Sidetracked (32 page)

“Has anything resembling this series of murders ever occurred in Sweden?” asked Sjösten.

“Not according to Ekholm,” said Wallander.

“It’s just that it would be good to have some colleagues who have experience with this type of crime,” said Sjösten.

“We’d have to get them from the continent, or the United States,” said Wallander. “And I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Not yet, at any rate. What we need, obviously, is experienced homicide investigators, who can add to our overall expertise.”

It took them less than 20 minutes to make the necessary decisions. When they’d finished, Wallander hastily left the room in search of Ekholm. He found him upstairs and took him into a guest room that smelt musty. Wallander opened the window to air the stuffy room. He sat on the edge of the bed and told Ekholm what had occurred to him that morning.

“You could be right,” Ekholm said. “A person with serious psychosis who has taken on the role of a lone warrior. There are many examples of that, though not in Sweden. Such a person generally metamorphoses into another before they go out to exact a revenge. The disguise frees them from guilt. The actor doesn’t feel the pangs of conscience for actions performed by his character. But don’t forget that there’s a type of psychopath who kills with no motive other than for his own intense enjoyment.”

“That’s doesn’t seem to fit this case,” said Wallander.

“The difficulty lies in the fact that the role the killer has adopted doesn’t tell us anything about the motive for the murder. If we assume that you’re right – a barefoot warrior who has chosen his disguise for reasons unknown to us – then he could just as easily have chosen to turn himself into a Japanese samurai or a
tonton macoute
from Haiti. There’s only one person who knows the reasons for the choice. The killer himself.”

Wallander recalled one of the earliest conversations he had had with Ekholm.

“That would mean that the scalps are a red herring,” he said. “That he’s taking them as a ritual act in the performance of the role he’s selected for himself. Not that he’s collecting trophies to reach some objective that serves as the basis for all the murders he has committed.”

“That’s possible.”

“Which means that we’re back to square one.”

“The combinations have to be tested over and over,” said Ekholm. “We never return to the starting point once we have left it. We have to move the same way the killer does. He doesn’t stand still. What happened last night confirms what I’m saying.”

“Have you formed any opinion?”

“The oven is interesting.”

Wallander flinched at Ekholm’s choice of words.

“In what way?”

“The difference between the acid and the oven is striking. In one case he uses a chemical agent to torture a man who’s still alive. It’s an element of the killing itself. In the second case it serves more as a greeting to us.”

Wallander looked at Ekholm intently. He tried to interpret what he’d just heard.

“A greeting to the police?”

“It doesn’t really surprise me. The murderer is not unaffected by his actions. His self-image is growing. It may reach a point where he has to start looking for contact. He’s terribly pleased with himself. He has to seek confirmation of how clever he is from the outside world. The victim can’t applaud him. Sometimes he turns to the very ones who are hunting him. This can take various forms. Anonymous telephone calls or letters. Or why not a dead man arranged in a grotesque position?”

“He’s taunting us?”

“I don’t think he sees it that way. He sees himself as invulnerable. If it’s true that he selected the role of a barefoot warrior, the invulnerability might be one of the reasons. Warrior peoples traditionally smear themselves with salves to make themselves immune from swords and arrows. In our day and age the police might symbolise those swords.”

Wallander sat silently for a while.

“What’s our next move?” he asked. “He’s challenging us by stuffing Liljegren’s head in the oven. What about next time? If there is one.”

“There are many possibilities. Psychopathic killers sometimes seek contact with individuals within the police force.”

“Why is that?”

Ekholm hesitated. “Policemen have been killed, you know.”

“You mean this madman has his eye on us?”

“It’s possible. Without our knowing it, he might be amusing himself by getting very close to us. And then vanishing again. One day this may not be enough of a thrill.”

Wallander remembered the sensation that he’d had outside the cordon at Carlman’s farm, when he thought he’d recognised one of the faces among the onlookers. Someone who had also been on the beach beyond the cordon when they’d turned over the boat and revealed Wetterstedt.

Ekholm looked at him gravely.

“You most of all should be aware of this,” he said. “I was thinking of talking to you about it anyway.”

“Why me?”

“You’re the most visible one of us. The search for the man who committed these four murders involves a lot of people. But the name and face that are most regularly seen are yours.”

Wallander grimaced. “You can’t expect me to take this seriously?”

“That’s for you to decide.”

When Ekholm had left, Wallander stayed behind, trying to gauge his true reaction to Ekholm’s warning. It was like a cold wind blowing through the room, he thought. But nothing more.

That afternoon Wallander drove back to Ystad with the others. It was decided that the investigation would continue to be directed from Ystad. Wallander sat in silence for the whole trip, giving only terse replies when Hansson asked him something. When they arrived they held a short briefing with Svedberg, Martinsson and Åkeson. Svedberg told them that it was now possible to speak with Carlman’s daughter. They decided that Wallander and Höglund would pay a visit to the hospital the next morning. When the meeting was over, Wallander called his father. Gertrud answered. All was back to normal. His father had no recollection of what had happened.

Wallander also called home. No answer. Linda wasn’t there. On his way out of the station he asked Ebba whether there was any word on his keys. Nothing. He drove down to the harbour and walked along the pier, then sat down in the harbour café and had a beer. He sat and watched the people passing by. Depressed, he got up and went back out on the pier, and sat on a bench next to the sea rescue hut.

It was a warm, windless evening. Someone was playing a concertina on a boat. One of the ferries from Poland was coming in. Without actually being conscious of it, he started to make a connection in his mind. He sat perfectly still and let his thoughts work. He was beginning to discern the contours of the drama. There were a lot of gaps still, but he could see where they should concentrate their investigation.

He didn’t think that the way they had been working so far was to blame. The problem was with the conclusions he had made. He drove home and wrote down a summary at his kitchen table. Linda arrived back just before midnight. She had seen the papers.

“Who is doing this? What is someone like this made of?” she asked.

Wallander thought for a while before he replied.

“He’s like you and me,” he said at last. “By and large, just like you and me.”

CHAPTER 31

Wallander woke with a start.

His eyes flew open and he lay completely still. The light of the summer night was grey. Someone was moving around in the flat. He glanced quickly at the clock on the bedside table. It was 2.15 a.m. His terror was instantaneous. He knew it wasn’t Linda. Once she fell asleep, she didn’t get up again until morning. He held his breath and listened. The sound was very faint.

The person moving around was barefoot.

Wallander got out of bed noiselessly. He looked for something to defend himself with. He had locked his service revolver in his desk at the station. The only thing in the bedroom he could use was the broken arm of a chair. He picked it up and listened again. The sound seemed to be coming from the kitchen. He came out of the bedroom and looked towards the living-room. He passed the door to Linda’s room. It was closed. She was asleep. Now he was very scared. The sounds
were
coming from the kitchen. He stood in the doorway of the living-room and listened. Ekholm was right after all. He prepared himself to meet someone who was very strong. The chair arm wouldn’t be much help. He remembered that he had a replica of a pair of old-fashioned brass knuckles in one of the drawers in the bookshelf. They had been the prize in a police lottery. He decided that his fists were better protection than the chair arm. He could still hear sounds in the kitchen. He moved cautiously across the parquet floor and opened the drawer. The brass knuckles were underneath a copy of his tax return. He put them on his right hand. At the same instant he realised that the sounds in the kitchen had stopped. He spun round and raised his arms.

Linda was in the doorway looking at him with a mixture of amazement and fear. He stared back at her.

“What are you doing?” she said. “What’s that on your hand?”

“I thought it was somebody breaking in,” he said, taking off the brass knuckles.

She could see that he was shaken.

“It was me. I couldn’t sleep.”

“The door to your room was closed.”

“I must have shut it behind me. I needed a drink of water.”

“But you never wake up in the night.”

“Those days are long gone. Sometimes I don’t sleep well. When I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

Wallander knew he ought to feel foolish. But his relief was too great. His reaction had confirmed something. He had taken Ekholm much more seriously than he thought. He sat down. Linda was still standing there staring at him.

“I’ve often wondered how you can sleep as well as you do,” she said. “When I think of the things you have to look at, the things you’re forced to do.”

“You get used to it,” said Wallander, knowing that wasn’t true at all.

She sat down next to him.

“I was looking through an evening paper while Kajsa was buying cigarettes,” she went on. “There was quite a bit about what happened in Helsingborg. I don’t know how you stand it.”

“The papers exaggerate.”

“How do you exaggerate somebody getting their head stuffed into an oven?”

Wallander tried to avoid her questions. He didn’t know whether it was for his sake or for hers.

“That’s a matter for the doctor,” he said. “I examine the scene and try to work out what happened.”

She shook her head, resigned.

“You never could lie to me. To Mama, maybe, but never to me.”

“I never lied to Mona, did I?”

“You never told her how much you loved her. What you don’t say can be a false affirmation.”

He looked at her in surprise. Her choice of words astonished him.

“When I was little I used to sneak looks at all the papers you brought home at night. I invited my friends too, sometimes, when you were working on something we thought was exciting. We would sit in my room and read transcripts of witness testimonies.”

“I had no idea.”

“You weren’t supposed to. So who did you think was in the flat?”

He decided to tell her at least part of the truth. He explained that sometimes, but very rarely, policemen in his position who had their pictures in the paper a lot or were on TV, might catch the attention of criminals who then became fixated on them. Perhaps “fascinated” was a better term. Normally there was nothing to worry about. But it was a good idea to acknowledge the phenomenon and to stay alert.

She didn’t believe him for a second.

“That wasn’t somebody standing there with brass knuckles on, showing how aware he was,” she said at last. “What I saw was my Dad who’s a policeman. And he was scared.”

“Maybe I had a nightmare,” he said unconvincingly. “Tell me why you can’t sleep.”

“I’m worried about what to do with my life,” she said.

“You and Kajsa were very good in the revue.”

“Not as good as we ought to be.”

“You’ve got time to feel your way.”

“But what if I want to do something else entirely?”

“Like what?”

“That’s what I think about when I wake up in the middle of the night. I open my eyes and think that I still don’t know.”

“You can always wake me up,” he said. “As a policeman at least I’ve learned how to listen, even if you can get better answers from someone else.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder.

“You’re a good listener. A lot better than Mama. But I have to find the answers for myself.”

They talked for a long time. Not until it was light outside did they go back to bed. Something Linda said made Wallander feel good: he listened better than Mona did. In some future life he wouldn’t mind doing everything better than Mona. But not now, when there was Baiba.

Wallander got up a little before 7 a.m. Linda was still asleep. He had a quick cup of coffee and left. The weather was beautiful, but the wind had started to blow. When he got to the station he ran into an agitated Martinsson, who told him that the whole holiday schedule had been thrown into chaos. Most holidays had been postponed indefinitely.

“Now I probably won’t be able to get time off until September,” he said angrily. “Who the hell wants a holiday at that time of year?”

“Me,” said Wallander. “I can go to Italy with my father.”

It was already Wednesday, 6 July. He was supposed to meet Baiba at Kastrup Airport in three days. For the first time he faced up to the fact that their holiday would have to be cancelled, or at least postponed. He had avoided thinking about it during the last hectic weeks, but he couldn’t continue to do so. He would have to cancel flights and the hotel reservations. He dreaded Baiba’s reaction. He sat at his desk feeling his stomach begin to ache with the stress. There must be some alternative, he thought. Baiba can come here. Maybe we could still catch this damned killer soon. This man who kills people and then scalps them.

He was terrified of her disappointment. Even though she had been married to a policeman, she probably imagined that everything was different in Sweden. But he couldn’t wait any longer to tell her that they wouldn’t be going to Skagen. He should pick up the phone and call Riga straight away. But he put off the unpleasant conversation. He wasn’t ready yet. He took his notebook and listed all the calls he’d have to make.

Then he turned into a policeman again. He put the summary he had written the day before on the desk in front of him and read it through. The notes made sense. He picked up the phone and asked Ebba to get hold of Sjösten in Helsingborg. A few minutes later she called back.

“He seems to spend his mornings scraping barnacles off a boat,” she said. “But he was on his way in. He’ll call you in the next ten minutes.”

When Sjösten called back, he told Wallander that they’d located some witnesses, a couple, who claimed to have seen a motorcycle on Aschebergsgatan on the evening Liljegren was murdered.

“Check carefully,” said Wallander. “It could be very important.”

“I thought I’d do it myself.”

Wallander leaned forward over his desk, as if he had to brace himself before tackling the next question.

“I’d like to ask you to do one more thing,” he said. “Something that should take the highest priority. I want you to find some of the women who worked at the parties that were held at Liljegren’s villa.”

“Why?”

“I think it’s important. We have to find out who was at those parties. You’ll understand when you go through the investigative material.”

Wallander knew very well that his question wouldn’t be answered in the material they had assembled for the other three murders. But he needed to hunt alone for a while longer.

“So you want me to pick out a whore,” said Sjösten.

“I do. If there were any at those parties.”

“It was rumoured that there were.”

“I want you to get back in touch with me as soon as possible. Then I’ll come up to Helsingborg.”

“If I find one, should I bring her in?”

“I just want to talk to her, that’s all. Make it clear she has nothing to worry about. Someone who’s afraid and says what she thinks I want to hear won’t help at all.”

“I’ll try,” said Sjösten. “Interesting assignment in the middle of summer.”

They hung up. Wallander concentrated on his notes from the night before until Höglund called. They met in reception and walked down to the hospital so they could plan what they would say to Carlman’s daughter. Wallander didn’t even know the name of this young woman who had slapped his face.

“Erika,” said Höglund. “Which doesn’t suit her.”

“Why not?” asked Wallander, surprised.

“I get the impression of a robust sort when I hear that name,” she said. “The manager of a hotel smörgåsbord or a crane operator.”

“Is it OK that my name is Kurt?” he asked.

She nodded cheerfully.

“It’s nonsense that you can match a personality to a name of course,” she said. “But it amuses me. And you could hardly imagine a cat called Fido. Or a dog called Kitty.”

“There probably are some,” said Wallander. “So what do we know about Erika Carlman?”

They had the wind at their backs as they walked towards the hospital. Höglund told him that Erika Carlman was 27 years old. That for a while she had been a stewardess for a small British charter airline. That she had dabbled in many different things without ever sticking to them for long. She had travelled all over the world, no doubt supported by her father. A marriage with a Peruvian football player had been quickly dissolved.

“A normal rich girl,” said Wallander. “One who had everything on a silver platter from the start.”

“Her mother says she was hysterical as a teenager. That’s the word she used, hysterical. It would probably be more accurate to describe it as a neurotic predisposition.”

“Has she attempted suicide before?”

“Not that anyone knows of, and I didn’t think the mother was lying.”

“She really wanted to die,” Wallander said.

“That’s my impression too.”

Wallander knew that he had to tell Ann-Britt that Erika had slapped him. It was very possible that she might mention the incident. And there wouldn’t be any explanation for his not having done so, other than masculine vanity, perhaps. As they reached the hospital, Wallander stopped and told her. He could see that she was surprised.

“I don’t think it was more than a manifestation of the hysteria her mother spoke of,” he said.

“This might cause a problem,” Ann-Britt said. “She may be in bad shape. She must know that she nearly died. We don’t even know if she regrets the fact that she didn’t manage to kill herself. If you walk into the room, her fragile ego might collapse. Or it might make her aggressive, scared, unreceptive.”

Wallander knew she was right. “You should speak to her alone. I’ll wait in the cafeteria.”

“First we’ll have to go over what we actually want to learn from her.”

Wallander pointed to a bench by the taxi rank. They sat down.

“We always hope that the answers will be more interesting than the questions,” he said. “What did her suicide attempt have to do with her father’s death? How you get to that question is up to you. You’ll have to draw your own map. Her answers will prompt more questions.”

“Let’s assume that she says she was so crushed by grief that she didn’t want to go on living.”

“Then we’ll know that much.”

“But what else do we actually know?”

“That’s where you have to ask other questions, which we can’t predict. Was it a normal loving relationship between father and daughter? Or was it something else?”

“And if she denies it was something else?”

“Then you have to start by not believing her. Without telling her so.”

“In other words,” said Höglund slowly, “a denial would mean that I should be interested in the reasons she might have for not telling the truth?”

“More or less.” Wallander answered. “But there’s a third possibility, of course. That she tried to commit suicide because she knew something about her father’s death that she couldn’t deal with in any other way except by taking the information with her to the grave.”