Sidetracked - By Henning Mankell & Steven T. Murray Page 0,119
it looked like this one, could it even be the very same car she had seen drive away from the house where the old minister of justice lived?
Sjösten agreed with Wallander when he explained his idea. Even if the “charwoman” held in such contempt by Wetterstedt said that it could have been a car of the same make, that wouldn’t prove a thing. All they would get was an indication, a possibility. But it was important even so; they both realised that.
Sara Björklund hesitated. Since there were keys in the ignition, Wallander asked Sjösten to drive it once round the block. If she closed her eyes and listened, did she recognise the sound of the engine? Cars had different sounds. She listened.
“Maybe,” she said afterwards. “It looks like the car I saw that morning. But whether it was the same one I can’t say. I didn’t see the number plate.”
Wallander nodded.
“I didn’t expect you to,” he said. “I’m sorry I had to ask you to come all the way here.”
Höglund had brought Norén with her, who would now drive Sara Björklund back to Ystad. Höglund wanted to stay. It was barely midday, yet the whole country seemed to know already what had happened. Sjösten held an impromptu press conference out on the street, while Wallander and Höglund drove down to the ferry terminal and had lunch. He told her all that he had learned.
“Åke Liljegren appeared in our investigative material on Alfred Harderberg,” she said when he’d finished. “Do you remember?”
Wallander let his mind travel back to the year before. He remembered the businessman and art patron who lived behind the walls of Farnholm Castle with distaste. The man they had eventually prevented from leaving the country in a dramatic scene at Sturup Airport. Liljegren’s name had indeed come up in the investigation, but he had been on the periphery. They had never considered questioning him.
Wallander sat with his third cup of coffee and gazed out over the Sound, filled with yachts and ferries.
“We didn’t want this, but we’ve got it,” he said. “Another dead, scalped man. According to Ekholm our chances of identifying the killer will now increase dramatically. That’s according to the F.B.I. models. Now the similarities and differences should be much clearer.”
“I think somehow the level of violence has increased,” she said hesitantly. “If you can grade axe murders and scalpings.”
Wallander waited with interest for her to continue. Her hesitation often meant that she was on the trail of something important.
“Wetterstedt was lying underneath a rowing boat,” she went on. “He had been hit once from behind. His scalp was sliced off, as if the killer had taken the time to do it carefully. Or maybe there was some uncertainty. The first scalp. Carlman was killed from the front. He must have seen his killer. His hair was torn off, not sliced. That seems to indicate more frenzy, or maybe rage, almost uncontrolled. Then Fredman. He apparently lay on his back. Probably tied up, or he’d have resisted. He had acid poured in his eyes. The killer forced open his eyelids. The blow to the head was tremendous. And now Liljegren, with his head stuck in an oven. Something is getting worse. Is it hatred? Or a sick person’s thrill at demonstrating his power?”
“Outline this to Ekholm,” Wallander suggested. “Let him put it into his computer. I agree with you. Certain changes in his behaviour are evident. Something is shifting. But what does it tell us? Sometimes it seems as though we’re trying to interpret footprints that are millions of years old. What I worry about most is the chronology, which is based on the fact that we found the victims in a certain order, since they were killed in a certain order. So for us a natural chronology is created. But the question is whether there’s some other order among them that we can’t see. Are some of the murders more important than others?”
She thought for a moment. “Was one of them closer to the killer than the others?”
“Yes, that’s it,” said Wallander. “Was Liljegren closer to the heart of it than Carlman, for example? And which of them is furthest away? Or do they all have the same relationship to him?”
“A relationship which may only exist in his mind?”
Wallander pushed aside his empty cup. “At least we can be certain that these men were not chosen at random,” he said.