She looked at him without replying. Then she turned and looked at Wallander.
“I asked you a question,” Sjosten said.
Wallander understood her glance. She wanted to give only him the answer. He signalled to Sjosten to follow him into the hall. There he explained that Sjosten had destroyed Elisabeth Carlen’s trust.
“Then we’ll arrest her,” said Sjosten. “I’ll be damned if I’ll let a whore give me trouble.”
“Arrest her for what?” asked Wallander. “Wait here, I’ll go in and get the answer. Calm down, damn it!”
Sjosten shrugged. Wallander went back in and sat down behind the desk.
“Logard used to hang out with Liljegren,” she said.
“Do you know where he lives?”
“In the country somewhere.”
“Do you know where?”
“Only that he doesn’t live in town.”
“What does he do?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“But he was at the parties?”
“Yes.”
“As guest or host?”
“As the host. And as a guest.”
“Do you know how I can get hold of him?”
“No.”
Wallander still believed she was telling the truth. Probably they wouldn’t be able to track down Logard through her.
“How did they get along?”
“Logard always had plenty of money. Whatever he did for Liljegren, he was well paid.”
She stubbed out her cigarette. Wallander felt as if he had been granted a private audience with her.
“I’m going,” she said, getting to her feet.
“Let me see you out,” said Wallander.
Sjosten came sauntering down the hall. She looked straight through him as they passed. Wallander waited on the steps until he saw someone follow her, then went back up to the office.
“Why were you needling her?” he asked.
“She stands for something I despise,” Sjosten said.
“We need her. We can despise her later.”
They got coffee and sat down to go over what they knew. Sjosten brought in Birgersson to help out.
“The problem is Fredman,” said Wallander. “He doesn’t fit. Otherwise we now have a number of links that seem to hang together, fragile points of contact.”
“Or maybe it just looks that way,” Sjosten said thoughtfully.
Wallander could tell that Sjosten was worried about something. He waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
Sjosten kept staring out of the window.
“Why couldn’t this be possible?” he said. “That he was killed by the same man, but for a completely different reason.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Birgersson.
“Nothing makes sense in this case.”
“So you mean that we should be looking for two different motives,” said Wallander.
“That’s about it. But I could be wrong. It was just an idea, that’s all.”
Wallander nodded. “We shouldn’t disregard that possibility”
“It’s a sidetrack,” said Birgersson. “A blind alley, a dead end. It doesn’t seem likely at all.”
“We can’t rule it out,” Wallander said. “We can’t rule out anything. But right now we have to find Logard. That’s the priority.”
“Liljegren’s villa is a very strange place,” said Sjosten. “There wasn’t one piece of paper there. No address book. Nothing. And no-one has had the opportunity to go in and clean up.”
“Which means we haven’t searched hard enough,” Wallander replied. “Without Logard we’re not going to get anywhere.”
Sjosten and Wallander had a quick lunch at a restaurant next to the station, and drove to Liljegren’s villa. The cordons were still up. An officer opened the gates and let them in. Sunlight filtered through the trees. Suddenly the case seemed surreal. Monsters belonged in the cold and dark. Not in a summer like this one. He recalled Rydberg’s joke. It’s best to be hunting insane killers in the autumn. In the summer give me a good old-fashioned bomber. He laughed at the thought. Sjosten gave him a funny look, but he didn’t explain.
Inside the huge villa the forensic technicians had finished their work. Wallander took a look in the kitchen. The oven door was closed. He thought of Sjosten’s idea about Bjorn Fredman. A killer with two motives? Did such birds exist? He called Ystad, and Ebba got hold of Ekholm for him. It was almost five minutes before he came to the phone. Wallander watched Sjosten wandering through the rooms on the ground floor, drawing back the curtains from the windows. The sunlight was very bright.
Wallander asked Ekholm his question. It was actually intended for Ekholm’s programme. Had there been serial killers who combined very different motives? Did criminal psychology have a collective view on this? As always, Ekholm found Wallander’s question interesting. Wallander wondered whether Ekholm really was so charmed by everything he told him. It was beginning to remind him of the satirical songs about the absurd incompetence of the Swedish security police. Recently they relied more and more on various specialists. And no-one could really explain why.
Wallander didn’t want to be unfair to Ekholm. During his time in Ystad he had proved to be a good listener. In that sense he had learned something basic about police work. The police had to be able to listen, as well as question. They had to listen for hidden meanings and motives, for the invisible impressions left by offenders. Just like in this house. Something is always left behind after a crime is committed. An experienced detective should be able to listen his way to what it was. Wallander hung up and went to join Sjosten, who was sitting at a desk. Wallander didn’t say a thing. Neither did Sjosten. The villa invited silence. Liljegren’s spirit, if he had one, hovered restlessly around them.
Wallander went upstairs and wandered through room after room. There were no papers anywhere. Liljegren had lived in a house in which emptiness was the most noticeable characteristic. Wallander thought back to what Liljegren had been famous or infamous for. The shell company scams, the looting of company finances. He had made his way in the world by hiding his money. Did he do the same thing in his private life? He had houses all over the world. The villa was one of his many hide-outs. Wallander stopped by a door up to the attic. When he was a child he had built a hide-out for himself in the attic. He opened the door. The stairs were narrow and steep. He turned the light switch. The main room with its exposed beams was almost empty. There were just some skis and a few pieces of furniture. Wallander smelled the same odour as in the rest of the house. The forensic technicians had been here too. He looked around. No secret doors. It was hot underneath the roof.
He went back down and started a more systematic search. He pulled back the clothes in Liljegren’s large wardrobes. Nothing. Wallander sat on the edge of the bed and tried to think. Liljegren couldn’t have kept everything in his head. There had to be an address book somewhere. Something else was missing too. At first he couldn’t figure out what it was. Who was Ake Liljegren, “the Auditor”? Liljegren was a travelling man, but there were no suitcases in the house. Not even a briefcase. Wallander went downstairs to see Sjosten.
“Liljegren must have had another house,” he said. “Or at least an office.”
“He has houses all over the world,” Sjosten said distractedly.
“I mean here in Helsingborg. This place is too empty”
“We would have known about it.”
Wallander nodded without saying any more. He was still sure his hunch was right. He continued his search. But now he was more persistent. He went down to the basement. In one room there was an exercise machine and some barbells. There was a wardrobe down there, too, which contained some exercise clothes and rain gear. Wallander thoughtfully regarded the clothes. Then he went back upstairs to Sjosten.
“Did Liljegren have a boat?”
“I’m sure he did. But not here. I would have known about it.”
Wallander nodded mutely. He was just about to leave Sjosten when an idea struck him.