She was asleep. He had taken medicine from a cabinet when he went to get her. He had gone there without painting his face, but he had an axe and some knives with him, in case anyone tried to stop him. It had been strangely quiet at the hospital, with almost no-one around. Everything went more smoothly than he could have imagined. Louise hadn’t recognised him at first, but when she’d heard his voice she put up no resistance. He had brought some clothes for her. They walked across the hospital grounds and then took a taxi, without any problem. She didn’t say a word, never questioning the bare mattress, and she fell asleep almost at once. He had lain down and slept a while beside her. They were closer to the future than ever before. The power from the scalps had already started working. She was on her way back to life again. Soon everything would be changed.
He looked at her. It was evening, past 10 p.m. He had made his decision. At dawn he would return to Ystad for the last time.
In Helsingborg a great crowd of reporters besieged Birgersson’s outer perimeter. The chief of police was there. At Wallander’s stubborn insistence, Interpol was trying to trace Sara Pettersson. They had contacted the girl’s parents and tried to put together a possible itinerary. It was a hectic night at the station.
Back in Ystad, Hansson and Martinsson were handling the incoming calls. They sent over materials when Wallander needed them. Akeson was at home but was willing to be reached at any time.
Although it was late, Wallander sent Hoglund to Malmo to talk to the Fredman family. He wanted to make sure they weren’t the ones who had taken Louise from the hospital. He would rather have gone there himself, but he couldn’t be in two places at once. She had left at 10.30 p.m., after Wallander had phoned Fredman’s widow. He estimated she’d be back by 1 a.m.
“Who’s taking care of the children while you’re away?” he’d asked.
“Do you remember my neighbour who has children of her own?” she asked. “Without her I couldn’t do this job.”
Wallander called home. Linda was there. He explained as best he could what had happened. He didn’t know when he’d be home, maybe sometime that night, maybe not until dawn.
“Will you get here before I leave?” she asked.
“Leave?”
“Did you forget I’m going to Gotland? Kajsa and I. And you’re going to Skagen.”
“Of course I didn’t forget,” he said.”
“Did you talk to Baiba?”
“Yes,” Wallander said, hoping she couldn’t hear that he was lying.
He gave her the number in Helsingborg. Then he wondered whether he ought to call his father, but it was late. They were probably already in bed. He went to the command centre where Birgersson was directing the manhunt. Five hours had passed, and no-one had seen the stolen car. Birgersson agreed with Wallander that it could only mean that Logard, if it was him, had taken the car off the road.
“He had two boats at his disposal,” Wallander said. “And a house outside Bjuv that we could barely locate. I’m sure he has other hideouts.”
“We’ve got a man going over the boats,” said Birgersson.
“And Hordestigen. I told them to look for other possibilities.”
“Who is this damned Logard, anyway?” Wallander said.
“They’ve started checking the prints,” Birgersson said. “If he’s ever had a run-in with the police, we’ll know very soon.”
Wallander went over to where the four girls were being interviewed. It was a laborious process, since everything had to go through interpreters. Besides, the girls were terrified. Wallander had told the officers to explain that they weren’t accused of a crime. But he wondered how frightened they were. He thought about Dolores Maria Santana, about the worst fear he had ever seen. But now, at midnight, a picture had finally begun to take shape.
The girls were all from the Dominican Republic. They had each separately left their villages and gone to the cities to look for work as domestic helps or factory workers. They had been contacted by men, all very friendly, and offered work in Europe. They had been shown pictures of beautiful houses by the Mediterranean, and were promised wages ten times what they could hope to earn at home. They’d all said yes.
They were supplied with passports but were never allowed to keep them. First they were flown to Amsterdam — at least that was what they thought the city was called. Then they were driven to Denmark. A week ago they had been taken across to Sweden at night by boat. There were different men involved at each stage and their friendliness decreased as the girls travelled further from home. The fear had set in in earnest when they were locked up at the farm. They had been given food, and a man had explained in poor Spanish that they would soon be travelling the last stretch of the way. But by now they had begun to understand that nothing would happen as promised. The fear had turned to terror.
Wallander asked the officers to question the girls carefully about the men they had met during the days at the farm. Was there more than one? Could they give a description of the boat that took them to Sweden? What did the captain look like? Was there a crew? He told them to take one of the girls down to the yacht club to see whether she recognised Logard’s launch. A lot of questions remained. Wallander needed an empty room where he could lock himself away and think.
He was impatient for Hoglund to return. And he was waiting for information on Logard. He tried to connect a moped at Sturup Airport, a man who took scalps and killed with an axe, and another who shot at people with a semi-automatic weapon. The myriad of details swam back and forth in his head. The headache he had felt coming earlier had arrived, and he tried unsuccessfully to fight it off with painkillers. It was very humid. There were thunderstorms over Denmark. In less than 48 hours he was supposed to be at Kastrup Airport.
Wallander was standing by a window, looking out at the light summer night and thinking that the world had dissolved into chaos, when Birgersson came stamping down the hall, triumphantly wielding a piece of paper.
“Do you know who Erik Sturesson is?” he asked.
“No, who?”
“Then do you know who Sture Eriksson is?”
“No.”
“They’re one and the same. And later he changed his name again. This time he didn’t settle for switching his first and last names. He took on a name with a more aristocratic ring to it. Hans Logard.”
“Great,” he said. “What have we got?”
“The prints we found at Hordestigen and in the boats are in our records, under Erik Sturesson and Sture Eriksson. But not Hans Logard. Erik Sturesson, if we start with him, since that was Hans Logard’s real name, is 47. Born in Skovde, father a career soldier, mother a housewife. The father was also an alcoholic. Both died in the late 1960s. Erik wound up in bad company, was first arrested at 14, downhill from there. He’s done time in Osteraker, Kumla and Hall prisons. And a short stretch at Norrkoping. He changed his name for the first time when he got out of Osteraker.”
“What type of crimes?”
“From simple jobs to specialisation, you might say. Burglaries and con games at first. Occasionally assault. Then more serious crimes. Narcotics. The hard stuff. He seems to have worked for Turkish and Pakistani gangs. This is an overview, mind. We’ll have more information through in the night.”
“We need a picture of him,” Wallander said. “And the fingerprints have to be cross-checked against the ones we found at Wetterstedt’s and Carlman’s. And the ones on Fredman too. Don’t forget the ones we got from the left eyelid.”
“Nyberg is onto it,” Birgersson said. “But he seems so pissed off all the time.”
“That’s just the way he is,” Wallander replied. “But he’s good at his job.”