Henning Mankell: Faceless Killers

“We’ll just have to wait,” said Björk. “Interpol’s dough rises slowly.”

Wallander groaned inwardly at the strained metaphor.

At the same time he realized that Björk was right.

When Britta-Lena Bodén came back from Oland and was about to start work at the bank again, Wallander asked the bank management to give her a few more days off. Then he took her out to the refugee camps around Ystad. They also made a trip to the floating camps on ships in Malmö’s Oil Harbor. But nowhere did she recognize any faces.

Wallander arranged for a police artist to fly down from Stockholm.

In spite of working with the artist on countless sketches, Britta-Lena Bodén was not satisfied with any of the faces the artist produced.

Wallander began to have doubts. Björk forced him to give up Martinson and make do with Hanson, as his closest and only colleague in the investigative work.

On Friday, July twentieth, Wallander was again ready to give up.

Late in the evening he sat down and wrote a memo suggesting that the investigation be put on hold for the time being because of a lack of pertinent material that could move the case forward in any meaningful way.

He put the paper on his desk and decided to leave the decision to Björk and Anette Brolin on Monday morning.

He spent Saturday and Sunday on the Danish island of Bornholm. It was windy and rainy, and he got sick from something he ate on the ferry. He spent Sunday night in bed. At regular intervals he had to get up and vomit.

When he woke up on Monday morning, he was feeling better. But he was still undecided about whether to stay in bed or not.

At last he got up and left the apartment. A few minutes before nine he was in his office. Since it was Ebba’s birthday, they all had cake in the lunchroom. It was almost ten o’clock when Wallander finally had a chance to read through his memo to Björk. He was just about to deliver it when the phone rang.

It was Britta-Lena Bodén.

Her voice was barely a whisper.

“They’ve come back. Get over here in a hurry!”

“Who’s come back?” asked Wallander.

“The men who changed the money. Don’t you understand?”

Out in the hall he ran into Norén, who had just come back from a traffic shift.

“Come with me!” shouted Wallander.

“What the hell’s going on?” said Norén as he bit into a sandwich.

“Don’t ask. Come on!”

When they arrived at the bank Norén was still holding the half-eaten sandwich. On the way over, Wallander had gone through a red light and driven over a dividing strip. He left the car in the midst of some market stalls in the square by the city hall. But they still got there too late. The men had already disappeared. Britta-Lena Bodén had been so shocked at seeing them again that she hadn’t thought to ask anyone to follow them.

On the other hand she did have the presence of mind to press the button for the alarm camera.

Wallander studied the signature on the exchange receipt. The name was again illegible. But the signature was the same. No address was given this time either.

“Good,” said Wallander to Britta-Lena Bodén, who was standing in the bank manager’s office, shaking. “What did you say when you left to call me?”

“That I had to go get a stamp.”

“Do you think the two men suspected anything?”

She shook her head.

“Good,” Wallander repeated. “You did exactly the right thing.”

“Do you think you’ll catch them now?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Wallander. “This time we’re going to get them.”

The videotape from the bank’s camera showed two men who did not look particularly Mediterranean. One of them had short blond hair, the other was balding. In police jargon the first was at once dubbed Lucia and the other Baldy.

Britta-Lena Bodén listened to samples of various languages and finally decided that the men had exchanged several words in Czech or Bulgarian. The fifty-dollar bill they had exchanged was immediately sent to the crime lab for examination.

Björk called a meeting in his office.

“After six months they turn up again,” said Wallander. “Why did they go back to the same small bank? First, because they live somewhere in the vicinity, of course. Second, because they once made a lucky catch after one of their bank visits. This time they weren’t so lucky. The man ahead of them in line was depositing money, not making a withdrawal. But it was an elderly man like Johannes Lövgren. Maybe they think that elderly men who look like farmers always make large cash withdrawals.”

“Czechs?” asked Björk. “Or Bulgarians?”

“That’s not absolutely positive,” said Wallander. “The girl might have been mistaken. But it fits with their appearance.”

They watched the video four times and decided which pictures should be copied and enlarged.

“Every Eastern European who lives in town or the surrounding area will have to be investigated,” said Björk. “It’s not going to be pleasant, and it will be regarded as unjustified discrimination. But we’ll have to say the hell with that. They’ve got to be around here somewhere. I’ll have a talk with the county police chiefs in Malmö and Kristianstad to find out what they think we should do on the county level.”

“Show the video to all the patrol officers,” said Hanson. “They might turn up on the streets.”

Wallander was reminded of the slaughterhouse.

“After what they did in Lenarp, we have to consider them dangerous,” he said.

“If they were the ones,” corrected Björk. “We don’t know that yet.”

“That’s true,” said Wallander. “But even so.”

“We’re going to move into high gear now,” said Björk. “Kurt is in charge and will divide up the work as he sees fit. Anything that doesn’t have to be done right away should be put aside. I’ll call the prosecutor; she’ll be glad to hear that something’s happening.”

But nothing happened.

In spite of a massive police effort and the small size of the town, the men had vanished.

Tuesday and Wednesday passed without results. The two county police chiefs gave the go-ahead to implement special measures in their regions. The videotape was copied and distributed. Wallander had last-minute doubts about whether the pictures should be released to the press. He was afraid that the men would make themselves even scarcer if their description was issued. He asked for advice from Rydberg, who did not agree with him.

“You have to drive foxes out into the open,” he said. “Wait a few days. But then release the pictures.”

For a long time he sat staring at the copies that Wallander had brought along.

“There’s no such thing as a murderer’s face,” he said. “You imagine something: a profile, a hairline, a set of the jaw. But it never matches up.”

Tuesday, July twenty-fourth, was a windy day in Skane. Ragged clouds raced across the sky, and the wind was gusting up to gale force. After waking at dawn, Wallander lay in bed for a long time and listened to the wind. When he stepped on the scale in the bathroom, he saw that he had lost another two pounds. This cheered him up so much that when he pulled into the parking lot at the police station he did not have the sense of despondency he’d been feeling lately.

This crime investigation is turning into a personal defeat, he had been thinking. I’m driving my colleagues hard, but in the end we’re stuck in a vacuum again.

But those two men had to be somewhere, he thought angrily as he slammed the car door. Somewhere — but where?

In the lobby he stopped to exchange a few words with Ebba. He noticed that there was an old-fashioned music box sitting next to the switchboard.

“I haven’t seen one of those in ages,” he said. “Where did you get it?”