Sidetracked

CHAPTER 37

Somewhere in the distance Hoover could hear thunder. He counted the seconds between the lightning and the thunder. The storm was passing far away. It wouldn’t come in over Malmo. He watched his sister sleeping on the mattress. He had wanted to offer her something better, but everything had happened so fast. The policeman whom he now hated, the cavalry colonel with the blue trousers, whom he’d christened “Perkins” and “the Man with the Great Curiosity” when he drummed his message to Geronimo, had demanded pictures of Louise. He had also threatened to visit her.

Hoover had realised that he had to change his plans right away. He would pick up Louise even before the row of scalps and the last gift, the girl’s heart, were buried. That’s why he had only managed to take a mattress and a blanket down to the basement. He had planned to do something quite different. There was a big empty house in Limhamn. The woman who lived there alone went to Canada every summer to see her family. She had been his teacher and he sometimes ran errands for her, so he knew she was away. He had copied a key to her front door long ago. They could have lived in her building while they planned their future. But now Perkins had got in the way. Until he was dead, and that would be soon, they would have to settle for the mattress in the basement.

She was asleep. He had taken medicine from a cabinet when he went to get her. He had gone there without painting his face, but he had an axe and some knives with him, in case anyone tried to stop him. It had been strangely quiet at the hospital, with almost no-one around. Everything went more smoothly than he could have imagined. Louise hadn’t recognised him at first, but when she’d heard his voice she put up no resistance. He had brought some clothes for her. They walked across the hospital grounds and then took a taxi, without any problem. She didn’t say a word, never questioning the bare mattress, and she fell asleep almost at once. He had lain down and slept a while beside her. They were closer to the future than ever before. The power from the scalps had already started working. She was on her way back to life again. Soon everything would be changed.

He looked at her. It was evening, past 10 p.m. He had made his decision. At dawn he would return to Ystad for the last time.

In Helsingborg a great crowd of reporters besieged Birgersson’s outer perimeter. The chief of police was there. At Wallander’s stubborn insistence, Interpol was trying to trace Sara Pettersson. They had contacted the girl’s parents and tried to put together a possible itinerary. It was a hectic night at the station.

Back in Ystad, Hansson and Martinsson were handling the incoming calls. They sent over materials when Wallander needed them. Akeson was at home but was willing to be reached at any time.

Although it was late, Wallander sent Hoglund to Malmo to talk to the Fredman family. He wanted to make sure they weren’t the ones who had taken Louise from the hospital. He would rather have gone there himself, but he couldn’t be in two places at once. She had left at 10.30 p.m., after Wallander had phoned Fredman’s widow. He estimated she’d be back by 1 a.m.

“Who’s taking care of the children while you’re away?” he’d asked.

“Do you remember my neighbour who has children of her own?” she asked. “Without her I couldn’t do this job.”

Wallander called home. Linda was there. He explained as best he could what had happened. He didn’t know when he’d be home, maybe sometime that night, maybe not until dawn.

“Will you get here before I leave?” she asked.

“Leave?”

“Did you forget I’m going to Gotland? Kajsa and I. And you’re going to Skagen.”

“Of course I didn’t forget,” he said.”

“Did you talk to Baiba?”

“Yes,” Wallander said, hoping she couldn’t hear that he was lying.

He gave her the number in Helsingborg. Then he wondered whether he ought to call his father, but it was late. They were probably already in bed. He went to the command centre where Birgersson was directing the manhunt. Five hours had passed, and no-one had seen the stolen car. Birgersson agreed with Wallander that it could only mean that Logard, if it was him, had taken the car off the road.

“He had two boats at his disposal,” Wallander said. “And a house outside Bjuv that we could barely locate. I’m sure he has other hideouts.”

“We’ve got a man going over the boats,” said Birgersson.

“And Hordestigen. I told them to look for other possibilities.”

“Who is this damned Logard, anyway?” Wallander said.

“They’ve started checking the prints,” Birgersson said. “If he’s ever had a run-in with the police, we’ll know very soon.”

Wallander went over to where the four girls were being interviewed. It was a laborious process, since everything had to go through interpreters. Besides, the girls were terrified. Wallander had told the officers to explain that they weren’t accused of a crime. But he wondered how frightened they were. He thought about Dolores Maria Santana, about the worst fear he had ever seen. But now, at midnight, a picture had finally begun to take shape.

The girls were all from the Dominican Republic. They had each separately left their villages and gone to the cities to look for work as domestic helps or factory workers. They had been contacted by men, all very friendly, and offered work in Europe. They had been shown pictures of beautiful houses by the Mediterranean, and were promised wages ten times what they could hope to earn at home. They’d all said yes.

They were supplied with passports but were never allowed to keep them. First they were flown to Amsterdam — at least that was what they thought the city was called. Then they were driven to Denmark. A week ago they had been taken across to Sweden at night by boat. There were different men involved at each stage and their friendliness decreased as the girls travelled further from home. The fear had set in in earnest when they were locked up at the farm. They had been given food, and a man had explained in poor Spanish that they would soon be travelling the last stretch of the way. But by now they had begun to understand that nothing would happen as promised. The fear had turned to terror.

Wallander asked the officers to question the girls carefully about the men they had met during the days at the farm. Was there more than one? Could they give a description of the boat that took them to Sweden? What did the captain look like? Was there a crew? He told them to take one of the girls down to the yacht club to see whether she recognised Logard’s launch. A lot of questions remained. Wallander needed an empty room where he could lock himself away and think.

He was impatient for Hoglund to return. And he was waiting for information on Logard. He tried to connect a moped at Sturup Airport, a man who took scalps and killed with an axe, and another who shot at people with a semi-automatic weapon. The myriad of details swam back and forth in his head. The headache he had felt coming earlier had arrived, and he tried unsuccessfully to fight it off with painkillers. It was very humid. There were thunderstorms over Denmark. In less than 48 hours he was supposed to be at Kastrup Airport.

Wallander was standing by a window, looking out at the light summer night and thinking that the world had dissolved into chaos, when Birgersson came stamping down the hall, triumphantly wielding a piece of paper.

“Do you know who Erik Sturesson is?” he asked.

“No, who?”

“Then do you know who Sture Eriksson is?”

“No.”

“They’re one and the same. And later he changed his name again. This time he didn’t settle for switching his first and last names. He took on a name with a more aristocratic ring to it. Hans Logard.”

“Great,” he said. “What have we got?”

“The prints we found at Hordestigen and in the boats are in our records, under Erik Sturesson and Sture Eriksson. But not Hans Logard. Erik Sturesson, if we start with him, since that was Hans Logard’s real name, is 47. Born in Skovde, father a career soldier, mother a housewife. The father was also an alcoholic. Both died in the late 1960s. Erik wound up in bad company, was first arrested at 14, downhill from there. He’s done time in Osteraker, Kumla and Hall prisons. And a short stretch at Norrkoping. He changed his name for the first time when he got out of Osteraker.”

“What type of crimes?”

“From simple jobs to specialisation, you might say. Burglaries and con games at first. Occasionally assault. Then more serious crimes. Narcotics. The hard stuff. He seems to have worked for Turkish and Pakistani gangs. This is an overview, mind. We’ll have more information through in the night.”

“We need a picture of him,” Wallander said. “And the fingerprints have to be cross-checked against the ones we found at Wetterstedt’s and Carlman’s. And the ones on Fredman too. Don’t forget the ones we got from the left eyelid.”

“Nyberg is onto it,” Birgersson said. “But he seems so pissed off all the time.”

“That’s just the way he is,” Wallander replied. “But he’s good at his job.”

They sat down at a table overflowing with used plastic coffee cups. Telephones rang all around them. They erected an invisible wall around themselves, admitting only Svedberg.

“The interesting thing is that Logard suddenly stopped paying visits to our prisons,” Birgersson said. “The last time he was inside was 1989. Since then he’s been clean. As if he found salvation.”

“That corresponds pretty well with when Liljegren got himself a house here in Helsingborg.”

Birgersson nodded. “We’re not too clear on that yet. But it seems that Logard bought Hordestigen in 1991. That’s a gap of a couple of years. But there’s nothing to prevent him from having lived somewhere else in the meantime.”

“We’ll need an answer to that one right away,” Wallander said, reaching for the phone. “What’s Elisabeth Carlen’s number? It’s on Sjosten’s desk. Have we still got her under surveillance, by the way?”

Birgersson nodded again. Wallander made a quick decision.

“Pull them off,” he said.

Someone put a piece of paper in front of him. He dialled the number. She answered almost immediately.

“This is Inspector Wallander,” he said.

“I won’t come to the station at this time of night,” she said.

“I don’t want you to. I just have one question: was Hans Logard hanging out with Liljegren as early as 1989? Or 1990?”

He could hear her lighting a cigarette and blowing smoke straight into the receiver.

“Yes,” she said, “I think he was there then. In 1990 anyway.”

“Good,” said Wallander.

“Why are you tailing me?” she asked.

“I was wondering myself,” Wallander said. “We don’t want anything to happen to you, of course. But we’re lifting the surveillance now. Just don’t leave town without telling us. I might get mad.”

“Fair enough,” she said, “I bet you can get mad.”

She hung up.

“Logard was there,” said Wallander. “It seems he appeared at Liljegren’s in 1989 or 1990. Then he acquired Hordestigen. Liljegren seems to have taken care of his salvation.”

Wallander tried to fit the different pieces together.

“And about then the rumours of the trade in girls surfaced. Isn’t that right?”

Birgersson nodded.

“Does Logard have a violent history?” Wallander asked.

“A few charges of aggravated assault,” Birgersson said. “But he’s never shot anyone, that we know of.”

“No axes?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“In any case, we’ve got to find him,” said Wallander, getting up.

“We’ll find him,” Birgersson said. “Sooner or later he’ll crawl out of his hole.”

“Why did he shoot at us?” Wallander asked.

“You’ll have to ask him that yourself,” Birgersson said, as he left the room.

Svedberg had taken off his cap. “Is this really the man we’re looking for?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Wallander. “Frankly I doubt it, although I could be wrong. Let’s hope I am.”

Svedberg left the room. Wallander was alone again. More than ever he missed Rydberg. There’s always another question you can ask. Rydberg’s words, repeated often. So what was the question he hadn’t asked yet? He searched and found nothing. All the questions had been asked. Only the answers were missing.

That was why it was a relief when Hoglund stepped into the room. It was just before 1 a.m. They sat down together.

“Louise wasn’t there,” she said. “Her mother was drunk. But her concern about her daughter seemed genuine. She couldn’t understand how it had happened. I think she was telling the truth. I felt really sorry for her.”

“You mean she actually had no idea?”

“Not a clue. And she’d been worrying about it.”

“Had it happened before?”

“Never.”

“And her son?”

“The older or the younger one?”

“The older one. Stefan.”

“He wasn’t there.”

“Was he out looking for his sister?”

“If I understood the mother correctly, he stays away occasionally. But there was one thing I did notice. I asked to have a look around. Just in case Louise was there. I went into Stefan’s room. The mattress was gone from his bed. There was just a bedspread. No pillow or blanket either.”

“Did you ask her where he was?”

“I don’t think she would have been able to tell me.”

“Did she say how long he’d been gone?”

She thought about it and looked at her notes.

“Since midday.”

“Not long before Louise disappeared.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“You think he was the one who went and got her? Then where are they now?”

“Two questions, two answers. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Wallander felt a deep unease creep over him. He couldn’t tell what it meant.

“Did you happen to ask her whether Stefan has a moped?”

He saw that she immediately understood where he was heading.

“No.”

Wallander gestured towards the phone.

“Call her,” he said. “Ask her. She drinks at night. You won’t wake her up.”

It was a long time before she got an answer. The conversation was very brief. She hung up again.

“He doesn’t have a moped,” she said. “Besides, Stefan isn’t 15 yet, is he?”

“It was just a thought,” Wallander said. “We have to know. Anyway, I doubt that young people today pay much attention to what is permitted or not.”

“The little boy woke up when I was about to leave,” she said. “He was sleeping on the sofa next to his mother. That’s what upset me the most.”

“That he woke up?”

“I’ve never seen such frightened eyes in a child before.”

Wallander slammed his fist on the table. She jumped.

“I’ve got it,” he cried. “What it was I’ve been forgetting all this time. Damn it!”

“What?”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. .”

Wallander rubbed his temples to squeeze out the image that had been bothering him for so long. Finally he captured it.

“Do you remember the doctor who did the autopsy of Dolores Maria Santana in Malmo?”

She tried to remember.

“Wasn’t it a woman?”

“Yes, it was. A woman. What was her name? Malm something?”

“Svedberg’s got a good memory,” she said. “I’ll get him.”

“That’s not necessary,” said Wallander. “I remember now. Her name was Malmstrom. We’ve got to get hold of her. And we need to get hold of her right now. I’d like you to take care of it. As fast as you can!”

“What is it?”

“I’ll explain later.”

She got up and left the room. Could the Fredman boy really be mixed up in this? Wallander picked up the phone and called Akeson. He answered at once.

“I need you to do me a favour,” he said. “Now. In the middle of the night. Call the hospital where Louise was a patient. Tell them to copy the page of the visitors’ book with the signature of the person who picked her up. And tell them to fax it here to Helsingborg.”

“How the hell do you think they can do that?”

“I have no idea,” Wallander said. “But it could be important. They can cross out all the other names on the page. I just want to see that one signature.”

“Which was illegible?”

“Precisely. I want to see the illegible signature.”

Wallander stressed his final words. Akeson understood that he was after something that might be important.

“Give me the fax number,” Akeson said. “I’ll try.”

Wallander gave him the number and hung up. The clock on the wall said 2.05 a.m. He was sweating in his new shirt. He wondered vaguely whether the state had paid for the shirt and trousers. Hoglund returned and said that Agneta Malmstrom was on a sailing holiday with her family somewhere between Landsort and Oxelosund.

“What’s the name of the boat?”

“It’s supposed to be some kind of Maxi class. The name is Sanborombon. It also has a number.”

“Call Stockholm Radio,” Wallander said. “They must have a two-way radio on board. Ask them to call the boat. Tell them it’s a police emergency. Talk to Birgersson. I want to get in touch with her right away.”

Wallander had his second wind. Hoglund left to go and find Birgersson. Svedberg almost collided with her in the doorway as he came in with the security guards’ account of the theft of their car.

“You’re right,” he said. “Basically all they saw was the gun. And it all happened very fast. But he had blond hair, blue eyes and was dressed in some kind of jogging suit. Normal height, spoke with a Stockholm accent. Gave the impression of being high on something.”

“What did they mean by that?”

“His eyes.”

“I assume the description is on its way out?”

“I’ll check.”

As Svedberg left, excited voices came from the hall. Wallander guessed that a reporter had tried to cross the boundary that Birgersson had drawn. He found a notebook and quickly wrote a few notes in the sequence he remembered them. He was sweating profusely now, checking the wall clock, and in his mind Baiba was sitting by the phone in her spartan flat in Riga waiting for the call he should have made long ago.

It was close to 3 a.m. The security company’s car was still missing. Hans Logard was hiding. The Dominican girl who had been taken to the yacht club couldn’t make a positive identification of the boat. Maybe it was the same one, maybe not. A man who had always kept in the shadows had been at the wheel. She couldn’t remember any crew. Wallander told Birgersson that the girls had to get some sleep now. Hotel rooms were arranged. One of the girls smiled shyly at Wallander when they met in the hall. Her smile made him feel good, for a brief moment almost exhilarated. At regular intervals Birgersson would find Wallander and provide information on Logard. At 3.15 a.m. Wallander learned that Logard had been married twice and had two children under 18. One of them, a girl, lived with her mother in Hagfors, the other in Stockholm, a boy of nine. Next Birgersson came back and reported that Logard might have had one other child, but that they hadn’t managed to confirm it.

At 3.30 a.m. an exhausted officer came into the room where Wallander was sitting with a coffee cup in his hand and his feet on the desk and told him that Stockholm Radio had contacted the Malmstroms’ Maxi. Wallander jumped up and followed him to the command centre, where Birgersson stood yelling into a receiver. He handed it to Wallander.

“They’re somewhere between two lightships named the Havringe and the Gustaf Dalen,” he said. “I’ve got Karl Malmstrom on the line.”

Wallander quickly handed the phone back to Birgersson.

“I’ve got to talk to his wife. Only the wife.”

“I hope you realise that there are hundreds of pleasure boats out there listening to the conversation going out over the coastal radio.”

In his haste, Wallander had forgotten that.

“A mobile phone is better,” he said. “Ask if they have one on board.”

“I’ve already done that,” Birgersson said. “These are people who think you should leave mobile phones at home when you’re on holiday.”

“Then they’ll have to put into shore,” Wallander said. “And call me from there.”

“How long do you think that will take?” said Birgersson. “Do you have any idea where the Havringe is? Plus, it’s the middle of the night. Are they supposed to set sail now?”

“I don’t give a shit where the Havringe is,” Wallander said. “Besides, they might be sailing at night and not lying at anchor. Maybe there’s some other boat nearby with a mobile phone. Just tell them that I have to get in touch with her within an hour. With her. Not him.”

Birgersson shook his head. Then he started yelling into the phone again. Half an hour later Agneta Malmstrom called from a mobile phone borrowed from a boat they’d met out in the channel. Wallander got straight to the point.

“Do you remember the girl who burned herself to death?” he asked. “In a rape field a few weeks ago?”

“Of course I remember.”

“Do you also recall a phone conversation we had at that time? I asked you how a young person could do such a thing to herself. I don’t remember my exact words.”

“I have a vague memory of it,” she replied.

“You answered by giving an example of something you had recently experienced. You told me about a boy, a little boy, who was so afraid of his father that he tried to put out his own eyes.”

“Yes,” she said. “I remember that. But it wasn’t something I had experienced myself. One of my colleagues told me about it.”

“Who was that?”

“My husband. He’s a doctor too.”

“Then I’ll have to talk to him. Please get him for me.”

“It’ll take a while. I’ll have to row over and get him in the dinghy. We put down a drift anchor some way from here.”

Wallander apologised for bothering her.

“Unfortunately, it’s necessary,” he said.

“It’ll take a while,” she said.

“Where the hell is the Havringe?” asked Wallander.

“Out in the Baltic,” she said. “It’s lovely where we are. But just now we’re making a night sail to the south. Even though the wind is poor.”

It took 20 minutes before the phone rang again. Karl Malmstrom was on the line. In the meantime Wallander had learnt that he was a paediatrician in Malmo. Wallander reverted to the conversation he had had with his wife.

“I remember the case,” he said.

“Can you remember the name of the boy off the top of your head?”

“Yes, I can. But I can’t stand here yelling it into a mobile phone.”

Wallander understood his point. He thought feverishly.

“Let’s do this, then,” he said. “I’ll ask you a question. You can answer yes or no. Without naming any names.”

“We can try,” said Malmstrom.

“Does it have anything to do with Bellman?” asked Wallander.

Malmstrom instantly understood the reference to Fredman’s Epistles by the famous Swedish poet.

“Yes, it does.”

“Then I thank you for your help,” said Wallander. “I hope I won’t have to bother you again. Have a good summer.”

Karl Malmstrom didn’t seem annoyed. “It’s nice to know we have policemen who work hard at all hours,” was all he said.

Wallander handed the phone to Birgersson.

“Let’s have a meeting in a while,” he said. “I need a few minutes to think.”

“Take my office,” Birgersson said.

Wallander suddenly felt very tired. His sense of revulsion was like a dull ache in his body. He still didn’t want to believe that what he was thinking could be true. He had fought against this conclusion for a long time. But he couldn’t do that any longer. The truth that confronted him was unbearable. The little boy’s terror of his father. A big brother nearby. Who pours hydrochloric acid into his father’s eyes as revenge. Who acts out an insane retribution for his sister, who had been abused in some way. It was all very clear. The whole thing made sense and the result was appalling. He also thought that his subconscious had seen it long ago, but he had pushed the realisation aside. Instead he had allowed himself to be sidetracked, distracted from his goal.

A police officer knocked on his door.

“We just got a fax from Lund,” he said. “From a hospital.”

Wallander took it. Akeson had acted fast. It was a copy of a page from the visitors’ book for the psychiatric ward. All the names but one were crossed out. The signature really was illegible. He took out a magnifying glass from Birgersson’s desk drawer and tried to make it out. Illegible. He put the paper on the table. The officer was still standing in the doorway.

“Get Birgersson over here,” Wallander said. “And my colleagues from Ystad. How’s Sjosten, by the way?”

“He’s sleeping. They’ve removed the bullet from his shoulder.”

A few minutes later they were gathered in the room. It was almost 4.30 a.m. Everyone was exhausted. Still no sign of Logard. Still no trace of the security guards’ car. Wallander nodded to them to sit down.

The moment of truth, he thought. This is it.

“We’re searching for Hans Logard,” he began. “We have to keep doing so of course. He shot Sjosten in the shoulder and he’s mixed up in the traffic of young girls. But he isn’t the one who committed four murders and scalped his victims. That was somebody else entirely.”

He paused.

“Stefan Fredman is the person who did this,” he said. “We’re looking for a 14-year-old boy who killed his father, along with the others.”

There was silence in the room. No-one moved. They were all staring at him. When Wallander had finished his explanation, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind. The team decided to return to Ystad. The greatest secrecy would have to attach to what they had just discussed. Wallander couldn’t tell which feeling was stronger among his colleagues, shock or relief.

Wallander called Akeson and gave him a brisk precis of his conclusions. As he did so, Svedberg stood next to him, staring at the fax that had come from Lund.

“Strange,” he said.

Wallander turned to him.

“What’s strange?”

“This signature. It looks as if he’s signed himself Geronimo.”

Wallander grabbed the fax out of Svedberg’s hand. He was right.