The Man Who Smiled Part 20

"We have to make sure we do not fail in too much of what we set ourselves to do. We have to lose our way so cleverly in the fog that Harderberg believes it. We have to lose our way and be following the right road at the same time."

She went back to her office to fetch a notepad. Meanwhile, Wallander sat listening to a dog barking somewhere inside the station. When she came back, it struck him again that she was an attractive woman, despite the fact that she was very pale, and had blotchy skin and dark rings under her eyes.

They went through Wallander's p.r.o.nouncements once again. All the time Hoglund kept coming up with relevant comments, finding flaws in Wallander's reasoning, homing in on contradictions. He noticed, however reluctantly, that he was inspired by her, and that she was very clear-headed. It struck him - at 2 a.m. - that he had not had a conversation like this since Rydberg died. He imagined Rydberg coming back to life and putting his vast experience at the disposal of this pale young woman.

They left the station together. It was cold, the sky was full of stars, the ground was covered in frost.

"We'll have a long meeting tomorrow," Wallander said. "There'll be any number of objections, but I'll talk to Bjork and keson ahead of time. I'll ask Per to sit in on the meeting. If we don't get them on our side, we'll lose too much time trying to dig up new facts just in order to convince them."

She seemed surprised. "Surely they must see we're right?"

"We can't be sure of that."

"It sometimes seems to me that the Swedish police force is very slow to catch on to things."

"You don't need to be a recent graduate of Police Training College to reach that conclusion," Wallander said. "Bjork has calculated that given the current increase in administrators and others who don't actually do work in the field, as investigators or on traffic duties, that kind of thing, all normal police work will grind to a halt around 2010. By which time every police officer will just sit around all day pa.s.sing bits of paper to other police officers."

She laughed. "Maybe we're in the wrong job," she said.

"Not the wrong job," Wallander said, "but maybe we're living at the wrong time."

They said goodnight and drove home in their own cars. Wallander kept an eye on the rear-view mirror, but could not see anybody following him. He was very tired, but at the same time inspired by the fact that a door had opened up into the current investigation. The coming days were going to be very strenuous.

On the morning of Sat.u.r.day, November 6, Wallander phoned Bjork at 7.00. His wife answered, and asked Wallander to try again a few minutes later as her husband was in the bath. Wallander used the time to phone keson, who he knew was an early riser and generally up and about by 5.00. keson picked up the phone immediately, Wallander summarised briefly what had happened, and why Harderberg had become relevant to the investigation in quite a new light. keson listened without interruption. When Wallander had finished, he made just one comment.

"Are you convinced you can make this stick?"

Wallander replied without a moment's hesitation: "Yes," he said. "I think this can solve the problem for us"

"In that case, of course, I've no objection to our concentrating on digging deeper. But make sure it's all discreet. Say nothing to the media without consulting me first. What we need least of all is a Palme situation here in Ystad."

Wallander could quite see what keson meant. The unsolved a.s.sa.s.sination of the Swedish prime minister, a mystery now getting on for ten years old, had not only stunned the police but had also shocked nearly everyone in Sweden. Too many people, both inside and outside the police force, were aware that in all probability the murder had not been solved because at an early stage the investigation had been dominated and mishandled in scandalous fas.h.i.+on by a district police chief who had put himself in charge in spite of being incompetent to run a criminal investigation. Every local force discussed over and over, sometimes angrily and sometimes contemptuously, how it had been possible for the murder, the murderer and the motive to be brushed under the carpet with such nonchalance. One of the most catastrophic errors in that disastrous investigation had been the insistence of the officers in charge on pursuing certain leads without first establis.h.i.+ng priorities. Wallander agreed with keson: an investigation had to be more or less concluded before the police had the green light to put all their eggs into one basket.

"I'd like you to be there when we discuss the case this morning," Wallander said. "We have to be absolutely clear about what we're doing. I don't want the investigation team to be split. That would prevent us from being able to react rapidly to any new development."

"I'll be there," keson said. "I was supposed to be playing golf today. Mind you, given the weather, I'd rather not."

"It's probably pretty hot in Uganda," Wallander said. "Or was it the Sudan?"

"I haven't even raised the subject with my wife yet," keson said in a low voice.

After that call, Wallander drank another cup of coffee and then called Bjork again. This time it was the man himself who answered. Wallander had decided not to say anything about what had happened the first time he visited Farnholm Castle. He would rather not do that on the phone, he needed to be face to face with Bjork. He was brief and to the point.

"We need to meet and discuss what's happened," Wallander said. "Something, that is, which is going to change the whole direction of the case."

"What's happened?" Bjork said.

"I'd sooner not discuss it over the phone," Wallander said.

"You're not suggesting our phones are being tapped, I hope?" Bjork said. "We need to keep things in perspective after all."

"It's not that," Wallander said, although it struck him that he had never considered that possibility. It was too late to do anything about it now - he had already told keson how things were going to develop from now on.

"I need to see you briefly before the investigation meeting starts," he said.

"OK, half an hour from now," Bjork said. "But I don't understand why you're being so secretive."

"I'm not being secretive," Wallander said. "But it's sometimes better to discuss crucial things face to face."

"That sounds pretty dramatic to me," Bjork said. "I wonder if we shouldn't contact Per."

"I've done that already," Wallander said. "I'll be in your office in half an hour."

Before meeting Bjork, Wallander sat in his car outside the police station for a few minutes, gathering his thoughts. He considered cancelling the whole thing, perhaps there were more important things to do; but then he acknowledged that he had to make it clear to Bjork that Harderberg must be treated like any other Swedish citizen. Failure to reach that understanding would lead inevitably to a crisis of confidence that would end up with Wallander's resignation. He thought how quickly things had moved. It was only just over a week since he had been pacing up and down the beach at Skagen, preparing to say goodbye for ever to his life as a police officer. Now he was feeling that he had to defend his position and his integrity as a police officer. He must write about all this to Baiba as soon as he could.

Would she be able to understand why everything had changed? Did he really understand it himself?

He went to Bjdrk's office and sat on his visitors' sofa.

"What on earth's happened?" Bjork said.

"There's something I must say before we go into the meeting," Wallander said, and realised his voice sounded hesitant.

"Don't tell me you've decided to resign again," Bjork said, looking worried.

"No," Wallander said. "I have to know why you phoned Farnholm Castle and warned them that the Ystad police were going to contact them in connection with the murder investigation. I have to know why you didn't tell me or the others that you had phoned."

Wallander could see Bjork was put out and annoyed.

"Alfred Harderberg is an important man in our society," Bjork said. "He's not suspected of any criminal activity. It was purely politeness on my part. Might I ask how you know about the phone call?"

"They were too well prepared when I got there."

"I don't see that as being negative," Bjork said. "Given the circ.u.mstances."

"But it was inappropriate even so," Wallander said. "Inappropriate in more ways than one. And besides, such goings-on can create unrest in the investigation team. We have to be absolutely frank with one another."

"I have to say that I find it difficult being lectured by you - of all people - on frankness," Bjork said, no longer hiding the fact that he was furious.

"My shortcomings are no excuse for others acting in that way," Wallander said. "Not my superior in any case."

Bjork rose to his feet. "I will not allow myself to be addressed in that manner," he said, going red in the face. "It was pure politeness, nothing more. In the circ.u.mstances, a routine conversation. It couldn't have had any adverse effect."

"Those circ.u.mstances no longer apply," Wallander said, realising he was not going to get any further. The important thing now was to apprise Bjork as quickly as possible as to how the whole situation had changed.

Bjork was staring at him, still on his feet. "Express yourself more clearly," he said. "I don't understand what you mean."

"Information has come to light which suggests that Alfred Harderberg could be behind everything that's happened," Wallander said. "That would surely imply that the circ.u.mstances have changed quite dramatically."

Bjork sat down again, incredulous. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that we have reason to believe that Harderberg is directly or indirectly mixed up in the murder of the two solicitors. And the attempted murder of Mrs Duner. And the blowing up of my car."

Bjork stared at him in disbelief. "Am I really expected to take that seriously?"

"Yes, you are," Wallander said. "keson does."

Wallander gave Bjork a brisk summary of what had happened. When he had finished, Bjork sat looking at his hands before responding.

"It would be very unpleasant, of course, if this were to turn out to be true," he said in the end.

"Murder and explosions are certainly unpleasant things," Wallander said.

"We must be very, very careful," Bjork said, apparently ignoring Wallander's comment. "We can't accept anything short of conclusive proof before we consider making a move."

"We don't normally do that," Wallander said. "Why should this case be any different?"

"I have no doubt at all that this will turn out to be a dead end," Bjork said, getting to his feet to indicate that the conversation was over.

"That is a possibility," Wallander said. "So is the opposite."

It was 8.10 when he left Bjork's office. He fetched a cup of coffee and called in at Hoglund's office, but she had not yet arrived. He went to his office to telephone Waldemar Kge, the taxi driver in Simrishamn. He got through to him on his mobile and explained what it was about.

He made a note that he should send Kge a cheque for 230 kronor. He wondered if he should phone the haulage contractor his father had punched and try to persuade him not to take the case to court, but decided against it. The meeting was due to start at 8.30. He needed to concentrate until then.

He stood at the window. It was a grey day, very cold and damp. Late autumn already, winter just round the corner. I'm here, he thought: I wonder where Harderberg is right now. At Farnholm Castle? Or 30,000 feet up, in his Gulfstream, on the way to and from some intricate negotiation? What had Gustaf Torstensson and Borman discovered? What had really happened? What if Hoglund and I are right, if two police officers of different generations, each with their own view of what the world is like, have come to the same conclusion? A conclusion that might even lead us to the truth?

Wallander came into the conference room at 8.30. Bjork was already at the short end of the table, keson was standing by the window, looking out, and Martinsson and Svedberg were deep in conversation about what sounded to Wallander like salaries. Hoglund was in her usual place opposite Bjork at the other short end of the table. Neither Martinsson nor Svedberg seemed to be worried by keson being there.

Wallander said good morning to Hoglund. "How do you think this is going to go?" he asked softly.

"When I woke up I thought I must have dreamed it all," she said. "Have you spoken yet to Bjork and keson?"

"keson knows most of what happened," he said. "I only had time to give Bjork the short version."

"What did keson say?"

"He'll go along with us."

Bjork tapped on the table with a pencil and those who were still standing sat down.

"All I have to say is that Kurt is going to do the talking," Bjork said. "Unless I am much mistaken, it looks as though there might have been a dramatic development."

Wallander wondered what to say, his mind a sudden blank. Then he found the thread and began. He went through in detail what Hoglund's colleague in Eskilstuna had been able to enlighten them about, and he set out the ideas that had developed in the early hours of the morning, about how they should proceed without waking the sleeping bear. When he had finished - and his account lasted 25 minutes - he asked Hoglund if she had anything to add, but she shook her head: Wallander had said all there was to say.

"So, that's where we've got to," Wallander said. "Because this means that we have no choice but to rea.s.sess our priorities for the investigation, we have got Per with us. Another consideration is whether we need to call in outside help at this stage. It's going to be a very tricky and in many ways a laborious process, penetrating Harderberg's world, especially since we can't afford to let him notice how interested in him we are."

Wallander was not sure whether he had succeeded in putting across all the things he had wanted to. Hoglund smiled and nodded at him, but when he studied the other faces around the table he still could not tell.

"This really is something for us to get our teeth into," keson said when the silence had lasted long enough. "We must be clear about the fact that Alfred Harderberg has an impeccable reputation in the Swedish business community. We can expect nothing but hostility if we start questioning that reputation. On the other hand, I have to say there are sufficient grounds for us to start taking a special interest in him. Naturally, I find it difficult to believe that Harderberg was personally involved in the murders or the other events, and of course it might be that things happen in his set-up over which he has no control."

"I've always dreamed of putting one of those gentlemen away," Svedberg suddenly said.

"A most regrettable att.i.tude in a police officer," Bjork said, unable to control his displeasure. "It shouldn't be necessary for me to remind you all of our status as neutral civil servants - "

"Let's stick to the point," keson interrupted. "And perhaps we should also remind ourselves that in our role as servants of the law we are paid to be suspicious in circ.u.mstances in which normally we would not need to be."

"So we have the go-ahead to concentrate on Harderberg, is that right?" Wallander asked.

"On certain conditions," Bjork said. "I agree with Per that we have to be very careful and prudent, but I also want to stress that I shall regard it as dereliction of duty if anything we do is leaked outside these four walls. No statements are to be made to the press without their first having been authorised by me."

"We gathered that," said Martinsson, speaking for the first time. "I'm more concerned to find out how we're going to manage to run a vacuum cleaner over the whole of Harderberg's empire when there are so few of us. How are we going to coordinate our investigation with the fraud squads in Stockholm and Malmo? How are we going to cooperate with the tax authorities? I wonder if we shouldn't approach it quite differently."

"How would we do that?" Wallander said.

"Hand the whole thing over to the national CID," Martinsson said. "Then they can arrange cooperation with whichever squads and authorities they like. I think we have to concede that we're too small to handle this."

"That thought had occurred to me too," keson said. "But at this stage, before we've even made an initial investigation, the fraud squads in Stockholm and Malmo would probably turn us down. I don't know if you realise this, but they're probably even more overworked than we are. There are not many of us, but they are so understaffed they're verging on collapse. We'll have to take charge of this ourselves for the time being at least. Do the best we can. Nevertheless, I'll see if I can interest the fraud squads in helping us. You never know."

Looking back, Wallander had no doubt that it was what keson had to say about the hopeless situation the national CID were in that established once and for all the basis of the investigation. The murder investigation would be centred on Harderberg and the links between him and Lars Borman and him and the dead solicitors. Wallander and his team would also be on their own. It was true that the Ystad police were always having to deal with fraud cases of various kinds, but this was so much bigger than anything they had come across before, and they did not know of any financial impropriety a.s.sociated with the deaths of the two solicitors.

In short, they had to start looking for an answer to the question: what were they really looking for?

When Wallander wrote to Baiba in Riga a few nights later and told her about "the secret hunt", as he had started to call the investigation, he realised that as he wrote to her in English, he would have to explain that hunting in Sweden was different from an English fox hunt. "There's a hunter in every police officer," he had written. "There is rarely, if ever, a fanfare of horns when a Swedish police officer is after his prey. But we find the foxes we are after even so. Without us, the Swedish hen house would long since have been empty: all that remained would have been a scattering of bloodstained feathers blowing around in the autumn breeze."

The whole team approached their task with enthusiasm. Bjork removed the lid of the box where generally he kept overtime locked away. He urged everybody on, reminding them again that not a word of their activities must leak out. keson had removed his jacket, loosened his tie which was usually so neatly knotted, and become one of the workers, even if he never let slip his authority as ultimate leader of the operation that was now getting under way.

But it was Wallander who called the shots; he could feel that, and it gave him frequent moments of deep satisfaction. Thanks to unexpected circ.u.mstances and the goodwill of his colleagues, which he scarcely deserved, he had been given an opportunity to atone for some of the guilt he felt after rejecting the confidence Sten Torstensson had shown in him by coming to Skagen and asking for his help. Leading the search for Sten's murderer and the murderer of his father was enabling Wallander to redeem himself. He had been so preoccupied with his own private woes that he had failed to hear Sten's cry for help, had not allowed it to penetrate the barricades he had built around his all-consuming depression.

He wrote another letter to Baiba that he never posted. In it he tried to explain to her, and hence also to himself, just what it meant, killing a man last year and now, adding to his guilt, rejecting Sten Torstensson's plea for help. The conclusion he seemed to reach, even though he doubted it deep down, was that Sten's death had started to trouble him more than the events of the previous year on the fog-bound training area, surrounded by invisible sheep.

But nothing of this was discernible to those around him. In the canteen his colleagues would comment in confidence that Wallander's return to duty and to health was as much a surprise as it would have been if he had taken up his bed and walked when he had been at his lowest. Martinsson, who was sometimes unable to hold his cynicism in check, said: "What Kurt needed was a challenging murder. Not some nervous, carelessly executed manslaughter committed on the spur of the moment. The dead solicitors, a mine in a garden and some Far Eastern explosive mixture in his petrol tank - that was just what he needed to bring him back to the fold."

The others agreed that there was more than a grain of truth in what Martinsson said.

It took them a week to complete the exhaustive survey of Harderberg's empire that would be the platform for the rest of the investigation. During that week neither Wallander nor any of his colleagues slept for more than five hours at a time. They would later look back at that period and conclude that a mouse really could roar if it had to. Even keson, who was rarely impressed by anything, had to doff his non-existent hat to what the team had achieved.

"Not a word of this must get out," he said to Wallander one evening when they had gone outside for a breath of fresh autumn air, trying to drive away their tiredness. Wallander did not at first understand what he meant.

"If this gets out, the Central Police Bureau and the Ministry of Justice will set up an inquiry that will eventually lead to something called the 'Ystad Model' being presented to the Swedish public: how to achieve outstanding results with minimal resources. We'll be used as proof that the Swedish police force is not undermanned at all. We'll be used as evidence to show that in fact there are too many police officers. So many that they keep getting in each other's way and that gives rise to a great waste of money and deteriorating clear-up rates."

"But we haven't achieved any results at all yet," Wallander said.

"I'm talking about the Central Police Bureau," keson said. "I'm talking about the mysterious world of politics. A world where ma.s.ses of words are used to camouflage the fact that they're doing nothing but straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. Where they go to bed every night and pray that the next day they'll be able to turn water into wine. I'm not talking about the fact that we haven't yet discovered who killed the two solicitors. I'm talking about the fact that we now know that Alfred Harderberg is not the model citizen, superior to all others, that we thought he was."

That was absolutely true. During that hectic week they had managed to build a bird's-eye view of Harderberg's empire that naturally was by no means comprehensive, but they could see that the gaps - indeed, the black holes - indicated quite clearly that the man who lived in Farnholm Castle should not be allowed out of their sight for one minute.

When keson and Wallander stood outside the police station that night, on November 14 to be exact, they had got far enough to be able to draw certain conclusions. The first phase was over, the beaters had done their work and the hunters could prepare to move in. Nothing had leaked out, and they had begun to discern the shape and nature of the leviathan in which Lars Borman and more especially Gustaf Torstensson must have discovered something it would have been safer for them not to have seen.