“How old is he?”
“Young forties. Very fit. Karate expert. An excellent marksman.”
“And the other one?”
“From Belgium. Maurice Obadia. Also a soldier. Younger than Tolpin. Could be thirty-four, maybe thirty-five. That’s all I know about him.”
“What are they doing at Farnholm Castle?”
“They’re called ‘special advisers.’ But they’re just Harderberg’s bodyguards. You couldn’t find people who were more skillful, or more dangerous. Harderberg seems to enjoy their company.”
“How do you know that?”
“Sometimes they have shooting practice on the grounds at night. Their targets are quite special.”
“Tell me more.”
“Dummies, big dolls that look like people. They aim at their heads. And they usually score.”
“Does Harderberg join in?”
“Yes. They sometimes keep going all night.”
“Do you know whether either of them, Tolpin or Obadia, has a Bernadelli pistol?”
“I keep as far away from their guns as possible,” Ström said. “There are some people you’d rather keep at arm’s length.”
“But they must have gun licenses,” Wallander said.
Ström smiled. “Only if they’re residents of Sweden,” he said.
“What does that mean? Farnholm Castle is in Sweden, surely?”
“There’s something special about ‘special advisers,’” Ström said. “They’ve never set foot in Sweden. So you can’t say that they are in this country.”
Carefully he stubbed out his cigarette before he said: “There’s a helicopter pad at the castle. It’s always at night, the landing lights are switched on, a helicopter lands, sometimes two. They take off again before dawn. They fly low so they aren’t tracked by radar. Whenever Harderberg is going to leave in his Gulfstream, Tolpin and Obadia disappear the night before by helicopter. Then they meet somewhere or another. Could be Berlin. That’s where the helicopters are registered. When they come back, it’s the same procedure. In other words, you could say they don’t go through customs like ordinary people.”
Wallander nodded thoughtfully. “Just one more question,” he said. “How do you know all this? You’re confined to your bunker by the main gate. You can’t possibly be allowed to roam around wherever you want.”
“That’s a question you’ll never get the answer to,” Ström said. “Let’s just say it’s a trade secret I don’t want to pass on to anybody else.”
“I’ll fix that certificate for you,” Wallander said.
“What do you know?” Ström said, with a smile. “I knew we’d strike a deal.”
“You didn’t know that at all,” Wallander said. “When are you next on duty?”
“I work three nights in a row. I start tonight at seven.”
“I’ll be here at three this afternoon,” Wallander said. “I’ll have something to show you. Then I’ll ask my question.”
Ström stood up and checked through the curtains.
“Is there somebody following you?” Wallander asked.
“You can’t be too careful,” Ström said. “I thought you’d caught on to that.”
Wallander went back to his car and drove to the police station. He paused in reception and asked Ebba to summon a meeting of the investigation team immediately.
“You look pretty stressed,” Ebba said. “Has something happened?”
“Yes,” Wallander said. “At long last something has happened. Don’t forget Nyberg. I need him to be there.”
Twenty minutes later they were ready to start, although Ebba hadn’t been able to reach Hanson, who had left the building early that morning without saying where he was going. Åkeson and Björk came into the conference room just as Wallander had decided he could not wait for them any longer. Without mentioning the fact that he had agreed to a deal with Ström, he described their exchanges at the house in Svartavägen. The listlessness that had characterized recent sessions with the team was noticeably reduced, even though Wallander could read the doubt in his colleagues’ faces. He felt a bit like a soccer manager trying to convince his players that they were about to enter a boom period even though they had lost every match for the last six months.
“I believe in this,” he said in conclusion. “Ström can be very useful to us.”
Åkeson shook his head. “I don’t like it,” he said. “The success of this investigation now seems to depend on a security guard who’s been kicked out of the police force but is nevertheless cast as our savior.”
“What choice do we have?” Wallander said. “Besides, I can’t see that we’re doing anything illegal. He was the one who came to us, not the other way around.”
Björk was more scathing. “It’s out of the question. We can’t use a disgraced police officer for a snitch. There would be a major scandal if this went wrong and the media got on to it. The national police commissioner would string me up if I gave you the go-ahead.”
“Let him come after me instead,” Wallander said. “Ström is serious. He wants to help. As long as we do nothing illegal, we’re hardly risking scandal.”
“I can see the headlines,” Björk said. “They’re not nice.”
“I see different headlines,” Wallander said. “Something about two more murders the police haven’t been able to solve.”
Martinsson could see that the discussion was getting out of hand, and intervened. “It seems a little odd that he didn’t want anything in return for giving us a little help,” he said. “Can we really believe that being upset about losing his job is sufficient reason for him to start helping the police, whom he hates?”
“He hates the police, no doubt about that,” Wallander said. “But I still think we can trust him.”
You could have heard a pin drop. Åkeson poked at his upper lip, wondering what he ought to think. “Martinsson’s question—you didn’t answer it,” he said.
“He didn’t ask for anything in return,” Wallander said, lying through his teeth.
“What exactly do you want us to do?”
Wallander nodded in the direction of Nyberg, who was sitting next to Höglund. “Sten Torstensson was killed by bullets that were probably from a Bernadelli pistol. Nyberg says that’s a rare weapon. I want Ström to find out whether one of those bodyguards has a Bernadelli. Then we can go to the castle and make an arrest.”
“We can do that anyway,” Åkeson said. “People carrying guns, no matter what make they are, illegally residing in this country—that’s good enough for me.”
“But what then?” Wallander said. “We arrest them. We deport them. We’ve put all our eggs in one basket and then dropped it. Before we can point to those men as possible murderers we have to know whether either of them has a gun that could be the murder weapon.”
“Fingerprints,” Nyberg said. “That would be good. Then we can run a check with Interpol and Europol.”
Wallander agreed. He had forgotten about fingerprints.
Åkeson was still poking at his upper lip. “Is there anything else you have in mind?” he asked.
“No,” Wallander said. “Not at the moment.”
He knew he was walking a tightrope and could fall at any moment. If he went too far, Åkeson would put a stop to any further contact with Ström or at the very least hold things up. So Wallander did not mention everything he intended to do.
While Åkeson continued to think the matter over, Wallander looked across at Nyberg and Höglund. She smiled. Nyberg nodded almost imperceptibly. They understand, Wallander thought. They know what I’m thinking. And they’re with me.
At last Åkeson stopped arguing with himself. “Just this once,” he said. “But this once only. No more future contact with Kurt Ström without first informing me. I’ll want to know what you intend to ask him before I approve of any more contributions from that gentleman. You can also expect me to say no.”