It was already Wednesday, 6 July. He was supposed to meet Baiba at Kastrup Airport in three days. For the first time he faced up to the fact that their holiday would have to be cancelled, or at least postponed. He had avoided thinking about it during the last hectic weeks, but he couldn’t continue to do so. He would have to cancel flights and the hotel reservations. He dreaded Baiba’s reaction. He sat at his desk feeling his stomach begin to ache with the stress. There must be some alternative, he thought. Baiba can come here. Maybe we could still catch this damned killer soon. This man who kills people and then scalps them.
He was terrified of her disappointment. Even though she had been married to a policeman, she probably imagined that everything was different in Sweden. But he couldn’t wait any longer to tell her that they wouldn’t be going to Skagen. He should pick up the phone and call Riga straight away. But he put off the unpleasant conversation. He wasn’t ready yet. He took his notebook and listed all the calls he’d have to make.
Then he turned into a policeman again. He put the summary he had written the day before on the desk in front of him and read it through. The notes made sense. He picked up the phone and asked Ebba to get hold of Sjosten in Helsingborg. A few minutes later she called back.
“He seems to spend his mornings scraping barnacles off a boat,” she said. “But he was on his way in. He’ll call you in the next ten minutes.”
When Sjosten called back, he told Wallander that they’d located some witnesses, a couple, who claimed to have seen a motorcycle on Aschebergsgatan on the evening Liljegren was murdered.
“Check carefully,” said Wallander. “It could be very important.”
“I thought I’d do it myself.”
Wallander leaned forward over his desk, as if he had to brace himself before tackling the next question.
“I’d like to ask you to do one more thing,” he said. “Something that should take the highest priority. I want you to find some of the women who worked at the parties that were held at Liljegren’s villa.”
“Why?”
“I think it’s important. We have to find out who was at those parties. You’ll understand when you go through the investigative material.”
Wallander knew very well that his question wouldn’t be answered in the material they had assembled for the other three murders. But he needed to hunt alone for a while longer.
“So you want me to pick out a whore,” said Sjosten.
“I do. If there were any at those parties.”
“It was rumoured that there were.”
“I want you to get back in touch with me as soon as possible. Then I’ll come up to Helsingborg.”
“If I find one, should I bring her in?”
“I just want to talk to her, that’s all. Make it clear she has nothing to worry about. Someone who’s afraid and says what she thinks I want to hear won’t help at all.”
“I’ll try,” said Sjosten. “Interesting assignment in the middle of summer.”
They hung up. Wallander concentrated on his notes from the night before until Hoglund called. They met in reception and walked down to the hospital so they could plan what they would say to Carlman’s daughter. Wallander didn’t even know the name of this young woman who had slapped his face.
“Erika,” said Hoglund. “Which doesn’t suit her.”
“Why not?” asked Wallander, surprised.
“I get the impression of a robust sort when I hear that name,” she said. “The manager of a hotel smorgasbord or a crane operator.”
“Is it OK that my name is Kurt?” he asked.
She nodded cheerfully.
“It’s nonsense that you can match a personality to a name of course,” she said. “But it amuses me. And you could hardly imagine a cat called Fido. Or a dog called Kitty.”
“There probably are some,” said Wallander. “So what do we know about Erika Carlman?”
They had the wind at their backs as they walked towards the hospital. Hoglund told him that Erika Carlman was 27 years old. That for a while she had been a stewardess for a small British charter airline. That she had dabbled in many different things without ever sticking to them for long. She had travelled all over the world, no doubt supported by her father. A marriage with a Peruvian football player had been quickly dissolved.
“A normal rich girl,” said Wallander. “One who had everything on a silver platter from the start.”
“Her mother says she was hysterical as a teenager. That’s the word she used, hysterical. It would probably be more accurate to describe it as a neurotic predisposition.”
“Has she attempted suicide before?”
“Not that anyone knows of, and I didn’t think the mother was lying.”
“She really wanted to die,” Wallander said.
“That’s my impression too.”
Wallander knew that he had to tell Ann-Britt that Erika had slapped him. It was very possible that she might mention the incident. And there wouldn’t be any explanation for his not having done so, other than masculine vanity, perhaps. As they reached the hospital, Wallander stopped and told her. He could see that she was surprised.
“I don’t think it was more than a manifestation of the hysteria her mother spoke of,” he said.
“This might cause a problem,” Ann-Britt said. “She may be in bad shape. She must know that she nearly died. We don’t even know if she regrets the fact that she didn’t manage to kill herself. If you walk into the room, her fragile ego might collapse. Or it might make her aggressive, scared, unreceptive.”
Wallander knew she was right. “You should speak to her alone. I’ll wait in the cafeteria.”
“First we’ll have to go over what we actually want to learn from her.”
Wallander pointed to a bench by the taxi rank. They sat down.
“We always hope that the answers will be more interesting than the questions,” he said. “What did her suicide attempt have to do with her father’s death? How you get to that question is up to you. You’ll have to draw your own map. Her answers will prompt more questions.”
“Let’s assume that she says she was so crushed by grief that she didn’t want to go on living.”
“Then we’ll know that much.”
“But what else do we actually know?”
“That’s where you have to ask other questions, which we can’t predict. Was it a normal loving relationship between father and daughter? Or was it something else?”
“And if she denies it was something else?”
“Then you have to start by not believing her. Without telling her so.”
“In other words,” said Hoglund slowly, “a denial would mean that I should be interested in the reasons she might have for not telling the truth?”
“More or less.” Wallander answered. “But there’s a third possibility, of course. That she tried to commit suicide because she knew something about her father’s death that she couldn’t deal with in any other way except by taking the information with her to the grave.”
“Could she have seen the killer?”
“It’s possible.”
“And doesn’t want him to be caught?”
“Also conceivable.”
“Why not?”
“Once again, there are at least two possibilities. She wants to protect him. Or she wants to protect her father’s memory.”
Hoglund sighed hopelessly. “I don’t know if I can handle this.”
“Of course you can. I’ll be in the cafeteria. Or out here. Take as long as you need.”
Wallander accompanied her to the front desk. A few weeks earlier he had been here and found out that Salomonsson had died. How could he have imagined then what havoc was in store for him? Hoglund disappeared down the hall. Wallander went towards the cafeteria, but changed his mind and went back outside to the bench. Once again he went over his thoughts from the night before. He was interrupted by his mobile phone ringing in his jacket pocket. It was Hansson, and he sounded harried.
“Two investigators from the National Criminal Bureau are arriving at Sturup this afternoon. Ludwigsson and Hamren. Do you know them?”
“Only by name. They’re supposed to be good. Hamren was involved in solving that case with the laser man, wasn’t he?”