Faceless Killers (9 page)

"You could say that."

"We're taking a look at Lövgren's bank account." "Who's we?"

"His name is Herdin. But you'd better talk to him yourself. We'll be back in half an hour."

Wallander finally met the man called Herdin an hour and a half later. He was almost six foot six, thin and wiry, and Wallander felt like he was shaking hands with a giant.

"It took a while," said Hansson. "But we got results. You have to hear what Herdin has to say. And what we've discovered."

Herdin was sitting erect and silent on a wooden chair. Wallander guessed that the man had put on his Sunday best before coming to the police station. Even if it was only a worn suit and a shirt with a frayed collar.

"We'd better start at the beginning," said Wallander, picking up a pad.

Herdin gave Hansson a bewildered look.

"Should I start all over again?" he asked.

"That would probably be best," said Hansson.

"It's a long story," Herdin began hesitantly.

"What's your name?" asked Wallander. "Let's start with that."

"Lars Herdin. I have a farm of 40 acres near Hagestad. I'm trying to make ends meet raising livestock. But things are pretty tight."

"I've got all his personal data," Hansson interrupted, and Wallander guessed that Hansson was in a hurry to get back to his form guides.

"If I understand correctly, you came here because you think you may have information relating to the murder of Mr and Mrs Lövgren," said Wallander, wishing he had expressed himself more simply.

"It's obvious that it was the money," Lars Herdin said.

"What money?"

"All the money they had!"

"Could you clarify that a little?"

"The German money."

Wallander looked at Hansson, who shrugged slightly. Wallander took this to mean that he had to be patient.

"I think we're going to need a little more detail on this," he said. "Do you think you could be more specific?"

"Lövgren and his father made money during the war," said Herdin. "They kept livestock in secret on some forest pastures up in Smaland. And they bought up worn-out old horses. Then they sold them on the black market to

Germany. They made an obscene amount of money on the meat. And nobody ever caught them. Lövgren was both greedy and clever. He invested the money, and it's been growing over the years." "You mean Lövgren's father?"

"His father died straight after the war. I mean Lövgren himself."

"So you're telling me that the Lövgrens were wealthy?"

"Not the family. Just Lövgren. She didn't know a thing about the money."

"Would he have kept his fortune a secret from his own wife?"

Herdin nodded. "Nobody has ever been as foully cheated as my sister."

Wallander raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"Maria Lövgren was my sister. She was killed because he had stashed away a fortune."

Wallander heard the barely concealed bitterness. So maybe it
was
a hate crime, he thought.

"And this money was kept at home?"

"Only sometimes," replied Herdin.

"Sometimes?"

"When he made the large withdrawals."

"Could you give me a little more detail?"

Suddenly something seemed to boil over inside the man in the worn-out suit.

"Johannes Lövgren was a brute," he said. "It's better now that he's gone. But that Maria had to die, that I can never forgive."

Lars Herdin's outburst came so suddenly that neither Hansson nor Wallander had time to react. He grabbed a solid glass ashtray from the table beside him and flung it full force at the wall, where it smashed close to Wallander's head. Splinters of glass flew in every direction, and Wallander felt a shard strike his upper lip.

The silence after the outburst was deafening.

Hansson had sprung out of his chair and seemed ready to throw himself at the rangy Herdin, but Wallander raised his hand to stop him, and Hansson sat back down.

"I beg your pardon," said Herdin. "If you have a broom and dustpan I'll clean up the glass. I'll pay for it."

"The cleaners will take care of it," said Wallander. "I think we should go on with our talk."

Herdin now seemed perfectiy calm.

"Johannes Lövgren was a beast," he repeated. "He pretended to be like everybody else. But the only thing he thought about was the money he and his father made from the war. He complained that everything was so expensive, and the farmers so poor. But he had his money, and it kept on growing and growing."

"And he kept this money in the bank?"

Herdin shrugged. "In the bank, in shares and bonds, who knows what else."

"Why did he keep the money at home sometimes?"

"Lövgren had a mistress," said Herdin. "There was a woman in Kristianstad whom he had a son with in the 1950s. Maria knew nothing about that either - not the woman, not the child. He gave his mistress more money every year than he spent on Maria in her whole life."

"How much money are we talking about?"

"Two or three times a year he gave her 25 or 30 thousand. He withdrew the money in cash. Then he would think up some excuse and go to Kristianstad."

Wallander thought for a moment about what he had heard. He tried to decide which questions were the most important. It would take hours to work out all the details.

"What did they say at the bank?" he asked Hansson.

"If you don't have the search warrants all in order, the bank doesn't say anything," said Hansson. "They wouldn't let me look at his bank statements. But I did get the answer to one question: Had he been to the bank recently?"

"Well?"

Hansson nodded. "Last Thursday. Three days before he was killed."

"Are they sure?"

"One of the clerks recognised him."

"And he withdrew a large sum of money?"

"They wouldn't say exactly. But the clerk nodded when the bank manager turned his back."

"We'll have to talk to the prosecutor when we have written up this statement," said Wallander. "Then we can look into his assets and see where we are."

"Blood money," said Herdin.

Wallander wondered whether he was going to start throwing things again.

"There are plenty of questions left," he said. "But one is more important than all the others right now. How do you know about all this? You say that Lövgren kept it secret from his wife. So how come you know?"

Herdin didn't answer the question. He stared mutely at the floor.

Wallander looked at Hansson, who shook his head.

"You really have to answer the question," said Wallander.

"I don't have to answer at all," said Herdin. "I'm not the one who killed them. Would I murder my own sister?"

Wallander tried to approach the question from another angle. "How many other people know what you just told us?"

Herdin didn't answer.

"Whatever you say won't go beyond this room," Wallander said.

Herdin stared at the floor. Wallander knew instinctively that he must wait.

"Would you get us some coffee?" he asked Hansson. "And see if you can find some pastries."

While Hansson was gone, Herdin kept staring at the floor, and Wallander waited. Hansson brought in the coffee, and Herdin ate a stale pastry.

Wallander thought it was time to ask the question again. "Sooner or later you'll have no choice but to answer," he said.

Herdin raised his head and looked him straight in the eye.

"When they got married I already had a feeling that there was another person behind Johannes Lövgren's friendly yet taciturn exterior. I thought there was something fishy about him. Maria was my little sister. I wanted the best for her. I was suspicious of Lövgren from the first time he came to our parents' house to court her. It took me 30 years to work out who he was. How I did it is my business."

"Did you tell your sister what you found out?"

"Never. Not a word."

"Did you tell anyone else? Your own wife?" "I'm not married."

Wallander looked at the man sitting in front of him. There was something hard and dogged about him. Like a man who had been brought up eating gravel.

"One last question," said Wallander. "Now we know that Lövgren had plenty of money. Maybe he also had a large sum of money at home the night he was murdered. We'll have to find that out. But who would have known about it? Besides you."

Herdin looked at him. Wallander saw a glint of fear in his eyes.

"I didn't know about it," said Herdin. Wallander nodded.

"We'll stop here," he said, shoving aside the pad on which he had been taking notes. "But we're going to be needing your help again."

"Can I go now?" said Herdin, getting up.

"You can go," replied Wallander. "But don't leave the district without talking to us first. And if you think of anything else, we'd like to hear from you."

As he was leaving, Herdin hesitated as if there was something more he wanted to say. Then he pushed open the door and was gone.

"Tell Martinsson to run a check on him," said Wallander. "Probably we won't find anything. But it's best to make sure."