Henning Mankell - Wallander's First Case

‘Maybe he wasn’t afraid,’ Wallander said. ‘He had maybe just decided never to be parted from his diamonds.’

Hemberg nodded.

‘You can draw one more conclusion. That someone knew that Halen had these diamonds.’

‘And that Halen knew that someone knew.’

Hemberg nodded, pleased.

‘You’re coming along,’ he said. ‘Even though it’s going very slowly.’

‘But this doesn’t explain the fire.’

‘You still have to ask yourself what is most important,’ Hemberg said. ‘Where is the centre? Where is the very kernel? The fire can be a distraction. Or the act of someone who is angry.’

‘Who?’

Hemberg shrugged.

‘It’ll be hard for us to find that out. Halen is dead. How he has managed to get a hold of these diamonds I don’t know. If I go to the public prosecutor with this he’ll laugh in my face.’

‘What happens to the diamonds?’

‘They go to the General Inheritance Fund. And we can stamp our papers and send in our report about Halen’s death to go as deep in the basement as possible.’

‘Does this mean that the fire won’t be investigated?’

‘Not very thoroughly, I suspect,’ Hemberg said. ‘There is no reason to.’

Hemberg walked over to a cabinet that stood against one wall. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked it. Then he nodded at Wallander to join him. He pointed at some folders with a ribbon around them that were lying to one side.

‘These are my constant companions,’ Hemberg said. ‘Three murder cases that are still neither solved nor old enough to have lapsed. I am not the one who is in charge of them. We review these cases once a year. Or if we receive additional information. These are not originals. They are copies. Sometimes I look at them. On occasion I dream about them. Most policemen aren’t like this. They do their job and when they go home they forget what they are working on. But then there is another type, like me. Who can never let go of an unsolved case. I even take these folders along with me on holiday. Three cases of murder. A nineteen-year-old girl. 1963. Ann-Louise Franzen. She was found strangled behind some bushes by the highway leading north out of town. Leonard Johansson, also 1963. Only seventeen years old. Someone had crushed his skull with a rock. We found him on the beach south of the city.’

‘I remember him,’ Wallander said. ‘Didn’t they suspect that it was a fight over a girl that had spiralled out of control?’

‘There was a fight over a girl,’ Hemberg said. ‘We interviewed the rival for many years. But we didn’t get him. And I don’t even think it was him.’

Hemberg pointed to the file on the bottom.

‘One more girl. Lena Moscho. Twenty years old. 1959. The same year that I came here to Malmo. Her hands had been cut off and buried along a road out to Svedala. It was a dog that found her. She had been raped. She lived with her parents out in Jagersro. An upright sort who was studying to become a physician, of all things. It was in April. She was heading out to buy a newspaper but never returned. It took us five months to find her.’

Hemberg shook his head.

‘You will discover what type you belong to,’ he said and closed the cabinet. ‘The ones who forget or the ones who don’t.’

‘I don’t even know if I measure up,’ Wallander said.

‘You want to, at least,’ Hemberg answered. ‘And that’s a good start.’

Hemberg had started to put on his coat. Wallander checked his watch and saw that it was five minutes to seven.

‘I have to go,’ he said.

‘I can give you a lift home,’ Hemberg said, ‘if you can hold your horses.’

‘I’m in a bit of a hurry,’ Wallander said.

Hemberg shrugged.

‘Now you know,’ he said. ‘Now you know what Halen had in his stomach.’

Wallander was lucky and managed to catch a taxi right outside. When he got to Rosengard it was nine minutes past seven. He hoped that Mona was running late. But when he read the note he had posted on the door he realised that this was not the case.

Is this how it’s going to be? she had written.

Wallander took down the note. The drawing pin fell onto the stairs. He didn’t bother to retrieve it. In the best-case scenario it would get stuck in Linnea Almquist’s shoe.

Is this how it’s going to be? Wallander understood Mona’s impatience. She did not have the same expectations for her professional life as he did. Her dreams about her own salon were not going to come true for a long time.

When he had gone into the apartment and sat down on the sofa he felt guilty. He should spend more time with Mona. Not simply expect her to be patient every time he was late. To try to call her was pointless. Right now she was driving that borrowed car to Helsingborg.

Suddenly there was an anxiety in him that everything was wrong. Had he really thought about what it would mean to live with Mona? To have a child with her?

He pushed the thoughts away. We’ll talk to each other in Skagen, he thought. Then we’ll have time. You can’t be too late on a beach.

He looked at the clock. Half past seven. He turned on the television. As usual a plane had crashed somewhere. Or was it just a train that had run off the rails? He walked into the kitchen and only half listened to the news. Looked in the fridge for a beer, but only found an opened soda. The desire for something stronger was suddenly very intense. The thought of going into town again and sitting in a bar seemed attractive. But he waved it away since he hardly had any money. Even though it was only the beginning of the month.

Instead he warmed the coffee that was in the pot and thought about Hemberg. Hemberg with his unsolved cases in a cupboard. Was he going to be like that? Or would he learn to switch off work when he came home? I’ll have to, for Mona’s sake, he thought. She’ll go crazy otherwise.

The key ring cut into the chair. He took it up and put it on the table without thinking about it. Then something came into his head, something that had to do with Halen.

The extra lock. That he had had installed only a short time ago. How to interpret that? It could be a sign of fear. And why had the door been ajar when Wallander found him?

There was too much that didn’t add up. Even though Hemberg had declared suicide to be the cause of death, doubt gnawed at Wallander.

He was becoming increasingly certain that there was something hidden in Halen’s death, something they had not even come close to. Suicide or not, there was something more.

Wallander located a pad of paper in a kitchen drawer and sat down to write out the points he was still puzzling over. There was the extra lock. The betting form. Why had the door been ajar? Who had been there that night looking for the diamonds? And why the fire?

Then he tried to remind himself what he had seen in the sailor scrapbooks. Rio de Janeiro, he recalled. But was that the name of a ship or the city? He remembered seeing Gothenburg and Bergen. Then he reminded himself that he had seen the name St Luis. Where was that? He stood up and walked around the room. At the very back of the wardrobe he found his old atlas from school. But suddenly he wasn’t sure of the spelling. Was it St Louis or St Luis? The United States or Brazil? As he looked down the list of names in the index he suddenly came to Sao Luis and was immediately sure that this had been the name.

He went through his list again. Do I see anything that I haven’t discovered? he thought. A connection, an explanation, or what Hemberg talked about, a centre?

He found nothing.

The coffee had grown cold. Impatiently he went back to the couch. Now there was one of those public television talk shows on again. This time a number of long-haired people were discussing the new English pop music. He turned it off and put the record player on instead. Immediately Linnea Almquist started to thump on the floor. Mostly he had the desire to turn the volume right up. Instead he turned it off.