The Forsaken
A Kurt Wallander story
When the body of an unknown girl is discovered Wallander and his team begin believe that something very unpleasant has been happening to her. However, the truth is much bigger and darker than even they were expecting. Please review: comments and suggestions are always welcome :)
Disclaimer: I do not own Kurt Wallander, or any of his colleagues, I've just borrowed them from Henning Mankell, whose skill and genius created them.
Chapter 1: Discovery
Stefan put his foot to the floor and accelerated hard up the empty winding road. The speed and the g-forces made his heart pound; it was the first time in weeks that he had felt really alive, wrestling his car round corners with his favourite music blasting from the speakers. The call-out along the lonely rural road and the excuse to get away from the station and drive wildly were just what he had been waiting for.
He slammed the car to a halt and the music died with the cutting out of the engine. He had arrived. An abandoned caravan, he had been told. Well, it certainly was. And somebody had indeed tried to set it on fire. He pulled at the charred door to see if it would open. It fell away in his hand and he was left staring into the gloomy space inside. There wasn't much in there: bedding, a few old magazines, some grotty-looking clothes. He put the door back and moved to the rear of the caravan. The number plate was gone. It was going to be hard to trace who had left this thing sitting here.
Stefan scowled to himself. This was not what he had joined the police for. He wanted to track down scum like murderers and rapists and get them off the streets, not impound derelict caravans. He sighed, glancing one more inside the vehicle to see if there was anything he had missed. This time his eyes fastened onto a small glinting object on the floor. Curious, he leaned inside and picked it up. It was a small gold ring with a red stone.
He was examining the ring, looking for an inscription or some clue to its owner's identity, when his phone rang. He answered, with little interest.
"Stefan? Where are you?" It was Wallander. There was a sharp, urgent tone to his voice that told Stefan something serious had happened.
"You know where I am. I'm checking out that abandoned caravan."
"Well, I need you back in town immediately. There's been a murder: a young girl."
Stefan shuddered.
"I'll be there as soon as I can." He hung up and put the phone in his pocket. He took one more look at the ring, then placed it carefully in the secure pocket inside his jacket.
The yard behind the bar was unusually crowded, with police, forensic officers and gawping bar staff all jostling for position. Wallander shivered in the frigid air as he watched Nyberg and his team busy themselves with the crime scene. The young woman who had discovered the body during her cigarette break was being calmed down by a female uniformed officer, and the bar's owner had been called. Everything so far was under control. Only the unsavoury task of finding what had happened, and to whom, remained.
Nyberg beckoned him over, and he threaded his way through the crowd in the yard.
"Come on, move these people out of here," he shouted to a pair of uniformed officers who appeared to be treating the incident as an excuse to stand around smoking and chatting. They nodded and began to shepherd the still gawping bar staff back into the building.
Wallander reached Nyberg's side.
"What have you found?"
"See for yourself."
Wallander looked down at the young woman whose body lay at his feet. He was taken aback at how little space she took up. She was painfully, jaggedly thin and wearing very little, with only a short vest and a minute pair of shorts to cover her sparse frame. Her body was liberally covered with bruises of varying sizes and shapes and there was a gash on her forehead, half-hidden under her pale blonde hair. For a minute or two he was utterly speechless.
"As you can see, she's been beaten," said Nyberg. "Some of those are old bruises, so I reckon the beating wasn't a one-off." Nyberg's face contorted in disgust.
"Was that what killed her?" ventured Wallander.
"Maybe. Although I wouldn't rule out hypothermia either. You can see how little she's wearing, and it was damn cold last night."
"Mmmm, I know. Get her to the morgue, then. Let me know if you find anything at all useful around this place." He moved away. He always hated cases like this, when the victim was so young and vulnerable. He shivered again, not entirely because of the cold, and was glad of the distraction when Stefan appeared.
"What's happened?"
"We have a dead teenage girl, Stefan."
"A teenager? When you said 'young girl' I thought…"
"Yes, I know. It's not quite as bad as that, but bad enough, Stefan. Bad enough."
"Do we know who she was?"
"Not yet." Wallander couldn't keep the note of regret out of his voice. Stefan looked at him sharply, noticing how his boss seemed to have aged ten years since that morning. The two men walked through the yard and into the back of the bar, which was dark and cavernous.
Their conversation was interrupted by the bar's owner, who had just arrived from Malmö.
"What the hell is going on?" he demanded. "They said I'll have to shut the bar. I can't shut the bar. Do you know how much money I'll lose if I don't open tonight?"
Wallander gave the man a hard stare.
"This bar is a crime scene. A girl has been found dead and until we finish with the scene of the crime, the bar will stay shut. I hope I've made myself clear, Mr…?"
"…Bergman. Arne Bergman."
"Mr Bergman. Things will of course move more quickly if we have your full co-operation. Otherwise, we may have to investigate the validity of your license…" Wallander left the threat hanging between them.
"Of course," Bergman backed down hastily. "I'll be glad to do anything I can to help. Of course I will."
"Good. The first thing you can do is let us speak to everyone who was here last night and this morning."
Wallander studied the photograph intently. It was not a pleasant photo. In the picture was a pale-skinned girl lying on a mortuary slab. She looked as if she were sleeping, but the sleep was not peaceful.
He held the picture under a desk lamp where the light was better. It was so late that everyone else had gone home and only the duty staff were still in the station. It was ink-dark outside, and inside didn't seem much brighter. The clock on the wall said 11:47 pm. Wallander desperately wanted to go home, to fall into bed and sleep, but found himself preoccupied with this still-unidentified victim. She didn't match anyone on the missing persons register and they had found absolutely no identification on her body. She troubled him.
"Who are you?" he asked her. "What happened to you? What has gone so badly wrong in your life that you end up beaten and bruised and dead in that bar's back yard?"
He hadn't realised that he had spoken out loud until he heard Stefan's voice behind him.
"Isn't that the first sign of madness?"
He looked up to see his younger colleague standing by the door, looking grave and amused all at once.
"Stefan? What are you doing still hanging round here?"
"I had to finish talking to all those people from the bar." Stefan sat heavily at his desk, rubbing his face. "They're idiots, all of them. Couldn't even agree on who had been doing what and where at the time that girl found the body. We need to speak to them again; we still haven't got everything pinned down."
"You look tired Stefan. Go home. This mess will still be here in the morning."
Stefan gave him a quiet snigger.
"Says the man who practically lives in his office," he said, good-naturedly.
"Not tonight though. I will find out who this young woman was, but that can also wait until tomorrow."
Wallander tacked the photograph to the whiteboard, giving it one last thoughtful stare, then the two men walked out of the building, leaving the room in silence and darkness.
