Sidetracked - By Henning Mankell & Steven T. Murray Page 0,37

hooked on morphine, supplied by Wetterstedt. He had a lot of doctor friends. The fact that he went to bed with whores wasn’t something the papers bothered with. He was neither the first nor the last Swedish minister to do that. Sometimes I wonder whether we’re talking about the rule or the exception. But one day it went too far. One of the hookers got her courage up and reported him to the police for assault.”

“When was that?” Wallander interrupted.

“Mid-60s. Her client said he’d beaten her with a leather belt and cut the soles of her feet with a razor. It was probably the stuff with the razor and her feet that made the difference. Perversion was newsworthy. The only problem was that the police had lodged a complaint against the highest defender of Swedish law and order next to the king. So the whole thing was hushed up, and the police report disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“It literally went up in smoke.”

“But the girl who reported him? What happened to her?”

“Overnight she became the proprietor of a lucrative boutique in Västerås.”

Wallander shook his head.

“How do you know all this?”

“I knew a journalist called Sten Lundberg. He dug around in the whole mess. But when the rumours started that he was about to snoop his way to the truth, he was frozen out, blacklisted.”

“And he accepted it?”

“He had no choice. Unfortunately he had a weakness that couldn’t be covered up. He gambled. Had huge debts. There was a rumour that those gambling debts suddenly went poof. The same way the hooker’s assault report did. So everything was back to square one. And Wetterstedt went on sending his morphine addict out after girls.”

“You said there was one more thing,” Wallander said.

“There was a story that he was mixed up in some of those art thefts carried out during his term as minister of justice. Paintings that were never recovered, and which now hang on the walls of collectors who will never show them to the public. The police arrested a fence once, a middleman. Unintentionally, I’m afraid. The fence swore that Wetterstedt was involved. But it couldn’t be proved. It was buried. There were more people filling up the hole than there were people standing down in it and tossing the dirt out.”

“Not a pretty picture,” said Wallander.

“Remember what I asked? Do you want the truth or the rumours? Because the rumour about Wetterstedt was that he was a talented politician, a loyal party member, an amiable human being. Educated and competent. That’s how his obituaries will read. As long as none of the girls he whipped talk.”

“Why did he leave office?” asked Wallander.

“I don’t think he got along so well with some of the younger ministers. Especially the women. There was a big shift between the generations in those days. I think he realised that his time was over. Mine was too. I quit being a journalist. After he came to Ystad I never wasted a thought on him. Until now.”

“Can you think of anyone who would want to kill him, so many years later?”

Magnusson shrugged.

“That’s impossible to answer.”

Wallander had just one question left.

“Have you ever heard of a murder in this country where the victim was scalped?”

Magnusson’s eyes narrowed. He looked at Wallander with a sudden, alert interest.

“Was he scalped? They didn’t say that on TV. They would have, if they knew about it.”

“Just between the two of us,” Wallander said, looking at Magnusson, who nodded.

“We didn’t want to release it just yet,” he went on. “We can always say we can’t reveal it ‘for investigative reasons’. The excuse the police have for presenting half-truths. But this time it’s actually true.”

“I believe you,” said Magnusson. “Or I don’t believe you. It doesn’t really matter, since I’m no longer a journalist. But I can’t recall a murderer who scalped people. That would have made a great headline. Ture Svanberg would have loved it. Can you avoid leaks?”

“I don’t know,” Wallander answered frankly. “I’ve had a number of bad experiences over the years.”

“I won’t sell the story,” said Magnusson.

Then he accompanied Wallander to the door.

“How the hell can you stand being a policeman?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Wallander. “I’ll let you know when I work it out.”

Wallander drove back to Wetterstedt’s house. The wind was gusting up to gale force. Some of Nyberg’s men were taking fingerprints upstairs. Looking out of the balcony window, he saw Nyberg perched on a wobbly ladder leaning against the light pole by the garden gate. He was clinging