His daughter had been present for the latter part of the conversation. She had woken up, and come out into the kitchen in surprise. Wallander explained briefly who the man was.
“The guy who hit you?” she asked.
“The very same.”
“And now he’s here drinking coffee with you?”
“Yes.”
“Even you must think that’s a little strange.”
“A cop’s life is a little strange.”
She asked no more questions. When she was dressed, she returned and sat quietly on a chair, listening. Afterward Wallander sent her to the pharmacy to buy a bandage for the man’s hand. He also found some penicillin in the bathroom and gave some to Victor Mabasha, well aware that he really ought to have called a doctor. Then he reluctantly cleaned up the wound around the severed finger, and applied a clean bandage.
Next he called Loven and got him almost right away. He asked about the latest news on Konovalenko and the others who had disappeared from the apartment block in Hallunda. He said nothing to Loven about the fact that Victor Mabasha was with him in his kitchen.
“We know where they went from their apartment when we made the raid,” said Loven. “They just moved up two floors in the same building. Cunning, and convenient, too. They had a second apartment there, in her name. But they’re gone now.”
“Then we know something else as well,” said Wallander. “They’re still in this country. Presumably in Stockholm, where it’s easiest to lose yourself.”
“If need be I’ll personally kick down the front door of every apartment in this town,” said Loven. “We have to get them now. And quick.”
“Concentrate on Konovalenko,” said Wallander. “I think the African is less important.”
“If only I could understand the connection between them,” said Loven.
“They were in the same place when Louise Akerblom was murdered,” said Wallander. “Then Konovalenko did a bank job and shot a cop. The African wasn’t there then.”
“But what does that mean?” asked Loven. “I can’t see any real connection, just a vague link that doesn’t make sense.”
“We know quite a bit even so,” said Wallander. “Konovalenko seems to be obsessed with wanting to kill that African. The most likely explanation is they started out friends but had a falling out.”
“But where does your real estate agent fit into all this?”
“She doesn’t. I guess we can say she was killed by accident. Like you just said, Konovalenko is ruthless.”
“All that boils down to one single question,” said Loven. “Why?”
“The only person who can answer that is Konovalenko,” said Wallander.
“Or the African,” said Loven. “You’re forgetting him, Kurt.”
After the telephone call to Loven, Wallander finally made up his mind to get Victor Mabasha out of the country. But before he could do anything he must be quite certain the African wasn’t the one who had shot Louise Akerblom after all.
How am I going to establish that, he wondered. I’ve never come across anybody with a face so expressionless. With him I can’t decide where truth stops and lies start.
“The best thing you can do is to stay here in the apartment,” he told Victor Mabasha. “I still have a lot of questions I want answered. You might just as well get used to that.”
Apart from the car trip on Sunday, they spent the whole weekend in the apartment. Victor Mabasha was exhausted, and slept most of the time. Wallander was worried that his hand would turn septic. At the same time he regretted ever having let him into his apartment. Like so often before, he had followed his intuition rather than his reason. Now he could see no obvious way out of his dilemma.
On Sunday evening he drove Linda out to see his father. He dropped her on the main road so he would not have to put up with his father’s complaints about not even having time for a cup of coffee.
Monday finally came, and he returned to the police station. Bjork welcomed him back. Then they got together with Martinson and Svedberg in the conference room. Wallander reported selectively on what had happened in Stockholm. There were lots of questions. But the bottom line was that nobody had much to say. The key to the whole business was in Konovalenko’s hands.
“In other words, we just have to wait until we pick him up,” was Bjork’s conclusion. “That’ll give us some time to sort out the stacks of other matters waiting for our attention.”
They sorted out what needed needed dealing with most urgently. Wallander was assigned to find out what happened to three trotting horses that had been rustled from stables near Skarby. To the astonishment of his colleagues, he burst out laughing.
“It’s a bit absurd,” he said, apologetically. “A missing woman. And now missing horses.”
He hardly got back to his office before he received the visit he was expecting. He was not sure which of them would actually turn up to ask the question. It could be any one of his colleagues. But it was in fact Martinson who knocked and entered.
“Have you got a minute?” he asked.
Wallander nodded.
“There’s something I need to ask you,” Martinson went on.
Wallander could see he was embarrassed.
“I’m listening,” said Wallander.
“You were seen with an African yesterday,” said Martinson. “In your car. I just thought…”
“You thought what?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Linda is back together with her Kenyan again.”
“I thought that would be it.”
“You said a moment ago you didn’t really know what you thought.”
Martinson threw out his arms and made a face. Then he retreated in a hurry.
Wallander ignored the case of the missing horses, shut the door Martinson had left open, and sat down to think. Just what were the questions he wanted to ask Victor Mabasha? And how would he be able to check his answers?
In recent years Wallander had often encountered foreign citizens in connection with various investigations, and had spoken to them both as victims and possible perpetrators. It often occurred to him that what he used to regard as absolute truth when it came to right and wrong, guilt and innocence, might not necessarily apply any more. Nor had he realized that what was regarded as a crime, serious or petty, might vary according to the culture one grew up in. He often felt helpless in such situations. He felt he simply did not have the grounds for asking questions that could lead to a crime being solved or a suspect released. The very year his former colleague and mentor, Rydberg, died, they had spent a lot of time discussing the enormous changes that were taking place in their country, and indeed the world at large. The police would be faced with quite different demands. Rydberg sipped his whiskey and prophesied that within the next ten years Swedish cops would be forced to cope with bigger changes than they had ever experienced before. This time, though, it would not be just fundamental organizational reforms, but it would affect police work on the ground.
“This is something I’m not going to have to face,” Rydberg had said one evening as they sat on his cramped little balcony. “Death comes to us all. I sometimes feel sad that I won’t be around to see what comes next. It’s bound to be difficult. But stimulating. You’ll be there, though. And you’ll have to start thinking along completely different lines.”
“I wonder if I’ll manage to cope,” was Wallander’s reply. “I keep wondering more and more often whether there’s life beyond the police station.”
“If you’re thinking of sailing to the West Indies, make sure you never come back,” said Rydberg ironically. “People who go off somewhere and then come back again are seldom any better off for their adventure. They’re fooling themselves. They haven’t come to terms with the ancient truth that you can never run away from yourself.”
“That’s something I’ll never do,” said Wallander. “I don’t have room for such big plans in my makeup. The
