The White Lioness Read online

  “No.”

  “A man called Konovalenko did that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Only he can tell you that.”

  “A guy comes here from South Africa, another from Russia. They meet up at a remote house in Skane.They have a powerful radio transmitter there, and they have weapons. Why?”

  “That’s how it was arranged.”

  “By whom?”

  “By the ones who asked us to make the journey.”

  We’re going around in circles, Wallander thought. I’m not getting any answers.

  But he tried again, forced himself to make one more effort.

  “I’ve gathered this was some kind of preparation,” he said. “A preparation for some crime or other that was going to take place back home where you come from. A crime you were to be responsible for. A murder? But who was going to be killed? Why?”

  “I’ve tried to explain what my country’s like.”

  “I’m asking you straightforward questions, and I want straightforward answers.”

  “Maybe the answers have to be what they are.”

  “I don’t understand you,” said Wallander after a long silence. “You’re a man who doesn’t hesitate to kill, and you do it to order if I understand you rightly. At the same time you seem to me a sensitive person who’s suffering as a result of circumstances in your country. I can’t make it all add up.”

  “Nothing adds up for a black man living in South Africa.”

  Then Victor Mabasha went on to explain how things were in his battered and bruised homeland. Wallander had difficulty believing his ears. When Victor Mabasha finally finished, it seemed to Wallander that he had been on a long journey. His guide had shown him places he never knew existed.

  I live in a country where we’ve been taught to believe that all truths are simple, he thought. And also that the truth is clear and unassailable. Our whole legal system is based on that principle. Now I’m starting to realize that the opposite is true. The truth is complicated, multi-faceted, contradictory. On the other hand, lies are black and white. If one’s view of humans, of human life, is disrespectful and contemptuous, then truth takes on another aspect than if life is regarded as inviolable.

  He contemplated Victor Mabasha, who was looking him straight in the eye.

  “Did you kill Louise Åkerblom?” asked Wallander, getting the impression that this was the last time he would ask.

  “No,” replied Victor Mabasha. “Afterward, I lost one of my fingers for the sake of her soul.”

  “You still don’t want to tell me what you’re supposed to do when you get back?”

  Before Victor Mabasha replied Wallander felt that something had changed. Something in the black man’s face was different. Thinking about it later, he thought maybe it was that the expressionless mask suddenly started to melt away.

  “I still can’t say what,” said Victor Mabasha. “But it won’t happen.”

  “I don’t think I understand,” said Wallander slowly.

  “Death will not come from my hands,” said Victor Mabasha. “But I can’t stop it coming from somebody else’s.”

  “An assassination?”

  “That it was my job to carry out. But now I’m washing my hands of it. I’m going to drop it and walk away.”

  “You’re talking in riddles,” said Wallander. “What are you going to drop? I want to know who was going to be assassinated.”

  But Victor Mabasha did not answer. He shook his head, and Wallander accepted, albeit reluctantly, that he would not get any further. Afterward he would also realize he still had a long way to go before he could recognize the truth in circumstances outside his normal range of experience. To put it briefly, it was only later that it dawned on him that the last admission, when Victor Mabasha allowed his mask to drop, was false through and through. He did not have the slightest intention of walking away from his assignment. But he realized the lie was necessary if he were to receive the help he needed to get out of the country. To be believed, he was forced to lie—and to do so skillfully enough to deceive the Swedish cop.

  Wallander had no more questions for the moment.

  He felt tired. But at the same time, he seemed to have achieved what he wanted to achieve. The assassination was foiled, at least as far as Victor Mabasha was concerned. Assuming he was telling the truth. That would give his unknown colleagues in South Africa more time to sort things out. And he was bound to think that whatever it was Victor Mabasha was not going to do must mean something positive as far as the blacks in South Africa were concerned.

  That will do, thought Wallander. I’ll contact the South African police via Interpol and tell them all I know. That’s about all I can do. All that’s left now is our friend Konovalenko. If I try to get Per Åkeson to have Victor Mabasha arrested, there’s a big risk that everything could become even more confused. Besides, the chances of Konovalenko fleeing the country would only increase. I don’t need to know any more. Now I can carry out my last illegal action as far as Victor Mabasha is concerned.

  Help him to get out of here.

  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 Lovén 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 Lovén 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 Lovén. “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 Lovén. “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 Lovén.

  “They were in the same place when Louise Åkerblom 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 Lovén. “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 Lovén. “Why?”

  “The only person who can answer that is Konovalenko,” said Wallander.

  “Or the African,” said Lovén. “You’re forgetting him, Kurt.”

  After the telephone call to Lovén, Wallander finally made up his mind to get Victor Mabasha out of the count
ry. But before he could do anything he must be quite certain the African wasn’t the one who had shot Louise Åkerblom 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. Björk 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 Björk’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 Skårby. 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 most I can do is wonder whether there might be some other job I’d enjoy.”

  “You’ll be a cop as long as you live,” said Rydberg. “You’re like me. Just acknowledge that.”

  Wallander banished all thought of Rydberg from his mind, took out a blank note pad, and reached for a pen.

  Then he just sat there. Questions and answers, he thought. That’s probably where I’m making the first mistake. Lots of people, not least those who come from continents a long way away from ours, have to be allowed to tell the story their own way in order to be able to formulate an answer. That’s something I ought to have learned by now, considering the number of Africans, Arabs, and Latin Americans I’ve met in various contexts. They are often scared by the hurry we’re always in, and they think it’s really a sign of our contempt. Not having time for a person, not being able to sit in silence together with somebody, that’s the same as rejecting them, as being scornful about them.

  Tell their own story, he wrote at the top of the note pad.

  He thought that might put him on the right path.

  Tell their own story, that’s all.

  He slid the note pad on one side and put his feet up on his desk. Then he called home and was told that everything was quiet. He promised to be back in a couple of hours.

  He absentmindedly read through the memo on the stolen horses. It told him nothing more than that three valuable animals had disappeared on the night of May 5. They had been put into their stalls for the night. The next morning, when one of the stable girls opened the doors at about half past five, the stalls were empty.

  He glanced at his watch and decided to drive out to the stables. After speaking to three grooms and the owner’s personal secretary, Wallander was inclined to believe the whole thing could very well be a sophisticated form of insurance fraud. He made a few notes and said he’d be coming back.

  On the way home to Ystad he stopped by a café for a cup of coffee.

  He wondered if they had race horses in South Africa.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Sikosi Tsiki came to Sweden on the evening of Wednesday, May 13.

  That very same evening he was told by Konovalenko he would be staying in the southern part of the country. This was where his preparatory training would take place, and he would also leave the country from there. When Konovalenko heard from Jan Kleyn that the replacement was on his way, he had considered the possibility of setting up camp in the Stockholm area. There were lots of possibilities, especially around Arlanda, where the noise of airplanes landing and taking off would drown most other sounds. The necessary shooting practice could take place there. Furthermore there was the problem of Victor Mabasha and the Swedish policeman he hated. If they were still in Stockholm, he would have to stay there until they had been liquidated. Nor could he ignore the probability that the general level of vigilance throughout the country would be higher, now that he had kille
d the cop. To be on the safe side he decided to proceed on two fronts at the same time. He kept Tania with him in Stockholm, but sent Rykoff to the southern part of the country again with orders to find a suitable house in a remote area. Rykoff had then pointed out on a map an area to the north of Skane called Småland, claiming it was much easier to find remotely situated houses there. But Konovalenko wanted to be near Ystad. If they did not catch Victor Mabasha and the policeman in Stockholm, they would turn up sooner or later in Wallander’s home town. He was as sure of that as he was that some kind of unexpected relationship had formed between the black man and Wallander. He had some difficulty in understanding what was going on. But nevertheless he was increasingly sure they would be not far away from each other. If he could find one of them, he would also find the other.

  Through a travel agency in Ystad, Rykoff rented a house north east of Ystad, on the way to Tomelilla. The location could have been better, but adjacent to the site was an abandoned quarry that could be used for target practice. As Konovalenko had decreed that Tania could go with them if they did in fact decide to go ahead with this alternative, Rykoff did not need to fill the freezer with food. Instead and on Konovalenko’s orders, he spent his time finding out where Wallander lived, and then keeping his apartment under observation. But Wallander did not show up. The day before Sikosi Tsiki was due to arrive, Tuesday, May 12, Konovalenko decided to stay in Stockholm. Although none of those he sent out looking for Victor Mabasha had seen him, Konovalenko had the distinct feeling he was lying low somewhere in town. He also found it difficult to believe that a cop as careful and well organized as Wallander would return too quickly to his home, which he must expect to be watched.

  Nevertheless that is where Rykoff finally found him, shortly after five o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. The door opened and Wallander stepped out onto the street. He was on his own, and Rykoff, who was sitting in his car, could see right away he was on guard. He left the building on foot, and Rykoff realized he would be spotted at once if he tried to follow him in his car. He was still there ten minutes later when the front door opened once again. Rykoff stiffened. This time two people left the building. The young girl had to be Wallander’s daughter, whom he had never seen before. Behind her was Victor Mabasha. They crossed the street, got into a car, and drove off. Rykoff did not bother following them this time either. Instead he stayed where he was and dialed the number of the apartment in Jarfalla where Konovalenko was staying with Tania. She answered. Rykoff greeted her briefly and asked to speak to Konovalenko. After hearing what Rykoff had to say, Konovalenko made up his mind right away. He and Tania would go to Skåne early the next day. They would stay there until they had collected Sikosi Tsiki and killed Wallander and Victor Mabasha; the daughter as well, if necessary. Then they could make up their minds what to do next. But the flat in Järfälla would be a possibility.