“Long time no see,” said Magnusson as they shook hands.
“You’re right,” said Wallander. “It must be more than five years.”
Long ago Magnusson had been a journalist. After a number of years at the Express he had tired of city life and returned to his roots in Ystad. He and Wallander met because their wives became friends. The two men discovered that they shared an interest in opera. It wasn’t until many years later, after he and Mona had divorced, that Wallander found out Magnusson was an alcoholic. But when the truth finally did come out, it came out with a vengeance. By chance, Wallander had been at the station late one night when Magnusson was dragged in, so drunk that he couldn’t stand up. He had been driving in that state, and had lost control and gone straight through the plate-glass window of a bank. He’d ended up spending six months in jail.
When he returned to Ystad he didn’t go back to his job. His wife had left their childless marriage. He continued drinking but managed not to step too far over the line. He gave up his career in journalism and made a living setting chess problems for a number of newspapers. The only reason he hadn’t drunk himself to death was that every day he forced himself to hold off on that first drink until he had devised at least one chess problem. Now that he had a fax machine, he didn’t even have to go to the post office.
Wallander walked into the simple flat. He could smell that Magnusson had been drinking. A bottle of vodka stood on the coffee table, but Wallander didn’t see a glass.
Magnusson was a good many years older than Wallander. He had a mane of grey hair falling over his dirty collar. His face was red and swollen, but his eyes were curiously clear. No-one doubted Magnusson’s intelligence. Rumour had it that he once had a collection of poems accepted by Bonniers, but had withdrawn it at the last minute and repaid the small advance.
“This is unexpected,” said Magnusson. “Have a seat. What can I get you?”
“Nothing, thanks,” said Wallander, moving a pile of newspapers and making himself comfortable on a sofa.
Magnusson casually took a swig from the bottle of vodka and sat down opposite Wallander. He had turned down the piano music.
“It’s been a long time,” said Wallander. “I’m trying to remember when it was.”
“At the state off licence,” Magnusson replied quickly. “Almost exactly five years ago. You were buying wine and I was buying everything else.”
Wallander nodded. He remembered now.
“There’s nothing wrong with your memory,” he said.
“I haven’t ruined that yet,” said Magnusson. “I’m saving it for last.”
“Have you ever considered quitting?”
“Every day. But I doubt you came here to talk me into going on the wagon.”
“You’ve probably read that Gustaf Wetterstedt was murdered, haven’t you?”
“I saw it on the TV.”
“I seem to remember that you told me something about him once. About the scandals that were hushed up.”
“And that was the biggest scandal of them all,” Magnusson interrupted him.
“I’m trying to get a fix on what sort of man he was,” Wallander went on. “I hoped you might be able to help me.”
“The question is whether you want to hear the unsubstantiated rumours or whether you want to know the truth,” said Magnusson. “I’m not sure I can tell them apart.”
“Rumours don’t usually get started without reason,” said Wallander.
Magnusson pushed away the vodka bottle as though it was too close to him.
“I started as a 15-year-old trainee at one of the Stockholm news-papers,” he said. “That was in the spring of 1955. There was an old night editor there named Ture Svanberg. He was almost as big a drunk as I am now. But he was meticulous at his work. And he was a genius at writing headlines that sold papers. He wouldn’t stand for anything sloppily written. Once he flew into such a rage over a story that he tore up the copy and ate the pieces, chewed the paper and swallowed it. Then he said: ‘This isn’t coming out as anything but shit.’ It was Svanberg who taught me to be a journalist. He used to say that there were two kinds of reporters. ‘The first kind digs in the ground for the truth. He stands down in the hole shovelling out dirt. But up on top there’s another man, shovelling the dirt back in. There’s always a duel going on between these two. The fourth estate’s eternal test of strength for dominance. Some journalists want to expose and reveal things, others run errands for those in power and help conceal what’s really happening.’
“And that’s how it really was. I learned fast, even though I was only 15. Men in power always ally themselves with symbolic cleaning companies and undertakers. There are plenty of journalists who won’t hesitate to sell their souls to run errands for those men. To shovel the dirt back into the hole. Paste over the scandals. Pile on the semblance of truth, maintain the illusion of the squeaky-clean society.”
With a grimace he reached for the bottle again and took a swig. Wallander saw that he’d put on weight around the middle.
“Wetterstedt,” Magnusson said. “So what was it that actually happened?” He fished a crumpled packet of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. He lit one and blew out a cloud of smoke.
“Whores and art,” he said. “For years it was common knowledge that the good Gustaf had a girl delivered to the block of flats in Vasastan every week, where he kept a small hideaway his wife didn’t know about. He had a right-hand man who took care of the whole thing. The rumour was that this man was hooked on morphine, supplied by Wetterstedt. He had a lot of doctor friends. The fact that he went to bed with whores wasn’t something the papers bothered with. He was neither the first nor the last Swedish minister to do that. Sometimes I wonder whether we’re talking about the rule or the exception. But one day it went too far. One of the hookers got her courage up and reported him to the police for assault.”
“When was that?” Wallander interrupted.
“Mid-60s. Her client said he’d beaten her with a leather belt and cut the soles of her feet with a razor. It was probably the stuff with the razor and her feet that made the difference. Perversion was newsworthy. The only problem was that the police had lodged a complaint against the highest defender of Swedish law and order next to the king. So the whole thing was hushed up, and the police report disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“It literally went up in smoke.”
“But the girl who reported him? What happened to her?”
“Overnight she became the proprietor of a lucrative boutique in Vasteras.”
Wallander shook his head.
“How do you know all this?”
“I knew a journalist called Sten Lundberg. He dug around in the whole mess. But when the rumours started that he was about to snoop his way to the truth, he was frozen out, blacklisted.”
“And he accepted it?”
“He had no choice. Unfortunately he had a weakness that couldn’t be covered up. He gambled. Had huge debts. There was a rumour that those gambling debts suddenly went poof. The same way the hooker’s assault report did. So everything was back to square one. And Wetterstedt went on sending his morphine addict out after girls.”
“You said there was one more thing,” Wallander said.
“There was a story that he was mixed up in some of those art thefts carried out during his term as minister of justice. Paintings that were never recovered, and which now hang on the walls of collectors who will never show them to the public. The police arrested a fence once, a middleman. Unintentionally, I’m afraid. The fence swore that Wetterstedt was involved. But it couldn’t be proved. It was buried. There were more people filling up the hole than there were people standing down in it and tossing the dirt out.”