The White Lioness (9 page)

"Damn it. South Africa?"

"There's no denying it gives us a possible link to the finger we found."

"What's a South African pistol doing in this country?"

"That's your job to find out," Nyberg said.

"OK," Wallander said. "It's good that you called me right away. We'll talk about this again later."

Wallander got out of his chair and went to the window. A long two minutes later, he had made up his mind. They would give priority to finding Louise Akerblom and checking out Gustafson. Everything else would have to take second place for the time being.

This is as far as we've got, Wallander thought, 117 hours after Louise Akerblom disappeared.

CHAPTER SIX

Peter Hanson was a thief. He was not a particularly successful criminal, but he usually managed to execute the assignments allocated to him by his employer and customer, a fence in Malmo called Morell.

That very day, the morning of Walpurgis Eve, April 30, Morell's stock was at a pretty low ebb with Hanson. He planned to take the day off, like everyone else, and maybe treat himself to a trip to Copenhagen. Late the previous evening, however, Morell called to say he had an urgent job for him.

"I want you to get hold of four water pumps," Morell said. "The old-fashioned sort. The ones you can see outside every cottage in the countryside."

"Surely it can wait until after the holiday," Hanson said. He was asleep when Morell called, and he did not like being woken up.

"It can't wait," Morell said. "I have a customer who lives in Spain, and he's driving there the day after tomorrow. He wants those pumps in the car with him. He sells them to other Swedish emigres down there. They pay good money to have old Swedish water pumps outside their haciendas. It's nostalgia."

"How the hell am I going to get hold of four water pumps?" Hanson said. "Have you forgotten it's a holiday? Every summer cottage will be occupied tomorrow."

"That's your problem," Morell said. "Start early enough and you'll manage it." Then he turned threatening. "If you don't, I'll be forced to go through my papers and work out how much your brother owes me."

Hanson slammed down the phone. He knew Morell would take that as a positive reply. As he had been woken up and would not be able to get to sleep again for ages, he got dressed and drove down to town from Rosengard, where he lived. He went into a bar and ordered a beer.

Hanson had a brother called Jan-Olof. He was Hanson's big misfortune in life. Jan-Olof played the ponies at Jagersro, at the toto, and occasionally also at other trotting tracks up and down the country. He did a lot of betting, and he did it badly. He lost more than he could afford, and ended up in Morell's hands. As he could not provide any guarantees, Hanson had been forced to step in as a living guarantee.

Morell was first and foremost a fence. In recent years, however, he had realised that, like all other businessmen, he would have to make up his mind how to develop his activities. Either he would have to specialise and concentrate on a smaller field, or he could broaden his base. He chose the latter.

Although he had a big network of customers who could give very precise information about the goods they ordered, he decided to go in for loan-sharking as well. That way, he reckoned he could increase his turnover considerably.

Morell had just turned 50. After 20 years in the fraud business, he had changed course and since the end of the 1970s had built up a successful receiving business all the way across southern Sweden. He had about two dozen thieves and drivers on his secret payroll, and every week truckloads of stolen goods would be transported to his warehouse in the Malmo free port, ready for moving on to importers overseas. He collected stereos, televisions, and mobile telephones from Smaland. Caravans of stolen cars came rolling up from Halland and were passed on to expectant buyers in Poland and, nowadays, the former East Germany. He could see an important new market ready to be opened up in the Baltic states, and he had already delivered a few luxury cars to Czechoslovakia as well. Hanson was one of the least significant cogs in his organisation. Morell was still doubtful about how good he was, and used him mostly for one-off deals. Four water pumps was an ideal assignment for him.

That was why Hanson was sitting in his car cursing on the morning of Walpurgis Eve. Morell had ruined his holiday. He was also worried about the assignment. There were too many people on the move for him to be confident of being undisturbed.

He had been born in Horby, and knew Skane inside out. There was hardly the tiniest of side roads in this part of the country he had not been on, and his memory was good. He had been working for Morell for four years now, ever since he was 19. He sometimes thought about all the things he had loaded into his rusty old van. He once rustled two young bulls. Orders for pigs were common around Christmas time. Several times he had acquired tombstones, and wondered what kind of a sick person commissioned such a theft. He had carried off front doors while the house owner was asleep upstairs, and dismantled a church spire with the assistance of a crane operator brought in for the purpose. Water pumps were run of the mill, as it were, but it was an unfortunate choice of day.

He decided to start in the area to the east of Sturup Airport. He banished all thought of Osterlen. Every single country cottage would be occupied today. If he was going to make it, he'd have to concentrate on the area between Sturup, Horby, and Ystad. There were quite a few empty houses around there.

Just beyond Krageholm, on a little dirt road which wound through the woods and eventually hit the main road at Sovde, he found his first pump. The house had almost collapsed and was well hidden from view. The pump was rusty, but intact. He started working it loose from the wooden base with a crowbar, but the wood was rotten. He dropped the crowbar and tugged at the pump, easing it away from the boards over the well itself. He began to think that maybe it wouldn't be impossible to find four pumps after all. Three more deserted houses, and he could be back in Malmo by early afternoon. It was still only 8.10 a.m. Perhaps he could nip over to Copenhagen in the evening after all.

At last he broke loose the rusty pump. As a result, the boards crumbled and fell away. He glanced down into the well.

There was something down there in the darkness. Something light yellow. He realised to his horror that it was a human head with blonde hair. There was a woman lying there. A corpse doubled up, twisted, deformed.

He dropped the pump and ran away. He drove off at a crazy speed, getting away from the deserted house as fast as possible. After a few kilometres, just before he got to Sovde, he braked, opened the car door, and threw up.

Then he tried to be calm. He knew he had not imagined it. There was a woman down the well. A woman lying in a well must have been murdered, he thought.

Then it occurred to him he'd left his fingerprints on the water pump he'd broken off. His fingerprints were in the files. Morell, he thought, confused. Morell's the man to sort this one out.

He drove through Sovde, far too fast, then took a left turn south, towards Ystad. He would drive back to Malmo and let Morell see to everything. The man leaving for Spain would have to go without his pumps.

Just before he got to the turning to the Ystad rubbish dump, his journey came to an end. As he tried to light a cigarette with shaking hands he went into a skid, and could only partially correct it. The van crashed into a fence, smashed through a row of letter boxes, and came to a halt. Hanson was wearing a seat belt, which prevented him from hurtling through the windscreen. Even so, the crash dazed him, and he remained in his seat, in shock.

A man mowing his lawn had seen what happened. He first ran over the road to make sure nobody had been badly injured, then he hurried back to his house, called the police, and stood by the car to make sure the man behind the wheel did not try to run away. He must be drunk, he assumed. Why else would he lose control on a stretch of straight road?

A quarter of an hour later, a patrol car arrived from Ystad. Peters and Noren, two of the most experienced officers in the district, had taken the call. Once they had established that no-one was injured, Peters started directing traffic past the scene of the accident, while Noren sat beside Hanson in the back of the police car, to try and find out what happened. Noren made him blow into the breathalyser, but the result was negative. The man seemed very confused, and not in the least interested in explaining how the accident happened. Noren was starting to think that perhaps the man was mentally unbalanced. He was talking disjointedly about water pumps, a fence in Malmo, and an empty house with a well.

"There's a woman in the well," he said.

"Oh, yes," Noren said. "A woman in a well?"

"She was dead."

Noren suddenly felt uneasy. What was the man trying to say? That he'd found a dead woman in a well at a deserted house?

Noren told him to stay in the car. Then he walked into the road where Peters was keeping the traffic moving, waving on inquisitive drivers who slowed down or showed signs of stopping.

"He claims he found a dead woman in a well," Noren said. "With blonde hair."

Peters dropped his arms to his side. "Mrs Akerblom?"

"I don't know. I don't even know if it's true."

"Get hold of Wallander," Peters said. "Right away."

The mood among the detectives in the Ystad police station this Walpurgis Eve morning was expectant. They had gathered in the conference room at 8 a.m., and Bjork rushed through the business. He had other things besides a missing woman to think about on a day like this. It was traditionally one of the most unruly days in the whole year, and there was a lot to do in preparation for the fun and games they could expect that evening and into the night.

The meeting was devoted to Stig Gustafson. Wallander had set his troops looking for the former marine engineer all Wednesday afternoon and evening. When he reported on his conversation with Pastor Tureson, everybody thought they were on the threshold of a breakthrough. The severed finger and the blown-up house would have to wait. Martinsson had even suggested that it was pure coincidence after all. That there simply was no connection between the incidents.

"This kind of thing has happened before," he said. "We've raided an illegal home distillery, and found an Aladdin's cave in a neighbour's house when we stopped to ask the way."

By Thursday morning they still had not found out where Gustafson lived.

"We have to crack this today," Wallander said. "Maybe we won't find him. But if we get his address, we can establish whether he's left in a hurry."

At that very moment, the telephone rang. Bjork grabbed the receiver, listened briefly, then handed it to Wallander.

"It's Noren," he said. "He's at a car accident somewhere outside of town."

"Somebody else can take it," Wallander said, annoyed.

He took the receiver nevertheless, and listened to what Noren had to say. Martinsson and Svedberg were well acquainted with Wallander's reactions and adept at picking up the slightest change in his mood, and they could see at once that this call was important.

Wallander replaced the receiver slowly, and looked at his colleagues. "Noren's at the junction with the road leading to the rubbish dump," he said. "A car that has driven through a row of letter boxes. The driver of the car claims he's found a dead woman stuffed down a well."

They waited anxiously to hear what Wallander had to say next.

"If I understood it rightly," Wallander said, "this well is less than five kilometres from the property Louise Akerblom was going to look at. And even closer to the pond where we found her car."

There was a moment's silence. Then they all got to their feet at the same time.

"Do you want a full-scale call-out right away?" Bjork said.

"No," Wallander said. "We've got to get it confirmed first. Noren warned us not to get over-excited. The man sounds seriously confused."

"So would I have been," Svedberg said. "If I'd found a dead woman in a well and then driven off the road."

"Exactly what I was thinking," Wallander said.

They left Ystad in patrol cars. Wallander had Svedberg with him, and Martinsson had a car to himself. When they got to the northern exit road, Wallander switched on the siren. Svedberg stared at him in surprise.

"There's hardly any traffic," he said.

"Even so," Wallander said.

They stopped at the turning to the rubbish dump, put the ashen Hanson in the back seat, and followed his directions.

"It wasn't me," he said, over and over again.

"Who did what?" Wallander said.

"I didn't kill her," he said.

"What were you doing there, then?"

"I was only going to steal the pump."

Wallander and Svedberg exchanged glances.

"Morell called late last night and ordered four water pumps, but I didn't kill her."

Wallander was lost. The penny suddenly dropped for Svedberg, and he explained. "There is a fence in Malmo, name of Morell. He's notorious, and our colleagues in town have never been able to pin anything on him."

"Water pumps?" Wallander was suspicious.

"Antique value," Svedberg said.

They turned into the drive in front of the house. Wallander had time to register that it looked like a lovely day for the holiday. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, not a puff of wind, and it must be at least 20degC, even though it was only 9 a.m.

He contemplated the well and the broken-off pump beside it. Then he took a deep breath, walked to the well, and looked down.

Martinsson and Svedberg waited in the background with Hanson.

Right away Wallander could see that it was Louise Akerblom. Even in death, there was a fixed smile on her face. He suddenly felt very ill. He turned away quickly and squatted on his haunches.

Martinsson and Svedberg approached the well. Both of them jerked back violently.