“Is it blood on the dock?”
“Almost certainly. Tonight you’ll know whether it ever ran around inside Fredman’s body.”
On his way to the car Wallander remembered something. He went back.
“Louise Fredman,” he said to Svedberg. “Did Akeson come up with anything else on her?”
Svedberg didn’t know, but said he’d talk to Akeson.
Wallander turned off at Charlottenlund, thinking that if they’d found the place where Fredman was murdered, it was chosen with great care. The closest house was too far away for screams to be heard. He drove to the E65 and headed towards Malmo. The wind was buffeting the car, but the sky was still totally clear. He thought about the map. There were a lot of reasons to think the killer lived in Malmo. He didn’t live in Ystad, that seemed certain. But why did he go to the trouble of dumping Fredman’s body in a pit at the railway station? Was Ekholm right, that he was taunting the police? Wallander took the road to Sturup and briefly considered stopping at the airport. But what good would that do? The interview in Helsingborg was more important.
Her name was Elisabeth Carlen. They were in the Helsingborg police station in Sjosten’s office. As Wallander shook hands with her he thought of the female vicar he had met the week before. Maybe it was because she was dressed in black and wore heavy make-up. She was about 30. Sjosten’s description of her was quite apt. Sjosten had said that she was attractive because she looked at the world with a cold, disparaging expression. To Wallander it seemed as if she had decided to challenge any man who came near her. He’d never seen eyes like hers before. They blazed contempt and interest at the same time. He went over Sjosten’s account of her as she lit a cigarette.
“Elisabeth Carlen is a whore,” he had said. “I doubt she’s been anything else since she was 20. She left middle school and then worked as a waitress on one of the ferries crossing the Sound. Got tired of that and opened a boutique with a girlfriend. That was a flop. Her parents had guaranteed a loan she took out for the business. After the money was gone, she did nothing but fight with them, and she drifted around a lot. Copenhagen for a while, then Amsterdam. When she was 17 she went there as a courier with a haul of amphetamines. Probably she was a user herself, but she seemed to be able to control it. That was the first time I met her. Then she was away for a few years, a black hole I don’t know anything about, before she popped up in Malmo, working in a chain of brothels.”
Wallander had to interrupt. “Are there still brothels?” he asked in surprise.
“Whorehouses, then,” said Sjosten. “Call them what you like. But yes, there are still plenty of them. Don’t you have them in Ystad? Just wait.”
Wallander didn’t interrupt again.
“She never walked the streets, of course. She built up an exclusive clientele. She had something that was attractive and raised her market value to the skies. She didn’t even need to put those classified ads in the porn magazines. You can ask her what it is that makes her so special. It might be interesting to find out. During the last few years she’s turned up in certain circles that are connected to Liljegren. She’s been seen at restaurants with a number of his directors. Stockholm has a record of quite a few occasions when the police were interested in the man who happened to be escorting her. That’s Elisabeth Carlen in a nutshell. Quite a successful Swedish prostitute.”
“Why did you choose her?”
“She’s fun. I’ve spoken with her many times. She isn’t timid. If I tell her she isn’t suspected of anything, she believes me. Also I imagine that she has a whore’s sense of self-preservation. She notices things. She doesn’t like the police. A good way to keep us out of the way is to stay on good terms with us.”
Wallander hung up his jacket and shifted a heap of papers on the table. Elisabeth Carlen followed all his movements with her eyes. Wallander was reminded of a wary bird.
“You know that you aren’t suspected of anything,” he began.
“Ake Liljegren was roasted in his kitchen,” she said. “I’ve seen his oven. Quite fancy. But I wasn’t the one who turned it on.”
“Nor do we think you were,” said Wallander. “What I’m looking for is information. I’m trying to build a picture. I’ve got an empty frame. I’d like to put a photo in it. Taken at a party at Liljegren’s. I want you to point out his guests.”
“No,” she said, “that’s not what you want. You want me to tell you who killed him. And I can’t.”
“What did you think when you heard Liljegren was dead?”
“I didn’t think anything. I burst out laughing.”
“Why? No-one’s death should be funny.”
“He had plans other than winding up the way he did. The mausoleum in the cemetery outside Madrid? That’s where he was going to be buried. A virtual fortress built according to his own sketches. Out of Italian marble. But he fetched up dying in his own oven. I think he would have laughed himself.”
“His parties,” said Wallander. “Let’s get back to them. I’ve heard they were wild.”
“They sure were.”
“In what way?”
“In every way.”
“Can you be a little more specific?”
She took a couple of deep drags on her cigarette while she thought about this, all the time looking Wallander in the eye.
“Liljegren liked to bring people together who lived life to the fullest,” she said. “Let’s say they were insatiable. Insatiable with regard to power, wealth and sex. And Liljegren had a reputation for being discreet. He created a safety zone around his guests. No hidden cameras, no spies. Nothing ever leaked out about his parties. He also knew which women he could invite.”
“Women like you?”
“Yes, women like me.”
“And who else?”
She didn’t seem to understand his question at first.
“What other women were there?”
“That depended on their desires.”
“Whose desires?”
“The desires of the guests. The men.”
“And what might they be?”
“Some wanted me to be there.”
“I understood that. Who else?”
“You won’t get any names.”
“Who were they?”
“Young girls, some very young, blonde, brown, black. Older ones sometimes, some of them hefty. It varied.”
“You knew them?”
“Not always. Not often.”
“How did he get hold of them?”
She put out her cigarette and lit a new one before she answered. She didn’t release his gaze even when she was stubbing it out.
“How does a person like Liljegren get what he wants? He had unlimited money. He had helpers. He had contacts. He could fly in a girl from Florida to attend a party. She probably had no idea she was going all the way to Sweden. Not to mention Helsingborg.”
“You say he had helpers. Who were they?”
“His chauffeurs. His assistant. He often had a butler with him. English, of course.”
“What was his name?”
“No names.”
“We’ll find out about them anyway.”
“You probably will. But that doesn’t mean the names are going to come from me.”
“What would happen if you gave me some names?”
She seemed utterly unmoved when she replied.
“Then I might be killed. Maybe not with my head in an oven, but in an equally unpleasant manner, I’m sure.”
“Were many of his guests public figures?”
“Many.”
“Politicians?”
“Yes.”
“Gustaf Wetterstedt?”
“I said no names.”
Suddenly he realised that she was sending him a message. Her answers had a subtext. She knew who Wetterstedt was, but he had not been at the parties.
“Businessmen?”
“Yes.”
“Arne Carlman, the art dealer?”
“Did he have almost the same name as me?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll say it one last time. Don’t push me for names, or I’ll get up and go.”
Not him either, thought Wallander. Her signals were very clear.
“Artists? Celebrities?”