Henning Mankell - Faceless Killers

He drank the lukewarm coffee and thought that maybe his father had wanted him to take over the brush one day and continue to paint the same motif for yet another generation.

Suddenly his father put down his brush and wiped his hands on a dirty rag. When he came over to him and poured a cup of coffee, Wallander could smell the stink of dirty clothes and his father’s unwashed body.

How do you tell your father that he smells bad? he thought.

Maybe he has gotten so old that he can’t take care of himself any longer.

And then what do I do?

I can’t have him at my place, that would never work. We’d murder each other.

He watched his father rub his nose with one hand as he slurped his coffee.

“You haven’t come out to see me in a long time,” his father said reproachfully.

“I was here the day before yesterday, wasn’t I?”

“For half an hour!”

“Well, I was here, anyway.”

“Why don’t you want to visit me?”

“I do! It’s just that I have a lot to do sometimes.”

His father sat down on an old rickety sled that creaked under his weight.

“I just wanted to tell you that your daughter came to visit me yesterday.”

Wallander was astounded.

“You mean Linda was here?”

“Aren’t you listening to what I’m saying?”

“Why did she come?”

“She wanted a painting.”

“A painting?”

“Unlike you, she actually appreciates what I do.”

Wallander had a hard time believing what he was hearing.

Linda had never shown any interest in her grandfather, except when she was very small.

“What did she want?”

“A painting, I told you! You’re not listening!”

“I am listening! Where did she come from? Where was she going? How the hell did she get out here? Do I have to drag everything out of you?”

“She came in a car,” said his father. “A young man with a black face drove her.”

“What do mean by black?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of Negroes? He was very polite and spoke excellent Swedish. I gave her the painting and then they left. I thought you’d like to know, since you have such poor contact with each other.”

“Where did they go?”

“How should I know?”

Wallander realized that neither of them knew where Linda actually lived. Occasionally she slept at her mother’s house. But then she would quickly disappear again, off on her own mysterious paths.

I’ve got to talk to Mona, he thought. Separated or not, we have to talk to each other. I can’t stand this anymore.

“Do you want a drink?” his father asked.

The last thing Wallander wanted was a drink. But he knew that it was useless to say no.

“All right, thanks,” he said.

A path connected the shed with the house, which was low-ceilinged and sparsely furnished. Wallander noticed at once that it was messy and dirty.

He doesn’t even see the mess, he thought. And why didn’t I notice it before?

I’ve got to talk to Kristina about it. He can’t keep living alone like this.

At that instant the telephone rang.

His father picked it up.

“It’s for you,” he said, making no attempt to hide his annoyance.

Linda, he thought. It’s got to be her.

It was Rydberg calling from the hospital.

“She’s dead,” he said.

“Did she wake up?”

“As a matter of fact, she did. For ten minutes. The doctors thought the crisis was over. Then she died.”

“Did she say anything?”

Rydberg sounded thoughtful when he answered. “I think you’d better come back to town.”

“What did she say?”

“Something you won’t want to hear.”

“I’ll come to the hospital.”

“It’s better if you go to the station. She’s dead, I told you.”

Wallander hung up. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

His father glared at him. “You don’t like me,” he said.

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” replied Wallander, wondering what to do about the squalor his father was living in. “I’ll come tomorrow for sure. We can sit and talk. We can fix dinner. We can play poker if you want.”

Even though Wallander was a miserable card player, he knew that a game would mollify his father. “I’ll be here at seven,” he said.

Then he drove back to Ystad.

At five minutes to eight he walked back in the same glass doors he had walked out of two hours earlier. Ebba nodded at him.

“Rydberg is waiting in the lunchroom,” she said.

That’s where he was, hunched over a cup of coffee. When Wallander saw the other man’s face, he knew that something unpleasant was in store for him.

Wallander and Rydberg were alone in the lunchroom. In the distance they could hear the ruckus a drunk was making, protesting loudly about being taken into custody. Otherwise it was quiet. Only the faint whine from the radiator could be heard.

Wallander sat down across from Rydberg.

“Take off your overcoat,” said Rydberg. “Or else you’ll freeze when you go back out in the wind again.”

“First I want to hear what you have to say. Then I’ll decide whether to take off my coat or not.”

Rydberg shrugged. “She died,” he said.

“So I understand.”

“But she woke up for a while right before she died.”

“And then she spoke?”

“That may be putting it too strongly. She whispered. Or wheezed.”

“Did you get it on tape?”

Rydberg shook his head. “It wouldn’t have worked anyway,” he said. “It was almost impossible to hear what she was saying. Most of it was just raving. But I wrote down what I’m sure I understood.”

Rydberg took a beat-up notebook out of his pocket. It was held together by a wide rubber band, and a pencil was stuck in between the pages.

“She said her husband’s name,” Rydberg began. “I think she was trying to find out how he was. Then she mumbled something I couldn’t understand. That’s when I tried to ask her, ‘Who was it that came in the night? Did you know them? What did they look like?’ Those were my questions. I repeated them for as long as she was conscious. And I actually think she understood what I was saying.”

“So what did she answer?”

“I only managed to catch one word. ‛Foreign.”’

“‘Foreign’?”

“That’s right. ‘Foreign.’”

“Did she mean that whoever attacked both her and her husband were foreigners?”

Rydberg nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“Do I usually say I’m sure if I’m not?”

“No.”

“Well then. So now we know that her last message to the world was the word ‘foreign.’ As a reply to who committed this insane crime.”

Wallander took off his coat and got a cup of coffee.

“What the hell could she have meant?” he muttered.

“I’ve been sitting here thinking about that while I waited for you,” replied Rydberg. “Maybe they looked un-Swedish. Maybe they spoke a foreign language. Maybe they spoke broken Swedish. There are lots of possibilities.”

“What does an un-Swedish person look like?” asked Wallander.

“You know what I mean,” said Rydberg. “Or rather, you can guess what she thought and what she meant.”

“So it could have been her imagination?”

Rydberg nodded. “That’s quite possible.”

“But not particularly likely?”

“Why should she use the last minutes of her life to say something that wasn’t true? Old people don’t usually lie.”

Wallander took a sip of his lukewarm coffee.

“This means we have to start looking for one or more foreigners,” he said. “I wish she’d said something different.”

“It’s damn unpleasant, all right.”