Wallander's First Case

  Wallander shook his head and noticed that his mouth was dry.

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘I didn’t notice anything that you haven’t already commented on.’

  Hemberg drummed his fingers against the tabletop.

  ‘Then we have no need to sit here any longer,’ he said. ‘Does anyone know what the lunch is today?’

  ‘Herring,’ Hörner said. ‘It’s usually good.’

  Hemberg asked Wallander to join him for lunch. But he declined. His appetite was gone. He felt that he needed to be alone to think. He went to his office to get his coat. He could see through the window that it had stopped raining. Just as he was about to leave his office, one of his colleagues from the patrol squad came in and threw his police cap on a table.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, and sat down heavily in a chair.

  His name was Jörgen Berglund and he came from a farm outside Landskrona. Wallander sometimes had trouble understanding his dialect.

  ‘We’ve cleaned up two blocks,’ he said. ‘In one of them we found some runaway thirteen-year-old girls who had been missing for weeks. One of them smelled so bad we had to hold our noses. Another one bit Persson on the leg when we were going to lift them out. What is happening in this country, anyway? And why weren’t you there?’

  ‘I was called in by Hemberg,’ Wallander said. As to the other question, about what was happening in Sweden, he had no answer.

  He took his coat and left. In the reception area he was stopped by one of the girls who worked in the call centre.

  ‘You have a message,’ she said and she handed him a note through the window. There was a phone number on it.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked.

  ‘Someone called and said he was a distant relative to you. He wasn’t sure you would even remember him.’

  ‘Didn’t he say what his name was?’

  ‘No, but he seemed old.’

  Wallander studied the telephone number. There was an area code: 0411. This can’t be true, he thought. My father calls and introduces himself as a distant relative. One I may not even remember.

  ‘Where is Löderup?’ he asked.

  ‘I think that’s the Ystad police district.’

  ‘I’m not asking about the police district. Which area code is it?’

  ‘It’s Ystad.’

  Wallander tucked the note in his pocket and left. If he had had a car he would have driven straight out to Löderup and asked his father what he had meant by calling like that. When he had got an answer, he would let him have it. Say that from this point on all contact between them would be severed. No more poker evenings, no phone calls. Wallander would promise to come to the funeral, which he hoped was not too far off. But that was all.

  Wallander walked along Fiskehamnsgatan. Then he swung onto Slottsgatan and continued into Kungsparken. I have two problems, he thought. The biggest and most important one is Mona. The other is my father. I have to solve both problems as soon as possible.

  He sat down on a bench and watched some grey sparrows bathing in a puddle of water. A drunk man was sleeping behind some bushes. I should really lift him up, Wallander thought. Put him down on this bench or even make sure he gets picked up and can sleep it off somewhere. But right now I don’t care about him. He can stay where he is.

  He rose from the bench and kept going. Left Kungsparken and came out on Regementsgatan. He still wasn’t feeling hungry. Even so, he stopped at a hot-dog stand on Gustav Adolf’s Square and bought a grilled hot dog on a bun. Then he returned to the station.

  It was half past one. Hemberg was unavailable. What he should do with himself, he didn’t know. He should really talk to Lohman about what he was expected to do during the afternoon. But he didn’t. Instead he pulled out the lists that Helena had given him. Again he browsed through the names. Tried to see the faces, imagine their lives. Sailors and engineers. Their birth information was noted in the margins. Wallander put the lists down again. From the corridor he heard something that sounded like a taunting laugh.

  Wallander tried to think about Hålén. His neighbour. Who had turned in betting sheets, put in an extra lock and thereafter shot himself. Everything pointed to Hemberg’s theory holding water. For some reason Hålén had killed Alexandra Batista and then taken his own life.

  That’s where it came to a stop for Wallander. Hemberg’s theory was logical and straightforward. Nonetheless Wallander thought it was hollow. The outside coordinates matched up. But the content? It was still very murky. Not least, this idea did not fit very well with the impression Wallander had had of his neighbour. Wallander had never found anything passionate or violent in him.

  Of course even the most retiring person was capable of exploding in anger and violence under certain circumstances. But did it actually make sense to think that Hålén had taken the life of the woman he most likely had a relationship with?

  Something is missing, Wallander thought. Inside this shell there is nothing.

  He tried to think more deeply but didn’t get anywhere. Absently he gazed at the lists on the table. Without being able to say where the thought came from, he suddenly started to look through all of the birth information in the margins. How old had Hålén been? He recalled that he was born in 1898. But which date? Wallander called reception and asked to be put through to Stefansson. He picked up at once.

  ‘This is Wallander. I’m wondering if you have Hålén’s birthdate available?’

  ‘Are you planning to wish him a happy birthday?’

  He doesn’t like me, Wallander thought. But in time I’ll show him that I am a much better investigator than he is.

  ‘Hemberg asked me to look into something,’ Wallander lied.

  Stefansson put down the receiver. Wallander could hear him riffling through papers.

  ‘It’s 17 September 1898,’ Stefansson said. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘That’s all,’ Wallander said and hung up.

  Then he pulled over the lists again.

  On the third page he found what he had not been consciously aware of looking for. An engineer who was born on 17 September 1898. Anders Hansson. Same initials as Artur Hålén, Wallander thought.

  He went through the rest of the entries to assure himself that there were no others who were born on the same day. He found a sailor who was born on 19 September 1901. That was the closest thing. Wallander took out the phone book and looked up the number of his local pastor’s office. Since Wallander and Hålén had lived in the same building, they must also be registered in the same parish. He dialled the number and waited. A woman answered. Wallander thought he might as well continue to introduce himself as a detective.

  ‘My name is Wallander and I’m with the Malmö police,’ he started. ‘This is in regard to a violent death that occurred a few days ago. I’m from the homicide unit.’

  He gave Hålén’s name, address and birthdate.

  ‘What is it you want to know?’ the woman asked.

  ‘If there is any information about Hålén possibly having a different name earlier in his life.’

  ‘You mean such as changing his last name?’

  Damn it, Wallander thought. People don’t change their first names. Only their last names.

  ‘Let me check,’ the woman said.

  This was wrong, Wallander realised. I react before I’ve thought my ideas through enough.

  He wondered if he should just hang up. But the woman would wonder about that, think the call had been cut off, and might call for him at the station. He waited. It took a long time before she returned.

  ‘His death was just in the process of being recorded,’ she said. ‘That’s why it took a while. But you were right.’

  Wallander sat up.

  ‘His name was Hansson before. He changed his name in 1962.’

  Right, Wallander thought. But wrong anyway.

  ‘The first name,’ he said. ‘What was it?’

  ‘Anders.’

  ‘It should have been Artur.’


  The answer came as a surprise.

  ‘It was. He must have had parents who loved names, or who couldn’t agree. His name was Anders Erik Artur Hansson.’

  Wallander held his breath.

  ‘Thank you so much for your help.’

  When the call was over, Wallander felt a strong urge to contact Hemberg. But he stayed where he was. The question was how much his discovery was worth. I’ll follow up on this myself, he decided. If it doesn’t lead anywhere, no one has to know about it.

  Wallander pulled over his notepad and started to make a summary. What did he really know? Artur Hålén had changed his name seven years ago. Linnea Almquist had said at some point that Hålén had moved in at the start of the 1960s. That could fit.

  Wallander ended up sitting with the pen in his hand. Then he called back the pastor’s office. The same woman answered.

  ‘I forgot to ask you something,’ Wallander excused himself. ‘I need to know when Hålén moved to Rosengård.’

  ‘You mean Hansson,’ the woman said. ‘I’ll go see.’

  This time she was much faster.

  ‘He is registered as newly moved on 1 January 1962.’

  ‘Where did he live before?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I thought that information was available?’

  ‘He was registered as being out of the country. There is no information about where.’

  Wallander nodded into the receiver.

  ‘Then I think that is all. I promise not to disturb you again.’

  He returned to his notes. Hansson moves to Malmö from some unknown foreign location in 1962 and changes his name at the same time. A few years later he starts a relationship with a woman in Arlöv. If they had known each other earlier, I don’t know. After several more years she is murdered and Hålén commits suicide. It’s not clear in what order this occurs. But Hålén kills himself. After first filling out a betting form and putting an extra lock on his door. And after swallowing a number of precious stones.

  Wallander made a face. He still wasn’t finding a direction from which to proceed. Why does a person change his name? he thought. To make himself invisible? To make himself impossible to find? So that no one will know who he is or who he has been?

  Who you are or who you have been?

  Wallander thought about this. No one had known Hålén. He had been a loner. There could, however, be people who had known a man by the name of Anders Hansson. The question was how he could find them.

  At that moment he was reminded of something that had happened the preceding year that might help him find a solution. A fight had broken out between some drunks down by the ferry terminal. Wallander was one of the officers who responded to the dispatch and helped to break up the fight. One of the parties involved was a Danish sailor by the name of Holger Jespersen. Wallander had had the impression that he had unwillingly been dragged into the fight and said as much to his superiors. He had also insisted that Jespersen had not done anything and the man had been allowed to go free while the others were brought in. Later on Wallander had forgotten all about it.

  But a few weeks later Jespersen had suddenly turned up outside his door in Rosengård and given him a bottle of Danish aquavit as thanks for his help. Wallander had never managed to establish how Jespersen had found him. But he had invited him in. Jespersen had problems with alcohol, but only from time to time. Usually he worked on various ships as an engineer. He was a good storyteller and seemed to know every northern sailor from the past fifty years. Jespersen had told him that he usually spent his evenings in a bar in Nyhavn. When he was sober he always drank coffee. Otherwise beer. But always in the same place. If he was not somewhere out at sea.

  Now Wallander came to think of him. Jespersen knows, he thought. Or else he can give me some advice.

  Wallander had already made his decision. If he was lucky, Jespersen would be in Copenhagen and hopefully not in the middle of one of his drinking binges. It was not yet three o’clock. Wallander would spend the rest of the day going to Copenhagen and back. No one seemed to miss his presence at the station. But before he set off across the sound he had a telephone call to make. It was as if his decision to go to Copenhagen had given him the necessary courage. He dialled the number to the hair salon where Mona worked.

  The woman who answered the phone was called Karin and was the owner. Wallander had met her on several occasions. He found her intrusive and nosy. But Mona thought she was a good boss. He told her who he was and asked her to give a message to Mona.

  ‘You can talk to her yourself,’ Karin said. ‘I have a woman under a dryer here.’

  ‘I’m in a case meeting,’ Wallander said and tried to sound busy. ‘Just tell her that I’ll be in touch by ten o’clock tonight.’

  Karin promised to forward the message.

  Afterwards Wallander noticed that he had started sweating during the short conversation. But he was still happy that he had accomplished it.

  Then he left the station and just managed to catch the hydrofoil that left at three o’clock. Earlier in the year he had often gone to Copenhagen. First alone, and then with Mona. He liked the city, which was so much bigger than Malmö. Sometimes he also went to Det Kongelige Theatre when there was an opera performance he wanted to see.

  He didn’t much care for the hydrofoils. The trip went too fast. The old ferries gave him a stronger feeling that there was actually some distance between Sweden and Denmark; that he was travelling abroad when he crossed the sound. He looked out the window as he drank his coffee. One day they will probably build a bridge here, he thought. But I probably won’t have to live to see that day.

  When Wallander arrived in Copenhagen it had started to drizzle again. The boat docked in Nyhavn. Jespersen had told him where his regular pub was and it was not without a feeling of excitement that Wallander stepped into the semi-darkness. It was a quarter to four. He looked around the dim interior. There were a few customers scattered about, sitting at tables, drinking beer.

  A radio was turned on somewhere. Or was it a record player? A Danish woman’s voice was singing something that seemed very sentimental. Wallander didn’t see Jespersen at any of the tables. The bartender was working on a crossword puzzle in a newspaper spread out over the counter. He looked up when Wallander approached.

  ‘A beer,’ Wallander said.

  The man gave him a Tuborg.

  ‘I’m looking for Jespersen,’ Wallander said.

  ‘Holger? He won’t be in for another hour or so.’

  ‘He’s not out at sea, then?’

  The bartender smiled.

  ‘If he was, he would hardly be coming in in an hour, would he? He usually comes in around five.’

  Wallander sat down at a table and waited. The sentimental female voice had now been replaced by an equally schmaltzy male voice. If Jespersen came in around five, Wallander would have no trouble being back in Malmö before he was set to call Mona. Now he tried to think out what he was going to say. He would not even acknowledge the slap. He would tell her why he had contacted Helena. He would not give up until she believed what he said.

  A man at one of the tables had fallen asleep. The bartender was still hunched over his crossword. Time was passing slowly. Now and again the door opened and let in a glimpse of daylight. Someone came in and a few others left. Wallander checked his watch. Ten to five. Still no Jespersen. He became hungry and was given some slices of sausage on a plate. And another Tuborg. Wallander had the feeling that the bartender was puzzling over the same word as he had been when Wallander had arrived at the bar an hour ago.

  It was five o’clock. Still no Jespersen. He’s not coming, Wallander thought. Today of all days he’s slipped and started drinking again.

  Two women walked in through the door. One of them ordered a schnapps and sat down at a table. The other one went behind the counter. The bartender left his newspaper and started to go through the bottles lined up on the shelves. Apparently the woman worked there. It was n
ow twenty minutes past five. The door opened and Jespersen entered, dressed in a denim jacket and a cap. He walked straight to the counter and said hello. The bartender immediately poured him a cup of coffee and pointed to Wallander’s table. Jespersen took his cup and smiled when he saw Wallander.

  ‘This is unexpected,’ he said in broken Swedish. ‘A Swedish police servant in Copenhagen.’

  ‘Not a servant,’ Wallander said. ‘Constable. Or criminal investigator.’

  ‘Isn’t that the same thing?’

  Jespersen chuckled and dropped four lumps of sugar into his coffee.

  ‘In any case, it’s nice to get a visitor,’ he said. ‘I know everyone who comes here. I know what they’re going to drink and what they’re going to say. And they know the same about me. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t go someplace else. But I don’t think I dare.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Maybe someone will say something I don’t want to hear.’

  Wallander wasn’t sure he understood everything that Jespersen was saying. For one thing, his Swedo-Danish was unclear, for another his pronouncements were somewhat vague.

  ‘I came here to see you,’ Wallander said. ‘I thought you might be able to help me.’

  ‘With any other police servant I would have told you to go to hell,’ Jespersen answered jovially. ‘But with you it’s different. What is it you want to know?’

  Wallander filled him in on what had happened.

  ‘A sailor, called both Anders Hansson and Artur Hålén,’ he finished. ‘Who also worked as an engineer.’

  ‘Which line?’

  ‘Sahlén.’

  Jespersen slowly shook his head.

  ‘I would have heard about someone who changed his name,’ he said. ‘That isn’t an everyday occurrence.’

  Wallander tried to describe Hålén’s appearance. At the same time he was thinking of the photographs he had seen in the sailor’s books. A man who changed. Maybe Hålén also deliberately altered his appearance when he changed his name?

  ‘Can you add anything else?’ Jespersen said. ‘He was a sailor and an engineer. Which in itself is an unusual combination. Which ports did he sail to? Which type of vessel?’