The White Lioness (5 page)

"Nothing," Wallander said. At the same time, he put his finger to his lips, discreetly, so that Akerblom couldn't see. He didn't want Svedberg and Martinsson to start asking questions. He didn't want to have to say Louise Akerblom probably never got as far as the house.

"We have nothing to report either," Martinsson said. "No car, nothing."

Wallander looked at his watch. It was 6.10 p.m. He turned to Akerblom and tried to smile. "I think the most useful thing you can do now is to go back home to the girls," he said. "Svedberg here will drive you home. We'll make a systematic search. Try not to worry. We'll find her all right."

"She's dead," Akerblom said, in a low voice. "She's dead, and she'll never come back."

The three policemen stood in silence.

"No," Wallander said, eventually. "There's no reason to think it's as bad as that. Svedberg will drive you home now. I'll get in touch later on."

Svedberg drove away.

"Now we can start searching in earnest," Wallander said, resolutely. He could feel the unease mounting in him all the time.

They sat in his car. Wallander called Bjork and asked for all available personnel with cars to be sent to the split oak. At the same time Martinsson began planning how best to examine all the roads in a circle around the house as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Wallander asked Bjork to make sure they got suitable maps.

"We'll keep looking until it gets dark," Wallander said. "We start again at dawn tomorrow if we don't find anything tonight. You can get in touch with the army as well. Then we'll have to consider a line search."

"Dogs," Martinsson said. "We need dogs tonight, right now."

Bjork promised to come along in person and take charge of the operation.

Martinsson and Wallander looked at each other.

"Summarise," Wallander said. "What do you think?"

"She never came here," Martinsson said. "She could have been close to here, or a long way away. I don't know what can have happened, but we have to find the car. We're doing the right thing, starting the search here. Somebody will have seen it, surely. We'll have to start knocking on doors. And Bjork will have to hold a press conference tomorrow. We have to let it be known we take the disappearance very seriously."

"What can have happened?" Wallander said.

"Something we'd rather not think about," Martinsson said.

The rain started drumming against the car windows and roof.

"Hell," Wallander said.

"Yes," Martinsson said. "Exactly so."

Shortly before midnight the policemen, tired and drenched, reassembled on the gravel in front of the house Mrs Akerblom had possibly never seen. They had found no trace of the dark blue car, still less of Louise Akerblom. The most noteworthy thing they found was a pair of elk carcasses. And a police car almost crashed with a Mercedes travelling along one of the dirt roads at high speed.

Bjork thanked all of them for their efforts. He had agreed with Wallander that they could be sent home. The search would begin again at 6 a.m.

Wallander was the last to leave. He had called Akerblom on his car phone, and told him that he was sorry to have nothing new to report. Although it was late, Akerblom expressed the wish that Wallander should come and see him at their house, where he was with the daughters.

Before Wallander started the engine he called his sister in Stockholm. He knew she stayed up late. He told her their father was planning to marry his home help. To Wallander's astonishment, she burst out laughing, but to his relief, she promised to come down to Skane at the beginning of May.

Wallander replaced the telephone in its holder and set off for Ystad. Rain squalls hammered the windscreen.

He found his way to the Akerblom home. It was a terrace house like hundreds of other houses. The light was still on downstairs. Before getting out of the car he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. She never got that far, he thought. What happened on the way?

CHAPTER FOUR

The alarm beside Wallander's bed rang at 4.45 a.m. He pulled his pillow over his face. I get far too little sleep, he thought dejectedly. Why can't I be one of those policemen who put everything to do with work aside as soon as they get home?

He stayed in bed, and turned his mind back to his brief visit to Akerblom's house the night before. It had been pure torture to look into his distraught eyes and tell him they hadn't managed to find his wife. Wallander had escaped from the house as quickly as he could, and he felt unwell as he drove home. Then he had lain awake until 3 a.m. in spite of his exhaustion.

We've got to find her, he thought. Now. Soon. Dead or alive. We just have to find her.

He had arranged with Akerblom that he would be in touch in the morning, once the search had begun again. Wallander realised he would have to go through Louise Akerblom's belongings, to find out what she was really like. Somewhere in the back of Wallander's mind was the nagging thought that there was something very peculiar about her disappearance. There were peculiar circumstances every time a person went missing; but there was something in this case that was different from anything he had experienced before. He badly wanted to know what it was.

Wallander forced himself out of bed, switched on the coffee machine, and went to turn on the radio. He cursed when he remembered the burglary, and it occurred to him that nobody would now have time to deal with that investigation.

He took a shower, got dressed, and drank his coffee. The weather did not improve his temper. It was pouring, and the wind was up. It was the worst possible weather for a line search. All day long the fields and coppices around Krageholm would be full of tired, irritable policemen, dogs with their tails between their legs, and fed-up conscripts from the local regiment. Still, that was Bjork's problem. His job was to go through Mrs Akerblom's belongings.

He drove to the split oak tree. Bjork was pacing irritably up and down the verge.

"What awful weather," he said. "Why does it always have to rain when we're out looking for somebody?"

"It's odd," Wallander said.

"I've talked to the lieutenant-colonel: his name's Hernberg," said Bjork. "He's sending two bus-loads of conscripts, at 7 a.m. I think we might as well start straightaway. Martinsson's done all the spadework."

Wallander nodded appreciatively. Martinsson was good when it came to line searches.

"I thought we'd call a press conference for 10 a.m.," Bjork said. "It would help if you could be there. We'll have to have a photograph of her by then."

Wallander gave him the one he still had in his inside pocket. Bjork studied Louise Akerblo m's picture.

"Nice girl," he said. "I hope we find her alive. Is it a good likeness?"

"Her husband thinks it is."

Bjork put the photograph into a plastic wallet which he carried in one of his raincoat pockets.

"I'm going to their house," Wallander said. "I can be of more use there."

As Wallander made to walk over to his car, Bjork grabbed him by the shoulder.

"What do you think?" he said. "Is she dead? Is there some crime at the back of all this?"

"It can hardly be anything else," Wallander said. "Unless she's been hurt and is lying in agony somewhere or other. But I don't think so."

"I don't like the look of this," Bjork said. "Not one little bit."

Wallander drove back to Ystad. The grey sea was very choppy.

When he entered the house in Akarvagen, two little girls stood staring at him, wide-eyed.

"I've told them you're a policeman," Akerblom said. "They know Mama's lost, and you're looking for her."

Wallander nodded and tried to smile, despite the lump that came into his throat. "My name's Kurt," he said. "What's yours?"

"Maria" and "Magdalena", the girls said, one after another.

"Those are lovely names," Wallander said. "I have a daughter named Linda."

"They're going to be at my sister's today," Akerblom said. "She'll be here shortly to pick them up. Can I offer you a cup of tea?"

"Yes, please," Wallander said.

He hung up his overcoat, removed his shoes, and went into the kitchen. The girls were standing in the doorway, watching him.

Where shall I start? Wallander wondered. Will he understand that I have to open every drawer, and go through every one of her papers?

The girls were collected, and Wallander finished his tea.

"We have a press conference at 10.00," he said. "That means we shall have to make public your wife's name, and ask for anybody who might have seen her to come forward. As you will realise, that implies something else. We can no longer discount the possibility that a crime has been committed."

Wallander had foreseen the risk that Akerblom might go to pieces and start weeping. But the pale, hollow-eyed man, immaculately dressed in suit and tie, seemed to be in control of himself this morning.

"We have to go on believing that there's a straightforward explanation for your wife's disappearance," Wallander said. "But we can no longer exclude anything at all."

"I understand," Akerblom said. "I've been clear about that all the time."

Wallander pushed his teacup to one side, said thank you, and got to his feet. "Have you thought of anything else we ought to know about?"

"No," Akerblom said. "It's a complete mystery."

"Let's go through the house together," Wallander said. "I hope you understand that I have to look through all her drawers, clothes, everything that could give us a clue."

"She keeps everything in good order," Akerblom said.

They began upstairs, and worked their way down to the basement and the garage. Wallander noticed that Louise Akerblom was fond of pastel shades. There was nowhere a dark curtain or tablecloth to be seen. The house exuded
joie de vivre
. The furniture was a mixture of old and new. When he was drinking his tea, he had noticed how well equipped the kitchen was with machines and gadgets. Their everyday life was evidently not restricted by excessive puritanism.

"I'll have to drive down to the office for a while," Akerblom said, when they had finished their tour of the house. "I take it I can leave you here on your own."

"No problem," Wallander said. "I'll save my questions till you get back. Or I'll give you a call. In any case, I have to leave for the station shortly before 10.00, for the press conference."

"I'll be back before then," Akerblom said.

When Wallander was on his own, he began by searching every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen and examined the refrigerator and the freezer. One thing intrigued him. In a cupboard under the sink was a copious supply of alcohol. That didn't square with the impression he had of the Akerblom family.

He continued with the living room, without finding anything of note. Then he went upstairs. He ignored the girls' room. He searched the bathroom first, reading the labels on bottles from the pharmacist and making a note of some of Louise Akerblom's medicines in his note pad. He stood on the bathroom scales, and was dismayed to see how much he weighed. Then he moved on to the bedroom. He always felt uncomfortable going through a woman's clothes: it was as if somebody was watching him without his knowing it. He went through all the pouches and cardboard boxes in the wardrobes. Then he came to the chest of drawers where she kept her underwear. He found nothing that surprised him, nothing that told him anything he didn't already know. When he was finished, he sat on the edge of the bed and looked around the room.

Nothing, he thought. Absolutely nothing.

He sighed, and moved on to the next room, which was used as a study. He sat at the desk, opening drawer after drawer. He immersed himself in photograph albums and bundles of letters. He didn't come across a single photograph in which Louise Akerblom was not smiling or laughing. He replaced everything carefully, closed the drawer, and tried the next one. Tax returns and insurance documents, school reports and conveyancing deeds, nothing out of the ordinary.

It was only when he opened the bottom drawer in the last of the chests that he was surprised. At first he thought it contained nothing but plain white writing paper. When he felt the bottom of the drawer, however, his fingers came into contact with a metal object. He took it out and sat there, frowning.

A pair of handcuffs. Not toy handcuffs; real ones. Made in England. He put them on the desk in front of him. They don't have to be significant, he thought. But they were well hidden. And I suspect Akerblom would have taken them away, if he had known they were there.

He put the handcuffs in his pocket and closed the drawer.

Then he went down to the basement rooms and the garage. On a shelf over a little workbench he found a few neatly made balsa wood model aeroplanes. He pictured Akerblom in his mind's eye. Maybe once he'd dreamed of becoming a pilot?

The telephone started ringing in the background. He hurried to answer it.

By this time it was 9 a.m.

"Could I speak to Inspector Wallander?" It was Martinsson.

"Speaking," Wallander said.

"You'd better get out here," Martinsson said. "Right away."

Wallander could feel his heart beating faster. "Have you found her?" he said.

"No," Martinsson said. "Not her, and not the car either. But there's a house on fire not far away. Or, to be more accurate, the house exploded. I thought there might be a link."

"I'm on my way," Wallander said.

He scribbled a note for Akerblom and left it on the kitchen table.

As he drove to Krageholm, he tried to work out the implications of what Martinsson had said. A house had exploded? What house?

He overtook three big trucks in succession. The rain was now so heavy that the wipers could only keep the windscreen partially clear.

Just before he reached the shattered oak tree, the rain eased a little and he could see a column of black smoke rising above the trees. A police car was waiting for him by the oak. One of the men inside indicated he should take the right-hand turning. As they swung in from the main road, Wallander noted the road was one of those he'd taken by mistake the previous day, the one with the most tyre marks. There was something else about that road, but he couldn't put his finger on what it was right now.

When he got to where the fire was, he recognised the house. It was to the left, and only just visible from the road. The firemen were already at work. Wallander got out of his car, and was immediately hit by the heat of the blaze. Martinsson was striding towards him.

"People?" Wallander said.

"None," Martinsson said. "Not as far as we know. In any case, it's impossible to go inside. The heat is terrific. The house has been empty for more than a year since the owner died. A farmer told me the background. Apparently, whoever was dealing with the estate couldn't make up his mind whether to rent it or sell it."

"So what happened?" Wallander said, eyeing the enormous clouds of smoke.

"I was out on the main road," Martinsson said. "One of the army search lines had got into a bit of a mess. Then there was this bang. It sounded like a bomb going off. At first I thought a plane had crashed. Then I saw the smoke. It took me five minutes at most to get here. Everything was in flames. Not just the house, but the barn as well."

Wallander tried to think. "A bomb," he said. "Could it have been a gas leak?"

Martinsson shook his head. "Even 20 canisters of calor gas could not have made an explosion of that force," he said. "Fruit trees in the back have snapped off. Or been blown up by the roots. It must have been deliberate."

"The whole area is crawling with police and soldiers," Wallander said. "An odd time to choose for arson."

"Exactly what I thought," Martinsson said. "That's why I thought right away there could be a connection."

"Any ideas?"

"No," Martinsson said. "None at all."

"Find out who owns the house," Wallander said. "Who's responsible for the estate. I agree with you, this seems to be more than just a coincidence. Where's Bjork?"

"He already left for the station, to get ready for the press conference," Martinsson said. "You know how nervous he gets when he has to face journalists who never write what he says. But he knows what's happened. Svedberg's been speaking to him. He knows you're here as well."

"I'll have a closer look at this when they've put the fire out," Wallander said. "But it would be a good idea for you to detail some men to run a fine-tooth comb over this area."

"Looking for Louise Akerblom?" Martinsson said.

"For the car in the first place," Wallander said.

Martinsson went off to find the farmer. Wallander stayed put, staring at the raging fire.

If there is a connection, what is it? he wondered. A woman goes missing and a house explodes. Right under the noses of a huge search party. He looked at his watch: 9.50. He beckoned to one of the firemen.

"When will I be able to start rooting around in there?" he said.

"It's burning pretty fast," the fireman said. "By this afternoon you should be able to get close to the house."