Sidetracked - By Henning Mankell & Steven T. Murray Page 0,154

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 Logård’s launch. A lot of questions remained. Wallander needed an empty room where he could lock himself away and think.

He was impatient for Höglund to return. And he was waiting for information on Logård. 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 Logård.”

“Great,” he said. “What have we got?”

“The prints we found at Hördestigen and in the boats are in our records, under Erik Sturesson and Sture Eriksson. But not Hans Logård. Erik Sturesson, if we start with him, since that was Hans Logård’s real name, is 47. Born in Skövde, 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 Österåker, Kumla and Hall prisons. And a short stretch at Norrköping. He changed his name for the first time when he got out of Österåker.”

“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.”

They sat down at a table overflowing with used plastic coffee cups. Telephones rang all around them. They erected an invisible wall around themselves, admitting only Svedberg.

“The interesting thing is that Logård suddenly stopped paying visits to our prisons,” Birgersson said. “The last time he was inside was 1989. Since then he’s been clean. As if he found salvation.”

“That corresponds pretty well with when Liljegren got himself a house here in Helsingborg.”

Birgersson nodded. “We’re not too clear on that yet. But it seems that Logård bought Hördestigen in 1991. That’s a gap of a couple of years. But there’s nothing to prevent him from having lived somewhere else in the meantime.”

“We’ll need an answer to that one right away,” Wallander said, reaching for the phone. “What’s Elisabeth Carlén’s number? It’s on Sjösten’s desk. Have we still got her under surveillance, by the way?”

Birgersson nodded again. Wallander made a quick decision.

“Pull them off,” he said.

Someone put a piece of paper in front of him. He dialled the number. She answered almost immediately.

“This is Inspector Wallander,” he said.

“I won’t come to the station at this time of night,” she said.

“I don’t want you to. I just have one question: was Hans Logård hanging out with Liljegren as early as 1989? Or 1990?”

He could hear her lighting a cigarette and blowing smoke straight into the receiver.

“Yes,” she said, “I think he was there then. In 1990 anyway.”

“Good,” said Wallander.

“Why are you tailing me?” she asked.

“I was wondering myself,” Wallander said. “We don’t want anything to happen to you, of course. But we’re lifting the surveillance now. Just