Henning Mankell - The White Lioness

“Your apartment has been repaired already,” she said. “You can move back in.”

“That’s great,” he said.

He wondered if he ought to call Kalmar. But he was too tired. He left it until the next day.

They sat up late that night, talking. But Wallander said nothing about the feeling of melancholy weighing down on him. For the moment, that was something he wanted to keep to himself.

Sikosi Tsiki took the express bus from Kalmar to Stockholm. He followed Konovalenko’s emergency instructions, and got to Stockholm just after four in the afternoon. His flight to London would leave at seven o’clock. He got lost and could not find the airport bus, so he took a cab to Arlanda. The driver was suspicious of foreigners and demanded the fare in advance. He had handed over a thousand-kronor bill, then settled down in a corner of the back seat. Sikosi Tsiki had no idea every passport officer in Sweden was on the lookout for him. All he knew was that he should leave the country as a Swedish citizen, Leif Larson, a name he had very quickly learned to pronounce. He was completely calm, as he trusted Konovalenko. His cab had taken him over the bridge, and he could see something had happened. But he had no doubt Konovalenko would have disposed of the unknown man who had shown up in the yard that morning.

Sikosi Tsiki took his change when they got to Arlanda, shaking his head when asked if he wanted a receipt. He went into the departure hall, checked in, and stopped by a newspaper stand on the way to passport control to buy some English newspapers.

If he had not stopped by the newspaper stand, he would have been arrested at passport control. But during those very minutes he took choosing and paying for his newspapers, the passport officers changed shifts. One of the new ones went to the rest room. The other, a girl named Kerstin Anderson, happened to have arrived for work at Arlanda very late. There was something wrong with her car, and she turned up at the last moment. She was conscientious and ambitious and would normally have been early enough to read through all the notices that had arrived that day with lists of people to look out for, as well as the lists still current from previous days. As it was, she had no time to do so, and Sikosi Tsiki went through passport control with his Swedish passport and smiling face, no problem. The door closed behind him just as Kerstin Anderson’s colleague came back from the rest room.

“Is there anything special to look out for this evening?” asked Kerstin Anderson.

“A black South African,” replied her colleague.

She remembered the African who had just gone through. But he was Swedish. It was ten o’clock before the supervising officer came to check that all was in order.

“Don’t forget that African,” he said. “We have no idea what he’s called, or what passport he’ll be traveling on.”

Kerstin Anderson could feel a sudden tightening of her stomach.

“He was a South African, surely?” she said to her colleague.

“Presumably,” said the supervisor. “But that needn’t indicate what nationality he’ll claim when he leaves Sweden.”

She told him immediately what had happened a few hours earlier. After some hectic activity, they established that the man with the Swedish passport had taken a British Airways flight to London at seven o’clock.

The airplane had taken off on time. It had already landed in London, and the passengers had been through customs. Sikosi Tsiki had used his time in London to tear up his Swedish passport and flush it down a toilet. From now on he was a Zambian citizen, Richard Motombwane. Since he was in transit, he had not been through passport control with either his Swedish or his Zambian passport. Moreover, he had two separate tickets. As he had no check-in baggage, the girl at the desk in Sweden had only seen his ticket to London. At the transit desk in Heathrow he showed his other ticket, the one to Lusaka. He had flushed away the first ticket together with the remains of his Swedish passport.

At half past eleven the Zambia Airways DC-10 Nkowazi took off for Lusaka. Tsiki arrived there at half past six on Saturday morning. He took a cab into town and paid for a South African Airways ticket for the afternoon flight to Johannesburg. It had been booked some time ago. This time he used his own name. He returned to Lusaka Airport, checked in, and had lunch in the departure hall restaurant. He boarded at three, and shortly before five his plane landed at Jan Smuts Airport outside Johannesburg. He was met by Malan, who drove him straight to Hammanskraal. He showed Sikosi Tsiki the deposit receipt for the half-million rand constituting the next to last part of the payout. Then he left him on his own, saying he would be back the next day. Meanwhile, Tsiki was not to leave the house and walled-in yard. When Sikosi Tsiki was alone, he took a bath. He was tired, but contented. The journey had passed without any problems. The only thing worrying him was what had happened to Konovalenko. On the other hand, he was not especially curious about the fact that he would soon know who he was being paid so much to shoot. Could any individual person be worth so much money, he asked himself. But he did not bother to answer. Before midnight struck he had settled down between cool sheets and fallen asleep.

On the morning of Saturday, May 23, two things happened more or less simultaneously. Jan Kleyn was set free in Johannesburg. Nevertheless, Scheepers informed him he could expect to be called in for further questioning.

He stood by a window, watching Jan Kleyn and his lawyer, Kritzinger, making their way to their cars. Scheepers had asked for him to be watched around the clock. He took it for granted Jan Kleyn was expecting that, but thought it would at least force him to be passive.

He had not managed to extract any information at all from Jan Kleyn to clarify the circumstances surrounding the Committee. On the other hand, Scheepers now felt certain the real scene of the intended assassination was to be Durban on July 3, and not Cape Town on June 12. Every time he had come back to the notebook Jan Kleyn displayed signs of nervousness, and Scheepers thought it was impossible for anybody to fake reactions such as sweating and shaking hands.

He yawned. He would be glad when it was all over. At the same time he could see the chances of Wervey being pleased about his efforts had now increased.

He suddenly thought about the white lioness lying by the river in the moonlight.

He would soon have time to visit her again.

At about the same time as Jan Kleyn was being released in the southern hemisphere, Kurt Wallander was back at his desk in the Ystad police station. He had received the congratulations and good wishes of those colleagues who were at work early that Saturday morning. He smiled his lopsided smile and mumbled something inaudible in response. When he got to his office he closed the door behind him and took the telephone off the hook. His whole body felt like he had been raving drunk the night before, even though he had not touched a drop of alcohol. He had feelings of remorse. His hands were shaking. He was also sweating. It took him nearly ten minutes to gather sufficient strength to call the Kalmar police station. Blomstrand answered the phone, and passed on the disappointing news that the African they were looking for had probably slipped out of the country the night before, at Arlanda.

“How is that possible?” asked Wallander indignantly.

“Carelessness and bad luck,” said Blomstrand, explaining what had happened.

“Why the hell do we bother?” asked Wallander when Blomstrand had finished.

Wallander ended the conversation, but left the receiver off the hook. He opened the window and stood listening to a bird singing in a tree outside. It was going to be a hot day. It would soon be June 1. The whole month of May had passed by without him really noticing that the trees were now in leaf, flowers were starting to grow, and the scents of early summer were in the air.