Sidetracked

by Unknown

They left the boat and went back to the dock.

  “I want you to call me if Logård shows up,” Sjösten told the dock watchman.

  He gave him a card with his phone number on it.

  “But I shouldn’t let on that you’re looking for him, right?” the man asked, excitedly.

  Sjösten smiled.

  “Right in one,” he replied. “Pretend that everything’s normal. And then call me. No matter what time.”

  “There’s nobody here at night,” said the man.

  “Then we’ll have to hope he comes in the day.”

  “May I ask what he did?”

  “You can,” said Sjösten, “but you won’t get an answer.”

  “Should we take more men along?” Sjösten asked.

  “Not yet,” Wallander replied. “First we have to find his house and see if he’s home.”

  They drove towards Bjuv. They were in a part of Skåne that Wallander didn’t know. The weather had turned muggy. There would be a thunderstorm that evening.

  “When’s the last time it rained?” he asked.

  “Around Midsummer,” Sjösten said, after thinking for a bit. “And it didn’t rain much.”

  They had just reached the turn-off to Bjuv when Sjösten’s mobile phone rang. He slowed down and answered it.

  “It’s for you,” he said, handing it to Wallander.

  It was Ann-Britt Höglund. She got straight to the point. “Louise Fredman has escaped from the hospital.”

  It took a moment before Wallander grasped what she said.

  “Could you repeat that?”

  “Louise Fredman has escaped from the hospital.”

  “When?”

  “About an hour ago.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “The hospital contacted Åkeson. He called me.”

  Wallander thought for a moment.

  “How did it happen?”

  “Someone came and got her.”

  “Who?”

  “No-one saw it happen. Suddenly she was gone.”

  “God damn it to hell!”

  Sjösten hit the brakes.

  “I’ll call you back in a while,” Wallander said. “In the meantime, find out absolutely everything you can. Above all, who it was that picked her up.”

  “Louise Fredman has escaped from hospital,” he told Sjösten.

  “How?”

  Wallander gave it some thought before he replied.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But this has something to do with our killer. I’m sure of it.”

  “Should I go back?”

  “No. Let’s keep going. Now it’s more important than ever to get hold of Logård.”

  They drove into the village and stopped. Sjösten rolled down the window and asked the way to the street. They asked three people and got the same answer. Not one of them knew the address they were looking for.

  CHAPTER 36

  They were just on the point of giving up when they finally picked up the trail to Hans Logård and his address. Some scattered showers had started over Bjuv by that time. But the main thunderstorm passed by to the west.

  The address they had been looking for was “Hördestigen”. It had a Bjuv postal code, but they couldn’t find it. Wallander went into the post office himself to check it. Logård didn’t have a post office box either, at least not in Bjuv. Finally there was nothing to do but think Logård’s address was false. At that point, Wallander walked into the bakery and struck up a conversation with the two ladies behind the counter while he bought a bag of cinnamon rolls. One of them knew the answer. Hördestigen wasn’t a road. It was the name of a farm north of the village, a place that was hard to find if you didn’t know the way.

  “There’s a man living there named Hans Logård,” Wallander told them. “Do you know him?”

  The two women looked at each other as if searching a shared memory, then shook their heads in unison.

  “I had a distant cousin who lived at Hördestigen when I was a girl,” said one of the women. “When he died it was sold to a stranger. But Hördestigen is the name of the farm, I know that. It must have a different postal address, though.”

  Wallander asked her to draw him a map. She tore up a bread bag and drew the route on it for him. It was almost 6 p.m. They drove out of town, following the road to Höganäs. Wallander navigated with the bread bag. They reached an area where the farms thinned out. That’s where they took the first wrong turn. They ended up in an enchantingly beautiful beech forest, but they were in the wrong place.

  Wallander told Sjösten to turn around, and when they got back to the main road they started again. They took the next side road to the left, then to the right, and then left. The road ended in a field. Wallander swore to himself, got out of the car, and looked around for a church spire the ladies had told him about. Out there in the field he felt like someone floating out to sea, searching for a light-house to navigate by. He found the church spire and then understood, after a conference with the bread bag, why they had got lost. Sjösten was directed back; they started again, and this time they found it.

  Hördestigen was an old farm, not unlike Arne Carlman’s, and it was in an isolated spot with no neighbours, surrounded by beech woods on two sides and gently sloping fields on the others. The road ended at the farmhouse. There was no letter box. His post must go elsewhere.

  “What can we expect?” asked Wallander.

  “You mean is he dangerous?”

  “He might be the one who killed Liljegren. Or all of them. We don’t know a thing about him.”

  Sjösten’s reply surprised Wallander.

  “There’s a shotgun in the boot. And ammunition. You take that. I’ve got my service revolver.”

  Sjösten reached under the seat.

  “Against regulations,” he said, smiling. “But if you had to follow all the regulations that exist, police work would have been forbidden long ago by the health and safety watchdogs.”

  “Forget the shotgun,” Wallander said. “Have you got a licence for the revolver?”

  “Of course I have a licence,” Sjösten said. “What do you think?”

  They got out of the car. Sjösten stuffed his revolver in his jacket pocket. They stood and listened. There was thunder in the distance. Around them it was quiet and extremely humid. No sign of a car or a living soul. The farm seemed abandoned. They walked up to the house, shaped like an L.

  “The third wing must have burned down,” Sjösten said. “Or else it was torn down. But it’s a nice house. Well preserved. Just like the boat.”

  Wallander went and knocked on the door. No answer. Then he banged on it hard. Nothing. He peered in through a window. Sjösten stood in the background with one hand in his jacket pocket. Wallander didn’t like being so close to a gun. They walked around the house. Still no sign of life. Wallander stopped, lost in thought.

  “There are stickers all over saying that the windows and doors are alarmed,” Sjösten said. “But it would take a hell of a long time for anyone to get here if it was set off. We’ll have time to go inside and get out of here before then.”

  “Something doesn’t fit here,” said Wallander, as if he hadn’t heard Sjösten.

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They went over towards the wing that served as a tool shed. The door was locked with a big padlock. Through the windows they could see all kinds of equipment and rubbish inside.

  “There’s nobody here,” said Sjösten flatly. “We’ll have to put the farm under surveillance.”

  Wallander looked around. Something was wrong, he was sure of it. He walked round the house again and looked in at several of the windows, listening. Sjösten followed. When they had gone round the house for a second time, Wallander stopped by some black rubbish bags next to the house. They were sloppily tied with string. Flies buzzed around them. He opened one of the sacks. Food remains, paper plates. He picked up a plastic bag from the Scan Deli between his thumb and
forefinger. Sjösten stood next to him, watching. He looked at the various expiry dates. He could smell the meat. They hadn’t been here many hours. Not in this heat. He opened the other sack. It too was filled with frozen food containers. It was a lot of food to eat in a few days.

  Sjösten stood next to Wallander looking at the sacks.

  “He must have had a party.”

  Wallander tried to think. The muggy heat was making the pressure build in his head. Soon he would have a headache, he could feel it.

  “We’re going in,” he said. “I want to look around inside the house. Isn’t there any way to get around the alarm?”

  “Maybe down the chimney.”

  “Then I guess we’ll have to take our chances.”

  “I’ve got a crowbar in the car,” Sjösten said.

  Wallander examined the front door of the house. He thought about the door he had broken down at his father’s studio in Löderup. He went to the back of the house with Sjösten carrying the crowbar. The door there seemed less solid. Wallander decided to prise it open. He jammed the crowbar between the hinges. He looked at Sjösten, who glanced at his watch.

  “Go,” he said.

  Wallander braced himself and pushed on the crowbar with all his strength. The hinges broke off, along with some chunks of wall plaster and tile. He jumped to one side so the door wouldn’t fall on him.

  The house looked even more like Carlman’s on the inside, if that were possible. Walls had been torn down, the space opened up. Modern furniture, newly laid hardwood floor. They listened again. Everything was quiet. Too quiet, Wallander thought. As if the house were holding its breath. Sjösten pointed to a telephone and fax machine on a table. The light on the answer machine was blinking. Wallander nodded. Sjösten pushed the play button. It crackled and clicked. Then there was a voice. Wallander saw Sjösten jump. A man’s voice asked Hans to call him as soon as possible. Then it was silent again. The tape stopped.

  “That was Liljegren,” Sjösten said, obviously shaken. “God damn.”

  “Then we know that message has been here for quite a while,” Wallander said.

  “So Logård hasn’t been here since then.”

  “Not necessarily,” Wallander said. “He might have listened to the message but not erased it. If the power goes off later, the light will start blinking again. They may have had a thunderstorm here. We don’t know.”

  They went through the house. A narrow hall led to the part of the house at the angle of the L. The door there was closed. Wallander suddenly raised his hand. Sjösten stopped short behind him. Wallander heard a sound. At first he couldn’t tell what it was. It sounded like a growling animal, then like a muttering. He looked at Sjösten, who’d heard it too. Then he tried the door. It was locked. The muttering had stopped.

  “What the hell is going on?” he whispered.

  “I don’t know,” said Wallander. “I can’t break this door open with the crowbar.”

  “We’re going to have the security company here in about 15 minutes.”

  Wallander thought hard. He didn’t know what was on the other side, except that it was at least one person, maybe more. He was feeling sick. He knew that he had to get the door open.

  “Give me your revolver,” he said.

  Sjösten took it out of his pocket.

  “Get back from the door,” Wallander shouted as loud as he could. “I’m going to shoot it open.”

  He looked at the lock, took a step back, cocked the gun, and fired. The blast was deafening. He shot again, then once more. The ricochets hit the far wall in the hall. He handed the revolver back to Sjösten and kicked open the door, his ears ringing.

  The room was large. It had no windows. There were a number of beds and a partition enclosing a toilet. A refrigerator, glasses, cups, some thermoses. Huddled together in a corner of the room, obviously terrified, were four young girls clutching one another. Two of them reminded Wallander of the girl he had seen from 20 metres away in Salomonsson’s rape field. For a brief moment, with his ears ringing, Wallander thought he could see it all before him, one event after another, how it all fitted together and how everything suddenly made sense. But in reality he saw nothing at all. There was just a feeling rushing straight through him, like a train going through a tunnel at high speed, leaving behind only a light shaking of the ground.

  “What the hell is going on?” Sjösten asked.

  “We have to get some back-up from Helsingborg,” Wallander said. “As fast as we can.”

  He knelt down, and Sjösten did the same. Wallander tried to talk to the frightened girls in English. But they didn’t seem to understand the language, or at least not the way he spoke it. Some of them couldn’t be much older than Dolores María Santana.

  “Do you know any Spanish?” he asked Sjösten. “I don’t know a word.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Do you know Spanish or not?”

  “I can’t speak Spanish! Shit! I know a few words. What do you want me to say?”

  “Anything! Just tell them to be calm.”

  “Should I say I’m a policeman?”

  “No! Whatever you do, don’t say that!”

  “Buenas dias,” Sjösten said hesitantly.

  “Smile,” Wallander said. “Can’t you see how scared they are?”

  “I’m doing the best I can,” complained Sjösten.

  “Say it again,” said Wallander. “Friendly this time.”

  “Buenas dias,” Sjösten repeated.

  One of the girls answered. Her voice was unsteady. Wallander felt as if he was now getting the answer he’d been looking for, ever since that day when the girl stood in the field and stared at him with her terrified eyes.

  At the same moment they heard a sound behind them in the house, perhaps a door opening. The girls heard it too, and huddled together again.

  “It must be the security guards,” Sjösten said. “We’d better go and meet them. Otherwise they’ll wonder what’s going on here and start making a fuss.”

  Wallander gestured to the girls to stay put. Then the two of them went back down the narrow hall, this time with Sjösten in the lead.

  It almost cost him his life. When they stepped into the open room, several shots rang out. They came in such rapid succession that they must have been fired from a semi-automatic weapon. The first bullet slammed into Sjösten’s left shoulder, smashing his collarbone. He was thrown backwards by the impact and rammed into Wallander. The second, third and maybe fourth shots landed somewhere above their heads.

  “Don’t shoot! Police!” Wallander shouted.

  Whoever was shooting fired off another burst. Sjösten was hit again, this time in the right ear. Wallander threw himself behind one of the walls. He pulled Sjösten with him, who screamed and passed out. Wallander found Sjösten’s revolver and fired it into the room. He knew there must only be two or three shots left.

  There was no answer. He waited with his heart pounding, revolver raised and ready to shoot. Then he heard the sound of a car starting. He let Sjösten go and crouching low, ran over to a window. He saw the back end of a black Mercedes disappearing down the farm road, vanishing into the beech woods. He went back to Sjösten, who was bleeding and unconscious. He found a pulse. It was fast. This was good. Better than too slow. Still holding the revolver in his hand, he picked up the phone and dialled 90–000.

  “Officer down,” he shouted when they answered. Then he managed to calm down, tell them who he was, what had happened, and where they were. He went back to Sjösten, who had regained consciousness.

  “It’ll be all right,” Wallander said, over and over again. “Help is on the way.”

  “What happened?” Sjösten asked.

  “Don’t talk,” Wallander said. “Everything will be fine.”

  He searched feverishly for wounds. He’d thought Sjösten had been hit by at least three bullets, finally realised that it was only two. He made two simple pressure bandages, wondering what had happen
ed to the security company and why it was taking so long for help to arrive. He also thought about the Mercedes and knew he wouldn’t rest until he caught the man who had shot Sjösten.

  Eventually he heard the sirens. He got up and went outside to meet the cars from Helsingborg. First came the ambulance, then Birgersson and two other squad cars and last the fire department. All of them were shocked when they saw Wallander. He hadn’t noticed how covered in blood he was. And he still had Sjösten’s revolver in his hand.

  “How is he?” Birgersson asked.

  “He’s inside. I think he’ll be OK.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “There are four girls locked up here,” said Wallander. “They’re probably some of the ones being taken through Helsingborg to brothels in southern Europe.”

  “Who shot at you?”

  “I never saw him. But I assume it was Logård. This house belongs to him.”

  “A Mercedes crashed into a car from the security company down by the main road,” Birgersson said. “No injuries, but the driver of the Mercedes stole the security guards’ car.”

  “Then they saw him,” said Wallander. “It must be him. The guards were on their way here. The alarm went off when we broke in.”

  “You broke in?”

  “Never mind that now. Put out the word on that security company car. And get the technicians out here right away. I want them to check for prints. They’ll have to be compared to the ones we found at the other murder scenes. Wetterstedt, Carlman, all of them.”

  Birgersson turned pale. The connection seemed to dawn on him for the first time.

  “You mean it was him?”

  “It could have been, but we don’t know that. Now get going. And don’t forget the girls. Take them all in. Treat them nicely. And find some Spanish interpreters.”

  “It’s amazing how much you know already,” Birgersson said.

  Wallander stared at him. “I don’t know a thing,” he said. “Now get moving.”

  Sjösten was carried out. Wallander went into town with him in the ambulance. One of the ambulance drivers gave him a towel. He wiped himself clean with it as best he could. Then he checked in with Ystad. It was just after 7 p.m. He got hold of Svedberg and explained what had happened.