“What kind of connection?”
“We don’t know. But it certainly wasn’t an impulse murder.”
“I just don’t know how we’re going to get any further.”
Wallander told her about his call to the American Express office.
“That will give us a name,” he said. “And if we have a name, we will have made good progress. While we’re waiting on that, I’d like you to visit Persson’s home. I want you to take a look at her bedroom. And where’s her father?”
Höglund checked her notes.
“His name is Hugo Lövström. According to his daughter, he’s a homeless drunk. She’s filled with hate, that girl. I don’t know who she hates more, her mother or her father.”
“They have no regular contact?”
“It doesn’t look like it.”
Wallander thought about it.
“We don’t see clearly yet,” he said. “We have to find the real reasons behind all this. It may be that I’m simply too naive, that young people today — even girls — don’t see anything wrong with murdering people. In that case, I give up. But not just yet. Something else must have driven them to do this.”
“Maybe we should be looking at it from all angles,” Höglund said.
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe we should be looking a little more closely at Lundberg.”
“Why? They couldn’t have known who their taxi driver was going to be.”
“You’re right.”
But Wallander saw that she was thinking about something. He waited.
“There’s just this possibility,” she said thoughtfully, “that maybe it was an impulsive act after all. They ordered a taxi. Perhaps one or both of them suddenly recognized Lundberg.”
Wallander saw what she was getting at.
“You’re right,” he said. “There is that possibility.”
“We know the girls were armed,” she said, “with both a hammer and a knife. It seems as if all young people these days carry some kind of weapon. The girls realize that Lundberg is their driver. Then they kill him. It could have happened like this, even if it seems unlikely.”
“Not more unlikely than anything else,” Wallander said. “Let’s try to establish if they had any earlier contact with Lundberg.”
Höglund got up and left. Wallander reached for his pad of paper and tried to jot down the basic outline of what Hoglund had said. At one o’clock, he still felt as if he had not gotten any further. He was hungry and walked out to the lunchroom to see if there were any sandwiches left. They were gone. He picked up his coat from his office and left the station. This time he had remembered to bring his cell phone and to instruct Irene to let calls from American Express through. He went to the diner closest to the station. He noticed that customers there recognized him. He was sure that the picture in the paper had been a topic of discussion in most Ystad homes. He felt self-conscious and ate in a hurry. When he was back on the street his phone rang. It was Anita.
“We’ve found the information you were looking for,” she said. “The card number belongs to someone called Fu Cheng.”
Wallander stopped and wrote it down on a scrap of paper in his pocket.
“It’s a Hong Kong-based account,” she continued. “There’s only one problem. It’s a false account.”
Wallander frowned.
“He stole it?”
“Worse. The account is completely fabricated. American Express has never opened an account with Fu Cheng.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, it’s good that we discovered it so quickly. The restaurant owner will unfortunately not get his money. Hopefully he has fraud insurance.”
“Does that mean Fu Cheng doesn’t exist?”
“Oh, I’m sure he exists, but he has a fake credit card, as well as a fake address.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this from the start?”
“That’s what I was trying to do.”
Wallander thanked her and hung up. A man who maybe came from Hong Kong had turned up at István’s restaurant in Ystad and paid with a fake credit card. At some point he had made eye contact with Sonja Hökberg.
He hurried back to the office. He could no longer put off the next task: preparing the lecture he had promised to give. Even though he had decided to speak plainly about the murder investigation he was involved in, he still needed to write down the points he wanted to touch on. Otherwise his nervousness would get the better of him.
He started writing but had trouble concentrating. The image of Sonja Hökberg’s charred body kept returning. He reached for the phone and called Martinsson.
“See if you find anything on Eva Persson’s father,” he said. “Hugo Lövström. He’s supposed to live in Växjö. A homeless alcoholic, apparently.”
“In that case it’ll be easier to locate him through our colleagues in Växjö,” Martinsson replied. “I’m also in the process of checking out Lundberg.”
“Did you think of that on your own?” Wallander was surprised.
“Höglund asked me to. She’s just left to go check out Eva Persson’s home. I don’t know exactly what she expects to find.”
“I have another name for your computers,” Wallander said. “Fu Cheng.”
“What was that?”
Wallander spelled it.
“Who’s that?”
“I’ll explain later. We should have a meeting this afternoon. I suggest half past four. It’ll be short.”
“His name is Fu Cheng? That’s it?” Martinsson asked.
Wallander didn’t bother to reply.
Wallander used the rest of the afternoon to plan his lecture. After working on it for only a short while, he had already started to hate what he had written. The year before, he had given a lecture at the National Police Academy about his experiences as a crime fighter. It had been a complete disaster in his own opinion. But many students had come up to him afterward to thank him. He had never been able to figure out what they were thanking him for.
At half past four he gave up. Now it was up to fate. He picked up his notes and headed for the conference room. No one was there yet. He tried to gather his thoughts and come up with a clear summary of the events of the case so far, but he was distracted.
It doesn’t hang together, he thought. Lundberg’s murder doesn’t fit with these two girls. Nor does Sonja’s murder. This whole investigation lacks a common foundation, even though we know what happened. What we don’t have is the crucial “why. ”
Hansson arrived with Martinsson in tow, and Höglund came in behind them. Wallander was glad that Holgersson didn’t turn up. It was a short meeting. Höglund told them about her visit to Eva Persson’s house.
“Everything seemed very normal,” she said. “It’s an apartment on Stödgatan. Her mother works as a cook at the hospital. The girl’s room was what you’d expect.”
“Did she have any posters on the wall?” Wallander asked.
“Just some pop stars I didn’t recognize,” Höglund said. “But nothing unusual. Why do you ask?”
Wallander didn’t answer.
The transcript of Höglund’s conversation with Eva Persson was already prepared and Höglund distributed copies to everyone. Wallander told them of his visit to István’s restaurant and the subsequent discovery of the stolen credit card.
“We need to find this man,” he said. “If for no other reason than to be able to effectively rule out any involvement on his part with this case.
They continued to sift through the day’s work. Martinsson told them what he had done, then Hansson. Hansson had talked to Kalle Ryss, whom Eva Persson had called Sonja’s boyfriend. But he hadn’t said anything of interest, other than that he knew very little about Sonja.