Henning Mankell - Faceless Killers

Could they be father and son? The tractor driver and the forklift operator?

Wallander had a hard time focusing on the pictures and making them blend together.

The only thing he thought he saw was the bloody face of an old man with his nose cut off.

By eleven o’clock on Friday night they had completed their plan of attack. By that time Björk had left them to go to a dinner organized by the local country club.

Wallander and Rydberg were going to spend Saturday paying another visit to Ellen Magnusson in Kristianstad. Martinson, Naslund, and Hanson would split up the surveillance of Erik Magnusson and also confront his fiancée with his alibi. Sunday would be devoted to surveillance and an additional run-through of all the investigative material. On Monday Martinson, who had been appointed computer expert in spite of his lack of any real interest in the subject, would examine Erik Magnusson’s business dealings. Did he have other debts? Had he ever been mixed up in any kind of criminal activity before?

Wallander asked Rydberg to go through everything personally. He wanted Rydberg to do what they called a crusade. He would try to match up events and individuals who outwardly had nothing in common. Were there actually points of contact that they had previously missed? That was what Rydberg would examine.

Rydberg and Wallander walked out of the police station together. Wallander was suddenly aware of Rydberg’s fatigue and remembered that he had paid a visit to the hospital.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

Rydberg shrugged his shoulders and mumbled something unintelligible in reply.

“With your leg, I mean,” said Wallander.

“Same old thing,” replied Rydberg, obviously not wanting to talk any more about his ailments.

Wallander drove home and poured himself a glass of whiskey. But he left it untouched on the coffee table and went into the bedroom to lie down. His exhaustion got the upper hand. He fell asleep at once and escaped all the thoughts that were whirling around in his head.

That night he dreamed about Sten Widen.

Together they were attending an opera in which the performers were singing in an unfamiliar language.

Later, when he awoke, Wallander couldn’t remember which opera they had seen.

On the other hand, as soon as he woke up the next day he remembered something they had talked about the day before.

Johannes Lövgren’s will. The will that didn’t exist.

Rydberg had spoken with the estate administrator who had been engaged by the two surviving daughters, a lawyer who was often called on by the farmers’ organizations in the area. No will existed. That meant that the two daughters would inherit all of Johannes Lövgren’s unexpected fortune.

Could Erik Magnusson have known that Lövgren had huge assets? Or had Lövgren been just as reticent with him as he had been with his wife?

Wallander got out of bed intending not to let this day pass before he knew definitively whether Ellen Magnusson had given birth to her son Erik with Johannes Lövgren as the unknown father.

He ate a hasty breakfast and met Rydberg at the police station just after nine o’clock. Martinson, who had spent the night in a car outside Erik Magnusson’s apartment in Rosengård and had been relieved by Naslund, had turned in a report which said that absolutely nothing had happened during the night. Magnusson was in his apartment. The night had been quiet.

The January day was hazy. Hoarfrost covered the brown fields. Rydberg sat tired and uncommunicative in the front seat next to Wallander. They didn’t say a word to each other until they were approaching Kristianstad.

At ten thirty they met Göran Boman at the police station in Kristianstad.

Together they went through the transcript of the woman’s interrogation, which Boman had conducted earlier.

“We’ve got nothing on her,” said Boman. “We ran a vacuum over her and the people she knows. Not a thing. Her whole story fits on one sheet of paper. She has worked at the same pharmacy for thirty years. She belonged to a choral group for a few years but finally quit. She takes out a lot of books from the library. She spends her vacations with a sister in Vemmenhög, never travels abroad, never buys new clothes. She’s a person who, at least on the surface, lives a completely undramatic life. Her habits are regular almost to the point of pedantry. The most surprising thing is that she can stand to live this way.”

Wallander thanked him for his work.

“Now we’ll take over,” he said.

They drove to Ellen Magnusson’s apartment building.

When she opened the door, Wallander thought that the son looked a lot like his mother. He couldn’t tell whether she had been expecting them. The look in her eyes seemed remote, as if she were actually somewhere else.

Wallander looked around the living room of the apartment. She asked if they wanted a cup of coffee. Rydberg declined, but Wallander said yes.

Every time Wallander stepped into a strange apartment, he felt as though he were looking at the covers of a book he had just bought. The apartment, the furniture, the pictures on the walls, and the smells were the title. Now he had to start reading. But Ellen Magnusson’s apartment was odorless. As if Wallander were in an uninhabited apartment. He breathed in the smell of hopelessness. A gray resignation. Against a background of pale wallpaper hung colored prints with indefinable abstract motifs. The furniture that filled the room was heavy and old-fashioned. Doilies lay decoratively arranged on several mahogany drop-leaf tables. On a little shelf stood a photograph of a child sitting in front of a rose bush. Wallander noticed that the only picture of her son she had on display was one from his childhood. As a grown man he was not present at all.

Next to the living room was a small dining room. Wallander nudged the half-open door with his foot. To his undisguised amazement, one of his father’s paintings hung on the wall.

It was the autumn landscape without the grouse.

He stood looking at the picture until he heard the rattle of a tray behind him.

It was as if he were looking at his father’s motif for the first time.

Rydberg had sat down on a chair by the window. Wallander thought that someday he would have to ask him why he always sat by a window.

Where do our habits come from? he thought. What secret factory produces our habits, both good and bad?

Ellen Magnusson served him coffee.

He figured he’d better begin.

“Göran Boman from the Kristianstad police was here and asked you a number of questions,” he said. “Please don’t be surprised if we ask you some of the same questions.”

“Just don’t be surprised if you get the same answers,” said Ellen Magnusson.

At that moment Wallander realized that the woman sitting across from him was the mystery woman with whom Johannes Lövgren had had a child.

Wallander knew it without knowing how he knew.

In a rash moment he decided to lie his way to the truth. If he wasn’t mistaken, Ellen Magnusson was a woman who had very little experience with the police. She no doubt assumed that they searched for the truth by using the truth themselves. She was the one who would be lying, not the police.

“Mrs. Magnusson,” said Wallander. “We know that Johannes Lövgren is the father of your son Erik. There’s no use denying it.”

She looked at him, terrified. The absent look in her eyes was suddenly gone. Now she was fully present in the room again.

“It’s not true,” she said.

A lie begs for mercy, thought Wallander. She’s going to break soon.

“Of course it’s true,” he said. “You and I both know it’s true. If Johannes Lövgren hadn’t been murdered, we would never have had to worry about asking these questions. But now we have to know. And if we don’t find out now, you’ll be forced to answer these questions under oath in court.”