Henning Mankell - Faceless Killers

“Let’s concentrate on his trip to Ystad first,” said Wallander, turning to Rydberg.

“Lars Herdin stands by his story,” he said after glancing at his worn notebook. “By coincidence he ran into Lövgren and that woman in Kristianstad in the spring of 1979. And he claims that it was from an anonymous letter that he found out they had a child together.”

“Could he describe the woman?”

“Vaguely. In the worst case we could line up all the ladies and have him point out the right one. If she’s one of them, that is,” he added.

“You sound like you have some doubt.”

Rydberg closed his notebook with an irritable snap.

“I can’t get anything to fit,” he said. “You know that. Obviously we have to follow up the leads we have. But I’m not at all sure that we’re on the right track. What bothers me is that I can’t figure out any alternative path to take.”

Wallander told them about his meeting with Erik Magnusson.

“Why didn’t you ask him for an alibi for the night of the murder?” wondered Martinson in surprise when he was done.

Wallander felt himself starting to blush behind his black and blue marks.

It had slipped his mind.

But he didn’t tell them that.

“I decided to wait,” he said. “I wanted to have an excuse to visit him again.”

He could hear how lame that sounded. But neither Rydberg nor Martinson seemed to react to his explanation.

The conversation came to a halt. Each was wrapped up in his own thoughts.

Wallander wondered how many times he had found himself in exactly this same situation. When an investigation suddenly ceases to breathe. Like a horse that refuses to budge. Now they would be forced to tug and pull at the horse until it started to move.

“How should we continue?” asked Wallander at last, when the silence became too oppressive.

He answered his own question. “For your part, Martinson, it’s a matter of finding out how Lövgren could go to Ystad and back without anyone noticing. We have to figure that out as soon as possible.”

“There was a jar full of receipts in one of the kitchen cupboards,” said Rydberg. “He might have bought something in a shop on that Friday. Maybe some clerk would remember seeing him.”

“Or maybe he had a flying carpet,” said Martinson. “I’ll keep working on it.”

“His relatives,” said Wallander. “We have to go through all of them.”

He pulled out a list of names and addresses from the thick folder and handed it to Rydberg.

“The funeral is on Wednesday,” said Rydberg. “In Villie Church. I don’t care much for funerals. But I think I’ll go to this one.”

“I’m going back to Kristianstad tomorrow,” said Wallander. “Göran Boman was suspicious about Ellen Magnusson. He didn’t think she was telling the truth.”

It was a few minutes before six when they finished their meeting.

They decided to meet again on the following afternoon.

“If Näslund is feeling better, he can work on the stolen rental car,” said Wallander. “By the way, did we ever find out what that Polish family is doing in Lenarp?”

“The husband works at the sugar refinery in Jordberga,” said Rydberg. “All his papers are in order. Even though he wasn’t fully aware of it himself.”

Wallander sat in his office for a while after Rydberg and Martinson left. There was a stack of papers on his desk that he was supposed to go through, including all the investigative material from the assault case he had been working on over New Year’s. There were also countless reports pertaining to everything from missing bull calves to trucks that had tipped over during the last stormy night. At the bottom of the stack he found a paper informing him that he had been given a raise. He swiftly calculated that he would be taking home an extra 39 kronor per month.

By the time he had made his way through the pile of papers, it was almost half past seven. He called Löderup and told his sister that he was on his way.

“We’re starving,” she said. “Do you always work late?”

Wallander selected a cassette tape of a Puccini opera and went out to his car. He had wanted to make sure that Anette Brolin had really forgotten all about what had happened the night before. But he put it out of his mind. It would have to wait.

Kristina told him that the home-care help for their father had turned out to be a resolute woman in her fifties who would have no trouble taking care of him.

“He couldn’t ask for anyone better,” she said when she came out to the driveway and met him in the dark.

“What’s Dad doing?”

“He’s painting,” she said.

While his sister made dinner, Wallander sat on the sled in the studio and watched the autumn motif emerge. His father seemed to have completely forgotten about what had happened a few days before.

I have to visit him more regularly, thought Wallander. At least three times a week, and preferably at specific times.

After dinner they played cards with their father for a couple of hours. At eleven o’clock he went to bed.

“I’m going home tomorrow,” said Kristina. “I can’t be away any longer.”

“Thanks for coming,” said Wallander.

They decided that he would pick her up at eight o’clock the next morning and drive her to the airport.

“The plane was full out of Sturup airport,” she said. “I’m leaving from Everöd.”

That suited Wallander just fine, since he had to drive to Kristianstad anyway.

Just after midnight he walked into his apartment on Mariagatan. He poured himself a big glass of whiskey and took it with him into the bathroom. He lay in the tub for a long time, thawing out his limbs in the hot water.

Even though he tried to push them out of his mind, Rune Bergman and Valfrid Ström kept popping into his thoughts. He was trying to understand. But the only thing he came up with was the same idea he had had so many times before. A new world had emerged, and he hadn’t even noticed it. As a cop, he still lived in another, older world. How was he going to learn to live in this new time? How would he deal with the great uncertainty he felt about the great changes, which were happening much too fast?

The murder of the Somali had been a new kind of murder.

The double murder in Lenarp, however, was an old-fashioned crime.

Or was it really? He thought about the brutality and the noose.

He wasn’t sure.

It was one-thirty when he finally crawled between the cool sheets.

His loneliness in bed felt worse than ever.

For the next three days nothing happened.

Näslund came back to work and succeeded in solving the problem of the stolen car.

A man and a woman went on a robbery spree and then left the car in Halmstad. On the night of the murder they had been staying in a boarding house in Bastad. The owner vouched for their alibi.

Wallander talked to Ellen Magnusson. She firmly denied that Johannes Lovgren was the father of her son Erik.

He also visited Erik Magnusson again and asked for the alibi he had forgotten to get during their first encounter.

Erik Magnusson had been with his fiancée. There was no reason to doubt his statement.

Martinson got nowhere with Lövgren’s trip to Ystad.

The Nyströms were quite sure about their story, as were the bus drivers and cab owners.

Rydberg went to the funeral, and he talked to nineteen different relatives of the Lövgrens.

Nothing came up that gave them any leads.

The temperature hovered around the freezing point. One day there was no wind, the next day it was gusty.

Wallander ran into Anette Brolin in the hall. She thanked him for the flowers. But he was still uncertain whether she had really decided to forget about what had happened that night.