Wallander made a note.
“We’ll follow that one up,” he said. “If we go back to Mc-Donald’s at Jagersro, the time would have been about half past six, right?”
“That’s probably about right,” said Stig Gustafson.
“What did you do next?”
“I went to Nisse’s to play cards.”
“Who’s Nisse?”
“An old carpenter I used to have as a shipmate for many years. His name’s Nisse Stromgren. Lives on Foreningsgatan. We play cards now and then. A game we learned in the Middle East. It’s pretty complicated. But fun once you know it. You have to collect jacks.”
“How long were you there?”
“It was probably near midnight by the time I went home. A bit too late, as I was going to have to get up so early. The bus was due to leave at six from Central Station. The bus to Kastrup, that is.”
Wallander nodded. Stig Gustafson has an alibi, he thought. If what he says is true. And if Louise Akerblom really was killed last Friday.
Right now there were not enough grounds to arrest Stig Gustafson. The prosecutor would never agree to it.
It’s not him, thought Wallander. If I start pressing him on his persecution of Louise Akerblom, we’ll get nowhere.
He stood up.
“Wait here,” he said and left the room.
They gathered in the conference room and listened gloomily to Wallander’s account.
“We’ll check up on what he said,” said Wallander. “But to be honest, I no longer think he’s our man. This was a blind alley.”
“I think you’re jumping the gun,” objected Bjork. “We don’t even know for sure she really did die on Friday afternoon. Stig Gustafson could in fact have driven from Lomma to Krageholm after leaving his card-playing pal.”
“That hardly seems likely,” said Wallander. “What could have kept Louise Akerblom out until that time? Don’t forget she left a message on her answering machine to say she’d be home by five. We’ve got to believe that. Something happened before five o’clock.”
Nobody spoke.
Wallander looked around.
“I’ll have to talk to the prosecutor,” he said. “If nobody has anything to say, I’m going to let Stig Gustafson go.”
Nobody had any objection.
Wallander walked over to the other end of the police station, where the prosecution authorities had their offices. He was admitted to Per Akeson and gave him a report of the interrogation. Every time Wallander visited his office, he was struck by the astonishing disorder all around him. Papers were stacked up haphazardly on desks and chairs; the garbage bin was overflowing. But Per Akeson was a skillful prosecutor. Moreover, no one had ever accused him of losing a single paper of significance.
“We can’t hold him,” he said when Wallander had finished. “I take it you can check his alibi pretty quickly?”
“Yes,” said Wallander. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think he did it.”
“Do you have any other leads?”
“It’s all very vague,” said Wallander. “We wondered if he might have hired somebody else to kill her. We’ll make a thorough check this afternoon before we go any further. But we have no other individual to go after. We’ll have to keep going on a broad basis for the time being. I’ll be in touch.”
Per Akeson nodded, and stared at Wallander, frowning.
“How much sleep are you getting?” he asked. “Or rather, how little? Have you seen yourself in a mirror? You look terrible!”
“That’s nothing compared to how I feel,” said Wallander, getting to his feet.
He went back down the corridor, opened the door to the interview room, and went in.
“We’ll arrange transport to take you to Lomma,” he said. “But you can bet we’ll be in touch again.”
“Am I free?” asked Gustafson.
“You’ve never been anything else,” said Wallander. “Being interrogated isn’t the same as being accused.”
“I didn’t kill her,” said Stig Gustafson. “I can’t understand how you could think such a thing.”
“Really?” said Wallander. “Even though you’ve been chasing after her on and off?”
Wallander saw a shadow of unease flit over Stig Gustafson’s face.
Just so he knows we know, thought Wallander.
He accompanied Stig Gustafson out to reception, and arranged for him to be taken home.
I won’t be seeing him again, he thought. We can write him off.
After an hour for lunch, they reassembled in the conference room. Wallander had been home for a few sandwiches in his kitchen.
“Where are all the honest thieves nowadays?” asked Martinson with a sigh. “This case seems to have come out of a storybook. All we have is a dead woman from a low-church sect, dumped in a well. And a severed black finger.”
“I agree with you,” said Wallander. “But we can’t get away from that finger, no matter how much we’d like to.”
“There are too many loose ends flying around out of control,” said Svedberg, scratching his bald head in irritation. “We have to collect together everything we have. And we must do it now. Otherwise we’ll never get anywhere.”
Wallander could detect in Svedberg’s words indirect criticism of the way he was leading the investigation. But he had to concede even now that it was not totally unjustified. There was always a danger of concentrating too soon on a single line of investigation. Svedberg’s imagery reflected all too accurately the confusion he felt.
“You’re right,” said Wallander. “Let’s see how far we’ve come. Louise Akerblom is murdered. We don’t know exactly where and we don’t know who did it. But we do know roughly when. Not far from where we found her, a house that had been standing empty explodes. In the ruins of the fire, Nyberg finds parts of an advanced radio transmitter and the charred remains of a pistol butt. The pistol is manufactured in South Africa. In addition, we find a severed black finger in the yard outside the house. Then somebody tries to hide Louise Akerblom’s car in a pond. It’s pure coincidence we find it as quickly as we do. The same applies to her body. We also know she was shot in the middle of her forehead, and the whole setup gives the impression of an execution. I called the hospital before we started this meeting. There are no signs of sexual assault. She was just shot.”
“We have to get all this sorted out,” said Martinson. “We have to find more evidence. About the finger, the radio transmitter, the handgun. That lawyer in Varnamo who was looking after the house has to be contacted immediately. There must obviously have been somebody in the house.”
“We’ll sort out who does what before we close the meeting,” said Wallander. “I just have two more thoughts I’d like to put forward.”
“We’ll kick off with them,” said Bjork.
“Who could possibly have wanted to shoot Louise Akerblom?” said Wallander. “A rapist would have been a possibility. But she was evidently not raped, according to preliminary medical reports. There are no signs of her being beaten up or held prisoner. She has no enemies. That all makes me wonder if the whole business could have been a mistake. She was killed instead of somebody else. The other possibility is that she happened to witness something she ought not to have seen or heard.”
“The house could fit in there,” said Martinson. “It wasn’t far from the property she was due to look over. Something has definitely been going on in that house. She might have seen something, and been shot. Peters and Noren went to the house she was going to examine. The one that belongs to a widow by the name of Wallin. They both said it was easy to go astray on the way there.”
Wallander nodded.
