Henning Mankell - Faceless Killers

“Yes?”

“I’m from the police. I’d like to have a word with you for a moment.”

Wallander scrutinized his face.

There was nothing unexpected about his reaction. He merely looked surprised. Quite naturally surprised.

“Why is that?” he asked.

Wallander looked around. “Is there someplace we can sit down?” he asked.

Erik Magnusson led the way to a corner with a coffee vending machine. There was a dirty wooden table and several rickety benches. Wallander fed two one-krona coins into the machine and got a cup of coffee. Erik Magnusson settled for a pinch of snuff.

“I’m from the police in Ystad,” he began. “I have a few questions for you regarding a brutal murder in a town called Lenarp. Maybe you read about it in the papers?”

“I think so. But what does that have to do with me?”

Wallander was beginning to wonder the same thing. The man named Erik Magnusson seemed completely unruffled by a visit from the police at his workplace.

“I have to ask you for the name of your father.”

The man frowned.

“My dad?” he said. “I don’t have any dad.”

“Everybody has a father.”

“Not one that I know about, at any rate.”

“How can that be?”

“Mom wasn’t married when I was born.”

“And she never told you who your father was?”

“No.”

“Did you ever ask her?”

“Of course I’ve asked her. I bugged her about it my whole childhood. Then I gave up.”

“What did she say when you asked her about it?”

Erik Magnusson stood up and pressed the button for a cup of coffee. “Why are you asking about my dad? Does he have something to do with the murder?”

“I’ll get to that in a minute,” said Wallander. “What did your mother say when you asked her about your father?”

“It varied.”

“It varied?”

“Sometimes she would say that she didn’t really know. Sometimes that it was a salesman she never saw again. Sometimes something else.”

“And you were satisfied with that?”

“What the hell was I supposed to do? If she won’t tell me, she won’t tell me.”

Wallander thought about the answers he was getting. Was it really possible to be so uninterested in who your father was?

“Do you get along well with your mother?” he asked.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Do you see each other often?”

“She calls me now and then. I drive over to Kristianstad once in a while. I got along better with my stepfather.”

Wallander gave a start. Göran Boman had said nothing about a stepfather.

“Is your mother remarried?”

“She lived with a man while I was growing up. They probably weren’t ever married. But I still called him my dad. Then they split up when I was about fifteen. I moved to Malmö a year later.”

“What’s his name?”

“ Was his name. He’s dead. He was killed in a car crash.”

“And you’re sure that he wasn’t your real father?”

“You’d have to look hard to find two people as unlike each other as we were.”

Wallander tried a different tack. “The man who was murdered at Lenarp was named Johannes Lövgren,” he said. “Isn’t it possible that he might have been your father?”

The man sitting across from Wallander gave him a look of surprise.

“How the hell would I know? You’ll have to ask my mother.”

“We’ve already done that. But she denies it.”

“So ask her again. I’d like to know who my father is. Murdered or not.”

Kurt Wallander believed him. He wrote down Erik Magnusson’s address and personal ID number and then stood up.

“You may hear from us again,” he said.

The man climbed back into the cab of the forklift.

“That’s fine with me,” he said. “Say hello to my mom if you see her.”

Wallander returned to Ystad. He parked near the square and headed down the pedestrian street to buy some gauze bandages at the pharmacy. The clerk gazed sympathetically at his battered face. He bought food for dinner in the supermarket on the square. On his way back to the car he changed his mind and retraced his steps to the state liquor store. There he bought a bottle of whiskey. Even though he couldn’t really afford it, he chose malt whiskey.

By four thirty Wallander was back at the station. Neither Rydberg nor Martinson was around. He went over to the prosecutor’s office. The girl at the reception desk smiled.

“She loved the flowers,” she said.

“Is she in her office?”

“She’s in district court until five o’clock.”

Wallander headed back. In the corridor he ran into Svedberg.

“How’s it going with Bergman?” asked Wallander.

“He’s still not talking,” said Svedberg. “But he’ll soften up eventually. The evidence is piling up. The crime lab technicians think they can connect the weapon to the crime.”

“What else have we got on this?”

“It looks as if both Ström and Bergman were active in various anti-immigrant groups. But we don’t know whether they were operating on their own or as entrepreneurs working for some organization.”

“In other words, everybody is perfectly happy?”

“I’d hardly say that. Björk’s talking about how he was so anxious to catch the murderer, but then it turned out to be a cop. I suspect they’re going to play down Bergman’s importance and dump it all on Valfrid Ström, who has nothing more to say about it. Personally, I think Bergman was just as involved in the whole thing.”

“I wonder whether Ström was the one who called me at home,” said Wallander. “I never heard him say enough to tell for sure.”

Svedberg gave him a searching look. “Which means?”

“That in the worst case, there are others who are prepared to take over the killing from Bergman and Ström.”

“I’ll tell Björk that we have to continue our patrols of the camps,” said Svedberg. “By the way, we’ve gotten a lot of tips indicating that it was a gang of kids who set the fire here in Ystad.”

“Don’t forget the old man who got a sack of turnips in the head,” said Wallander.

“How’s it going with Lenarp?”

Wallander hesitated with his answer. “I’m not really sure,” he said. “But we’re doing some serious work on it again.”

At ten minutes past five Martinson and Rydberg were in Wallander’s office. He thought that Rydberg still looked tired and worn-out. Martinson was in a bad mood.

“It’s a mystery how Lövgren got to Ystad and back again on Friday, January fifth,” he said. “I talked to the bus driver on that route. He said that Johannes and Maria used to ride with him whenever they went into town. Either together or separately. He was absolutely certain that Johannes Lövgren did not ride his bus any time after New Year’s. And no cab had a fare to Lenarp. According to Nyström, they took the bus when they had to go anywhere. And we know that Lövgren was tight-fisted.”

“They always drank coffee together,” said Wallander. “In the afternoon. The Nyströms must have noticed if Lövgren went off to Ystad or not.”

“That’s exactly what’s such a mystery,” said Martinson. “Both of them claim that he didn’t go into town that day. And yet we know that he went to two different banks between eleven thirty and one fifteen. He must have been away from home at least three or four hours that day.”

“Strange,” said Wallander. “You’ll have to keep working on it.”

Martinson referred to his notes. “At any rate, he doesn’t have any other safe-deposit boxes in town.”

“Good,” said Wallander. “At least we know that much.”

“But he might have one in Simrishamn,” Martinson objected. “Or Trelleborg. Or Malmö.”