Faceless Killers

Chapter ten

Kurt Wallander stood freezing in the pouring rain. It was almost five o’clock, and the police had rigged floodlights around the murder scene. He watched two ambulance attendants who came squishing through the mud with a stretcher. They were taking away the dead Somali. When he looked at the sea of mud he wondered whether even as skillful a detective as Rydberg would be able to find any tracks.

Still, at the moment he felt slightly relieved. Until ten minutes ago the officers had been surrounded by a hysterical wife and nine howling children. The wife of the dead man had thrown herself into the mud, and her wails were so piercing that several of the policemen couldn’t stand the sound and had moved away. To his surprise, Wallander had realized that the only one who was able to handle the grieving woman and the dismayed children was Martinson. The youngest cop on the force, who so far in his career had never even been forced to notify someone of a relative’s death. He had held the woman, kneeling in the mud, and in some way the two were able to understand each other across the language barrier. A minister who had been hurriedly called was unable to do anything, of course. Gradually Martinson succeeded in getting the woman and the children back to the main building, where a doctor was ready to take care of them.

Rydberg came tramping through the mud. His pants were splotched all the way up his thighs.

“What a hell of a mess,” he said. “But Hanson and Svedberg have done a fantastic job. They managed to find two refugees and an interpreter who actually think they saw something.”

“What?”

“How should I know? I don’t speak either Arabic or Swahili. But they’re on their way to Ystad right now. The Immigration Service has promised us some interpreters. I thought it would be best if you handled the interrogations.”

Wallander nodded. “Have we got anything to go on?”

Rydberg took out his grimy notebook.

“He was killed at precisely one o’clock,” he said. “The director was listening to the wire-service news on the radio when she heard the noise. There were two shots. But you know that already. He was dead before he hit the ground. It seems to have been regular buckshot. Gyttorp brand, I think. Nytrox 36, probably. That’s about all.”

“That’s not much.”

“I think it’s absolutely nothing. But maybe the eyewitnesses will have something to tell us.”

“I’ve authorized overtime for everyone,” said Wallander. “Now we’ll have to bust our butts night and day if necessary.”

Back at the station, the first interrogation almost drove him to despair. The interpreter, who was supposed to know Swahili, couldn’t understand the dialect spoken by the witness, a young man from Malawi. It took Wallander almost half an hour before he realized that the interpreter wasn’t translating what the witness said at all. Then it took almost twenty more minutes before he learned that the man from Malawi, for some strange reason, knew Luvale, a language that was spoken in parts of Zaire and Zambia. But then they had a stroke of luck. One of the Immigration Service representatives knew an old missionary who spoke fluent Luvale. She was close to ninety years old and lived in a retirement apartment in Trelleborg. After calling his colleagues there, he received a promise that the missionary would be given police transport to Ystad. Wallander suspected that a ninety-year-old missionary might not be very sharp. But he was wrong. A little white-haired lady with lively eyes suddenly stood on the threshold of his office, and before he knew it she was involved in an intense conversation with the young man.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the man hadn’t seen a thing.

“Ask him why he volunteered as a witness,” Wallander said wearily.

The missionary and the young man went off into a lengthy exchange.

“He probably just thought it was rather exciting,” she said at last. “And that’s understandable.”

“Is it?” Wallander wondered.

“You were probably young once yourself,” said the old woman.

The young man from Malawi was sent back to Hageholm, and the missionary returned to Trelleborg.

The next witness actually had something to tell them. He was an Iranian interpreter who spoke good Swedish. Just like the dead Somali, he had been out for a walk in the area around Hageholm when the shots were fired.

Wallander picked out a section of the topographic map that showed the area around Hageholm. He put an X at the murder scene, and the interpreter was able to point out at once where he had been when he heard the two shots. Wallander calculated the distance as about three hundred meters.

“After the shots I heard a car,” said the interpreter.

“But you didn’t see it?”

“No. I was in the woods. I couldn’t see the road.”

The interpreter pointed again. To the south.

Then he gave Wallander a real surprise.

“It was a Citroën,” he said.

“A Citroën?”

“The one you call a turtle here in Sweden.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“I grew up in Teheran. When we were kids we learned to recognize the makes of cars by the sound of the engine. Citroëns are easy. Especially the turtle.”

Wallander had a hard time believing what he heard. Then he made a quick decision.

“Come out in the courtyard with me,” he said. “And when you get outside, turn your back and shut your eyes.”

Outside in the rain he started his Peugeot and drove around the parking lot. He watched the interpreter carefully the whole time.

“All right,” he said when he returned. “What was that?”

“A Peugeot,” replied the interpreter with the utmost confidence.

“Good,” said Wallander. “Damned amazing.”

He sent the witness home and gave the order to put out an APB on a Citroen that might have been seen between Hageholm and E4 to the west. The wire service was also informed that the police were now searching for a Citroen that was assumed to be involved in the murder.

The third witness was a young woman from Romania. She sat in Wallander’s office nursing her baby during the interrogation. The interpreter spoke poor Swedish, but Wallander still thought he got a good idea of what the woman was saying.

She had walked the same way as the murdered Somali, and she had met him on the way back to the camp.

“How long?” asked Wallander. “How long was it from when you met him and when you heard the shots?”

“Maybe three minutes.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

The woman nodded, and Wallander leaned over the desk in suspense.

“Where?” he asked. “Show me on the map!”

The interpreter held the infant while the woman searched on the map.

“There,” she said, pressing the pen to the map.

Wallander saw that the spot was right near the murder scene.

“Tell me about it,” he said. “Take your time. Think carefully.”

The interpreter translated and the woman took her time.

“A man in blue overalls,” she said. “He was standing out in the field.”

“What did he look like?”

“He didn’t have much hair.”

“How tall was he?”

“Normal height.”

“Am I a man of normal height?”

Wallander stood up straight.

“He was taller.”

“How old was he?”

“He wasn’t young. Not old either. Maybe forty-five.”

“Did he see you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What was he doing out in the field?”

“He was eating.”

“Eating?”

“He was eating an apple.”

Wallander thought for a moment. “A man in blue overalls standing in a field near the road and eating an apple. Did I understand you correctly?”

“Yes.”

“Was he alone?”

“I didn’t see anyone else. But I don’t think he was alone.”

“Why not?”

“He seemed to be waiting for someone.”

“Did this man have a weapon of any kind?”

The woman thought again. “There might have been a brown package at his feet. Maybe it was just mud.”

“What happened after you saw the man?”

“I hurried home as fast as I could.”

“Why were you in a hurry?”

“It’s not a good idea to run into strange men in the woods.”

Wallander nodded. “Did you see a car?” he asked.

“No. No car.”

“Can you describe the man in more detail?”

She thought for a long time before she replied. The baby was asleep in the interpreter’s arms.

“He looked strong,” she said. “I think he had big hands.”

“What color was his hair? What little he had.”

“Swedish color.”

“Blond hair?”

“Yes. And he was bald like this.”

She drew a half moon in the air.

Then she was allowed to go back to the camp. Wallander went to get a cup of coffee. Svedberg asked if he wanted pizza. He nodded.

At nine o’clock that night the team met in the lunchroom. Wallander thought that everyone except Naslund still looked surprisingly alert. Näslund had a cold and a fever but stubbornly refused to go home.

As they divided up the pizzas and sandwiches, Wallander tried to sum up. At one end of the room he had taken down a picture and projected a slide that showed a map of the murder scene. He had put an X at the site of the crime and drawn in the location and movements of both witnesses.

“So we aren’t totally out in the cold here,” he began his presentation. “We’ve got the time, and we have two reliable witnesses. A few minutes before the first shot, the female witness sees a man in blue overalls standing in a field right next to the road. This fits exactly with the time it should have taken the deceased to reach that point. Then we know that the killer took off in a Citroen and headed southwest.”

The presentation was interrupted when Rydberg came into the lunchroom. All the team members broke out laughing. Rydberg was covered in mud all the way up to his chin. He kicked off his filthy wet shoes and took a sandwich that someone handed him.

“You’re just in time,” said Wallander. “What have you found?”

“I’ve been slogging around in that field for two hours,” replied Rydberg. “The Romanian woman pointed out pretty well where the man was probably standing. We took casts of some footprints there. From rubber boots. And she said that’s what the man was wearing. Ordinary green rubber boots. Then I found an apple core.”

Rydberg took a plastic bag out of his pocket.

“With a little luck we might get some prints off it,” he said.

“Can you take fingerprints from an apple core?” Wallander wondered.

“You can take prints from anything,” said Rydberg. “There might be a strand of hair, a little saliva, skin fragments.”

He set the plastic bag on the table carefully, as if it were made of porcelain.

“Then I followed the footprints,” he went on. “And if this Apple Man is the killer, then this is how I think it happened.”

Rydberg took his pen out of the notebook and went over to the map projected on the wall.

“He saw the Somali coming up the road. Then he threw away the apple core and walked straight onto the road in front of him. It looked as if his boots had dragged some mud onto the road. There he fired off his two shots at a distance of about four meters. Then he turned around and ran about fifty meters down the road from the murder scene. The path turns there, and the road widens a little, making it possible for a car to turn around. Sure enough, there were tire tracks. And I also found two cigarette butts.”

He took the next plastic bag from his pocket.

“Then the man hopped in the car and drove south. That’s how I think it happened. By the way, I think I’ll send my dry-cleaning bill to the police department.”

“I’ll sign for it,” promised Wallander. “But now we have to think.”

Rydberg raised his hand, as if he were in school.

“I’ve got a couple of ideas,” he said. “First of all, I’m sure there were two of them. One waiting by the car and one shooter.”

“Why do you think that?” asked Wallander.

“People who choose to eat an apple in a tense situation are probably not smokers. I think there was one person waiting by the car. A smoker. And a killer who ate an apple.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Also, I’ve got a feeling that the whole thing was carefully planned. It doesn’t take much to figure out that the refugees at Hageholm use this road to take walks. Most often they probably go in groups. But now and then someone will be walking alone. If you then dress like a farmer, no one would think it looked suspicious. And the spot was well chosen, because the car could wait on the road right nearby without being seen. So I think that this senseless act was a cold-blooded execution. The only thing the killers didn’t know was who would come walking up that road alone. And they didn’t care.”

Silence fell over the lunchroom. Rydberg’s analysis had been so clear that no one had anything to say. The ruthlessness of the murder was now blatantly apparent.

It was Svedberg who finally broke the silence. “A messenger brought over a cassette tape from Sydsvensan,” he said.

Someone got a tape recorder.

Wallander recognized the voice. It was the same man who had called him twice and threatened him.

“We’ll send this tape up to Stockholm,” said Wallander. “Maybe they can figure out something by analyzing it.”

“I also think we should find out what kind of apple he was eating,” said Rydberg. “With a little luck we might track down the store where he bought it.”

Then they started talking about the motive.

“Racial hatred,” said Wallander. “That can be so many things. But I assume we have to start poking around in these Neo-Swedish groups. Obviously we’ve entered a new and more serious phase. Now they’re not just painting slogans anymore. Now they’re throwing fire bombs and killing people. But I don’t think the same people did this as set fire to the barracks in Ystad. I still think that was more of a prank or the act of some drunk who got worked up about refugees in general. This murder is different. It’s individuals either acting on their own or somehow involved in one of these movements. And we’ll have to give them a good shake-up. We also need to go out and appeal to the public for tips. I’m thinking of asking Stockholm for help in charting these Neo-Swedish movements. This murder has the status of a national alarm. That means we can have all the resources we need. Besides, someone must have seen that Citroën.”

“There’s a club for Citroen owners,” said Naslund in a hoarse voice. “We could match their list against the list of registered vehicles. The people in the club probably know about every Citroen on the road in the whole country.”

The assignments were given out. It was almost ten thirty before the meeting was over. No one even thought of going home.

Wallander arranged an improvised press conference in the lobby of the police station. Again he urged anyone who had seen a Citroen on E14 to get in touch with the police. He also gave the preliminary description of the murderer.

When he was finished, the questions rained down on him.

“Not now,” he said. “I’ve said all I’m going to say.”

When Wallander was on the way back to his office, Hanson came and asked if he wanted to see a videotape of the discussion program on which the chief of the National Police had been a guest.

“I’d rather not,” he replied. “Not right now, at least.”

He cleaned off his desk. He stuck the note reminding him to call his sister on the receiver of the telephone. Then he called Göran Boman at home.

Boman himself answered. “How’s it going?” he asked.

“We’ve got a good deal to go on,” said Wallander. “We’ll have to work on it.”

“I’ve got good news for you too.”

“I was hoping you would.”

“Our colleagues in Sölvesborg found Nils Velander. Apparently he has a boat at some shipyard that he goes out and works on once in a while. The transcript of the interrogation is coming tomorrow, but they told me the most important things. He claims that he earned the money in the plastic bag in his underwear business. And he agreed to exchange the bills for new ones, so we can check for fingerprints.”

“The Union Bank here in Ystad,” said Wallander. “We have to find out whether the serial numbers can be traced.”

“The money is arriving tomorrow. But honestly, I don’t think he’s the one.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought you said you had good news?”

“I do. Now I’m getting to the third woman. I didn’t think you’d mind if I looked her up by myself.”

“Of course not.”

“As you recall, her name is Ellen Magnusson. She’s sixty years old and works at one of the pharmacies here in Kristianstad. I actually met her once before. Several years ago she ran over a highway worker in a traffic accident and killed him. That was outside the airport at Everöd. She claimed that she had been blinded by the sun. Which was no doubt true. In 1955 she gave birth to a son and listed the father as unknown. The son’s name is Erik, and he lives in Malmö. He’s a civil service employee at the county council. I drove out to her house. She seemed frightened and upset, as if she’d been waiting for the police to show up. She denied that Johannes Lövgren was the father of her boy. But I had a strong feeling that she was lying. If you trust my judgment, I’d like to focus on her. But of course I won’t forget about that bird dealer and his mother.”

“For the next twenty-four hours I probably won’t be able to do much beyond what I’m working on right now,” said Wallander. “I’m grateful for all the time you’re devoting to this.”

“I’ll send over the papers,” said Boman. “And the banknotes. I assume you’ll have to give us a receipt for them.”

“When all this is over we’ll sit down and have a whiskey,” said Wallander.

“There’s going to be a conference at Snogeholm Castle in March on the new narcotics routes in Eastern Europe,” said Boman. “How would that be?”

“I think that sounds fine,” said Wallander.

They hung up, and he went over to Martinson’s room to hear whether any tips had come in on the Citroen they were looking for.

Martinson shook his head. Still nothing.

Wallander went back to his office and put his feet up on his desk. It was eleven thirty. Slowly he let his thoughts fall into place. First he methodically replayed in his mind the murder outside the refugee camp. Had he forgotten anything? Was there any hole in Rydberg’s account of the events, or something else that they ought to be working on right away?

In his opinion, the investigation was rolling along as efficiently as could be expected. All they had to do now was wait for the various technical analyses and hope that the vehicle could be traced.

He shifted in his chair, loosened his tie, and thought about what Göran Boman had told him. He had full confidence in his judgment.

If Boman felt the woman was lying, then that was undoubtedly the case.

But why was he going so easy on Nils Velander?

He took his feet down from the desk and pulled over a blank sheet of paper. Then he made a list of everything he had to do in the next few days. He also decided to try to get the Union Bank to open its doors for him tomorrow, even though it was Saturday.

When he finished his list, he stood up and stretched. It was just after midnight. Out in the corridor he could hear Hanson talking with Martinson, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying.

Outside the window a streetlight was swaying in the wind. He felt sweaty and dirty and considered taking a shower downstairs in the police locker room. He opened the window and breathed in the cold air. It had stopped raining.

He could feel that he was restless. How would they be able to stop the murderer from striking again?

The next one would be a woman, in retribution for Maria Lövgren’s death.

He sat down at his desk and pulled over the folder with the data on the refugee camps in Skåne.

It was unlikely that the murderer would return to Hageholm. But there were countless conceivable alternatives. And if the murderer selected his victim as randomly as he had at Hageholm, they had even less to go on.

Besides, it was impossible to require the refugees to stay indoors.

He shoved the folder aside and rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter.

It was almost half past twelve. He thought he might as well write his memo to Björk.

Just then the door opened and Svedberg came in.

“News?” asked Wallander.

“You might call it that,” said Svedberg, looking unhappy.

“What is it?”

“I don’t quite know how to tell you. But we just got a call from a farmer out by Löderup.”

“Did he see the Citroën?”

“No. But he claimed that your father was walking around out in a field in his pajamas. With a suitcase in his hand.”

Wallander was completely stunned. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The guy who called seemed lucid enough. It was you he actually wanted to talk to. But the switchboard put it through to me by mistake. I thought you ought to decide what to do.”

Wallander sat quite still, his expression blank.

Then he stood up. “What field?” he asked.

“It sounded like your father was walking down by the main highway.”

“I’ll handle this myself. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Tell them to give me a car with a radio, so you can call me if anything happens.”

“Do you want me or somebody else to go along?”

Wallander shook his head.

“My father is senile,” he said. “I have to see about getting him into a home somewhere.”

Svedberg saw to it that Wallander was given the keys to a squad car with a radio.

Just as Wallander was going out the main doors, he noticed a man standing in the shadows outside. He recognized him as a reporter on one of the afternoon papers.

“I don’t want him following me,” he told Svedberg.

Svedberg nodded. “Wait till you see me back out and stall my engine in front of his car. Then you can leave.”

Wallander got into his car and waited.

He saw the reporter quickly run over to his own car. Thirty seconds later, Svedberg drove up. He switched off the ignition.

The car was blocking the reporter from backing out. Wallander drove away.

He drove fast. Much too fast. He ignored the speed limit through Sandskogen. Besides, he was almost alone on the road. Terrified hares fled across the rain-slick asphalt.

When he reached the town where his father lived, he didn’t even have to look for him. His headlights caught the old man, in his blue-trimmed pajamas, squishing barefoot through a field. He was wearing his old hat and carrying a big suitcase. When the headlights blinded him, his father held his hand in front of his eyes in annoyance. Then he kept on walking. Energetically, as if he were on his way to some specific destination.

Kurt Wallander turned off his engine but left the headlights on.

Then he walked out into the field.

“Dad!” he yelled. “What the hell are you doing?”

His father didn’t answer but kept going. Wallander followed him. He tripped and fell and got wet up to his belt.

“Dad!” he shouted again. “Stop! Where are you going?”

No response. His father seemed to pick up speed. Soon they would be down by the main highway. Wallander ran and stumbled to catch up to him, grabbing him by the arm. But his father pulled away and kept going.

Then Kurt Wallander got mad. “Police,” he yelled. “If you don’t stop, we’ll fire a warning shot.”

His father stopped short and turned around. Wallander saw him blinking in the glare of the headlights.

“What did I tell you?” the old man screamed. “You want to kill me!”

Then he flung his suitcase at Wallander. The lid flew open and revealed the contents: dirty underwear, tubes of paint, and brushes.

Wallander felt a huge sorrow well up inside him. His father had tramped out into the night with the bewildered notion that he was on his way to Italy.

“Calm down, Dad,” he said. “I just thought I’d drive you down to the station. Then you won’t have to walk.”

His father gave him a skeptical look. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

“Of course I’d drive my own dad to the station if he’s going on a trip.”

Wallander picked up the suitcase, closed the lid, and started for the car. He put the bag in the trunk and stood waiting. His father looked like a wild animal caught in the headlights out in the field. An animal that has been chased to exhaustion and was now merely waiting for the fatal shot.

Then he started to walk toward the car. Wallander couldn’t decide whether what he saw was an expression of dignity or humiliation. He opened the rear door and his father crawled in. Wallander had taken a blanket from the trunk, and now he wrapped it around his father’s shoulders.

He gave a start when a man suddenly stepped out of the shadows. An old man, dressed in dirty overalls.

“I’m the one who called,” said the man. “How’s it going?”

“Everything’s fine,” replied Wallander. “Thanks for calling.”

“It was pure chance that I saw him at all.”

“I understand. Thanks again.”

He got behind the wheel. When he turned his head he could see that his father was so cold he was shaking underneath the blanket.

“Now I’ll take you to the station, Dad,” he said. “It won’t take long.”

He drove straight to the emergency entrance of the hospital. He was lucky enough to run into the young doctor he had met earlier by Maria Lövgren’s death bed. He explained what had happened.

“We’ll admit him overnight for observation,” said the doctor. “He may be suffering from exposure tonight. Tomorrow the social worker will try to find a place for him.”

“Thank you,” said Wallander. “I’ll stay with him a while.”

His father had been dried off and was lying on a gurney.

“Sleeping car to Italy,” he said. “I’m finally on my way.”

Wallander sat on a chair next to the gurney.

“That’s right,” he said. “Now you’ll get to Italy.”

It was past two o’clock in the morning when he left the hospital. He drove the short distance to the police station. Everyone except Hanson had gone home for the night. He was watching the taped discussion program with the chief of the National Police.

“Anything going on?” asked Wallander.

“Not a thing,” said Hanson. “A few tips, of course. But nothing earthshaking. I took the liberty of sending people home to get a few hours’ sleep.”

“That’s good. Funny that nobody has called about the car.”

“I was just thinking about that. Maybe he just drove out E14 a little way and then took off on one of the back roads. I’ve looked at the maps. There’s a whole maze of little roads in that area. Plus a big nature preserve for taking country walks, where no one goes in the winter. The patrols that check the camps are running a fine-tooth comb over those roads tonight.”

Wallander nodded.

“We’ll send in a helicopter when it gets light,” he said. “The car might be hidden somewhere in that nature preserve.”

He poured a cup of coffee.

“Svedberg told me about your dad,” said Hanson. “How did it go?”

“It went all right. The old man is turning senile. He’s at the hospital. But it went well.”

“Go home and sleep for a few hours. You look beat.”

“I’ve got some things to write up.”

Hanson turned off the video.

“I’ll stretch out on the sofa for a while,” he said.

Wallander went into his office and sat down at the typewriter. His eyes stung with fatigue.

And yet the weariness brought with it an unexpected clarity. A double murder was committed, he thought. And the manhunt triggers another murder. Which we have to solve fast, so we won’t be saddled with more murders.

All this had happened within the past five days.

Then he wrote his memo to Björk. He decided to make sure that it was delivered to him by hand at the airport.

He yawned. It was quarter to four. He was too tired to think about his father. He was just afraid that the social worker at the hospital wouldn’t be able to come up with a good solution.

The note with his sister’s name on it was still stuck to the telephone. In a few hours, when it was morning, he would have to call her.

He yawned again and sniffed his armpits. He stank. Just then Hanson appeared in the half-open door.

Wallander saw at once that something had happened.

“We’ve got something,” said Hanson.

“What?”

“A guy from Malmö just called and said his car has been stolen.”

“A Citroën?”

Hanson nodded.

“How come he discovers it at four in the morning?”

“He said he was on his way to some trade fair in Göteborg.”

“Did he report it to our colleagues in Malmö?”

Hanson nodded. Wallander grabbed the phone.

“Then let’s get moving,” he said.

The police in Malmö promised to hurry their interrogation of the man. The license number of the stolen car, the model, year, and color were already being sent all over the country.

“BBM 160,” said Hanson. “A dove-blue turtle with a white roof. How many of those can there be in this country? A hundred?”

“If the car isn’t buried, we’ll find it,” said Wallander. “When does the sun come up?”

“Around eight or nine o’clock,” replied Hanson.

“As soon as it gets light we need a chopper over the preserve. You take care of that.”

Hanson nodded. He was just leaving the room when he remembered something he had forgotten to say because he was so tired.

“Damn it! There was one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“The guy who called and said that his car was stolen. He was a cop.”

Wallander gave Hanson a puzzled look.

“A cop? What do you mean by that?”

“I mean he was a cop. Like you and me.”