‘Irrespective of what we did, no matter what people say about us, we were specialists. We knew what we were doing.’
‘But why should Louise von Enke of all people be subjected to something like this?’
‘That’s not a question I can answer.’
Wallander was feeling both tired and uneasy. He stood up and shook Hermann Eber’s hand.
‘I’ll be back; you can count on that,’ he said by way of goodbye.
‘So I gather,’ said Eber. ‘In our world, we are used to meeting again at the most unlikely times.’
Wallander went to his car and drove home. It started raining just as he came to the roundabout at the turn- off to Ystad. It was pouring by the time he ran from the car to his front door. Jussi was barking from his kennel. Wallander sat down at his kitchen table and watched the rain pattering on the windowpane. Water was dripping from his hair.
He had no doubt that Hermann Eber was right. Louise von Enke had not committed suicide. She had been murdered.
23
Wallander took a piece of meat out of the fridge. Together with half a head of cauliflower, that would be his meal. When he sat down at the table and opened the newspaper he’d bought on the way home, he thought how, for as long as he could remember as an adult, he had always derived deep satisfaction from eating undisturbed while leafing through a newspaper. But on this occasion he had barely opened the paper when an enlarged photograph stared him in the face, with a dramatic headline. He wondered if he was imagining it - but no, it really was a picture of the hitchhiker he’d picked up. His astonishment increased as he read that the previous day she had killed her parents in the centre of Malmo, in a residential block just off Sodra Forstadsgatan, and had been on the run ever since. The police had no idea of her motive. But there was no doubt that she was the killer - her name was not Carola at all, but Anna-Lena. A police officer whose name Wallander thought he recognised described the murder as exceptionally violent, a frenzied attack culminating in a bloodbath in the little apartment the family had lived in. The police were now searching for the woman and had issued a ‘wanted’ report. Wallander slid both the newspaper and his plate to one side. He asked himself once again if it could possibly be the same woman. Then he reached for the phone and dialled Martinsson’s home number.
‘Come right away,’ Wallander said. ‘To my house.’
‘I’m bathing my grandchildren,’ said Martinsson. ‘Can’t it wait?’
‘No. It can’t wait.’
Exactly thirty minutes later Martinsson drove up to Wallander’s house. Wallander was standing at the gate, waiting for him. It had stopped raining and was looking much brighter. Martinsson was well acquainted with Wallander’s methods and had no doubt that something serious had happened. Jussi had been let out of his kennel and was leaping around Martinsson’s feet. With considerable difficulty, Wallander succeeded in making him lie down.
‘I see you’ve taught him how to behave at last,’ said Martinsson.
‘Not really. Let’s go and sit in the kitchen.’
They went inside. Wallander pointed at the picture in the newspaper.
‘I picked her up and drove her to Hoor this morning,’ he said. ‘She said she was on her way to Smaland, but that might not be true, of course. The probability is that with a picture like this in the newspapers, somebody will have recognised her already. But the police should start looking there.’
Martinsson stared at Wallander.
‘I seem to recall that as recently as last year we talked about the fact that we never pick up hitchhikers, you and I.’
‘I made an exception this morning.’
‘On the way to Hoor?’
‘I have a good friend there.’
‘In Hoor?’
‘It’s possible that you don’t know where all my friends live. Why shouldn’t I have a good friend there? Don’t you have a good friend in the Hebrides? Every word I say is true.’
Martinsson nodded. He took a notebook out of his pocket. His pen wouldn’t write. Wallander gave him one that did, and placed a towel over his plate - several flies had settled on his food. Martinsson made a note of what the woman had been wearing, what she’d said, the exact times. He already had his mobile phone in his hand when Wallander held him back.
‘Maybe it would be best to say that the police received an anonymous tip?’
‘I’ve already thought of that. We’d better not say that it was a well-known police officer from Ystad who gave a woman a lift and helped her to escape.’
‘I didn’t know who she was.’
‘But you know as well as I do what the papers will write. If the truth comes out. You’d be an excellent news item to liven up the summer.’
Wallander listened as Martinsson called the police station.
‘The call was anonymous,’ Martinsson said in conclusion. ‘I have no idea how he got my home number, but the man who called was sober and very credible.’
He hung up.
‘Who isn’t sober at lunchtime?’ wondered Wallander sarcastically. ‘Was that necessary?’
‘When we catch that woman she’ll say that she thumbed a ride with an unknown man. That’s all. She won’t know it was you. Nor will anybody else.’
Wallander suddenly remembered something else his passenger had said.
‘She said the driver of the car that had taken her to where I picked her up had been making a nuisance of himself. I forgot to mention that.’
Martinsson pointed at the photo in the newspaper.
‘She looks good, even if she’s a murderer. Did you say she was wearing a short yellow skirt?’
‘She was very attractive,’ said Wallander. ‘Apart from her bitten nails. I can’t think of a bigger turn-off than that.’
Martinsson smiled at Wallander.
‘We’ve more or less stopped all that,’ he said. ‘Discussing women. There was a time when we never stopped talking about them.’
Wallander offered Martinsson coffee, but he declined. Wallander saw him off, then resumed his interrupted meal. It tasted good, but it didn’t fill him. He took Jussi for a long walk, trimmed a hedge at the back of the house, and reattached his mailbox to the gatepost, where it had been hanging askew. The whole time, he was chewing over what Hermann Eber had said. He was tempted to call Ytterberg but decided to wait until the following day. He needed time to think. A suicide was developing into a murder, in a way he didn’t understand. He began to feel once again that there was something he’d overlooked. Not only him, but all the others who were involved in the investigation. He couldn’t put his finger on it. It was just his intuition at work yet again, and he had become increasingly sceptical about its reliability.
Until now he had assumed that Hakan was the main character. But what if it was Louise? That’s where I have to start, he thought. I need to go through everything again, this time from a different perspective. But first he needed to sleep for a few hours in order to clear his mind. He undressed and got into bed. A spider scuttled along a beam in the ceiling. Then he fell asleep.
He had just finished breakfast at eight o’clock when Linda drove up to the gate. She had Klara with her. Wallander was annoyed at her coming so early in the morning. Now that he was on holiday, a rare occurrence, he wanted to spend his morning in peace.
They sat down in the garden. Wallander noticed that she had blue streaks in her hair.
‘Why the blue streaks?’
‘I think they’re attractive.’
‘What does Hans say?’
‘He also thinks they’re pretty.’
