Henning Mankell - Faceless Killers

Wallander felt a burning pain inside at the thought that Rydberg might be seriously ill. With a growing sense of hopelessness he trudged on with his investigation. One day, in a fit of rage, he threw the thick folders at the wall. The floor was covered with paper. For a long time he sat looking at the havoc. Then he crawled around sorting the material again and started from the beginning.

Somewhere there’s something I’m not seeing, he thought.

A connection, a detail, which is exactly the key I have to turn. But should I turn it to the right or the left?

He often called Göran Boman in Kristianstad to complain about his plight.

On his own authority, Boman had carried out intensive investigations of Nils Velander and other conceivable suspects. Nowhere did the rock crack. For two whole days Wallander sat with Lars Herdin without advancing a single meter.

He still didn’t want to believe that the crime would never be solved.

In the middle of March he managed to entice Anette Brolin to make an opera trip with him to Copenhagen. During the night she embraced his desolation. But when he told her that he loved her, she shied away.

It was what it was. Nothing more.

On the weekend of March seventeenth and eighteenth his daughter came to visit. She came alone, without the Kenyan medical student, and Wallander met her at the train station. Ebba had sent a friend of hers over the day before to give his apartment on Mariagatan a major cleaning. And he finally felt that he had his daughter back. They took a long walk along the beach by Osterleden, ate lunch at Lilla Vik, and then stayed up talking till five in the morning. They visited Wallander’s father, and he surprised them both by telling funny stories about Kurt as a child.

On Monday morning he took her to the train.

He seemed to have regained some of her trust.

When he was back in his office, poring over the investigative material, Rydberg suddenly came in. He sat down on the spindle-backed chair by the window and told Wallander straight out that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Now he was going in for cytotoxin and radiation therapy, which could last a long time and might not do any good. He wouldn’t permit any sympathy. He had merely come to remind Wallander about Maria Lövgren’s last words. And the noose. Then he stood up, shook Wallander’s hand, and left.

Wallander was left alone with his pain and his investigation. Björk thought that for the time being he ought to work alone, since the police were swamped.

Nothing happened in March. Or in April either.

The reports on the status of Rydberg’s health varied. Ebba was the unflagging messenger.

On one of the first days in May, Wallander went into Björk‛s office and suggested that someone else take over the investigation. But Björk refused. Wallander would have to continue at least until the summer and vacation period were over. Then they would reevaluate the situation.

Time after time Wallander started over. Retreated, prying and twisting at the material, trying to make it come alive. But the stones he was walking on remained cold.

At the beginning of June he traded in his Peugeot on a Nissan. On June eighth he went on vacation and drove up to Stockholm to see his daughter.

Together they drove all the way to the North Cape. Herman Mboya was in Kenya but would be coming back in August.

On Monday, July ninth, Wallander was back on duty.

A memo from Björk informed him that he was to continue with his investigation until Björk returned in early August. Then they would decide what to do next.

He also received a message from Ebba that Rydberg was doing much better. The doctors might be able to control his cancer after all.

Tuesday, July tenth, was a beautiful day in Ystad. At lunchtime Wallander went downtown and strolled around. He went into the store by the square and decided to buy a new stereo.

Then he remembered that he had some Norwegian bills in his wallet that he had forgotten to exchange. He had been carrying them around since the trip to the North Cape. He went down to the Union Bank and got in line for the only window that was open.

He didn’t recognize the woman behind the counter. It wasn’t Britta-Lena Bodén, the young woman with the good memory, or any of the other tellers he had met before. He thought it must be a summer temp.

The man in front of him in line made a large withdrawal. Distractedly, Wallander wondered what he was going to use such a large amount of cash for. While the man counted up his bills, Wallander absentmindedly read his name on the driver’s license he had placed on the counter.

Then it was his turn, and he exchanged his Norwegian money. Behind him in the line he heard a summer tourist speaking Italian or Spanish.

As he emerged onto the street, an idea suddenly occurred to him.

He stood there motionless, as if he were frozen solid in his inspiration.

Then he went back inside the bank. He waited until the tourists had exchanged their money.

He showed his police ID to the teller.

“Britta-Lena Bodén,” he said, smiling. “Is she on vacation?”

“She’s probably with her parents in Simrishamn,” said the teller. “She has two weeks of vacation left.”

“Bodén,” he said. “Is that her parents’ name too?”

“Her father runs a gas station in Simrishamn. I think it’s the one called Statoil nowadays.”

“Thank you,” said Wallander. “I just have some routine questions to ask her.”

“I recognize you,” said the teller. “So you haven’t been able to solve that awful crime yet?”

“No,” said Wallander. “It’s terrible, isn’t it?”

He practically ran back to the police station, jumped into his car, and drove to Simrishamn. From Britta-Lena Bodén’s father he learned that she was spending the day with friends at the beach at Sandhammaren. He searched a long time before he found her, well hidden behind a sand dune. She was playing backgammon with her friends, and all of them gave Wallander an astonished look as he came tramping through the sand.

“I wouldn’t bother you if it weren’t important,” he said.

Britta-Lena Bodén seemed to grasp his serious mood and stood up. She was dressed in a minuscule bathing suit, and Wallander averted his eyes. They sat down a little way from the others, so they wouldn’t be disturbed.

“That day in January,” said Wallander. “I wanted to ask you about it again. I’d like you to think back to that day. And I want you to try and remember whether there was anyone else in the bank when Johannes Lövgren made his big withdrawal.”

Her memory was still excellent.

“No,” she said. “He was alone.”

He knew that what she said was true.

“Keep going,” he continued. “Lövgren went out the door. The door closed behind him. What happened then?”

Her reply was quick and firm. “The door didn’t close.”

“Another customer came in?”

“Two of them.”

“Did you know them?”

“No.”

The next question was crucial.

“Because they were foreigners?”

She looked at him in astonishment.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I didn’t know until now. Keep thinking.”

“There were two men. Quite young.”

“What did they want?”

“They wanted to exchange money.”

“Do you remember what currency?”

“Dollars.”

“Did they speak English? Were they Americans?”

She shook her head. “Not English. I don’t know what language they were speaking.”

“Then what happened? Try to picture it in your mind.”

“They came up to the window.”

“Both of them?”

She thought carefully before she answered. The warm wind was ruffling her hair.