One Step Behind (1997) kw-7

by Henning Mankell

  "From his description, he hardly sounds like a mass murderer," she said.

  "Who does? My point is that we finally have someone whose activities we can trace to three of the victims' homes."

  "So what are you suggesting we do?"

  "I just came here to talk to you about it, nothing more."

  "We've talked to the regular postal workers, so we should talk to these substitutes too. Is that what you want?"

  "I don't think we need to bother with Lena Stivell."

  Hoglund looked down at her watch. "We could take a short walk," she said. "Get some fresh air. We could walk by Harmonigatan and ring Larstam's bell. It's not that late."

  "Even I hadn't thought that far," he said. "But I like your idea."

  It took them ten minutes to walk to Harmonigatan, which lay in the western part of the city. Number 18 was an older, three-storey block of flats. Larstam lived on the top floor. Wallander rang the bell and they waited. He rang it again.

  "I suppose he isn't home," she said. Wallander crossed the street and looked up at the flat. Two of the windows were lit. He went back and tried the front door. It was open, so they walked in. There was no elevator. They walked up the wide stairs. Wallander rang the doorbell, and they heard it ring inside. Nothing happened. He rang it three times. Hoglund bent down and looked through the post slot.

  "There's no sound," she said. "But the light's on."

  Wallander rang the bell one last time, then Hoglund banged on the door.

  "We'll have to try again tomorrow," she said.

  Wallander was struck by the feeling that something wasn't quite right. She noticed it immediately.

  "What are you thinking?"

  "I don't know. That something doesn't add up."

  "He's probably not home. The manager at the post office said that he's not working at the moment. He might have gone somewhere for a few days. That's a logical explanation."

  "You're probably right," Wallander said doubtfully.

  She started down the stairs. "Let's try again tomorrow," she said.

  "That is if we don't try to go in tonight anyway."

  She looked up at him with genuine surprise. "Are you suggesting that we break in? Is he even a suspect?"

  "It's just that we happen to be here now."

  She shook her head vigorously. "I can't let you do it. It goes against all the rules."

  Wallander shrugged. "You're right. We'll try again tomorrow."

  They returned to the station. During the walk they discussed how the workload should be distributed over the next couple of days. They parted in reception, and Wallander returned to his office to deal with some pressing paperwork.

  Shortly before 11 p.m. he dialled the number of the Stockholm restaurant where Linda worked. For once he succeeded in getting through, but Linda was very busy. They agreed that she would call him in the morning.

  "How is everything?" he asked. "Have you decided where you're going to go?"

  "Not yet. I will."

  The conversation gave him a burst of energy. He returned to his paperwork. At 11.30 p.m., Hoglund came to say she was leaving.

  "I'll try to be here before 8 a.m.," she said. "We can start by visiting Larstam again."

  "We'll fit it in when we have the time," Wallander said.

  Wallander waited for five minutes, then took a set of skeleton keys out of his desk drawer and left the office. He had already made up his mind while they were deliberating outside Larstam's door. If she didn't want to be party to breaking in, he would do it alone. There was something about Ake Larstam that bothered him.

  He walked back to Harmonigatan. It was just before midnight and there was a soft, easterly breeze. Wallander thought he could feel a touch of autumn chill in the air. Maybe the heat wave was nearing its end. He rang the bell from downstairs and noted that the same lights were on. When there was no answer, he pushed open the front door and walked up the stairs.

  He had a feeling of being back where it all began; of reliving the night when he and Martinsson had gone up to Svedberg's flat. He shuddered, then listened intently outside the door of the flat. Not a sound. He carefully opened the post slot. No sound, just a soft beam of light. He rang the doorbell and waited, then rang it again. After waiting for five minutes, he got out the skeleton keys, and looked closely at the door. It was fitted with the most elaborate set of locks he had ever seen in his life. Ake Larstam was clearly a person who valued his privacy. There was no way he would be able to open these locks with his skeleton keys. At the same time, the need to get inside seemed more pressing than ever. He hesitated for only a moment before getting out his phone and calling Nyberg.

  Nyberg answered in his usual irritated tone. Wallander didn't need to ask if he had been asleep.

  "I need your help," he said.

  "Don't tell me it's happened again," Nyberg groaned.

  "No one's dead," Wallander said. "But I need your help opening a door."

  "You don't need a technician for that."

  "In this case I do."

  Nyberg growled on the other end, but he was fully awake now. Wallander described the locks to him and gave him the address. Nyberg promised to come. Wallander walked quietly down the stairs and waited for him out on the street. He would need to explain to him what was going on, and Nyberg was probably going to protest loudly. With good reason.

  Wallander knew he was doing something he shouldn't.

  Nyberg arrived within ten minutes. Wallander guessed he was wearing pyjamas under his coat. As he had expected, Nyberg immediately issued a furious protest.

  "You can't just break into the homes of innocent people."

  "I need you to open the door," Wallander said. "Then you're free to go. I take full responsibility, and I won't tell a soul you've been here."

  Nyberg still expressed his reluctance, but when Wallander insisted he walked up the stairs and studied the locks carefully.

  "No one will believe you," he said. "There's no way you'd get past this on your own."

  Then he got to work. At just before 1 a.m., the door finally opened.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The first thing he noticed was the smell. After he stepped into the hall, he stood absolutely still to and listened for sounds within the flat. That's when it hit him. Nyberg stayed where he was on the other side of the door. The smell was overpowering.

  He realised that it was merely the smell of a place that was never aired. The air had actually gone bad. Wallander gestured for Nyberg to follow him in, which he did unwillingly. Wallander told him to wait there and walked into the rest of the flat on his own. There were three rooms and a little kitchen, all clean and orderly. The neatness contrasted strongly with the bad air.

  The door to one of the rooms differed from the others. It looked as if it had been specially made. When Wallander pushed it open he saw that it was extremely thick. It reminded him of a door to a recording studio, like the ones he had seen on the few occasions he'd done radio interviews. Wallander stepped inside. There was something strange about the room. There were no windows and the walls were reinforced. There was a bed and a lamp in the room, nothing else. The bed was made, but there was a faint imprint of a body on the bedspread. It took him a while to put it together: the room looked as it did because it had been soundproofed. His curiosity piqued, Wallander walked through the rest of the flat again, hoping to find a picture of the man who lived there. There were shelves full of porcelain figures, but not a single photograph. Wallander came to a halt in the living room, suddenly overtaken by the sense that he was violating someone's privacy.

  He had no business being here. He should leave at once. But something held him back. He returned to the hall where Nyberg was waiting.

  "Five more minutes," he said. "That's all."

  Nyberg didn't reply. Wallander returned to the flat, conducting a methodical search now. He knew what he was looking for. He went through the three cupboards one by one. In the first two he found only men's cloth
ing. He was about to close the door of the third when he caught sight of something. He reached into one end of the cupboard, where some clothes had been hung behind the others, and pulled out a hanger. It held a red dress. He started going through the drawers with equal concentration, feeling underneath the neatly folded piles of men's clothing. The sense that time was running out, that he had to hurry, spurred him on. Again, he came up lucky. Various articles of women's underclothing were hidden away. He returned to the third cupboard, crept around on hands and knees, and found some women's shoes. He was careful to return things as they had been. Nyberg came out into the living room as he worked.

  Wallander could see that he was furious. Or possibly afraid.

  "It's been almost 15 minutes," he hissed. "What the hell are we doing here?"

  Wallander didn't answer. Now he was looking around for a desk. There was an old secretary's desk in the corner. It was locked. He motioned for Nyberg to work on it, but Nyberg objected.

  Wallander interrupted his protests, giving him the shortest possible answer he could think of.

  "Louise lives here," he said. "You know, the woman in the picture we found in Svedberg's flat. The woman in Copenhagen. The one who doesn't really exist. She lives here."

  "You could have said that a little earlier," Nyberg said.

  "I didn't know for sure," Wallander said. "Not until this moment. Could you open that desk for me, without leaving any marks?"

  Nyberg unlocked it quickly with his tools. The lid folded down into a writing surface.

  It had often seemed to Wallander that police work was characterised by a series of expectations that were inevitably disappointed. What he had been expecting at this particular moment, he was later unable to determine, but it could not have been what actually awaited his gaze.

  There was a plastic folder full of newspaper clippings, all related to the murder investigation. There was a copy of Svedberg's obituary, which Wallander hadn't seen until then.

  Nyberg was waiting behind him. "You should take a look at this," Wallander said slowly. "It'll explain what we're doing in this flat."

  Nyberg took a few steps forward, flinched, then looked at Wallander.

  "We could leave," Wallander said, "and put the house under surveillance. Or we could call for reinforcements and start going through the flat right away."

  "He's killed eight people," Nyberg said. "That means he's armed and dangerous."

  It hadn't occurred to Wallander that they might be in danger. That made up his mind for him: they'd get reinforcements. Nyberg closed the desk. Wallander went into the kitchen, where he had seen some glasses on the counter. He wrapped one of them in paper and put it in his pocket. He was about to leave the kitchen when he noticed that the back door was slightly ajar. He felt a wave of fear so powerful it almost knocked him over. He thought someone was about to push the door open and shoot. But nothing happened. Gingerly he approached the back door and nudged it gently. The back stairs were empty. Nyberg was already on his way out of the flat by the front door. Wallander joined him.

  They listened carefully. Nothing. Nyberg softly closed the front door. He examined the threshold with a torch.

  "There are a few scratches," he said. "But they're not noticeable unless you're really looking for them."

  Wallander thought about the back door that had been slightly ajar. He decided to keep it to himself for now. When they got to the station, Wallander literally ran down the corridor to his office. The first person he called was Martinsson, since he wanted him there as soon as possible.

  During the next ten minutes he talked to a number of sleepy people who became surprisingly alert when he told them about his find. Martinsson was the first to arrive, then Hoglund and the others in rapid succession.

  "I'm lucky," she said. "My mother's visiting."

  "I went back to Harmonigatan," Wallander said. "I had the feeling it couldn't wait."

  By 2 a.m., everyone was assembled. Wallander looked around the table. He wondered briefly how Thurnberg had found the time to get such a perfect knot in his tie. Then he told them about his discovery.

  "What made you go over there in the middle of the night?" Hansson asked.

  "I'm usually sceptical of my intuition," Wallander said. "But this time I was right."

  He shook off his tiredness. Now he had to shape his investigative team into hunters, stalking their prey in ever-narrowing circles until he was caught.

  "We don't know where he is right now," he said. "But the back door was open. Given the nature of the locks on his front door, I think we can assume he heard us working on them and fled. In other words, he knows we're closing in on him."

  "That means he's not likely to return," Martinsson said.

  "We don't know that for sure. I'd like to put the place under surveillance. One car is fine, as long as there are several others close by."

  Wallander brought his palms down heavily on the table.

  "This man is extremely dangerous," he said. "I want everyone to be fully armed."

  Hansson and one of the reinforcements from Malmo volunteered to take the first watch. Nyberg said he would take them to the flat and see if there had been any change in the lights in the window.

  "I want to talk to Kjell Albinsson in Rydsgard," Wallander continued. "A car should be sent out to bring him in."

  No one remembered Albinsson. Wallander explained that he was the manager at the postal depot and moved on.

  "We need to check if Ake Larstam turns up in any police records," he said. "That's your responsibility, Martinsson. It may be the middle of the night to everyone else, but to us it's a normal working day. Feel free to call anyone you can think of who may have important information. Albinsson will give us some details about Larstam, but it may not be enough. This man dresses up as a woman and takes on other personas. His name may not even be Larstam. We have to look everywhere we can think of for clues. Everywhere."

  Wallander now took out the glass he had taken from the flat and placed it on the table.

  "If we're lucky, there are prints on this glass," he said. "And if I'm right, they're going to match the ones we found in Svedberg's flat, as well as the ones in the nature reserve."

  "What about Sundelius?" Hoglund asked. "Shouldn't we wake him up as well? He may know something about Larstam."

  Wallander nodded and glanced briefly at Thurnberg, who seemed to have no objections.

  "Why don't you do the honours, Ann-Britt? Don't let him off easily this time. He's been hiding something from us, I'm sure of it. Now we have no more time for secrets."

  Thurnberg nodded. "That sounds reasonable enough," he said. "But let me just ask this: is there any possibility that we're mistaken?"

  "No," Wallander said. "We're not mistaken."

  "I just want to make sure, since the only thing we really have on this man is a file of newspaper clippings."

  Wallander felt perfectly calm as he answered. "It's him. There's not a single doubt in my mind."

  They made the conference room their provisional headquarters. Wallander was still in his chair at the end of the table when they brought in Kjell Albinsson. He was very pale and seemed bewildered at having been woken up in the middle of the night and brought to the police station. Wallander asked someone to bring him a cup of coffee. In the background he saw Hoglund go by with an indignant Sundelius.

  "I want to explain the whole situation to you," he began. "We think Ake Larstam is the person who killed a police officer by the name of Svedberg a few weeks ago, the same man who was buried yesterday."

  Albinsson went whiter still. "That's just not possible."

  "There's more," Wallander said. "We're also convinced he killed three young people in Hagestad's nature reserve, as well as a young woman on an island in the Ostergot-land archipelago, and finally a couple of newly-weds out in Nybrostrand. What I'm telling you is that this person has killed eight people in a relatively short space of time, making him one of the worst mass murderers that Sweden
has ever had."

  Albinsson simply shook his head. "There has to be some mistake. It can't be Ake."

  "I wouldn't be talking with you now if I wasn't utterly certain. You must take my word for it, and make sure you answer my questions as thoroughly as you can. Do you understand?"

  "Yes."

  Thurnberg walked in and sat across the table from Albinsson without a word.

  "This is chief prosecutor Thurnberg," Wallander said. "The fact that he's here means you're not being charged with anything."

  Albinsson didn't seem to understand. "I'm not charged with anything?"

  "That's what I said. Now try to concentrate on my questions."

  Albinsson nodded. The realisation of where he was and why seemed slowly to be sinking in.

  "Ake Larstam lives at number 18, Harmonigatan," Wallander said. "We know he isn't there now, and we suspect he's fled. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"

  "I don't really know him outside work."

  "Does he have a summer house? Any close friends?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "You must know something."

  "There's some information about him in the employee records. But all that's kept at the depot."

  Wallander swore under his breath. He should have thought of that himself. "Then we'll get it," he said. "Now."

  He called in some patrol officers and sent them off with Albinsson. When he returned to his seat, Thurnberg was making notes on a pad.

  "How did you enter the flat in the first place?" he said.

  "I broke in," Wallander said. "Nyberg was present but the responsibility was wholly mine."

  "I hope you're right about Larstam. Otherwise this is going to look very bad."

  "I envy you that you should have time to think about such things right now."

  "You have to understand my position," Thurnberg said. "Sometimes people make mistakes."

  Wallander controlled his temper with some difficulty.

  "I don't want another murder on my hands," he said. "That's the bottom line. And Ake Larstam is the man we've been looking for."