“It turns up again, then,” Wallander said softly. “Religion, the church. This Larsen is important. Someone has to go over and assist our colleagues in their investigation. I want to know how he fits in.”
“If he fits in,” Lindman said.
“He does,” Wallander said. “We just need to know how. Ask Höglund to do it.”
Martinsson’s telephone rang. He listened and then finished his cup of coffee.
“The Norwegians are stirring,” he said. “We’ve received some information about Torgeir Langaas.”
“Let’s see it.”
Martinsson went to get the faxes. There was a fuzzy version of a photograph.
“This was taken more than twenty years ago,” Martinsson said. “He’s tall. Over one hundred and ninety centimeters.”
They studied the snapshot. Have I seen this man before? Linda wondered. But she wasn’t sure.
“What do they say?” Wallander asked.
Linda noticed that he was getting more and more impatient. Just like me, she thought. The anxiety and impatience go hand in hand.
“They found our man Langaas as soon as they started to look. It would have come through sooner if the officer in charge hadn’t misdirected our urgent query. In other words, the Oslo office is plagued by the same problems we are. Here tapes from the archives go missing, there requests from other stations. But it all got sorted out in the end, and Torgeir Langaas is involved in an old missing-persons case, as it turns out.”
“In what way?” Wallander asked.
“You won’t believe me when I tell you.”
“Try me.”
“Torgeir Langaas disappeared from Norway nineteen years ago.”
They looked at each other. Linda felt as if the room itself was holding its breath. She saw her dad sit up in his chair as if readying himself to charge.
“Another disappearance,” he said. “Somehow all of this is about disappearances.”
“And reappearance,” Lindman said.
“Or a resurrection,” Wallander said.
Martinsson kept reading, slowly, picking his way through the text as if there were land mines hidden between the words: “Torgeir Langaas was the heir of a shipping magnate. His disappearance was unexpected and sudden. No crime was suspected, since he left a letter to his mother, Maigrim Langaas, in which he assured her he was not depressed and had no intentions of committing suicide. He left because he — and I quote — ‘couldn’t stand it any longer.’ ”
“What was it he couldn’t stand?”
It was Wallander who interrupted him again. To Linda it seemed as if his impatience and worry came out of his nostrils like invisible smoke.
“It’s not clear from this report, but he left, with quite a stockpile of cash. Several bank accounts. His parents thought he would tire of his rebellion after a while. His parents didn’t go to the police until two years had passed. The reason they gave, it says here in the report from January 12, 1984, was that he had stopped writing letters, that they hadn’t had any signs of life from him for four months, and that he had emptied all his bank accounts. Since then no one has heard from him.”
Martinsson let the page fall to the table.
“There’s more, but those are the main points.”
Wallander raised his hand.
“Does it say where the last letter was mailed from? And when the bank accounts were emptied?”
Martinsson looked through the papers for these answers, but without success. Wallander picked up the phone.
“What’s the number?”
He dialed the number that Martinsson read out. The Norwegian officer’s name was Hovard Midstuen. Once they were connected, Wallander asked his two questions, gave him his phone number, and hung up.
“He said it would only take a few minutes,” Wallander said. “We’ll wait.”
Midstuen called back after nineteen minutes. During that time no one had said a word. When the phone rang, Wallander pounced on the receiver, then scrawled a few notes as he listened. He thanked his Norwegian colleague and slammed the phone down triumphantly.
“This might be starting to hang together.”
He read from his notes: the last letter Langaas had sent was posted from Cleveland, Ohio. It was also from there that the accounts were emptied and closed.
Not everyone made the connection, but Linda saw what he was getting at.
“The woman who was found dead in Frennestad Church came from Tulsa,” he said. “But she was born in Cleveland, Ohio.”
Everyone was quiet.
“I still don’t understand what’s happening,” he said. “But there’s one thing I know, and that’s that Linda’s friend Zeba is in danger. It may also be that Linda’s other friend Anna Westin is also in danger.”
He paused.
“It may also be that Anna Westin is part of this. That’s why we need to concentrate on these two and nothing else for the moment.”
It was three o’clock in the afternoon and Linda was scared. All she could think about was Zeba and Anna. A fleeting thought passed through her mind: she would start her real work as a police officer in three days. But how would she feel about that if something happened to either of her friends? She didn’t know the answer to that question.
47
When Anna recognized the scream as Zeba’s, Westin knew that God was testing him in the same way he had tested Abraham. He perceived all of her reactions even though she had merely flinched and then carefully composed her features to hide her emotions. A moment of doubt, a series of questions — was that some animal or, in fact, a human scream? Could it be Zeba? She was searching for an answer that would satisfy her, and at the same time she was waiting to hear the scream again. What Westin didn’t understand was why she didn’t simply ask him about it. In a way it was just as well that Zeba had made her presence known. Now there was no turning back. He would soon see if Anna was worthy of being called his daughter. What would he do if it turned out she did not possess the strength he expected of her? It had taken him many years to travel down the road his inner voices had told him to follow. He had to be prepared to sacrifice even that which was most precious to him, and it would be up to God whether Westin too would be granted a stay at the last minute.
I won’t talk to her, he thought. I must preach to her, as I preach to my disciples. She broke in during a pause. He let her speak, because he knew he could best interpret a person’s state of mind at such a moment of vulnerability.
“Once upon a time you were my father. You lived a simple life.”
“I had to follow my calling.”
“You abandoned me, your daughter.”
“I had to. But I never left you in my heart. And I came back to you.”
She was tense, he could see that, but still her sudden loss of control surprised him. Her voice rose to a shriek.
“That screaming I heard was Zeba! She’s here somewhere below us. What is she doing here? She hasn’t done anything.”
“You know what she has done. It was you who told me.”
“I wish I’d never told you!”
“She who commits a sin and takes the life of another must bear the wrath of God. This is justice, and the word of the Lord.”
“Zeba didn’t kill anyone. She was only fifteen years old. How could she have cared for a child at that age?”
“She should never have allowed it to happen.”
Westin could not manage to calm her, and he felt a wave of impatience. This is Henrietta, he thought. She’s too much like her.
He decided to exert more force.
“Nothing is going to happen to Zeba,” he said.