Sidetracked

by Unknown

  “Who is this Logård?” Svedberg asked.

  “That’s what we have to find out. Is Louise Fredman still missing?”

  “Yes.”

  Wallander felt the need to think. What had seemed so clear in his mind a while before was no longer making sense.

  “I’ll be in touch later,” he said. “But you’ll have to pass all of this on to the investigative team.”

  “Ludwigsson and Hamrén have found an interesting witness at Sturup,” Svedberg said. “A night watchman. He saw a man on a moped. The timetable fits.”

  “A moped?”

  “Yep.”

  “You don’t think our killer is riding around on a moped, do you? Those are for children, for God’s sake.”

  Wallander felt himself starting to lose his cool. He didn’t want to, least of all at Svedberg. He said goodbye quickly and hung up.

  Sjösten looked up at him from the stretcher.

  Wallander smiled. “It’s going to be fine,” he said.

  “It was like getting kicked by a horse,” moaned Sjösten. “Twice.”

  “Don’t talk,” said Wallander. “We’ll be at the hospital soon.”

  The night of 7 July was one of the most chaotic Wallander had ever experienced. There was an air of unreality about everything that happened.

  He would never forget it. Sjösten was admitted to hospital, and the doctors confirmed that his life was not in danger. Wallander was driven to the station in a squad car.

  Sergeant Birgersson had proven to be a good organiser, and he’d understood everything Wallander had said at the farmhouse. He had the presence of mind to establish an area past which all the reporters who had started gathering weren’t permitted. Inside, where the actual police were working, no reporters were allowed.

  It was 10 p.m. when Wallander arrived from the hospital. Someone had lent him a clean shirt and pair of trousers. They were so tight around the waist that he couldn’t zip them up. Birgersson, noticing the problem, called the owners of Helsingborg’s most elegant tailor and put Wallander on the line. It was a strange experience to stand in the middle of the chaos and try to remember his waist size, but in an astonishingly swift time, several pairs of trousers were delivered to the station, and one of them fitted.

  Höglund, Svedberg, Ludwigsson and Hamrén had already arrived and been briefed on the work that was under way. There was no sighting of the security company’s car yet. Interviews were being conducted in different rooms. The Spanish-speaking girls had each been supplied with an interpreter. Höglund was talking to one of them, while three female officers from Helsingborg took care of the others. The guards whose car had collided with the Mercedes had also been interviewed, while forensic technicians were busy cross-checking fingerprints. Finally, several officers were leaning over a number of computers, entering all the information that they had on Hans Logård. The activity was intense. Birgersson concentrated on keeping order so that their work stayed on track.

  When Wallander had been briefed, he took his colleagues from Ystad into a room and closed the door. He had obtained Birgersson’s approval to do so. Birgersson was an exceptional policeman who performed his job impeccably, and didn’t seem to suffer from the jealousy and rivalry that so often degraded the quality of police work. He was interested only in catching the man who had shot Sjösten, working out exactly what had happened and who the killer was.

  Wallander told his version of events, but what he wanted to resolve was the reason for his unease. Too many things didn’t add up. The man who had shot Sjösten, was he really the same man who had assumed the role of a lone warrior? It was difficult to believe. He would have to do his thinking out loud, with all of them together and just one thin door separating them from the frenzied investigative work. Wallander wanted his colleagues to step aside – and Sjösten would have been there too if he wasn’t in hospital – so that they could serve as a kind of counterweight to the work being done. Wallander looked around and wondered why Ekholm wasn’t there.

  “He left for Stockholm this morning,” Svedberg said.

  “Just when we need him most,” Wallander said, dismayed.

  “He’s supposed to be back tomorrow morning,” Höglund said. “I think one of his children was hit by a car. Nothing serious. But even so . . .”

  Wallander nodded. The phone rang. It was Hansson for Wallander.

  “Baiba Liepa has called several times from Riga,” he said. “She wants you to call her right away.”

  “I can’t right now,” said Wallander. “Explain to her if she calls again.”

  “If I understood her correctly, you’re supposed to meet her at Kastrup on Saturday. To go on a holiday together. How were you planning to pull that off?”

  “Not now,” Wallander said. “I’ll call you later.”

  No-one except Höglund seemed to notice that the conversation with Hansson was over a personal matter. Wallander caught her eye. She smiled, but didn’t say a word.

  “Let’s continue,” he said. “We’re searching for a man who shot at both Sjösten and me. We find some girls locked up inside a farmhouse in the countryside near Bjuv. We can assume that Dolores María Santana once came from such a group, passing through Sweden on the way to brothels and the devil knows what else in other parts of Europe. Girls lured here by people associated with Liljegren. In particular, a man named Hans Logård, if that’s his real name. We think he was the one who shot at us, but we aren’t sure. We don’t have a picture of him. Maybe the guards can give us a usable description, but they’re pretty shaken up. They may have seen nothing but his gun. Now we’re hunting for him. But are we actually tracking our killer? The one who killed Wetterstedt, Carlman, Fredman and Liljegren? I’m doubtful. We must catch this man as soon as possible. In the meantime, I think we have to keep working as if this were simply one event on the periphery of the major investigation. I’m just as interested in what has happened to Louise Fredman. And what was discovered at Sturup. But first, of course, I’d like to hear if you have any reactions to my view of the case.”

  The room was silent, then Hamrén spoke up. “Looking from outside, and not needing to be afraid of causing offence, the whole thing seems like a problem in approach. The police have a tendency to focus on one thing at a time, while the offenders they’re hunting are thinking about ten.”

  Wallander listened approvingly, though he wasn’t sure Hamrén meant what he was saying.

  “Louise Fredman disappeared without a trace,” said Höglund. “She had a visitor. She followed the visitor out. The name written in the visitors’ book was illegible. Because there were only summer temps working, the normal system had almost fallen apart.”

  “Someone must have seen the person who came to get her,” Wallander said.

  “Someone did,” Höglund said. “An assistant nurse named Sara Pettersson.”

  “Did anyone talk to her?”

  “She’s left on holiday.”

  “Where to?”

  “She’s bought an Interrail card. She could be anywhere.”

  “Damn!”

  “We can trace her through Interpol,” Ludwigsson said. “That’ll probably work.”

  “Yes,” said Wallander. “I think we should do that. And this time we won’t wait. I want someone to contact Åkeson about it tonight.”

  “This is Malmö’s jurisdiction,” Svedberg pointed out.

  “I don’t give a shit whose jurisdiction we’re in,” Wallander said. “Do it. It’ll have to be Åkeson’s headache.”

  Höglund said she would get hold of him. Wallander turned to Ludwigsson and Hamrén.

  “I heard rumours about a moped,” he said. “A witness who saw something at the airport.”

  “That’s right,” Ludwigsson said. “The timing fits. A moped drove off towards the E65 on the night in question.”

  “Why is that of interest?”

  “Because the night watchman is sure that the moped was driven off just about the same time Björn Fredman’s
van arrived.”

  Wallander recognised the significance of this.

  “We’re talking about a time of night when the airport is closed,” Ludwigsson went on. “Nothing’s happening. No taxis, no traffic. Everything is quiet. A van comes up and stops in the car park. Then a moped drives off.”

  The room grew still. If there were magic moments in a complex criminal investigation, this was definitely one of them.

  “A man on a moped,” Svedberg said. “Can this be right?”

  “Is there a description?” Höglund asked.

  “According to the watchman, the man was wearing a helmet that covered his whole head. He’s worked at Sturup for many years. That was the first time a moped left there at night.”

  “How can he be sure that he headed towards Malmö?”

  “He wasn’t. And I didn’t say that either.”

  Wallander held his breath. The voices of the others were far away, like the distant, unintelligible noise of the universe. He knew that now they were very, very close.

  CHAPTER 37

  Somewhere in the distance Hoover could hear thunder. He counted the seconds between the lightning and the thunder. The storm was passing far away. It wouldn’t come in over Malmö. He watched his sister sleeping on the mattress. He had wanted to offer her something better, but everything had happened so fast. The policeman whom he now hated, the cavalry colonel with the blue trousers, whom he’d christened “Perkins” and “the Man with the Great Curiosity” when he drummed his message to Geronimo, had demanded pictures of Louise. He had also threatened to visit her.

  Hoover had realised that he had to change his plans right away. He would pick up Louise even before the row of scalps and the last gift, the girl’s heart, were buried. That’s why he had only managed to take a mattress and a blanket down to the basement. He had planned to do something quite different. There was a big empty house in Limhamn. The woman who lived there alone went to Canada every summer to see her family. She had been his teacher and he sometimes ran errands for her, so he knew she was away. He had copied a key to her front door long ago. They could have lived in her building while they planned their future. But now Perkins had got in the way. Until he was dead, and that would be soon, they would have to settle for the mattress in the basement.

  She was asleep. He had taken medicine from a cabinet when he went to get her. He had gone there without painting his face, but he had an axe and some knives with him, in case anyone tried to stop him. It had been strangely quiet at the hospital, with almost no-one around. Everything went more smoothly than he could have imagined. Louise hadn’t recognised him at first, but when she’d heard his voice she put up no resistance. He had brought some clothes for her. They walked across the hospital grounds and then took a taxi, without any problem. She didn’t say a word, never questioning the bare mattress, and she fell asleep almost at once. He had lain down and slept a while beside her. They were closer to the future than ever before. The power from the scalps had already started working. She was on her way back to life again. Soon everything would be changed.

  He looked at her. It was evening, past 10 p.m. He had made his decision. At dawn he would return to Ystad for the last time.

  In Helsingborg a great crowd of reporters besieged Birgersson’s outer perimeter. The chief of police was there. At Wallander’s stubborn insistence, Interpol was trying to trace Sara Pettersson. They had contacted the girl’s parents and tried to put together a possible itinerary. It was a hectic night at the station.

  Back in Ystad, Hansson and Martinsson were handling the incoming calls. They sent over materials when Wallander needed them. Åkeson was at home but was willing to be reached at any time.

  Although it was late, Wallander sent Höglund to Malmö to talk to the Fredman family. He wanted to make sure they weren’t the ones who had taken Louise from the hospital. He would rather have gone there himself, but he couldn’t be in two places at once. She had left at 10.30 p.m., after Wallander had phoned Fredman’s widow. He estimated she’d be back by 1 a.m.

  “Who’s taking care of the children while you’re away?” he’d asked.

  “Do you remember my neighbour who has children of her own?” she asked. “Without her I couldn’t do this job.”

  Wallander called home. Linda was there. He explained as best he could what had happened. He didn’t know when he’d be home, maybe sometime that night, maybe not until dawn.

  “Will you get here before I leave?” she asked.

  “Leave?”

  “Did you forget I’m going to Gotland? Kajsa and I. And you’re going to Skagen.”

  “Of course I didn’t forget,” he said.”

  “Did you talk to Baiba?”

  “Yes,” Wallander said, hoping she couldn’t hear that he was lying.

  He gave her the number in Helsingborg. Then he wondered whether he ought to call his father, but it was late. They were probably already in bed. He went to the command centre where Birgersson was directing the manhunt. Five hours had passed, and no-one had seen the stolen car. Birgersson agreed with Wallander that it could only mean that Logård, if it was him, had taken the car off the road.

  “He had two boats at his disposal,” Wallander said. “And a house outside Bjuv that we could barely locate. I’m sure he has other hideouts.”

  “We’ve got a man going over the boats,” said Birgersson.

  “And Hördestigen. I told them to look for other possibilities.”

  “Who is this damned Logård, anyway?” Wallander said.

  “They’ve started checking the prints,” Birgersson said. “If he’s ever had a run-in with the police, we’ll know very soon.”

  Wallander went over to where the four girls were being interviewed. It was a laborious process, since everything had to go through interpreters. Besides, the girls were terrified. Wallander had told the officers to explain that they weren’t accused of a crime. But he wondered how frightened they were. He thought about Dolores María Santana, about the worst fear he had ever seen. But now, at midnight, a picture had finally begun to take shape.

  The girls were all from the Dominican Republic. They had each separately left their villages and gone to the cities to look for work as domestic helps or factory workers. They had been contacted by men, all very friendly, and offered work in Europe. They had been shown pictures of beautiful houses by the Mediterranean, and were promised wages ten times what they could hope to earn at home. They’d all said yes.

  They were supplied with passports but were never allowed to keep them. First they were flown to Amsterdam – at least that was what they thought the city was called. Then they were driven to Denmark. A week ago they had been taken across to Sweden at night by boat. There were different men involved at each stage and their friendliness decreased as the girls travelled further from home. The fear had set in in earnest when they were locked up at the farm. They had been given food, and a man had explained in poor Spanish that they would soon be travelling the last stretch of the way. But by now they had begun to understand that nothing would happen as promised. The fear had turned to terror.

  Wallander asked the officers to question the girls carefully about the men they had met during the days at the farm. Was there more than one? Could they give a description of the boat that took them to Sweden? What did the captain look like? Was there a crew? He told them to take one of the girls down to the yacht club to see whether she recognised Logård’s launch. A lot of questions remained. Wallander needed an empty room where he could lock himself away and think.

  He was impatient for Höglund to return. And he was waiting for information on Logård. He tried to connect a moped at Sturup Airport, a man who took scalps and killed with an axe, and another who shot at people with a semi-automatic weapon. The myriad of details swam back and forth in his head. The headache he had felt coming earlier had arrived, and he tried unsuccessfully to fight it off with painkillers. It was very humid. There were thunderstorms over Denmark. In less than
48 hours he was supposed to be at Kastrup Airport.

  Wallander was standing by a window, looking out at the light summer night and thinking that the world had dissolved into chaos, when Birgersson came stamping down the hall, triumphantly wielding a piece of paper.

  “Do you know who Erik Sturesson is?” he asked.

  “No, who?”

  “Then do you know who Sture Eriksson is?”

  “No.”

  “They’re one and the same. And later he changed his name again. This time he didn’t settle for switching his first and last names. He took on a name with a more aristocratic ring to it. Hans Logård.”

  “Great,” he said. “What have we got?”

  “The prints we found at Hördestigen and in the boats are in our records, under Erik Sturesson and Sture Eriksson. But not Hans Logård. Erik Sturesson, if we start with him, since that was Hans Logård’s real name, is 47. Born in Skövde, father a career soldier, mother a housewife. The father was also an alcoholic. Both died in the late 1960s. Erik wound up in bad company, was first arrested at 14, downhill from there. He’s done time in Österåker, Kumla and Hall prisons. And a short stretch at Norrköping. He changed his name for the first time when he got out of Österåker.”

  “What type of crimes?”

  “From simple jobs to specialisation, you might say. Burglaries and con games at first. Occasionally assault. Then more serious crimes. Narcotics. The hard stuff. He seems to have worked for Turkish and Pakistani gangs. This is an overview, mind. We’ll have more information through in the night.”

  “We need a picture of him,” Wallander said. “And the fingerprints have to be cross-checked against the ones we found at Wetterstedt’s and Carlman’s. And the ones on Fredman too. Don’t forget the ones we got from the left eyelid.”

  “Nyberg is onto it,” Birgersson said. “But he seems so pissed off all the time.”

  “That’s just the way he is,” Wallander replied. “But he’s good at his job.”

  They sat down at a table overflowing with used plastic coffee cups. Telephones rang all around them. They erected an invisible wall around themselves, admitting only Svedberg.