Sidetracked (16 page)

He walked around the house, stopping at each window. From the kitchen he looked for a long time at a pair of trees growing just out-side Wetterstedt’s property. But they were young birches that wouldn’t have held a person’s weight.

Not until he came to the study and looked out of the window did he realise that he had found the answer. From the projecting garage roof it was possible to see straight into the room. He left the house and went around the garage. A younger, fit man could jump up, grab hold of the eaves and pull himself up. Wallander went and got a ladder he had seen on the other side of the house. He leaned it against the garage roof and climbed up. The roof was the old-fashioned tar-paper type. Since he wasn’t sure how much weight it would hold, he crawled on all fours over to a spot where he could look straight into Wetterstedt’s study. He searched until he found the point farthest away from the window that still had a good view inside. On his hands and knees he inspected the tar-paper. Almost at once he discovered some cuts in it criss-crossing each other. He ran his fingertips across the tar-paper. Someone had slashed it with a knife. He looked around. It was impossible to be seen either from the beach or from the road above Wetterstedt’s house.

Wallander climbed down and put the ladder back. Carefully he inspected the ground next to the garage, but all he found were some tattered pages from a magazine that had blown onto the property. He went back into the house. The silence was oppressive. He went upstairs. Through the window in Wetterstedt’s bedroom he could see Lindgren and his father turning their boat right side up. He could see that it took two people to turn it over.

And yet he now knew that the killer had been alone, both here and when he killed Carlman. Though there were few clues, his intuition told him that it had been one person sitting on Wetterstedt’s roof and on the hill above Carlman’s.

I’m dealing with a lone killer, he thought. A lone man who leaves his borderland and hacks people to death so he can then take their scalps as trophies.

He left Wetterstedt’s house, emerging into the sunshine again with relief. He drove over to a café and ate lunch at the counter. A young woman at a table nearby nodded to him and said hello. He replied, unable to remember who she was. Not until he left did he recall that she was Britta-Lena Bodén, the bank teller whose excellent memory had been so important during an investigation.

By midday he was back at the station. Ann-Britt Höglund met him in the foyer.

“I saw you from my window,” she said.

Wallander knew at once that something had happened. He waited, tense, for her to continue.

“There is a point of contact,” she said. “In the late 1960s Carlman did some time in prison. At Långholmen. Wetterstedt was minister of justice at the time.”

“That isn’t enough,” said Wallander.

“I’m not finished. Carlman wrote a letter to Wetterstedt. And when he got out of prison they met.”

Wallander stood motionless.

“How do you know this?”

“Come to my office and I’ll tell you.”

Wallander knew what this meant. If there was a connection, they had broken through the hard, outermost shell of the investigation.

CHAPTER 15

It had started with a telephone call.

Ann-Britt Höglund had been on her way down the hall to talk to Martinsson when she was paged. She returned to her office and took the call. It was a man who spoke so softly that at first she thought he was sick or injured. But she understood that he wanted to talk to Wallander. No-one else would do, least of all a woman. She explained that Wallander had gone out and no-one could say when he was coming back. But the man was extremely persistent, although she didn’t understand how a man who spoke so softly could seem so strong-willed. She considered transferring the call to Martinsson and having him pretend to be Wallander. But something told her that he might know Wallander’s voice.

He said that he had important information. She asked him whether it had to do with Wetterstedt’s death. Maybe, he replied. Then she asked whether it was about Carlman. Maybe, he said once again. She knew that somehow she had to keep him talking. He had refused to give his name or phone number.

He finally resolved the impasse. He had been silent for so long that Höglund thought he had hung up, but then he asked for the station fax number. Give the fax to Wallander, the man had said. Not to anyone else.

An hour later the fax had arrived. She handed it to Wallander. To his astonishment he saw that it was sent from Skoglund’s Hardware in Stockholm.

“I looked up the number and called them,” she said. “I also thought it was strange that a hardware shop would be open on Sunday. From a message on their answer machine I got hold of the owner via his mobile phone. He had no idea either how someone could have sent a fax from his office. He was on his way to play golf but promised to look into the matter. Half an hour later he called and reported that someone had broken into his office.”

“How strange,” said Wallander.

He read the fax. It was hand-written and hard to read. He must get reading glasses soon. He couldn’t pretend any longer he was just tired or stressed. The fax seemed to have been written in great haste. Wallander read it silently. Then he read it aloud to make sure he hadn’t misunderstood anything.

“‘Arne Carlman was in Långholmen during the spring of 1969 for fraud and fencing stolen goods. At that time Gustaf Wetterstedt was minister of justice. Carlman wrote letters to him. He bragged about it. When he got out he met with Wetterstedt. What did they talk about? What did they do? We don’t know. But things went well for Carlman. He never went to prison again. And now they’re dead. Both of them.’ Have I read this correctly?”

“I came up with the same thing,” she said.

“No signature,” said Wallander. “And what is he really getting at? Who is he? How does he know this stuff? Is any of it true?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I had a feeling that this man knew what he was talking about. Anyway, it’s not hard to check whether Carlman was really at Långholmen in the spring of 1969. We know that Wetterstedt was minister of justice then.”

“Wasn’t Långholmen closed by then?” Wallander asked.

“That was a few years later, in 1975, I think. I can check on exactly when.”

Wallander waved it off.

“Why did he only want to talk to me?” he asked. “Did he give any explanation?”

“I got a feeling he’d heard about you.”

“So he wasn’t claiming that he knew me?”

“No.”

Wallander thought for a moment.

“Let’s hope what he wrote is true,” he said. “Then we’ve established the connection.”

“It shouldn’t be too hard to verify,” said Höglund. “Even if it is Sunday.”

“I’ll go out and talk to Carlman’s widow right now. She must know whether her husband was ever in prison,” said Wallander.

“Do you want me to come along?”

“No.”

Half an hour later Wallander parked his car outside the cordon in Bjäresjö. A bored-looking officer sat in a squad car reading the paper. He straightened up when he saw Wallander approaching.

“Is Nyberg still working here?” asked Wallander in surprise. “Isn’t the forensic investigation finished?”

“I haven’t seen any technicians around,” said the officer.

“Call Ystad and ask them why the cordons haven’t been removed,” said Wallander. “Is the family home?”

“The widow is probably there,” said the officer. “And the daughter. But the sons left in a car a few hours ago.”

Wallander entered the grounds of the farm. The bench and the table in the arbour were gone. In the beautiful summer weather the events of the last few days seemed unbelievable. He knocked on the door. Carlman’s widow opened it almost at once.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” said Wallander. “But I have a few questions that I need answered as soon as possible.”

She was very pale. As he stepped inside he smelled a faint whiff of alcohol. Somewhere inside, Carlman’s daughter shouted, asking who was at the door. Wallander tried to remember the name of the woman leading the way. Had he ever heard it? Yes – it was Anita. He’d heard Svedberg use it during the long investigative meeting. He sat down on the sofa facing her. She lit a cigarette. She was wearing a flimsy summer dress. Wallander felt vaguely disapproving. Even if she didn’t love her husband, he had been murdered. Didn’t people believe in showing respect for the dead any more? Couldn’t she have chosen more sombre attire? He had such conservative views sometimes that he surprised himself. Sorrow and respect didn’t follow a colour scheme.

“Would the inspector like something to drink?” she asked.

“No thank you,” said Wallander. “I’ll be as brief as I can.”

She shot a glance past his face. He turned around. Her daughter, Erika, had entered the room silently and was sitting in the background. She was smoking and seemed nervous.

“Do you mind if I listen?” she asked in a belligerent voice.

“Not at all,” he said. “You’re welcome to join us.”

“I’m fine here,” she said.

Her mother shook her head almost imperceptibly. She seemed resigned about her daughter’s behaviour.

“Actually I came here because it’s Sunday,” Wallander began. “Which means that it’s difficult to get information from archives. And since we need to have an answer as soon as possible, I came to you.”

“You don’t have to excuse yourself,” said the woman. “What is it you want to know?”

“Was your husband in prison in the spring of 1969?”

Her reply was swift and resolute.

“He was in Långholmen between the 9th of February and the 19th of June. I drove him there and I picked him up. He was convicted of fraud and fencing stolen goods.”

Her frankness made Wallander lose his train of thought. But what had he expected? That she would deny it?

“Was this the first time he was sentenced to a prison term?”

“The first and the last.”

“Can you tell me any more about the convictions?”

“He denied having either received stolen paintings or forged any cheques. Other people did it in his name.”

“So you think he was innocent?”

“It’s not a matter of what I think. He was innocent.”

Wallander decided to change tack.

“It has come to light that your husband knew Gustaf Wetterstedt, despite the fact that both you and your children claimed earlier that this was not the case.”

“If he knew Gustaf Wetterstedt then I would have known about it.”

“Could he have had contact with him without your knowledge?”

She thought for a moment before she replied.

“I would find that very difficult to believe,” she said.

Wallander knew at once that she was lying. But he couldn’t see why. Since he had no more questions he stood up.

“Perhaps you can find your own way out,” said the woman on the sofa. She seemed very tired suddenly.

Wallander walked to the door. As he approached the daughter, who had been watching him intently, she stood up and blocked his way, holding her cigarette in her left hand.

Out of nowhere came a slap that struck Wallander hard on his left cheek. He was so surprised that he took a step back, tripped, and fell to the floor.

“Why did you let it happen?” she shrieked.

Then she started pummelling Wallander, who managed to fend her off as he tried to get up. Mrs Carlman came to his rescue. She did the same thing as the girl had just done to Wallander. She slapped her daughter hard in the face. When the girl calmed down, her mother led her over to the sofa. Then she returned to Wallander, who was standing there with his burning cheek, torn between rage and astonishment.

“Erika’s been so depressed about what happened,” said Anita Carlman. “She’s lost control. The inspector must forgive her.”

“Maybe she should see a doctor,” said Wallander, noticing that his voice was shaking.

“She already has.”

Wallander nodded and went out of the door. He tried to remember the last time he had been struck. It was more than ten years ago. He was interrogating a man suspected of burglary. Suddenly the man had jumped up from the table and slugged him in the mouth. That time Wallander struck back. His rage was so fierce that he broke the man’s nose. Afterwards the man tried to sue Wallander for police brutality, but he was found innocent. The man later sent a complaint to the ombudsman about Wallander, but that too was dropped with no measures taken.

He had never been hit by a woman before. When his wife Mona had lost control, she had thrown things at him. But she had never tried to slap him. He often wondered what would have happened if she had. Would he have hit back? He knew there was a good chance he would.

He stood in the garden touching his stinging cheek. All the energy he had felt that morning had evaporated. He was so tired that he couldn’t even manage to hold on to the feeling the girls’ visit had given him.

He walked back to his car. The officer was slowly rolling up the yellow tape.

He put
The Marriage of Figaro
in the cassette deck. He turned up the volume so high that it thundered inside the car. His cheek stung. In the rear-view mirror he could see that it was red. When he got to Ystad he turned into the big car park by the furniture shop. Everything was closed, the car park deserted. He opened the car door and let the music flow. Barbara Hendricks made him forget about Wetterstedt and Carlman for a moment. But the girl in flames still ran through his mind. The field seemed endless. She kept running and running. And burning and burning.

He turned down the music and started pacing back and forth in the car park. As always when he was thinking, he walked along staring at the ground. And so Wallander didn’t notice the photographer who saw him by chance, and took a picture of him through a telephoto lens as he paced around the empty car park. A few weeks later, when an astonished Wallander saw the picture, he’d even forgotten that he’d stopped there to try and clear his head.

The team met very briefly that afternoon. Mats Ekholm joined them and ran through what he had discussed earlier with Hansson and Wallander. Höglund told the team about the fax, and Wallander reported that Anita Carlman had confirmed the information it contained. He didn’t mention being slapped. When Hansson asked tentatively whether he’d consider talking to the reporters camped out around the station who seemed to know when a meeting had taken place, he refused.

“We have to teach these reporters that we’re working on a legal matter,” Wallander said, and could hear how affected he sounded. “Ann-Britt can take care of them. I’m not interested.”

“Is there anything I shouldn’t say?” she asked.

“Don’t say we have a suspect,” said Wallander. “Because we don’t.”

After the meeting Wallander exchanged a few words with Martinsson.

“Has anything more been discovered about the girl?” he asked.

“Not yet,” said Martinsson.

“Let me know as soon as something happens.”

Wallander went to his room. The telephone rang immediately, making him jump. Every time it rang he expected to be told of another murder. But it was his sister. She told him that she had talked to Gertrud. There was no doubt that their father had Alzheimer’s disease. Wallander could hear how upset she was.

“He’s almost 80,” he consoled her. “Sooner or later something had to happen.”

“But even so,” she said.

Wallander knew what she meant. He could have used the same words himself. All too often life was reduced to those powerless words of protest,
but even so
.

“He won’t be able to handle a trip to Italy,” she said.

“If he wants to, then he will,” said Wallander. “Besides, I promised him.”

“Maybe I should come with you.”

“No. It’s our trip.”

He hung up, wondering whether she was offended that he didn’t invite her to join them. But he put aside those thoughts and decided that he really had to go and visit his father. He located the scrap of paper on which he had written Linda’s phone number and called her. He was surprised when Kajsa answered at once, expecting them to be outside on such a beautiful day. When Linda came on he asked whether she’d leave her rehearsal and drive out with him to see her grandfather.