The White Lioness Read online

  Konovalenko drove down to Skåne with Tania overnight. Rykoff met them at a parking lot on the western edge of Ystad. They drove straight to the house he had rented. Later that afternoon Konovalenko also paid a visit to Mariagatan. He spent some time observing the block where Wallander lived. On the way back he also paused for a while on the hill outside the police station.

  The situation seemed very simple to him. He could not afford to fail again. That would mean the end of his dreams about a future life in South Africa. He was already living dangerously, and knew it. He had not told Jan Kleyn the truth, not admitted that Victor Mabasha was still alive. There was a risk, albeit a small one, that Jan Kleyn had someone passing on information without Konovalenko knowing. He had occasionally sent out scouts to see if they could find anyone shadowing him. But nobody had come across any kind of surveillance that might have been organized by Jan Kleyn.

  Konovalenko and Rykoff spent the day deciding how to proceed. Konovalenko made up his mind from the very first to act resolutely and ruthlessly. It would be a brutal, direct attack.

  “What kind of weapons do we have?” he asked.

  “Practically anything you like short of a rocket launcher,” Rykoff had told him. “We have explosives, long-distance detonators, grenades, automatic rifles, shotguns, pistols, radio equipment.”

  Konovalenko drank a glass of vodka. He would really like most of all to capture Wallander alive. There were some questions he wanted answering before he killed him. But he banished the thought. He could not afford to take any risks.

  Then he made up his mind what to do.

  “Tomorrow morning when Wallander is out, Tania can enter the building and see what the staircase and apartment doors look like,” he said. “You can pretend to be distributing advertising brochures. We can pick up some leaflets from a supermarket. Then the building has to be kept under constant observation. If we’re certain they’re at home tomorrow evening, we’ll make our move then. We’ll blow up the door and rush in with guns blazing. If nothing unexpected happens we’ll kill the pair of them and make our escape.”

  “There are three of them,” observed Rykoff.

  “Two or three,” said Konovalenko. “We can’t let anybody survive.”

  “This new African I’m going to pick up this evening, will he be in on it?” wondered Rykoff.

  “No,” said Konovalenko. “He waits here with Tania.”

  His expression was serious as he eyed Rykoff and Tania.

  “The fact is, Victor Mabasha has been dead for several days,” he said. “At least, that’s what Sikosi Tsiki has to believe. Is that clear?”

  They both nodded.

  Konovalenko poured himself and Tania another glass of vodka. Rykoff refused, since he was going to prepare the explosives and did not want to be affected by the alcohol. Besides, he was going to drive to Limhamn later to collect Sikosi Tsiki.

  “Let’s put on a welcoming dinner for the man from South Africa,” said Konovalenko. “None of us enjoys sitting at dinner with an African. But sometimes you have to do it for the sake of the job in hand.”

  “Victor Mabasha didn’t like Russian food,” said Tania.

  Konovalenko thought for a moment.

  “Chicken,” he said eventually. “All Africans like chicken.”

  At six o’clock Rykoff met Sikosi Tsiki at Limhamn. A few hours later they were all sitting around the table. Konovalenko raised his glass.

  “You have a day off tomorrow,” he said. “We get started on Friday.”

  Sikosi Tsiki nodded. The replacement was just as silent as his predecessor.

  Quiet guys, thought Konovalenko. Ruthless when the chips are down. Just as ruthless as I am.

  Wallander devoted most of the first few days after his return to Ystad to planning various forms of criminal activities. He paved the way for Victor Mabasha’s escape from Sweden with dogged persistence. After much soul-searching he had decided it was the only way to get the situation under control. He had severe pangs of guilt, and could not avoid being constantly reminded that what he was doing was downright reprehensible. Even if Victor Mabasha had not killed Louise Åkerblom himself, he was present when the murder was committed. Moreover, he had stolen cars and robbed a store. As if that were not enough, he was an illegal immigrant in Sweden, and had been planning to commit a serious crime back home in South Africa. Wallander convinced himself that in spite of everything, this was a way of preventing the crime. In addition, Konovalenko could be prevented from killing Victor Mabasha. He would be punished for the murder of Louise Åkerblom once he was caught. What he intended to do now was to send a message to his colleagues in South Africa via Interpol. But first he wanted to get Victor Mabasha out of the country. So as not to attract unnecessary attention, he contacted a travel agency in Malmö to find out how Victor Mabasha could get a flight to Lusaka in Zambia. Mabasha had told him he could not get into South Africa without a visa. But with a fake Swedish passport, he did not need a visa to enter Zambia. He still had enough money for both an airline ticket and the next stage of the journey from Zambia, via Zimbabwe and Botswana. Once he got to South Africa he would slip over the border at an unguarded point. The travel agent in Malmö explained the various choices. They decided in the end that Victor Mabasha would go to London and then take a Zambia Airways flight from there to Lusaka. It meant Wallander would have to get him a false passport. That caused him not only the severest practical problems, but also the worst pangs of conscience. Arranging a false passport at his own police station seemed to him a betrayal of his profession. It did not make things any better to know he had made Victor Mabasha promise to destroy the passport as soon as he had gone through the checks in Zambia.

  “The very same day,” Wallander had insisted. “And it must be burned.”

  Wallander bought a cheap camera and took passport photographs. The big problem that could not be resolved until the last minute was how Victor Mabasha would get through Swedish passport control. Even if he had a Swedish passport that was technically genuine and did not appear on the blacklist held by the border police, there was a big risk that something could go wrong. After a lot of thought Wallander decided to get Victor Mabasha out via the hovercraft terminal in Malmö. He would buy him a first-class ticket. He assumed the embarkation card might help to ensure that passport officials were not especially interested in him. Linda would play the role of his girlfriend. They would kiss goodbye right under the noses of the immigration officials, and Wallander would teach him a few phrases of perfect Swedish.

  The connections and the confirmed tickets meant he would be leaving Sweden on the morning of May 15. Wallander would have to produce a false passport for him by then.

  On Tuesday afternoon he completed a passport application form for his father, and took with him two photographs. The whole procedures for issuing passports had recently been revised. The document was now produced while the applicant waited. Wallander hung around until the woman dealing with passports had finished with the last of her customers and was about to close.

  “Excuse me for being a little late,” said Wallander. “But my dad is going on a senior citizens trip to France. He managed to burn his passport when he was sorting some old papers.”

  “These things happen,” said the woman, whose name was Irma. “Does he have to have it today?”

  “If possible,” said Wallander. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “You can’t solve the murder of that woman either,” she said, taking the photos and the application form.

  Wallander watched closely as she created the passport. Afterwards, when he had the document in his hand, he was confident he could repeat exactly what she had done.

  “Impressively simple,” he said.

  “But boring,” said Irma. “Why is it that all jobs get more boring when they’re made easier?”

  “Become a cop,” said Wallander. “What we do is never boring.”

  “I am a cop,” she said. “Besides, I don’t think I’d want
to change places with you. It must be awful, pulling a body out of a well. What does it feel like, in fact?”

  “I don’t really know,” said Wallander. “I suppose it feels so awful you get numb and so you don’t feel anything at all. But you can bet your boots there’ll be some committee in the Ministry of Justice looking into what policemen feel when they pull dead women out of wells.”

  He stayed chatting while she locked up. All the things you needed to make a passport were locked away in a cupboard. But he knew where the keys were kept.

  They had decided Victor Mabasha would leave the country as the Swedish citizen Jan Berg. Wallander had tried out endless combinations of names to find out which ones Victor Mabasha found easiest to pronounce. They went for Jan Berg. Victor Mabasha asked what the name meant. He was satisfied with the translation he was given. Wallander had realized during their conversations these last few days that the man from South Africa lived in close contact with a spirit world that was completely alien to him. Nothing was coincidental, not even a chance change of name. Linda had been able to help him with some explanations of why Victor Mabasha thought as he did. Even so, he thought he was looking at a world he had absolutely no basis for understanding. Victor Mabasha talked about his ancestors as if they were alive. Wallander was sometimes unsure whether incidents had taken place a hundred years ago, or yesterday. He could not help but be fascinated by Victor Mabasha. It became more and more difficult to comprehend that this man was a criminal preparing to commit a serious crime in his home country.

  Wallander stayed in his office until late that Tuesday evening. To help the time pass he began a letter to Baiba Liepa in Riga. But when he read through what he had written, he tore it up. One of these days he would write a letter and send it to her. But it would take some time, he realized that.

  By about ten o’clock only those on night duty were still at the station. As he did not dare to switch the light on in the room where the passports were assembled, he had acquired a flashlight that produced a blue light. He walked along the corridor, wishing he was on his way to someplace quite different. He thought of Victor Mabasha’s spirit world, and wondered briefly if Swedish cops had a special patron saint who would watch over them when they were about to do something forbidden.

  The key was hanging on its hook in the filing cabinet. He paused for a moment, staring at the machine that transformed the photographs and the application forms with all their completed answers and crosses into a passport.

  Then he put on his rubber gloves and started work. At one point he thought he heard footsteps approaching. He ducked down behind the machine and turned off his flashlight. When the footsteps died away, he started once again. He could feel sweat streaming down under his shirt. In the end, though, he had a passport in his hand. He switched off the machine, returned the key to its rightful place in the cabinet, and locked the door. Sooner or later some check would show that a passport template had disappeared. Bearing the registration numbers in mind, it could even happen the very next day, he thought. That would cause Björk some sleepless nights. But nothing could be traced to Wallander.

  Not until he was back in his office and slumped down behind his desk did it occur to him that he had forgotten to stamp the passport. He cursed himself, and flung the document down on the desk in front of him.

  Just then the door burst open and Martinson marched in. He gave a start when he saw Wallander in his chair.

  “Oh, excuse me,” he said. “I didn’t think you were here. I was just going to see if I could find my cap.”

  “Cap?” asked Wallander. “In the middle of May?”

  “I can feel a cold coming on,” said Martinson. “I had it with me when we were sitting here yesterday.”

  Wallander could not remember Martinson having a cap with him the previous day when he and Svedberg had been in Wallander’s office to go through the latest developments in the investigation and the hitherto fruitless search for Konovalenko.

  “Look on the floor under the chair,” said Wallander.

  When Martinson bent down Wallander hastily stuffed the passport into his pocket.

  “Nothing,” said Martinson. “I’m always losing my caps.”

  “Ask the cleaner,” Wallander suggested.

  Martinson was about to leave when something struck him.

  “Do you remember Peter Hanson?” he asked.

  “How could I ever forget him?” wondered Wallander.

  “Svedberg called him a few days ago and asked about a few details in the interrogation report. Then he told Peter Hanson about the break-in at your apartment. Thieves generally know what each other is up to. Svedberg thought it might be worth a try. Peter Hanson called in today and said maybe he knew who did it.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” said Wallander. “If he can arrange for me to get back my records and tapes, I’ll forget about the hi-fi.”

  “Have a word with Svedberg tomorrow,” said Martinson. “And don’t stay here all night.”

  “I was just about to leave,” said Wallander, getting to his feet.

  Martinson paused in the doorway.

  “Do you think we’ll get him?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said Wallander. “Of course we’ll get him. Konovalenko isn’t going to get away.”

  “I wonder if he’s still in the country,” said Martinson.

  “We have to assume that,” said Wallander.

  “What about the African who’s missing a finger?”

  “No doubt Konovalenko can explain that.”

  Martinson nodded doubtfully.

  “One other thing,” he added. “It’s Louise Åkerblom’s funeral tomorrow.”

  Wallander looked at him. But he said nothing.

  The funeral was at two o‘clock on Wednesday afternoon. Wallander wondered whether or not he should go right to the last minute. He had no personal connections with the Åkerblom family. The woman they were burying had been dead when he first came into contact with her. On the other hand, might it be misunderstood if somebody from the police was there? Not least in view of the fact that the killer had not yet been nailed. Wallander had trouble figuring out why he was thinking of going. Was it curiosity? Or a guilty conscience? All the same, at one o’clock he changed into a dark suit and spent some time looking for his white necktie. Victor Mabasha sat watching him tying the knot in front of the hall mirror.

  “I’m going to a funeral,” said Wallander. “The woman Konovalenko killed.”

  Victor Mabasha stared at him in astonishment.

  “Only now?” he asked in surprise. “Back home we bury our dead as soon as possible. So they don’t walk.”

  “We don’t believe in ghosts,” said Wallander.

  “Spirits aren’t ghosts,” said Victor Mabasha. “I sometimes wonder how it’s possible for white folk to understand so little.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Wallander. “Or maybe you’re wrong. It could be the other way around.”

  Then he went out. He noticed that Victor Mabasha’s question had annoyed him.

  Does that black bastard think he can come here and tell me what to think? he thought irreverently. Where would he be without me and the help I’ve given him?

  He parked his car some way from the chapel at the crematorium and waited while the bells were ringing and the black-clad congregation entered. Only when a janitor started closing the doors did he go in himself and sit in the back. A man a couple of rows in front of him turned round and greeted him. He was a journalist from the Ystad Chronicle.

  Then he listened to the organ music and felt a lump in his throat. Funerals were a great strain as far as he was concerned. He dreaded the day he would have to follow his father to the grave. His mother’s funeral eleven years ago could still conjure up unpleasant memories. He was supposed to make a short speech over the bier, but had broken down and rushed out of the church.

  He tried to control his emotions by contemplating the rest of the congregation. Robert Åkerblom was on
the front row with his two daughters, both wearing white dresses. Next to them was Pastor Tureson, who would be in charge of the burial.

  He suddenly started thinking about the handcuffs he found in a desk drawer at the Akerbloms’ house. It was over a week since he last thought about them.

  He thought how policemen have a sort of curiosity that goes beyond the immediate investigative work. Maybe it’s a kind of occupational hazard brought on by having to spend so many years delving into the most private parts of peoples’ lives. I know those handcuffs can be excluded from the murder investigation. They have no significance. All the same I’m ready to spend time and effort trying to figure out why they were in that drawer. Trying to figure out what they meant to Louise Åkerblom, and maybe also her husband.

  He shuddered at the unpleasant implications of his train of thought, and concentrated on the funeral service. At one point during Pastor Tureson’s homily he caught the eye of Robert Åkerblom. Despite the distance he could sense the depths of sorrow and forlornness. The lump came back into his throat, and tears started to flow. In order to regain control of his emotions he started thinking about Konovalenko. Like most of the other cops in Sweden, no doubt, Wallander was secretly pro death penalty. Quite apart from the scandal that it had been enforced against traitors during the war, it was not that he saw it as a knee-jerk reaction to a certain kind of crime. It was rather that certain murders, certain assaults, certain drug offenses were so appallingly immoral, so crass in their disregard of human dignity, that he could not help feeling the perpetrators had forfeited all right to life themselves. He could see that his thinking was riddled with contradictions, and that laws to introduce it would be impossible and unjust. It was just his raw experience speaking, unrefined yet painful. What he was forced to come up against because he was a cop. Things that caused reactions, irrational and excruciating.