Henning Mankell - Faceless Killers

“One of them came up and put the money on the counter. I think it was a hundred dollars. I asked him if he wanted to exchange it. He nodded.”

“What was the other man doing?”

She thought again.

“He dropped something on the floor, which he bent over and picked up. A mitten, I think.”

He backed up a step with his questions.

“Johannes Lövgren had just left,” he said. “He had received a large amount of cash which he put into his briefcase. Did he receive anything else?”

“He got a receipt for his money.”

“Which he put in the briefcase?”

For the first time she was hesitant.

“I think so.”

“If he didn’t put the receipt in his briefcase, then what happened to it?”

She thought again.

“There was nothing lying on the counter. I’m sure of that. Otherwise I would have picked it up.”

“Could it have slipped off onto the floor?”

“Possibly.”

“And the man who bent over for the mitten could have picked it up?”

“Maybe.”

“What was on the receipt?”

“The amount. His name and address.”

Wallander held his breath.

“All that was on it? Are you sure?”

“He filled out his withdrawal slip in big letters. I know that he wrote down his address too, even though it wasn’t required.”

Wallander backtracked again. “Lövgren takes his money and leaves. In the doorway he runs into two unknown men. One of them bends down and picks up a mitten, and maybe the withdrawal slip too. It says that Johannes Lövgren has just withdrawn twenty-seven thousand kronor. Is that correct?”

Suddenly she understood. “Are they the ones that did it?”

“I don’t know. Think back again.”

“I exchanged their money. He put the bills in his pocket. They left.”

“How long did it take?”

“Three, four minutes. No more.”

“The bank has a copy of their exchange receipt, I suppose?”

She nodded.

“I exchanged money at the bank today. I had to give my name. Did they give any address?”

“Maybe. I don’t remember.”

Kurt Wallander nodded. Now something was starting to burn.

“Your memory is phenomenal,” he said. “Did you ever see those two men again?”

“No. Never.”

“Would you recognize them?”

“I think so. Maybe.”

Wallander thought for a few moments.

“You might have to interrupt your vacation for a few days,” he said.

“We’re supposed to drive to Öland tomorrow!”

Wallander made a decision on the spot. “I’m sorry, you can’t,” he said. “Maybe the next day. But not before then.”

He stood up and brushed off the sand.

“Be sure to tell your parents where we can reach you,” he said.

She stood up and got ready to rejoin her friends.

“Can I tell them?” she asked.

“Make up something,” he replied. “I’m sure you can do that.”

Just after four o’clock that afternoon they found the exchange receipt in the Union Bank’s files.

The signature was illegible. No address was given.

To his surprise, Wallander was not disappointed. He thought this was because now at least he understood how the whole thing might have happened.

From the bank he drove straight to Rydberg’s place, where he was convalescing.

Rydberg was sitting on his balcony when Wallander rang the doorbell. He had grown thin and was very pale.

Together they sat on the balcony, and Wallander told him about his discovery.

Rydberg nodded thoughtfully.

“You’re probably right,” he said when Wallander finished. “That’s probably how it happened.”

“The question now is how to find them,” said Wallander. “Some tourists who happened to be visiting Sweden more than six months ago.”

“Maybe they’re still here,” said Rydberg. “As refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants.”

“Where do I start?” asked Wallander.

“I don’t know,” said Rydberg. “But you’ll figure out something.”

They sat for a couple of hours on Rydberg’s balcony.

Just before seven o’clock Wallander went back to his car.

The stones were no longer as cold under his feet.

Kurt Wallander would always remember the following days as the time when the chart was drawn. He started with what Britta-Lena Bodén remembered and an illegible signature. A conceivable scenario existed, and the last word Maria Lovgren spoke before she died was a puzzle piece that had finally fallen into place. He also had the oddly knotted noose to take into account. Then he drew the chart. On the same day he had talked with Britta-Lena Bodén in the warm sand dunes at Sandhammaren he had gone over to Björk’s house, pulled him away from the dinner table, and extracted an immediate promise to assign Hanson and Martinson full-time to the investigation, which was once again given top priority and put into high gear.

On Wednesday, July eleventh, before the bank opened for business, they reconstructed the scene. Britta-Lena Bodén took her place behind the teller’s window, Hanson assumed the role of Johannes Lövgren, and Martinson and Björk played the two men who came in to exchange their dollars. Wallander insisted that everything should be exactly as it was on that day six months earlier. The anxious bank manager finally agreed to allow Britta-Lena Bodén to hand over 27,000 kronor in bills of mixed but large denominations to Hanson, who had borrowed an old briefcase from Ebba.

Wallander stood to one side, watching everything. Twice he ordered them to start over when Britta-Lena Bodén remembered some detail that didn’t seem right.

Wallander carried out this reconstruction in order to spark her memory. He hoped that she might be able to open a door to yet another room in her extraordinarily clear memory.

Afterwards she shook her head. She had told him everything she could remember. She had nothing to add. Wallander asked her to postpone her trip to Oland another couple of days and then left her alone in an office where she could look through photographs of foreign criminals who, for one reason or another, had been caught in the net of the Swedish police. When this search produced no results either, she was put on a plane to Norrköping to go through the extensive photo archives at the Immigration Service. After eighteen hours of staring at countless pictures, she returned to Sturup airport, where Wallander himself went to meet her. The results were negative.

The next step was to link up with Interpol. The scenario of how the crime might have occurred was fed into their computers, which then made comparative studies at European headquarters. Still, nothing turned up to change the situation in any significant way.

While Britta-Lena Bodén was sitting and sweating over the endless rows of photographs, Wallander carried out three long interviews with Arthur Lundin, the master chimney sweep from Slimminge. His trips between Lenarp and Ystad were reconstructed, clocked, and repeated. Wallander continued drawing up his chart. Now and then he went to see Rydberg, who sat on his balcony, weak and pale, and went over the investigation with him. Rydberg insisted that Wallander was not bothering him and that these sessions did not tire him. But Wallander left his balcony each time with a nagging feeling of guilt.

Anette Brolin returned from her vacation, which she had spent with her husband and children in a summer house in Grebbestad on the west coast. She brought her family back to Ystad with her, and Wallander assumed his most formal tone of voice when he called her to report on his breakthrough in the practically lifeless investigation.

After the first intensive week everything came to a standstill.

Wallander stared at his chart. They were stuck again.