The White Lioness (33 page)

"There'll be a bloodbath," Malan said.

"Think of it as a purification process," Kleyn said. "Besides, that's what we are hoping to achieve."

"Nevertheless," Malan said. "I can't help asking myself: will we be able to control what happens?"

"The answer to that is simple," Kleyn said. "We have to."

The familiar fatalism, Malan thought. Was Kleyn a psychopath hiding the violent truth about himself behind a mask that personified self-control? Malan did not like the thought, but all he could do was suppress it.

The formal meeting of the Committee lasted less than an hour. The decision was taken. In 28 days Nelson Mandela would die at the stadium near Cape Town.

The Committee members left Hammanskraal at intervals of a few minutes. Kleyn was the last to leave.

CHATPER TWENTY-TWO

The attack came just after midnight. Mabasha was asleep, wrapped in his blanket. Wallander was standing by the kitchen window, trying to decide whether he was hungry or whether all he wanted was a cup of tea. He was wondering whether his father and daughter were still up. He supposed they were. They always had a surprising number of things to talk about.

As he was waiting for the water to boil it came to him that it was 17 days since the hunt for Louise Akerblom had begun. Now, they were pretty sure that she had been killed by a Russian called Konovalenko, who had in all likelihood shot the Stockholm policeman too.

Once Mabasha was out of the country - a few hours from now - he would be able to tell people what had happened. He would post an unsigned letter to the police. Not everyone would believe it. In the end everything depended on what they could make Konovalenko confess to. Not that everything he told them would be believed.

Wallander poured the boiling water into the teapot and left it to brew. Then he sat at the kitchen table. And at that moment the apartment door exploded. Wallander was thrown against the refrigerator by the blast. The kitchen rapidly filled up with smoke. He groped his way on all fours to the bedroom door. As he reached his bed and was fumbling for his pistol on the bedside table he heard four shots in close succession behind him. He flung himself to the floor. The shots had come from the living room.

Konovalenko, he thought frantically. He's coming for me. He wriggled as fast as he could under the bed. He was so shaken, he wasn't sure his heart could cope. Later on, he would recall thinking how degrading it would be, dying under one's own bed.

He heard some thuds and breathless groans from the living room. Somebody came into the bedroom, stood motionless for a moment, then went out again. Wallander heard Mabasha shouting something. So he was still alive. Then came footsteps fading away into the stairwell. At the same time somebody started yelling, though he could not tell if it came from the street or from one of the neighbouring flats.

He eased himself from under the bed and carefully looked down into the street. The smoke was choking, and he had difficulty in making anything out. But then he saw two men dragging Mabasha between them. One of them was certainly Rykoff. Without thinking, Wallander flung open the bedroom window and fired straight up into the air. Rykoff let go of Mabasha and turned around. Wallander just managed to duck before a salvo from an automatic weapon demolished the window beside him. Glass showered down over his face. He heard shrieks and a car starting. He had time to see it was a black Audi before it disappeared. Wallander ran down the stairs and into the street, where half-dressed people were gathering. When they saw Wallander with a pistol in his hand, they jumped aside screaming. Wallander opened the door of his car with fumbling fingers, cursed as he stabbed at the ignition with his key before getting it in, then set off in the direction the Audi had taken. He could hear the distant wail of sirens. He decided to head for the Osterlen highway and got lucky. The Audi came skidding around the corner from Regementsgatan and took off to the east. Wallander thought they might not realise it was him in the car. The only reason that the man who came into his bedroom had not looked under the bed must have been that it was still made, suggesting that Wallander was not at home. He did not normally make his bed in the morning, but that day his daughter, upset by all the mess, had cleaned the apartment and changed his bed linen.

They drove away from Ystad at high speed. Wallander kept his distance, and felt as if he was living a nightmare. Undoubtedly he was breaking all the rules on how to arrest dangerous criminals. He thought of turning back. Then he changed his mind and kept going. They had already passed Sandskogen, the golf course on the left, and Wallander began to wonder if the Audi would take a left to Sandhammaren or keep going straight on towards Simrishamn and Kristianstad.

Suddenly he saw the rear lights on the Audi shuddering, and getting closer. The car must have a puncture. He watched the car slide into the ditch and crash onto its side. Wallander stamped on his brakes outside the driveway to a house on the roadside, and turned in. When he got out of the car he saw a man standing in the doorway under a light.

Wallander had his pistol in his hand. When he started talking he made an effort to sound friendly and firm at the same time. "My name's Wallander and I'm a police officer," he said, noticing how breathless he was. "Call the police station in Ystad and tell them I'm chasing a Russian suspect, got that? Tell them where you live and tell them to prepare a search of the army training ground. Is that clear?"

The man nodded. He looked to be in his thirties. "I recognise you," he said. "I've seen you in the papers."

"Call at once," Wallander said. "You do have a telephone?"

"Of course I do," the man said. "Don't you need something more effective than that pistol?"

"I do," Wallander said. "But I don't have time to change right now."

Then he ran back to the road. The Audi was some way ahead. He tried to stick to the shadows as he approached it. He was still wondering how long his heart would hold out with the acute stress. He was glad, all the same, that he hadn't died under his bed. Now it seemed as if his fear was driving him on. He paused behind a road sign and listened. There was nobody in the car. Then he noticed that a section of the fence around the training ground had been cut open. Fog was drifting in from the sea and settling densely over the artillery range. He could see a group of sheep lying motionless on the ground, and he heard a bleat from a sheep he could not see through the fog, and another answering restlessly.

There, he thought. The sheep can guide me. He crouched and ran towards the hole in the fence, then lay on the ground, staring into the fog. He could neither see nor hear anything. A car approached from the direction of Ystad and slowed to a halt. A man got out. Wallander saw it was the man who had promised to call the police. He had a shotgun in his hand. Wallander crept back through the fence.

"Stay here," he said. "Back the car up about a hundred metres. Stay there and wait till the police arrive. Show them this hole in the fence. Say there are at least two armed men out there. One of them has some kind of automatic. Can you remember all that?"

The man nodded. "I brought this shotgun," he said.

Wallander hesitated a moment. "Show me how it works," he said. "I know next to nothing about shotguns."

The man looked at him in surprise. Then he showed him the safety catch and how to load. It was a pump-action model. Wallander took it and stuffed a handful of cartridges in his pocket.

The man went back to his car and Wallander crawled through the fence again. A sheep bleated once more. The sound came from the right, somewhere between a clump of trees and the slope down to the sea. Wallander tucked his pistol into his belt and started to edge his way towards where the sheep were bleating.

The fog was very thick by now.

Martinsson was woken by the call from headquarters. They told him about the shooting and the fire on Mariagatan, and also the message Wallander had sent from the outskirts of Ystad. He was immediately wide awake, and started getting dressed as he dialled Bjork's number. It seemed to Martinsson it took forever for the message to penetrate Bjork's sleepy brain, but half an hour later the largest squad the Ystad force could muster at such short notice was assembled outside the police station. Reinforcements were also on their way from surrounding districts. In addition, Bjork had found time to wake up the police commissioner, who had asked to be informed as soon as the arrest of Konovalenko had been achieved.

Martinsson and Svedberg regarded the crowd of assembled officers with some irritation. A smaller squad would be as effective in a much shorter time. But Bjork was going by the book, not risking criticism afterwards.

"This'll be a disaster," Svedberg said. "We should take care of this ourselves, you and me. Bjork will just mess things up. If Wallander is out there on his own and Konovalenko is as dangerous as we think he is, he needs us right now."

Martinsson nodded and went over to Bjork. "While you are organising the squad, Svedberg and I will go on ahead," he said.

"Out of the question," Bjork said. "We have to follow the rules."

"You do that while Svedberg and I use our common sense," Martinsson said angrily, and walked away. Bjork yelled after him, but Svedberg and Martinsson got into a squad car and drove off. They also signalled to Noren and Peters that they should follow. They allowed the patrol car to overtake them and lead the way with flashing blue lights and siren. Martinsson drove, with Svedberg at his side fumbling with his pistol.

"What have we got?" Martinsson said. "The training ground just before the turn-off to Kaseberga. Two armed men. One of them Konovalenko."

"We've got nothing," Svedberg said. "And I can't say I'm looking forward to this."

"Explosion and shooting on Mariagatan," Martinsson said. "How does it all hang together?"

"Let's hope Bjork can work that one out with the help of his rule book," Svedberg said.

Outside the police station in Ystad things were deteriorating. Telephone calls were coming in from terrified people living on or near Mariagatan. The fire brigade was putting out the fire. Now it was up to the police to find out what was behind the shooting. The fire chief, Peter Edler, phoned in to say that the pavement in front of the house was covered with blood.

Bjork was under pressure from all sides, but finally made up his mind to let Mariagatan take second place. The priority was to catch Konovalenko and the other man, and to give Wallander what assistance they could.

"Is there anybody here who knows how far the training ground extends?" Bjork wanted to know. Nobody knew, but Bjork was sure it stretched from the road right down to the beach. They had too little information to think of doing anything other than try to surround the whole area.

Cars kept arriving from nearby districts. Because they had the prospect of arresting someone who had killed a policeman, even off-duty officers were turning up.

Bjork consulted a colleague from Malmo and decided they would make their plans for surrounding the place once they got there. A car had been sent to the army barracks to pick up some reliable maps.

The long caravan of police vehicles began leaving Ystad at 1 a.m. A few private cars that happened to be passing joined in out of curiosity. The fog was drifting down over central Ystad.

At the training ground they met the man who had spoken first with Wallander, and then with Martinsson and Svedberg.

"Any developments?" Bjork said.

"None," the man said, just as a shot rang out somewhere in the middle of the training ground. It was followed shortly afterwards by a long burst of automatic fire. Then all was silent again.

"Where are Martinsson and Svedberg?" Bjork said, in a voice that could not disguise his anxiety.

"They ran into the training ground," the man said.

"And Inspector Wallander?"

"I haven't seen him again since he went off into the fog."

The searchlights on the squad car roofs were lighting up a wall of fog and some sheep.

"We have to let them know we're here," Bjork said. "We'll surround the place as best as we can."

A few minutes later his voice rang out over the training ground, the loudspeaker echoing spookily. Then the whole squad was divided into two and sent off in both directions around the fence in order to spread themselves around the perimeter. Then they settled down to wait.

Wallander had been completely swallowed up by the fog as soon as he had crawled into the training ground. Things happened very fast. He walked towards the bleating sheep. He was moving rapidly, as he had the strong sense that he was going to arrive too late. Several times he tripped over sheep on the ground, and they ran off bleating. He realised the sheep he was using to guide him were also betraying his whereabouts.

Then he came upon them. By now they were at the far side of the artillery range, where it started sloping down to the sea. It was like a still photograph from a film. Mabasha had been forced down on his knees. Konovalenko was standing in front of him, pistol in hand, and Rykoff a few paces to the side. Konovalenko repeated the same question over and over in English.

"Where's the policeman?"

"I don't know."

Mabasha's voice was defiant. That made Wallander see red. He hated the man who had killed Louise Akerblom, and presumably the policeman Tengblad as well. At the same time his mind was racing as he tried to decide what he should do. If he crawled any closer, they would notice him. He doubted whether he could hit them with his pistol from where he was, and they were out of shotgun range. If he tried to run at them, he would simply be signing his own death warrant. The automatic pistol in Rykoff's hand would make short work of him.

The only thing he could do was wait and hope his colleagues would turn up soon. But he could hear Konovalenko getting more annoyed.

He had his pistol ready. He tried lying so that he could aim with steady hands. He was aiming straight at Konovalenko.

But the end came too soon. And it came so fast, Wallander had no time to react before it was too late. Looking back, he could see more clearly than ever in how short a time you can waste a life.