Henning Mankell - Faceless Killers

It went more quickly than he thought.

Suddenly she broke.

“Why do you want to know?” she shrieked. “I haven’t done anything. Why can’t a person be allowed to keep her secrets?”

“No one is forbidding secrets,” said Wallander deliberately. “But as long as people are murdered, we have to search for the perpetrators. This means we have to ask questions. And we have to get answers.”

Rydberg sat motionless on his chair by the window. His tired eyes stared at the woman.

Together they listened to her story. Wallander thought it inexpressibly dreary. Her life, as it was laid out before him, was just as hopeless as the frosty landscape he had driven through that same morning.

She had been born the daughter of an elderly farming couple in Yngsjö. She had torn herself free from the land and had eventually become a clerk in a pharmacy. Johannes Lövgren had come into her life as a customer at the pharmacy. She told Wallander and Rydberg that they first met when he was buying bicarbonate of soda. Then he had returned and started to court her.

His story was that of the lonely farmer. Not until the baby was born did she find out that he was married. Her feelings had been resigned, never spiteful. He had bought her silence with money, which was paid several times a year.

But she had raised the son alone. He was hers.

“What did you think when you found out that he had been murdered?” asked Wallander when she fell silent.

“I believe in God,” she said. “I believe in righteous vengeance.”

“Vengeance?”

“How many people did Johannes betray?” she asked. “He betrayed me, his son, his wife, and his daughters. He betrayed everyone.”

And now she will sc learn that her son is a murderer, thought Wallander. Will she imagine that he was an archangel who was carrying out a divine decree for vengeance? Will she be able to stand it?

He continued asking his questions. Rydberg shifted his position on the chair by the window. A bell went off in the kitchen.

When they finally left, Wallander felt that he had gotten the answers to all his questions.

He knew who the mystery woman was. The secret son. He knew that she was expecting money from Johannes Lövgren. But Lövgren had never shown up.

Another question, however, proved to have an unexpected answer.

Ellen Magnusson never gave any of Lövgren’s money to her son. She put it into a savings account. He wouldn’t inherit the money until she was gone. Maybe she was afraid he would gamble it away.

But Erik Magnusson knew that Johannes Lövgren was his father. On that point he had lied. And did he also know that Lövgren, who was his father, had vast financial assets?

Rydberg was silent during the entire interrogation. Just as they were about to leave, he had asked her how often she saw her son. Whether they got along well with each other. Did she know about his fiancée?

Her reply was evasive. “He’s grown now,” she said. “He lives his own life. But he’s good about coming to visit. And of course I know that he has a fiancée.”

Now she’s lying again, thought Wallander. She didn’t know about the fiancée.

They stopped at the inn at Degeberga and ate. Rydberg seemed to have revived.

“Your interrogation was perfect,” he said. “It should be used as a training exercise at the police academy.”

“Still, I did lie,” said Wallander. “And that’s not considered kosher.”

During the meal they took stock of their strategy. Both of them agreed that they should wait for the background investigation of Erik Magnusson. Not until that was compiled and ready would they pick him up for questioning.

“Do you think he’s the one?” asked Rydberg.

“Of course he is,” replied Wallander. “Alone or with an accomplice. What do you think?”

“I hope you’re right.”

They arrived back at the police station in Ystad at quarter past three. Näslund was sitting in his office, sneezing. He had been relieved by Hanson at noon.

Erik Magnusson had spent the morning buying new shoes and turning in some betting coupons at a tobacco shop. Then he had returned home.

“Does he seem on guard?” asked Wallander.

“I don’t know,” said Naslund. “Sometimes I think so. Sometimes I think I’m imagining things.”

Rydberg drove home, and Wallander locked himself in his office.

He leafed absentmindedly through a new stack of papers that someone had put on his desk.

He was having a hard time concentrating.

Ellen Magnusson’s story had made him uneasy.

He imagined that his own life wasn’t that far from her reality. His own dubious life.

I’m going to take some time off when this is over, he thought. With all my overtime I could probably be gone for a week. I’m going to devote seven whole days to myself. Seven days like seven lean years. Then I’ll emerge a new man.

He pondered whether he ought to go to some health spa where he could get help losing some weight. But he found the thought disgusting. He would rather get in his car and drive south.

Maybe to Paris or Amsterdam. In Arnhem he knew a cop he had met once at a narcotics seminar. Maybe he could visit him.

But first we’ve got to solve the murder in Lenarp, he thought. We’ll do that next week.

Then I’ll decide where I’m going to go.

On Thursday, January twenty-fifth, Erik Magnusson was picked up by the police for questioning. They nabbed him right outside the building where he lived. Rydberg and Hanson took care of it while Wallander sat in the car and watched. Erik Magnusson went along to the squad car without protest. They had scheduled it for morning, when he was on his way to work. Since Kurt Wallander was anxious for the first interrogations with the man to take place without arousing any attention, he let Magnusson call his workplace and explain why he wasn’t coming in. Björk, Wallander, and Rydberg were present in the room when Magnusson was interrogated. Björk and Rydberg stayed in the background while Wallander asked the questions.

During the days before Erik Magnusson was taken to Ystad for the first interrogations, the police grew even more certain that he was guilty of the double murder in Lenarp. Various investigations had shown that Magnusson was a man with heavy debts. On several occasions he had barely managed to avoid being physically beaten because he had not paid off his gambling debts. In a visit to Jägersrö, Hanson had seen Magnusson wagering large sums. His financial situation was catastrophic.

The year before, he had been the object of attention by the Eslöv police for some time as the suspect in a bank robbery. It was never possible to connect him to the crime, however. It did seem conceivable, on the other hand, that Magnusson was mixed up in narcotics smuggling. His fiancée, who was now unemployed, had on several occasions been sentenced for various narcotics violations, and in one instance for postal fraud. So Erik Magnusson had large debts. At times, however, he had amazing amounts of money. In comparison, his salary from the county council was insignificant.

This Thursday morning in January would mean the final breakthrough in the investigation. Now the double murder in Lenarp would be cleared up. Kurt Wallander had awakened early this morning with a great sense of tension in his body.

The next day, Friday, January twenty-sixth, he realized that he was wrong.

The assumption that Erik Magnusson was the guilty party, or at least one of the guilty parties, was completely obliterated. The track they had been following was a blind alley. On Friday afternoon they realized that Magnusson could never be tied to the double murder, for the simple reason that he was innocent.

His alibi for the night of the murder had been corroborated by his fiancée’s mother, who was visiting. Her credibility was beyond reproach. She was an elderly lady who suffered from insomnia. Erik Magnusson had snored all night long the night that Johannes and Maria Lövgren were so brutally murdered.