Sidetracked

CHAPTER 15

It had started with a telephone call.

Ann-Britt Hoglund 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 Hoglund 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 Langholmen 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 Langholmen in the spring of 1969. We know that Wetterstedt was minister of justice then.”

“Wasn’t Langholmen 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 Hoglund. “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 Bjaresjo. 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 Langholmen 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. Hoglund 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.

“Can Kajsa come too?” she asked.

“Normally I’d say yes,” replied Wallander. “But today I’d prefer it if it was just you and me. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

He picked her up in Osterport Square. On the way to Loderup he told her about his father’s visit to the station, and that he was ill.

“No-one knows how fast it will progress,” said Wallander. “But he will be leaving us. Sort of like a ship sailing farther and farther out towards the horizon. We’ll still be able to see him clearly, but for him we’ll seem more and more like shapes in the fog. Our faces, our words, our common memories, everything will become indistinct and finally disappear altogether. He might be cruel without realising he’s doing it. He could turn into a totally different person.”

Wallander could tell that she was upset.

“Can’t anything be done?” she asked after sitting for a long time in silence.

“Only Gertrud can answer that,” he said. “But I don’t think there is a cure.”

He also told her about the trip that he and his father wanted to take to Italy.

“It’ll be just him and me,” said Wallander. “Maybe we can work out all the problems we’ve had.”

Gertrud met them on the steps when they pulled into the courtyard. Linda ran to see her grandfather, who was painting out in the studio he had made in the old barn. Wallander sat down in the kitchen and talked to Gertrud. It was just as he thought. There was nothing to be done but try to live a normal life and wait.

“Will he be able to travel to Italy?” asked Wallander.

“That’s all he talks about,” she said. “And if he should die while he’s there, it wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

She told him that his father had taken the news of his illness calmly. This surprised Wallander, who had known his father to fret about the slightest ailment.

“I think he’s come to terms with old age,” said Gertrud. “He probably thinks that by and large he would live the same life again if he had the chance.”

“But in that life he would have stopped me from becoming a policeman,” said Wallander.

“It’s terrible, what I read in the papers,” she said. “All the horrible things you have to deal with.”

“Someone has to do it,” said Wallander. “That’s just the way it is.”

They stayed and ate dinner in the garden. Wallander could see that his father was in an unusually good mood. He assumed that Linda was the reason. It was already 11 p.m. by the time they left.

“Adults can be so childlike,” Linda said suddenly. “Sometimes because they’re showing off, trying to act young. But Grandpa can seem childlike in a way that seems totally unaffected.”

“Your grandpa is a very special person,” said Wallander.

“Do you know you’re starting to look like him?” she asked. “You two are becoming more alike every year.”

“I know,” said Wallander. “But I don’t know if I like it.”

He dropped her off where he’d picked her up. They decided that she would call in a few days. He watched her disappear past Osterport School and realised to his astonishment that he hadn’t thought about the investigation once the whole evening. He immediately felt guilty, then pushed the feeling away. He knew that he couldn’t do any more than he had already done today.

He drove to the station. None of the detectives were in. There weren’t any messages important enough to answer that evening. He drove home, parked his car, and went up to his flat.

Wallander stayed up for a long time that night. He had the windows open to the warm summer air. On his stereo he played some music by Puccini. He poured himself the last of the whisky. He felt some of the happiness he had felt the afternoon he was driving out to Salomonsson’s farm, before the catastrophe had struck. Now he was in the middle of an investigation that was marked by two things. First, they had very little to help them identify the killer. Second, it was quite possible that he was busy carrying out his third murder at that very moment. Still, Wallander tried to put the case out of his mind. And for a short time the burning girl disappeared from his thoughts too. He had to admit that he couldn’t single-handedly solve every violent crime that happened in Ystad. He could only do his best. That’s all anyone could do.

He lay down on the sofa and dozed off to the music and the summer night with the whisky glass within reach.

But something drew him back to the surface again. It was something that Linda had said in the car. Some words that suddenly took on a whole new meaning. He sat up on the sofa, frowning. What was it she had said? Adults can be so childlike. There was something there that he couldn’t grasp. Adults can be so childlike.

Then he realised what it was. And he couldn’t understand how he could have been so sloppy. He put on his shoes, found a torch in one of the kitchen drawers, and left the flat. He drove out along Osterleden, turned right, and stopped outside Wetterstedt’s house, which lay in darkness. He opened the gate to the front yard. He gave a start when a cat vanished like a shadow among the bushes. He shone the torch along the base of the garage, and didn’t have to search long before he found what he was looking for. He took the torn-out pages of the magazine between his thumb and forefinger and shone the light on them. They were from an issue of The Phantom. He searched in his pockets for a plastic bag and put the pages inside.

Then he drove home. He was still annoyed that he had been so sloppy.

Adults can be so childlike.

A grown man could very well have sat on the garage roof reading an issue of The Phantom.