“So you’re the police officer,” she said cheerfully. “I’d expected a man in uniform.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Wallander said.
She invited him in. It was an old apartment with high ceilings. She introduced him to her father, who was sitting in a chair with his leg in a cast. Wallander noticed the cordless telephone on his knee.
“I recognize you,” the man said. “There was a lot about you in the newspapers a year or so ago. Or am I mixing you up with somebody else?”
“No, that was probably me,” Wallander said.
“And something to do with a burning car on Öland Bridge,” the man said. “I remember it because I used to be a sailor before the bridge was built, getting in the way of the ships.”
“Newspapers exaggerate things,” Wallander said.
“I remember you were described as an exceptionally successful police officer.”
“That’s right,” the daughter said. “Now you mention it, I recognize Inspector Wallander from the photos in the papers. Weren’t you on some television talk show too?”
“You must be mixing me up with somebody else.”
“Let’s go and sit in the kitchen,” she said.
The autumn sun was shining through the high window. A cat was curled up asleep among the plant pots. He accepted the offer of a cup of coffee, and sat down.
“My questions are not going to be very precise,” Wallander said. “Your answers are likely to be far more interesting. Let me just say that the Ystad police are currently investigating a murder, possibly two murders, and there are certain indications to suggest that the transportation and illegal selling of body organs might be involved. I can’t say for certain if that is the case, and I’m afraid I can’t go into any more detail for technical reasons associated with the case.”
Why can’t I express myself more simply? he wondered, crossly. I speak like a parody of a police officer. I sound like a machine.
“I see why Lasse Strömberg gave you my name,” she said, and Wallander could tell that her interest had been aroused.
“If I understand correctly you’re doing work on this horrific traffic,” he said. “It would be a big help to me if you could give me an overview.”
“It would take all day to do that,” she said. “Possibly all night as well. Besides, you’d soon find there was an invisible question mark behind every word I said. It’s a gruesome activity that practically nobody has dared to look into, apart from a handful of American journalists. I’m probably the only journalist in Scandinavia who’s started digging into it.”
“I take it that’s a pretty risky business.”
“Maybe not here, and maybe not for me,” she said. “But I know personally one of the American journalists involved, Gary Becker from Minneapolis. He went to Brazil to look into rumors about a gang said to be operating in São Paulo. He wasn’t just threatened—one night when his taxi stopped outside his hotel someone fired a whole magazine at it. He booked the next flight and got the hell out of there.”
“Have you come across any suggestion that Swedes could be involved in the trafficking?”
“No. Should I have?”
“I was only asking,” Wallander said.
She studied him without speaking, then leaned across the table toward him. “If you and I are going to have a conversation, you have to be honest with me,” she said. “Don’t forget that I’m a journalist. You don’t have to pay for this visit because you’re a police officer, but the least I can ask is that you tell me the truth.”
“You’re right,” Wallander said. “There is a slight possibility that there might be a connection. That’s the nearest I can get to telling you the truth.”
“OK,” she said. “Now we understand each other. But I want just one more thing from you. If in fact there does turn out to be a connection, I want to be the first journalist who knows about it.”
“I can’t promise you that,” Wallander said. “It’s against our regulations.”
“No doubt it is. But killing people to take their body parts goes against something much more important than regulations.”
Wallander considered what she had said. He was citing regulations that he had long since ceased to observe uncritically himself. In recent years his experiences as a police officer had taken place in a no-man’s-land where any good he might have been able to do had always involved his having to decide which regulations to abide by, and which not. Why should he change now?
“You’ll be the first to know,” he said. “But you’d better not quote me. I’ll have to remain anonymous.”
“That’s good,” she said again. “Now we understand each other even better.”
When Wallander looked back over all the hours he spent in that hushed kitchen, with the cat asleep among the potted plants and the rays of the sun moving slowly over the plastic tablecloth before disappearing altogether, he was surprised at how quickly the time had passed. They had started talking at 10 a.m. and it was evening by the time they finished. They had taken a few breaks, she had prepared lunch for him, and her father had entertained Wallander with stories about his life as captain of various ships plying the Baltic coast, with occasional voyages to Poland and the Baltic States. Otherwise they had been alone in the kitchen, and she had talked about her research. Wallander envied her. They both worked on investigations, they both spent their time constantly running up against crime and human suffering. The difference was that she was trying to expose crime to prevent it happening, while Wallander was always occupied in clearing up crimes that had already been committed.
What he remembered most from his time in that kitchen was a journey into an unimagined world where human beings and body parts had been reduced to market commodities, with no sign of any moral consideration. If she was correct in her assumptions, the trade in body parts was so vast that it was almost beyond comprehension. What shook him most, however, was her claim that she could understand the people who killed healthy human beings in order to sell parts of their bodies.
“It’s a reflection of the world,” she said. “This is how things are, whether we like it or not. When a person is sufficiently poor, he’s ready to do anything at all to keep body and soul together, no matter how squalid his life might be. How can we presume to make moral judgments about what they do? When their circumstances are so far beyond our understanding? In the slums on the edge of cities like Rio or Lagos or Calcutta or Madras, you can hold up thirty dollars and announce that you want to meet somebody who’s prepared to kill another human being. Within a minute you have a line of willing assassins. And they don’t ask who they’re going to be required to kill, nor do they wonder why. And they’re prepared to do it for twenty dollars. Maybe even ten. I’m aware of a sort of abyss in the middle of what I’m working on. I get shocked, I feel desperate, but as long as the world continues as it is, I recognize that everything I do could be regarded as meaningless.”
Wallander had sat in silence for most of the time. From time to time he asked a question to better understand what she was saying. But he could see that she really was trying to pass on everything she knew—or suspected, because there was so little anybody could be 100 percent certain about.
And then, hours later, they had come to a stop.
“I don’t know any more,” she said. “But if what I’ve said is of help to you, I’m glad of it.”
“I don’t even know if I’m on the right track,” Wallander said. “But if I am, I know we’ve identified a Swedish link to this abominable trade. And if we can put a stop to it, that surely has to be a good thing.”