The White Lioness Read online

  They went out onto the bridge over the old moat around the ruined castle. Svedberg stopped, leaned over the rail and contemplated the green sludge below.

  “It’s hard to grasp that this sort of thing can happen,” he said.

  “I’ve come to the conclusion that we nearly always act against our better judgment,” said Wallander. “We think we can stop something happening just by refusing to acknowledge it.”

  “But why Sweden?” Svedberg wondered. “Why choose this country as their starting point?”

  “Victor Mabasha had a possible explanation,” said Wallander.

  “Who?”

  Wallander realized Svedberg did not know what the dead African was called. He repeated the name. Then he went on.

  “It was partly because this is where Konovalenko was established, of course,” he said. “But it was just as important to lay a smoke screen. The crucial thing for the guys behind this business is that nothing can be tracked down. Sweden is a country where it’s easy to get lost. It’s simple to cross the border without being noticed, and it’s easy to disappear. He had a simile for it. He said South Africa is a cuckoo who often lays her eggs in other people’s nests.”

  They continued towards the castle that had collapsed long ago. Svedberg looked around.

  “I’ve never been here before,” he said. “I wonder what it was like, being a cop when this castle was in its prime.”

  They wandered in silence around the crumbled remains of what had once been high walls.

  “You have to understand, Martinson and I were really shaken,” said Svedberg. “You were covered in blood, your hair was standing on end, and you were waving guns around in both hands.”

  “Yes, I realize that,” said Wallander.

  “But it was wrong of us to tell Björk you seemed to be out of your mind.”

  “I sometimes wonder if I am, in fact.”

  “What are you thinking of doing?” asked Svedberg.

  “I’m thinking of enticing Konovalenko to come after me,” said Wallander. “Now I think that’s the only way to make him come out of hiding.”

  Svedberg looked at him, a serious expression on his face.

  “What you’re doing is dangerous,” he said.

  “It’s less risky when you can anticipate the danger,” said Wallander, wondering as he did so what his words really meant.

  “You’ve got to have backup,” Svedberg insisted.

  “He wouldn’t come out then,” said Wallander. “It’s not enough for him just to think I’m on my own. He’ll check. He won’t pounce until he’s absolutely certain.”

  “Pounce?”

  Wallander shrugged.

  “He’ll try to kill me,” he said. “But I’ll make sure he doesn’t succeed.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Svedberg stared at him in amazement. But he said nothing.

  They started back, and stopped once again on the bridge.

  “There’s something I want to ask you,” said Wallander. “I’m worried about my daughter. Konovalenko’s unpredictable. That’s why I want you to give her a bodyguard.”

  “Björk will want an explanation,” said Svedberg.

  “I know,” said Wallander. “That’s why I’m asking you. You can talk with Martinson. Björk doesn’t really need to know.”

  “I’ll try,” said Svedberg. “I can see why you’re worried.”

  They started walking again, left the bridge and puffed their way up the hill.

  “By the way, somebody who knows your daughter came to see Martinson,” said Svedberg, trying to change the subject to something less solemn.

  Wallander stared at him in amazement.

  “At home?”

  “In his office. She was reporting a theft from her car. She’d been your daughter’s teacher or something. I don’t remember exactly.”

  Wallander stopped dead.

  “One more time,” he said. “Just what are you saying?”

  Svedberg said it again.

  “What was her name?” asked Wallander.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “You’d better ask Martinson that.”

  “Try and remember exactly what he said!”

  Svedberg pondered.

  “We were having coffee,” he said. “Martinson was complaining about being interrupted all the time. He says he’ll get an ulcer from all the work piling up. ‘At least they could stop breaking into cars just now. A woman came in, by the way. Somebody had broken into her car. She asked about Wallander’s daughter. If she was still living in Stockholm.’ Something along those lines.”

  “What did Martinson tell her? Did he tell that woman my daughter is here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We must call Martinson,” said Wallander. He started rushing towards the house. He broke into a run, with Svedberg after him.

  “Get Martinson on the phone,” said Wallander when they were inside. “Ask him if he said where my daughter is right now. Find out what that woman was called. If he asks why, just tell him you’ll explain later.”

  Svedberg nodded.

  “You don’t believe there was a car theft?”

  “I don’t know. But I can’t take any risks.”

  Svedberg got hold of Martinson almost right away. He wrote down a few notes on a scrap of paper. Wallander could hear Martinson was very perplexed by Svedberg’s questions.

  When the call was over, Svedberg had started to share Wallander’s worry.

  “He said he’d told her.”

  “Told her what?”

  “That she was staying with your father out at Osterlen.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “She asked him.”

  Wallander looked at the kitchen clock.

  “You’d better make the call,” he said. “My father might answer. He’s probably eating just now. Ask to talk to my daughter. Then I’ll take over.”

  Wallander gave him the number. It rang for a long time before anybody answered. It was Wallander’s father. Svedberg asked to speak to his granddaughter. When he heard the reply, he cut the conversation short.

  “She went down to the beach on her bike,” he said.

  Wallander felt a stabbing pain in his stomach.

  “I told her to stay indoors.”

  “She left half an hour ago,” said Svedberg.

  They took Svedberg’s car, and drove fast. Wallander did not say a word. Svedberg occasionally glanced at him. But he said nothing.

  They came to the Kåseberga exit.

  “Keep going,” said Wallander. “Next exit.”

  They parked as close to the beach as they could get. There were no other cars. Wallander raced onto the sands with Svedberg behind him. The beach was deserted. Wallander could feel panic rising. Once again he had the invisible Konovalenko breathing down his neck.

  “She could be behind one of the sand dunes,” he said.

  “Are you sure this is where she’ll be?” wondered Svedberg.

  “This is her beach,” said Wallander. “If she goes to the beach, this is where she comes. You go that way, I’ll go this way.”

  Svedberg walked back towards Kåseberga while Wallander continued in an easterly direction. He tried to convince himself that he had no need to worry. Nothing had happened to her. But he couldn’t understand why she hadn’t stayed inside the house as promised. Was it really possible that she did not understand how serious it was? In spite of all that had happened?

  Occasionally he would turn around and look toward Svedberg. Nothing as yet.

  Wallander suddenly thought of Robert Åkerblom. He would have said a prayer in this situation, he told himself. But I have no god to pray to. I don’t even have any spirits, like Victor Mabasha. I have my own joy and sorrow, that’s all.

  There was a guy with a dog on top of the cliff, gazing out to sea. Wallander asked him if he had seen a solitary girl walking along
the beach. But the guy shook his head. He had been on the beach with his dog for twenty minutes, and had been alone the whole time.

  “Have you seen a man?” asked Wallander, and described Konovalenko.

  The guy shook his head again.

  Wallander walked on. He felt cold even though there was a trace of spring warmth in the wind. He started walking faster. The beach seemed endless. Then he looked around again. Svedberg was a long way away, but Wallander could see somebody standing by his side. Suddenly, Svedberg started waving.

  Wallander ran all the way back. When he got to Svedberg and his daughter he was shattered. He looked at her without saying anything while he waited to get his breath back.

  “You were supposed not to leave the house,” he said. “Why did you?”

  “I didn’t think a walk along the beach would matter,” she said. “Not when it’s light. It’s nighttime when things happen, isn’t it?”

  Svedberg drove and the other two sat in the back seat.

  “What shall I tell Grandad?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” answered Wallander. “I’ll talk to him tonight. I’ll play cards with him tomorrow. That will cheer him up.”

  They separated on the road not far from the house.

  Svedberg and Wallander drove back to Stjarnsund.

  “I want that guard starting tonight,” said Wallander.

  “I’ll go and tell Martinson right away,” said Svedberg. “We’ll arrange it somehow.”

  “A police car parked on the road,” said Wallander. “I want it to be obvious the house is being watched.”

  Svedberg got ready to leave.

  “I need a few days,” said Wallander. “Until then you can keep on looking for me. But I’d like you to call me here occasionally.”

  “What shall I tell Martinson?” wondered Svedberg.

  “Tell him you got the idea of guarding my father’s house yourself,” said Wallander. “You can figure out how best to convince him.”

  “You still don’t want me to fill Martinson in?”

  “It’s enough for you to know where I am,” said Wallander.

  Svedberg left. Wallander went to the kitchen and fried a couple of eggs. Two hours later the horse trailer returned.

  “Did she win?” asked Wallander as Sten Widen came into the kitchen.

  “She won,” he replied. “But barely.”

  Peters and Norén were in their patrol car, drinking coffee.

  They were both in a bad mood. They had been ordered by Svedberg to guard the house where Wallander’s father lived. The longest shifts were when your car was standing still. They would be sitting here until somebody came to relieve them. That was many hours away yet. It was a quarter past eleven at night. Darkness had fallen.

  “What do you think’s happened to Wallander?”

  “No idea,” said Norén. “How many times do I have to say the same thing? I don’t know.”

  “It’s hard not to think about it,” Peters went on. “I’m sitting here wondering whether he might be an alcoholic.”

  “Why should he be?”

  “Do you remember that time we caught him drunk?”

  “That’s not the same as being alcoholic.”

  “No. But still.”

  The conversation petered out. Norén got out of the car and stood legs apart to urinate.

  That was when he saw the fire. At first he thought it was the reflection from a car’s headlights. Then he noticed smoke spiraling up from where the fire was burning.

  “Fire!” he shouted to Peters.

  Peters got out of the car.

  “Can it be a forest fire?” wondered Norén.

  The blaze was in a clump of trees on the far side of the nearest group of fields. It was hard to see where the center was because the countryside was undulating.

  “We’d better drive over and take a look,” said Peters.

  “Svedberg said we weren’t to leave our posts,” said Norén. “No matter what happened.”

  “It’ll only take ten minutes,” said Peters. “We have a duty to intervene if we find a fire.”

  “Call Svedberg first and get permission,” said Norén.

  “It’ll only take ten minutes,” said Peters. “What are you scared of?”

  “I’m not scared,” said Norén. “But orders are orders.”

  They did as Peters wanted even so. They found their way to the fire via a muddy tractor track. When they got there, they found an old oil drum. Somebody had filled it with paper and plastic to make a good blaze. By the time Peters and Norén arrived, the fire was almost out.

  “Funny time to burn garbage,” said Peters, looking round.

  But there was no sign of anybody. The place was deserted.

  “Let’s get back,” said Norén.

  Barely twenty minutes later they were back at the house they were supposed to be guarding. All seemed to be quiet. The lights were out. Wallander’s father and daughter were asleep.

  Many hours later they were relieved by Svedberg himself.

  “All quiet,” said Peters.

  He did not mention the excursion to the burning oil drum.

  Svedberg sat dozing in his car. Dawn broke, and developed into morning.

  By eight o’clock he started wondering why there was nobody up. He knew Wallander’s father got up early.

  By half past eight, he had the distinct impression something was wrong. He got out of his car, crossed the courtyard to the front door and tried the handle.

  The door was not locked. He rang the bell and waited. Nobody opened. He entered the dark vestibule and listened. Not a sound. Then he thought he could hear a scratching sound somewhere or other. It sounded like a mouse trying to get through a wall. He followed the noise until he found himself in front of a closed door. He knocked. By way of answer he could hear a muffled bellowing. He flung open the door. Wallander’s father was lying in bed. He was tied up, with a length of black tape over his mouth.

  Svedberg stood quite still. He carefully removed the tape and untied the ropes. Then he searched through the whole house. The room in which he assumed Wallander’s daughter slept was empty. There was nobody in the house but Wallander’s father.

  “When did it happen?” he asked.

  “Last night,” said Wallander’s father. “Just after eleven.”

  “How many of them were there?”

  “One.”

  “One?”

  “Just one. But he had a gun.”

  Svedberg stood up. His head was a complete blank.

  Then he went out to the telephone to call Wallander.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The acrid smell of winter apples.

  That was the first thing she noticed when she came to. But then, when she opened her eyes in the darkness, there was nothing but solitude and terror. She was lying on a stone floor and it smelled of damp earth. There was not a sound to be heard, even though fear sharpened all her senses. Carefully, she felt the rough surface of the floor with one hand. It was made of individual slabs fitted together. She realized she was in a cellar. In the house at Osterlen where her grandfather lived and where she had been brutally woken and abducted by an unknown man, there was a similar floor in the potato cellar.

  When there was nothing more for her senses to register, she felt dizzy and her headache got steadily worse. She could not say how long she had been there in darkness and silence; her wristwatch was still on the bedside table. Nevertheless she had the distinct impression it was many hours since she had been woken up and dragged away.

  Her arms were free. But she had a chain around her ankles. When she felt it with her fingers she discovered there was a padlock. The feeling of being confined by an iron lock turned her cold. It occurred to her that people are usually tied up with ropes. They were softer, more flexible. Chains belonged to the past, to slavery and ancient witch trials.

  But worst of all during this waking up period were the clothes she had on. She could feel right away they
were not hers. They were unfamiliar—their shape, the colors she could not see but seemed to think she could feel with her fingertips, and the smell of a strong washing powder. They were not her clothes, and somebody must have dressed her in them. Somebody had taken off her nightie and dressed her in everything from underclothes to stockings and shoes, an outrage that made her feel sick. The dizziness immediately got stronger. She put her head in her hands and rocked backwards and forwards. It’s not true, she thought in desperation. But it was true, and she could even remember what had happened.

  She had been dreaming something but could no longer remember the context. She was woken by a man pressing a handkerchief over her nose and mouth. A pungent smell, then she was overcome by a feeling of numbness and fading senses. The light from the lamp outside the kitchen door produced a faint glow in her room. She could see a man in front of her. His face was very close when he bent over her. Now when she thought about him she recalled a strong smell of shaving lotion even though he was unshaven. He said nothing, but although it was almost dark in the room she could see his eyes and had time to think she would never forget them. Then she remembered nothing else until she woke up on the damp stone floor.

  Of course she understood why it had happened. The guy who bent over her and anaesthetized her must have been the one who was hunting and being hunted by her father. His eyes were Konovalenko’s eyes, just as she had imagined them. The man who killed Victor Mabasha, who killed a policeman and wanted to kill another, her own father. He was the one who had sneaked into her room, dressed her and put chains around her ankles.

  When the hatch in the cellar ceiling opened, she was completely unprepared. It occured to her afterward that the man had doubtless been standing up there, listening. The light shining through the hole was very strong, perhaps specially planned to dazzle her. She caught a glimpse of a ladder being dropped down and a pair of brown shoes, a pair of trouser legs approaching her. Then, last of all, the face, the same face and the same eyes that had stared at her as she was being knocked out. She looked away in order not to be dazzled and because her fear had returned and was paralyzing her. But she noticed the cellar was larger than she had thought. In the darkness the walls and ceiling seemed close to her. Maybe she was in a cellar extending under the whole ground floor of a house.