Henning Mankell - Faceless Killers

“It’s obvious it was the money,” said Lars Herdin.

“What money?”

“All the money they had!”

“Could you clarify that a little?”

“The German money.”

Wallander looked at Hanson, who shrugged discreetly. Wallander interpreted that as meaning he had to be patient.

“I think we’re going to need a little more detail on this,” he said. “Do you think you could be more specific?”

“Lövgren and his father made money during the war,” said Herdin. “They secretly kept livestock on some forest pastures up in Småland. And they bought up worn-out old horses. Then they sold them on the black market to Germany. They made an obscene amount of money on the meat. And nobody ever caught them. Lövgren was both greedy and clever. He invested the money, and it’s been growing over the years.”

“You mean Lövgren’s father?”

“He died right after the war. I mean Lövgren himself.”

“So you’re telling me that the Lövgrens were wealthy?”

“Not the family. Just Lövgren. She didn’t know a thing about the money.”

“Would he have kept his fortune a secret from his own wife?”

Lars Herdin nodded. “Nobody has ever been as badly deceived as my sister.”

Wallander raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Maria Lövgren was my sister. She was killed because he had stashed away a fortune.”

Wallander heard the barely concealed bitterness. So maybe it was a hate murder, he thought.

“And this money was kept at home?”

“Only sometimes,” replied Herdin.

“Sometimes?”

“When he made his large withdrawals.”

“Could you try and give me a little more detail?”

Suddenly something seemed to spill over inside the man in the worn-out suit.

“Johannes Lövgren was a brute,” he said. “It’s better now that he’s gone. But that Maria had to die, I can never forgive that.”

Lars Herdin’s outburst came so suddenly that neither Hanson nor Wallander had time to react. Herdin grabbed a thick glass ashtray that was on the table near him and flung it full force against the wall, right next to Wallander’s head. Splinters of glass flew in every direction, and Wallander felt a shard strike his upper lip.

The silence after the outburst was deafening.

Hanson had sprung out of his chair and seemed ready to throw himself at the rangy Lars Herdin. But Wallander raised his hand to stop him, and Hanson sat back down.

“I beg your pardon,” said Herdin. “If you have a broom and dustpan I’ll clean up the glass. I’ll pay for it.”

“The cleaning women will take care of it,” said Wallander. “I think we should continue talking.”

Herdin now seemed totally calm.

“Johannes Lövgren was a beast,” he repeated. “He pretended to be like everybody else. But the only thing he thought about was the money he and his father had made off the war. He complained that everything was so expensive and the farmers were so poor. But he had his money, which kept on growing and growing.”

“And he kept this money in the bank?”

Herdin shrugged. “In the bank, in stocks and bonds, who knows what else.”

“Why did he keep the money at home sometimes?”

“Johannes Lövgren had a mistress,” said Herdin. “There was a woman in Kristianstad he had a child with in the fifties. Maria knew nothing about that either — the woman or the child. He probably spent more money on her every year than he gave Maria in her whole life.”

“How much money are we talking about?”

“Twenty-five, thirty thousand. Two or three times a year. He withdrew the money in cash. Then he would think up some excuse and go to Kristianstad.”

Wallander thought for a moment about what he had heard.

He tried to decide which questions were the most important. It would take hours to figure out all the details.

“What did they say at the bank?” he asked Hanson.

“If you don’t have all the search warrants in order, the bank usually doesn’t say anything,” said Hanson. “They wouldn’t let me look at his account balances. But I did get the answer to one question: Whether he had been to the bank recently.”

“And he had?”

Hanson nodded. “Last Thursday. Three days before someone slaughtered him.”

“Are you sure?”

“One of the tellers recognized him.”

“And he withdrew a large sum of money?”

“They wouldn’t say exactly. But the teller nodded when the bank director turned his back.”

“We’ll have to talk to the prosecutor after we write up this deposition,” said Wallander. “Then we can look into his assets and get an idea of the situation.”

“Blood money,” said Lars Herdin.

Wallander wondered for a moment whether he was going to start throwing things again.

“There are plenty of questions left,” he said. “But one is more important than all the others right now. How come you know about all this? You claim that Johannes Lövgren kept all this secret from his wife. So how do you know about it?”

Herdin didn’t answer the question. He stared mutely at the floor.

Wallander looked at Hanson, who shook his head.

“You really have to answer the question,” said Wallander.

“I don’t have to answer at all,” said Herdin. “I’m not the one who killed them. Would I murder my own sister?”

Wallander tried to approach the question from another angle. “How many people know about what you just told us?”

Herdin didn’t answer.

“Whatever you say won’t go beyond this room,” Wallander continued.

Herdin stared at the floor.

Wallander knew instinctively that he ought to wait.

“Would you get us some coffee?” he asked Hanson. “See if you can find some pastries too.”

Hanson vanished out the door.

Lars Herdin kept staring at the floor, and Wallander waited.

Hanson brought in the coffee, and Herdin ate a stale pastry.

Wallander thought it was time to ask the question again. “Sooner or later you’ll be forced to answer,” he said.

Herdin raised his head and looked him straight in the eye.

“When they got married I already had a feeling that there was somebody else behind Johannes Lövgren’s friendly and taciturn front. I thought there was something fishy about him. Maria was my little sister. I wanted the best for her. I was suspicious of Johannes Lövgren from the first time he started coming around and courting her at our parents’ house. It took me thirty years to figure out who he was. How I did it is my business.”

“Did you tell your sister what you found out?”

“Never. Not a word.”

“Did you tell anyone else? Your own wife?”

“I’m not married.”

Wallander looked at the man sitting in front of him. There was something hard and dogged about him. Like a man who had been brought up eating gravel.

“One last question for now,” said Wallander. “Now we know that Johannes Lövgren had plenty of money. Maybe he also had a large sum of money at home the night he was murdered. We’ll have to find that out. But who would have known about it? Besides you.”

Lars Herdin looked at him. Wallander suddenly noticed a glint of fear in his eyes.

“I didn’t know about it,” said Herdin.

Wallander nodded.

“We’ll stop here,” he said, shoving aside the pad on which he had been taking notes the whole time. “But we’re going to be needing your help again.”

“Can I go now?” said Herdin, getting up.

“You can go,” replied Wallander. “But don’t leave the area without talking to us first. And if you think of anything else, let’s hear from you.”

At the door Herdin stopped as if there was something more he wanted to say.