Sidetracked - By Henning Mankell & Steven T. Murray Page 0,121

he thought. He must have a horse. A motorcycle. Which had leant against the road workers’ hut. You drive in a car, but you ride a motorcycle.

He walked back to the house. For the first time he’d caught a glimpse of the man he sought. The excitement of the discovery was immediate. His alertness sharpened. For the time being, however, he would keep his idea to himself.

A window on the top floor opened. Sjösten leaned out.

“Come up here,” he shouted.

Wallander went in, wondering what they had found. Sjösten and Höglund were standing in front of a bookcase in a room that must have been Liljegren’s office. Sjösten had a plastic bag in his hand.

“I’m guessing cocaine,” he said. “Could be heroin.”

“Where was it?” Wallander asked.

Sjösten pointed to an open drawer.

“There may be more,” Wallander said.

“I’ll see about getting a dog in here,” said Sjösten.

“I wonder whether you shouldn’t send out a few people to talk to the neighbours,” said Wallander. “Ask if they noticed a man on a motorcycle. Not just last night, but earlier too. Over the last few weeks.”

“Did he come on a motorcycle?”

“I think so. It seems to be his means of getting around. You’ll find it in the investigative material.”

Sjösten left the room.

“There’s nothing about a motorcycle in the investigative material,” said Höglund, surprised.

“There should be,” said Wallander, sounding distracted. “Didn’t we confirm that it was a motorcycle that stood behind the road workers’ hut?”

Wallander looked out the window. Ekholm and Hansson were on their way up the path, with another man whom Wallander assumed was the Helsingborg chief of police. Birgersson met them halfway.

“We’d better go down,” he said. “Did you find anything?”

“The house reminds me of Wetterstedt’s,” she replied. “The same gloomy bourgeois respectability. But at least here there are some family photos. Whether they make it more cheerful I don’t know. Liljegren seems to have had cavalry officers in his family, Scanian Dragoons if you can believe it.”

“I haven’t looked at them,” Wallander apologised. “But I believe you. His scams undoubtedly had much in common with primitive warfare.”

“There’s a photo of an old couple outside a cottage,” she said. “If I understood what was written on the back, the picture was of his maternal grandparents on the island of Öland.”

They went down. Parts of the stairs were cordoned off to protect the blood traces.

“Old bachelors,” said Wallander. “Their houses resemble each other’s because they were alike. How old was Åke Liljegren, anyway? Was he over 70?”

Höglund didn’t know.

A conference room was set up in the dining room. Ekholm, who didn’t have to attend, was assigned an officer to fill him in. When they had all introduced themselves and sat down, Hansson surprised Wallander by being quite clear-cut about what should happen. During the trip up from Ystad he had spoken with both Åkeson and the National Criminal Bureau in Stockholm.

“It would be a mistake to state that our situation has changed significantly because of this murder,” Hansson began. “The situation has been dramatic enough ever since we realised that we were dealing with a serial killer. Now we might say that we have crossed a sort of boundary. There’s nothing to indicate that we will actually crack these murders. But we have to hope. As far as the Bureau is concerned, they are prepared to give us whatever help we request. The formalities involved shouldn’t present any serious difficulties either. I assume no-one has anything against Kurt being assigned leader of the new cross-boundary investigative team?”

No-one had any objections. Sjösten nodded approval from his side of the table.

“Kurt has a certain notoriety,” Hansson said, without a trace of irony. “The chief of the National Criminal Bureau regarded it as obvious that he should continue to lead the investigation.”

“I agree,” said the chief of the Helsingborg police. That was the only thing he said during the meeting.

“Guidelines have been drawn on how a collaboration such as this can be implemented as quickly as possible,” Hansson continued. “The prosecutors have their own procedures to follow. The key thing is to agree what type of assistance from Stockholm we actually require.”

Wallander had been listening to what Hansson was saying with a mixture of pride and anxiety. At the same time he was self-assured enough to realise that no-one else was more suitable to lead the investigation.

“Has anything resembling this series of murders ever occurred in Sweden?” asked Sjösten.

“Not according to Ekholm,” said Wallander.

“It’s just that it would be good to have some colleagues who have experience