The White Lioness (25 page)

When Wallander appeared at the entranceway, he knew immediately that this was the policeman Tania had warned him about. She confirmed his suspicions later on. He was called Wallander, and was a detective inspector. She had also noted from his ID that he came from Ystad.

"Why was he here?" Konovalenko said.

"He wanted to know if I knew anybody called Konovalenko," Rykoff said.

"Good," Konovalenko said.

Tania and Rykoff stared blankly at him.

"Of course it's good," Konovalenko said. "Who could possibly have told him about me? If you haven't? There's only one possibility: Mabasha. Through this policeman we can get to Mabasha."

Then he asked Tania for some glasses. They drank vodka.

Silently Konovalenko toasted the detective from Ystad. He was very pleased with himself.

Wallander went straight back to his hotel after the excursion to Hallunda. The first thing he did was to call his daughter.

"Are you free?" he said.

"Now? I thought you were working."

"I have an hour or two off. If you can make it."

"Where do you want us to meet? You don't know Stockholm at all."

"I know where the Central Station is."

"Why don't we meet there, then? In the middle of the big hall? In 45 minutes?"

"Sounds good."

Wallander went down to reception.

"I'm incommunicado for the rest of the afternoon," he said. "Whoever comes looking for me, whether in person or by telephone, gets the same message. I'm on important business and can't be contacted."

"Until when?" asked the receptionist.

"Until I tell you otherwise," Wallander said.

He crossed the road and walked to the Central Station. When Linda came into the big hall, he hardly recognised her. She had dyed her hair and cut it. She was also heavily made up. She was wearing black overalls and a bright red raincoat. Boots with high heels. Wallander saw how several men turned to look at her, and he felt angry and embarrassed. This was his daughter. But the lady who turned up was a self-assured young woman. No sign of the shyness so much a part of her in the old days. He gave her a hug, but felt there was something about it that wasn't quite right.

She said she was hungry. It had started raining, and they ran to a cafe on Vasagatan, across from the main post office. He watched her eat. He shook his head when she asked if he wanted anything.

"Mama was here last week," she announced in between chews. "She wanted to show off her new man. Have you met him?"

"We haven't spoken for more than six months," Wallander said.

"I don't think I like him," she said. "In fact, I felt that he was more interested in me than he was in Mama."

"Really?"

"He imports machine tools from France, but he went on and on about golf. Did you know Mama had taken up golf?"

"No," Wallander said, taken aback. "I didn't know that."

She stared at him for a moment. "It's not right that you don't know what she's up to," she said. "I mean, she is the most important woman in your life to date. She knows all about you. She knows about that woman in Latvia, for instance."

Wallander was surprised. He had never mentioned Baiba Liepa to his ex-wife.

"How does she know about her?"

"Somebody must have told her."

"Who?"

"Does it matter?"

"I just wondered."

She changed the subject. "What are you doing here in Stockholm?" she asked. "It isn't only to see me."

He recounted the case, from the day ten days ago when his father had announced he was going to get married, and Robert Akerblom reported that his wife was missing. She listened attentively, and for the very first time he had the impression his daughter was a grown-up. A person who undoubtedly had much more experience in certain fields than he had himself.

"I've been missing somebody to talk to," he said when he'd finished. "If only Rydberg were still alive. Do you remember him?"

"Was he the one who always seemed so miserable?"

"That's the one. He could appear strict as well."

"I remember him. I hoped you'd never be like him."

Now it was his turn to change the subject. "What do you know about South Africa?"

"Not a lot. Just that the blacks are treated like slaves. And I'm against that, of course. We had a visit at school by a black woman from South Africa. You couldn't believe what she told us was true."

"You know more than I do in any case," he said. "When I was in Latvia last year, I often wondered how I could have reached 40 without having a clue about what was going on in the world."

"You just don't keep in touch," she said. "I remember when I was twelve, 13, and tried to ask you both things. Neither you nor Mama had the slightest idea about what was going on beyond your own back yard. All you wanted to know about was the house and the garden and your work. Nothing else. Is that why you divorced?"

"Is that what you think?"

"You had made your lives a matter of tulip bulbs and new taps in the bathroom. That's all you ever talked about, when you did talk to each other, that is."

"What's wrong with talking about flowers?"

"The flowers grew so high, you couldn't see anything that was happening beyond them."

He decided to put an end to that discussion. "How much time do you have?"

"An hour, at least."

"No time at all, really. How about meeting tonight, if you feel like it?"

They went out to the street when the rain had stopped.

"Don't you find those high heels difficult to walk in?" he said.

"Of course, but you get used to them. Do you want to try?"

Wallander was just happy that she existed. Something inside him eased up. He watched as she walked to the underpass, waving to him.

At that very moment it came to him what he had seen in the apartment in Hallunda, what had caught his attention, although he couldn't say why. Now he knew. On the bookshelf on the wall, there had been an ashtray. He'd seen one like it before. It might have been a coincidence, but he did not think so.

He remembered his meal at the Continental Hotel in Ystad. He'd started out in the bar. On the table in front of him was a glass ashtray. Exactly the same as the one in the Rykoffs' spare room. Konovalenko, he thought. At some time or other, he's been in the Continental Hotel. He might even have been sitting at the same table as me. He couldn't resist the temptation to take home one of their heavy glass ashtrays. A human failing, one of the most common. He could never have imagined that a detective inspector from Ystad would take a look at the little room in Hallunda where he occasionally spends his nights.

Wallander went up to his hotel room, thinking that he might not be such an incompetent policeman after all. The times had not completely passed him by, not yet. Maybe he was still capable of solving the pointless and brutal murder of a woman who just happened to take a wrong turning not far from Krageholm.

He went over what he believed he had established so far. Louise Akerblom and Klas Tengblad had been shot by the same weapon. Tengblad by a white man with a foreign accent. The black African who had been there when Louise Akerblom was killed had been pursued by a man who also had a foreign accent, and was probably called Konovalenko. This Konovalenko was known to Rykoff, though he denied it. To judge by his build, Rykoff could well be the man who had rented the house from Alfred Olsson. And in Rykoff's apartment was an ashtray that suggested that somebody had been to Ystad. It was not a lot to go on, and but for the bullets, the link would have been tenuous. But he had his hunches, and he knew to pay attention to them. A search of the Rykoffs' apartment could provide the evidence they needed.

That evening he and Linda dined in a restaurant not far from the hotel. He felt more secure with her. When, shortly before 1 a.m., he got to bed, it occurred to him that it was the most pleasant evening he had spent for a long time.

Wallander arrived at the Kungsholmen police station before 8 a.m. the next morning. An audience of detectives there listened in astonishment to what he had discovered in Hallunda, and the conclusions he had drawn. He could feel their scepticism, but their desire to catch the man who had shot their colleague was overwhelming, and he felt the mood slowly change. In the end, nobody challenged his conclusions.

The morning saw continuous, rapid developments. The block in Hallunda was put under observation while preparations were made for a search. An energetic young prosecutor had no hesitation in approving the application for search and arrest warrants.

They were to go in at 2 p.m. Wallander kept himself in the background while Loven and his colleagues went through what was going to happen. At about 10 p.m., in the middle of the most chaotic phase of the preparations, he made a call to Bjork in Ystad from Loven's office and told him of the action planned for that afternoon, and how the murder of Louise Akerblom might soon be solved.

"I have to say it all sounds pretty improbable," Bjork said.

"We live in an improbable world."

"Whatever happens, you've done a good job. I'll let everybody at this end know what's going on."

"No press conference, though," Wallander said. "And nobody is to discuss this with Akerblom."

"Of course not," Bjork said. "When do you expect to be back?"

"As soon as possible," Wallander said. "How's the weather?"

"Terrific," Bjork said. "It feels like spring is on the way. Svedberg is sneezing like a man with hay fever. That's a sure sign of spring, as you well know."

As he put the phone down Wallander felt vaguely homesick, but his excitement at the imminent raid was stronger.

At 11 a.m. Loven summoned everybody who would be involved. Reports from those watching the building suggested both Rykoff and his wife were in the apartment. It was not possible to establish whether anybody else was there.

Wallander listened closely to Loven's summary. A raid in Stockholm was very different from anything he was used to. Operations of this size were virtually unknown in Ystad. He could only remember one such occasion, the previous year, when a man had barricaded himself into a summer cottage in Sandskogen, high on drugs.

Before the meeting Loven had asked Wallander if he wanted to play an active role.

"Certainly," he said. "If Konovalenko is there, in a sense he's my baby. Half of him, anyway. Besides, I'm looking forward to seeing Rykoff's face."

Loven brought the meeting to a close at 11.30 a.m.

"We don't know what we'll encounter," he said. "Probably just two people who'll go along with the inevitable. But it might turn out very different."

Wallander had lunch in the canteen with Loven.

"Have you ever asked yourself what you've got involved in?" Loven said, out of the blue.

"That's something I think about every day," Wallander said. "Don't most of us?"

"I don't know," Loven said. "I only know what I think. And what I think depresses me. We're on the brink of losing control in Stockholm. I don't know how it is in a smaller district like Ystad, but being a criminal in this city must be a pretty carefree existence, at least as far as the chances of getting caught are concerned."

"We're still in control, I guess," Wallander said. "But the differences between districts are decreasing all the time. What's happening here is happening in Ystad too."

"A great many police officers in Stockholm can't wait to get posted to the provinces," Loven said. "They think they'll have an easier time there."

"I reckon there are quite a few of ours who'd like to transfer here as well," Wallander said. "They think they lead too quiet a life out in the sticks, or in some small town."

"I doubt if I'd be able to change," Loven said.

"Me neither," Wallander said. "Either I'm an Ystad policeman, or I'm not a policeman at all."

And then Loven had things to do. Wallander found a sofa where he could stretch out. He thought he had not had a good night's sleep since the day that Robert Akerblom had come into his office. He dozed off for a few minutes, and awoke with a start. Then he just lay there, thinking about Baiba Liepa.

The raid on the apartment in Hallunda began at 2 p.m. precisely. Wallander, Loven, and three other officers climbed the stairs. After ringing the bell twice without getting any reply, they broke down the door with a crowbar. Men with automatic weapons, from a special unit, were waiting in the background. All of the policemen on the stairs carried pistols, apart from Wallander. Loven asked him if he wanted a gun, but he declined. On the other hand, he was glad to be wearing a bulletproof vest like the others.

They stormed into the apartment, spread out, and it was all over before it had begun. There was no-one there.

The officers looked at each other in bewilderment. Then Loven took out his walkie-talkie and contacted the officer in charge down below.

"It's empty," he said. "There will be no arrests. You can call the special units off, but you can send in the forensic team."