Faceless Killers (31 page)

His alibi for the night of the murder had been corroborated by his fiancee's mother, who was visiting. Her credibility was beyond reproach. She was an elderly lady who suffered from insomnia. Erik Magnusson had snored all night long the night that Johannes and Maria Lövgren were brutally murdered.

The money with which he had paid his debt to the Junkman came from the sale of a car. Magnusson was able to produce a receipt for the Chrysler he had sold. And the buyer, a cabinetmaker in Lomma, told them that he had paid cash, with 1,000-krona and 500-krona notes.

Magnusson was also able to give a satisfactory explanation for lying about Johannes Lövgren being his father. He had done it for his mother's sake, since he thought she would want it that way. When Wallander told him that Lövgren was a wealthy man, he had looked truly astonished.

In the end there was nothing left.

Björk asked whether anyone was opposed to sending Erik Magnusson home, dropping him from the case until further notice. No-one had any objections. Wallander felt a crushing guilt at having steered the entire investigation in the wrong direction. Only Rydberg seemed unaffected. He was also the one who had been the most sceptical from the beginning.

They had run aground. All that was left was a wreck. There was nothing to do but start over again.

And then the snow arrived. In the early hours of Saturday, 27 January, a violent snowstorm came in from the southwest. After a few hours, the E65 was closed. The snow fell steadily for six hours. The heavy wind made the efforts of the snowploughs futile. As fast as they scraped the snow off the roads, it would collect in drifts again. For 24 hours the police were busy preventing the mess from developing into chaos. Then the storm moved on, as quickly as it had come.

To Wallander's great delight, his daughter Linda called him few days later. She was in Malmö and had decided to enroll at a college outside Stockholm. She promised to come and see him before she left.

Wallander arranged his schedule so that he could visit his father at least three times a week. He wrote a letter to his sister in Stockholm, telling her that the home help had done wonders with their father. The confusion that had driven him out on that desolate night-time promenade towards Italy had gone. Having the woman come regularly to his house had been his salvation.

One evening, Wallander called up Anette Brolin and offered to show her around wintry Skåne. He apologised again for his behaviour. She thanked him and said yes, and the following Sunday, 4 February, he took her out to see the ancient stones at Ales Stenar and the medieval castle of Glimmingehus. They had dinner in Hammenhog at the inn, and Wallander started to think that she really had decided that he was not the man who had pulled her down onto his knee.

The weeks passed with no new breakthrough in their investigation. Martinsson and Näslund were transferred to new assignments. Wallander and Rydberg, however, were allowed to concentrate exclusively on the murders for the time being.

One cold, clear, windless day in the middle of February, Wallander was visited in his office by the Lövgrens' daughter who lived and worked in Goteborg. She had come back to Skåne to oversee the placement of a headstone on her parents' grave in Villie cemetery. Wallander told her the truth - that the police were still fumbling around for a clue. The day after her visit, he drove out to the cemetery and stood there for a long while, staring at the black headstone with the gold inscription.

The month of February was spent in broadening and deepening the investigation.

Rydberg, who was uncommunicative and was suffering terribly from the pain in his leg, did most of his work by phone, while Wallander was often out in the field. They checked every single bank in Skdne, but found no more safe-deposit boxes. Wallander talked to more than 200 people who were either relatives or acquaintances of Johannes and Maria Lövgren. He went over the bulging file of investigative material again and again, went back to points he had covered long ago, and tore apart reports, scrutinising them anew. But he found no opening.

One icy, windy day in February he picked up Sten Widén at his farm and they visited Lunnarp. Together they inspected the horse that might hold the answer, and watched the mare eat an arm load of hay. Old Nyström was at their heels wherever they went. He had been given the mare by the two daughters.

The property itself, which stood silent and closed up, had been turned over to an estate agent in Skurup for sale. Wallander stood in the wind looking at the smashed kitchen window, which had not been repaired, just boarded up with a piece of plywood. He tried to re-establish the bond with Widén that had been lost in the past years, but the racehorse trainer appeared uninterested. After Wallander had driven him home, he realised that their friendship was broken for good.

The investigation of the murder of the Somali refugee was concluded, and Rune Bergman was brought before the district court in Ystad. The courtroom was packed with people from the press. By now it had been established that it was Valfrid Ström who had fired the fatal shots. But Bergman was charged as an accessory to the murder, and the psychiatric evaluation declared him fit to be tried.

Wallander testified in court, and on several occasions he sat in and listened to Anette Brolin's submissions and cross-examination. Bergman said as little as possible. The court proceedings revealed a racist underground network in which political views similar to those of the Ku-Klux-Klan predominated. Bergman and Ström had acted on their own, but were connected to several racist organisations.

It again occurred to Wallander that a change was taking place in Sweden. He sympathised with some of the arguments against immigration that arose in conversation and in the press while the trial was in progress. Did the government and the Immigration Service have any real control over which individuals sought asylum? Over who was a refugee and who was an opportunist? Was it possible to differentiate at all? How long could the current refugee policy operate without leading to chaos? Was there an upper limit?

Wallander had made half-hearted attempts at studying the issues thoroughly. He realised that he harboured the same vague apprehension that so many other people did. Anxiety at the unknown, at the future.

At the end of February Bergman was sentenced to a long prison term. To everyone's astonishment, he did not appeal the verdict, which took effect immediately.

No more snow fell on Skåne that winter. Early one morning at the beginning of March, Anette Brolin and Wallander took a long walk out on the Falsterbo Spit. Together they watched the flocks of birds returning from the distant lands of the Southern Cross. Wallander took her hand, and she didn't pull it away, at least not at once.

He managed to lose four kilos, but he realised that he would never get back to what he had weighed before Mona had left him. Occasionally they spoke on the telephone. Wallander noticed that his jealousy was gradually fading away. And the black woman no longer visited him in his dreams.

March began. Rydberg was admitted to hospital for two weeks. At first everyone thought it was for his bad leg. But Ebba told Wallander in confidence that Rydberg was suffering from cancer. She didn't say how she knew, or what type of cancer it was. When Wallander visited Rydberg at the hospital, he told him it was only a routine checkup on his stomach. A shadow on an x-ray had revealed a possible lesion on his large intestine.

Wallander felt a burning pain inside him at the thought that Rydberg might be seriously ill. With a growing sense of hopelessness he trudged on with his investigation. One day, in a fit of rage, he threw the thick folders at the wall. The floor was covered with paper. For a long time he sat looking at the havoc. Then he crawled around sorting the material again and started from the beginning.

Somewhere there's something I'm not seeing, he thought. A connection, a detail, which is exactly the key I have to turn. But should I turn it to the right or the left?

He often called Boman in Kristianstad to complain about his plight. On his own authority, Boman had carried out intensive investigations of Nils Velander and other conceivable suspects. Nowhere did the rock crack. For two whole days Wallander sat with Lars Herdin without advancing an inch. But he still didn't want to believe that the crime would never be solved.

In the middle of March he managed to entice Anette Brolin to go to Copenhagen with him to see an opera. They had spent the night together. But when he told her that he loved her, she shied away. It was what it was. Nothing more.

On the weekend of 17 and 18 March, his daughter came to visit. She came alone, without the Kenyan medical student, and Wallander met her at the railway station. Ebba had sent a friend of hers over the day before to give his flat in Mariagatan a good clean.

Finally he felt that he had his daughter back. They took a long walk along the beach by Österleden, ate lunch at Lilla Vik, and then stayed up talking till 5 a.m. They visited Wallander's father, and he surprised them both by telling funny stories about Kurt as a child. On Monday morning he took her to the train. He seemed to have regained her trust a little.

He was back in his office, poring over the investigative material, when Rydberg came in. He sat down in the wooden chair by the window and told Wallander straight out that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Now he was going in for radiation treatment and chemotherapy, which could last for a long time and might not do any good. He wouldn't allow sympathy. He had merely come to remind Wallander about Maria Lövgren's last words. And the noose. Then he stood up, shook Wallander's hand, and left.

Wallander was left alone with his pain and his investigation. Björk thought that for the time being he ought to work alone, since the police were swamped.

Nothing happened in March. Or in April either. The reports on the status of Rydberg's health varied. Ebba was the unflagging messenger.

Early in May, Wallander went into Björk's office and suggested that someone else take over the investigation. But Björk refused. Wallander would have to continue at least until the summer holiday period was over. Then they would re-evaluate the situation.

Time after time Wallander started again. Retraced, prying and twisting at the material, trying to make it come alive. But the stones he was walking on remained cold.

At the beginning of June he traded in his Peugeot for a Nissan. On 8 June he went on holiday and drove up to Stockholm to see his daughter. Together they drove all the way to the North Cape. Herman Mboya was in Kenya but would be coming back in August.

On Monday, 9 July, Wallander was back on duty. A memo from Björk informed him that he was to continue with his investigation until Björk returned in early August. Then they would decide what to do.

He also received a message from Ebba that Rydberg was much better. The doctors might be able to control the cancer after all.

Tuesday, 10 July was a beautiful day in Ystad. At lunch-time Wallander went downtown and strolled around. He went into the electrical shop by the square and decided to buy a new stereo.

He remembered that he had some Norwegian notes in his wallet that he had forgotten to exchange. He had been carrying them around since the trip to the North Cape. He went down to the Union Bank and stood in line for the only window that was open.

He didn't recognise the woman behind the counter. It wasn't Britta-Lena Bod£n, the young woman with the good memory, or any of the other clerks he had met before. It must be a summer temp, he thought.

The man in front of him in line made a large withdrawal. Wallander wondered idly what he was going to use such a large amount of money for. While the man counted up the cash, Wallander absentmindedly read the name on the driver's licence that he had placed on the counter.

Then it was his turn, and he exchanged his Norwegian money. Behind him in the line he heard a tourist speaking Italian or Spanish.

As he emerged onto the street, an idea hit him. He stood there motionless, as if he were frozen solid by his inspiration. Then he went back inside the bank. He waited until the tourists had exchanged their money, and showed his identity card to the clerk.

"Britta-Lena Bodén," he said, smiling. "Is she on holiday?"

"She's probably with her parents in Simrishamn," said the teller. "She has two weeks of holiday left."

"Bodén," he said. "Is that her parents' name too?"

"Her father runs a petrol station in Simrishamn. I think it's the one called Statoil nowadays."

"Thank you," said Wallander. "I just have some routine questions to ask her."

"I remember you," said the clerk. "So you haven't been able to solve that awful crime yet?"

"No," said Wallander. "It's terrible, isn't it?"

He practically ran back to the station, jumped into his car, and drove to Simrishamn. From Britta-Lena Bodén's father he learned that she was spending the day with friends at the beach at Sandhammaren. He searched a long time before he found her, well-hidden behind a sand dune. She was playing backgammon with her friends, and all of them gave Wallander an astonished look as he came trudging through the sand.

"I wouldn't bother you if it wasn't important," he said.

Britta-Lena Bodén seemed to grasp his serious mood and got up. She was dressed in a minuscule bathing suit, and Wallander averted his eyes. They sat down a little way from the others, so they wouldn't be disturbed.

"That day in January," said Wallander. "I want to ask you about it again. I'd like you to think back, and try to remember whether there was anyone else in the bank when Johannes Lövgren made his large withdrawal."

Her memory was still excellent.

"No," she said. "He was alone."

He knew that what she said was true.

"Keep going," he continued. "Lövgren went out the door. The door closed behind him. What happened then?"

Her reply was quick and firm. "The door didn't close."