The White Lioness Page 26

  “Not a sound,” said Victor Mabasha, ripping off the tape over the man’s mouth.

  A cop understands, he thought. He knows when a guy means what he says. He then began to wonder if a man who abducted a policeman risked hanging in Sweden.

  He got out of the car, listened, and looked around. All was quiet, apart from the passing traffic. He walked round the car, opened the door and motioned to the man to get out. Then he led him to one of the iron gates and they soon disappeared in the darkness consuming the gravel paths and gravestones.

  Victor Mabasha led him over to the burial vault where he had managed to open the iron door without difficulty. It smelled musty in the damp vault, but he was not scared by graveyards. He had often hidden among the dead in the past.

  He had bought a hurricane lamp and an extra sleeping bag. At first the cop refused to go with him into the vault, and put up a show of resistance.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you, either. But you’ve got to go in there.”

  He tucked the cop into one of the sleeping bags, lit the lamp, and went out to see if the light could be seen. But it was all dark.

  Once again he stood still and listened. The many years he had spent constantly on the alert had developed his hearing. Something had moved on a gravel path. The cop’s backup, he thought. Or some nocturnal animal.

  In the end he decided it was not a threat. He went back into the vault and squatted opposite the cop, whose name was Kurt Wallander.

  The fear Wallander had first felt had now become positive fright, perhaps even terror.

  “If you do as I say no harm will come to you,” said Victor Mabasha. “But you must answer my questions. And you must tell the truth. I know you’re a cop. I can see you’re looking at my left hand and the bandage all the time. That means you’ve found my finger. The one Konovalenko cut off. I want to tell you right away he was the one who killed the woman. It’s up to you if you believe me or not. I only came to this country to stay for a short time, and I’ve decided to kill only one person. Konovalenko. But you have to help me first by telling me where he is. Once Konovalenko’s dead, I’ll let you go right away.”

  Victor Mabasha waited for a reply. Then he remembered something he had forgotten.

  “I don’t suppose you have a shadow?” he asked. “A car following you?”

  The man shook his head.

  “You’re on your own?”

  “Yes,” said the policeman, making a face.

  “I had to make sure you didn’t start struggling,” said Victor Mabasha. “But I don’t think my punch did too much damage.”

  “No,” said the man, grimacing.

  Victor Mabasha sat there in silence. There was no rush for the moment. The cop would feel calmer if everything was quiet.

  Victor Mabasha did not blame him for being afraid. He knew how abandoned a man could feel when he was terrified.

  “Konovalenko,” he said quietly. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” said Wallander.

  Victor Mabasha eyed him up and down, and realized the cop knew who Konovalenko was, but did not actually know where he was. That was unfortunate. That would make everything more difficult, would take more time. But it wouldn’t really change anything fundamentally. Together, they would be able to find Konovalenko.

  Victor Mabasha slowly recounted everything that had happened when the woman was killed. But he said nothing about why he was in Sweden in the first place.

  “So he was the one who blew the house up?” said Wallander when he was through.

  “You know what happened now,” said Victor Mabasha. “Now it’s your turn to put me in the picture.”

  The cop had suddenly calmed down, even if he did seem put out at being in a cold, damp burial vault. Behind their backs were caskets inside sarcophagi, stacked on top of one another.

  “Do you have a name?” he asked.

  “Just call me Goli,” said Victor Mabasha. “That’ll do.”

  “And you come from South Africa?”

  “Maybe. But that’s not important.”

  “It’s important for me.”

  “The only thing that’s important for both of us is where Konovalenko is.”

  The last part of this claim was spat out. The policeman understood. The fear returned to his eyes.

  That very same moment Victor Mabasha stiffened. He had not relaxed his guard while talking to the policeman. Now his sensitive ears had picked up a noise outside the vault. He gestured to the cop to keep still. Then he took out his pistol and turned down the flame in the hurricane lamp.

  There was somebody outside the vault. And it was not an animal. The movements were too meticulously cautious.

  He leaned rapidly over the cop and grabbed him by the throat.

  “For the last time,” he hissed, “was there anybody tailing you?”

  “No. Nobody. I swear.”

  Victor Mabasha let go. Konovalenko, he thought in a fury. I don’t know how you do it, but I do know now why Jan Kleyn wants you working for him in South Africa.

  They could not stay in the vault. He eyed the hurricane lamp. That was their chance.

  “When I open the door, throw the lamp to the left,” he said to the cop, untying his hands at the same time. He turned up the flame as far as it would go, and handed it over.

  “Jump to the right,” he whispered. “Crouch down. Don’t get in my line of fire.”

  He could see the cop wanted to protest. But he raised his hand and Wallander said nothing. Then he cocked the pistol and they got ready for action.

  “I’ll count to three,” he said.

  He flung open the iron door and the cop hurled the lamp to the left. Victor Mabasha fired at the same moment. The cop came stumbling behind him and he almost overbalanced. Just then he heard shots from at least two different weapons. He threw himself to one side and crawled behind a gravestone. The cop crawled off in some other direction. The hurricane lamp lit up the burial vault. Victor Mabasha detected a movement in one corner and fired. The bullet hit the iron door and disappeared whining into the vault. Another shot shattered the hurricane lamp and everything went black. Somebody scampered away along one of the gravel paths. Then all was quiet once more.

  Kurt Wallander could feel his heart pounding like a piston against his ribs. He did not seem able to breathe properly, and thought he’d been hit. But there was no blood, and he couldn’t feel any pain apart from his tongue, which he had bitten some time ago. With great care he crawled behind a tall gravestone. He lay there absolutely still. His heart was still pounding away. Victor Mabasha was nowhere to be seen. Once he was sure he was alone, he started running. He stumbled his way forward along the gravel paths, running towards the lights on the main road, and the noise from what cars were still out. He kept running until he was outside the boundary fence of the cemetery. He stopped at a bus stop and managed to wave down a cab on its way back to the city from Arlanda airport.

  “Central Hotel,” he gasped.

  The driver eyed him up and down in suspicion.

  “I don’t know if I want you in my cab,” he said. “You’ll make everything filthy.”

  “I’m a cop, dammit,” Wallander roared. “Just drive!”

  The driver pulled away from the bus stop. When they got to the hotel he paid for the taxi without waiting for either a receipt or his change, and collected his key from the receptionist, who stared at his clothes in astonishment. It was midnight when he closed the door behind him and collapsed onto the bed.

  When he had calmed down, he called Linda.

  “Why are you calling as late as this?” she wondered.

  “I’ve been busy until now,” he said. “I didn’t have a chance to call you earlier.”

  “Why do you sound so funny? Is something the matter?”

  Wallander had a lump in his throat and was on the point of bursting into tears. But he managed to control himself.

  “It’s nothing,” he
said.

  “Are you sure everything’s all right?”

  “Everything’s fine. Why shouldn’t it be?”

  “You know better than I do.”

  “Don’t you remember from when you used to live at home that I was always out working at strange hours?”

  “I guess so,” she said. “I’d forgotten.”

  He made up his mind on the spur of the moment.

  “I’m coming over to your place in Bromma,” he said. “Don’t ask me why. I’ll explain later.”

  He left the hotel and took a cab to where she lived in Bromma. Then they sat at the kitchen table with a beer each, and he told her what had happened.

  “They say it’s good for kids to get some idea of what their parents do at work,” she said, shaking her head. “Weren’t you scared?”

  “Of course I was scared. These people have no respect at all for human life.”

  “Why don’t you send the cops after them?”

  “I’m a cop myself. And I need to think.”

  “Meanwhile they might kill a few more people.”

  He nodded.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’ll go to the station at Kungsholmen. But I felt I needed to talk to you first.”

  “I’m glad you came.”

  She went out into the hall with him.

  “Why did you ask if I was at home?” she asked suddenly, as he was about to leave. “Why didn’t you say you stopped by yesterday?”

  Wallander did not know what she meant.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “I met Mrs. Nilson when I got home, she lives next door,” she said. “She told me you’d been here asking if I was in. You have a key, don’t you?”

  “I haven’t spoken with any Mrs. Nilson,” said Wallander.

  “Maybe I got her wrong, then,” she said.

  A shiver suddenly ran down Wallander’s spine.

  “What did she say?”

  “One more time,” he said. “You came home. You met Mrs. Nilson. She said I’d been asking after you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Repeat what she said, word for word.”

  “Your dad’s been asking after you. That’s all.”

  Wallander felt scared.

  “I’ve never met Mrs. Nilson,” he said. “How can she know what I look like? How can she know I’m me?”

  It was a while before she caught on.

  “You mean it could have been somebody else? But who? Why? Who would want to pretend they were you?”

  Wallander looked at her in all seriousness. Then he switched off the light and went cautiously over to one of the living room windows.

  The street down below was deserted.

  He went back to the hall.

  “I don’t know who it was,” he said. “But you’re going back with me to Ystad tomorrow. I don’t want you around here on your own right now.”

  She could tell he was deadly serious.

  “OK,” she said simply. “Do I need to be scared tonight?”

  “You don’t need to be scared at all,” he said. “It’s just that you shouldn’t be here on your own for the next few days.”

  “Don’t say any more,” she begged. “Right now I want to know as little as possible.”

  She made up a bed for him on a mattress.

  Then he lay there in the dark, listening to her breathing. Konovalenko, he thought.

  When he was certain she was asleep, he got up and went over to the window.

  The street down below was just as deserted as before.

  Wallander had called a prerecorded information service and established there was a train to Malmö at three minutes past seven, and they left the apartment in Bromma soon after six.

  He had slept restlessly, dozing off then waking up with a start. He wanted to spend a few hours in a train. Flying would mean he got to Malmö too quickly. He needed to rest, and he needed to think.

  They came to a standstill just outside Mjölby with an engine failure, and waited there nearly an hour. But Wallander was just grateful for the extra time. They occasionally exchanged a few words. But just as often she was buried in a book, and he was lost in thought.

  Fourteen days, he thought as he watched a lonely tractor plowing what looked like a never-ending field. He tried counting the seagulls following the plow, but could not manage it.

  Fourteen days since Louise Åkerblom had disappeared. The image of her was already beginning to melt away from the two small children’s consciousness. He wondered if Robert Åkerblom would be able to cling to his God. What sort of answers could Pastor Tureson give him?

  He looked at his daughter, who had fallen asleep with her cheek resting against the window. What did her mostly solitary fear look like? Was there a landscape where their abandoned and deserted thoughts could arrange to meet, without their knowing about it? We don’t really know anybody, he thought. Least of all ourselves.

  Had Robert Åkerblom known his wife?

  The tractor disappeared into a dip in the field. Wallander imagined it sinking slowly into a bottomless pit of mud.

  The train suddenly jerked into motion. Linda woke up and looked at him.

  “Are we there?” she asked, drowsily. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “A quarter of an hour, maybe,” he said with a smile. “We haven’t reached Nässjö yet.”

  “I could use a cup of coffee,” she said, yawning. “How about you?”

  They sat in the buffet car as far as Hassleholm. For the first time he told her the full story of his two trips to Riga the previous year. She listened in fascination.

  “It doesn’t sound like you at all,” she said when he had finished.

  “That’s how I feel as well,” he said.

  “You could have died,” she said. “Did you never think about me and Mom?”

  “I thought about you,” he said. “But I didn’t think about your mother.”

  When they got to Malmö, they only had to wait half an hour for a train to Ystad. They were back in his apartment shortly before four. He made up a bed for her in the guest room, and when he went to look for some clean sheets it struck him that he had forgotten all about the time he had booked in the laundry room. At about seven they went out to one of the pizzerias on Hamngatan and had dinner. They were both tired, and were back home again before nine.

  She called her grandfather, and Wallander stood by her side, listening. She promised to go and see him the next day.

  He was surprised at how his father could sound so different when he talked to her.

  He thought he had better call Lovén. But he put it off, since he was not yet sure how he was going to explain why he did not contact the police immediately after the incident in the cemetery. He could not understand that himself. It was a breach of duty, no doubt about it. Had he started to lose control over his own judgment? Or had he been so scared that he lost the ability to act?

  Long after she fell asleep he stood in the window, looking down at the deserted street.

  The images in his mind’s eye were alternating between Victor Mabasha and the man known as Konovalenko.

  While Wallander was standing in his window in Ystad, Vladimir Rykoff was noting that the police were still interested in his apartment. He was two floors higher up in the same building. It was Konovalenko who once suggested they should have an escape route in case the usual apartment could not or ought not to be used. It was also Konovalenko who explained how the safest haven was not always the one furthest away. The best plan is to do the unexpected. And so Rykoff rented an identical apartment in Tania’s name, two floors higher up. That made it easier to move the necessary clothes and other baggage.

  The previous day Konovalenko had told them to leave the apartment. He questioned Vladimir and Tania, and realized the cop from Ystad was evidently no fool. He should not be underestimated. Nor could they exclude the possibility that the cops might search the place. But most of all, Konovalenko was afraid Vladimir
and Tania might be subjected to more serious interrogation. He was not convinced they were always capable of distinguishing between what they could say, and what not.

  Konovalenko had also wondered whether the best solution might be to shoot them. But he decided that was unnecessary. He still needed Vladimir’s legwork. Besides, the cops would only get more excited than they already were.

  They moved to the other apartment that same night. Konovalenko had given Vladimir and Tania strict instructions to stay at home the next few days.

  Among the first things Konovalenko learned as a young KGB officer was that there were deadly sins in the shadowy world of the intelligence service. Being a servant of secrecy meant joining a brotherhood where the most important rules were written in invisible ink. The worst sin of all, of course, was being a double agent. Betraying one’s own organization, but at the same time doing it in the service of an enemy power. In the mystical hell of the intelligence service, the moles were closest to the center of the inferno.

  There were other deadly sins. One was to arrive too late.

  Not just to a meeting, emptying a secret letter box, a kidnapping, or even nothing more complicated than a journey. Just as bad was being too late with regard to oneself, one’s own plans, one’s own decisions.

  Nevertheless, that is what had happened to Konovalenko early in the morning of May 7. The mistake he made was to put too much faith in his BMW. As a young KGB officer, his superiors had always taught him to plan a journey on the basis of two parallel possibilities. If one vehicle proved to be unserviceable, there should always be time to resort to a planned alternative. But that Friday morning, when his BMW suddenly stopped on St. Erik’s Bridge and refused to start again, he had no alternative. Of course, he could take a cab or the subway. Besides, since he did not know if and when the cop or his daughter would leave the apartment in Bromma, it was not even certain he would be too late, anyway. Nevertheless, it seemed to him like the mistake, all the guilt, was his, not the car’s. He spent nearly twenty minutes trying to restart it, and it seemed like he was trying to bring about a resurrection. But the engine was dead as far as he was concerned.