Sidetracked Read online

  They walked in the dazzling sunshine to a restaurant where Forsfält liked to eat spaghetti. After Wallander told him about his meeting with Hjelm, Forsfält started talking about his summer house, up near Älmhult. Wallander guessed that he didn’t want to spoil their lunch by talking about the investigation. Normally this would have made Wallander impatient, but he listened with growing fascination as the old detective described how he was restoring an old smithy. Only when they were having coffee did they return to the investigation. Forsfält would try to interview Marianne Eriksson that same day. But most important was the revelation that Louise Fredman had been a patient in a psychiatric hospital for the past three years.

  “I’m not sure,” said Forsfält. “But I’d guess that she’s in Lund. At St Lars Hospital. That’s where the more serious cases finish up, I think.”

  “It’s hard to bypass all the obstacles when you want to get patient records,” said Wallander. “And that’s a good thing, of course. But I think we must know everything about Louise Fredman. Especially since the family haven’t told the truth.”

  “Mental illness isn’t something people want to talk about,” Forsfält reminded him. “I had an aunt who was in and out of institutions her whole life. We almost never talked about her to strangers. It was a disgrace.”

  “I’ll ask one of the prosecutors in Ystad to get in touch with Malmö,” said Wallander.

  “What reason are you going to give?” asked Forsfält.

  Wallander thought for a moment.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I have a suspicion that Fredman may have abused her.”

  “That’s not good enough,” said Forsfält firmly.

  “I know,” said Wallander. “Somehow I have to show that it’s crucial to the whole murder investigation to obtain information on Louise Fredman. About her and from her.”

  “What do you think she could help you with?”

  Wallander threw out his hands.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe nothing will be cleared up by finding out what it is that’s keeping her locked up. Maybe she’s incapable of holding a conversation with anyone.”

  Forsfält nodded, deep in thought. Wallander knew that Forsfält’s objections were well-founded, but he couldn’t ignore his hunch that Louise Fredman was important. Wallander paid for lunch. When they got back to the station Forsfält went to the reception desk and got a black plastic bag.

  “Here are a few kilos of papers on Björn Fredman’s troubled life,” he said, smiling. But then he turned serious, as if his smile had been inappropriate.

  “That poor devil,” he said. “The pain must have been incredible. What could he possibly have done to deserve it?”

  “That’s just it,” said Wallander. “What did he do? What did Wetterstedt do? Or Carlman? And to whom?”

  “Scalping and acid in the eyes. Where the hell are we headed?”

  “According to the national police board, towards a society where a police district like Ystad doesn’t need to be manned at all on weekends,” said Wallander.

  Forsfält stood silent for a moment before he replied. “I hardly think that’s the answer,” he said.

  “Tell the national commissioner.”

  “What can he do?” Forsfält asked. “He’s got a board of directors on his back. And above them are the politicians.”

  “He could always refuse,” said Wallander. “Or he could resign if things get too far out of hand.”

  “Perhaps,” said Forsfält absently.

  “Thanks for all your help,” said Wallander. “And especially for the story about the smithy.”

  “You’ll have to come up and visit sometime,” said Forsfält. “I don’t know whether Sweden is as fantastic as all the magazines say it is. But it’s a great country all the same. Beautiful. And surprisingly unspoiled. If you take the trouble to look.”

  “You won’t forget Marianne Eriksson?”

  “I’m going to see if I can find her right now,” replied Forsfält. “I’ll call you later.”

  Wallander unlocked his car and tossed in the plastic bag. Then he drove out of town and onto the E65. He rolled down the window and let the summer wind blow across his face. When he arrived in Ystad he stopped at the supermarket and bought groceries. He was already at the checkout when he discovered he had to go back for washing powder. He drove home and carried the bags up to his flat, but found that he had lost his keys.

  He went back downstairs and searched the car without finding them. He called Forsfält and was told that he had gone out. One of his colleagues went into his office and looked to see whether they were on his desk. They weren’t there. He called Peter Hjelm, who picked up the phone almost at once. He came back minutes later and said he couldn’t find them.

  Wallander fished out the piece of paper with the Fredmans’ number in Rosengård. The son answered. Wallander waited while he looked for the keys, but he couldn’t find them. Wallander wondered whether to tell him that he now knew his sister Louise had been in a hospital for several years, but decided not to.

  He thought for a while. He might have dropped his keys at the place where he ate lunch with Forsfält, or in the shop where he had bought the new shirt. Annoyed, he went back to his car and drove to the station. Ebba kept a spare set of keys for him. He told her the name of the clothing shop and the restaurant in Malmö. She said she would check whether they had found them. Wallander left the station and went home without talking to any of his colleagues. He needed to think over all that had happened that day. In particular, he wanted to plan his conversation with Åkeson. He carried in the groceries and put them away. He had missed the laundry time he had signed up for. He took the box of washing powder and gathered up the huge pile of laundry. When he got downstairs, the room was still empty. He sorted the pile, guessing which types of clothes required the same water temperature. With some fumbling he managed to get two machines started. Satisfied, he went back up to his flat.

  He had just closed the door when the phone rang. It was Forsfält, who told him that Marianne Eriksson was in Spain. He was going to keep trying to reach her at the hotel where the travel agent said she was staying. Wallander unpacked the contents of the black plastic bag. The files covered his whole kitchen table. He took a beer out of the refrigerator and sat down in the living-room. He listened to Jussi Björling on the stereo. After a while he stretched out on the sofa with the can of beer beside him on the floor. Soon he was asleep.

  He woke with a start when the music ended. Lying on the sofa, he finished the can of beer. The phone rang. It was Linda. Could she stay at his place for a few days? Her friend’s parents were coming home. Wallander suddenly felt energetic. He gathered up all the papers spread out on the kitchen table and carried them to his bedroom. Then he made up the bed in the room where Linda slept. He opened all the windows and let the warm evening breeze blow through the flat. He went downstairs and got his laundry out of the machines. To his surprise none of the colours had run. He hung the laundry in the drying room. Linda had told him that she wouldn’t want any food, so he boiled some potatoes and grilled a piece of meat for his supper. As he ate he wondered whether he should call Baiba. He also thought about his lost keys. About Louise Fredman. About Peter Hjelm. And about the stack of papers waiting for him in his bedroom. And he thought about the man who was out there somewhere in the summer night. The man they would have to catch soon. When he’d finished, he stood by the open window until he saw Linda coming down the street.

  “I love you,” he said aloud.

  He dropped the keys from the window and she caught them with one hand.

  CHAPTER 26

  Wallander sat up half the night talking with Linda, but he still forced himself to get up at 6 a.m. He stood in the shower for a long time before managing to shake off his weariness. He moved quietly through the flat and thought that it was only when either Baiba or Linda was there that it really felt like home. When he was alone it felt like little more than a temporary
roof over his head. He made coffee and went down to the drying room. One of his neighbours pointed out that he hadn’t cleaned up after himself the day before. She was an old woman who lived alone, and he greeted her when they ran into each other, but didn’t know her name. She showed him a spot on the floor where there was some spilled washing powder. Wallander apologised and promised to do better in the future. What a nag, he thought as he went upstairs. But he knew she was right, he had been too lazy to clean up.

  He dumped his laundry on the bed and then carried the papers Forsfält had given him out to the kitchen. He felt guilty because he hadn’t read them the night before. But the talk with Linda had been important. They had sat out on the balcony in the warm night. Listening to her, he felt for the first time that she was an adult. She told him that Mona was talking about remarrying. Wallander was depressed at this news. He knew that Linda had been asked to inform him. But for the first time he talked about why he thought the marriage had fallen apart. From her response he could tell that Mona saw it quite differently. Then she asked him about Baiba, and he tried to answer her as honestly as he could, though there was a lot that was still unresolved about their relationship. And when they finally turned in, he felt sure that she didn’t blame him for what had happened, and that now she could view her parents’ divorce as something that had been necessary.

  He sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the extensive material describing Björn Fredman’s life. It took him two hours just to skim through it all. Once in a while he would jot down notes. By the time he pushed aside the last folder and stretched, it was after 8 a.m. He poured another cup of coffee and stood by the open window. It was going to be a beautiful day. He couldn’t remember the last time that it had rained.

  He tried to think through what he had read. Björn Fredman had been a sorry character from the outset. He had had a difficult and troubled home life as a child, and his first brush with the police, over a stolen bicycle, occurred when he was seven. He had been in constant trouble ever since. Björn Fredman had struck back at a life that had never given him any pleasure. Wallander thought of how many times during his career he’d read these grey, colourless sagas in which it was clear from the first sentence that the story would end badly.

  Sweden had pulled herself out of material poverty, largely under her own steam. When Wallander was a child there had still been desperately poor people, even though they were few in number by then. But the other kind of poverty, he thought, we’ve never dealt with that. And now that progress seemed to have stopped for the time being, and the welfare state was being eroded, the spiritual poverty that had been there all along was beginning to surface.

  Fredman was not the only one. We haven’t created a society where people like him could feel at home, Wallander thought. When we got rid of the old society, where families stuck together, we forgot to replace it with something else. The great loneliness that resulted was a price we didn’t know we were going to have to pay. Or perhaps we chose to ignore it.

  He put the folders back in the black plastic bag and then listened once again outside Linda’s door. She was asleep. He couldn’t resist the temptation to open the door a crack, and peek in at her. She was sleeping curled up, turned to the wall. He left a note on the kitchen table and wondered what to do about his keys. He called the station. Ebba was at home. He looked up her home number. Neither the restaurant nor the clothing shop had found his keys. He added to the note that Linda should put the house keys under the doormat. Then he drove to the station.

  Hansson was sitting in his office, looking greyer than ever. Wallander felt sorry for him, and wondered how long he would last. They went to the canteen and had some coffee. There was little sign that the biggest manhunt in the history of the Ystad police force was under way. Wallander told Hansson that he realised now that they needed reinforcements. And that Hansson needed a break. They had enough manpower to send out in the field, but Hansson needed relief on the home front. He tried to protest, but Wallander refused to back down. Hansson’s grey face and harried eyes were evidence enough. Finally Hansson gave in and promised to speak to the county chief of police on Monday. They would have to borrow a sergeant from another district.

  The investigative team had a meeting set for 10 a.m. Wallander left Hansson, who already seemed relieved. He went to his office and called Forsfält, who couldn’t be located. It took 15 minutes before Forsfält called back. Wallander asked about Björn Fredman’s passport.

  “It should be in his flat, of course,” said Forsfält. “Funny we haven’t found it.”

  “I don’t know if this means anything,” said Wallander. “But I want to find out more about those trips Peter Hjelm was talking about.”

  “E.U. countries hardly use entry and exit stamps any more,” Forsfält pointed out.

  “I think Hjelm was talking about trips further afield,” replied Wallander. “But I could be wrong.”

  Forsfält said that they would start searching for Fredman’s passport immediately.

  “I spoke with Marianne Eriksson last night,” he said. “I thought about calling you, but it was late.”

  “Where did you find her?”

  “In Malaga. She didn’t even know that Fredman was dead.”

  “What did she have to say?”

  “Not much, I must say. Obviously she was upset. I couldn’t spare her any details, unfortunately. They had met occasionally over the past six months. I got a feeling that she actually liked Fredman.”

  “In that case, she’s the first,” said Wallander. “If you don’t count Hjelm.”

  “She thought he was a businessman,” Forsfält continued. “She had no idea he had been involved in illegal activities. She also didn’t know he was married and had three children. She was quite upset. I smashed the image she had of Fredman to smithereens with one phone call, I’m afraid.”

  “How could you tell she liked him?”

  “She was hurt that he had lied to her.”

  “Did you learn anything else?”

  “Not really. But she’s on her way back to Sweden. She’s coming home on Friday. I’ll talk to her then.”

  “And then you’re going on holiday?”

  “I was planning to. Weren’t you supposed to start yours soon too?”

  “I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “Once they start moving, things could happen quickly.”

  Wallander didn’t respond to Forsfält’s last remark. They said good-bye. Wallander dialled the switchboard, and asked the receptionist to track down Åkeson. After more than a minute she told him that Åkeson was at home. Wallander looked at the clock. Just after 9 a.m. He made a quick decision and left his office. He ran into Svedberg in the hall, still wearing his silly cap.

  “How is the sunburn?” asked Wallander.

  “Better. But I don’t dare go out without the cap.”

  “Do you think locksmiths are open on Saturday?” asked Wallander.

  “I doubt it. But there are locksmiths on call.”

  “I need to get a couple of keys copied.”

  “Did you lock yourself out?”

  “I’ve lost my house keys.”

  “Were your name and address on them?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then at least you don’t need to change your lock.”

  Wallander told Svedberg that he might be a little late for the meeting. He had to see Åkeson about something important. Åkeson lived in a residential neighbourhood near the hospital. Wallander had been to the house before and knew the way. When he arrived and got out of the car, he saw Åkeson mowing his lawn. He stopped when he saw Wallander.

  “Has something happened?” he asked when they met at the gate.

  “Yes and no,” said Wallander. “Something is always happening. But nothing crucial. I need your help with part of the investigation.”

  They went into the garden. Wallander thought gloomily that it looked like every other garden he’d been in. He tu
rned down an offer of coffee. They sat in the shade of a roofed patio.

  “If my wife comes out I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention that I’m going to Africa this autumn. It’s still quite a sensitive topic,” said Åkeson.

  Wallander said he wouldn’t. He explained about Louise Fredman and his suspicion that she might have been abused by her father. He was honest and said that this could well be a false trail and might not add anything to the investigation. He outlined the new tack they were trying in the case, which was based around the knowledge that Fredman had been killed by the same person as Wetterstedt and Carlman. “Björn Fredman was the black sheep in the scalped ‘family’,” he said, realising immediately how inappropriate the description was.

  How did he fit into the picture? How didn’t he fit? Maybe they could find the connection by starting with Fredman at a place where a link was by no means obvious. Åkeson listened intently.

  “I talked to Ekholm,” he said when Wallander had finished. “A good man, I thought. Competent. Realistic. The impression I got from him was that the man we’re looking for may strike again.”

  “I’m always thinking about that.”

  “What about getting reinforcements?” Åkeson asked.

  Wallander told him about his conversation with Hansson earlier that morning.

  “I think you’re mistaken,” Åkeson said. “It’s not enough for Hansson to have support. I think you have a tendency to overestimate the work that you and your colleagues can handle. This case is big, in fact it’s too big. I want to see more people working on it. More manpower means more things can be done at the same time. We’re dealing with a man who could kill again. That means we have no time to lose.”

  “I know,” said Wallander. “I keep worrying that we’re already too late.”

  “Reinforcements,” Åkeson repeated. “What do you think?”

  “For the time being no, that’s not the problem.”

  Tension rose between them.

  “Let’s say that I, as the leader of the investigation, can’t accept that,” said Åkeson. “But you don’t want more manpower. Where does that leave us?”