The White Lioness

Chapter Eighteen

Days and nights had merged to form a vague whole from which he was no longer able to pick out the parts. Victor Mabasha did not know how long it was since he left the dead body of Konovalenko behind in the remote house set in muddy fields. The man who had suddenly come back to life and shot at him in the disco filled with tear gas. That was a shock for him. He was convinced he had killed Konovalenko with the bottle. But despite the smarting in his eyes, he had seen Konovalenko through the clouds of smoke. Victor Mabasha escaped from the premises via a back staircase full of screaming, kicking people in a panic, trying to flee the smoke. For a brief moment, he thought he was back in South Africa, where tear gas attacks on black townships were not uncommon. But he was in Stockholm and Konovalenko had risen from the dead and was now chasing him in order to kill him.

He had reached town at dawn and spent hours driving around the streets, not knowing what to do. He was very tired, so weary he did not really dare trust his own judgment. That made him scared. Before, he had always felt that his judgment, his ability to think himself out of difficult situations with a clear head, was his ultimate life insurance. He wondered whether to take a room in a hotel somewhere. But he had no passport, no documents at all to establish his identity. He was a nobody among all these people, an armed man without a name, that was all.

The pain in his hand kept returning at irregular intervals. Soon he would have to see a doctor. The black blood had seeped through the bandages, and he could not afford to succumb to infections and fever. That would make him completely defenseless. But the bloody stump hardly affected him. His finger might never have existed. In his thoughts he had transformed it into a dream. He was born without an index finger on his left hand.

He slept in a cemetery in a sleeping bag he bought. He was cold in spite of it. In his dreams he was pursued by the singing hounds. As he lay awake watching the stars, he thought how he might never return to his homeland. The dry, red, swirling soil would never again be touched by the soles of his feet. The thought filled him with sudden sorrow, so intense he could not remember feeling anything like it since the death of his father. It also occurred to him that in South Africa, a country founded upon an all-embracing lie, there was seldom room for simple untruths. He thought about the lie that formed the very backbone of his own life.

The nights he spent in the cemetery were filled with the songoma’s words. It was also during these nights, surrounded by nothing but the unknown dead, white people he had never met and would never meet until he entered the underworld, the world of spirits, that he remembered his childhood. He saw his father’s face, his smile, and heard his voice. It also occurred to him that the spirit world might be divided, just like South Africa. Perhaps even the underworld consisted of a black and a white world? He was filled with sorrow as he imagined the spirits of his forefathers being forced to live in smoky, slummy townships. He tried to get his songoma to tell him how it was. But all he got was the singing hounds, and their howls he was unable to interpret.

At dawn the second day he left the cemetery after hiding his sleeping bag in a tomb where he had managed to pry open an air vent. A few hours later he stole another car. It all happened very quickly: an opportunity arose, and he grasped it without hesitation. Once again his judgment was beginning to assist him. He had turned a corner onto a street where he saw a man leave his car with the engine running and disappear into a doorway. There was nobody around. He recognized the make, a Ford; he had driven lots of them before. He sat behind the wheel, threw a briefcase the man had left behind onto the street, and drove off. He eventually managed to find his way out of town and had searched for a lake where he could be alone with his thoughts.

He could not find a lake, but he came upon the seashore. Or rather, he thought it had to be the seashore. He did not know which sea it was or what it was called, but when he tasted the water it was salty. Not as salty as he was used to, from the beaches at Durban and Port Elizabeth. But there could hardly be salt lakes in this country? He clambered over a few rocks, and imagined he was gazing into infinity through a narrow gap between two islands in the archipelago. There was a chill in the air and he felt cold. Even so, he remained standing on a rock as far out as he could get, thinking that this was where his life had taken him. A very long way. But what would the future look like?

Just as he used to do in his childhood, he squatted down and made a spiral-shaped labyrinth from pebbles that had broken loose from the rock. At the same time he tried to delve so deeply into himself that he could hear the voice of his songoma. But he couldn’t get that far. The noise of the sea was too strong and his own concentration too weak. The stones he had arranged to form a labyrinth did not help. He just felt scared. If he could not talk to the spirits, he would grow so weak he might even die. He would no longer have any resistance to illnesses, his thoughts would desert him, and his body would become a mere shell that cracked the moment it was touched.

Feeling uneasy, he tore himself away from the sea and returned to his car. He tried to concentrate on the most important things. How was it possible for Konovalenko to trace him so easily to the disco recommended by some Africans from Uganda he started talking to in a burger bar?

That was the first question.

The second was how he could get out of this country and return to South Africa.

He realized he would be forced to do what he wanted to do least of all. Find Konovalenko. That would be very difficult. Konovalenko would be as hard to track down as an individual spriengboek in the endless African bush. But somehow or other he would have to entice Konovalenko. He was the one with a passport, he was the one who could be forced to help him get away from this country. He did not think he could see any alternative.

He still hoped he would not need to kill anybody, apart from Konovalenko.

That evening he went back to the disco. There were not many people there, and he sat in a corner, drinking beer. When he went to the bar with his empty glass for another beer, the bald man spoke to him. At first Victor Mabasha did not understand what he was saying. Then he realized that two different people had been there the day before, looking for him. He could tell from the description that one of them was Konovalenko. But what about the other one? The man behind the bar said he was a cop. A cop with an accent that showed he came from the southern part of the country.

“What did he want?” wondered Victor Mabasha.

The bald man nodded at his filthy bandage.

“He was looking for a black man missing a finger,” he said.

He drank no more beer, but left the disco without more ado. Konovalenko might come back. He was still not prepared to face him, even though his gun was at the ready, tucked into his belt.

When he came out onto the street, he knew right away what he was going to do. This cop would help him find Konovalenko.

Somewhere or other there was an investigation going on into the disappearance of a woman. Maybe they had found her body already, wherever Konovalenko had hidden it. But if they had managed to find out about him, they might know about Konovalenko as well?

I left a clue, he thought. A finger. Maybe Konovalenko also left something behind?

He spent the rest of the evening hovering in the shadows outside the disco. But neither Konovalenko nor the cop showed up. The bald man had given him a description of the cop. It occurred to Victor Mabasha that a white man in his forties was not going to be a regular customer at the disco.

Late that night he went back to the tomb in the cemetery. The next day he stole another car, and that evening he hovered once more in the shadows outside the disco.

At exactly nine o’clock, a cab came to a halt at the entrance. Victor was in the front seat of his car. He sank down so that his head was level with the steering wheel. The cop got out of the taxi and disappeared into the underworld. As soon as he had vanished, Victor drove up to the entrance and got out. He withdrew to the darkest shadows, and waited. His pistol was in his jacket pocket, within easy reach.

The man who emerged a quarter of an hour later and looked around vaguely or possibly lost in thought was not on his guard. He gave the impression of being completely harmless, a solitary, unprotected nocturnal prowler. Victor Mabasha drew his pistol, took a few swift strides, and pressed the gun against the underside of the man’s chin.

“Not a move,” he said in English. “Not a single move.”

The man gave a start. But he understood English. He did not move.

“Go to the car,” said Victor Mabasha. “Open the door and get into the passenger seat.”

The man did as he was told. He was evidently very scared.

Victor quickly ducked into the car and punched him on the chin. Hard enough to knock him out, but not hard enough to break his jaw. Victor Mabasha knew his strength when he was in control of the situation. Something that did not apply that catastrophic last evening with Konovalenko.

He went through the cop’s pockets. Oddly enough, no gun. Victor Mabasha was even more convinced he was in a very strange country, with unarmed cops. Then he bound the man’s arms to his chest and taped over his mouth. A narrow trickle of blood was seeping from the side of his mouth. It was never possible to avoid injuring somebody altogether. The man had presumably bitten his own tongue.

During the three hours available to Victor Mabasha that afternoon, he had memorized the route he intended to take. He knew exactly where he was going and had no desire to risk a wrong turn. When he stopped at the first red light, he took out the man’s wallet and saw he was called Kurt Wallander, forty years old.

The lights changed, and he moved on. He kept a close eye on the rear mirror the whole time.

After the second red light he started to think he had a car on his tail. Could the cop have had a backup? If so, there would soon be problems. When he came to a multi-lane highway, he stepped on the gas. He suddenly felt he could have been imagining things. Maybe they were on their own after all?

The man in the passenger seat started groaning and moving. Victor Mabasha could see he must have hit him precisely as hard as he had intended.

He turned into the cemetery and came to a halt in the shadow of a green building containing a shop that sold flowers and wreaths during the day. Now it was closed and in darkness. He turned off his lights and watched the cars taking the slip road. None of them seemed to be slowing down.

He waited another ten minutes. But nothing happened, apart from the policeman coming to.

“Not a sound,” said Victor Mabasha, ripping off the tape over the man’s mouth.

A cop understands, he thought. He knows when a guy means what he says. He then began to wonder if a man who abducted a policeman risked hanging in Sweden.

He got out of the car, listened, and looked around. All was quiet, apart from the passing traffic. He walked round the car, opened the door and motioned to the man to get out. Then he led him to one of the iron gates and they soon disappeared in the darkness consuming the gravel paths and gravestones.

Victor Mabasha led him over to the burial vault where he had managed to open the iron door without difficulty. It smelled musty in the damp vault, but he was not scared by graveyards. He had often hidden among the dead in the past.

He had bought a hurricane lamp and an extra sleeping bag. At first the cop refused to go with him into the vault, and put up a show of resistance.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you, either. But you’ve got to go in there.”

He tucked the cop into one of the sleeping bags, lit the lamp, and went out to see if the light could be seen. But it was all dark.

Once again he stood still and listened. The many years he had spent constantly on the alert had developed his hearing. Something had moved on a gravel path. The cop’s backup, he thought. Or some nocturnal animal.

In the end he decided it was not a threat. He went back into the vault and squatted opposite the cop, whose name was Kurt Wallander.

The fear Wallander had first felt had now become positive fright, perhaps even terror.

“If you do as I say no harm will come to you,” said Victor Mabasha. “But you must answer my questions. And you must tell the truth. I know you’re a cop. I can see you’re looking at my left hand and the bandage all the time. That means you’ve found my finger. The one Konovalenko cut off. I want to tell you right away he was the one who killed the woman. It’s up to you if you believe me or not. I only came to this country to stay for a short time, and I’ve decided to kill only one person. Konovalenko. But you have to help me first by telling me where he is. Once Konovalenko’s dead, I’ll let you go right away.”

Victor Mabasha waited for a reply. Then he remembered something he had forgotten.

“I don’t suppose you have a shadow?” he asked. “A car following you?”

The man shook his head.

“You’re on your own?”

“Yes,” said the policeman, making a face.

“I had to make sure you didn’t start struggling,” said Victor Mabasha. “But I don’t think my punch did too much damage.”

“No,” said the man, grimacing.

Victor Mabasha sat there in silence. There was no rush for the moment. The cop would feel calmer if everything was quiet.

Victor Mabasha did not blame him for being afraid. He knew how abandoned a man could feel when he was terrified.

“Konovalenko,” he said quietly. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” said Wallander.

Victor Mabasha eyed him up and down, and realized the cop knew who Konovalenko was, but did not actually know where he was. That was unfortunate. That would make everything more difficult, would take more time. But it wouldn’t really change anything fundamentally. Together, they would be able to find Konovalenko.

Victor Mabasha slowly recounted everything that had happened when the woman was killed. But he said nothing about why he was in Sweden in the first place.

“So he was the one who blew the house up?” said Wallander when he was through.

“You know what happened now,” said Victor Mabasha. “Now it’s your turn to put me in the picture.”

The cop had suddenly calmed down, even if he did seem put out at being in a cold, damp burial vault. Behind their backs were caskets inside sarcophagi, stacked on top of one another.

“Do you have a name?” he asked.

“Just call me Goli,” said Victor Mabasha. “That’ll do.”

“And you come from South Africa?”

“Maybe. But that’s not important.”

“It’s important for me.”

“The only thing that’s important for both of us is where Konovalenko is.”

The last part of this claim was spat out. The policeman understood. The fear returned to his eyes.

That very same moment Victor Mabasha stiffened. He had not relaxed his guard while talking to the policeman. Now his sensitive ears had picked up a noise outside the vault. He gestured to the cop to keep still. Then he took out his pistol and turned down the flame in the hurricane lamp.

There was somebody outside the vault. And it was not an animal. The movements were too meticulously cautious.

He leaned rapidly over the cop and grabbed him by the throat.

“For the last time,” he hissed, “was there anybody tailing you?”

“No. Nobody. I swear.”

Victor Mabasha let go. Konovalenko, he thought in a fury. I don’t know how you do it, but I do know now why Jan Kleyn wants you working for him in South Africa.

They could not stay in the vault. He eyed the hurricane lamp. That was their chance.

“When I open the door, throw the lamp to the left,” he said to the cop, untying his hands at the same time. He turned up the flame as far as it would go, and handed it over.

“Jump to the right,” he whispered. “Crouch down. Don’t get in my line of fire.”

He could see the cop wanted to protest. But he raised his hand and Wallander said nothing. Then he cocked the pistol and they got ready for action.

“I’ll count to three,” he said.

He flung open the iron door and the cop hurled the lamp to the left. Victor Mabasha fired at the same moment. The cop came stumbling behind him and he almost overbalanced. Just then he heard shots from at least two different weapons. He threw himself to one side and crawled behind a gravestone. The cop crawled off in some other direction. The hurricane lamp lit up the burial vault. Victor Mabasha detected a movement in one corner and fired. The bullet hit the iron door and disappeared whining into the vault. Another shot shattered the hurricane lamp and everything went black. Somebody scampered away along one of the gravel paths. Then all was quiet once more.

Kurt Wallander could feel his heart pounding like a piston against his ribs. He did not seem able to breathe properly, and thought he’d been hit. But there was no blood, and he couldn’t feel any pain apart from his tongue, which he had bitten some time ago. With great care he crawled behind a tall gravestone. He lay there absolutely still. His heart was still pounding away. Victor Mabasha was nowhere to be seen. Once he was sure he was alone, he started running. He stumbled his way forward along the gravel paths, running towards the lights on the main road, and the noise from what cars were still out. He kept running until he was outside the boundary fence of the cemetery. He stopped at a bus stop and managed to wave down a cab on its way back to the city from Arlanda airport.

“Central Hotel,” he gasped.

The driver eyed him up and down in suspicion.

“I don’t know if I want you in my cab,” he said. “You’ll make everything filthy.”

“I’m a cop, dammit,” Wallander roared. “Just drive!”

The driver pulled away from the bus stop. When they got to the hotel he paid for the taxi without waiting for either a receipt or his change, and collected his key from the receptionist, who stared at his clothes in astonishment. It was midnight when he closed the door behind him and collapsed onto the bed.

When he had calmed down, he called Linda.

“Why are you calling as late as this?” she wondered.

“I’ve been busy until now,” he said. “I didn’t have a chance to call you earlier.”

“Why do you sound so funny? Is something the matter?”

Wallander had a lump in his throat and was on the point of bursting into tears. But he managed to control himself.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“Are you sure everything’s all right?”

“Everything’s fine. Why shouldn’t it be?”

“You know better than I do.”

“Don’t you remember from when you used to live at home that I was always out working at strange hours?”

“I guess so,” she said. “I’d forgotten.”

He made up his mind on the spur of the moment.

“I’m coming over to your place in Bromma,” he said. “Don’t ask me why. I’ll explain later.”

He left the hotel and took a cab to where she lived in Bromma. Then they sat at the kitchen table with a beer each, and he told her what had happened.

“They say it’s good for kids to get some idea of what their parents do at work,” she said, shaking her head. “Weren’t you scared?”

“Of course I was scared. These people have no respect at all for human life.”

“Why don’t you send the cops after them?”

“I’m a cop myself. And I need to think.”

“Meanwhile they might kill a few more people.”

He nodded.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’ll go to the station at Kungsholmen. But I felt I needed to talk to you first.”

“I’m glad you came.”

She went out into the hall with him.

“Why did you ask if I was at home?” she asked suddenly, as he was about to leave. “Why didn’t you say you stopped by yesterday?”

Wallander did not know what she meant.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“I met Mrs. Nilson when I got home, she lives next door,” she said. “She told me you’d been here asking if I was in. You have a key, don’t you?”

“I haven’t spoken with any Mrs. Nilson,” said Wallander.

“Maybe I got her wrong, then,” she said.

A shiver suddenly ran down Wallander’s spine.

“What did she say?”

“One more time,” he said. “You came home. You met Mrs. Nilson. She said I’d been asking after you?”

“Yep.”

“Repeat what she said, word for word.”

“Your dad’s been asking after you. That’s all.”

Wallander felt scared.

“I’ve never met Mrs. Nilson,” he said. “How can she know what I look like? How can she know I’m me?”

It was a while before she caught on.

“You mean it could have been somebody else? But who? Why? Who would want to pretend they were you?”

Wallander looked at her in all seriousness. Then he switched off the light and went cautiously over to one of the living room windows.

The street down below was deserted.

He went back to the hall.

“I don’t know who it was,” he said. “But you’re going back with me to Ystad tomorrow. I don’t want you around here on your own right now.”

She could tell he was deadly serious.

“OK,” she said simply. “Do I need to be scared tonight?”

“You don’t need to be scared at all,” he said. “It’s just that you shouldn’t be here on your own for the next few days.”

“Don’t say any more,” she begged. “Right now I want to know as little as possible.”

She made up a bed for him on a mattress.

Then he lay there in the dark, listening to her breathing. Konovalenko, he thought.

When he was certain she was asleep, he got up and went over to the window.

The street down below was just as deserted as before.

Wallander had called a prerecorded information service and established there was a train to Malmo at three minutes past seven, and they left the apartment in Bromma soon after six.

He had slept restlessly, dozing off then waking up with a start. He wanted to spend a few hours in a train. Flying would mean he got to Malmo too quickly. He needed to rest, and he needed to think.

They came to a standstill just outside Mjolby with an engine failure, and waited there nearly an hour. But Wallander was just grateful for the extra time. They occasionally exchanged a few words. But just as often she was buried in a book, and he was lost in thought.

Fourteen days, he thought as he watched a lonely tractor plowing what looked like a never-ending field. He tried counting the seagulls following the plow, but could not manage it.

Fourteen days since Louise Akerblom had disappeared. The image of her was already beginning to melt away from the two small children’s consciousness. He wondered if Robert Akerblom would be able to cling to his God. What sort of answers could Pastor Tureson give him?

He looked at his daughter, who had fallen asleep with her cheek resting against the window. What did her mostly solitary fear look like? Was there a landscape where their abandoned and deserted thoughts could arrange to meet, without their knowing about it? We don’t really know anybody, he thought. Least of all ourselves.

Had Robert Akerblom known his wife?

The tractor disappeared into a dip in the field. Wallander imagined it sinking slowly into a bottomless pit of mud.

The train suddenly jerked into motion. Linda woke up and looked at him.

“Are we there?” she asked, drowsily. “How long have I been asleep?”

“A quarter of an hour, maybe,” he said with a smile. “We haven’t reached Nassjo yet.”

“I could use a cup of coffee,” she said, yawning. “How about you?”

They sat in the buffet car as far as Hassleholm. For the first time he told her the full story of his two trips to Riga the previous year. She listened in fascination.

“It doesn’t sound like you at all,” she said when he had finished.

“That’s how I feel as well,” he said.

“You could have died,” she said. “Did you never think about me and Mom?”

“I thought about you,” he said. “But I didn’t think about your mother.”

When they got to Malmo, they only had to wait half an hour for a train to Ystad. They were back in his apartment shortly before four. He made up a bed for her in the guest room, and when he went to look for some clean sheets it struck him that he had forgotten all about the time he had booked in the laundry room. At about seven they went out to one of the pizzerias on Hamngatan and had dinner. They were both tired, and were back home again before nine.

She called her grandfather, and Wallander stood by her side, listening. She promised to go and see him the next day.

He was surprised at how his father could sound so different when he talked to her.

He thought he had better call Loven. But he put it off, since he was not yet sure how he was going to explain why he did not contact the police immediately after the incident in the cemetery. He could not understand that himself. It was a breach of duty, no doubt about it. Had he started to lose control over his own judgment? Or had he been so scared that he lost the ability to act?

Long after she fell asleep he stood in the window, looking down at the deserted street.

The images in his mind’s eye were alternating between Victor Mabasha and the man known as Konovalenko.

While Wallander was standing in his window in Ystad, Vladimir Rykoff was noting that the police were still interested in his apartment. He was two floors higher up in the same building. It was Konovalenko who once suggested they should have an escape route in case the usual apartment could not or ought not to be used. It was also Konovalenko who explained how the safest haven was not always the one furthest away. The best plan is to do the unexpected. And so Rykoff rented an identical apartment in Tania’s name, two floors higher up. That made it easier to move the necessary clothes and other baggage.

The previous day Konovalenko had told them to leave the apartment. He questioned Vladimir and Tania, and realized the cop from Ystad was evidently no fool. He should not be underestimated. Nor could they exclude the possibility that the cops might search the place. But most of all, Konovalenko was afraid Vladimir and Tania might be subjected to more serious interrogation. He was not convinced they were always capable of distinguishing between what they could say, and what not.

Konovalenko had also wondered whether the best solution might be to shoot them. But he decided that was unnecessary. He still needed Vladimir’s legwork. Besides, the cops would only get more excited than they already were.

They moved to the other apartment that same night. Konovalenko had given Vladimir and Tania strict instructions to stay at home the next few days.

Among the first things Konovalenko learned as a young KGB officer was that there were deadly sins in the shadowy world of the intelligence service. Being a servant of secrecy meant joining a brotherhood where the most important rules were written in invisible ink. The worst sin of all, of course, was being a double agent. Betraying one’s own organization, but at the same time doing it in the service of an enemy power. In the mystical hell of the intelligence service, the moles were closest to the center of the inferno.

There were other deadly sins. One was to arrive too late.

Not just to a meeting, emptying a secret letter box, a kidnapping, or even nothing more complicated than a journey. Just as bad was being too late with regard to oneself, one’s own plans, one’s own decisions.

Nevertheless, that is what had happened to Konovalenko early in the morning of May 7. The mistake he made was to put too much faith in his BMW. As a young KGB officer, his superiors had always taught him to plan a journey on the basis of two parallel possibilities. If one vehicle proved to be unserviceable, there should always be time to resort to a planned alternative. But that Friday morning, when his BMW suddenly stopped on St. Erik’s Bridge and refused to start again, he had no alternative. Of course, he could take a cab or the subway. Besides, since he did not know if and when the cop or his daughter would leave the apartment in Bromma, it was not even certain he would be too late, anyway. Nevertheless, it seemed to him like the mistake, all the guilt, was his, not the car’s. He spent nearly twenty minutes trying to restart it, and it seemed like he was trying to bring about a resurrection. But the engine was dead as far as he was concerned.

In the end he gave up, and flagged down a cab. He had planned to be outside the red-brick apartment block by seven at the latest. As it was, he did not get there until nearly a quarter to eight.

It had not been difficult to find out that Wallander had a daughter and that she was the one living in Bromma. He called the police station in Ystad and was told that Wallander was staying at the Central Hotel in Stockholm. He claimed to be a cop himself. Then he went to the hotel and pretended to be discussing a block booking for a sizable group of tourists a couple of months later. When he was not being observed, he stole a look at a message left for Wallander and quickly memorized the name Linda and a telephone number. He left the hotel, and then traced the number to an address in Bromma. He chatted to a woman on the stairs there, and soon figured out how things stood.

That morning he waited on the street outside the apartment until half past eight. Just then, an elderly woman emerged from the building. He went over to her and wished her good morning; she recognized the pleasant guy who had spoken to her previously.

“They left early this morning,” she said in reply to his question.

“Both of them?”

“Both of them.”

“Are they going to be away long?”

“She promised to call.”

“She told you where they were going, no doubt?”

“They were going abroad on vacation. I didn’t quite catch where.”

Konovalenko could see she was trying hard to remember. He waited.

“France, I think it was,” she said eventually. “I’m not absolutely sure, mind you.”

Konovalenko thanked her for her assistance, and left. He would send Rykoff later to go over the apartment.

As he needed time to think and was in no special hurry, he walked to Brommaplan where he could no doubt find a cab. The BMW had served its purpose, and he would give Rykoff the job of finding him another car before the day was out.

Konovalenko immediately rejected the possibility that they had gone abroad. The cop from Ystad was a cold, calculating sort of guy. He had discovered that somebody had been asking the old lady questions the day before. Somebody who would doubtless come back and ask some more questions. And so he left a false trail, pointing to France.

Where can they have gone, Konovalenko wondered. In all probability he has taken his daughter back with him to Ystad. But he might have chosen some other place I couldn’t possibly track down.

A temporary retreat, thought Konovalenko. I’ll give him a start that I can recover later.

He drew one more conclusion. The cop from Ystad was worried. Why else would he take his daughter with him?

Konovalenko gave a little smile at the thought that they were thinking along the same lines, he and the insignificant little cop called Wallander. He recalled something a KGB colonel said to his new recruits shortly after they started their long period of training. A high level of education, a long line of ancestors, or even a high level of intelligence is no guarantee of becoming an outstanding chess player.

The main thing just now was to find Victor Mabasha, he thought. Kill him. Finish off what he had failed to do in the disco and the cemetery.

With a vague feeling of unease, he recalled the previous evening.

Shortly before midnight he called South Africa and spoke with Jan Kleyn on his special emergency number. He had rehearsed what he was going to say very carefully. There were no more excuses to explain away Victor Mabasha’s continued existence. And so he lied. He said Victor Mabasha had been killed the previous day. A hand grenade in the gas tank. When the rubber band holding back the firing pin had been eaten away, the car exploded. Victor Mabasha had perished instantaneously.

All the same, Konovalenko sensed a degree of dissatisfaction in Jan Kleyn. A crisis of confidence between himself and the South African intelligence service that he could not afford. That could put his whole future at risk.

Konovalenko resolved to step on the gas. There was no longer any time to spare. Victor Mabasha had to be tracked down and killed within the next few days.

This unfathomable dusk slowly set in. But Victor Mabasha barely noticed it.

Now and again he thought about the man he was to kill. Jan Kleyn would understand. He would allow him to retain his assignment. One of these days, he would have the South African president in his sights. He would not hesitate, he would carry out the assignment he had taken on.

He wondered if the president was aware that he would soon be dead. Did white people have their own songomas who came to them in their dreams?

In the end he concluded they must have. How could any man survive without being in contact with the spirit world that controlled our lives, that had power over life and death?

On this occasion the spirits had been kind to him. They had told him what he had to do.

Wallander woke up soon after six in the morning. For the first time since starting to track down Louise Akerblom’s killer, he was starting to feel properly rested. He could hear his daughter snoring through the half-open door. He got up and stood in the doorway, watching her. He was suddenly overwhelmed by intense joy, and it occurred to him that the meaning of life was quite simply to take care of one’s children. Nothing else. He went to the bathroom, took a long shower, and decided to make an appointment with the police doctor. It must be possible to give some kind of medical help to a cop with the serious intention of losing weight and getting fitter.

Every morning he recalled the occasion the previous year when he woke up in the middle of the night, in a cold sweat, and thought he was having a heart attack. The doctor who examined him said it was a warning. A warning that there was something completely wrong in his life. Now, a year later, he had to admit he had done nothing at all to change his life style. In addition, he had put on at least three kilos.

He drank coffee at the kitchen table. There was a thick fog over Ystad this morning. But soon spring would really have arrived, and he resolved to go and talk with Bjork this coming Monday about vacation plans.

He left the apartment at a quarter past seven, after scribbling down his direct number on a scrap of paper and leaving it on the kitchen table.

When he came out onto the street, he was enveloped by fog. It was so thick, he could hardly make out his car parked a short way from the apartment block. He thought maybe he should leave it where it was, and walk to the station.

Suddenly he had the feeling something had moved on the other side of the street. A lamppost seemed to sway slightly.

Then he saw there was a man standing there, enveloped by fog just like himself.

The next moment he recognized who it was. Goli had returned to Ystad.