The White Lioness

Chapter Two

When Detective Chief Inspector Kurt Wallander arrived at the police station in Ystad on Monday morning, April 27, The was furious. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in such a bad mood. His anger had even left its traces on his face, a band-aid on one cheek where he cut himself shaving.

He muttered a reply to colleagues who said good morning. When he got to his office, he slammed the door behind him, took the phone off its hook, and sat staring out the window.

Kurt Wallander was forty-four years old. He was considered a proficient cop, persistent and occasionally astute. That morning, though, he felt only anger and an increasingly bad temper. Sunday had been one of those days he would have preferred to forget all about.

One of the causes was his father, who lived alone in a house on the plain just outside Loderup. His relationship with his father had always been complicated. Things had gotten no better over the years as Kurt Wallander realized, with a growing feeling of annoyance, that he was becoming more and more like him. He tried to imagine himself at the same stage as his father, but this made him feel ill at ease. Would he also end up a sullen and unpredictable old man, capable of suddenly doing something absolutely crazy?

On Sunday afternoon Kurt Wallander had visited his father as usual. They played cards and drank coffee out on the veranda in the warm spring sunshine. Out of the blue his father announced his intention of getting married. Kurt Wallander thought at first he had misheard him.

“No,” he said, “I’m not going to get married.”

“I’m not talking about you,” his father responded, “I’m talking about me.”

Kurt Wallander stared at him in disbelief.

“You’re almost eighty,” he said. “You aren’t getting married.”

“I’m not dead yet,” interrupted his father. “I’ll do whatever I like. You’d be better off asking me who.”

Kurt Wallander did as he was told.

“You ought to be able to work it out for yourself,” said his father. “I thought cops were paid to draw conclusions?”

“But you don’t know anybody your age, do you? You keep pretty much to yourself.”

“I know one,” said his father. “And anyway, who says you have to marry somebody your own age?”

Kurt Wallander suddenly realized there was only one possibility: Gertrud Anderson, the fifty-year-old woman who came to do the cleaning and wash his father’s feet three times a week.

“Are you going to marry Gertrud?” he asked. “Have you thought of asking her if she wants to? There’s thirty years between you. How do you think you’re going to be able to live with another person? You’ve never been able to. Not even with my mother.”

“I’ve grown better-tempered in my old age,” replied his father mildly.

Kurt Wallander couldn’t believe his ears. His father was going to get married? Better-tempered in his old age? Now, when he was more impossible than he’d ever been?

Then they had quarreled. It ended up with his father throwing his coffee cup into the tulip bed and locking himself in the shed where he used to paint his pictures with the same motif, repeated over and over again: sunset in an autumnal landscape, with or without a wood grouse in the foreground, depending on the taste of whoever commissioned it.

Kurt Wallander drove home much too fast. He had to put a stop to this crazy business. How on earth could Gertrud Anderson work for his father for a year and not see it was impossible to live with him?

He parked the car on Mariagatan in central Ystad where he lived, and made up his mind to call his sister Kristina in Stockholm right away. He would ask her to come to Skane. Nobody could change his father’s mind. But perhaps Gertrud Anderson could be made to see sense.

He never got around to calling his sister. When he got up to his apartment on the top floor, he could see the door had been broken open. A few minutes later it was clear the thieves had marched off with his brand-new stereo equipment, CD player, all his discs and records, the television, radio, clocks, and a camera. He slumped into a chair and just sat there for a long while, wondering what to do. In the end, he rang his workplace and asked to speak with one of the CID inspectors, Martinson, who he knew was on duty that Sunday.

He was kept waiting for ages before Martinson eventually came to the phone. Wallander guessed he’d been having coffee and chatting to some of the cops who were taking a rest from the big traffic operation they were mounting that weekend.

“Martinson here. How can I help you?”

“It’s Wallander. You’d better get your ass over here.”

“Where? To your office? I thought you were off today?”

“I’m at home. Get out here.”

Martinson evidently realized it must be serious. He asked no more questions.

“OK,” he said. “I’m on my way ”

The rest of Sunday was spent doing a technical investigation of the apartment and writing a case report. Martinson, one of the younger cops Wallander worked with, was sometimes careless and impulsive. All the same, Wallander liked working with him, not least because he often proved to be surprisingly perceptive. When Martinson and the police technician had left, Wallander did a very provisional repair job on the door.

He spent most of the night lying awake, thinking about how he’d beat the shit out of the thieves if he ever laid hands on them. When he could no longer bear to torture himself thinking about the loss of all his discs, he lay there worrying about what to do with his father, feeling more and more resigned to it all.

At dawn he got up, brewed some coffee and looked for his home insurance documents. He sat at his kitchen table going through the papers, getting increasingly annoyed at the insurance company’s incomprehensible jargon. In the end he flung the papers to one side and went to shave. When he cut himself, he considered calling the station and telling them he was sick, then going back to bed with the cover over his head. But the thought of being in his apartment without even being able to listen to a CD was too much for him.

Now it was half past seven in the morning and he was sitting in his office with the door closed. With a groan, he forced himself to become a policeman again, and replaced the phone.

It rang immediately. It was Ebba, the receptionist.

“Sorry to hear about the burglary,” she said. “Did they really take all your records?”

“They left me a few 78s. I thought I might listen to them tonight. If I can get hold of a wind-up gramophone.”

“It’s awful.”

“That’s the way it goes. What do you want?”

“There’s a man out here who insists on talking to you.”

“What about?”

“About some missing person or other.”

Wallander looked at the stack of case notes on his desk.

“Can’t Svedberg look after him?”

“Svedberg’s out hunting.”

“He’s what?”

“I don’t quite know what to call it. He’s out looking for a young bull that broke out of a field at Marsvinsholm. It’s running around on the E14- freeway, playing havoc with the traffic.”

“Surely the traffic cops can deal with that? Why should one of our men have to get involved?”

“It was Bjork who sent Svedberg.”

“Oh, my God!”

“Shall I send him in to you, then? The man who wants to report a missing person?”

Wallander nodded into the phone.

“All right,” he said.

The knock on his door a few minutes later was so discreet, Wallander was not sure at first whether he’d heard anything at all. When he shouted “Come in,” however, the door opened right away.

Wallander had always been convinced the first impression a person makes is crucial.

The man who entered Wallander’s office was not at all conspicuous. Wallander guessed he was about thirty-five with a dark brown suit, close-cropped blond hair, and glasses.

Wallander immediately noticed something else as well.

The man was obviously worried. Wallander was clearly not the only one with a sleepless night behind him.

He got to his feet and offered his hand.

“Kurt Wallander. Detective Inspector Wallander.”

“My name is Robert Akerblom,” said the man. “My wife has disappeared.”

Wallander was surprised by the man’s forthright statement.

“Let’s start from the beginning,” he said. “Please sit down. I’m afraid the chair’s a bit old. The left armrest keeps dropping off. Don’t worry about it.”

The man sat down on the chair.

He suddenly started sobbing, heart-broken, desperate.

Wallander remained standing at his desk, at a loss. Then he decided to wait.

The man in the visitor’s chair calmed down after a couple of minutes. He dried his eyes and blew his nose.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Something must have happened to Louise, though. She would never go away of her own accord.”

“Cup of coffee?” asked Wallander. “Maybe we can get a pastry or something as well.”

“No thank you,” said Robert Akerblom.

Wallander nodded and took a notebook out of one of the desk drawers. He used regular note pads he bought himself at the local bookstore, with his own money. He’d never managed to get around to coping with the flood of printed report forms the Central Police Authority used to overwhelm the force with. He’d occasionally thought of writing a letter to Swedish Policeman proposing that whoever drew up the forms should be presented with printed replies.

“You’d better start by giving me your personal details,” said Wallander.

“My name’s Robert Akerblom,” the man said. “I run Akerblom’s Real Estate with my wife.”

Wallander nodded as he wrote. He knew the offices were close to the Saga cinema.

“We have two children,” Robert Akerblom went on, “ages four and seven. Two girls. We live in a row house, 19 Akarvagen. I was born in this town. My wife comes from Ronneby.”

He broke off, took a photo out of his inside pocket, and put it on the desk in front of Wallander. It was a woman; she looked like any other woman. She was smiling at the photographer, and Wallander could see it was taken in a studio. He contemplated her face and decided it was somehow or other just right for Robert Akerblom’s wife.

“The photo was taken only three months ago,” said Robert Akerblom. “That’s exactly what she looks like.”

“And she’s disappeared, has she?” asked Wallander.

“Last Friday she was at the Savings Bank in Skurup, clinching a property deal. Then she was going to look at a house somebody was putting on the market. I spent the afternoon with our accountant, at his office. I stopped in at the agency on my way home. She’d left a message on the answering machine saying she’d be home by five. She said it was a quarter after three when she called. That’s the last we know.”

Wallander frowned. It was Monday today. She’d already been away for three days. Three whole days, with two small children waiting for her at home.

Wallander felt instinctively that this was no ordinary disappearance. He knew that most people who went missing came back sooner or later, and that a natural explanation would gradually emerge. It was very common for people to go away for a few days or even a week, for instance, and forget to tell anybody. On the other hand, he also knew that relatively few women abandoned their children. That worried him.

He made a few notes on his pad.

“Do you still have the message she left on the answering machine?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Robert Akerblom. “I didn’t think of bringing the cassette with me, though.”

“That’s OK, we’ll sort that out later,” said Wallander. “Was it clear where she was calling from?”

“She used the car phone.”

Wallander put down his pen and contemplated the man on the visitor’s chair. His anxiety gave the impression of being absolutely genuine.

“You can’t think of why she might have had to go away?” Wallander asked.

“No.”

“She can’t be visiting friends?”

“No.”

“Relatives?”

“No.”

“There’s no other possibility you can think of?”

“No.”

“I hope you won’t mind if I ask you some personal questions.”

“We’ve never quarreled. If that’s what you were wanting to know.”

Wallander nodded.

“That was what I was going to ask,” he said.

He started all over again.

“You say she disappeared last Friday afternoon. But you waited for three days before coming to us?”

“I was afraid,” said Robert Akerblom.

Wallander stared at him in surprise.

“Going to the police would be like accepting that something awful had happened,” Robert Akerblom went on. “That’s why I didn’t dare.”

Wallander nodded slowly. He knew exactly what Robert Akerblom meant.

“You’ve been out looking for her, of course,” he went on.

Robert Akerblom nodded.

“What other steps have you taken?” he asked, starting to make notes again.

“I’ve prayed to God,” replied Robert Akerblom, quite simply.

Wallander stopped writing.

“Prayed to God?”

“My family are Methodists. Yesterday, we joined the whole congregation and Pastor Tureson in praying that nothing unthinkable can have happened to Louise.”

Wallander could feel something gnawing away in his stomach. He tried to conceal his disquiet from the man in the chair before him.

A mother with two children, member of a free church, he thought to himself. She wouldn’t just disappear of her own accord. Not unless she’d gone out of her mind. Or been possessed by religion. A mother of two children would hardly stroll out into the forest and take her own life. Such things do happen, but very rarely.

Wallander knew what was afoot.

Either there had been an accident, or Louise Akerblom was the victim of a crime.

“Of course, you realize there might have been an accident,” he said.

“I’ve called every hospital in Skane,” said Robert Akerblom. “She hasn’t been admitted anywhere. Besides, a hospital would have been in touch with me if anything had happened. Louise always had her ID card on her.”

“What make of car did she drive?” asked Wallander.

“A Toyota Corolla. 1990 model. Dark blue. Registration number MHL 449.”

Wallander wrote it all down.

Then he went back to the beginning again, methodically going through the details Robert Akerblom knew about what his wife was doing that afternoon. They looked at maps, and Wallander could feel unease growing within him.

For God’s sake, let’s not have the murder of a woman on our plates, he thought. Anything but that.

Wallander put down his pen at a quarter to eleven.

“There’s no reason to suppose that your wife won’t be found safe and sound,” he said, hoping his skepticism was not/apparent. “But needless to say, we’ll treat your report with the utmost seriousness.”

Robert Akerblom was slumped down on the chair. Wallander was afraid he might start bawling again. He suddenly felt incredibly sorry for him. He would have loved to console him. But how could he do that without showing how worried he really felt?

He got up from his chair.

“I’d like to listen to her telephone message,” he said. “Then I’ll drive over to Skurup and call in at the bank. Have you got somebody to help out with the children?”

“I don’t need any help,” said Robert Akerblom. “I can manage on my own. What do you think has happened to Louise, Inspector?”

“I don’t think anything at all as yet,” replied Wallander. “Except that she’ll soon be back home again.”

I’m lying, he thought.

I don’t think that. I’m just hoping.

Wallander followed Robert Akerblom back into town. As soon as he had listened to the message on the answering machine and gone through her desk drawers, he’d go back to the office and talk to Bjork. Even if there were very clear procedures for how to go about looking for a missing person, Wallander wanted all available resources placed at his disposal right away. The disappearance of Louise Akerblom indicated from the start that a crime had been committed.

Akerblom’s Real Estate was located in a former grocery store. Wallander recalled it from his first year in Ystad, when he’d arrived as a young cop from Malmo. There were a couple of desks, and some stands with photographs and descriptions of properties. There was a table with visitors’ chairs where clients could delve into the details of the various properties they were interested in. On the wall were a couple of ordinance survey maps, covered in pins of various colors. There was a little kitchen behind the office itself.

They entered the back way, but even so, Wallander noticed the handwritten card taped to the front door: “Closed Today.”

“Which is your desk?” asked Wallander.

Robert Akerblom pointed. Wallander sat down at the other desk. It was empty, apart from a diary, a photo of their two daughters, a few files and a pen stand. Wallander had the impression it had recently been tidied up.

“Who does the cleaning?” he asked.

“We have a cleaner who comes in three times a week,” Robert Akerblom replied. “Mind you, we generally do the dusting and empty the wastebaskets every day ourselves.”

Wallander nodded. Then he took a look around the office. The only thing that struck him as being odd was a little crucifix on the wall by the kitchen door.

Then he nodded at the answering machine.

“It’ll come right away,” said Robert Akerblom. “It was the only message we had after three o’clock on Friday.”

First impressions, was what Wallander was thinking. Listen carefully now.

Hi there! I’m just going to take a look at a house at Krageholm. Then I’ll be off to Ystad. It’s a quarter after three. I’ll be home by five.

Cheerful, thought Wallander. She sounds happy and keen. Not threatened, not scared.

“One more time,” said Wallander. “But first I want to hear what you yourself say on the tape. If you still have that?”

Robert Akerblom nodded, rewound the cassette, and pressed a button.

Welcome to Akerblom’s Real Estate. Right now we’re out on business. But we’ll be open again as usual on Monday morning, eight o’clock. If you would like to leave a message or send a fax, please do so after the beep. Thank you for calling, and we look forward to hearing from you again.

Wallander could hear that Robert Akerblom was not comfortable when confronted with the answering machine’s microphone. His voice sounded slightly strained.

Then he turned his attention to Louise Akerblom again, and asked her husband to wind the tape back time after time.

Wallander tried to listen for some message that might have been concealed behind the words. He had no idea what it might be. But he tried even so.

When he had heard the tape some ten times, he nodded to Robert Akerblom, indicating that was enough.

“I’ll have to take the cassette with me,” he said. “We can amplify the sound at the station.”

Robert Akerblom took out the little cassette and handed it to Wallander.

“I’d like you to do something for me while I’m going through the drawers in her desk,” said Wallander. “Write down everything she did or was going to do last Friday. Who she was due to meet, and where. Write down what route you think she would have taken as well. Note the times. And I want an exact description of where that house is, the one she was going to look at near Krageholm.”

“I can’t tell you that,” said Robert Akerblom.

Wallander looked at him in surprise.

“It was Louise who took the call from the lady who wanted to sell the house,” explained Robert Akerblom. “She drew a map for herself, and took it with her. She wouldn’t be putting all the details into a file until today. If we’d taken on the house either she or I would have gone back there to take a photograph.”

Wallander thought for a moment.

“In other words, at the moment Louise is the only one who knows where the house is,” he said.

Robert Akerblom nodded.

“When would the lady who called get in touch again?” Wallander went on.

“Some time today,” said Robert Akerblom. “That’s why Louise wanted to try and see the house on Friday.”

“It’s important that you’re here when she calls,” said Wallander. “Say that your wife has taken a look at the house, but unfortunately she’s sick today. Ask for a description of how to get there again, and take her telephone number. As soon as she’s been in touch, give me a call.”

Robert Akerblom nodded to show he’d understood. Then he sat down to write out the details Wallander wanted.

Wallander opened the desk drawers one at a time. He found nothing that seemed significant. None of the drawers appeared to be recently emptied. He lifted the green blotting pad, and found a recipe for hamburgers, torn from a magazine. Then he contemplated the photo of the two daughters.

He got up and went out into the kitchen. Hanging on one of the walls was a calendar and a sampler with a quotation from the Bible. A small jar of coffee was on one of the shelves, unopened. On another were several kinds of tea. He opened the refrigerator. A liter of milk and some margarine.

He thought about her voice, and what she’d said on the telephone. He was sure the car had been stationary when she made the call. Her voice was steady. It would not have been if she had been concentrating on driving at the same time. Later, when they amplified the sound at the station, he was proven right. Besides, Louise Akerblom was sure to be a careful, law-abiding citizen who would not risk her life nor anybody else’s by using the car phone while driving.

If the times she mentioned are right, she’ll be in Skurup, thought Wallander. She’ll have concluded her business at the bank and be about to set off for Krageholm. But she wants to call her husband first. She’s pleased that everything went well at the bank. Moreover it’s Friday afternoon, and she’s finished work for the day. It’s nice weather. She has every reason to feel happy.

Wallander went back and sat down at her desk once more, leafing through the desk diary. Robert Akerblom handed him a sheet of paper with the details Wallander had asked for.

“I have just one more question for the moment,” said Wallander. “It isn’t really a question. But it is important. What kind of a person is Louise?”

He was very careful to use the present tense, as if nothing had happened. In his own mind, however, Louise Akerblom was already someone who no longer existed.

“Everybody likes her,” said Robert Akerblom straightforwardly. “She’s even-tempered, laughs a lot, finds it easy to talk to people. Actually, she finds it hard to do business. Anything to do with money or complicated negotiations, she hands over to me. She’s easily moved. And upset. She’s troubled by other people’s suffering.”

“Does she have any special idiosyncrasies?” asked Wallander.

“Idiosyncrasies?”

“We all have our peculiarities,” said Wallander.

Robert Akerblom thought for a moment.

“I can’t think of anything,” he said eventually.

Wallander nodded and got to his feet. It was already a quarter to twelve. He wanted to have a word with Bjork before his boss went home for lunch.

“I’ll be in touch later this afternoon,” he said. “Try not to worry too much. See if you can think of anything you’ve forgotten. Something I ought to know about.”

“What happened, do you think?” asked Robert Akerblom as they shook hands.

“Probably nothing at all,” said Wallander. “There’s bound to be a natural explanation.”

Wallander got hold of Bjork just as he was about to leave. He was looking harassed, as usual. Wallander imagined a chief constable’s job wasn’t something to feel envious about.

“Sorry to hear about the burglary,” said Bjork, trying to look sympathetic. “Let’s hope the newspapers don’t get hold of this one. It wouldn’t look good, a detective inspector’s home being broken into. We have a high percentage of unsolved cases. The Swedish police force is pretty low on the international league tables.”

“That’s the way it goes,” said Wallander. “I need to talk to you about something.”

They were standing in the corridor outside Bjork’s office.

“It can’t wait till after lunch,” he added.

Bjork nodded, and they went back into the office.

Wallander put his cards on the table. He reported in detail his meeting with Robert Akerblom.

“A mother of two, religious,” said Bjork when Wallander had finished. “Missing since Friday. Doesn’t sound good.”

“No,” said Wallander. “It doesn’t sound good at all.”

Bjork eyed him shrewdly.

“You think there’s been a crime?”

Wallander shrugged.

“I don’t really know what I think,” he said. “But this isn’t a straightforward missing persons case. I’m sure about that. That’s why we ought to mobilize the right resources from the start. Not just the usual wait-and-see tactics.”

Bjork nodded.

“I agree,” he said. “Who do you want? Don’t forget we’re understaffed as long as Hanson’s away. He managed to pick just the wrong moment to break his leg.”

“Martinson and Svedberg,” replied Wallander. “By the way, did Svedberg find that young bull that was careening around the E14?”

“A farmer got it with a lasso in the end,” said Bjork glumly. “Svedberg twisted his ankle when he tumbled into a ditch. But he’s still at work.”

Wallander stood up.

“I’ll drive out to Skurup now,” he said. “Let’s get together at half past four and sort out what we know. We’d better start looking for her car right away.”

He put a piece of paper on Bjork’s desk.

“Toyota Corolla,” said Bjork. “I’ll see to that.”

Wallander drove from Ystad to Skurup. He needed some time to think, and chose the coastal route.

A wind was picking up. Jagged clouds were racing across the sky. He could see a ferry from Poland on its way into the harbor.

When he got as far as Mossby Beach, he drove down to the deserted parking lot and stopped by the boarded-up hamburger stand. He stayed in the car, thinking about the previous year when a rubber dinghy had drifted into land just here, with two dead men in it. He thought about Baiba Liepa, the woman he’d met in Riga. Interesting that he hadn’t managed to forget her, despite his best efforts.

A year ago, and he was still thinking about her all the time.

A murdered woman was the last thing he needed right now.

What he needed was peace and quiet.

He thought about his father getting married. About the burglary and all the music he’d lost. It felt as if someone had robbed him of an important part of his life.

He thought about his daughter, Linda, at college in Stockholm. He had the feeling he was losing touch with her.

It was too much, all at once.

He got out of the car, zipped up his jacket and walked down to the beach. The air was chilly, and he felt cold.

He went over in his mind what Robert Akerblom had said, tried various theories yet again. Could there be a natural explanation, despite everything? Could she have committed suicide? He thought of her voice on the telephone. Her eagerness.

Shortly before one Wallander left the beach and continued his way towards Skurup.

He couldn’t shake the conclusion he had come to: Louise Akerblom was dead.