Sidetracked

CHAPTER 6

The rain was coming down harder by the time they got to the beach. On the way there they had spoken very little. Martinsson gave directions. They turned off onto a narrow road past the tennis courts. Wallander tried to picture what awaited them. What he wanted least of all had happened. If the man who called the station turned out to be right, his leave was in danger. Hansson would appeal to him to postpone it, and eventually he would have to give in. What he had been hoping for — that his desk would be cleared of pressing matters at the end of June — was not going to happen.

They saw the dunes ahead of them and stopped. A man came forward to meet them. To Wallander’s surprise, he didn’t seem older than 30. If it was Wetterstedt who had died, this man couldn’t have been more than ten when the minister of justice had retired and vanished from public view. Wallander had been a young detective at the time. In the car he had tried to remember Wetterstedt’s face. He wore his hair cropped short, and glasses without frames. Wallander vaguely recalled his voice: blaring, invariably self-confident, never willing to admit a mistake.

The young man introduced himself as Goran Lindgren. He was dressed in shorts and a thin sweater, and he seemed very agitated. They followed him down to the beach, deserted now that it had started to rain. Lindgren led them over to a big rowing boat turned upside down. On the far side there was a wide gap between the sand and the boat’s gunwale.

“He’s under there,” said Lindgren in an unsteady voice.

Wallander and Martinsson looked at each other, still hoping the man had imagined it. They knelt down and peered in under the boat. In the dim light they could see a body lying there.

“We’ll have to turn the boat over,” said Martinsson in a low voice, as if afraid the dead man would hear him.

“No,” said Wallander, “we’re not turning anything over.” He got up quickly and turned to Goran Lindgren.

“I assume you have a torch,” he said. “Otherwise you couldn’t have described the body in such detail.”

The man nodded in surprise and pulled a torch out of a plastic bag near the boat. Wallander bent down again and shone the light inside.

“Holy shit,” said Martinsson at his side.

The dead man’s face was covered with blood. But they could see that the skin from the forehead up over his skull was torn off, and Lindgren had been right. It was Wetterstedt under the boat. They stood up. Wallander handed back the torch.

“How did you know it was Wetterstedt?” he asked.

“He lives here,” said Lindgren, pointing up towards a villa to the left of the boat. “Besides, everyone knows him. You don’t forget a politician who was on TV all the time.”

Wallander nodded doubtfully.

“We’ll need a full team out here,” he said to Martinsson. “Go and call. I’ll wait here.”

Martinsson hurried off. It was raining harder now.

“When did you find him?” asked Wallander.

“I don’t have a watch on me,” said Lindgren. “But it couldn’t have been more than half an hour ago.”

“Where did you call from?”

Lindgren pointed to the plastic bag.

“I have a mobile phone.”

Wallander regarded him with interest.

“He’s lying under an overturned boat,” he said. “He’s invisible from outside. You must have bent down to be able to see him?”

“It’s my boat,” said Lindgren simply. “Or my father’s, to be exact. I usually walk here on the beach when I finish work. Since it was starting to rain, I thought I’d put my things under the boat. When I felt the bag bump into something I bent down. At first I thought it was a plank, but then I saw him.”

“It’s really none of my business,” said Wallander, “but I wonder why you had a torch with you?”

“We have a summer cottage in the woods at Sandskogen,” replied Lindgren. “Over by Myrgangen. We’re in the process of rewiring it, so it has no lights. My father and I are electricians.”

Wallander nodded. “You’ll have to wait here,” he said. “We’ll have to ask you these questions again in a while. Have you touched anything?”

Lindgren shook his head.

“Has anyone other than you seen him?”

“No.”

“When did you or your father last turn over this boat?”

Lindgren thought for a moment.

“It was over a week ago,” he said.

Wallander had no more questions. He stood there thinking for a moment and then left the boat and walked in a wide arc up towards the villa where Wetterstedt lived. He tried the gate. It was locked. He waved Lindgren over.

“Do you live nearby?” he asked.

“No,” he said. “I live in Akesholm. My car is parked on the road.”

“But you knew that Wetterstedt lived in this house?”

“He used to walk along the beach here. Sometimes he stopped to watch while we were working on the boat, Dad and I. But he never spoke to us. He was rather arrogant.”

“Was he married?”

“Dad said that he’d read in a magazine that he was divorced.”

Wallander nodded.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Don’t you have a raincoat in that bag?”

“It’s up in the car.”

“Go ahead and get it,” Wallander said. “Did you call anyone besides the police and tell them about this?”

“I think I ought to call Dad. It’s his boat, after all.”

“Hold off for the time being,” said Wallander. “Leave the phone here, and go and get your raincoat.”

Lindgren did as he was told. Wallander went back to the boat. He stood looking at it and tried to imagine what had happened. He knew that the first impression of a crime scene was often crucial. During an investigation that was long and difficult, he would return to that first moment.

Some things he was already sure of. It was out of the question that Wetterstedt had been murdered underneath the boat. Someone had wanted to hide him. Since Wetterstedt’s villa was so close, there was a good chance that he had died there. Besides, Wallander had a hunch that the killer couldn’t have acted alone. The boat must have been lifted to get the body underneath. And it was the old-fashioned kind, clinker-built and heavy.

Wallander turned his mind to the torn-off scalp. What was it that Martinsson had said? Lindgren had told him on the phone that the man had been “scalped”. Wallander tried to imagine what other reasons there might be for the wound to the head. They didn’t know how Wetterstedt had died. It wasn’t natural to think that someone would intentionally have torn off his hair. Wallander felt uneasy. The torn-off skin disturbed him.

Just then the police cars started to arrive. Martinsson had been smart enough to tell them not to turn on their sirens and lights. Wallander walked about ten metres away from the boat so that the others wouldn’t trample the sand around it.

“There’s a dead man underneath the boat,” said Wallander when the police had gathered. “Apparently it’s Gustaf Wetterstedt, who was once our top boss. Anyone as old as I am, at least, will remember the days when he was minister of justice. He was living here in retirement. And now he’s dead. We have to assume that he was murdered. So we’ll start by cordoning off the area.”

“It’s a good thing the game isn’t on tonight,” said Martinsson.

“No doubt the person who did this is a football fan too,” said Wallander. He was getting annoyed at the constant references to the World Cup, but he hid his irritation from Martinsson.

“Nyberg is on his way,” said Martinsson.

“We’ll have to work on this all night,” said Wallander. “We might as well get started.”

Svedberg and Ann-Britt Hoglund were in one of the first cars. Hansson showed up right after they did. Lindgren reappeared in a yellow raincoat. He explained again how he had found the dead man while Svedberg took notes. It was raining hard now, and they gathered under a tree at the top of one of the dunes. When Lindgren had finished, Wallander asked him to wait. Since he still didn’t want to turn the boat over, the doctor had to dig out some sand to get far enough in under the boat to confirm that Wetterstedt was indeed dead.

“Apparently he was divorced,” said Wallander. “But we’ll have to get confirmation on that. Some of you will have to stay here. Ann-Britt and I will go up to his house.”

“Keys,” said Svedberg.

Martinsson went down to the boat, lay on his stomach, and reached in. After a minute or so he managed to find a key ring in Wetterstedt’s jacket pocket. Covered in wet sand, Martinsson handed Wallander the keys.

“We’ve got to put up a canopy,” Wallander said testily. “Where is Nyberg? Why the delay?”

“He’s coming,” said Svedberg. “Today is his sauna day.”

Wallander and Hoglund made their way up to Wetterstedt’s villa.

“I remember him from the police academy,” she said. “Somebody put up a photo of him on the wall and used it as a dartboard.”

“He was never popular with the police,” Wallander said. “It was during his administration that we noticed something new was coming, a change that snuck up on us. I remember it felt like someone had pulled a hood over our eyes. It was almost shameful to be a policeman then. People seemed to worry more about how the prisoners were doing than the fact that crime was steadily on the rise.”

“There’s a lot I can’t recall,” said Hoglund. “But wasn’t he mixed up in some sort of scandal?”

“There were a lot of rumours,” said Wallander. “About one thing and another. But nothing was ever proven. A number of police officers in Stockholm were said to be quite upset.”

“Maybe time caught up with him,” she said.

Wallander looked at her in surprise. But he said nothing.

They had reached the gate.

“I’ve been here before, you know,” she said suddenly. “He used to call the police and complain about young people sitting on the beach and singing on summer nights. One of those young people wrote a letter to the editor of Ystad Recorder to complain. Bjork asked me to look into it.”

“Look into what?”

“I’m not really sure,” she answered. “But Bjork was very sensitive to criticism.”

“That was one of his best traits,” said Wallander. “He always defended us and that isn’t always the case.”

They found the key and opened the gate. Wallander noticed that the light was burned out. The garden they stepped into was well tended. There were no fallen leaves on the lawn. There was a little fountain with two nude plaster children squirting water at each other from their mouths. A swing hung in the arbour. On a flagstone patio stood a marble-topped table and chairs.

“Well cared for and expensive,” said Hoglund. “What do you think a marble table like that costs?”

Wallander didn’t answer, since he had no idea. They continued up towards the villa. He guessed that it had been built around the turn of the century. They followed the flagstone path around to the front of the house. Wallander rang the bell. He waited for over a minute before he rang again. Then he looked for the key and unlocked the door. They stepped into a lit hall. Wallander called out into the silence, but there was no-one there.

“Wetterstedt wasn’t killed under the boat,” said Wallander. “Of course he could have been attacked on the beach. But I think it happened here.”

“Why’s that?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Just a hunch.”

They went through the house slowly, from the basement to the attic, without touching anything but the light switches. It was a cursory examination. Yet for Wallander it was important. The man who now lay dead on the beach had lived in this house. They had to seek clues as to how his death had come about.

But they didn’t find the slightest sign of disorder. Wallander looked in vain for the place where the crime might have taken place. At the front door he had looked for signs of a break-in. As they had stood in the hall listening to the silence, Wallander had told Hoglund to take off her shoes. Now they padded soundlessly through the huge villa, which seemed to grow with each step they took. Wallander could feel his colleague looking as much at him as at the objects in the rooms they passed through. He remembered how he had done the same thing with Rydberg, when he was still a young, inexperienced detective. Instead of considering it flattering, it depressed him. The changing of the guard was under way already. She was the one on the way in, he was on the way out.

He remembered when they had first met, almost two years ago. She was a pale, plain young woman who had graduated from the police academy with top marks. But the first thing that she said to him was that he’d teach her everything that the academy couldn’t about the unpredictability of the real world. But maybe it was the other way round, he thought, as he looked at a rather blurry lithograph. Imperceptibly, the transition had taken place.

They stopped by a window on the upper floor where they had a view of the beach. The floodlights were in place; Nyberg was gesticulating angrily as he supervised the arrangement of a plastic canopy over the rowing boat. The cordon was guarded by policemen in raincoats. Only a few people stood outside the cordon in the driving rain.

“I’m beginning to think I was wrong,” Wallander said as he watched the canopy finally settle into place. “There are no signs that Wetterstedt was killed in here.”

“The killer might have cleaned up,” Hoglund suggested.

“We’ll find that out after Nyberg goes through the house with a fine-tooth comb,” said Wallander. “But I’m sure it happened outside.”

They went back downstairs in silence.

“There was no mail on the floor inside the front door,” she said. “The property is walled off. There must be a letter box somewhere.”

“We’ll take that up later,” said Wallander.

He walked into the living-room and stood in the middle. She watched from the doorway, as though expecting him to make an impromptu speech.

“I make a habit of asking myself what I’m missing,” Wallander said. “But everything here seems in place. A man living alone in a house where everything is orderly, no bills are unpaid, and where loneliness lingers like old cigar smoke. The only thing that doesn’t fit is that the man in question is now lying dead underneath a rowing boat down on the beach.”

Then he corrected himself, “No, there’s one other thing,” he said. “The light by the garden gate isn’t working.”

“It may have just burned out,” she said, surprised.

“Right,” said Wallander, “but it still breaks the pattern.”

There was a knock on the door. When Wallander opened it, Hansson was standing there, raindrops streaming down his face.

“Neither Nyberg nor the doctor are going to get anywhere unless we turn that boat over,” he said.

“Turn it over,” said Wallander. “I’ll be right there.”

Hansson disappeared into the rain.

“We have to start looking for his relatives,” Wallander said. “He must have an address book somewhere.”

“There’s one thing that’s odd,” said Hoglund. “This house is full of souvenirs from a long life with lots of travel and countless meetings with people. But there are no family photographs.”

They were back in the living-room. Wallander looked around and saw that she was right. It bothered him that he hadn’t thought of it himself.

“Maybe he didn’t want to be reminded that he was old,” Wallander said without conviction.

“A woman would never be able to live without pictures of her family,” she said. “That’s probably why I thought of it.”

There was a telephone on a table next to the sofa.

“There’s a phone in his study too,” he said, pointing. “You look in there, and I’ll start here.”

Wallander squatted by the low telephone stand. Next to the phone was the remote control for the TV. Wetterstedt could talk on the phone and watch TV at the same time, he thought. Just like me. We live in a world where people can’t bear not to be able to change channel and talk on the phone at the same time. He riffled through the phone books, but didn’t find any private notes. Next he pulled out two drawers in a bureau behind the telephone stand. In one there was a stamp album, in the other some tubes of glue and a box of napkin rings.

As he was walking towards the study, the phone rang. He stopped. Hoglund appeared at once in the doorway to the study. Wallander sat down carefully on the corner of the sofa and picked up the receiver.

“Hello,” said a woman’s voice. “Gustaf? Why haven’t you called me?”

“Who’s speaking, please?” asked Wallander.

The woman’s voice suddenly turned formal. “This is Gustaf Wetterstedt’s mother calling,” she said. “With whom am I speaking?”

“My name is Kurt Wallander. I’m a police officer here in Ystad.”

He could hear the woman breathing. He realised that she must be very old if she was Gustaf Wetterstedt’s mother. He made a face at Hoglund, who was standing looking at him.

“Has something happened?” asked the woman.

Wallander didn’t know how to react. It went against all written and unwritten procedures to inform the next of kin of a sudden death over the telephone. But he had already told her his name, and that he was a police officer.

“Hello?” said the woman. “Are you still there?”

Wallander didn’t answer. He stared helplessly at Hoglund. Then he did something which he couldn’t decide was justified. He hung up.

“Who was that?” she asked.

Wallander shook his head. He picked up the phone and called the headquarters of the Stockholm police.