The White Lioness (38 page)

"I hope nothing happens to Wallander's daughter, for your sakes," Svedberg said.

"But abducted, and by whom? And why?" Noren said.

Svedberg gave them a long, serious look before answering. "I'm going to make you promise me something," he said. "If you keep that promise, I'll try and overlook that you acted in complete disregard of clearly expressed orders last night. If the girl comes out of this unharmed, nobody will get to know a thing. Is that clear?"

They both nodded.

"You heard nothing, and you saw nothing last night," he said. "And most important of all, Wallander's daughter has not been abducted. In other words, nothing has happened."

Peters and Noren stared at him, nonplussed.

"I mean what I say," Svedberg said again. "Nothing has happened. That's what you have to remember. You'll just have to believe me when I say it's important."

"Is there anything we can do?" Peters said.

"Yes," Svedberg said. "Go home and get some sleep."

Then Svedberg searched in vain for clues in the courtyard and inside the house. He searched the clearing where the oil drum had been. There were tyre tracks into the area, but no other clue. He went back to the house and spoke again with Wallander's father. He was in the kitchen drinking coffee, and was scared stiff.

"What's happened?" he asked, worried. "There's no sign of Linda."

"I honestly don't know," Svedberg said. "But it'll all work itself out, that's for sure."

"You think?" Wallander's father said. His voice was full of doubt. "I could hear how upset Kurt was on the telephone. Where is he, come to that? What's going on?"

"I think it'll be best if he explains that himself," Svedberg said, getting to his feet. "I'm going to see him now."

"Say hello from me," the old man said. "Tell him I'm doing just fine."

"Thanks. I'll do that," Svedberg said.

Wallander was barefoot in a patch of sun on the gravel outside Widen's house when Svedberg drove up. It was nearly 11 a.m. Still in the courtyard, Svedberg set out in every detail he knew what must have happened. He did not leave out how easily Peters and Noren had been fooled into leaving for the short time it took for his daughter to be taken. Finally, he passed on the message from his father.

Wallander listened attentively all the time. Even so, Svedberg saw that there was something distant about him. Normally he could look Wallander in the eye when he spoke to him, but now his eyes were wandering aimlessly about. Svedberg could see that, mentally, he was with his daughter, wherever she might be.

They went into the house.

"I've been trying to think," Wallander said, when they were sitting in the kitchen. Svedberg could see his hands were shaking. "This is Konovalenko's work, of course. Just as I'd feared. It's all my fault. I ought to have been there. Now he's using Linda to get hold of me. He's apparently working on his own."

"He must have at least one assistant," Svedberg said, cautiously. "If I understood Peters and Noren right, he couldn't possibly have had time to light the fire himself, get back to the house, break in, tie up your dad and get away from the house with your daughter."

Wallander thought for a moment. "OK. The oil drum was lit by Tania," he said. "Rykoff's wife. So there are two of them. We don't know where they are. Presumably in a house somewhere not far from Ystad. A remote place. A house we could have found if circumstances were different. We can't now."

Widen came discreetly to the table with coffee. Wallander looked at him. "I need something stronger," he said.

Widen came back with a half-empty bottle of whisky. Wallander took a gulp straight from the bottle.

"I've been trying to work out what'll happen next," he said. "He'll get in touch with me. And he'll use my father's house. That's where I'll wait until I hear from him. I don't know what he'll propose. At best my life for hers. At worst, God only knows what."

He turned to Svedberg. "That's how I see it," he said. "Do you think I'm wrong?"

"It sounds right," Svedberg said. "The question is just what are we going to do about it."

"Nobody should do anything," Wallander said. "No police near the house, nothing. Konovalenko will smell the slightest hint of danger. I'll have to be alone in the house with my father. Your job will be to make sure nobody goes there."

"You can't handle this on your own," Svedberg said. "You've got to let us help you."

"I don't want my daughter to die," Wallander said quite simply. "I have to sort this out myself."

Svedberg realised the conversation was over. Wallander had made up his mind.

"I'll take you to Loderup," Svedberg said.

"That won't be necessary. You can take the Duett," Widen said.

Wallander nodded. He almost fell as he stood up. He grabbed the edge of the table. "No problem," he said.

Svedberg and Widen stood in the courtyard, watching him drive off.

When Wallander reached Loderup his father was painting in his studio. He had abandoned for the first time ever his unvarying theme, a landscape in the evening sun, either with or without a wood grouse in the foreground. This time he was painting a different landscape, darker, more chaotic. The picture did not hang together. Woods were growing directly out of a lake, and the mountains in the background overwhelmed the scene.

He put down his brushes after Wallander had been standing behind him for a while. When he turned around, Wallander could see he was scared.

"Let's go in," his father said. "I sent the housekeeper home." His father placed his hand on Wallander's shoulder. He could not remember the last time the old man had made a gesture like that.

When they were inside Wallander told him everything that had happened. He could see his father was incapable of making sense of the various incidents as they crisscrossed one another. Even so, he wanted to give him an idea of what had been going on these last three weeks. He did not want to hide the fact that he had killed another human being, or that his daughter was in great danger. The man holding her prisoner, who had tied him up in his own bed, was absolutely ruthless.

When he was finished, his father sat looking down at his hands.

"I can deal with it," Wallander said. "I'm a good policeman. I'll stay here until this man contacts me. It could be any time now. Or he may wait until tomorrow."

The afternoon was close to being evening, and still no word from Konovalenko. Svedberg called twice, but Wallander had nothing new to tell him. He sent his father out to the studio to go on painting. He couldn't stand having him sitting in the kitchen, staring at his hands. His father would normally have been furious at having to do what his son told him, but now he stood up and went.

Wallander paced up and down, sat down on a chair for a moment, then got up again straightaway. Sometimes he would go into the courtyard and gaze over the fields. Then he would come back in and start pacing again. He tried eating twice, but he had no appetite. His anguish, his worry and his helplessness made it impossible for him to think straight. On several occasions Akerblom came into his mind. But he sent him packing, scared that the very thought could be a bad omen for what might happen to his daughter.

Evening came and still no contact. Svedberg called to say he could be reached at home from now on. Wallander called Widen, but did not really have anything to say. At 10 p.m. he sent his father to bed. It was still warm and light outside. He sat on the steps outside the kitchen door for a while. When he was sure his father was asleep, he called Baiba Liepa in Riga. No reply the first time. But she was home when he tried again half an hour later. He was icily calm as he told her his daughter had been taken hostage by a very dangerous man. He said he had no-one to talk to, and just then he felt he was telling the absolute truth. He apologised for the night when he had been drunk and woken her with his call. He tried to articulate his feelings for her, but the words he needed were beyond his grasp of English. Before hanging up he promised to keep in touch. She listened to what he had to say, but hardly said anything herself from start to finish. Afterwards he wondered whether he really had been talking to her, or whether it had all been in his imagination.

He spent a sleepless night. Occasionally he slumped down into one of his father's worn old armchairs and closed his eyes. But just as he was about to doze off, he would wake again with a start. He started pacing up and down once more, and it was like reliving the whole of his life. Towards dawn he stood staring at a solitary hare sitting motionless in the courtyard.

It was now Tuesday, May 19. Shortly after 5 a.m. The wind got up and it started raining.

The message came just before 8 a.m.

A taxi from Simrishamn turned into the courtyard. Wallander heard the car approaching from some way off, and went out onto the steps when it came to a halt. The driver got out and handed him a fat envelope.

The letter was addressed to his father.

"It's for my father. I'll take it," he said. "Where is it from?"

"A lady handed it in at the office in Simrishamn," the driver said, who was in a hurry and did not want to get wet. "She paid for it to be delivered. I don't need a receipt."

Wallander nodded. Tania, he thought. She has taken over her husband's role as errand boy.

The taxi disappeared. Wallander was alone in the house. His father was already in his studio.

It was a padded envelope. He examined it carefully before starting to open it along one of the short sides. At first he could not see what was inside. Then he saw Linda's hair, and the necklace he had once given her.

He sat still as a statue, staring at the cropped hair lying on the table in front of him. Then he started crying. His pain had passed another limit, and he could not fight it anymore. What had Konovalenko done to her? It was all his fault, getting her involved in this.

Then he forced himself to read the letter. Konovalenko would be in touch again in twelve hours' time. They needed to meet in order to sort out their problems, he wrote. Wallander would just have to wait until then. Any contact with the police would put his daughter's life in grave danger. The letter was unsigned.

He looked again at his daughter's hair. The world was helpless in the face of such evil. How could he stop Konovalenko?

He supposed that these were exactly the reflections Konovalenko wanted him to be having. He had also given him twelve hours with no hope of doing anything other than what Konovalenko had dictated.

Wallander sat frozen like a statue on his chair. He had no idea what to do.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A long time ago, Karl Evert Svedberg had decided to become a policeman for a very particular reason, and for that only - a reason he tried to keep secret. He was terrified of the dark. Ever since he was a child he had slept with the bedside lamp on. Unlike most people's, his fear of the dark did not recede as he grew older. On the contrary, it became worse when he was a teenager. And so had his feeling of shame at suffering from a defect that could hardly be classified as other than cowardice.

His father had been a baker who got up at 2.30 a.m. every morning; he suggested to his son that he should follow him into the business. He would sleep in the afternoons, so the problem would solve itself. His mother was a milliner, considered by her dwindling clientele very skilful at creating individual and expressive ladies' hats. She took her son to a child psychologist, who was convinced that the problem would disappear in time. But he became even more scared. He could never resolve what was the cause of it. In the end he decided to become a policeman. He thought his fear of the dark might be driven out if he developed his physical courage. But now, this spring day, Tuesday, May 19, he woke up with his bedside lamp on. Moreover, his habit was always to lock the bedroom door. He lived alone in an apartment in central Ystad. He was born in the town, and disliked leaving it - even for short periods.

He put the light out, stretched, and got up. He had slept badly. What was happening to Kurt Wallander had made him upset and alarmed. He could see that he had somehow to help him. During the night he had worried about what he could do without breaking his promise of silence to Wallander. In the end, shortly before dawn, he made up his mind. He would try to find the house where Konovalenko was hiding. He thought it highly likely that Wallander's daughter was being held prisoner there.

He got to the police station just before 8 a.m. His only starting point was what had happened at the military training ground at Fskjutfalt. It was Martinsson who had gone through the belongings he found in the dead men's clothes. There was nothing exceptional. Nevertheless, Svedberg decided to go through the material one more time. He went to the room where the various pieces of evidence and other finds from several crime scenes were kept, and identified the relevant plastic bags. Martinsson had found nothing at all in the African's pockets, which seemed significant in itself. Svedberg replaced the bag containing nothing more than a few grains of dust. Then he carefully tipped out onto the table the contents of the other bag. Martinsson's list had cigarettes, a lighter, grains of tobacco, unclassifiable bits of dust, and odds and ends. Svedberg contemplated the objects in front of him. His interest was immediately focused on the lighter. It had an advertising slogan that was almost worn away. Svedberg held it up to the light and tried to read what it said. He replaced the bag, and took the lighter to his office. At 10.30 a.m. they were due at a meeting to establish how things were going in the attempt to track down Konovalenko and Wallander. He wanted the time before that meeting to himself. He took a magnifying glass from a drawer, adjusted the desk lamp, and started to study the lighter. After a minute or so, his heart started beating faster. He had managed to decipher the text. If the clue would lead anywhere was too early to say, of course, but the lighter's slogan was for the ICA in Tomelilla. Not conclusive in itself; could have been picked up more or less anywhere. But if the man had been at the ICA shop in Tomelilla, it was not impossible that a checkout assistant might be able to remember a man who spoke broken Swedish, and most obviously of all, was hugely fat. He put the lighter in his pocket and left the station without saying where he was going.

He drove to Tomelilla, went into the ICA, showed his ID, and asked to see the manager. This turned out to be a young man by the name of Sven Persson. Svedberg showed him the lighter and explained what he wanted to know. The manager thought for a while, then shook his head. He could not recall a strikingly fat man having been in the shop recently.

"Talk to Britta," he said. "The girl at the check out. But I'm afraid she has a pretty poor memory. Well, she's scatterbrained, put it that way."

"Is she the only person on the till?" Svedberg said.

"We have an extra one on Saturdays, but she's not in today."

"Call her," Svedberg said. "Ask her to come here at once."

"Is it that important?"

"Yes, it is. Call her now please."

"Yes. Immediately." The manager disappeared to make the call. Svedberg waited until Britta, a woman in her fifties, was through with the customer she was dealing with and who had produced a wad of coupons for discounts and special offers. Svedberg identified himself.

"I want to know if you've had a big and very fat man shopping here recently," he said.

"We get lots of fat people shopping here," the woman said.

Svedberg rephrased the question. "Not just fat, positively obese. In fact, absolutely enormous. And who speaks bad Swedish as well. Has anyone of that description been here?"

She tried to remember, but Svedberg could tell that her growing curiosity was affecting her concentration.

"He hasn't done anything in the least bit exciting," Svedberg said. "I just want to know if he's been in here."

"No," she said. "If he was that fat, I'd have remembered. I'm dieting myself, you see. So I do look at people."

"Have you been away at all lately?"

"No."

"Not even for an hour?"

"Well, I sometimes have to go on an errand."

"Who does the till then?"

"Sven."

Svedberg could feel any hope he had ebbing away. He thanked her for her assistance and wandered around the shop while waiting for the part-timer. As he did so, his mind was working overtime, trying to work out what to do if this lead went nowhere. Where to find another starting point?

The girl who worked Saturdays was, he thought, no more than 17. She was quite fat herself, and Svedberg dreaded having to ask her about other fat people. The manager introduced her as Annika Hagstrom and withdrew discreetly. They were standing by some shelves stacked with dog and cat foods.

"You work here on Saturdays," Svedberg said.

"I'm out of work," she said. "There aren't any jobs. Sitting here on Saturdays is all I do."

"It can be pretty tough just now," Svedberg said, trying to sound understanding.

"Actually, I've wondered about joining the police," the girl said.

Svedberg stared at her in surprise.

"But I'm not sure I'm the type to wear a uniform," she said. "Why aren't you wearing a uniform?"

"We don't always have to," Svedberg said.

"Maybe I'll think again, then. Anyway, what have I done?"

"Nothing at all," Svedberg said. "I only wanted to ask if you'd seen a male person in this shop who looked a little unusual."

He groaned inwardly at his clumsy way of putting it.

"What do you mean, unusual?"

"A man who is very fat, and speaks bad Swedish."

"Oh, him," she said immediately. "He was here last Saturday."

Svedberg took a notebook out of his pocket. "What time," he said.

"A little after 9 a.m."

"Was he alone?"

"Yes."

"Do you remember what he bought?"

"Quite a lot. Several packets of tea, among other things. He filled four bags."

That's him, thought Svedberg. Russians drink tea like we drink coffee.

"How did he pay?"

"He was carrying money loose in his pocket."

"How did he seem? Was he nervous? Or what?"

Her answers were all immediate and specific.

"He was in a hurry. He practically stuffed the food into the bags."

"Did he talk to you?"

"No."

"How do you know he had a foreign accent?"

"He said hello and thank you. You could tell right away."

"Just one more question. You don't happen to know where he lives, I suppose?" he wondered.

Her brow furrowed and she thought hard. Surely she can't have an answer for that one as well, Svedberg thought quickly.

"He lives somewhere in the direction of the quarry," she said.

"The quarry?"

"Do you know where the college is?"

Svedberg nodded. He knew.

"Drive past there, then take a left," she said. "Then left again."

"How do you know he lives there?"

"The next person in line was an old man called Holgerson," she said. "He always gossips when he pays. He said he'd never seen anyone as fat as that before. Then he said he'd seen him outside a house down by the quarry. There are quite a few empty houses there. Holgerson knows about everything that happens in Tomelilla."

Svedberg put his notebook away. "I'll tell you something." he said. "You really should join the police force."

"What did he do?" she said.

"Nothing," Svedberg said. "If he comes back it's very important you don't say somebody's been asking about him. Least of all a policeman."

"I won't say a word," she said. "Would it be possible to come and see you at the police station some time?"

"Just call and ask for Svedberg. That's me. I'll show you around."

Her face lit up. "I'll do that," she said.

"Wait a few weeks though. We're pretty busy right now."

He left and followed her directions. When he came to the road leading to the quarry, he took the pair of binoculars he kept in the glove compartment and walked to the quarry and climbed up to the cabin of an abandoned stone crusher.

There were two houses on the other side of the quarry, several hundred metres apart. One of them was rather decrepit, the other seemed to be in better condition. He could see no cars in the yard, and the house looked deserted. Even so, he had the feeling that this was the place. It was remote. There was no road nearby. Nobody would take that track unless they had business at the house. He waited, binoculars ready. It started drizzling.

After almost half an hour, the door opened and a woman stepped out. Tania, he thought. She stood quite still, smoking. Svedberg could not see her face because she was half hidden by a shrub.

He put down his binoculars. That's the place. The girl in the shop had her wits about her, and a good memory too. He waited until Tania had gone back inside, then climbed down from the stone crusher and went back to his car. It was after 10 a.m. He decided to call in and report sick. He had no time to sit around in meetings. And he must now talk to Wallander.

Tania threw down her cigarette and stubbed it out with her heel. She was in the yard, in the drizzle. The weather was in tune with her mood. Konovalenko was closeted with the new African. She had no interest in whatever they were talking about. Vladimir used to tell her what was going on. Some politician in South Africa was to be killed, but she had no idea who or why. Probably Vladimir had told her, but she had forgotten.

She went out to the yard to have a few minutes to herself. She still had barely had time to come to terms with the consequences of Vladimir's death. Their marriage had never been more than a practical arrangement that suited them both, but she was stricken by the sorrow and pain she was feeling. When they fled the collapsing Soviet Union, they were able to give each other some support. When they came to Sweden, she gave her life some purpose by helping Vladimir with his various undertakings. All that changed when Konovalenko turned up. At first Tania was quite attracted to him. His decisive manner, his self-confidence, stood in sharp contrast to Vladimir's personality, and she did not hesitate when Konovalenko had started to take a serious interest in her. It did not take her long to see that he was just using her, however. His lack of emotion and his fierce contempt for other people horrified her. He began totally to dominate their lives. Occasionally, late at night, she and Vladimir had talked about getting out, starting all over again, far from Konovalenko's influence. But nothing had come of it, and now Vladimir was dead. She was standing in the yard, thinking about how much she missed him.

She had no idea what would happen next. Konovalenko was obsessed with killing this policeman who had killed Vladimir and had caused him so much trouble. Thoughts about the future would have to wait until it was all over, the policeman dead and the African back in South Africa to carry out his assignment. She was dependent on Konovalenko, whether she liked it or not. She was in exile, and there was no going back. She had occasional but increasingly vague thoughts about Kiev, the city both she and Vladimir grew up in. What hurt was not all the memories, but her conviction that she would never again see the place and the people who used to be the foundation of her life. The door had slammed inexorably behind her. The last hopes had vanished with Vladimir.

She thought about the girl in the cellar. That was the only thing she had asked Konovalenko about these last days. What would happen to her? He said they would let her go once he had captured the father. But she wondered from the first if he meant that. She shuddered at the thought of him killing her as well.

Tania had trouble sorting out her feelings on this matter. She could feel unmixed hatred for the girl's father, for having killed her husband, and barbarically too, although Konovalenko had not told her what he meant by that. But sacrificing the daughter as well was going too far. At the same time, she knew she could do nothing to prevent it. The slightest sign of resistance on her part would only result in Konovalenko turning his deadly attention on her as well.