Faceless Killers

Chapter fifteen

Kurt Wallander would always remember the following days as the time when the chart was drawn. He started with what Britta-Lena Bodén remembered and an illegible signature. A conceivable scenario existed, and the last word Maria Lovgren spoke before she died was a puzzle piece that had finally fallen into place. He also had the oddly knotted noose to take into account. Then he drew the chart. On the same day he had talked with Britta-Lena Bodén in the warm sand dunes at Sandhammaren he had gone over to Björk’s house, pulled him away from the dinner table, and extracted an immediate promise to assign Hanson and Martinson full-time to the investigation, which was once again given top priority and put into high gear.

On Wednesday, July eleventh, before the bank opened for business, they reconstructed the scene. Britta-Lena Bodén took her place behind the teller’s window, Hanson assumed the role of Johannes Lövgren, and Martinson and Björk played the two men who came in to exchange their dollars. Wallander insisted that everything should be exactly as it was on that day six months earlier. The anxious bank manager finally agreed to allow Britta-Lena Bodén to hand over 27,000 kronor in bills of mixed but large denominations to Hanson, who had borrowed an old briefcase from Ebba.

Wallander stood to one side, watching everything. Twice he ordered them to start over when Britta-Lena Bodén remembered some detail that didn’t seem right.

Wallander carried out this reconstruction in order to spark her memory. He hoped that she might be able to open a door to yet another room in her extraordinarily clear memory.

Afterwards she shook her head. She had told him everything she could remember. She had nothing to add. Wallander asked her to postpone her trip to Oland another couple of days and then left her alone in an office where she could look through photographs of foreign criminals who, for one reason or another, had been caught in the net of the Swedish police. When this search produced no results either, she was put on a plane to Norrköping to go through the extensive photo archives at the Immigration Service. After eighteen hours of staring at countless pictures, she returned to Sturup airport, where Wallander himself went to meet her. The results were negative.

The next step was to link up with Interpol. The scenario of how the crime might have occurred was fed into their computers, which then made comparative studies at European headquarters. Still, nothing turned up to change the situation in any significant way.

While Britta-Lena Bodén was sitting and sweating over the endless rows of photographs, Wallander carried out three long interviews with Arthur Lundin, the master chimney sweep from Slimminge. His trips between Lenarp and Ystad were reconstructed, clocked, and repeated. Wallander continued drawing up his chart. Now and then he went to see Rydberg, who sat on his balcony, weak and pale, and went over the investigation with him. Rydberg insisted that Wallander was not bothering him and that these sessions did not tire him. But Wallander left his balcony each time with a nagging feeling of guilt.

Anette Brolin returned from her vacation, which she had spent with her husband and children in a summer house in Grebbestad on the west coast. She brought her family back to Ystad with her, and Wallander assumed his most formal tone of voice when he called her to report on his breakthrough in the practically lifeless investigation.

After the first intensive week everything came to a standstill.

Wallander stared at his chart. They were stuck again.

“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?”

“I bought it at a stall in the Sjöbo marketplace,” she replied. “Sometimes you can actually find something great in the midst of all the junk.”

Wallander smiled and moved on. On the way to his office he dropped by to see Hanson and Martinson and asked them to come along with him.

There was still no trace of Baldy or Lucia.

“Two more days,” said Wallander. “If we don’t come up with something by Thursday, we’ll call a press conference and release the pictures.”

“We should have done that right from the start,” said Hanson.

Wallander said nothing.

They went over the chart again. Martinson would continue to organize a search of various campgrounds where the two men might be hiding out.

“Check the youth hostels,” said Wallander. “And all the rooms that are for rent in private homes in the summer.”

“It was easier before,” said Martinson. “People used to stay put in the summer. Now they run all over the place.”

Hanson would continue to look into a number of smaller, less particular construction companies that were known to hire undocumented workers from various Eastern European countries.

Wallander would go out to the strawberry fields. He couldn’t overlook the possibility that the two men might be hiding out at one of the big berry farms.

But all their efforts turned up nothing.

When they met again late that afternoon, the reports were negative.

“I found an Algerian pipelayer,” said Hanson, “two Kurdish bricklayers, and a huge number of Polish manual laborers. I feel like writing a note to Björk. If we hadn’t had this damn double homicide, we could have cleaned up that crap. They’re making the same wages as kids with summer jobs. They don’t have any insurance. If there’s an accident, the contractors will say that the workers were living illegally at the sites.”

Martinson didn’t have any good news either.

“I found a bald Bulgarian,” he said. “With a little luck he could have been Baldy. But he’s a doctor at the clinic in Mariestad and would have no trouble producing an alibi.”

The room was stuffy. Wallander got up and opened the window.

All of a sudden he thought of Ebba’s music box. Even though he hadn’t heard its melody, the music box had been playing in his subconscious all day.

“The marketplaces,” he said, turning around. “We should take a look at them. Which market is open next?”

Both Hanson and Martinson knew the answer.

The one in Kivik.

“It opens today,” said Hanson. “And closes tomorrow.”

“I’ll go out there tomorrow,” said Wallander.

“It’s a big one,” said Hanson. “You should take somebody with you.”

“I can go,” said Martinson.

Hanson looked happy to get out of the trip. Wallander thought that there were probably harness races on Wednesday nights.

They concluded their meeting, said goodbye to each other, and Hanson and Martinson left. Wallander stayed at his desk and sorted through a stack of phone messages. He arranged them by priority for the following day and got ready to leave. Suddenly he caught sight of a note that had fallen under his desk. He bent down to pick it up and saw that the message was about a call from the director of a refugee camp.

He tried the number. He let it ring ten times and was just about to hang up when someone answered.

“This is Wallander at the Ystad police. I’m looking for someone named Modin.”

“Speaking.”

“I’m returning your call.”

“I think I have something important to tell you.”

Kurt Wallander held his breath.

“It’s about the two men you’re looking for. I came back from vacation today. The photographs the police sent were on my desk. I recognize those two men. They lived at this camp for a while.”

“I’m on my way,” said Wallander. “Don’t leave your office before I get there.”

The refugee camp was located outside of Skurup. The drive took him nineteen minutes. The camp was housed in an empty parsonage and was used only as a temporary shelter when all the permanent camps were full.

Modin, the director, was a short man close to sixty. He was waiting in the courtyard when Wallander’s car skidded to a stop.

“The camp is empty right now,” said Modin. “But we’re expecting a number of Romanians next week.”

They went into his small office.

“Start at the beginning,” Wallander said.

“They lived here between December of last year and the middle of February,” said Modin, leafing through some papers. “Then they were transferred to Malmö. To Celsius Estate, to be exact.”

Modin pointed to the photo of Baldy. “His name is Lothar Kraftczyk. He’s a Czech citizen seeking political asylum because he claims that he was persecuted for being a member of an ethnic minority in his own country.”

“Are there minorities in Czechoslovakia?” wondered Wallander.

“I think he regarded himself as a gypsy.”

“Regarded himself?”

Modin shrugged. “I don’t believe he is. Refugees who know they have insufficient reason for staying in Sweden learn quickly that one excellent way to improve their chances is to claim that they’re gypsies.”

Modin picked up the photo of Lucia. “Andreas Haas. Also a Czech. I don’t really know what his reason was for seeking asylum. The paperwork went with them to Celsius Estate.”

“And you’re positive that they’re the men in the photographs”

“Yes. I’m sure of it.”

“Go on,” said Wallander. “Tell me more.”

“About what?”

“What were they like? Did anything special happen while they were living here? Did they have plenty of money? Anything you can recall.”

“I’ve been trying to remember,” said Modin. “They mostly kept to themselves. You should know that life in a refugee camp is probably the most stressful thing anyone can be subjected to. They played chess. Day in and day out.”

“Did they have any money?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“What were they like?”

“Very reserved. But not unfriendly.”

“Anything else?”

Wallander noticed that Modin hesitated.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“This is a small camp,” said Modin. “I don’t stay here at night, and neither does anyone else. On certain days it was also unstaffed. Except for a cook who prepared the meals. We usually keep a car here. The keys are locked in my office. But sometimes when I arrived in the morning, I had the feeling that someone had been using the car. Somebody had been in my office, taken the keys, and driven off in the car.”

“And you suspected these two men?”

Modin nodded. “I don’t know why. It was just a feeling I had.”

Wallander pondered this.

“So at night no one was here,” he said. “Or on certain days either. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Friday, January fifth,” said Wallander. “That’s over six months ago. Can you remember whether there were any staff here that day?”

Modin paged through his desk calendar.

“I was at an emergency meeting in Malmö,” he said. “There was such a backlog of refugees that we had to find more temporary camps.”

The stones were starting to burn under Kurt Wallander’s feet.

The chart had come alive. Now it was speaking to him.

“So nobody was here that day?”

“Only the cook. But the kitchen is in the back. She might not have noticed if anyone had used the car.”

“None of the refugees said anything?”

“Refugees don’t get involved. They’re scared. Even of each other.”

Wallander stood up.

He was suddenly in a big hurry.

“Call up your colleague at Celsius Estate and tell him I’m on my way,” he said. “But don’t mention anything about these two men. Just make sure that the director is available.”

Modin stared at him.

“Why are you looking for them?” he asked.

“They may have committed a crime. A serious crime.”

“The murders in Lenarp? Is that what you mean?”

Wallander suddenly saw no reason not to answer. “Yes. I think they’re the ones.”

He reached Celsius Estate in central Malmö at a few minutes past seven PM. He parked on a side street and went up to the main entrance, which was protected by a security guard. After several minutes a man came to get him. His name was Larson, a former seaman, and he was emanating the unmistakable odor of beer.

“Haas and Kraftczyk,” said Wallander after they sat down in Larson’s office. “Two Czech asylum seekers.”

The man who smelled like beer answered at once.

“The chess players,” he said. “Yes, they live here.”

Goddamn, thought Wallander. We’ve finally got them.

“Are they here in the building?”

“Yes,” said Larson. “I mean, no.”

“No?”

“They live here. But they’re not here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they’re not here.”

“Where the hell are they then?”

“I don’t really know.”

“But they do live here?”

“They ran away.”

“Ran away?”

“It happens all the time — people run away from here.”

“But aren’t they seeking asylum?”

“They still run away.”

“What do you do then?”

“We report them, of course.”

“And then what happens?”

“Usually nothing.”

“Nothing? People run away who are waiting to hear whether they can stay in this country or whether they’re going to be deported? And nobody cares?”

“I guess the police are supposed to look for them.”

“This is completely idiotic. When did they disappear?”

“They left in May. They both probably suspected that their applications for asylum would be turned down.”

“Where do you think they went?”

Larson threw his hands wide. “If you only knew how many people live in this country without residency permits. More than you can imagine. They live together, falsify their papers, trade names with each other, work illegally. You can live all your life in Sweden without anyone asking about you. No one wants to believe it. But that’s the way it is.”

Wallander was speechless.

“This is crazy,” he said. “This is fucking crazy.”

“I agree. But that’s the way things are.”

Wallander groaned.

“I need all the documents you have on these two men.”

“I can’t give those out to just anybody.”

Wallander exploded. “These two men have committed murder,” he shouted. “A double murder.”

“I still can’t release the papers.”

Wallander stood up.

“Tomorrow you’re going to hand over those papers. Even if I have to get the chief of the National Police to come and get them himself.”

“That’s just the way things are. I can’t change the regulations.”

Wallander drove back to Ystad. At quarter to nine he rang Björk’s doorbell. Quickly he told him what had happened.

“Tomorrow we put out an APB on them,” he said.

Björk nodded. “I’ll call a press conference for two o’clock. In the morning I have a consultation with the police chiefs. But I’ll see to it that we get the papers from that camp.”

Wallander went over to see Rydberg. He was sitting in the dark on his balcony.

All of a sudden he saw that Rydberg was in pain.

Rydberg, who seemed to read his thoughts, said bluntly, “I don’t think I’m going to make it through this. I might live past Christmas; I might not.”

Wallander didn’t know what to say.

“One has to endure,” said Rydberg. “But tell me why you’re here.”

Wallander told him. He could dimly make out Rydberg’s face in the darkness.

Then they sat in silence.

The night was cool. But Rydberg didn’t seem to notice as he sat there in his old bathrobe with slippers on his feet.

“Maybe they’ve skipped the country,” said Wallander. “Maybe we’ll never catch them.”

“In that case, we’ll have to live with the fact that at least we know the truth,” said Rydberg. “Justice doesn’t only mean that the people who commit crimes are punished. It also means that we can never give up.”

With great effort he stood up and got a bottle of cognac. With shaking hands he filled two glasses.

“Some old police officers die worrying about ancient, unsolved puzzles,” he said. “I guess I’m one of them.”

“Have you ever regretted becoming a cop?” asked Wallander.

“Never. Not a single day.”

They drank cognac. Talked some, or sat in silence. Not until midnight did Wallander get up to leave. He promised to come back the following evening. After he left, Rydberg stayed where he was, sitting on the balcony in the dark.

On Wednesday morning, July twenty-fifth, Wallander told Hanson and Martinson what had happened after the meeting the day before. Since the press conference was set for that afternoon, they decided to pay a visit to the Kivik market after all. Hanson took on the task of writing the press release along with Björk. Wallander figured that he and Martinson would be back no later than noon.

They drove by way of Tomelilla and joined a long line of cars just south of Kivik. They pulled in and parked in a field where a greedy landowner demanded a fee of twenty kronor.

Just as they reached the market area, which stretched before them with a view of the sea, it started to rain. In dismay they stared at the throngs of stalls and people. Loudspeakers were screeching, drunken youths were bellowing, and they were shoved back and forth by the crowd.

“Let’s try to meet somewhere in the middle,” said Wallander.

“We should have brought walkie-talkies in case something happens,” said Martinson.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” said Wallander. “Let’s meet in an hour.”

He watched Martinson shamble off and vanish into the crowd. He turned up the collar of his jacket and headed off in the opposite direction.

After a little more than an hour they met up again. Both of them were soaked and feeling annoyed with the throngs of people and the jostling.

“To hell with this,” said Martinson. “Let’s go someplace and get some coffee.”

Wallander pointed at a cabaret tent in front of them.

“Have you been in there?” he asked.

Martinson grimaced. “Some tub of lard doing a striptease. The audience roared like it was some kind of sexual revival meeting. Jesus.”

“Let’s walk around the tent,” said Wallander. “I think there are a few stalls over there too. Then we can go.”

They trudged through the mud, pushing their way between a house trailer and rusty tent stakes.

A few stalls were selling various goods. They all looked the same, their awnings pitched above red-painted metal poles.

Wallander and Martinson saw the two men at exactly the same moment.

They were standing inside a stall, its counter covered with leather jackets. A sign showed the price, and Wallander had time to think that the jackets were unbelievably cheap.

The two men were behind the counter.

They stared at the two police officers.

Much too late Wallander realized that they recognized him. His face had appeared so often in pictures in the papers and on television. Kurt Wallander’s description had been spread all over the country.

Then everything happened very fast.

One of the men, the one they had started calling Lucia, stuck his hand under the leather jackets on the counter and pulled out a gun. Both Martinson and Wallander dove to the side. Martinson got tangled up in the ropes of the cabaret tent, while Wallander hit his head on the back end of the house trailer. The man behind the counter fired at Wallander. The shot could hardly be heard amid the commotion from the tent where the “death riders” were tearing around on their roaring motorcycles. The bullet struck the trailer, just a few inches from Wallander’s head. In the next instant he saw that Martinson was holding a pistol. Even though Wallander was unarmed, Martinson had brought along his service revolver.

Martinson fired. Wallander saw Lucia jerk back and put his hand up to his shoulder. The gun flew out of his hand and landed outside the counter. With a bellow Martinson yanked himself free from the tent ropes and threw himself at the counter, straight at the wounded man. The counter broke in two, and Martinson landed in a jumble of leather jackets. By this time Wallander had lunged forward and grabbed the gun, which was lying in the mud. At the same time he saw Baldy dash away and vanish in the throng. No one seemed to have noticed the exchange of gunfire. The vendors in the surrounding stalls had watched in amazement as Martinson made his furious tiger pounce.

“Go after the other guy,” shrieked Martinson from the heap of leather jackets. “I’ll take care of this one.”

Wallander ran with the pistol in his hand. Baldy was somewhere in the crowd. Terrified people pulled away as Wallander came running with mud on his face and the gun in his hand. He thought he had lost the man when suddenly he caught sight of him again, in wild and reckless flight through the market crowds. He shoved aside an elderly woman who stepped in front of him and crashed into a stall selling cakes. Wallander stumbled over the mess, knocked over a candy cart, and then took off after him.

Suddenly the man disappeared.

Shit, thought Wallander. Shit.

Then he saw him again. He was running toward the outskirts of the market area, on his way down to the steep cliff. Wallander raced after him. A couple of security guards came running toward him, but they leaped aside when he waved the gun and yelled at them to stay away. One of the guards crashed into a tent serving beer, while the other one knocked over a stall selling homemade candlesticks.

Kurt Wallander ran. His heart was pounding like a piston in his chest.

Suddenly the man vanished over the steep cliff. Wallander was about thirty meters behind him. When he reached the edge he stumbled and fell headlong down the slope. He lost his grip on the gun in his hand. For a moment he hesitated, wondering whether he should stop and search for the weapon. Then he saw Baldy running along the shore, and he took off after him.

The chase ended when neither of them had any energy left to keep running. Baldy leaned against a black-tarred rowboat that lay turned over on the shore. Wallander stood ten meters away, so out of breath that he thought he was going to fall over.

Then he noticed that Baldy had drawn a knife and was coming toward him.

That’s the knife he cut off Johannes Lövgren’s nose with, he thought. That’s the knife he used to force Lövgren to tell him where the money was hidden.

He looked around for a weapon. A broken oar was the only thing he could find.

Baldy made a lunge with the knife. Wallander parried with the heavy oar.

The next time the man jabbed with the knife, Wallander hit him. The oar struck the man on the collarbone. Wallander could hear the bone crack. The man stumbled, and Wallander let go of the oar and slammed his right fist into the man’s chin. His knuckles hurt like hell.

But the man fell.

Wallander collapsed onto the wet sand.

A second later Martinson came running.

The rain was suddenly pouring down.

“We got them,” said Martinson.

“Yes,” said Wallander. “I guess we did.”

He walked over to the edge of the water and rinsed off his face. In the distance he saw a freighter heading south.

He thought about how glad he was to be able to give Rydberg some good news in the midst of his misery.

Two days later the man named Andreas Haas confessed that they had committed the murders. He confessed but blamed it all on the other man. When Lothar Kraftczyk was confronted with the confession, he gave up too. But he blamed the violence on Andreas Haas.

Everything had happened just as Wallander had imagined. On several occasions the two men had gone into various banks to exchange money and to try to find a customer who was withdrawing a large sum. They had followed Johannes Lövgren when Lundin, the chimney sweep, had driven him home. They had tailed him along the dirt road, and two nights later they had returned in the car from the refugee camp.

“There’s one thing that puzzles me,” said Wallander, who was heading the interrogation of Lothar Kraftczyk. “Why did you give hay to the horse?”

The man looked at him in surprise.

“The money was hidden in the hay,” he said. “Maybe we threw some of the hay over to the horse when we were looking for the briefcase.”

Wallander nodded. The solution to the mystery of feeding the horse was that simple.

“One more thing,” said Wallander. “Why the noose?”

He got no answer. Neither of the two men wanted to admit to being the one behind the insane violence. He repeated his question but never got an answer.

The Czech police informed them, however, that both Haas and Kraftczyk had done time for assault in their native country.

After fleeing from the refugee camp, the two men had rented a little dilapidated house outside of Höör. The leather jackets they were selling came from the burglary of a leather-goods shop in Tranås.

The detention hearing was over in a matter of minutes.

No one doubted that the evidence would be airtight, even though the two men were still accusing each other.

Kurt Wallander sat in the courtroom and stared at the two men he had been tracking for such a long time. He remembered that early morning in January when he stepped inside the house in Lenarp. Even though the double murder had now been solved and the criminals would receive their punishment, he still wasn’t satisfied. Why had they put a noose around Maria Lövgren’s neck? Why so much violence for its own sake?

He shuddered. He had no answers. And that made him uneasy.

Late in the evening on Saturday, August fourth, Wallander took a bottle of whiskey and went over to see Rydberg. On the following day Anette Brolin was going to go with him to visit his father.

Wallander thought about the question he had asked her.

Whether she would consider getting a divorce for his sake.

Of course she had said no.

But he knew that she hadn’t been offended by the question.

As he drove over to Rydberg’s place, he listened to Maria Callas on the tape deck. He was taking the next week off, as comp time for the extra hours he had worked. He was going to go to Lund to visit Herman Mboya, who had come back from Kenya. He was planning to spend the rest of the time repainting his apartment.

Maybe he would even treat himself to a new stereo.

He parked outside the building where Rydberg lived.

He caught a glimpse of the yellow moon overhead. He could feel that autumn was on the way.

As usual, Rydberg was sitting in the dark on the balcony.

Wallander filled two glasses with whiskey.

“Do you remember when we sat around worrying about what Maria Lövgren had whispered?” said Rydberg. “That we would be forced to search for some foreigners? Then, when Erik Magnusson came into the picture, he was the most sought-after murderer imaginable. But he wasn’t the one. Now we’ve got a couple of foreigners after all. And a poor Somali who died needlessly.”

“You knew all along,” said Wallander. “Didn’t you? You were sure the whole time that it was foreigners.”

“I wasn’t positive,” said Rydberg. “But I thought so.”

Slowly they went over the investigation, as if it were already a distant memory.

“We made lots of mistakes,” said Wallander thoughtfully. “I made lots of mistakes.”

“You’re a good cop,” said Rydberg emphatically. “Maybe I never told you that. But I think you’re a damned fine cop.”

“I made too many mistakes,” replied Wallander.

“You kept at it,” said Rydberg. “You never gave up. You wanted to catch whoever committed those murders in Lenarp. That’s the important thing.”

The conversation gradually petered out.

I’m sitting here with a dying man, thought Kurt Wallander in confusion. I don’t think I ever realized that Rydberg is actually going to die.

He remembered the time in his youth when he was stabbed.

He also thought about the fact that a little less than six months ago he had driven his car while intoxicated. In reality he should have been dismissed from the police force.

Why don’t I tell Rydberg about that? he wondered. Why don’t I say anything? Or does he already know?

The incantation flashed through his mind.

A time to live, a time to die.

“How are you doing?” he asked cautiously.

Rydberg’s face was invisible in the darkness.

“Right now I don’t have any pain,” he said. “But tomorrow it’ll be back. Or the next day.”

It was almost two in the morning when Wallander left Rydberg, who stubbornly remained sitting on his balcony.

Wallander left his car where it was and walked home.

The moon had disappeared behind a cloud.

Now and then he took a little hop.

The voice of Maria Callas resounded in his head.

Before he went to sleep, he lay in bed for a while in the dark of his apartment with his eyes open.

Again he thought about the senseless violence. The new times, which might demand a different kind of cop.

We’re living in the time of the noose, he thought. Fear will be on the rise.

Then he forced himself to push these thoughts aside and started looking for the black woman in his dreams.

The investigation was over.

Now he could finally get some rest.