Faceless Killers (7 page)

"You stayed up to keep watch last night," he said. "You're scared, and I can understand that. You must have thought to yourself: 'Why were they the ones who were attacked?' You must have thought: 'Why them? Why not us?' "

"They didn't have any money," said Nyström. "Or anything else that was especially valuable. Anyway, nothing was stolen, as I told one of the policemen here yesterday. The only thing that might have been stolen was a wall clock."

"Might have been?"

"One of their daughters might have taken it. I can't remember everything." "No money," said Wallander. "And no enemies." Something occurred to him.

"Do you keep any money in the house?" he asked. "Could it be that whoever did this got the wrong house?"

"All that we have is in the bank," replied Nyström. "And we don't have any enemies either."

They went back to the house and drank coffee. Wallander saw that Hanna Nystrdm was red-eyed, as if she had been careful to cry while they were out in the stable.

"Have you noticed anything unusual recently?" he asked the couple. "Anyone visiting the Lövgrens you didn't recognise?"

They looked at each other and then shook their heads.

"When was the last time you talked to them?"

"We were over there for coffee the day before yesterday," said Hanna. "As always. We drank coffee together every day. For over 40 years."

"Did they seem frightened of anything?" asked Wallander. "Worried?"

"Johannes had a cold," Hanna replied. "But otherwise everything was normal."

It seemed hopeless. Wallander didn't know what else to ask them. Each reply he got was like a door slamming shut.

"Did they have any acquaintances who were foreigners?" he asked.

The man raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Foreigners?"

"Anyone who wasn't Swedish," Wallander ventured.

"One Midsummer a few years ago some Danes camped on their field."

Wallander looked at the clock. At 8 a.m. he was supposed to meet Rydberg, and he didn't want to be late.

"Try and think," he said. "Anything you can come up with may help."

Nyström walked out to the car with him.

"I have a permit for the shotgun," he said. "And I didn't aim at you. I just wanted to scare you."

"You did a good job," replied Wallander. "But I think you ought to get some sleep tonight. Whoever did this isn't coming back."

"Would you be able to sleep?" asked Nyström. "Would you be able to sleep if your neighbours had been slaughtered like dumb animals?"

Since Wallander couldn't think of a good answer, he said nothing.

"Thanks for the coffee," he said, got in his car, and drove away.

This is all going to hell, he thought. Not one clue, nothing. Only Rydberg's strange knot, and the word "foreign". Two old people with no money under the bed, no antique furniture, are murdered in such a way that there seems to be something more than robbery behind it. A murder of hate or revenge.

There must be something out of the ordinary about them, he thought. If only the horse could talk! He had an uneasy feeling about that horse. It was just a vague hunch. But he was too experienced a policeman to ignore his unease.

Just before 8 a.m. he braked to a halt outside the police station in Ystad. The wind was down to light gusts. Still, it felt a few degrees warmer today. Just so long as we don't get snow, he thought.

He nodded to Ebba at the switchboard. "Did Rydberg show up yet?"

"He's in his office," replied Ebba. "They're calling already. TV, radio and the newspapers. And the county police commissioner.

"Stall them a while," said Wallander. "I have to talk with Rydberg first."

He hung up his jacket in his office before he went in to see Rydberg, whose office was a few doors down the corridor. He knocked and heard a grunt in reply.

Rydberg was standing looking out the window when Wallander entered. It was obvious that he hadn't had enough sleep.

"Good morning" said Wallander. "Shall I bring in some coffee?"

"Sure. But no sugar. I've cut it out."

Wallander went out to get two coffees in plastic mugs and then went back to Rydberg's office. Outside the door he stopped. What's my plan, anyway? he thought. Should we keep her last words from the press for "investigative reasons"? Or should we release them?

I don't have a plan, he thought, annoyed, and pushed open the door with his foot. Rydberg was sitting behind his desk combing his sparse hair. Wallander sank into a visitor's chair with worn-out springs.

"You ought to get a new chair," he said.

"There's no money for one," said Rydberg, putting away his comb in a desk drawer.

Wallander set his cup on the floor beside his chair.

"I woke up so damned early this morning," he said. "I drove out and talked to the Nyströms. The old man was waiting in a bush and took a shot at me with a shotgun."

Rydberg pointed at his cheek.

"Not from buckshot," said Wallander. "I hit the deck. He claimed he had a permit for the gun. Who the hell knows?"

"Did they have anything new to say?"

"Not one thing. Nothing out of the ordinary. No money, nothing. Provided they're not lying, of course."

"Why would they be lying?"

"No, why would they?"

Rydberg took a slurp of coffee and made a face. "Did you know that policemen are unusually susceptible to stomach cancer?" he asked.

"I didn't know that."

"If it's true, it's because of all the lousy coffee we drink." "But we solve our cases over our mugs of coffee." "Like now?"

Wallander shook his head. "What do we really have to go on? Nothing."

"You're too impatient, Kurt." Rydberg looked at him while he stroked his nose. "You'll have to excuse me if I seem like a schoolteacher," he went on. "But in this case I think we have to be patient."

They went over the progress of the investigation again. The technicians had taken fingerprints from the scene of the crime and were checking them against the national centralised records. Hansson was busy investigating the location of all known criminals with records of assault on old people, to find out whether they were in prison or had alibis. They would continue questioning the residents of Lunnarp, and perhaps the questionnaire they sent out would produce something. Both Rydberg and Wallander knew that the police in Ystad carried out their work precisely and methodically. Sooner or later something would turn up. A trace, a clue. It was just a matter of waiting. Of working methodically and waiting.

"The motive," Wallander persisted. "If the motive isn't money, or the rumour of money hidden away, then what is it? The noose? You must have thought the same thing I did. This crime has revenge or hate in it. Or both."

"Let's imagine a pair of suitably desperate robbers," said Rydberg. "Let's assume that they were convinced that Lövgren had money squirreled away. Let's assume that they were sufficiently indifferent to human life. Then torture isn't out of the question."

"Who would be that desperate?"

"You know as well as I do that there are plenty of drugs that create such a dependency that people are ready to do anything."

Wallander did know that. He had seen the accelerating violence first hand, and narcotics trafficking and drug dependency almost always lurked in the background. Even though Ystad's police district was seldom hit by this increasing violence, he harboured no illusions: it was steadily creeping up on them.

There were no protected zones any more. An insignificant little village like Lunnarp was confirmation of that fact. He sat up straight in the uncomfortable chair.

"What are we going to do?" he said.

"You're the boss," replied Rydberg.

"I want to hear what you think."

Rydberg got up and went over to the window. With one finger he felt the soil in a flowerpot. It was dry.

"If you want to know what I think, I'll tell you. But you should know that I'm by no means sure that I'm on the right track. I think that no matter what we decide to do, there's going to be a big fuss. But maybe it would be a good idea to keep quiet for a few days anyway. There are plenty of things to investigate."

"Like what?"

"Did the Lövgrens have any foreign acquaintances?" "I asked about that this morning. They may have known some Danes." "There, you see."

"It couldn't have been Danish campers, could it?"

"Why not? No matter what, we'll have to check it out. And there are more people than just the neighbours to question. If I understood you correctly yesterday, the Lövgrens had a big family."

Wallander realised that Rydberg was right. There were investigative reasons to keep quiet about the fact that the police were searching for a person or persons with foreign connections.

"What do we know about foreigners who have committed crimes in Sweden?" he asked. "Do the national police have special files on that?"

"There are files on everything" Rydberg replied. "Put someone in front of a computer and link up to the central criminal database, and maybe we'll find something."

Wallander stood up.

Rydberg looked at him quizzically. "Aren't you going to ask about the noose?" "I forgot."

"There's supposed to be an old sail maker in Limhamn who knows all about knots. I read about him in a newspaper some time last year. I thought I'd try to track him down. Not because I'm confident anything will come of it. But just in case."

"I want you to come to the meeting first," said Wallander. "Then you can drive over to Limhamn."

At 10 a.m. they were all gathered in Wallander's office.

The run through was very brief. Wallander told them what the woman had said before she died. For the time being, this piece of information was not to be disclosed. No-one seemed to have any objections.

Martinsson was put on the computer to search for foreign criminals. The officers who were going to continue with the questioning in Lunnarp went on their way. Wallander assigned Svedberg to concentrate on the young Polish family, who were presumably in the country illegally. He wanted to know why they were living in Lunnarp. Rydberg left for Limhamn to look for the sail maker.

When Wallander was alone in his office, he stood for a while looking at the map on the wall. Where had the killers come from? Which way did they go afterwards?

He sat down at his desk and asked Ebba to start putting through calls. For more than an hour he spoke with various reporters. But there was no word from the girl from the local radio station.

A while later Norén knocked on the door.

"I thought you were going to Lunnarp," Wallander said, surprised.

"I was," said Norén. "But
I
just thought of something."

Norén sat on the edge of a chair, since he was wet. It had started to rain. The temperature had now risen to 1° C.

"This might not mean anything," said Norén. "It just crossed my mind."

"Most things mean something," said Wallander.

"You remember that horse?" asked Norén.

"Sure."

"You told me to give it some hay." "And water."

"Hay and water. But I never did." Wallander wrinkled his brow. "Why not?" "The horse already had hay. Water too." Wallander sat in silence for a moment, looking at Norén. "Go on," he said. "You're getting at something." Norén shrugged his shoulders.

"We had a horse when I was growing up," he said. "When the horse was in its stall and was given hay, it would eat all of it. I mean that someone must have given the horse some hay. Maybe just an hour or so before we got there."

Wallander reached for the phone.

"If you're thinking of calling Nyström, don't bother," said Norén.

Wallander let his hand drop.

"I talked to him before I came here. And he hadn't given the horse any hay."

"Dead men don't feed their horses," said Wallander. "Who did?" Norén stood up. "It seems weird," he said. "First they kill a man. Then they put a noose on somebody else. And then they go out to the stable and give the horse some hay. Who the hell would do anything that weird?"

"You're right," said Wallander. "Who would do that?"

"It might not mean anything," said Norén.

"Or maybe it does," replied Wallander. "It was good of you to tell me."

Norén said goodbye and left.

Wallander sat and thought about what he had just heard. His hunch had been correct. There
was
something about that horse.

His thoughts were interrupted by the telephone. Another reporter who wanted to talk with him. At 12.45 p«m. he left the police station. He had to visit a friend he hadn't seen in many, many years.

CHAPTER
5

Kurt Wallander turned off the E65 where a sign pointed towards the ruins of Stjarnsund Castle. He got out of the car and unzipped to have a leak. Through the roar of the wind he could hear the sound of accelerating jet engines at Sturup airport. Before he got back in the car, he scraped the mud from his shoes. The change in the weather had been abrupt. The thermometer in his car showed -50 C. Ragged clouds were racing across the sky as he drove on.

Beyond the castle ruin the gravel road forked, and he kept to the left. He had never come this way before, but he was positive it was the right road. Despite the fact that almost ten years had passed since it had been described to him, he remembered the route in detail. He had a mind that seemed programmed for landscapes and roads.

After about a kilometre the surface deteriorated. He went slowly forwards, wondering how large lorries ever managed to negotiate it. The road sloped sharply downward, and a large farm with long wings of stables lay spread out before him. He drove into the yard and stopped. A flock of crows cawed overhead as he climbed out of the car.