Faceless Killers (3 page)

"You can't come in here," she said sharply.

"I'm a police inspector," replied Wallander feebly. "I just wanted to hear how she's doing."

"You've been asked to wait outside," said the nurse.

Before he could answer, a doctor came rushing into the room. Wallander thought he looked surprisingly young.

"We would prefer not to have any unauthorised persons in here," said the doctor when he caught sight of Wallander.

"I'm leaving. But I just wanted to hear how she's doing. My name is Wallander, and I'm a police inspector. Homicide," he added, not sure whether that made any difference. "I'm heading the investigation into the person or persons who did this. How is she?"

"It's amazing that she's still alive," said the doctor, nodding to Wallander to step over to the bed. "We can't tell yet the extent of the internal injuries she may have suffered. First we have to see whether she survives. But her windpipe has been severely traumatised. As if someone had tried to strangle her."

"That's exactly what happened," said Wallander, looking at the thin face visible among the sheets and tubes.

"She should have died," said the doctor.

"I hope she survives," said Wallander. "She's the only witness we've got."

"We hope all our patients survive," replied the doctor sternly, studying a monitor where green lines moved in uninterrupted waves.

Wallander left the room after the doctor insisted that he could tell him nothing more. The prognosis was uncertain. Maria Lövgren might die without regaining consciousness. There was no way to know.

"Can you Hp-read?" Wallander asked the cadet.

"No," Martinsson replied in surprise.

"That's too bad," said Wallander, and left.

From the hospital he drove to the brown police station that lay on the road out towards the east end of town. He sat down at his desk and looked out of the window, over at the old red water tower.

Maybe the times require another kind of policeman, he thought. Policemen who aren't distressed when they're forced to go into a human slaughterhouse in the Swedish countryside early on a January morning. Policemen who don't suffer from my uncertainty and anguish.

His thoughts were interrupted by the telephone. The hospital, he thought at once. They're calling to say that Maria Lövgren is dead. But did she wake up? Did she say anything? He stared at the ringing telephone. Damn, he thought. Damn. Anything but that.

But when he picked up the receiver, it was his daughter. He gave a start and almost dropped the phone on the floor.

"Papa," she said, and he heard the coin dropping into the pay phone.

"Hello," he said. "Where are you calling from?"

Just so long as it's not Lima, he thought. Or Katmandu. Or Kinshasa.

"I'm here in Ystad."

He felt happy. That meant he'd get to see her.

"I came to visit you," she said. "But I've changed my plans. I'm at the train station. I'm leaving now. I just wanted to tell you that at least I thought about seeing you."

Then the conversation was cut off, and he was left sitting there with the receiver in his hand. It was like holding something dead, something hacked off. That damned kid, he thought. Why does she do things like this?

His daughter Linda was 19. Until she was 15 their relationship had been good. She came to him rather than to her mother when she had a problem or when there was something she really wanted to do but didn't quite dare. He had seen her metamorphose from a chubby little girl to a young woman with a defiant beauty. Before she was 15, she never gave any hint that she was carrying around secret demons that one day would drive her into a precarious and inscrutable landscape.

One spring day, soon after her 15th birthday, Linda had without warning tried to commit suicide. It happened on a Saturday afternoon. Wallander had been fixing one of the garden chairs and his wife was washing the windows. He had put down his hammer and gone into the house, driven by a sudden unease. Linda was lying on the bed in her room. She had used a razor to cut her wrists and her throat. Afterwards, when it was all over, the doctor told Wallander that she would have died if he hadn't come in when he did and had the presence of mind to apply pressure bandages.

He couldn't get over the shock. All contact between him and Linda was broken off. She pulled away, and he never managed to understand what had driven her to attempt suicide. When she finished school she took a string of odd jobs, and would abruptly disappear for long periods of time. Twice his wife had pressed him to report her missing. His colleagues had seen his pain when Linda became the subject of his own investigation. But then she would reappear, and the only way he could follow her travels was to go through her pockets and leaf through her passport on the sly.

Hell, he thought. Why didn't you stay? Why did you change your mind?

The telephone rang again and he snatched up the receiver.

"This is Papa," said Wallander without thinking.

"What do you mean?" said his father. "What do you mean by picking up the phone and saying Papa? I thought you were a policeman."

"I don't have time to talk to you right now. Can I call you later?"

"No, you can't. What's so important?"

"Something serious happened this morning. I'll call later."

"So what happened?"

His elderly father called him almost every day. On several occasions Wallander had told the switchboard not to put through any calls from him. But then his father saw through his ruse and started giving false names and disguising his voice to fool the operators.

Wallander saw only one possibility of evading him.

"I'll come out and see you tonight," he said. "Then we can talk."

His father reluctantly let himself be persuaded. "Come at seven. I'll have time to see you then."

"I'll be there at seven. See you."

Wallander hung up and pushed the button to block incoming calls. For a moment he considered taking the car and driving down to the train station to try and find his daughter. Talk to her, try to rekindle the contact that had been lost so mysteriously. But he knew that he wouldn't do it. He didn't want to risk her running away from him for good.

The door opened and Näslund stuck his head in.

"Hello," he said. "Should I show him in?"

"Show who in?"

Näslund looked at his watch.

"It's nine o'clock. You told me yesterday that you wanted Klas Mansön here for an interview at nine." "Who's Klas Mansön?"

Näslund looked at him quizzically. "The guy who robbed the shop on Österleden. Have you forgotten about him?"

It came back to Wallander, and at the same time he realised that Näslund obviously hadn't heard about the murder that had been committed in the night.

"You deal with Mansön," he said. "We had a murder last night out in Lunnarp. Maybe a double murder. An elderly couple. You can take over Mansön. But put it off for a while. The thing we have to do first is plan the investigation at Lunnarp."

"Mansön's lawyer is already here," said Näslund. "If I send him away, he's going to raise hell."

"Do a preliminary questioning," said Wallander. "If the lawyer makes a fuss later, it can't be helped. Set up a case meeting in my office for ten o'clock. Make sure everyone comes."

Now he was in motion. He was a policeman again. His anxiety about his daughter and his wife would have to wait. Right now he had to begin the arduous hunt for a murderer. He removed the piles of paper from his desk, tore up a football lottery form he wouldn't get around to filling out anyway, and went out to the canteen and poured himself a cup of coffee.

At 10 a.m. everyone gathered in his office. Rydberg had been called in from the scene of the crime and was sitting in a chair by the window. Seven police officers in all, sitting and standing, filled the room. Wallander phoned the hospital and managed to ascertain that Mrs Lövgren's condition was still critical. Then he told them what had happened.

"It was worse than you could imagine," he said. "Wouldn't you say so, Rydberg?"

"You're right," replied Rydberg. "Like an American movie. It even smelt like blood. That doesn't usually happen."

"We have to find whoever did this," said Wallander, concluding his presentation. "We can't leave maniacs like this on the loose."

The policemen fell silent. Rydberg was drumming his fingertips on the arm of his chair. A woman could be heard laughing in the corridor outside. Wallander looked around the room. All of them were his colleagues. None of them was his close friend. And yet they were a team.

"Well," he said, "what are we waiting for? Let's get started."

It was 10.40 a.m.

CHAPTER
3

At 4 p.m. that afternoon Wallander discovered that he was hungry. He hadn't had a chance to eat lunch. After the case meeting in the morning he had spent his time organising the hunt for the murderers in Lunnarp. He found himself thinking about them in the plural. He had a hard time imagining that one person could have been responsible for that blood bath.

It was dark outside when he sank into the chair behind his desk to try and put together a statement for the press. There was a pile of messages, left by one of the women from the switchboard. After searching in vain for his daughter's name among the slips, he placed them all in his in-tray. To escape the unpleasantness of standing in front of the TV cameras of News South and telling them that at present the police had no leads on the criminal or criminals who had carried the heinous murder of Johannes Lövgren, Wallander had appealed to Rydberg to take on that task. But he had to write and give the press release himself. He took a sheet of paper from a desk drawer. But what would he write? The day's work had involved little more than collecting a large number of questions.

It had been a day of waiting. In the intensive care unit the old woman who had survived the noose was fighting for her life. Would they ever find out what she had witnessed on that appalling night in the lonely farmhouse?

Or would she die before she could tell them anything?

Wallander looked out of the window, into the darkness. Instead of a press release he started writing a summary of what had been done that day and what the police actually had to go on. Nothing, he thought, when he was finished. Two elderly people with no enemies, no hidden cash, were brutally attacked and tortured. The neighbours heard nothing. Not until the attackers were gone had they noticed that a window had been broken and heard the old woman's cry for help. Rydberg had so far found no clues. That was it.

Old people in the countryside have always been targets for robbery. They have been bound, beaten, and sometimes killed. But this is different, thought Wallander. The noose tells a gruesome story of viciousness or hate, maybe even revenge. Something about this attack doesn't add up.

All they could do now was hope. All day long police patrols had been talking to the inhabitants of Lunnarp. Perhaps someone had seen something? In crimes of this nature those responsible had often cased the place in advance. Maybe Rydberg would find some clues at the farmhouse after all.

Wallander looked at the clock. How long since he'd last called the hospital? 45 minutes? An hour? He decided to wait until after he had written his press release. He popped a cassette of Jussi Björling into his Walkman and put on the headphones. The scratchy sound of the 1930s recording could not detract from the magnificence of the music from
Rigoletto.

The press release ran to eight lines. Wallander took it to one of the clerks to type up and make copies. While this was being done he read through a questionnaire that was to be mailed to everyone living in the area around Lunnarp. Had anyone seen anything out of the ordinary? Anything that could be connected to the brutal attack? He didn't have much confidence that the questionnaire would produce anything but inconvenience. The telephones would ring incessandy and two officers would need to be assigned to listen to useless reports.

Still, it has to be done, he thought. At least we can satisfy ourselves that no-one saw anything. He went back to his office and phoned the hospital. Nothing had changed. Mrs Lövgren was still fighting for her life. Just as he put down the phone, Näslund came in.

"I was right," he said.

"What about?"

"Mansön's lawyer hit the roof."

Wallander shrugged. "We'll just have to live with that."

Näslund scratched his forehead and asked how the investigation was going.

"Not a thing so far. We've started. That's about it."

"I noticed that the preliminary forensic report came in."

Wallander raised an eyebrow. "Why didn't I get it?"

"It was in Hansson's office."

"That's not where it's supposed to be, damn it!"

Wallander got up and went out into the corridor. Always the same, he thought. Papers never end up where they're supposed to. More and more police work was recorded on computers, but even so there was a tendency for important papers to get lost.

Wallander knocked and went into Hansson's office. Hansson was talking on the phone. He saw that Hansson's desk had strewn all over it, hardly concealed, betting slips and form guides from racetracks around the country. It was common knowledge at the station that he spent the best part of his working day calling various horse trainers begging for tips. Then he spent his evenings figuring out all manner of betting systems that would guarantee him the maximum winnings. It was also rumoured that Hansson had hit it big on one occasion, but no-one knew this for certain. And Hansson wasn't exactly living the highlife.