The White Lioness

Chapter Twenty-six

The acrid smell of winter apples.

That was the first thing she noticed when she came to. But then, when she opened her eyes in the darkness, there was nothing but solitude and terror. She was lying on a stone floor and it smelled of damp earth. There was not a sound to be heard, even though fear sharpened all her senses. Carefully, she felt the rough surface of the floor with one hand. It was made of individual slabs fitted together. She realized she was in a cellar. In the house at Osterlen where her grandfather lived and where she had been brutally woken and abducted by an unknown man, there was a similar floor in the potato cellar.

When there was nothing more for her senses to register, she felt dizzy and her headache got steadily worse. She could not say how long she had been there in darkness and silence; her wristwatch was still on the bedside table. Nevertheless she had the distinct impression it was many hours since she had been woken up and dragged away.

Her arms were free. But she had a chain around her ankles. When she felt it with her fingers she discovered there was a padlock. The feeling of being confined by an iron lock turned her cold. It occurred to her that people are usually tied up with ropes. They were softer, more flexible. Chains belonged to the past, to slavery and ancient witch trials.

But worst of all during this waking up period were the clothes she had on. She could feel right away they were not hers. They were unfamiliar-their shape, the colors she could not see but seemed to think she could feel with her fingertips, and the smell of a strong washing powder. They were not her clothes, and somebody must have dressed her in them. Somebody had taken off her nightie and dressed her in everything from underclothes to stockings and shoes, an outrage that made her feel sick. The dizziness immediately got stronger. She put her head in her hands and rocked backwards and forwards. It’s not true, she thought in desperation. But it was true, and she could even remember what had happened.

She had been dreaming something but could no longer remember the context. She was woken by a man pressing a handkerchief over her nose and mouth. A pungent smell, then she was overcome by a feeling of numbness and fading senses. The light from the lamp outside the kitchen door produced a faint glow in her room. She could see a man in front of her. His face was very close when he bent over her. Now when she thought about him she recalled a strong smell of shaving lotion even though he was unshaven. He said nothing, but although it was almost dark in the room she could see his eyes and had time to think she would never forget them. Then she remembered nothing else until she woke up on the damp stone floor.

Of course she understood why it had happened. The guy who bent over her and anaesthetized her must have been the one who was hunting and being hunted by her father. His eyes were Konovalenko’s eyes, just as she had imagined them. The man who killed Victor Mabasha, who killed a policeman and wanted to kill another, her own father. He was the one who had sneaked into her room, dressed her and put chains around her ankles.

When the hatch in the cellar ceiling opened, she was completely unprepared. It occured to her afterward that the man had doubtless been standing up there, listening. The light shining through the hole was very strong, perhaps specially planned to dazzle her. She caught a glimpse of a ladder being dropped down and a pair of brown shoes, a pair of trouser legs approaching her. Then, last of all, the face, the same face and the same eyes that had stared at her as she was being knocked out. She looked away in order not to be dazzled and because her fear had returned and was paralyzing her. But she noticed the cellar was larger than she had thought. In the darkness the walls and ceiling seemed close to her. Maybe she was in a cellar extending under the whole ground floor of a house.

The man stood in such a way that he shielded her from the light streaming down. He had a flashlight in one hand. In the other he had a metal object she could not make out at first.

Then she realized it was a pair of scissors.

She screamed. Shrill, long. She thought he had climbed down the ladder in order to kill her, and that he would do it with the scissors. She grabbed the chains around her legs and started pulling at them, as if she could break free despite everything. All the time he was staring at her, and his face was no more than a silhouette against the strong background light.

Suddenly he turned the flashlight onto his own face. He held it under his chin so that his face looked like a lifeless skull. She fell silent. Her screaming had only increased her fear. And yet she felt strangely exhausted. It was already too late. There was no point in offering resistance.

The skull suddenly started talking.

“You’re wasting your time screaming,” said Konovalenko. “Nobody will hear you. Besides, there’s a risk I’ll get annoyed. Then I might hurt you. Better keep quiet.”

His last words were like a whisper.

Daddy, she thought. You’ve got to help me.

Then everything happened very quickly. With the same hand in which he held the flashlight, he grabbed her hair, pulled it and started cutting it off. She started back, in pain and surprise. But he was holding her so tightly, she could not move. She could hear the dry sound of the sharp scissors clipping away around the back of her neck, just under her earlobes. It happened very quickly. Then he let her go. The feeling of wanting to vomit came back. Her cropped hair was another outrage, just like him dressing her without her being aware of it.

Konovalenko rolled up the hair into a ball and put it in his pocket.

He’s sick, she thought. He’s crazy, a sadist, a madman who kills and feels nothing.

Her thoughts were interrupted by him talking again. The flashlight was shining on her neck, where she was wearing a necklace. It was in the form of a lyre, and she had gotten it from her parents for her fifteenth birthday.

“The necklace,” said Konovalenko. “Take it off.”

She did as she was told and was careful to avoid touching his hands when she held it out. He left her without a word, climbed up the ladder, and returned her to the darkness.

She crawled away, to one side, until she came up against a wall. She groped along till she came to a corner. Then she tried to hide there.

The previous night, after successfully abducting the cop’s daughter, Konovalenko had ordered Tania and Sikosi Tsiki out of the kitchen. He had a great need to be alone, and the kitchen suited him best just now. The house, the last one Rykoff had rented in his life, was planned so that the kitchen was the biggest room. It was arranged in old-fashioned style, with exposed beams, a deep baking oven, and open china cupboards. Copper pots were hanging along one wall. Konovalenko was reminded of his own childhood in Kiev, the big kitchen in the kolkhoz where his father had been a political superintendent.

He realized to his surprise that he missed Rykoff. It was not just a feeling of now having to shoulder an increased practical workload. There was also a feeling that could hardly be called melancholy or sorrow, but which nevertheless made him occasionally feel depressed. During his many years as a KGB officer, the value of life, for everybody but himself and his two children, had gradually been reduced to calculable resources or, at the opposite pole, to expendable persons. He was always surrounded by sudden death, and all emotional reactions gradually disappeared more or less completely. But Rykoff’s death had affected him, and it made him hate even more this cop who was always getting in his way. Now he had his daughter under his feet, and he knew she would be the bait that would entice him out into the open. But the thought of revenge could not liberate him entirely from his depression. He sat in the kitchen drinking vodka, being careful not to get too drunk, and occasionally looking at his face in a mirror hanging on the wall. It suddenly occurred to him that his face was ugly. Was he starting to get old? Had the collapse of the Soviet empire resulted in some of his own hardness and ruthlessness softening?

At two in the morning, when Tania was asleep or at least pretending to be, and Sikosi Tsiki had shut himself away in his room, he went out into the kitchen where the telephone was, and called Jan Kleyn. He had thought carefully about what he was going to say. He decided there was no reason to conceal the fact that one of his assistants was dead. It would do no harm for Jan Kleyn to be aware that Konovalenko’s work was not without its risks. Then he decided to lie to him one more time. He would say that damned nuisance of a cop had been liquidated. He was so sure he would get him, now that he had his daughter locked up in the cellar, that he dared to declare Wallander dead in advance.

Jan Kleyn listened and made no special comment. Konovalenko knew Jan Kleyn’s silence was the best approval he could get for his efforts. Then Jan Kleyn had mentioned that Sikosi Tsiki ought to return to South Africa soon. He asked Konovalenko if there was any doubt about his suitability, if he had displayed any signs of weakness, as Victor Mabasha had done. Konovalenko replied in the negative. That was also a claim made in advance. He had been able to devote very little time to Sikosi Tsiki so far. The main impression he had was of a man completely devoid of emotion. He hardly ever laughed at all, and was just as controlled as he was impeccably dressed. He thought that once Wallander and his daughter were out of the way he would spend a few intensive days teaching the African all he needed to know. But he said Sikosi Tsiki would not let them down. Jan Kleyn seemed satisfied. He concluded their conversation by asking Konovalenko to call again in three days. Then he would receive precise instructions for Sikosi Tsiki’s return to South Africa.

The conversation with Jan Kleyn restored some of the energy he thought he had lost thanks to his depression after Rykoff’s death. He sat at the kitchen table and concluded that the abduction of Wallander’s daughter had been almost embarrassingly easy. It had only taken him a few hours to locate her grandfather’s house, once Tania had been to the Ystad police station. He made the call himself and a housekeeper answered the phone. He introduced himself as a representative of the telephone company and inquired whether there was likely to be any change of address before the next edition of the telephone directory went to press. Tania bought a large-scale map of Skane from the local bookstore, and then they drove out to the house and kept it under observation from a distance. The housekeeper went home late in the afternoon, and a few hours later a single police car parked on the road. When he was certain there were no further guards posted, he rapidly planned a diversion. He drove back to the house in Tomelilla, prepared an oil drum he found lying around in a shed, and told Tania what she had to do. They rented a car from a nearby gas station, then drove back to the house in two cars, found the copse, decided on a time and set to work. Tania made the fire blaze up as intended and then, as planned, left the scene before the cops showed up to investigate the fire. Konovalenko realized he did not have much time, but that was just an extra challenge for him. He flung open the outside door, tied up and silenced the old man in his bed, then chloroformed the daughter and carried her out to the waiting car. The whole operation took less than ten minutes, and he made his escape before the police car got back. Tania had bought some clothes for the girl during the day, and dressed her while she was still unconscious. Then he dragged her down into the cellar and secured her legs with a padlock and chain. It was all so easy, and he wondered whether things would continue to be equally uncomplicated. He had noticed her necklace and thought her father would be able to identify her by it. But he also wanted to give Wallander a different picture of the circumstances, something threatening that would leave no doubt about what he was fully prepared to do. That was when he resolved to cut off her hair and send it to him along with the necklace. Cropped female hair smells of death and ruin, he thought. He’s a cop, he’ll get the picture.

Konovalenko poured himself another glass of vodka and gazed out the window. Dawn was already rising. There was warmth in the air, and he thought about how he would soon be living in constant sunshine, far away from this climate where you never knew from one day to the next what the weather would be like.

He went to bed for a few hours. When he woke up he looked at his wristwatch. A quarter past nine, Monday, May 18. By this stage Wallander must know that his daughter has been abducted. Now he would be waiting for Konovalenko to contact him.

He can wait a little bit longer, Konovalenko thought. The silence will grow increasingly unbearable with every hour that passes, and his worry greater than his ability to control it.

The hatch leading down to the cellar where Wallander’s daughter was imprisoned was just behind his chair. Occasionally he listened for any noises, but everything was silent.

Konovalenko sat there a bit longer, gazing thoughtfully out of the window. Then he got up, got an envelope and put the cropped hair and necklace into it.

Soon he would be in touch with Wallander.

The news of Linda’s abduction hit Wallander like an attack of vertigo.

It made him desperate and furious. Sten Widen happened to be in the kitchen when the telephone rang, answered it, and looked on in astonishment as Wallander tore the instrument from the wall and hurled it through the open door into Sten Widen’s office. But then he saw how scared Wallander was. His fear was completely bare, naked. Widen realized something awful must have happened. Sympathy often aroused ambivalent reactions in him, but not this time. Wallander’s agony over what had happened to his daughter and the fact that nothing could be done about it had hit him hard. He squatted down beside him and patted him on the shoulder.

Meanwhile Svedberg had worked up a frenzy of energy. Once he had made sure Wallander’s father was uninjured and did not seem to be especially shocked, he called Peters at home. His wife answered, and said her husband was in bed asleep after his night shift. Svedberg’s bellowing left no doubt in her mind that he should be woken immediately. When Peters came to the phone, Svedberg gave him half an hour to get hold of Noren and then come to the house they were supposed to have been guarding. Peters knew Svedberg well and realized he would not have woken him up unless something serious had happened. He asked no questions but promised to hurry. He called Noren, and when they arrived at the grandfather’s house, Svedberg confronted them with the brutal truth about what had happened.

“All we can do is tell you the truth,” said Noren, who had been vaguely worried the previous evening that there was something odd about the burning oil drum.

Svedberg listened to what Noren had to say. The night before it was Peters who insisted they should go and investigate the fire, but he said nothing. Noren did not pin the blame on him, however. In his report he stated the decision was a joint one.

“I hope nothing happens to Wallander’s daughter, for your sake,” said Svedberg afterwards.

“Abducted?” asked Noren. “By whom? And why?”

Svedberg gave them a long, serious look before answering.

“I’m going to make you promise me something,” he said. “If you keep that promise, I’ll try and forget that you acted in complete disregard of clearly expressed orders last night. If the girl comes out of this unharmed, nobody will get to know a thing. Is that clear?”

They both nodded.

“You heard nothing, and you saw nothing last night,” he said. “And most important of all, Wallander’s daughter has not been abducted. In other words, nothing has happened.”

Peters and Noren stared at him, nonplused.

“I mean what I say,” said Svedberg again. “Nothing has happened. That’s what you have to remember. You’ll just have to believe me when I say it’s important.”

“Is there anything we can do?” asked Peters.

“Yes,” said Svedberg. “Go home and get some sleep.”

Then Svedberg searched in vain for clues in the courtyard and inside the house. He searched the copse where the oil drum had been. There were tire tracks leading there, but nothing else. He went back to the house and spoke again with Wallander’s father. He was in the kitchen drinking coffee, and was scared stiff.

“What’s happened?” he asked, worried. “There’s no sign of Linda.”

“I don’t know,” said Svedberg, honestly. “But it’ll all work itself out, that’s for sure.”

“You think?” said Wallander’s father. His voice was full of doubt. “I could hear how upset Kurt was on the telephone. Where is he, come to that? What’s going on?”

“I guess it’ll be best if he explains that himself,” said Svedberg, getting to his feet. “I’m going to see him.”

“Say hello from me,” said the old man. “Tell him I’m doing just fine.”

“I’ll do that,” said Svedberg, and left.

Wallander was barefoot on the gravel outside Sten Widen’s house when Svedberg drove up. It was nearly eleven in the morning. Svedberg explained in detail what must have happened while they were still out in the courtyard. He did not refrain from mentioning how easily Peters and Noren had been lured away for the short time needed to abduct his daughter. Finally he passed on the greeting from his father.

Wallander listened attentively all the time. Even so, Svedberg had the impression there was something distant about him. Normally he could always look Wallander in the eye when he spoke to him, but now his eyes were wandering about aimlessly. Svedberg could see that mentally, he was with his daughter, wherever she might be.

“No clues?” asked Wallander.

“Nothing at all.”

Wallander nodded. They went into the house.

“I’ve been trying to think,” said Wallander when they sat down. Svedberg could see his hands were shaking.

“This is Konovalenko’s work, of course,” he continued. “Just as I’d feared. It’s all my fault. I ought to have been there. Everything should have been different. Now he’s using my daughter to get hold of me. He evidently has no assistants. He’s working on his own.”

“He must have at least one,” objected Svedberg cautiously. “If I understood Peters and Noren right, he couldn’t possibly have had time to light the fire himself, then tie up your dad and run off with your daughter.”

Wallander thought for a moment.

“The oil drum was lit by Tania,” he said. “Rykoff’s wife. So there are two of them. We don’t know where they are. Presumably in a house somewhere in the countryside. Not far from Ystad. A remotely situated house. A house we could have found if circumstances had been different. We can’t now.”

Sten Widen tiptoed to the table and served coffee. Wallander looked at him.

“I need something stronger,” he said.

Sten Widen returned with a half-empty bottle of whiskey. Without hesitation Wallander took a gulp straight from the bottle.

“I’ve been trying to figure out what’ll happen next,” said Wallander. “He’ll get in touch with me. And he’ll use my dad’s house. That’s where I’ll wait until I hear from him. I don’t know what he’ll propose. At best my life for hers. At worst, God only knows.”

He turned to Svedberg.

“That’s how I see it,” he said. “Do you think I’m wrong?”

“You’re probably right,” replied Svedberg. “The question is just what we’re going to do about it.”

“Nobody should do anything,” said Wallander. “No cops around the house, nothing. Konovalenko will smell the slightest whiff of danger. I’ll have to be alone in the house with my father. Your job will be to make sure nobody goes there.”

“You can’t handle this on your own,” said Svedberg. “You’ve got to let us help you.”

“I don’t want my daughter to die,” said Wallander quite simply. “I have to sort this out myself.”

Svedberg realized the conversation was over. Wallander had made up his mind.

“I’ll take you to Loderup,” said Svedberg.

“That won’t be necessary. You can take the Duett,” said Sten Widen.

Wallander nodded.

He almost fell as he stood up. He grabbed the edge of the table.

“No problem,” he said.

Svedberg and Sten Widen stood in the courtyard, watching him drive off in the Duett.

“How will it all end?” asked Svedberg.

Sten Widen did not answer.

When Wallander reached Loderup he found his father painting in his studio.

Wallander saw that for the first time ever he had abandoned his eternal theme, a landscape in the evening sun, with or without a wood grouse in the front corner. This time he was painting a different landscape, darker, more chaotic. The picture did not hang together. The woods were growing directly out of the lake, and the mountains in the background overwhelmed the viewer.

He put down his brushes after Wallander had been standing behind his back for a while. When he turned around Wallander could see he was scared.

“Let’s go in,” said his father. “I sent the aide home.”

His father placed his hand on Wallander’s shoulder. He could not remember the last time the old man had made a gesture like that.

When they were inside Wallander told him everything that had happened. He could see his father was incapable of separating out the various incidents as they crisscrossed one another. Even so he wanted to give him an idea of what had been going on these last three weeks. He did not want to hide the fact that he had killed another human being, nor that his daughter was in great danger. The man holding her prisoner, who had tied him up in his own bed, was absolutely ruthless.

Afterwards his father sat looking down at his hands.

“I can deal with it,” said Wallander. “I’m a good cop. I’ll stay here until this man contacts me. It could be any time now. Or he could wait until tomorrow.”

The afternoon was close to being evening, and still no word from Konovalenko. Svedberg called twice, but Wallander had nothing new to tell him. He sent his father out into the studio to go on painting. He couldn’t stand him sitting in the kitchen, staring at his hands. His father would normally have been furious at the thought of having to do what his son told him, but on this occasion he just stood up and went. Wallander paced up and down, sat down on a chair for a moment, then got up again right away. Occasionally he would go out into the courtyard and gaze out over the fields. Then he would come back in and start pacing again. He tried eating twice, but could not tolerate anything. His anguish, his worry and his helplessness made it impossible for him to think straight. On several occasions Robert Akerblom came into his mind. But he sent him packing, scared that the very thought could be a bad omen for what might happen to his daughter.

Evening came and Konovalenko still had not made contact. Svedberg called to say he could be reached at home from now on. Wallander called Sten Widen but did not really have anything to say. At ten o’clock he sent his father to bed. It was spring, and still light outside. He sat on the steps outside the kitchen door for a while. When he was sure his father was asleep, he called Baiba Liepa in Riga. No reply at first. But she was home when he tried again half an hour later. He was icily calm as he told her his daughter had been abducted by a very dangerous man. He said he had no one to talk to, and just then he felt he was telling the absolute truth. Then he apologized once again for the night when he had been drunk and woken her up with his call. He tried to explain his feelings for her, but without success. The words he needed were outside his grasp of English. Before hanging up he promised to get back to her. She listened to what he had to say, but hardly said anything herself from start to finish. Afterwards he wondered whether he really had been talking to her, or whether it was all in his imagination.

He spent a sleepless night. Occasionally he slumped down into one of his father’s worn old armchairs and closed his eyes. But just as he was about to doze off, he would wake up again with a start. He started pacing up and down once more, and it was like reliving the whole of his life. Toward dawn he stood staring at a solitary hare sitting motionless in the courtyard.

It was now Tuesday, May 19.

Shortly after five o’clock it started raining.

The message came just before eight.

A taxi from Simrishamn turned into the courtyard. Wallander heard the car approaching from some way off, and went out onto the steps when it came to a halt. The driver got out and handed over a fat envelope.

The letter was addressed to his father.

“It’s for my father,” he said. “Where is it from?”

“A lady handed it in at the taxi station in Simrishamn,” said the driver, who was in a hurry and did not want to get wet. “She paid for it to be delivered. It’s all fixed. I don’t need a receipt.”

Wallander nodded. Tania, he thought. She has taken over her husband’s role as errand boy.

The cab disappeared. Wallander was alone in the house. His father was already out painting in his studio.

It was a padded envelope. He examined it carefully before starting to open it along one of the short sides. At first he could not see what was inside. Then he saw Linda’s hair, and the necklace he had once given her.

He sat still as a statue, staring at the cropped hair lying on the table in front of him. Then he started crying. His pain had passed another limit, and he could not fight it any more. What had Konovalenko done to her? It was all his fault, getting her involved in this.

Then he forced himself to read the enclosed letter.

Konovalenko would be in touch again in exactly twelve hours. They needed to meet in order to sort out their problems, he wrote. Wallander would just have to wait until then. Any contact with the police would put his daughter’s life in danger.

The letter was unsigned.

He looked again at his daughter’s hair. The world was helpless in the face of such evil. How could he stop Konovalenko?

He imagined these were exactly the thoughts Konovalenko wanted him to be having. He had also given him twelve hours with no hope of doing anything other than what Konovalenko had dictated.

Wallander sat frozen like a statue on his chair.

He had no idea what to do.