The White Lioness

Chapter Seven

At dawn, just before he woke up, Kurt Wallander had a dream.

He had discovered that one of his hands was black. He had not put on a black glove. It was his skin that had grown darker until his hand was like an African’s.

In his dream Wallander wavered between reactions of horror and satisfaction. Rydberg, his former colleague who had been dead for nearly two years, looked disapprovingly at the hand. He asked Wallander why only one of them was black.

“Something will have to happen tomorrow as well,” Wallander replied in his dream.

When he woke up and recalled the dream, he lay in bed wondering about the reply he gave Rydberg. What did he mean, in fact?

Then he got up and looked out the window. The first of May in Skane this year was cloud-free and sunny, but very windy. It was six o’clock.

Although he had only slept for two hours, he did not feel tired. That morning they would get an answer to the question of whether Stig Gustafson had an alibi for Friday afternoon the previous week, when Louise Akerblom had most probably been murdered.

If we can solve the crime today already, it will have been surprisingly simple, he thought. The first few days we had nothing to go on. Then everything started to happen very quickly. A criminal investigation seldom follows everyday rhythms. It has its own life, its own energy. The clocks of a criminal investigation distort time, making it stand still, or race forward. No one can know in advance.

They met at eight o’clock in the conference room, and Wallander set the ball rolling.

“There’s no need for us to interfere in what the Danish police are doing,” he began. “If what his half-sister says is to believed, Stig Gustafson will land on a Scanair flight to Copenhagen at ten o’clock. You can check that, Svedberg. Then he has three possible ways of getting to Malmo. The ferry to Limhamn, the hydrofoil, or the SAS hovercraft. We’ll be keeping an eye on all three.”

“An old marine engineer will probably take the big ferry,” said Martinson.

“He might have had enough of boats,” objected Wallander. “We’ll have two men at each spot. He’s to be taken firmly and informed of the reasons. A certain amount of caution would no doubt be appropriate. Then we’ll bring him here. I thought I would start talking to him.”

“Two men seem on the low side,” said Bjork. “Shouldn’t we have a patrol car in the background, at least?”

Wallander went along with that.

“I’ve talked to our colleagues in Malmo,” Bjork went on. “We’ll get all the help we need. You can decide for yourselves what signal the immigration people should give you when he shows up.”

Wallander looked at his watch.

“If that’s all, we’d better get going,” said Wallander. “It’s best if we get to Malmo in good time.”

“The flight could be delayed by up to twenty-four hours,” said Svedberg. “Wait until I’ve checked.”

Fifteen minutes later, he informed them the plane from Las Palmas was expected at Kastrup at twenty minutes past nine.

“It’s already taken off,” said Svedberg. “And they have a tailwind.”

They drove to Malmo immediately, talked to their colleagues there, and divided up the assignments. Wallander allocated himself to the hovercraft terminal, along with a rookie cop named Engman, who was wet behind the ears. He had come in place of a cop named Naslund, with whom Wallander had worked for many years. He was from the island of Gotland, and couldn’t wait for an assignment back home. When a vacancy occurred in the Visby force, he did not hesitate to go for it. Wallander missed him at times, especially his unfailing good humor. Martinson and a colleague were taking care of Limhamn, and Svedberg was keeping an eye on the hydrofoils. They were in touch by walkie-talkie. Everything was set by half past nine. Wallander managed to arrange for coffee to be delivered to himself and the trainee by colleagues at the terminal.

“This is the first murderer I’ve ever hunted,” said Engman.

“We don’t know if he’s our man,” said Wallander. “In this country a man is innocent until he’s proven guilty. Never forget that.”

He was uncomfortable about the critical tone of his voice. He thought he’d better make up for it by saying something kind. But he couldn’t think of anything.

At half past ten Svedberg and his colleague made an undramatic arrest at the hydrofoil terminal. Stig Gustafson was a small man, thin, balding, sunburnt after his holiday.

Svedberg explained how he was suspected of murder, put the cuffs on him and announced he was being taken to Ystad.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Stig Gustafson. “Why do I have to be handcuffed? Why are you taking me to Ystad? Who am I supposed to have murdered?”

Svedberg noted that he seemed genuinely surprised. The thought suddenly struck him that marine engineer Gustafson might be innocent.

At ten minutes to twelve Wallander was sitting opposite Gustafson in an interview room at the Ystad police station. By that time he had already informed the prosecutor, Per Akeson, of the arrest.

He started by asking if Stig Gustafson would like a cup of coffee.

“No,” he said. “I want to go home. And I want to know why I’m here.”

“I want to talk to you,” said Wallander, “and the answers I get will decide whether or not you can go home.”

He started from the beginning. Wrote down Gustafson’s personal details, noted that his middle name was Emil, and that he was born in Landskrona. The man was obviously nervous, and Wallander could see he was sweating at the roots of his hair. But that did not necessarily mean anything. Police phobia is just as real as snake phobia.

Then the real interrogation started. Wallander came straight to the point, intrigued to find out what sort of a reaction he would get.

“You are here to answer questions about a brutal murder,” he said. “The murder of Louise Akerblom.”

Wallander saw the man stiffen. Had he not counted on the body being found so soon? wondered Wallander. Or is he genuinely surprised?

“Louise Akerblom disappeared last Friday,” he continued. “Her body was found a few days ago. She was probably murdered during the latter part of Friday. What have you to say to that?”

“Is it the Louise Akerblom I know?” asked Stig Gustafson.

Wallander could see he was scared now.

“Yes,” he said. “The one you got to know through the Methodists.”

“Has she been murdered?”

“Yes.”

“That’s terrible!”

Wallander immediately began to feel a gnawing sensation in his stomach, and knew something was wrong, absolutely damned wrong. Stig Gustafson’s shocked astonishment gave the impression of being completely genuine. Mind you, Wallander knew from his own experience there were perpetrators of the most horrific crimes you could think of who nevertheless had the ability to appear innocent in the most convincing way possible.

All the same, he could feel that gnawing sensation.

Had they been following a trail that was cold from the start?

“I want to know what you were doing last Friday,” said Wallander. “Start by telling me about the afternoon.”

The answer he got surprised him.

“I was with the police,” said Stig Gustafson.

“The police?”

“Yes. The cops in Malmo. I was flying to Las Palmas the next day. And I’d suddenly realized my passport had run out. I was at the station in Malmo, getting a new passport. The office was already closed by the time I got there, but they were nice and helped me anyway. I got my passport at four o’clock.”

Deep down Wallander knew from that moment on that Stig Gustafson was out of the picture. Even so, he didn’t seem to want to let go. He had a pressing need to solve this murder as soon as humanly possible. Anyway, it would have been dereliction of duty to allow the interrogation to be governed by his feelings.

“I parked at Central Station,” added Gustafson. “Then I went to the bar for a beer.”

“Is there anybody who can prove you were in the bar shortly after four o’clock last Friday?” asked Wallander.

Stig Gustafson considered for a moment.

“I don’t know,” he said eventually. “I was sitting on my own. Maybe one of the bartenders will remember me? I very rarely go to the bar, though. I’m not exactly a regular customer.”

“How long were you there?” asked Wallander.

“An hour, maybe. No longer.”

“Until about half past five? Is that right?”

“I suppose so. I’d planned to go to the liquor store before they closed.”

“Which one?”

“The one behind the NK department store. I don’t know the name of the street.”

“And you went there?”

“I just bought a few beers.”

“Can anybody prove you were there?”

Stig Gustafson shook his head.

“The man who served me had a red beard,” he said. “But I might still have the receipt. There’s the date on those receipts, isn’t there?”

“Go on,” said Wallander, nodding.

“Then I collected the car,” said Stig Gustafson. “I was going to buy a suitcase at the B amp;W discount warehouse, out at Jagersro.”

“Is there anybody there who might recognize you?”

“I didn’t buy a suitcase,” said Stig Gustafson. “They were too expensive. I thought I could manage with my old one. It was a disappointment.”

“What did you do next?”

“I had a hamburger at the McDonald’s out there. But the servers are only kids. I don’t suppose they’ll remember anything at all.”

“Young people often have good memories,” said Wallander, thinking of a young bank teller who had been extremely helpful in an investigation some years ago.

“I’ve just remembered something else,” said Stig Gustafson suddenly. “Something that happened while I was at the bar.”

“Go on.”

“I went down to the rest room. I stood there talking to a guy for a couple of minutes. He was complaining that there weren’t any paper towels to dry your hands on. He was a bit drunk. Not too much. He said his name was Forsgard and he ran a garden center at Hoor.”

Wallander made a note.

“We’ll follow that one up,” he said. “If we go back to Mc-Donald’s at Jagersro, the time would have been about half past six, right?”

“That’s probably about right,” said Stig Gustafson.

“What did you do next?”

“I went to Nisse’s to play cards.”

“Who’s Nisse?”

“An old carpenter I used to have as a shipmate for many years. His name’s Nisse Stromgren. Lives on Foreningsgatan. We play cards now and then. A game we learned in the Middle East. It’s pretty complicated. But fun once you know it. You have to collect jacks.”

“How long were you there?”

“It was probably near midnight by the time I went home. A bit too late, as I was going to have to get up so early. The bus was due to leave at six from Central Station. The bus to Kastrup, that is.”

Wallander nodded. Stig Gustafson has an alibi, he thought. If what he says is true. And if Louise Akerblom really was killed last Friday.

Right now there were not enough grounds to arrest Stig Gustafson. The prosecutor would never agree to it.

It’s not him, thought Wallander. If I start pressing him on his persecution of Louise Akerblom, we’ll get nowhere.

He stood up.

“Wait here,” he said and left the room.

They gathered in the conference room and listened gloomily to Wallander’s account.

“We’ll check up on what he said,” said Wallander. “But to be honest, I no longer think he’s our man. This was a blind alley.”

“I think you’re jumping the gun,” objected Bjork. “We don’t even know for sure she really did die on Friday afternoon. Stig Gustafson could in fact have driven from Lomma to Krageholm after leaving his card-playing pal.”

“That hardly seems likely,” said Wallander. “What could have kept Louise Akerblom out until that time? Don’t forget she left a message on her answering machine to say she’d be home by five. We’ve got to believe that. Something happened before five o’clock.”

Nobody spoke.

Wallander looked around.

“I’ll have to talk to the prosecutor,” he said. “If nobody has anything to say, I’m going to let Stig Gustafson go.”

Nobody had any objection.

Wallander walked over to the other end of the police station, where the prosecution authorities had their offices. He was admitted to Per Akeson and gave him a report of the interrogation. Every time Wallander visited his office, he was struck by the astonishing disorder all around him. Papers were stacked up haphazardly on desks and chairs; the garbage bin was overflowing. But Per Akeson was a skillful prosecutor. Moreover, no one had ever accused him of losing a single paper of significance.

“We can’t hold him,” he said when Wallander had finished. “I take it you can check his alibi pretty quickly?”

“Yes,” said Wallander. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think he did it.”

“Do you have any other leads?”

“It’s all very vague,” said Wallander. “We wondered if he might have hired somebody else to kill her. We’ll make a thorough check this afternoon before we go any further. But we have no other individual to go after. We’ll have to keep going on a broad basis for the time being. I’ll be in touch.”

Per Akeson nodded, and stared at Wallander, frowning.

“How much sleep are you getting?” he asked. “Or rather, how little? Have you seen yourself in a mirror? You look terrible!”

“That’s nothing compared to how I feel,” said Wallander, getting to his feet.

He went back down the corridor, opened the door to the interview room, and went in.

“We’ll arrange transport to take you to Lomma,” he said. “But you can bet we’ll be in touch again.”

“Am I free?” asked Gustafson.

“You’ve never been anything else,” said Wallander. “Being interrogated isn’t the same as being accused.”

“I didn’t kill her,” said Stig Gustafson. “I can’t understand how you could think such a thing.”

“Really?” said Wallander. “Even though you’ve been chasing after her on and off?”

Wallander saw a shadow of unease flit over Stig Gustafson’s face.

Just so he knows we know, thought Wallander.

He accompanied Stig Gustafson out to reception, and arranged for him to be taken home.

I won’t be seeing him again, he thought. We can write him off.

After an hour for lunch, they reassembled in the conference room. Wallander had been home for a few sandwiches in his kitchen.

“Where are all the honest thieves nowadays?” asked Martinson with a sigh. “This case seems to have come out of a storybook. All we have is a dead woman from a low-church sect, dumped in a well. And a severed black finger.”

“I agree with you,” said Wallander. “But we can’t get away from that finger, no matter how much we’d like to.”

“There are too many loose ends flying around out of control,” said Svedberg, scratching his bald head in irritation. “We have to collect together everything we have. And we must do it now. Otherwise we’ll never get anywhere.”

Wallander could detect in Svedberg’s words indirect criticism of the way he was leading the investigation. But he had to concede even now that it was not totally unjustified. There was always a danger of concentrating too soon on a single line of investigation. Svedberg’s imagery reflected all too accurately the confusion he felt.

“You’re right,” said Wallander. “Let’s see how far we’ve come. Louise Akerblom is murdered. We don’t know exactly where and we don’t know who did it. But we do know roughly when. Not far from where we found her, a house that had been standing empty explodes. In the ruins of the fire, Nyberg finds parts of an advanced radio transmitter and the charred remains of a pistol butt. The pistol is manufactured in South Africa. In addition, we find a severed black finger in the yard outside the house. Then somebody tries to hide Louise Akerblom’s car in a pond. It’s pure coincidence we find it as quickly as we do. The same applies to her body. We also know she was shot in the middle of her forehead, and the whole setup gives the impression of an execution. I called the hospital before we started this meeting. There are no signs of sexual assault. She was just shot.”

“We have to get all this sorted out,” said Martinson. “We have to find more evidence. About the finger, the radio transmitter, the handgun. That lawyer in Varnamo who was looking after the house has to be contacted immediately. There must obviously have been somebody in the house.”

“We’ll sort out who does what before we close the meeting,” said Wallander. “I just have two more thoughts I’d like to put forward.”

“We’ll kick off with them,” said Bjork.

“Who could possibly have wanted to shoot Louise Akerblom?” said Wallander. “A rapist would have been a possibility. But she was evidently not raped, according to preliminary medical reports. There are no signs of her being beaten up or held prisoner. She has no enemies. That all makes me wonder if the whole business could have been a mistake. She was killed instead of somebody else. The other possibility is that she happened to witness something she ought not to have seen or heard.”

“The house could fit in there,” said Martinson. “It wasn’t far from the property she was due to look over. Something has definitely been going on in that house. She might have seen something, and been shot. Peters and Noren went to the house she was going to examine. The one that belongs to a widow by the name of Wallin. They both said it was easy to go astray on the way there.”

Wallander nodded.

“Go on,” he said.

“There’s not much more to say,” said Martinson. “For some reason or other, a finger gets cut off. Unless that happened when the house blew up. But it doesn’t look that way. An explosion like that turns a man into pulp. The finger was whole, apart from having been cut off.”

“I don’t know much about South Africa,” said Svedberg. “Except that it’s a racist country with lots of violence. Sweden has no diplomatic relations with South Africa. We don’t even play tennis or do business with them. Not officially, at least. What I can’t understand for the life of me is why something from South Africa should end up in Sweden. You’d think Sweden would be the last place to be involved.”

“Maybe that’s exactly why,” muttered Martinson.

Wallander homed in on Martinson’s comment immediately.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said Martinson. “I just think we have to start thinking in a completely different way if we’re going to get anywhere with this case.”

“I agree entirely,” said Bjork, interrupting the exchange. “I want a written report on this business from every one of you by tomorrow. Let’s see if a little quiet contemplation might get us somewhere.”

They divided up the assignments among themselves. Wallander took over the lawyer in Varnamo from Bjork, who was going to concentrate on producing a preliminary report on examinations of the finger.

Wallander punched in the number to the lawyer’s office, and asked to speak to Mr. Holmgren on urgent business. There was such a long delay before Holmgren answered that Wallander grew annoyed.

“It’s about the property you are looking after in Skane,” he said. “The house that burned down.”

“Completely inexplicable,” said Holmgren. “But I have checked to make sure the insurance policy arranged by the late owner covers the incident. Do the police have any explanation for what happened?”

“No,” said Wallander. “But we’re working on it. I have some questions I need to ask you on the telephone.”

“I hope this won’t take long,” said the lawyer. “I’m very busy.”

“If you can’t take the questions by telephone, the police in Varnamo will have to take you down to the station,” said Wallander, ignoring the fact that he sounded brusque.

There was a pause before the lawyer responded.

“OK, fire away. I’m listening.”

“We’re still waiting for a fax with the names and addresses of the joint heirs to the estate.”

“I’ll make sure that’s sent.”

“Then I wonder who is directly responsible for the property.”

“I am. I’m not sure what you mean by the question.”

“A house needs attention occasionally. Roof tiles need replacing, mice keeping under control. Do you do that as well?”

“One of the beneficiaries of the estate lives in Vollsjo. He usually looks after the house. His name is Alfred Hanson.”

Wallander noted his address and telephone number.

“So the house has been empty for a year?”

“For more than a year. There’s been some disagreement as to whether it should be sold or not.”

“In other words, nobody’s been living in the house?”

“Of course not.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“I don’t understand what you’re getting at. The house has been boarded up. Alfred Hanson has been calling me at regular intervals to report that all is in order.”

“When did he call last?”

“How on earth am I supposed to remember that?”

“I don’t know. But I’d like an answer to my question.”

“Some time around New Year’s, I believe. But I can’t swear to it. Why is that important?”

“Everything is important for the moment. But thank you for the information.”

Wallander hung up, opened his telephone directory, and checked Alfred Hanson’s address. Then he got up, grabbed his jacket and left the office.

“I’m off to Vollsjo,” he said as he passed the door to Martinson’s office. “There’s something odd about the house that blew up.”

“I think there’s something odd about everything,” said Martinson. “I was just talking to Nyberg before you came, by the way. He maintains that radio transmitter could well have been made in Russia.”

“Russia?”

“That’s what he said. Don’t ask me.”

“Another country,” said Wallander. “Sweden, South Africa, Russia. Where’s it all going to end?”

Just over half an hour later, he drove up to the house where Alfred Hanson supposedly lived. It was a relatively modern house, very much different from the original building. Some German shepherds started barking frenziedly as Wallander got out of his car. It was half past four by now, and he was feeling hungry.

A man in his forties opened the door and came out onto the steps in his stocking feet. His hair was in a mess, and as Wallander approached he could smell strong liquor.

“Alfred Hanson?” he enquired.

The man nodded.

“I’m from the police in Ystad,” said Wallander.

“Oh, hell!” said the man even before Wallander had given his name.

“Excuse me?”

“Who’s squealed? Is it that shit Bengtson?”

Wallander thought rapidly before saying anything.

“I can’t comment on that,” he said. “The police protect all their informers.”

“It’s gotta be Bengtson,” said the man. “Am I under arrest?”

“We can talk about that,” said Wallander.

The man let Wallander into the kitchen. He immediately detected the faint but unmistakable smell of fusel oil. Something clicked. Alfred Hanson was running an illegal still, and thought Wallander had come to arrest him.

The man had flopped down on a kitchen chair and was scratching his head.

“Just my luck,” he sighed.

“We’ll talk about the moonshine later,” said Wallander. “There’s something else I want to talk about.”

“What?”

“The property that burned down.”

“I know nothing about that,” said the man.

Wallander noticed immediately that he was worried.

“You know nothing about what?”

The man lit a crumpled cigarette with trembling fingers.

“I’m really a paint sprayer,” said the man. “But I can’t face starting work at seven o’clock every morning. So I thought I might as well rent out that little shack, if anybody was interested. I mean, I want to sell the thing. But the family’s making such a damned fuss.”

“Who was interested?”

“Some guy from Stockholm. He’d been driving around the area, looking for something suitable. Then he found this house, and liked the location. I’m still wondering how he managed to trace it to me.”

“What was his name?”

“He said he was called Nordstrom. I took that with a pinch of salt, though.”

“Why?”

“He spoke good Swedish, but he had a foreign accent. You show me a goddamned foreigner called Nordstrom!”

“But he wanted to rent the house?”

“Yeah. And he paid well. I was gonna get ten thousand kronor a month. You don’t turn your nose up at a deal like that. It wasn’t doing anybody any harm, I thought. I get a bit of a reward in return for looking after the house. No need for the heirs or Holmgren in Varnamo to know anything about it.”

“How long was he going to rent the house?”

“He came at the beginning of April. Said he wanted it till the end of May.”

“Did he say what he was going to use it for?”

“For people who wanted to be left in peace to do some painting.”

“Painting?”

Wallander thought of his father.

“Artists, that is. And he offered cash up front. Damn right I was going to take it.”

“When did you meet him next?”

“Never.”

“Never?”

“It was a sort of unspoken condition. That I should keep my nose out of it. And I did. He got the keys, and that was that.”

“Have you got the keys back?”

“No. He was going to mail them to me.”

“And you have no address?”

“No.”

“Can you describe him?”

“He was extremely fat.”

“Anything else?”

“How the hell do you describe a fat guy? He was balding, red-faced and fat. And when I say fat, do I mean fat! He was like a barrel.”

Wallander nodded.

“Have you any of the money left?” he asked, thinking of possible fingerprints.

“Not an ore. That’s why I started distilling again.”

“If you stop that as of today, I won’t take you in to Ystad,” said Wallander.

Alfred Hanson could hardly believe his ears.

“I mean what I say,” said Wallander. “But I’ll check up that you really have stopped. And you must pour away everything you’ve made already.”

The man was sitting open-mouthed at the kitchen table when Wallander left.

Dereliction of duty, he thought. But I haven’t time to bother with moonshiners just now.

He drove back to Ystad. Without really knowing why, he turned into the parking lot by Krageholm Lake. He got out of the car and walked down to the water’s edge.

There was something about this investigation, about the death of Louise Akerblom, that scared him. As if the whole thing had barely started yet.

I’m scared, he thought. It’s like that black finger were pointing straight at me. I’m in the middle of something I can’t understand.

He sat down on a rock, even though it was damp. Suddenly his weariness and depression threatened to overwhelm him.

He gazed out over the lake, thinking there was a fundamental similarity between this case he was up to his neck in and the feelings he had inside. He seemed to have as little control over himself as he had chance of solving the case. With a sigh even he thought was pathetic, he decided he was as much at sea with his own life as he was with the search for Louise Akerblom’s murderer.

“Where do I go from here?” he said aloud to himself. “I don’t want anything to do with ruthless killers with no respect for life. I don’t want to get involved in a kind of violence that will be incomprehensible to me as long as I live. Maybe the next generation of cops in this country will have a different kind of experience and have a different view of their work. But it’s too late for me. I’ll never be any different than what I am. A pretty good cop in a medium-sized Swedish police district.”

He stood up and watched a magpie launching itself from a treetop.

All questions remain unanswered in the end, he thought. I devote my life to trying to catch and then put away crooks who are guilty of various crimes. Sometimes I succeed, often I don’t. But when I eventually pass away one of these days, I’ll have failed in the biggest investigation of all. Life will still be an insoluble riddle.

I want to see my daughter, he thought. I miss her so much at times, it hurts. I have to catch a black man missing a finger, especially if he’s the one who killed Louise Akerblom. I have a question for him I need an answer to: why did you kill her?

I must follow up on Stig Gustafson, not let him slide out of the picture too soon, even though I’m already convinced he’s innocent.

He walked back to his car.

The fear and repugnance would not go away. The finger was still pointing.

The Man from Transkei