Sidetracked

CHAPTER 20

The man who lifted the tarpaulin screamed. Then he fled.

One of the ticket agents was standing outside the railway station smoking a cigarette. It was just before 7 a.m. on the morning of 29 June, and it was going to be a hot day. The agent was wrenched from his thoughts, which were focused less on selling tickets than on the trip he was about to take to Greece. He turned when he heard the scream. He saw the man drop the tarpaulin and run off towards the ferry terminal. The ticket agent flicked away his cigarette butt and walked over to the pit. He stared down at a bloody head for a moment, then dropped the tarpaulin as if it had burned him. He ran into the station, tripping over a couple of suitcases left in the middle of the floor, and grabbed one of the phones inside the stationmaster’s office.

The call arrived at the Ystad station on the 90-000 line just after 7 a.m. Svedberg, who was in unusually early that morning, was summoned to take the call. When he heard the agent talking about a bloody head he froze. His hand shook as he wrote down a single word, station, and hung up. He dialled the wrong number twice before managing to get hold of Wallander.

“I think it’s happened again,” said Svedberg.

For a few brief seconds Wallander didn’t understand what Svedberg meant, even though every time the phone rang he feared that very thing. But now he experienced a moment of shock, or perhaps a desperate attempt at denial.

He knew he would never forget this moment. Fleetingly he thought that it was like having a premonition of his own death, a moment when denial and escape were impossible. I think it’s happened again. He felt as if he were a wind-up toy. Svedberg’s stammered words were like hands twisting the key attached to his back. He was wrenched out of his sleep and his bed, out of dreams he couldn’t remember but which might have been pleasant. He got dressed in a desperate frenzy, buttons popping off, and his shoelaces flopped untied as he raced down the stairs and outside.

When he came screeching to a stop in his car, which still needed its M.O.T., Svedberg was already there. Directed by Noren, some officers were busy rolling out the striped crime-scene tape. Svedberg was awkwardly patting the weeping ticket agent on the shoulder, while some men in blue overalls stared into the pit, now transformed into a nightmare. Wallander left his door open and ran over to Svedberg. Why he ran he didn’t really know. Maybe his internal police mechanism had started to speed up. Or maybe he was so afraid of what he was going to see that he simply didn’t dare approach it slowly.

Svedberg was white in the face. He nodded towards the pit. Wallander walked slowly over and took several deep breaths before looking into the hole.

It was worse than he could have imagined. He was looking straight into a dead man’s brain. Ann-Britt Hoglund arrived next to Wallander. She flinched and turned away. Her reaction made him start to think clearly.

“No doubt about it,” he said to Hoglund, turning back to the pit. “It’s him again.”

She was very pale. Wallander was afraid she was going to faint. He put his arm around her shoulders.

“Are you OK?” he asked.

She nodded.

Martinsson arrived with Hansson. Wallander saw them both give a start when they looked in the hole. He was overcome with rage. The man who had done this had to be stopped.

“It must be the same killer,” said Hansson in an unsteady voice. “Isn’t it ever going to end? I can’t take responsibility for this any more. Did Bjork know about this before he left? I’m going to ask for reinforcements from the National Criminal Bureau.”

“Do that,” said Wallander. “But first let’s get him out of there and see whether we can solve this ourselves.”

Hansson stared in disbelief at Wallander, who realised that Hansson thought they were going to have to lift the dead man out themselves.

A large crowd had gathered outside the cordon. Wallander remembered what he had sensed in connection with Carlman’s murder. He took Noren aside and asked him to borrow a camera from Nyberg and take pictures, as discreetly as possible, of the people standing outside the cordon. Meanwhile the emergency van from the fire department had arrived on the scene. Nyberg was directing his crew around the pit. Wallander went over to him, trying to avoid looking at the corpse.

“Once again,” said Nyberg. He wasn’t being cynical. Their eyes met.

“We’ve got to catch him,” said Wallander.

“As soon as possible, I hope,” said Nyberg. He lay down on his stomach so he could study the dead man’s face. When he straightened up again he called to Wallander, who was just heading off to talk to Svedberg. He came back.

“Did you see his eyes?” asked Nyberg.

Wallander shook his head.

“What about them?”

Nyberg grimaced.

“Apparently the murderer wasn’t content with taking a scalp this time,” said Nyberg. “It looks like he poked his eyes out too.”

“What do you mean?”

“The man in the pit doesn’t have any eyes,” said Nyberg. “There are two holes where they used to be.”

It took them two hours to get the body out. Wallander talked to the workman who had lifted the tarpaulin and the ticket agent who had stood by the steps of the station dreaming of Greece. He noted the times that they had seen the body. He asked Nyberg to search the dead man’s pockets to see if they could establish his identity, but they were empty.

“Nothing at all?” asked Wallander in surprise.

“Not a thing,” said Nyberg. “But something may have fallen out. We’ll look around down there.”

They hauled him up in a sling. Wallander forced himself to look at his face. Nyberg was right. The man had no eyes. The torn-off hair made it seem that it was a dead animal, not a human being lying on the plastic sheet at his feet.

Wallander sat down on the steps of the station. He studied his notes. He called Martinsson, who was talking to a doctor.

“We know he hasn’t been here long,” he said. “I talked to the workmen replacing the sewerage pipes. They put the tarpaulin down at 4 p.m. yesterday. So the body was put there between then and 7 a.m. this morning.”

“There are a lot of people around here in the evenings,” said Martinsson. “People taking a walk, traffic to and from the station and the ferry terminal. It must have happened during the night.”

“How long has he been dead?” asked Wallander. “That’s what I want to know. And who he is.”

Nyberg hadn’t found a wallet. They had nothing to help establish the man’s identity. Hoglund came over and sat down next to them.

“Hansson’s talking about requesting reinforcements from the National Criminal Bureau,” she said.

“I know,” said Wallander. “But he won’t do anything until I tell him to. What did the doctor say?”

She looked at her notes.

“About 45 years old,” she said. “Strong, well-built.”

“That makes him the youngest one so far,” said Wallander.

“Strange place to hide the body,” said Martinsson. “Did he think that work would stop during the summer holiday?”

“Maybe he just wanted to get rid of it,” said Hoglund.

“Then why did he pick this pit?” asked Martinsson. “It must have been a lot of trouble to get him into it. And there was the risk that someone might see him.”

“Maybe he wanted the body to be found,” Wallander said thoughtfully. “We can’t rule out that possibility.”

They looked at him in astonishment, waiting for him to explain, but he remained silent.

The body was taken away to Malmo. They left for the police station. Noren had been taking pictures of the large crowd milling around outside the cordoned-off area.

Mats Ekholm had shown up earlier that morning, and stared at the corpse for a long time. Wallander had gone over to him.

“You got your wish,” he said. “Another victim.”

“I didn’t wish for this,” replied Ekholm, shaking his head.

Now Wallander regretted his remark. He would have to explain to Ekholm what he’d meant.

Just after 10 a.m. they closed the door to the conference room, Hansson again giving instructions that calls weren’t to be put through. But they had barely started the meeting when the phone rang. Hansson snatched the receiver and barked into it, red with anger. But he sank slowly back in his chair. Wallander knew at once that someone very important was on the line. Hansson adopted Bjork’s obsequiousness. He made some brief comments, answered questions, but mostly listened. When the call was over he placed the receiver back as if it were a fragile antique.

“Let me guess — the national police board,” said Wallander. “Or the chief public prosecutor. Or a TV reporter.”

“The commissioner of the national police,” replied Hansson. “He expressed as much dissatisfaction as encouragement.”

“Sounds like a strange combination,” Hoglund said drily.

“He’s welcome to come down here and help,” said Svedberg.

“What does he know about police work?” Martinsson spluttered. “Absolutely nothing.”

Wallander tapped his pen on the table. Everyone was upset and uncertain of what to do next, and he knew they had very little time before they would be subjected to a barrage of criticism. They would never be totally immune from outside pressure. They could only counteract it by focusing their attention inward on the shifting centre of the search. He tried to collect his thoughts, knowing that they didn’t have a thing to go on.

“What do we know?” Wallander began, looking around the table. He felt like a vicar who had lost his faith. But he had to say something to spur them on again as a unit.

“The man wound up in that pit sometime last night. Let’s assume that it took place in the early hours. We can assume that he wasn’t murdered there. There would have been a lot of blood at the place where he was killed. Nyberg hadn’t found a thing by the time we left, so he must have been transported there in a vehicle. Maybe the people working at the hot dog stand next to the railway crossing noticed something. It appears that he was killed by a powerful blow from the front that went all the way through his skull.”

Martinsson turned completely white. He got up and left the room without a word. Wallander decided to carry on without him.

“He was scalped like the others. And he had his eyes put out. The doctor wasn’t sure how, but there were some spots near the eyes that might indicate a corrosive agent. Maybe our specialist has some opinion on what this indicates.”

Wallander turned to Ekholm.

“Not yet,” said Ekholm. “It’s too soon.”

“We don’t need a comprehensive analysis,” said Wallander firmly. “At this stage we have to think out loud. Maybe we’ll uncover the truth. We don’t believe in miracles. But we don’t have much else to go on.”

“I think the fact that the eyes were put out means something,” said Ekholm. “We can assume that the same man is involved. This victim was younger than the other two. And he suffered the loss of his sight, presumably while he was still alive. It must have been excruciating. The murderer took scalps from the first two he killed, and this time too. But he also blinded his victim. Why? What kind of revenge was he exacting this time?”

“The man must be a psychopath,” said Hansson suddenly. “A serial killer of the kind I thought existed only in the United States. But here? In Ystad? In Skane?”

“There’s still something controlled about him,” said Ekholm. “He knows what he wants. He kills and scalps. He pokes out or dissolves the eyes. There’s nothing to indicate unbridled rage. Psychopath, yes. But one in control of his actions.”

“Are there instances of something like this having happened before?” asked Hoglund.

“Not that I can recall,” replied Ekholm. “At least not here in Sweden. In America studies have been done on the role that eyes have played in psychopathic killings. I’ll read about it today.”

Wallander had been half-listening to the conversation. A thought that he couldn’t quite yet grasp had popped into his head. It was something about eyes. Something somebody had said about eyes. What was it? He turned his attention to the meeting. But the thought lingered like an uneasy ache.

“Anything else?” he asked Ekholm.

“Not at the moment.”

Martinsson came back into the room. He was still very pale.

“I’ve got an idea,” said Wallander. “After hearing Mats I’m convinced that the murder took place elsewhere. The man must have screamed. Someone would have seen or heard something if it happened outside the railway station. We’ll have to confirm this. But for the time being let’s say I’m right. Why then did he pick that pit to hide the body? I talked to one of the workmen. Persson was his name, Erik Persson. He said that the pit had been excavated on Monday afternoon. Less than two days ago. The killer could have stumbled on it by chance, of course. But that doesn’t fit with the fact that he seems to plan everything he does carefully. The killer must have been outside the railway station at some time after Monday afternoon. He must have looked into the pit to see if it was deep enough. We’ll need to interview all the workmen. Did they notice anybody hanging around? And did the staff at the railway station notice anything?”

Everyone around the table was listening intently, making him feel that his ideas weren’t completely off track.

“I also think the question of whether it was meant as a hiding place is crucial,” he went on. “He must have known that the body would be found the next morning. So why did he choose the pit? So it would be discovered? Or is there another explanation?”

Everyone in the room waited for him to continue.

“Is he taunting us?” said Wallander. “Does he want to help us? Or is he trying to fool us? Does he want to trick me into thinking exactly the way I’m thinking now? What would the alternative be?”

No-one answered him.

“The timing is also important,” said Wallander. “This murder was very recent. That might assist us.”

“For that we need help,” said Hansson. Clearly he’d been waiting for an opportunity to bring up the question of reinforcements.

“Not yet,” said Wallander. “Let’s decide later on today. Or maybe tomorrow. As far as I know, no-one in this room is going on holiday soon. Let’s keep it to this group for a few more days. Then we can seek reinforcements if necessary.”

“What about the connection?” said Wallander in conclusion. “Now there’s one more person to fit into the puzzle we’re trying to piece together.”

He looked around the table once more.

“We have to realise that he could strike again,” he said. “In fact, we should assume that he will.”

The meeting was over. They all knew what they had to do. Wallander remained sitting at the table while the others filed out of the door. He was trying to recapture that thought. He was sure that it was something someone had said in relation to the investigation. Somebody had mentioned eyes. He thought back to the day he’d first heard that Wetterstedt had been found murdered. He searched his memory, but found nothing. Irritated, he tossed his pen aside and went out to the canteen for a cup of coffee. When he got back to his office he set the coffee cup on his desk and was about to shut the door when he saw Svedberg coming down the hall. Svedberg was walking fast. He only did that when something important had happened. Wallander instantly got a knot in his stomach. Not another one, he thought. We just can’t cope.

“I think we’ve found the scene of the crime,” said Svedberg.

“Where?”

“Our colleagues at Sturup found a delivery van soaked in blood in the airport car park.”

A van. That would fit.

A few minutes later they left the station. Wallander couldn’t remember ever in his life feeling that he had so little time. When they reached the edge of town he told Svedberg to turn on the police lights. In the fields beside the road a farmer was harvesting his rape.