“As far as I know, both Volvo and Skanska had large shareholdings in Smeden at that time. It might be different now, though.”
“We can come back to that,” Wallander said. “Let’s get back to the fraud. What happened?”
“We had a series of meetings in late summer and early autumn to put the finishing touches on the formation of the company. The consultants were very efficient and our lawyers gave them high praise, as did the financial supremos at the county council. We even went so far as to propose that STRUFAB should be given a long-term contract by the council.”
“Who were the individual consultants?”
“Egil Holmberg and Stefan Fjällsjö. On a few occasions a third one was there as well, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten his name.”
“And all of these people turned out to be swindlers?”
Oscarsson’s reply surprised him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The fraud was carried out in such a way that, in the end, it wasn’t possible to put a finger on any one individual. Nobody was guilty. But the money had disappeared.”
“That sounds pretty odd,” Wallander said. “What actually happened?”
“We have to go back to the afternoon of Friday, August 14, 1992,” Oscarsson said. “That’s when the scam was set up, and carried out in a very short period of time. As far as we could determine with hindsight, it was all very carefully planned. We met the consultants in a conference room at the Finance Unit. We started at one P.M. and thought we’d be finished by five. When the meeting started, Holmberg announced that he had to leave at four, but that it shouldn’t have any effect on the meeting. At 1:55 the Finance Director’s secretary came in to announce that there was an important phone call for Fjällsjö. I think it was said to be from the Ministry of Technology. Fjällsjö apologized and went out with the secretary in order to take the call in her office. She explained later that she intended to leave the room so that Fjällsjö could take the call in private and he told her that the call would last for at least ten minutes. What happened next we can’t be absolutely sure, but we are clear on the outline. Fjällsjö laid the receiver on the desk—we don’t know where the call came from, except that it wasn’t from the Ministry of Technology. He then went from the secretary’s office through the connecting door to the finance director’s office, and authorized the transfer of four million kronor to a business account at Handelsbanken in Stockholm. It was described specifically as a consultancy fee. No countersignature was required, so there was no problem. The authorization referred to a contract number with the nonexistent consultancy firm, which I seem to remember was called Sisyphus. Fjällsjö confirmed the transfer in writing, forging the signature of the finance director and using the appropriate form. Then he keyed his authorization into the computer. He put the hard copy in the interoffice mail, then went back to the secretary’s office, continued talking to whoever it was at the other end of the line, and hung up when the secretary returned. That was the end of the first stage of the fraud. Fjällsjö returned to the conference room. Less than a quarter of an hour had passed.”
Wallander was listening intently. Because he was not making notes, he was afraid of forgetting details.
Oscarsson continued: “Just before four Holmberg made his apologies and left. We realized afterward that he didn’t leave the building, but went down to the next floor where the chief clerk had his office. I should perhaps mention that it was empty, because the chief clerk was attending our meeting. He didn’t usually do so, but on this occasion the consultants had specifically asked for him to be present. In other words, the whole thing was meticulously prepared. Holmberg hacked into his computer, entered the invented contract number, and inserted an authorization for a payment of four million kronor back-dated a week. He phoned the Handelsbanken head office in Stockholm and requested payment. And then he sat back and waited calmly for the response. Ten minutes later Handelsbanken called back to check. He took the call and confirmed the transaction. There was only one thing left to do: he called the county council’s own bank and authorized the payment, and then left the premises. Early the following Monday morning, somebody collected the money from Handelsbanken in Stockholm. The person was authorized by Sisyphus to sign on behalf of the company, and claimed to be called Rickard Edén. We have reason to believe that it was Fjällsjö who collected the money, using this alias. It was about a week before the fraud was discovered. The police were called in, and it did not take long to work out what must have happened. But there was no proof, naturally. Needless to say, Fjällsjö and Holmberg were vociferous in denying all knowledge. We severed all links with the consultancy firm, but we were unable to get any further. In the end, the public prosecutor wrote the whole thing off and we managed to hush it up. Everybody agreed that was what we had to do—apart from one person.”
“Borman?”
Oscarsson nodded slowly. “He was truly upset. We all were, of course, but Borman took it hardest. He seemed to take it personally because we weren’t prepared to force the public prosecutor and the police to follow the case through. I suppose he took it so badly because he thought we’d failed in our duty.”
“Did he take it badly enough to commit suicide?”
“I believe so.”
Some progress, Wallander thought. But where does the law firm in Ystad fit in? They must be involved, in light of Borman’s letters.
“Do you know what Holmberg and Fjällsjö are doing now?”
“Their consultancy firm changed its name. That’s all I know. We warned county councils the length and breadth of the country about them, discreetly to be sure.”
“You said that the consultancy firm was part of a bigger concern, an investment company. But you didn’t know who owned it. Who was chairman of the board of Smeden?”
“From what I’ve read in the newspapers, Smeden has been transformed during the last year or so. It’s been split up, several sectors have been sold off, and new elements have been acquired. It might not be going too far to say that Smeden has quite a poor reputation. Volvo have sold their shares. I forget who bought them. But somebody at the stock exchange could tell you.”
“You’ve been a great help,” Wallander said.
“You won’t forget our agreement?”
“I never forget anything,” Wallander said. “But tell me, did it ever occur to you that Borman might have been murdered?”
Oscarsson stared at him in evident unease.
“No,” he said. “Never. Why on earth would I have thought that?”
“I was only asking,” Wallander said. “Many thanks for your help. I might need to be in touch again.”
Oscarsson stood on the steps, watching him leave. Wallander was now so exhausted he wanted nothing more than to lie down in the car and go to sleep, but he forced himself to think ahead. The natural thing would have been to return to Höör, call Thomas Rundstedt out from his budget conference, and ask him some quite different questions.
He set off for Malmö while allowing a decision to mature in his mind, then he stopped on the hard shoulder and called the Malmö police. He asked for Roslund, gave his name, and said he had an urgent matter to discuss. It took the operator less than a minute to find Roslund.
“It’s Wallander here, from Ystad,” he said. “We met last night.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Roslund said. “They told me you had something urgent to discuss.”
“I’m in Malmö,” Wallander said. “I’d like to ask you a favor.”
“I’m listening.”
“About a year ago, at the beginning of September, the first or second Sunday in the month, a man called Lars Borman hanged himself in a clearing in the woods at Klagshamn. There must be an incident report, some notes about death by unnatural causes, and a postmortem report. I’d be very grateful if you could dig them out for me. If at all possible I’d like to get in touch with one of the officers who answered the call and took the body down. Do you think this might be possible?”
br /> “What was the name again?”
Wallander spelled it out.
“I don’t know how many suicides we get per year,” Roslund said. “I don’t recall this one. But I’ll look for the documents and see if one of the officers called out is in today.”
Wallander gave him his cell phone number.
“I’ll drive to Klagshamn in the meantime,” he said.
It was 2:00. He tried in vain to shake off his exhaustion, but was forced to give in and turned off onto a road that he knew led to an old quarry. He switched off the engine and pulled his jacket tightly around him. A minute later he was asleep.
He woke up with a start. He was freezing cold and didn’t know where he was at first. Something had strayed into his consciousness, something he had dreamed, but he couldn’t remember what it was. A feeling of depression gripped him when he looked around at the gray landscape on every side. It was 2:35, so he had been asleep for half an hour. He felt as if he had been roused from a long period of unconsciousness.
That is about as close as one can get to the greatest loneliness of all, he thought. Being all alone in the world. The final human being, forgotten about.
He was roused from his thoughts by the phone ringing. It was Roslund.
“You sound half asleep,” he said. “Have you been taking a nap in the car?”
“Not at all,” Wallander said. “I have a bit of a cold.”
“I’ve found the stuff you asked for,” Roslund said. “I have the papers here on my desk. I also have the name of the police officer: Magnus Staffansson. He was in the car that was called out when a jogger found a body hanging from a birch tree. No doubt he can explain how a man can hang himself in a birch, of all trees. Where would you like to meet him?”
Wallander could feel his exhaustion slipping away. “At the slip road for Klagshamn,” he said.
“He’ll be there in a quarter of an hour,” Roslund said. “By the way, I spoke to Sven Nyberg a few minutes ago. He hasn’t found anything in your car.”
“I’m not surprised,” Wallander said.
“You won’t have to see the wreck when you drive back home,” Roslund said. “We’ve just arranged for it to be towed away.”
“Thanks for your help.”
He drove straight to Klagshamn and parked at the meeting place. After a few minutes a police car drove up. Wallander had gotten out of his car and was walking up and down; Magnus Staffansson was in uniform, and saluted. Wallander responded with an awkward wave. They sat in Wallander’s car. Staffansson handed over a plastic file containing photocopies.
“I’ll glance through this,” Wallander said. “Meanwhile, you can try to remember what happened.”
“Suicide is something you’d prefer to forget,” Staffansson said, in a thick Malmö accent. Wallander smiled to hear how he too used to speak, before his move to Ystad had changed his dialect.
He read swiftly through the terse reports, the postmortem document, and the record of the decision to abandon the investigation. There were no suspicious circumstances.
I wonder, Wallander thought. Then he put the file on the shelf on the dashboard and turned to Staffansson.
“I think it would be a good idea to take a look at the place where it happened. Can you remember how to get there?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s a few kilometers outside the village. I’ll go first.”
They left Klagshamn and drove south along the coast. A container ship was on its way through the Sound. A bank of clouds hovered over Copenhagen. The housing estates petered out and soon they were surrounded by fields. A tractor made its way slowly over one of them.
They were there almost before he knew it. There was a stretch of deciduous woods to the left of the road. Wallander pulled up behind Staffansson’s police car and got out. The path was wet and he thought he better put on his rubber boots, but on his way to the trunk to get them he realized they had been in his Peugeot.
Staffansson pointed to a birch tree, bigger than the rest. “That’s where he was hanging,” he said.
“Tell me about it,” Wallander said.
“Most of it’s in the report,” Staffansson said.
“It’s always better from the horse’s mouth.”
“It was a Sunday morning,” Staffansson began. “About eight. We’d been called out to calm down an angry passenger on the morning ferry from Dragør who claimed he had gotten food poisoning from the breakfast during the crossing. That was when we got the emergency call: a man hanging from a tree. We got a location and headed there. A couple of joggers had come across him. They were in shock, of course, but one of them had run to the house on the hill over there and called the police. We did what we’re trained to do and took him down, as it sometimes happens that they’re still alive. Then the ambulance arrived, the CID took over, and eventually it was put down as a suicide. That’s all I can remember. Oh, I forgot to say he had gotten there on a bike. It was lying here among the bushes.”
Wallander examined the tree while listening to what Staffansson had to say. “What kind of a rope was it?” he said.
“It looked like a hawser from a boat, about as thick as my thumb.”
“Do you remember the knot?”
“It was an ordinary running noose.”
“How did he do it?”
Staffansson stared at him, bewildered.
“It’s not all that easy to hang yourself,” Wallander said. “Did he stand on something? Did he climb up the tree?”
Staffansson pointed at the trunk. “He probably pushed off from that bulge in the trunk,” he said. “That’s what we guessed. There was nothing he could have stood on.”
Wallander nodded. The postmortem made it clear Borman had choked to death. His neck was not broken. He had been dead for an hour at most when the police arrived.
“Can you remember anything else?” he asked.
“Such as what?”
“Only you can answer that.”
“You do what you have to do,” Staffansson said. “You write your report and then you try to forget it as soon as you can.”
Wallander knew how it was. There’s an atmosphere of depression about a suicide unlike anything else. He thought of all the occasions when he himself had been forced to deal with suicides.
He went over what Staffansson had said. It lay like a sort of filter over what he had already read in the report. But he knew that there was something that did not add up.
He thought of all he had heard about Borman: even if the descriptions were incomplete, even if there had been some murky areas, it seemed clear that Borman had been in every way a well-organized sort of person. And yet when he had decided to take his own life he had bicycled out to some woods and chosen a tree that was highly unsuitable for what he planned to do. That already told Wallander there was something fishy about Borman’s death. But there was something else. He could not put his finger on it at first, but then he stared down at the ground a few meters from the tree.
The bicycle, he thought. That’s telling quite a different story.
Staffansson had lit a cigarette and was pacing up and down to keep warm.
“The bicycle,” Wallander said. “There are no details about it in your reports.”
“It was a very good one,” Staffansson said. “Ten gears, good condition. Dark blue, as I remember.”
“Show me exactly where it was.”
Staffansson pointed straight at the spot.
“How was it lying?” Wallander asked.
“Well, what can one say? It was just lying on the ground.”
“It hadn’t fallen over?”
“There was a stand, but it hadn’t been opened.”
“Are you sure?”
He thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said, “I’m certain.”
“So he had just let the bike fall down any which way? More or less like a kid does when he’s in a hurry?”
“Exactly,” Staffansson said. “It had been flung down. As if he was
in a hurry to get it all over with.”
Wallander nodded thoughtfully. “Just one more thing,” he said. “Ask your colleague if he can confirm that the stand hadn’t been opened up.”
“Is that so important?”
“Yes,” Wallander said. “It’s much more important than you think. Call me if your colleague disagrees.”
“The stand wasn’t opened,” Staffansson said. “I’m absolutely certain.”
“Call me anyway,” Wallander said. “Now let’s get out of here. Many thanks for your help.”
Wallander started the drive back to Ystad, thinking about Borman. An accountant at the County Council. A man who would never have just tossed his bicycle to the ground, not even in extremis.
One more step forward, Wallander thought. I am onto something without quite knowing what it is. Somewhere between Borman and the law firm in Ystad there is a link. I need to find it.
He had passed the spot where his car had blown up before he noticed. He turned off at Rydsgård and had a late lunch at the local inn. He was the only person in the dining room. He really must call Linda that night, no matter how tired he was. Then he would write to Baiba.
He was back at the station in Ystad by 5:00. Ebba informed him that there was not going to be a meeting—everybody was busy and didn’t have time to advise their colleagues that they had nothing of significance to advise them about. They would meet the following morning instead, at 8:00.
“You look dreadful,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll get some sleep tonight.”
He went to his office and shut the door behind him. There were several notes on his desk, but nothing so important that it could not wait until morning.
He hung up his jacket and spent half an hour writing a summary of what he had done during the day. Then he dropped his pen and leaned back in his chair.
We really must break through now, he thought. We just have to find the missing link.
He had just put on his jacket when there was a knock on the door and Svedberg came in. Wallander could see right away that something had happened. Svedberg seemed worried.