. Reality slowly dawned. The town was quiet. Few sounds other than birdsong penetrated his room. He couldn’t remember whether he’d dreamed about Baiba or not. The flight from the child’s room in Sjösten’s flat now seemed wildly irrational. Not like him at all.

  With a yawn he got up and went into the kitchen. On the table he found a note from Linda. I communicate with my daughter through a series of notes, he thought. When she makes one of her occasional stops in Ystad. He read over what she had written and realised that the dream about Baiba, waking up and believing that she was standing outside his door, had contained a warning. Linda’s note said that Baiba had called and would he call right away. Baiba’s irritation was recognisable from the note.

  He couldn’t call her, not now. He’d call her tonight, or maybe tomorrow. Or should he have Martinsson do it? He could give her the unfortunate news that the man she was intending to go to Skagen with, the man she assumed would be standing at Kastrup Airport to meet her, was up to his neck in a hunt for a maniac who smashed axes into the heads of his fellow human beings and then cut off their scalps. What he might tell Martinsson to say was true, and yet not true. It could never explain or excuse the fact that he was too weak to do the decent thing and call Baiba himself.

  He picked up the phone, not to call Baiba, but Sjösten in Helsingborg, to explain why he had left during the night. What could he possibly say? The truth was one option: sudden concern for his daughter, a concern all parents feel without being able to explain. But when Sjösten answered he said something quite different, that he’d forgotten about a meeting he had arranged with his father for early that morning. It was something that couldn’t be revealed by accident, since Sjösten and his father would never cross paths. They agreed to talk later, after Wallander had been to Malmö.

  Then everything seemed much easier. It wasn’t the first time in his life he had started his day with a bunch of white lies, evasions and self-deceptions. He took a shower, had some coffee, wrote a new note to Linda, and left the flat just after 6.30 a.m. Everything was quiet at the station. It was this early, lonely hour, when the weary graveyard shift was on its way home and it was still too early for the daytime staff, that Wallander took pleasure in. Life took on a special meaning in this solitude. He never understood why this was so, but he could remember the feeling from deep in his past, maybe as far back as 20 years.

  Rydberg, his old friend and mentor, had been the same way. Everyone has small but extremely personal sacred moments, Rydberg had told him on one of the few occasions when they had sat in either his or Wallander’s office and split a small bottle of whisky behind a locked door. No alcohol was permitted in the station. But sometimes they had something to celebrate. Or to grieve over, for that matter. Wallander sorely missed those brief and strangely philosophical times. They had been moments of friendship, of irreplaceable intimacy.

  Wallander read quickly through a stack of messages. In a memo he saw that Dolores María Santana’s body had been released for burial and now rested in a grave in the same cemetery as Rydberg. This brought him back to the investigation; he rolled up his sleeves as though going out into the world to do battle, and skimmed as fast as he could through the copies of investigative material his colleagues had prepared. There were papers from Nyberg, laboratory reports on which Nyberg had scrawled question marks and comments, and charts of the tip-offs that had come in from the public. Tyrén must be an extraordinarily zealous young man, Wallander thought, without being able to decide whether that meant he would be a good policeman in the field in the future, or whether he was already showing signs that he belonged somewhere in the hunting grounds of the bureaucracy. Wallander read quickly, but nothing of value escap
ed him. The most important thing seemed to be that they had established that Fredman had indeed been murdered on the dock below the side road to Charlottenlund.

  He pushed the stacks of papers aside and leaned back pensively in his chair. What do these men have in common? Fredman doesn’t fit the picture, but he belongs just the same. A former minister of justice, an art dealer, a criminal fraudster and a petty thief. They’re all murdered by the same killer, who takes their scalps. Wetterstedt, the first, is barely hidden, just shoved out of sight. Carlman, the second, is killed in the middle of a summer party in his own arbour. Fredman is kidnapped, taken to an out-of-the-way dock and then dumped in the middle of Ystad, as if being put on display. He lies in a pit with a tarpaulin over his head, like a statue waiting to be unveiled. Finally, the killer moves to Helsingborg and murders Liljegren. Almost immediately we pin down a connection between Wetterstedt and Liljegren. Now we need the links between the others. After we know what connected them, we have to discover who might have had reason to kill them. And why the scalps? Who is the lone warrior?

  Wallander sat for a long time thinking about Fredman and Liljegren. There was a similarity there. The kidnapping and the acid in the eyes on the one hand, and the head in the oven on the other. It hadn’t been enough to kill these two. Why? He took another step. The water got deeper around him. The bottom was slippery. Easy to lose his footing. There was a difference between Fredman and Liljegren, a very clear one. Fredman had hydrochloric acid poured into his eyes while he was alive. Liljegren was dead before he was stuck in the oven. Wallander tried to conjure up the killer again. Thin, in good condition, barefoot, insane. If he hunts evil men, Fredman must have been the worst. Then Liljegren. Carlman and Wetterstedt in about the same category.

  Wallander got up and went to the window. There was something about the sequence that bothered him. Fredman was the third. Why not the first? Or the last – at least so far? The root of evil, the first or the last to be punished, by a killer who was insane but canny and well-organised. The dock must have been chosen because it was handy. How many docks did he look at before he chose that one? Is this a man who is always near the sea? A well-behaved man; a fisherman, or someone in the coast guard? Or why not a member of the sea rescue service, which has the best bench for meditating on in Ystad? Someone who also managed to drive Fredman away, in his own van. Why did he go to all that trouble? Because it was his only way to get to him? They met somewhere. They knew each other. Peter Hjelm had been quite clear. Fredman travelled a lot and always had plenty of money afterwards. It was rumoured that he was an enforcer. But Wallander only knew of parts of Fredman’s life. They must try to bring the unknown past to light.