On the morning of Thursday, 15 August, Wallander finally went back to Dr Göransson's office. He didn't have an appointment but was seen immediately. He hadn't slept well and was extremely tired, but he left the car at home. He knew that each new day would carry with it fresh excuses for not exercising. This day was just as inconvenient as any other, so he might as well start getting used to it.
The weather was still beautiful and calm. As he walked through the town he tried to recall when they had last had an August this warm. But his mind kept turning back to the investigation, and not just during his waking hours. It haunted him in his sleep as well.
Last night he had dreamed of Bärnsö. He kept hearing her scream. When he woke up he was halfway out of bed, drenched in sweat, his heart pounding. It had taken him a long time to fall back to sleep.
He sat at the kitchen table for a while after he woke. It was still dark outside. He couldn't think of a time when he'd felt as helpless as he did at that moment. It wasn't just the fatigue caused by the little icebergs of sugar floating around in his blood. It also came from a feeling of having been overtaken by age. Was he really too old? He wasn't even 50.
He wondered if he was simply starting to crumble under the weight of all the responsibility and was now on a downward trajectory to a point where only fear remained. He was very close to making a new decision: to give up. To ask Holgersson to put someone else in charge.
The question was who to appoint in his place. Martinsson and Hansson both came to mind, but Wallander knew neither one of them was up to it. They would have to bring someone in from outside, which was not ideal. That would be like labelling themselves inadequate.
He didn't come to any conclusion. When he decided to go to the doctor it was in the hope that he'd hear the words that would free him, give him the chance to be forced to take leave on medical grounds.
But it turned out that Dr Göransson had no such plans for him. After telling Wallander that his blood sugar was still too high, that he was leaking sugar into his urine and had worryingly high blood pressure, he simply gave him a prescription for some medication and ordered him to make a radical change in his diet.
"We have to attack your symptoms from all sides," he said. "They're connected and have to be treated as such. But it's not going to be possible unless you take charge of your health."
He gave him the phone number of a dietician. Wallander left the office with the prescription in hand. It was a little after 8 a.m. and he knew he should go directly to the station, but he didn't feel ready. He went up to the cafe by the main square and had a cup of coffee, but this time he passed on the pastry.
What do I do now, he thought. I'm in charge of solving one of the most brutal serial killings in Sweden in years. Every police officer's eye is on me, since one of the victims was in the force. The press are hounding me. I'll probably be criticised by the victims' parents. Everyone expects me to find the killer in a few days and to have collected the kind of evidence against him that would make even the most hardened prosecutor weep. The only problem is that in reality I have nothing. Soon I'll gather my colleagues together and we'll start again. We aren't even close to anything like a breakthrough. What we're in is a vacuum.
He finished his coffee. A man was reading the paper at the next table. Wallander saw the big black headlines, and left the cafe in a hurry. Since he had time to spare, he decided to squeeze in an errand before returning to the station. He went to Vädergränd and rang the doorbell at Bror Sundelius's house. There was a chance that Sundelius didn't welcome surprise visits, but Wallander knew it would not be because he wasn't up yet.
The door opened. Even though it was only 8.30 a.m., Sundelius was dressed in a suit. The knot of his tie was an exercise in perfection. He opened the door wide without hesitation, invited Wallander in, and disappeared into the kitchen for coffee.
"I always keep the water hot," he said, "in case I have unexpected visitors. The last time that happened was about a year ago, of course, but you never know."
Wallander sat down on the sofa and pulled the cup towards him. Sundelius sat down across from him.
"Last time we spoke we were interrupted," Wallander said.
"The reason for that has become exceedingly clear," Sundelius replied dryly. "What kind of people do we let into this country anyway?"
His comment puzzled Wallander.
"There's no evidence that this was the work of an immigrant," he said. "Why would you think that?"
"It seems obvious to me," Sundelius said. "No Swede could have done anything like this."
He knew the best thing to do was to steer the conversation to safer ground. Sundelius did not seem like the kind of man who was easily swayed in his convictions. But Wallander couldn't keep himself from articulating his objections.
"Nothing points to a killer of foreign extraction. That much we know. Let's talk about Karl Evert instead. You knew him quite well?"
"He was always 'Kalle' to me."
"How long had you known each other?"
"Which day did he die?"
Wallander was puzzled again. "We haven't established that yet. Why?"
"If you had, I would have been able to give you an exact answer. Let me provisionally say that we knew each other 19 years, seven months, and around 15 days when he passed away so tragically. I have kept careful records my whole life. The only data I won't be able to record is the exact time of my own death, unless I commit suicide, which I have no plans to do. But my lawyer has instructions to burn all my notebooks when I die. They are of value only to me, not anyone else."
Wallander was starting to sense that Sundelius was one of these old people who did not get enough chances to talk to others. Wallander thought briefly of his father – one of the few people he had known who had been an exception to this rule.
"You were both interested in astronomy, is that correct?"
"That is correct."
"You don't have a Scanian accent. You moved here at some point?"
"I moved here from Vadstena on 12 May 1959. My furniture arrived on the 14th. I thought I would stay a few years, but it has been much longer than that."
Wallander cast his gaze hastily around the room. He didn't see any pictures of family. Sundelius wasn't wearing a ring.
"Are you married?"
"No."
"Divorced?"
"I'm a bachelor."
"Like Svedberg."
"Yes."
He might as well come right to the point. He still had a copy of the picture of Louise in his breast pocket. He took it out and laid it on the table.
"Have you ever seen this woman before?"
Sundelius put on some glasses after polishing the lenses with his handkerchief, and studied it carefully.
"Isn't that the same picture that was published in the paper the other day?"
"That's right."
"Members of the public were asked to call the police if they had any information regarding who she was."
Wallander nodded. Sundelius laid the photograph back on the table.
"So I should already have contacted you if I had known anything about her."
"Do you?"
"No. And I have a gift for faces. It's a necessity for a banker."
Wallander couldn't help himself. Why would bank directors need to have a gift for faces? He asked the question and got another long answer.
"There was a time when I was young when it was the only kind of credit information there was," Sundelius said. "That was before our society started recording its citizens' every move. We speak of before and after the birth of Christ, but it would be more accurate to speak of before and after the invention of personal identification numbers. When I was young, you had to make your decision on the spot. Was the person standing before you honest? Did he mean what he said? Did he have integrity, or was he a liar? I remember an old clerk in Vadstena who never gathered any credit reports on his clients, and this even after the regulations were tightened and it was easier to collect such information. However large the loan in question, he would simply study the person's face. And he was never wrong, not once over the course of his whole career. He rejected the scoundrels, and helped the honest and hardworking. Of course, he could never foresee a person's luck."
Wallander nodded and continued. "This woman has been connected with Kalle," he said. "According to reliable information, they saw each other for about ten years. Or, to be more precise, they had a relationship for ten years. Kalle remained a bachelor, but he was apparently involved with this woman for a very long time."
Sundelius froze with the coffee cup halfway to his mouth. When Wallander finished speaking, he slowly lowered it onto the saucer.
"That was not very reliable information," he said. "You're wrong."
"In what way?"
"In all ways. Kalle didn't have a girlfriend."
"We know these meetings took place in secret."
"They didn't take place at all."
Sundelius was sure of himself. But Wallander also sensed something else in the tone of his voice. At first he couldn't tell what it was. Then he realised that Sundelius was upset. He maintained his self-control, but an edge had crept into his voice.
"Let me make it clear that none of his colleagues nor anyone else knew about this woman," Wallander said. "Only one person knew about her. So we're all very surprised."
"Who knew about her?"
"I'd rather not tell you for now."
Sundelius looked at Wallander. There was something resolute and yet vacant in his gaze. But Wallander was sure: the indignation and irritation were there. It was not his imagination.
"Let us leave this unknown woman for a while," Wallander said. "How did you meet?"
Sundelius's manner was altered. Now his answers came reluctantly and without his previous fluency. He had been led into an area where he hadn't been expecting to go.
"We met in the home of mutual friends in Malmö."
"Is that what it says in your notebook?"
"I really don't know why the police would be interested in what my calendar does or does not say."
Now he's completely dismissive, Wallander thought. A photograph of an unknown woman changes everything. He continued carefully.
"But it was at that time that you started maintaining a friendship?"
Sundelius seemed to have realised that his new attitude was noticeable. He resumed his calm and friendly manner, but Wallander still felt his attention was elsewhere.
"We would study the night sky together. That was all."
"Where did you go?"
"Out into the countryside, where it's dark. Especially in the autumn. We would go to Fyledalen, among other places."
Wallander thought for a moment. "You were surprised when I first contacted you," he said. "You said you were surprised that I hadn't been in touch earlier, since Kalle didn't have many close friends. Did you count yourself among them?"
"I remember what I said."
"But now you describe a relationship based on a mutual interest in the night sky. Was that all it was?"
"Neither he nor I was the intrusive type."
"But it hardly qualifies you as a close friend, does it? Nor as the kind of friend we as his colleagues would have heard about."
"It was what it was."
No, Wallander thought. It wasn't. But I still don't know what it was.
"When was the last time you saw each other?"
"In the middle of July. The 16th, to be precise."
"You went to look at the stars?"
"We went out to Österlen. It was a very clear night, although summer is not the best time."
"How was he?"
Sundelius looked at him blankly. "I don't understand the question."
"Was he his normal self? Did he say anything unexpected?"
"He was exactly as he always was. You don't talk much when you look at stars. At least we never did."
"And after that?"
"We didn't see each other again."
"Had you decided when you would see each other again?"
"He said he was going away for a few days and that he had a lot to do. We said we would be in touch in August, when he was due to take his holidays."
Wallander held his breath. Three days later Svedberg had gone to Bärnsö. What Sundelius had just said seemed to indicate that Svedberg had already decided to go. He'd said he had a lot to do, and that he was due to take his holiday in August, although he was actually in the middle of his holiday already.
Svedberg was lying, Wallander thought. Even to Sundelius, who was his friend, he had lied about the way he was spending his holiday. He didn't tell people at work either. For the first time Wallander felt that he was very close to a revelation. But he still didn't see what it could be.
Wallander thanked him for the coffee. Sundelius followed him to the door.
"I'm sure we'll be seeing each other again," Wallander said as he took his leave. Sundelius had completely regained his composure.
"I'd be grateful if you would let me know when the funeral is going to be."
Wallander promised him he would be notified. He walked along Vädergränd and sat down on a bench outside Cafe Bäckahästen. As he watched the ducks swimming in the pond, he went over his conversation with Sundelius. There were two moments of particular significance: one when Wallander had showed him the photograph, the other when he had realised that Svedberg was lying. He stayed with the photograph for a moment. It wasn't just the picture that had upset him; it was also the fact that Wallander had spoken of a ten-year love affair.
Perhaps it's that easy, he thought. Maybe there wasn't one love affair but two. Could Sundelius and Svedberg have had a relationship? Was there something to the rumour that Svedberg was gay? Wallander grabbed a handful of gravel and let it fall through his fingers. He still had doubts. The photograph was of a woman, and Sture Björklund was very sure of the fact that a woman called Louise had long been a part of Svedberg's life. That raised another important question. Why did Sture Björklund know about this woman when no one else did?
Wallander wiped off his hands and got up. He remembered the prescription, and stopped at a pharmacy to have it filled. When he took out the prescription slip, he noticed that his phone was turned off. He continued on to the station at a more rapid clip. His conversation with Sundelius had propelled him deeper into the investigation.
When Wallander walked through the station doors, Ebba told him that everyone was looking for him. He told her to tell people that they were meeting in half an hour. On his way to his office he bumped into Hansson.
"I was just coming to find you. Some results have come in from Lund."
"Can the pathologist give us a time of death?"
"It seems like it."
"Then let's have a look."
Wallander followed Hansson to his office. When they walked past Svedberg's office, he noticed to his surprise that the nameplate was already gone. His surprise turned into dismay, then anger.
"Who removed Svedberg's nameplate?"
"I don't know."
"Couldn't the bastards at least have waited until after the funeral?"
"The funeral is on Tuesday," Hansson said. "Lisa said that the minister of justice will be attending."
Wallander knew her from her TV appearances to be a very determined and self-confident woman. Right now her name escaped him. Hansson hastily brushed some racing forms off his desk and got out the pathologist's report. Wallander leaned against the wall while Hansson was rifling through the report.
"Here we are," he said finally.
"Let's start with Svedberg."
"He was hit with two shots from the front. Death was instantaneous."
"But when?" Wallander said impatiently. "Skip the rest unless it's important. I want a time."
"When you and Martinsson found him he couldn't have been dead more than 24 hours, and not less than ten."
"Are they sure? Or will they change their minds?"
"They seem sure. And just as sure that Svedberg was sober when he died."
"Were there speculations to the contrary?"
"I'm just stating what the report says. His last meal, taken a couple of hours before he died, was of yogurt."
"That suggests he died in the morning."
Hansson nodded. Everyone knew that Svedberg ate yogurt for breakfast. When he was forced to work a night shift he always put a container of yogurt in the fridge in the canteen.
"There it is," Wallander said.
"There's a lot more," Hansson continued. "Do you want the details?"
"I'll go over those myself later," Wallander said. "What does it say about the three young people?"
"That it's difficult to ascertain their time of death."
"We knew that already. But what's their conclusion?"
"Their tentative conclusion is that there needs to be further research done, but they don't rule out the possibility that the victims could have been killed as early as 21 June, Midsummer's Eve, with one stipulation."
"That the bodies weren't left out in the open air."
"Exactly. Of course, they're not sure."
"But I am. Now we can finally draw up a time frame. We'll start with that at the meeting."
"I haven't located the cars yet," Hansson said. "The killer must have disposed of them too somehow."
"Maybe he buried them as well," Wallander said. "Whatever he did with them, they have to be found as soon as possible."
He walked back to his office, got out his medication, and read the label. It was called Amaryl, and the instructions said to take it with food. Wallander wondered when he would have a chance to eat next. He got up with a heavy sigh and walked to the canteen, where he found some old biscuits on a plate. He managed to get them down and took his pills when he was finished.
He returned to his office, gathered up his papers, and went to the conference room. Just as Martinsson was about to close the door, Lisa Holgersson turned up with Thurnberg, the chief prosecutor, in tow. Wallander realised when he saw him that he hadn't really kept him informed of the investigation's progress. As might be expected, Thurnberg had a disapproving look on his face. He sat as far from Wallander as he could get.
Holgersson told them that Svedberg's funeral was to be held on Tuesday, 20 August, at 2 p.m.
She looked at Wallander. "I'll give a speech," she said. "So will the minister of justice and the national chief of police. But I wonder if one of you shouldn't also say a few words. I'm thinking especially of you, Kurt, since you've been here the longest."
Wallander held up his hands. "I can't give a speech," he said. "Standing in church next to Svedberg's coffin, I won't be able to get a single word out."
"You made a great speech when Björk retired," Martinsson said. "One of us should say something, and it ought to be you."
Wallander knew he couldn't do it. Funerals terrified him.
"It's not that I don't want to do it," he said pleadingly. "I'll even write the speech. I'm just not going to be able to deliver it."
"I'll do it if you write it." Höglund said. "I don't think anyone should be forced to speak at a funeral unless they want to. It can be so overwhelming. I can give the speech, unless anyone objects."
Wallander was sure that neither Hansson nor Martinsson actually thought this was the best solution. But neither one of them said so, and it was agreed that Höglund would speak.
Wallander quickly turned the discussion to the case. Thurnberg sat motionless at his end of the table, an inscrutable expression on his face. His presence made Wallander nervous. There was something disdainful, even hostile, in his manner.
They went through the latest developments. Wallander gave them an abbreviated version of his conversation with Sundelius, completely leaving out Sundelius's reaction to hearing of Svedberg's ten-year relationship with an unknown woman.
Leads kept being phoned in to the station, but there were no credible reports about the woman's identity yet. Everyone agreed that this was unusual. They decided to send the picture to the Danish papers, as well as to Interpol. After a couple of hours, they reached the matter of the pathologist's report and Wallander suggested they take a short break. Thurnberg got up immediately and left the room. He hadn't said a single word. Lisa Holgersson lingered after the others had left.
"He doesn't seem very happy," Wallander said, referring to Thurnberg.
"No, I don't think he is," she answered. "I think you should talk to him. He thinks this is taking too long."
"We're working as hard as we can."
"But do we need reinforcements?"
"We'll discuss this issue, of course, but I can tell you right now that I for one am not going to oppose it."
His answer seemed to relieve her. He went out and got a cup of coffee. Then they all filed back into the room. Thurnberg returned to the same seat, his face as blank as before. They began to go through the autopsy report. Wallander sketched the possible time frame on the board.
"Svedberg was killed not more than 24 hours before we found him. Everything indicates that he was killed in the morning. As far as the young people go, it turns out that our hypothesis works better than we had imagined. It doesn't supply us with a motive or a killer, but it does tell us something significant."
He sat down before he continued. "These young people made the arrangement for their celebration in secret. They chose a place where they were sure they would be left alone. But someone knew about their plans. Someone kept himself incredibly well informed, and had the time to make meticulous preparations. We still have no motive for what happened in the nature reserve, but we have a killer who didn't give up until he had traced the only remaining survivor of this night and killed her too. Isa Edengren. He knew she fled to Bärnsö, and he found her out there among all those islands. This gives us a place to start. We're looking for a person who knew about the plans for the Midsummer celebration. Someone close to the source."
No one spoke for a long time.
"Where do we find this person who had access to so much information?" Wallander said. "That's where we have to start. If we do, then sooner or later we'll find out where Svedberg fits into the picture."
"We already have," Hansson said. "We know he started his investigation only a few days after Midsummer."
"I think we can say more than that," Wallander said. "I think Svedberg had a definite suspicion who killed, or was about to kill, the young people in the reserve."
"Why did the killer wait so long to kill Isa Edengren?" Martinsson asked. "He took more than a month to do it."
"We don't know why," Wallander agreed. "She wasn't particularly hard to find."
"And one more thing," Martinsson added. "Why did he dig up the bodies? Did he want them to be discovered?"
"There's no other explanation," Wallander said. "But it raises another set of questions about what motivates this killer. And in what way he and Svedberg had anything to do with each other."
Wallander sat back and looked at everyone gathered around the table.
Svedberg knew what had happened to the young people when they didn't return after Midsummer, he thought. Svedberg knew who the killer was, or at least had a very strong suspicion. That's why he was killed. There just isn't any other explanation. Which brings us to the most important question of all. Why didn't he want to tell us who the killer was?
Shortly after 2 p.m., Wallander asked Martinsson a question regarding a call that had come in from a man who had a news-stand in Sölvesborg. This man had stopped at Hagestad's nature reserve on the afternoon of Midsummer's Eve on his way to a party in Falsterbo. He had realised he was going to be too early, and had stopped to take a break. He thought he remembered two cars parked at the entrance. But Wallander never heard what additional details the man remembered. When he finished asking Martinsson his question, he fainted.
One moment he was waving his pencil in Martinsson's direction. The next he fell back in his chair, his chin to his chest. For a split second no one knew what had happened. Then Holgersson and Höglund reacted almost simultaneously, before the others. Hansson later confessed that he had thought Wallander had had a stroke and died. What the rest of them thought, or feared, he never heard. They dragged him out of the chair and laid him out on the floor, loosened his collar, and took his pulse. Someone grabbed a phone and called an ambulance. But Wallander came to before it arrived. As they helped him to his feet, he was already thinking that his blood-sugar level must have dropped. He drank some water and took some lumps of sugar from a tray on the table. He was starting to feel his normal self again.
Everyone around him looked worried. They thought he should go down to the hospital for an examination or at the very least go home and rest. But Wallander didn't want to do either. He excused the episode as due to lack of sleep and then returned to the matter at hand with such determined energy the others had to back down.
The only one who didn't show signs of either worry or fear was Thurnberg. He hardly had any reaction at all. He stood up when Wallander was laid on the ground, but he didn't leave his place. No one really noticed a significant shift in expression either.
When they took a break Wallander went to his office and called Dr Göransson, and told him about the fainting episode. Dr Göransson did not seem surprised.
"Your blood-sugar level will continue to fluctuate," he said. "It'll take us a while to get it stabilised. We may have to reduce your medication if it keeps happening, but until then keep an apple handy in case you get dizzy."
After that day Wallander walked around with lumps of sugar in his pocket, as if he were expecting to see a horse. He didn't tell anyone about his diabetes. It was still his secret.
The meeting dragged on until 5 p.m., but by then they had managed to go through every aspect of the investigation thoroughly. There was a new infusion of energy in the room. They decided to call for reinforcements from Malmö, although Wallander knew that it was the people gathered around the table who would remain the core members of the investigative team.
Thurnberg remained behind after everyone had filed out of the room, and Wallander realised he must want to have a word with him. As he made his way to the other side of the table, he thought regretfully of Per Åkeson, who was somewhere under an African sun.
"I've been expecting a debriefing for quite a while," Thurnberg said. His voice was high-pitched and always sounded on the verge of cracking.
"We should have done this earlier, of course," Wallander said in a friendly tone. "But the direction of the investigation has shifted dramatically over the last couple of days."
Thurnberg ignored Wallander's last comment. "In the future I expect to be continuously apprised of the situation without having to ask. The justice department is naturally very interested when a police officer is killed."
Wallander felt no need to answer. He waited for him to continue.
"The investigation up to this point can hardly be called successful or even as thorough as one would hope," Thurnberg said, gesturing to a long list of points he had written on a pad of paper in front of him. Wallander felt as if he was back at school being told he had failed a test.
"If the criticisms are warranted we'll take the steps necessary to remedy the situation," he said.
He tried hard to sound calm and friendly, but he knew he would be unable to conceal his anger much longer. Who did this visiting prosecutor from Örebro think he was? How old was he? He couldn't be more than 33.
"I'll see to it that you have my list of complaints about the handling of the case on your desk tomorrow morning," Thurnberg said. "I'll be expecting a written response from you."
Wallander stared back at him quizzically. "Do you really mean you want us to waste time writing letters to each other while a killer who's committed five brutal murders is still running around out there?"
"What I mean is that the investigation so far has not been satisfactory."
Wallander hit the table with his fist and got up so violently that the chair fell to the ground. "There are no perfect investigations!" he roared. "But no one is going to accuse me or my colleagues of not having done everything that we can."
Thurnberg's expression finally changed. His face drained of all colour.
"Go ahead and send me your little note," Wallander said. "If you are right, we'll do as you say. But don't expect me to write you any letters in reply."
Wallander left the room and slammed the door shut behind him.
Höglund was on her way into her office and turned around when she heard the noise.
"What was that all about?" she asked.
"It's Thurnberg," Wallander said. "The bastard's whining about the investigation."
"Why?"
"He doesn't think we're thorough enough. How could we possibly have done more?"
"He probably just wants to show you who's boss."
"In that case he's picked the wrong man."
Wallander went into her office and sat down heavily in her visitor's chair.
"What happened in there?" she asked. "When you fainted."
"I haven't been sleeping well," he said, dodging her question. "But I feel fine now."
He got the same feeling he had when he was in Gotland with Linda. She didn't believe him either. Martinsson poked his head round the door.
"Am I interrupting anything?"
"No, it's good that you're here," Wallander said. "We should talk. Where's Hansson?"
"He's working on the cars."
"He should be here too," Wallander said. "But you'll have to fill him in later."
He gestured to Martinsson to close the door, then told them about his conversation with Sundelius, and his feeling that Svedberg might have been gay after all.
"Not that it matters one way or the other," he added. "Police officers are allowed to have whatever sexual orientation they like. The reason I'm not going public with this is that I don't want to start unnecessary rumours. Since Svedberg didn't talk about his sexuality while he was alive, I don't see the need for public speculation now that he's dead."
"It complicates this matter with Louise," Martinsson said.
"He may have been a man of many interests. But what is it that Sundelius knows? I had a strong feeling that he wasn't telling me everything. That means we have to dig deeper into both their lives. Are there other secrets? We have to do the same thing with these young people. Somewhere there's a point of intersection. A person who is a shadow to us right now, but who is there just the same."
"I have a vague recollection that someone lodged a complaint against Svedberg with the justice department's ombudsman a number of years ago," Martinsson said. "I forget what it was about."
"We should look into it, like everything else," Wallander said. "I thought we could divide these things up. I'll take Svedberg and Sundelius. I also have to talk to Björklund again, since he's the only one who knows anything about Louise."
"It's incomprehensible that no one's seen her," said Höglund.
"It's not just incomprehensible," Wallander said. "It's an impossibility. We just have to find out why."
"Haven't we gone a little easy on Björklund?" Martinsson asked. "After all, we found Svedberg's telescope at his house."
"He's innocent until proven guilty," Wallander said. "It's a hackneyed phrase, but there's some truth to it."
He got up. "Remember to tell Hansson about this," he said and left the room.
It was 5.30 p.m. and he hadn't eaten anything all day except the dry old biscuits in the canteen. The thought of going home and cooking a meal was too overwhelming. Instead he went down to the Chinese restaurant on the main square. He drank a beer while he was waiting. Then another. When the food came he ate too fast, as usual. He was about to order dessert when he stopped himself, and headed home. It was another warm evening and he opened the door to the balcony. He tried to call Linda three times, then gave up. Her phone was constantly busy. He was too tired to think. The TV was on, with the sound down. He lay down on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. Shortly before 9 p.m. the phone rang. It was Lisa Holgersson.
"I think we have a problem," she said. "Thurnberg spoke to me after your argument."
Wallander grimaced, sensing what she was about to say. "Thurnberg was probably upset because I shouted at him. I made a lot of noise, thumped my fist on the table, that sort of thing."
"It's worse than that," she said. "He says you're not fit to be in charge of the investigation."
That came as a surprise. Wallander hadn't thought Thurnberg would go so far. He should have felt angry, but instead he was frightened. It was one thing to question your own abilities, but had it never occurred to him that someone else might do so.
"What were his reasons?"
"Mostly things to do with the running of the investigation. He's particularly concerned about the fact that he's been kept so poorly informed."
Wallander protested. What more could they have done?
"I'm just telling you what he said. He also thinks it was a serious lapse of judgment not to contact the police in Norrköping before you went up to Östergötland. He questions the validity of the trip itself, in fact."
"But what about the fact that I found Isa?"
"He thinks the police in Norrköping could have done that, while you were down here leading the team, and he seems to imply that she might have lived if this had been the case."
"That's absurd," Wallander said flatly. "I hope that's what you told him."
"There's one last thing," she said. "Your health."
"I'm not sick."
"Look, you fainted right in front of everyone. In the middle of a meeting."
"That could happen to anyone who is overworked."
"I'm telling you what he said."
"But what did you say to him?"
"That I would speak to you. And consider it."
Suddenly Wallander felt unsure of her opinion. Could he still assume she was on his side? His suspicion flared up in an instant, and it was strong.
"So now you've talked to me," he said. "What do you think?"
"What do you think?"
"That Thurnberg is an annoying little man who doesn't like me or any of the others. Which is mutual, by the way. I think he looks on his time here simply as a springboard to greater things."
"That's hardly an objective statement."
"But true. I believe I did the right thing in going up to Bärnsö Island. The investigation here continued just the same. There was no reason to notify the police in Norrköping because no crime had been committed, nor was there any reason to assume one would occur. On the contrary, there was every reason in the world to keep things quiet. Isa Edengren could easily have become even more frightened."
"Thurnberg understands all that," she said. "And I agree with you that he can seem very arrogant. What seems to worry him most is your health."
"I don't think he's worried about anyone but himself. The day I'm no longer up to leading the investigation I promise you'll be the first to know."
"I suppose Thurnberg will have to accept that as his answer for now. But it might be best if you kept him better informed from now on."
"It's going to be hard for me to trust him in the future," Wallander said. "I can stand a lot of things, but I hate it when people go behind my back."
"He hasn't gone behind your back. Telling me about his concerns was the right thing to do."
"No one can force me to like him."
"That's not what this is about. But I think he's going to react to any signs of weakness from now on."
"What the hell do you mean by that?"
The sudden flare of anger came from nowhere, and Wallander didn't manage to control it.
"You don't have to get upset. I'm just telling you what's happened."
"We have five murders to solve," Wallander said. "And a killer who's cold-blooded and well-organised. There are no apparent motives and we don't know if he's going to strike again. One of the victims was a close colleague. You have to assume people are going to get a little upset. This investigation isn't exactly a tea party."
She laughed. "I haven't heard that expression used before in this context."
"Just so you understand where I'm coming from," Wallander said. "That's all."
"I wanted to let you know about this as soon as possible."
"I know, I'm grateful that you did."
When the conversation was over, Wallander went back to the sofa. His suspicions still hadn't left him, and he was already plotting how he would get even with Thurnberg. Perhaps it was out of self-defence, perhaps self-pity. The thought of being relieved of his responsibilities frightened him. Being in charge of an investigation like this meant being under an almost unbearable strain, but the thought of humiliation was worse.
Wallander felt a great desire to talk to someone, anyone who could give him the kind of moral support he needed. It was 9.15 p.m. Who could he call? Martinsson or Höglund? Most of all he wanted to talk to Rydberg, but he lay in his grave and couldn't speak. He thought of Nyberg. They never really talked about private matters, but Wallander knew Nyberg would understand. His irascible and outspoken nature was an advantage in this situation. Above all, Wallander knew Nyberg respected his abilities. He doubted that Nyberg would be able to stand working under anyone else.
Wallander dialled Nyberg's home number. As usual he answered the phone in an irritable voice. Wallander often said to Martinsson that he'd never heard Nyberg sound friendly on the phone.
"We need to talk," Wallander said.
"What's happened?"
"Nothing to do with the case. But I need to see you."
"Can't it wait?"
"No."
"I can be at the station in 15 minutes."
"Let's meet somewhere else. I thought we could go out and have a beer."
"We're going to a bar? What's this all about?"
"Do you have any suggestions where we could go?"
"I never go out," Nyberg said dismissively. "At least not in Ystad."
"There's a new restaurant and bar by the main square," Wallander said. "By the antiques shop. I'll see you there."
"Do I have to wear a suit and tie?"
"I can't imagine you would," Wallander answered.
Nyberg promised to be there in half an hour. Wallander changed his shirt, then left the flat on foot. There weren't many people in the restaurant. When he asked, they told him it closed at 11 p.m. He realised he was quite hungry, flipped through the menu, and was shocked by the prices. Who could afford to eat out any more? But he wanted to treat Nyberg to something to eat.
Nyberg arrived in exactly half an hour. He was dressed in a suit and tie, and had even slicked his normally wayward hair down with water. The suit was a little old and looked too big. Nyberg sat down across from Wallander.
"I had no idea there was a restaurant here," he said.
"It opened fairly recently," Wallander answered. "Five or so years ago. Let me treat you to something."
"I'm not hungry," Nyberg said.
"Then have a starter," Wallander said
"I'll leave it up to you" Nyberg said and pushed his menu away.
They had a couple of beers while they waited for the food to arrive. Wallander told him about his conversation with Holgersson. He recounted it in detail, but he also added the things he had thought and not said.
"It doesn't sound like the kind of thing you should pay much attention to," Nyberg said when Wallander had finished. "But I understand why it upset you. Internal disputes are the last thing we need right now."
Wallander pretended to take Thurnberg's side for a moment. "Do you think maybe he's right? Should someone else take charge?"
"Who would that be?"
"Martinsson?"
Nyberg stared back at him in disbelief. "You're joking."
"What about Hansson?"
"Maybe in ten years. But this is the worst case we've ever had. That's not a good time to suddenly weaken the leadership of the investigation."
The food appeared on the table and Wallander kept talking about Thurnberg. But Nyberg gave only one-word answers and offered no further comments. At last Wallander realised he was going too far. Nyberg was right. There was nothing more to say. If necessary, Nyberg would back him up. A couple of years earlier Wallander had taken up the matter of his unreasonable workload with Holgersson, soon after she had replaced Björk as chief of police. Nyberg's situation improved after that. They had never talked about it, but Wallander was sure Nyberg knew the part he had played in the matter.
Nyberg was right. They shouldn't waste any more of their energy on Thurnberg, but save it for more pressing matters. They ordered more beers and were told it was the last round. Wallander asked Nyberg if he wanted coffee, but he declined.
"I have more than 20 cups a day," he said. "To keep my energy up. Actually, maybe just to keep going."
"Police work wouldn't be possible without coffee," Wallander said.
"No work would be possible without coffee."
They pondered the importance of coffee in silence. Some people at a nearby table got up and left.
"I don't think I've ever been involved in anything quite as strange as these murders," Nyberg said suddenly.
"Neither have I. It's senseless brutality. I can't imagine a motive."
"It could simply be for the love of killing," Nyberg said. "A killer with a lust for blood who carefully plans and arranges his crimes."
"You may be right," Wallander said. "But how did Svedberg get onto him so fast? That's what I can't understand."
"There's only one rational explanation, which is that Svedberg knew whoever it was. Or had a definite suspicion. Then the question of why he didn't want to tell anyone about this becomes crucial, perhaps the most important question of all."
"Could it be that it was someone we know?"
"Not necessarily. There's another possibility. Not that Svedberg knew who it was, or that he had definite suspicions, but that he feared it was someone he knew."
Wallander saw the logic of Nyberg's statement. To suspect someone and to fear something were not necessarily the same thing.
"That would explain the need for secrecy," Nyberg continued. "He's afraid the killer is someone he knows, but he's not sure. He wants to be convinced before he tells us about it, and he wants to be able to bury the whole thing in silence if his fears turn out to be mistaken."
Wallander watched Nyberg attentively. He was seeing a connection that had not been apparent to him earlier.
"Let's assume that Svedberg hears about the disappearance of the young people," he said. "Let's assume that he is driven by fear that is grounded in a reasonable suspicion. Let's even assume that he knows he's right and that he knows who is responsible for their disappearance. He doesn't even have to know they're dead."
"It isn't very likely that he knew," Nyberg said. "Since he would then have felt compelled to come clean. I can't imagine that Svedberg would have been able to carry a burden like that."
Wallander nodded. Nyberg was right.
"So he doesn't know they're dead," he said. "But he has strong fears and enough conviction to confront this particular person. Then what?"
"He's killed."
"The scene of the crime is hastily rearranged, so that our first thought was that there had been a burglary. And something's missing: the telescope. Which is then hidden in Sture Björklund's shed."
"The door," Nyberg said. "I'm convinced that the killer was let into Svedberg's flat. Or maybe even had his own set of keys."
"It must be someone he knows, someone who's been there before."
"Someone who knows he has a cousin. The killer tries to push the blame onto him, by planting the telescope at Björklund's place."
The waitress came over with the bill, but Wallander was reluctant to end their conversation.
"What's the common denominator? We really have only two people in the picture: Bror Sundelius and an unknown woman by the name of Louise."
Nyberg shook his head. "A woman didn't commit these murders," he said. "Although we said the same thing a couple of years ago and were proved wrong."
"It can hardly have been Bror Sundelius either," Wallander said. "His legs are bad. There's nothing wrong with his mind, but his health isn't the best."
"Then it's someone we still don't know about," Nyberg said. "Svedberg must have had other people he was close to."
"I'm going to go back a little," Wallander said. "Tomorrow I'm going to start searching Svedberg's life."
"That's probably the right way to do it," Nyberg agreed. "I'll check on the results of our forensic tests, especially the fingerprinting. Hopefully that'll tell us more."
"The weapons," Wallander said. "They're important."
"Wester in Ludvika is very pleasant," Nyberg said. "I'm getting full cooperation."
Wallander pulled the bill towards him. Nyberg wanted to split it with him.
"We could try to put it on the expense account," Wallander said.
"You'll never get this through," Nyberg said.
Wallander felt around for his wallet. It wasn't there. Suddenly he saw it in his mind's eye, lying on the kitchen table.
"I still want to treat you, but it seems I've left my wallet at home."
Nyberg took out his wallet and counted out 200 kronor. But the bill was almost twice that.
"There's a cashpoint around the corner," Wallander said.
"I don't use cards like that," Nyberg said firmly.
The waitress, who had turned the lights on and off several times, approached them. They were the only people left. Nyberg showed her his ID, which she regarded sceptically.
"We don't let guests have tabs here," she said.
"We're police officers," Wallander said angrily. "I just happen to have left my wallet at home."
"We don't give credit," she said. "If you can't pay I'll have to report you."
"Report us to who?"
"The police."
Wallander almost lost his temper, but Nyberg restrained him. "This could get interesting."
"Are you paying or not?" the waitress asked.
"I think you should call the police," Wallander said pleasantly.
The waitress walked off and made the call, making sure to lock the front door first.
"They're on their way," she said. "You'll have to stay until then."
They waited five minutes, then a police car pulled up outside and two officers got out. One of them was Edmundsson. He stared at Wallander and Nyberg.
"We seem to have a little problem," Wallander said. "I've left my wallet at home and Nyberg doesn't have enough cash to cover the bill. This lady doesn't give credit, nor was she impressed by Nyberg's ID."
Edmundsson took this in, then burst into laughter. "What's the bill?" he asked.
"It's 400 kronor."
He took out his wallet and paid.
"It's not my fault," the waitress said. "My boss says we should never give credit."
"Who owns this place?" Nyberg asked.
"His name's Fredriksson. Alf Fredriksson."
"Is he a big man?" Nyberg asked. "Does he live in Svarte?"
The waitress nodded.
"Then I know him," Nyberg said. "Nice man. Say hello to him from Nyberg and Wallander."
The squad car was already gone when they walked out onto the street.
"This is the strangest August I've ever known," Nyberg said. "It's already the 15th and it's still warm."
They parted ways when they got to Hamngatan.
"We just don't know if he's going to strike again," Wallander said. "That's the worst thing."
"That's why we have to get him," Nyberg said. "As fast as we can."
Wallander walked home slowly. He was inspired by his talk with Nyberg but felt no real peace of mind. He didn't want to admit it, but Thurnberg's reaction and his conversation with Holgersson had depressed him. Was he being unfair to Thurnberg? Was he right? Should someone else be in charge of this investigation?
When Wallander got home he put on a pot of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. The thermometer outside the window read 19°C. Wallander got out a pad of paper and a pencil, then looked for his glasses, and found a pair under the sofa.
Coffee cup in hand, he found himself walking around the kitchen table a couple of times as if to coax himself into the right frame of mind for the task ahead. He had never written a speech in memory of a murdered colleague before. Now he regretted having agreed to do it. How did you describe the feeling of finding your colleague with his face blown off in his flat only one week earlier?
Finally he sat down and got started. He could still remember when he first met Svedberg, 20 years earlier, when Svedberg had already begun to bald. He was halfway through when he tore everything up and started again. It was after 1 a.m. when he'd finished. This time it was good enough.
He walked out onto the balcony. The town was quiet, and it was still quite warm. He recalled his conversation with Nyberg and let his mind wander. Suddenly the image of Isa Edengren was there, curled up in the cave that had protected her as a child but no longer could. Wallander went back in, leaving the door to the balcony open. There was a thought that wouldn't go away. That the man out there in the darkness was preparing to strike again.
It had been a long day. There were many packages, certified letters, and international money orders. He wasn't done with the bookkeeping until it was almost 2 p.m.
His old self would have been irritated by the fact that the work took longer than expected. Now it didn't affect him any more. The enormous change he'd undergone had made him impervious to time. He realised there was no such thing as past or future. There was no time that could be lost or won. The only thing that counted was action.
He put away his postbag and cashbox, then showered and changed his clothes. He hadn't eaten since early that morning, before he'd driven to the depot to start sorting his post. But he wasn't hungry. This was a feeling that he remembered from his childhood. When something exciting lay in store for him, he lost his appetite. He went into the soundproofed room and turned on all the lights. He'd made the bed before leaving that morning, and now he spread the letters out over the dark-blue bedspread. He sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed. He had read these letters before. That was the first step, to pick out letters that caught his eye. He opened them carefully, without doing any damage to the envelope. He copied them and then he read them. He didn't know exactly how many letters he had opened, copied and read this past year. It must have been close to 200. Most of them were nothing special. They were vacuous, boring. It wasn't until he had opened the letter from Lena Norman to Martin Boge…
He interrupted the thought. That was over and done with. He didn't need to think about them any more. The last phase had been so difficult and tiring. First there was the trip to Östergötland, then he had hunted around for a suitable boat in the darkness, one that was big enough to take him to the little island at the far edge of the archipelago.
It had been a bothersome undertaking, and he hadn't liked having to put in the extra effort. It meant overcoming his own resistance, something he tried to avoid. He looked at the letters spread around him on the bed. Choosing a couple that were planning to get married had not occurred to him until sometime in May. The idea came to him by chance, like so much else in life. During his years as an engineer, chance had not been allowed in his orderly existence. Now everything had changed. The interplay of luck and coincidence meant a person's life was a steady stream of unexpected opportunities. He could pick and choose what he wanted.
The little raised flag on the letter box told him nothing. But when he knocked on the door and entered the kitchen, he found more than a hundred invitations lying on the table. The bride-to-be let him in. He could no longer remember her name, but he remembered her joy, and it enraged him. He took her letters and posted them, and if he hadn't been so embroiled in complicated plans for participating in the upcoming Midsummer celebration he would perhaps have become involved in her wedding.
New opportunities kept presenting themselves. All six envelopes in front of him were wedding invitations. He had read their letters, got to know each couple. He knew where they lived, what they looked like, and where they were to be married. The invitations in front of him were merely printed cards, there to remind him of the different couples.
Now he faced his most important task, deciding which of the couples was the happiest. He went through the envelopes one by one, reminding himself of other letters that they had written, to each other or their friends. He savoured the moment, suffused with contentment. He was in charge. In this soundproofed room he could not be touched by the things that had made him suffer in his earlier life – the feeling of being an outsider and being misunderstood. In here he could bear to think about the great catastrophe, when he was shut out and declared superfluous.
Nothing was hard any more. Or almost nothing. He still couldn't bear to think about how he had subjected himself to humiliation for more than two years. He had answered ads in the paper, sent in his CV, gone to countless interviews.
That was before he cut himself off from his former existence and left everything behind. Becoming another.
He knew he was one of the lucky ones. Today he would never have got a job as a substitute postman. There were blocks to most professions. People were laid off. He noticed this as he went along his post route. People sat in their houses waiting for letters. More and more of them ended up on the outside and had not yet learned how to break free.
He finally picked the couple getting married on Saturday, 17 August, at their home just outside Köpingebro. They had invited a lot of people. He couldn't even remember how many invitations they had given him. But both of them had been standing there when he came in through the door, and their happiness seemed limitless. He could have killed them on the spot. But as usual he controlled himself. He congratulated them, and no one could have guessed what he was really thinking.
It was the most important art a person could learn: self-control.
On Friday morning, Wallander began the task of mapping out Svedberg's life in earnest. He arrived at the station shortly after 7 a.m. and went about his task with some reluctance. He didn't know exactly what he was looking for, but somewhere in Svedberg's life there had to be a point leading to the reason for his murder. It was like trying to find a trace of life in a person who had already died.
What interested him most this morning was a man called Jan Söderblom, who Ylva Brink said knew Svedberg when he was young, during his days of compulsory military service and police training. The connection was severed when Söderblom married and moved away, she thought to Malmö or Landskrona. What interested Wallander was that Söderblom had become a police officer just like Svedberg. He was about to call the station in Malmö when Nyberg appeared at the door. Wallander could tell from his expression that something was up.
"Things are happening," Nyberg said and waved some faxes at him. "We can start with the murder weapons, if you like. Turns out the revolver stolen in Ludvika along with the shotgun could have been the same as the one in the nature reserve."
"Could have been?"
"In my language that means it's the one."
"Good," Wallander said. "We needed that."
"Then there are the fingerprints," Nyberg continued. "We found a good right thumbprint on the shotgun. We found another good thumbprint on a wineglass out in the reserve."
"Same thumb?"
"Yes."
"Previous record?"
"Not in our files. But we're going to send that thumbprint all around the world if we have to."
"So it is the same man," Wallander said slowly. "At least we know that much."
"There were no fingerprints on the telescope, however, other than Svedberg's own."
"Does that mean he hid it at Björklund's place himself?"
"Not necessarily. The person could have been wearing gloves."
"We have this thumbprint on the shotgun," Wallander said. "But what about in Svedberg's flat in general? We have to know who created that chaos, if it was Svedberg or someone else. Or both."
"We'll have to wait on that, but they're working on it."
Wallander got up and leaned against the wall. He felt that there was more to this.
"We found none of Svedberg's prints on the shotgun," Nyberg said. "That may or may not mean anything."
"We've come a long way," Wallander said. "We have a single killer."
"Maybe we should notify the chief prosecutor," Nyberg said, smiling. "That might cheer him up."
"Or not. We're not living up to our bad reputation. But we'll make sure he gets his report."
Nyberg left the room and Wallander grabbed the phone, called Malmö and asked to speak to Officer Jan Söderblom. Sure enough there was a detective by that name who worked mainly on theft cases, but he was on holiday on a Greek island until the following Wednesday. Wallander left a message that he wanted to speak to him as soon as possible. He also made a note of Söderblom's home phone number. He had just hung up when Höglund knocked on the half-open door. She held his speech about Svedberg in her hands.
"I've read it," she said. "And I think it's honest and moving. I suppose those two things always go together. No one's touched simply by empty talk of eternity and light conquering the darkness."
"It's not too long?" Wallander asked anxiously.
"I read it aloud to myself and it took less than five minutes. I don't usually speak at funerals, but I think it's just the right length."
She was about to slip out again when Wallander told her Nyberg's news.
"That's a huge step forward," she said when he had finished. "If we could only find the person or people who stole the guns."
"It'll be hard, but of course we'll try. I was wondering if it wouldn't be worth it to put pictures of the guns in the papers. Both the revolver and the shotgun."
"There's a press conference at 11 a.m.," she said. "Lisa has been overrun by the press lately. Maybe we should tell them about the weapons. What do we really have to lose by telling them there's a connection between the two cases? It'll be murder on a scale this country hasn't seen for a long time."
"You're right," Wallander said. "I'll be there."
She lingered in the doorway. "Then there's the elusive Louise," she said. "Whom no one seems to have seen. There have been a lot of calls but nothing reliable."
"That's strange," Wallander said. "But someone somewhere knows her. We talked about trying Denmark."
"Why not all of Europe?"
"Yes," he agreed. "Why not? But let's start with Denmark and let's do it now, as soon as possible."
"I'm on my way to Lund to go through Lena Norman's flat," she said. "But I'll ask Hansson to do it."
"Not Hansson," Wallander said. "He's still working on finding the cars. There has to be someone else who can do it."
"We're going to need those reinforcements," Höglund said. "Lisa says some people are arriving from Malmö this afternoon."
"We need Svedberg," Wallander said. "That's what it is. We just aren't used to not having him around."
They were silent for a while after this; then she left. Wallander opened the window. It was still warm, and there was only a gentle breeze. The phone rang. It was Ebba. She sounded tired, and Wallander thought how much she had seemed to age during the last few years. Before, she had always helped them keep their spirits up. Now she was often down herself, and sometimes she forgot to pass along their messages. She was due to retire next summer, but no one could bring themselves to think about it.
"There's a call here from an officer called Larsson. He says he's from the police in Valdemarsvik" she told him. "Can you take it? Everyone else is busy."
Larsson spoke with an Östgöta dialect.
"Harry Lundström from Norrköping told us to inform you about anything stolen around Gryt on the day that girl was shot out on Bärnsö Island."
"That's right."
"We may have something that will interest you, stolen from Snäckvarp. The owner can't say exactly when, because he wasn't there when it happened. But it was found in an inlet just south of Snäckvarp. It's a six-metre fibreglass boat with a raised steering platform."
Wallander felt his usual insecurity in discussing boats.
"Is it big enough to take out to Bärnsö?"
"If the wind wasn't too strong it could take you all the way out to Gotland."
Wallander thought for a moment. "Any fingerprints?" he asked.
"We've checked," Larsson said. "There was oil on the steering wheel so we found a couple of good prints there. They're already on their way over to you, via Norrköping. Harry is the one in charge of the whole thing."
"Was there a road near where the boat was found?" Wallander asked.
"The boat was hidden in a mass of reeds. But you can walk to Snäckvarp in about ten minutes and there's a dirt road from there."
"This is important," Wallander said.
"How are things going? Are you closing in on the killer?"
"Yes, but these things take time."
"I never met the girl, but I had a run-in with Edengren a couple of years ago."
"Oh, what happened?"
"Illegal fishing. He was putting nets and eel traps in other people's water."
"Isn't it free fishing out there?"
"It varies. Not that he bothered to find out. If I may speak plainly, I thought he was a royal pain in the arse. But of course I feel sorry for him now, with the girl and all."
"Was that it? Illegal fishing?"
"As far as I know."
Wallander thanked him for the call. Then he tried to reach Harry Lundström in Norrköping, and was directed to his mobile phone. Lundström was in a car somewhere out in Vikboland. Wallander told him they had a positive ID on the murder weapon from the reserve, and that they would soon know about the gun used on Bärnsö Island. Lundström in turn told him they weren't sure of any prints found on the island, but he assumed the stolen boat in Snäckvarp was the one the killer had used.
"People out here on the islands are getting worried," he said. "You have to get this man."
"Yes," Wallander said. "Yes, we do. And we will."
He went and got a cup of coffee when he was done with the conversation. It was already 9.30 a.m. Something occurred to him, and he went back to his office and looked up the number for the Lundberg family in Skårby. The wife answered. Wallander realised he hadn't spoken to them since Isa was murdered, and so he began by offering her his condolences.
"Erik is still in bed," she said. "He doesn't have the energy to get up. He says we should sell the house and move away. Who could do something like this to a child?"
Isa was like a daughter to her, Wallander thought. I should have thought of it earlier.
He couldn't really answer her question, but he sensed that she held him responsible for Isa's death.
"I called to see if her parents have come home," he said.
"They came back last night."
"That was all I wanted to know," he said. He expressed his regrets once again and then hung up.
He planned to drive out to Skårby immediately after the press conference. He wanted to go right away, but there wasn't time. He picked up the phone and called Thurnberg. Without mentioning what he had heard the previous night, he gave him a short update on the latest findings from the forensic investigation. Wallander concluded by stressing that the findings meant they could now concentrate on searching for a single killer. Thurnberg said he looked forward to seeing the written report, and Wallander promised to send him a copy.
"There will be a press conference at 11 a.m.," Wallander said. "I think we should reveal these latest findings to the press and have pictures of the guns published."
"Do we have any pictures of them available now?"
"We'll get them tomorrow at the latest." Thurnberg made no objections, and said he would participate in the press conference. They kept the conversation brief, but Wallander noticed by the end that he had broken into a sweat.
They held the press conference in the largest room available. Wallander couldn't remember another case ever getting so much attention. As usual he got terribly nervous when he walked up to the podium. To his surprise, Thurnberg began. That had never happened in all the years he had worked there. Per Åkeson always let Wallander or the chief of police take on that task. Thurnberg spoke as if he was accustomed to speaking to the press. It's a new era, Wallander thought. He wasn't sure that he didn't feel a tiny bit envious. He listened carefully to what Thurnberg said, and couldn't deny that he expressed himself well.
Next it was his turn to speak. He had made some notes on a piece of paper to remind himself of what to say, but now, naturally, couldn't find it. He told them they had traced the murder weapons to Ludvika, with a possible link to a robbery in Orsa. He also told them that they were still waiting for a positive ID on the weapon used on Bärnsö Island in the Östergötland archipelago. As he spoke he thought of Westin, the postman who had taken him out to the island. Why he thought of him at that moment he couldn't say. He also talked about the findings regarding the stolen boat. When he finished, there were many questions. Thurnberg handled most of them, with Wallander jumping in from time to time. Martinsson was listening to the proceedings from the very back of the room.
Finally a woman from one of the evening papers indicated that she wanted to ask a question. Wallander had never seen her before.
"Would it be accurate to say that the police have no leads at this time?" she said, turning directly to Wallander.
"We have many leads," Wallander said. "We're just not close to making an arrest."
"It seems to me that the police investigation hasn't yielded any results. It seems more than likely that this killer will strike again. After all, I think it's clear to all of us that we're dealing with a madman."
"We don't know that," Wallander answered. "That's why we're keeping our approach as comprehensive as we can."
"That sounds like a strategy," the reporter said. "But it could also give the impression that you don't know where to turn, that you're helpless."
Wallander glanced at Thurnberg, who encouraged him to continue with an almost invisible nod of his head.
"The police are never helpless," Wallander said. "If we were, we wouldn't be police officers."
"Don't you agree that you're looking for a madman?"
"No."
"What else could this person be?"
"We don't know yet."
"Do you think you'll catch whoever did this?"
"Yes, without a doubt."
"Will he strike again?"
"We don't know."
There was a brief pause. Wallander got up, which the others took as a signal that the conference was over. Wallander thought Thurnberg had probably intended to end it in a more formal manner, but Wallander left the room before Thurnberg had a chance to talk to him. TV news teams were waiting to interview him in the reception area. Wallander told them to speak with Thurnberg. Later Ebba told him that Thurnberg was more than happy to oblige.
Wallander went into his office to get his coat. He tried to think what it was that made him think of Westin during the press conference. He knew it was significant. He sat down at his desk and tried to coax the thought to the surface, but it wouldn't come. He gave up. As he was putting his coat on, Hansson called.
"I found the cars," he said. "Norman's and Boge's: a 1991 Toyota and a Volvo that's one year older. They were in a car park down by Sandhammaren. I've already called Nyberg. He's on his way there."
"So am I."
At the edge of town, Wallander pulled over at a takeaway bar and ate a hotdog. It had become habit now to buy one-litre bottles of mineral water. He had forgotten to take the medication that Dr Göransson had prescribed for him, and he didn't have it with him.
He drove back to Mariagatan in a bad temper. There was a heap of post on the floor in the hall, and he noticed a postcard from Linda, who was visiting friends in Hudiksvall, and a letter from his sister Kristina. Wallander took the post with him into the kitchen. His sister had put the name and address of a hotel on the back of the envelope. It was in Kemi, which Wallander knew was in northern Finland. He wondered what she was doing there, but he let the post wait, and took his medicine instead. Before he left the kitchen, he glanced at the post lying on the table and again his thoughts returned to Westin. Now he was able to catch hold of the thought.
There was something Westin had said during their trip out to Bärnsö Island, something that Wallander's subconscious had been turning over and was trying to send to the surface. He tried to reconstruct their conversation in the noisy wheelhouse without success. But Westin had said something important. He decided to call him after he had looked at the two cars.
Nyberg was already there when Wallander got out of his car. The Toyota and Volvo were parked next to each other. Police tape was plastered all around the area and the cars were being photographed. The doors and boots were wide open. Wallander walked up to Nyberg, who was getting a bag out of his car.
"Thanks again for meeting me last night," he said.
"An old friend came down to see me from Stockholm in 1973," Nyberg replied. "We went out to a bar one evening. I don't think I've been out since then."
Wallander remembered that he hadn't paid Edmundsson back.
"Well, anyway, I had a nice time," he said.
"There's already a rumour going around that we were caught trying to get out of paying the bill," Nyberg said.
"Just as long as Thurnberg doesn't get wind of it. He might take it the wrong way."
Wallander walked over to Hansson, who was making some notes.
"Any doubt they're the right ones?"
"The Toyota is Lena Norman's, the Volvo belongs to Martin Boge."
"How long have they been here?"
"We don't know. In July the car park is full of cars coming and going. It's only in August that it starts to slow down and that people start noticing which cars haven't been moved."
"Is there any other way to find out if they've been here since Midsummer?"
"You'll have to talk to Nyberg about that."
Wallander went back to Nyberg, who was staring at the Toyota.
"Fingerprints are the most important," Wallander said. "The cars must have been driven here from the reserve."
"Someone who leaves his prints on a boat might well leave us a greeting on a steering wheel."
"That's what I'm hoping."
"That probably also means our killer is fairly sure his prints don't appear in any records, either here or abroad."
"I was thinking the same thing," Wallander said. "We'll just have to hope you're wrong."
Wallander didn't need to stay any longer. As he passed the turn-off to his father's house, he couldn't resist having a look. There was a For Sale sign by the driveway. He didn't stop. Seeing the sign gave him a fanny feeling. He had just made it back to Ystad when the mobile phone rang. It was Höglund.
"I'm in Lund," she said. "In Lena Norman's flat. I think you should come here."
"What is it?"
"You'll see when you get here. I think it's important."
Wallander wrote down the address and was on his way.
The block of flats was on the outskirts of Lund. It was four storeys high, one of five buildings comprising a large housing estate. Once, many years ago when Wallander had come down to Lund with Linda, she had pointed them out to him and told him they were student flats. If she had chosen to study in Lund, she would have lived in a place like this. Wallander shivered, imagining Linda out in the reserve.
He didn't have to guess which building it was, as a police car was parked outside one of them. Wallander put his phone in his pocket and got out. A woman was stretched out in the sun on one of the lawns. Wallander wished he could lie down beside her and sleep for a while. His tiredness came and went in heavy waves. An officer stood inside the doorway, yawning. Wallander waved his identification in front of him and the officer pointed up the stairs absentmindedly.
"All the way up. No elevator."
Then he yawned again and Wallander felt a sudden urge to whip him into shape. Wallander was the superior officer, and one from another district at that. They were trying to catch a man who had killed five people so far. He didn't need to be greeted by an officer who yawned and could hardly bring himself to speak.
But he said nothing. He walked up the stairs. Apart from the loud, raucous music coming from one flat, the building seemed abandoned. It was still August and the autumn term had not yet begun. The door to Lena Norman's flat was slightly ajar but Wallander rang the bell anyway.
Höglund came to the door herself. He tried to read her expression without success.
"I didn't mean to sound so dramatic over the phone," she said quickly. "But I think you'll understand why I wanted you to see this."
He followed her into the flat, which hadn't been aired out for a while. The air had that characteristic but indescribable dry quality he had so often encountered in concrete buildings. He had read somewhere that the FBI had developed a method for determining how long a house had been locked up. He didn't know whether Nyberg had the technique at his disposal.
At the thought of Nyberg he made another mental note to repay Edmundsson. The flat had two rooms and a kitchen. They reached the combined living room and study. The sun was shining in through the window and dust drifted slowly in the still air. There were a number of photographs tacked up on one wall. Wallander put on his glasses and peered at them. He recognised her at once. Lena Norman was dressed up in a scene that looked like it was supposed to be from the 17th century. Martin Boge was also in the picture, which was taken with what appeared to be a castle in the background. The next picture was also of a party. Lena Norman was in that one too, and now Astrid Hillström was there. They were indoors somewhere, half-naked. Wallander guessed they were staging a bordello scene. Neither Norman nor Hillström was particularly convincing. Wallander straightened up and cast a glance over the entire wall.
"They play different roles at their parties," he said.
"It goes further than that," she said and went over to a desk that stood at right angles to one of the windows. It was covered with binders and plastic folders.
"I've gone through this material," she said. "Not completely, of course, but what I've seen so far worries me." Wallander lifted his hand to interrupt her.
"Wait a second. I need to drink a glass of water, and use the bathroom."
"My father has diabetes," she said.
Wallander froze on his way to the door. "What do you mean by that?"
"If I didn't know any better I'd think you had it too, the way you drink water these days. And need to go to the loo constantly."
For a moment Wallander thought he was going to break his silence and tell her the truth: that she was right. But instead he just muttered something inaudible and left the room. When he came out of the kitchen, the toilet was still flushing.
"The flushing mechanism is broken," he said. "I guess that's not our problem."
She was looking at him as if she was expecting him to talk.
"Why are you worried?" he asked.
"I'll tell you what I've found so far," she said. "But I'm convinced there's more, and that it'll become apparent when we've gone through everything."
Wallander sat down on a chair by the desk. She remained standing.
"They dress up," she started. "They have parties, and move between our own time and that of past ages. From time to time they even go into the future, but not very often. Probably because it's harder – no one knows how people will dress in a thousand years, or even 50. We know all this, of course. We've talked to the friends who weren't with them at Midsummer. You even had a chance to talk to Isa Edengren. We know they rented their costumes in Copenhagen. But there's a deeper level to this."
She picked up a folder covered in geometric figures. "They appear to have belonged to a sect," she said. "It has its roots in the United States, in Minneapolis. It strikes me as an updated version of the Jim Jones cult or the Branch Davidians. Their rules are horrifying, something akin to the threatening letters people who have broken chain mail or pyramid schemes hand over to us. Anyone who divulges their secrets will suffer violent retribution – always death, of course. They pay dues to the head office that in turn sends out lists of suggestions for their parties and explains how to maintain their secrecy. But there is also a spiritual dimension to their activities. They think that people who practise moving through time like this will be able to choose the age of their rebirth at the moment of their death. It was highly unpleasant reading. I think Lena Norman was the head of the Swedish chapter."
Wallander was listening with rapt attention. Höglund had called him down here with good reason.
"Does the organisation have a name?"
"I don't know what it would be in Swedish. In English they call themselves the Divine Movers."
Wallander flipped through the folder she had given him. There were geometric figures everywhere, but also pictures of old gods and the mutilated bodies of tortured people. He put the material down with disgust.
"Do you think what happened in the nature reserve was a result of vengeance? That they had divulged the secret and had to be killed?"
"In this day and age I hardly think that can be ruled out."
Wallander knew she was right. Only a short time ago a number of members of a sect in Switzerland and France had committed mass suicide. In May, Martinsson had taken part in a conference in Stockholm devoted to the role of the police in stemming this increased activity. It was getting harder, since modern sects no longer circled around a single crazed individual. Now they were well-organised corporations that had their own lawyers and accountants. Members took out loans to pay fees they couldn't really afford. It wasn't even clear these days if the emotional blackmail that took place could be classified as criminal activity. Martinsson had told Wallander after he returned from the conference that new laws would have to be enacted if they were to have any hope in prosecuting these soul-sucking vampires who were profiting from the increased sense of helplessness in society.
"This is an important discovery," he said to Höglund. "We're going to need help with this. The national police have a special division devoted to working on new sects. We'll also need help from the United States on the Divine Movers. Above all, we have to get the other young people involved in this to talk, get them to divulge their carefully guarded secrets."
"They take their vows and then eat horse liver. Raw," she said, leafing through the folder.
"Who officiates at these ceremonies?"
"It must be Lena Norman."
Wallander shook his head, baffled. "And she's dead now. Do you think she would have broken her vows? Was there someone waiting to replace her?"
"I don't know. Maybe we'll find a name among these papers when we've had a chance to go through them properly."
Wallander stood up and looked out the window. The woman was still down on the lawn. He thought of the woman he had met at the roadside restaurant outside Västervik. He searched for her name for a while before it came to him: Erika. He had a sudden longing to see her again.
"We probably shouldn't get too distracted by all this," he said in an absentminded way. "We shouldn't rule out our other theories."
"Which are?"
He didn't need to spell it out for her. The only possible theory was a deranged killer acting alone. The theory you always worked with when you had no leads.
"I have difficulty seeing Svedberg getting tangled up in all this," he said. "Even though he's surprised us."
"Maybe he wasn't directly involved," Höglund said. "He may simply have known someone who was."
He thought again of Westin, the seafaring postman. Wallander was still desperately trying to catch hold of something he had said during that boat trip. But it remained out of reach.
"There's really only one thing we need to know," Wallander said, "as in all complicated cases. One thing, that would set everything else in motion."
"The identity of Svedberg's killer?"
He nodded. "Exactly. Then we would have an answer to everything, except perhaps the question of the motive. But we could piece that together as well."
Wallander returned to the chair and sat down. "Did you have time to talk to the Danes about Louise?"
"The photograph will be published tomorrow."
Wallander got up again. "We have to go through this flat thoroughly," he said. "From top to bottom. But I think I'll be of more use in Ystad. If we have time, we'll contact Interpol today and get the Americans involved. Martinsson will love taking charge of that."
"I think he dreams about being a federal agent in the United States," Höglund agreed. "Not just a policeman in Ystad."
"We all have our dreams," Wallander said, in an awkward and completely unnecessary attempt to come to Martinsson's defence. He gathered the papers from the desk while Höglund looked around the kitchen for some plastic bags to put them in. They talked for a while in the small hall before he left.
"I keep having this feeling that I'm overlooking something," Wallander said. "I think it has something to do with Westin."
"Westin?"
"He was the one who took me out to Bärnsö Island. He's the postman in the archipelago. He said something when we were standing in the wheelhouse. I just can't remember what it was."
"Why don't you call him? The two of you might be able to reconstruct the conversation. Maybe simply hearing his voice will bring whatever it was back to you."
"You may be right," Wallander said doubtfully. "I'll call."
Then he remembered another voice. "What happened with Lundberg? I mean the person who wasn't him, but who pretended to be. The one who called the hospital and asked about Isa."
"I passed that on to Martinsson. We exchanged a couple of tasks; I can't remember now what they were. I took on something he hadn't had time to do. He promised to talk to the nurse."
Wallander sensed a note of criticism in her voice. They all had so much to do. The tasks were piling up.
Wallander drove back to Ystad, thinking over the latest events. How did the revelations in Lena Norman's flat alter the picture? Were these parties much more sinister than he had thought? He recalled the time a few years earlier, when Linda had undergone what might be described as a religious crisis. It was right after the divorce. Linda was as lost as he was, and one night he had heard a soft mumbling from inside her bedroom that he thought must be prayer. When he found books in her room about Scientology, he'd become seriously concerned. He tried to reason with her without much success. Finally Mona sorted things out. He didn't know exactly what happened, but one day the soft mumbles behind her door stopped and she went back to her old interests.
He shivered at the thought of sects. Were the answers to this case lying somewhere in these plastic bags? He accelerated. He was in a hurry.
The first thing he did back at the station was to find Edmundsson and pay him the money he owed. Then he went to the conference room where Martinsson was briefing the three police officers from Malmö who were joining the investigation. Wallander had met one of them before, a detective in his 60s by the name of Rytter. He didn't recognise either of the other two, who were younger. Wallander said hello, but didn't stay. He asked Martinsson to try to catch him sometime later that evening. Then he went to his office and started going through the papers from Lena Norman's flat. He was about half finished when Martinsson appeared. It was a little after 11 p.m. Martinsson was pale and bleary-eyed. Wallander wondered how he looked himself.
"How's it going?" he asked.
"They're good," Martinsson said. "Especially the old guy, Rytter."
"They're going to make a real difference," Wallander said enthusiastically. "It will give us the break we need."
Martinsson pulled off his tie and unbuttoned his collar.
"I have a project for you," Wallander said. He told him in some detail about the materials that had turned up in Lena Norman's flat. Martinsson became more and more interested. The thought that he would be contacting colleagues in the U.S. was clearly invigorating.
"The most important thing is to get a clear picture of these people," Wallander said.
Martinsson looked at his watch. "I guess this isn't the best time of day to get in touch with the U.S., but I'll give it a shot."
Wallander got up and gathered the papers together, and they went to copy the material that Wallander hadn't had time to look through.
"Apart from drugs, sects are the thing I'm most afraid of for my children," Martinsson said. "I'm afraid of them getting pulled into some religious nightmare they won't be able to get out of, where I won't be able to reach them."
"There was a time when I had those exact worries about Linda," Wallander said. He didn't say anything more, and Martinsson didn't ask any questions.
The copier suddenly stopped working. Martinsson reloaded it with a new sheaf of blank paper. Wallander left Martinsson and returned to his office. A report on the charges once filed against Svedberg was lying on his desk. He read through it quickly to get a sense of what had happened. It was dated 19 September 1985. A man named Stig Stridh, the complainant, was assaulted by his brother, an alcoholic, who had come to ask him for money. He knocked out two of Stridh's teeth, stole a camera, and demolished a large part of his living room. Two police officers, one by the name of Andersson, showed up at the flat and took down details of the incident. Stridh was called down to the police station on 26 August for a meeting with Inspector Karl Evert Svedberg. Svedberg explained to him that there would not be an investigation into the case since there was no evidence. Stridh argued vehemently that a camera was missing and a large part of his living room was damaged, and that the two officers had seen his cuts and bruises. According to Stridh, at this point Svedberg's manner became threatening and he ordered him to drop the charges. Stridh left and later wrote a letter to Björk, in which he complained about the treatment he had received.
Two days later Svedberg showed up at Stridh's door and repeated his threats. After some deliberation with friends, Stridh had decided to file charges against Svedberg with the department of justice. Wallander read the report with a growing sense of disbelief. Svedberg's response to the report was brief and denied all charges. Svedberg's behaviour in the case simply couldn't be explained. But this was exactly the kind of thing they had to get to the bottom of.
It was past midnight when Wallander had finished reading the report. He hadn't managed to fit in the visit to Isa Edengren's parents. He couldn't find a Stig Stridh in the phone book. Both matters would have to wait until the morning. Now he had to get some sleep. He took his coat and left the station. There was a faint breeze outside, but it was still warm. He found his car keys and unlocked the door.
Suddenly he jerked around. He couldn't say what had frightened him. He listened hard and stared into the shadows at the edge of the car park. There was no one there, he told himself. He got into his car. I'm always afraid that he's out there, close by, he thought. Whoever he is, he keeps himself well informed, and I'm afraid he will kill again.
On Saturday, 17 August, Wallander woke to the sound of rain drumming against the bedroom window. The alarm clock read 6.30 a.m. Wallander listened to the sound of the rain. Soft morning light was streaming in through a gap in the curtains. He tried to recall when it had last rained. It had to have been before the night when he and Martinsson found Svedberg's body, and that was eight days ago. It's an unfathomable length of time, he thought. Neither long, nor short. He went out to the bathroom and had a pee, then drank some water at the kitchen counter and returned to bed. The fear from the night before was still with him, just as mysterious, just as strong.
He was showered and dressed by 7.15 a.m. For breakfast he had a cup of coffee and a tomato. The rain had stopped and the thermometer read 15°C. The clouds were already starting to clear. He decided to make his calls from the flat rather than the station. First he would call Westin, then the operator to try and get Stig Stridh's phone number. He had already found the piece of paper with Westin's numbers on it. He was counting on Westin having Saturdays off, but he probably wasn't the type to stay in bed, either. Wallander took his coffee with him into the living room and dialled the first of the three numbers on the scrap of paper. A woman answered after the third ring. Wallander introduced himself and apologised for calling so early.
"I'll get him," she said. "He's chopping wood."
Wallander thought he could hear the sound of wood splitting in the background. Then the sound stopped and he heard children's voices. Westin finally came to the phone, and they exchanged greetings.
"You're chopping wood," Wallander said.
"The cold weather always comes sooner than you think," Westin said. "How are things going? I've been trying to follow the case in the papers and on the news. Have you caught him yet?"
"Not yet. It takes time. But we'll get him."
Westin was silent on the other end. He probably saw right through Wallander's optimism, which was as hollow as it was necessary. Pessimistic policemen rarely solved complicated crimes.
"Do you remember any of our conversation when we were heading out to Bärnsö?" Wallander asked.
"Which part?" Westin answered. "We talked all the way there, if I recall. Between stops."
"One of our conversations was a little longer – I think it was the very first part of the trip."
Suddenly Wallander remembered. Westin had slowed the boat down and they were coasting in towards the first or perhaps the second island. It had a name that reminded him of Bärnsö.
"It was one of the first stops," Wallander said. "What were the names of those islands?"
"You must be thinking of Harö or Båtmansö Island."
"Båtmansö. That was it. An old man lived there."
"Zetterquist."
It was starting to come back to him now. "We were on our way in towards the dock," he said. "You were telling me about Zetterquist, who spends the winters out there all alone. Do you remember what you said?"
Westin laughed, but in a jovial way. "I'm sure I could have said any number of things."
"I know this seems strange, but it's actually quite important," Wallander said.
Westin seemed to sense that Wallander was serious. "I think you asked me what it was like to deliver the post," he said.
"Then I'll ask you that same question. What's it like being a postman in the islands?"
"It gives you a sense of freedom, but it's also hard work. And no one knows how long I'll keep my job. I wouldn't put it past them to cut my route entirely and stop servicing the archipelago. Zetterquist once told me he might even have to put in an advance order to have his body collected, just to make sure he wasn't left lying out there indefinitely when his time came."
"You didn't say that. I would have remembered it. I'll ask you again. What's it like to be a postman in the islands?"
Westin hesitated this time. "I don't recall saying much else."
But Wallander knew there had been something else. Something mundane, about what delivering post to people who lived out there was like.
"We were on our way in towards the landing," Wallander said. "That much I remember. The boat had slowed down a lot and you were telling me about Zetterquist."
"Maybe I said something about how you end up looking out for people. If they don't come down to meet you, you go up and make sure they're all right."
Almost, Wallander thought. We're almost there now. But you said something more, Lennart Westin. I know you did.
"I can't think of anything else. I really can't," Westin said.
"We're not giving up just yet. Try again."
But Westin couldn't come up with anything else and Wallander wasn't able to coax it out of him.
"Keep at it," Wallander said. "Call me if it comes back to you."
"I'm not normally the curious type, but why is this so important?"
"I don't know," Wallander said simply. "But when I do, I'll tell you, I promise."
Wallander felt despondent after the call. Not only had he been unable to get Westin to remember what he'd said, it was probably irrelevant anyway. His thoughts of giving up, and letting Holgersson put someone else in charge returned more strongly. But then he thought of Thurnberg and felt an even stronger urge to prove him wrong. He called the operator and asked for a number for Stig Stridh. It was unlisted but not private. He dialled the number and counted nine rings before someone answered. The voice was old and drawling.
"Stridh."
"This is Inspector Kurt Wallander from the Ystad police."
Stridh sounded like he was spitting when he replied. "It wasn't me who shot Svedberg, but maybe I should have."
His attitude angered Wallander. Stridh should show more respect, even if Svedberg had acted inappropriately towards him in the past. He had trouble holding back his irritation.
"You filed charges against Svedberg ten years ago. They were dismissed."
"I still can't understand how they could do that," Stridh said. "Svedberg should have lost his job."
"I'm not calling to discuss the decision," Wallander said curtly. "I want to talk to you about what happened."
"What's there to talk about? My brother was drunk."
"What's his name?"
"Nisse."
"Does he live in Ystad?"
"He died in 1991. Cirrhosis of the liver, what a surprise."
Wallander was momentarily at a loss. He had assumed the call to Stig Stridh was the first step towards eventually meeting the brother who played the leading role in the whole strange episode.
"You have my condolences," Wallander said.
"The hell I do. But whatever. I'm not particularly sorry. I get left in peace now and I have the place to myself. At least more often."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Nisse has a widow, or whatever one should call her."
"Is she his widow?"
"That's what she says, but he never married her."
"Do they have children?"
"She did, but not with him. That was just as well. One of hers is doing time."
"What for?"
"Robbed a bank."
"What's his name?"
"It's a she. Stella."
"Your brother's stepdaughter robbed a bank?"
"Is that so strange?"
"It's unusual for a woman to commit that kind of crime. Where did it take place?"
"In Sundsvall. She fired a number of shots at the ceiling."
A vague recollection of this event was coming back to Wallander. He looked for something to write with. Wallander turned back to the matter at hand. Stridh's answers came slowly and with great unwillingness. It took what seemed like an eternity, but Wallander finally had a clearer picture of the events. Stig Stridh had been married, had two grown sons who now lived in Malmö and Laholm. His brother, Nils, called Nisse, who was three years younger, became an alcoholic early on. He began a career in the military but was discharged on account of his heavy drinking. At first Stig tried to be patient with his brother, but the relationship deteriorated, not least because he always came asking for money. Tensions had reached breaking point eleven years earlier. This was the point Wallander wanted to reach.
"We don't have to go through the events in detail," he said. "I just want to know one thing: why do you think Svedberg acted the way he did?"
"He said we had no evidence, but that was bullshit."
"We know that. We don't have to go into it. What I want to know is why you think he acted like this."
"Because he was an idiot."
Wallander was prepared for the answers to anger him, and he knew that Stig had good reasons for his hostility. Svedberg's behaviour had been incomprehensible.
"Svedberg was no idiot," Wallander said. "There must be another explanation. Had you ever met him before?"
"When would that have been?"
"Just answer my questions," Wallander said shortly.
"I'd never met him before."
"Have you had any run-ins with the law yourself?"
"No."
That answer came a little too fast, Wallander thought. It isn't true.
"Stick to the truth, Stridh. If you tell me lies I'll have you hauled straight down to the station in the blink of an eye."
It worked. "Well, I did a little car-dealing in the 1960s," he said. "There was some trouble once about a car that was supposed to be stolen, but that's all."
Wallander decided to take him at his word.
"How about your brother?"
"He probably did all kinds of things, but he never did any time for anything except his drinking."
Again, Wallander felt that Stridh was telling the truth. The man didn't know of a connection between his brother and Svedberg. It's hopeless, he thought. I'm banging my head against the wall. Wallander ended the conversation, having decided to talk to Rut Lundin, the "widow".
He left the flat and walked to the station.
Shortly after 11 a.m., as he went to get another cup of coffee, he realised that most of his colleagues were around, including the officers from Malmö, and took the opportunity to call a meeting in the conference room. He started by going through his own attempts to shed light on the events surrounding the complaint filed against Svedberg eleven years ago. Martinsson told him that Hugo Andersson, the policeman who'd answered Stridh's call that night, now worked as a janitor at a school in Värnamo. The officer who'd been his partner was a policeman by the name of Holmström, who now worked in Malmö.
Martinsson promised to check up on both of them. Wallander told them he was driving out to meet Isa Edengren's parents. After the meeting, Wallander shared a pizza with Hansson. All day he had been trying to keep track of how much water he had drunk and how many times he'd relieved himself, but he had already lost track. He called Rut Lundin. Once she understood why he was calling, she answered most of his questions – but she had nothing useful to add. He asked her specifically about Nisse's drinking buddies, and she said she remembered a few. When he pressed her for names, she said she needed time to think. He told her he would drop by later that afternoon.
At 4 p.m. he called Björk, their former chief of police, who now lived in Malmö. They started by catching up on the latest gossip, and Björk expressed deep sympathy at their having to deal with the case at hand. They talked at length about Svedberg. Björk said he was planning to attend the funeral, which surprised Wallander, although he didn't know why. Björk had nothing to say about the complaint filed against Svedberg. He couldn't remember any more why Svedberg had dismissed the investigation, but since the department of justice hadn't intervened, he was sure the whole thing was above board.
Wallander left the station at 4.30 p.m., on his way to Skårby. First he stopped by Rut Lundin's flat to pick up the list of names she had promised him. When he rang her doorbell she opened the door at once, as if she had been waiting for him in the hall. He could see that she was drunk. She thrust a piece of paper in his hand and said it was all she could remember. Wallander saw she didn't want him to come in, so he thanked her and left.
Back out on the footpath, he stopped under the shade of a tree and read through what she had written. He immediately saw a name he recognised about halfway down the list. Bror Sundelius. Wallander caught his breath. A pattern was finally starting to emerge. Svedberg, Bror Sundelius, Nisse Stridh. He didn't get any further. The phone in his pocket rang.
It was Martinsson, and his voice was shaking.
"He's done it again," he said. "He's done it again."
It was 4.55 p.m. on Saturday, 17 August 1996.
He knew he was taking a risk. He hadn't done that before, since taking risks was beneath him and he had devoted his whole life to learning how to escape. But he was attracted by the challenge, and the situation was much too tempting.
He had almost lost control when he came by to pick up their invitations. Their joy was so great that it felt like a physical blow, an act specifically aimed at humiliating him, which of course it was.
Then, when he read the letter, he made up his mind. Between the ceremony at the church and the reception, they were going to stop off at a nearby beach to have their wedding portraits taken. The photographer was very clear in his directions and had even drawn a little map for them. The couple agreed. They would meet him there at 4 p.m., weather permitting.
He went there to scout it out. The photographer's directions were so clear that he had no problem in locating the exact spot. The beach was big, with a camping ground at one end. At first, he wasn't sure that he'd be able to carry out his plans, but then he saw that they would be quite sheltered in their spot among the sand dunes. There would be others on the beach, but they would keep their distance while the photographs were being taken. The challenge was figuring out which direction to approach them from. Disappearing afterwards would be relatively easy, since it was only about 200 metres to the car. If anything went wrong and he was chased, he had his gun. Someone might notice what kind of car he was driving, but he would have three different cars standing by so he could switch them.
He didn't solve the question of his approach on the first visit. But on the second visit, he saw what he had overlooked on the first. He saw the dramatic solution that would enable him to transform the comedy into tragedy.
Suddenly everything was planned and he was running out of time. Cars had to be stolen and parked in their various locations. A small revolver wrapped in plastic had to be buried in the sand. He also put a towel in with it.
The only thing he couldn't count on was the weather, but August had been beautiful this year.
They were married in the church where she had been confirmed nine years earlier. The minister who had officiated then had died, but she had a relative who was a minister and he agreed to step in. Everything went according to plan. The church was bursting with family and friends, and once the photo session was over they would have a big reception. The photographer was at the church with them taking pictures. He had already planned out the pictures he wanted to take at the beach. He had used the spot before and it worked well. He had never been as lucky with the weather as today.
They arrived at the beach just before 4 p.m. The camping ground was full of people, and a number of children were playing on the beach. A lone swimmer was out in the water. It took the photographer only a few minutes to set up his gear, which included the tripod and the light reflectors. They were completely undisturbed.
Everything was ready. The photographer paused behind the camera while the bridegroom helped his bride check her make-up in a small mirror. The swimmer was on his way up out of the water. His towel lay on the beach. He sat down on it, with his back to them. The bride thought it looked like he was digging a hole in the sand. They were ready. The photographer told them what he had planned for the first photo. They debated whether they should be serious or smiling, and the photographer suggested trying it both ways. It was 4.09 p.m. They had plenty of time.
They had just taken the first picture when the man on the beach below them got up and started walking. The photographer was getting ready to take the next picture but at that moment the bride saw that the man had changed his course and was heading towards them. She held up her hand to stop the photographer from taking the picture, thinking it best to wait until he had passed. He was almost upon them now, carrying his towel like a shield in front of his body. The photographer smiled at him and turned back to the couple. The man smiled in return, unwrapped the towel from his gun, and shot the photographer in the neck. He quickly advanced a couple of steps and shot the bride and groom in turn. All that was heard were some dry crackles. He looked all around. No one had noticed anything.
He continued on over the sand dunes and waited until he was out of sight of the camping ground. Then he started running. He reached the car safely, unlocked it, and jumped in. The whole thing had taken less than two minutes.
He realised that he was cold. It was another risk he had taken, as he could have caught cold. But the temptation had simply been too great. It was wonderful to emerge from the water like that, like the invincible person he really was.
At the edge of Ystad he stopped the car and pulled on the tracksuit he had laid out on the back seat. Then he settled in to wait.
It took a little longer than he expected. Was it one of the children playing on the beach, or someone at the camping ground taking a walk? He would read about it in the papers soon enough.
Finally he heard the noise of the sirens. It was just before 5 p.m. The vehicles drove past him at high speed, among them an ambulance. He felt like waving at them, but controlled himself. He drove home. He had again achieved what he had set out to do. And escaped again, with dignity.
Wallander was picked up outside Rut Lundin's building. The officers assigned to get him didn't know anything other than that they were to take him to Nybrostrand. From the information on the police radio, he gathered that several people were dead. He hadn't managed to get anything more out of Martinsson. Wallander leaned back in his seat. Martinsson's words still echoed in his head. "He's done it again."
He opened the door before the car had even come to a halt. A woman stood there crying, her hands in front of her face. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt with a slogan supporting Sweden joining NATO.
"What happened?" Wallander asked.
People from the camping ground were rushing around, waving and gesturing. They were running all over the sand dunes. Wallander made it out there before the rest. He stopped dead. The nightmare was repeating itself. At first he couldn't take in what he was seeing, and then he understood that three bodies lay before him. There was a camera on a tripod.
"They had just been married," he heard Höglund say, somewhere nearby. Wallander walked closer and crouched down. All three of them had been shot. The shots had struck the bride and groom in the forehead. The bride's white veil was stained with blood. He touched her arm very carefully. It was still warm. He stood up again and hoped he wouldn't get dizzy. Hansson arrived, as well as Nyberg. He walked over to them.
"It's him again. This happened minutes ago. Are there any tracks? Has anyone seen anything? Who found them?"
Everyone around him seemed dumbstruck, as if they had been looking to him to supply them with the answers.
"Don't just stand there – move!" he shouted. "It just happened! This time we've got to get him!"
Their paralysis lifted, and after a couple of minutes Wallander was able to get a clearer idea of what had happened. The couple had come here to have their wedding pictures taken. They had gone into the sand dunes. A child playing on the beach had left his friends because he needed to pee. He had discovered the dead bodies and run screaming to the camping ground. No one had heard shots, and no one had noticed anything unusual. Several witnesses confirmed that the photographer and the couple had arrived alone.
"Some of the children saw a man swimming in the water," Hansson said. "According to their accounts, he came up out of the sea, sat down in the sand, and then disappeared."
"What do you mean, 'disappeared'?" Wallander was having trouble concealing his impatience.
"A woman who was hanging up her laundry when the couple arrived said the same thing," Höglund said. "She thought she saw a swimmer, but when she looked again he was gone."
Wallander shook his head. "What does that mean? That he drowned? Buried himself in the sand?"
Hansson pointed to the stretch of beach that lay directly below the crime scene.
"The place he sat down was right there," he said. "At least according to one child who seems believable. He had his eyes open."
They walked down on the beach. Hansson ran over to a dark-haired boy and his father. Wallander made them all walk in a wide circle to avoid ruining the tracks in the sand and making it harder for the dog to pick up a scent. They could see the marks of someone sitting in the sand, the remains of a little hole and a piece of plastic sheeting.
Wallander shouted for Edmundsson and Nyberg to join him.
"This plastic reminds me of something," he said, and Nyberg nodded. "Maybe it matches the plastic sheeting we found in the nature reserve."
Wallander turned to Edmundsson. "Let her smell this and see what she finds."
They walked off to the side and watched the dog, who immediately took off into the sand dunes. Then she veered to the left. Wallander and Martinsson followed at a distance. The dog was still excited. They arrived at a small road, and there the scent ended. Edmundsson shook his head.
"A car," Martinsson said.
"Someone may have seen it," Wallander said. "Get every police officer out here to work on this: we're looking for a man in a bathing suit. He left about an hour ago in a car that was parked here."
Wallander ran back to the crime scene. One of the forensic technicians was making a mould of a footprint in the sand. Edmundsson's dog was searching the area.
Hansson was just ending a conversation with a woman from the camping ground. Wallander waved him over.
"More people saw him," Hansson said.
"The swimmer?"
"He was down in the water when the couple arrived. Then he walked up onto the beach. Someone said it looked as though he started to build a sand castle, then got up and disappeared."
"No one's seen anyone else in the area?"
"One man, who is clearly under the influence, claimed two masked men were riding down the beach on bicycles, but I think we can safely disregard this."
"Then we'll stick with the swimmer for now," Wallander said. "Do we know who the victims are?"
"The photographer had this invitation in his pocket," Höglund said and handed it over to Wallander. He was overcome by such a wave of despair that he wanted to scream.
"Malin Skander and Torbjörn Werner," he read out loud. "They were married at 2 p.m. this afternoon."
Hansson had tears in his eyes. Höglund was staring at the ground.
"They were man and wife for two whole hours," he said. "They came down here to have their pictures taken. Who was the photographer?"
"We found his name on the inside of the camera bag," Hansson said. "His name was Rolf Haag and he had a studio in Malmö."
"We have to notify the next of kin," Wallander said. "The press will be all over this place before we know it."
"Shouldn't we put up roadblocks?" Martinsson asked. He had just joined them.
"Why? We have no idea what the car looked like. Even though we know when this happened, it's already too late."
"I just want to nail the bastard," Martinsson said.
"We all do," Wallander said. "So let's go through everything we know at this point. The one lead we have is a lone swimmer. We have to assume he's our man. We know two things about him: he's well informed and plans his crimes meticulously."
"You think he was out there swimming in the ocean while he waited for them?" Hansson asked hesitantly.
Wallander tried to imagine the chain of events. "He knew the newly-weds were having their wedding pictures taken here," he said. "On the invitation it said the reception was starting at 5 p.m. He knew the photo session would be around 4 p.m. He waited out in the water, having parked his car nearby in a spot where he could get down to the beach without walking through the camping ground."
"He had his gun with him the whole time he was out in the water?" Hansson was clearly sceptical, but Wallander was starting to see how it hung together.
"Remember that this is a well-informed and meticulous killer," he said. "He's waiting for his victims out in the water. That means he's only wearing a bathing suit, and with his hair wet his whole appearance is altered. No one pays any attention to a swimmer. Everyone saw him and knew he was there, but no one could describe him."
He looked around and they nodded in agreement. None of the witnesses had managed to describe him yet.
"The newly-weds arrive with their photographer," Wallander said. "That's his cue to come up out of the water and sit down on the beach."
"He has a towel," Höglund added. "A striped one. Several people recalled that detail."
"That's good," Wallander said. "The more detail the better. He sits down on his striped towel, and what does he do?"
"He starts to dig in the sand," Hansson said.
The pieces were starting to fit together. The killer followed his own rules, and often varied them, but Wallander was starting to see a pattern.
"He's not building a sand castle," he said. "He's uncovering a gun that he's buried in the sand under a piece of plastic sheeting."
Now they followed his train of thought. Wallander continued slowly. "He planted the gun there at some earlier point," he said. "He just has to wait for the right moment, when no one happens to be walking by. He gets up, probably shielding the gun from view with his towel. He fires the gun three times. The victims die immediately. He must have had a silencer on the gun. He continues past the sand dunes, gets to the road where his car is parked, and escapes. The whole thing doesn't take longer than a minute. But we don't know where he went."
Nyberg walked over and joined them.
"We don't know anything about this killer, other than what he's done," Wallander said. "But we're going to find similarities between these crimes, and new details will emerge."
"I know something about him," Nyberg interjected. "He uses snuff. There's some down there in the hole in the sand. He must have tried to kick some sand over it, but the dog found it. We're sending it to the laboratory. You can find out quite a lot about a person from his saliva."
Wallander saw Holgersson approaching from a distance, with Thurnberg a couple of steps behind. The sense of failure washed over him again. Even though he had acted in good faith, he had failed. They hadn't found the man who had killed their colleague, three young people in a nature reserve, a girl curled up in a cave on an island in the Östergötland archipelago, and now some newly-weds and their photographer. There was only one thing he could do, and that was ask Holgersson to put someone else in charge. Maybe Thurnberg had already asked the national police to step in.
Wallander didn't have the energy to go over the events with them. Instead, he walked to Nyberg, who was turning his attention to the tripod.
"He was able to take one picture before it happened," Nyberg said. "We'll get it developed as soon as possible."
"They were married for two hours," Wallander said.
"It seems like this madman hates happy people, sees it as his life's calling to turn joy into misery."
Wallander listened absently to Nyberg's last comment, but he didn't reply. He still didn't have the energy to comprehend the enormity of what had happened. He had been convinced that the killer would strike again, but he was hoping he would be proved wrong.
A good policeman always hopes for the best outcome, Rydberg had often said. And what else? That fighting crime is simply a question of endurance; about which side can outlast the other.
Holgersson and Thurnberg appeared at his side. Wallander had been so lost in thought that he jumped.
"The road should have been blocked off," Thurnberg said, by way of greeting.
Wallander looked back at him stonily. At that moment he decided two things. He wasn't going to relinquish leadership in this case willingly, and he was going to start speaking his mind, the latter effective immediately.
"Wrong," he answered. "The roads shouldn't have been blocked off at all. You can of course order us to do so, but it won't receive my endorsement."
This wasn't the answer Thurnberg was expecting, and he looked taken aback.
He was too puffed up, Wallander thought with satisfaction. He was so puffed up by his own sense of importance that he burst. Wallander turned his back on Thurnberg. Holgersson looked paler than he'd ever seen her before. He could see his own fear in her eyes.
"It's the same man?"
"I'm sure of it."
"But a couple of newly-weds?"
It was the first thought that had come to him as well.
"You could say that wedding clothes are a kind of costume."
"Is that what he's after?"
"I don't know."
"What else could it be?"
Wallander didn't answer. The only possibility he could see was a madman. A madman who wasn't a madman, but who had killed eight people, including a police officer.
"I've never been involved in anything so horrible in my whole life," she said. After a moment she added, "I heard they were married nearby."
"In Köpingebro," Wallander told her. "The reception is about to begin."
She looked at him and he knew what she was thinking.
"I'm going to ask Martinsson to contact the photographer's family," he said. "He can contact the Malmö police for help. You and I will drive out to Köpingebro."
Thurnberg stood a short distance away, talking to someone on his mobile phone. Wallander wondered who it was. He gathered everyone around him and asked Hansson to take charge until he returned.
"Answer all of Thurnberg's questions," Wallander said. "But if he tries to tell you what to do, let me know."
"Why on earth would a chief prosecutor try to tell the police how to do their work?"
Now there's a good question, Wallander thought. But he left without answering and joined Holgersson, who was waiting silently in her car.
At 10 p.m. on Saturday, 17 August, it began to rain. Wallander was already back at the crime scene. Notifying the next of kin, entering that room of joy with his brutal news, was even worse than he had imagined. Holgersson was strangely passive during the visit, perhaps because her encounters with the parents of the young people in the reserve the week before had drained her of any remaining energy. Maybe we have a set quota for these kinds of experiences, Wallander thought. I must have met mine by now.
It was a relief to get back to Nybrostrand. Holgersson had already returned to Ystad by then. Wallander had been in touch with Hansson by phone several times, but there was nothing new to report. Hansson told him that Rolf Haag was unmarried and childless. Martinsson had delivered the news to his aged father, who was in a nursing home. A nurse assured Martinsson that the old man had long since forgotten he even had a son.
Nyberg had just been given a freshly developed copy of the one photograph Rolf Haag had taken. The bride and groom smiled into the camera. Wallander looked at it intently for a moment. He suddenly remembered something Nyberg had said to him earlier.
"What was it you said?" he asked. "When we were standing here before. You had just discovered that he had managed to take a picture."
"I said something?"
"It was some kind of comment."
Nyberg thought hard. "I think I said that the killer didn't like happy people."
"What did you mean by that?"
"Svedberg is the exception, of course. But with the young people in the nature reserve, I think their celebration could be characterised as joyous."
Wallander sensed he was on to something. He looked at the wedding picture again, then gave it back to Nyberg and was about to say a few words to Höglund when Martinsson pulled him aside.
"I thought you should know that someone has filed charges against you."
Wallander stared back at him.
"Against me? Why?"
"For assault."
Martinsson scratched his head apologetically. "Do you remember that jogger in the nature reserve? Nils Hagroth?"
"He was trespassing."
"Well, he filed the charges anyway. Thurnberg's got wind of it and seems to take it seriously."
Wallander was speechless.
"I just wanted to tell you," Martinsson said. "That's all."
It was raining harder now. Martinsson left.
A police spotlight illuminated the place where, a few hours earlier, a couple of newly-weds had been murdered. It was 10.30 p.m.
It stopped raining shortly after midnight. Wallander walked down to the sea to think. It was what he most needed to do at this point. A fresh smell was rising up from the ground after the rain. There were no more wafts of rotting seaweed. The hot weather had lasted for two weeks. Now that the rain had passed, it was warming up again and there was still no wind. The waves against the shore were almost imperceptible.
Wallander pissed into the water. In his mind's eye he could see the little white grains of sugar congealing in his veins. He was constantly dry-mouthed, had trouble keeping his eyes focused on an object, and feared that his blood-sugar levels were increasing.
As he walked along the dark beach, his thoughts returned to the latest events. He was convinced that the lone swimmer, the man with the striped towel, was the one they were looking for. There was no other plausible suspect. He was the one who had been in the nature reserve, probably hidden behind the tree that Wallander had pinpointed. Later he had been in Svedberg's flat. And now he had emerged from the ocean. His weapon was concealed in the sand, his car parked on a nearby road.
The swimmer had been to this place more than once. He must have gone to the same spot and dug a hole in the sand. It could even have been in the middle of the night. Wallander felt he was getting closer to unlocking the secret now, but he wasn't quite there yet. The answer is quite simple, he thought. It's like looking for the pair of glasses on your nose.
He began walking slowly back. The spotlights shone in the distance. Now he tried following in Svedberg's footsteps. Who was the person he had let into his flat? Who was Louise? Who had sent those postcards from all over Europe? What was it you knew, Svedberg? Why didn't you want to tell me, even though Ylva Brink says I was your closest friend?
He stopped. The question he'd posed suddenly seemed more important than before. If Svedberg hadn't wanted to tell anyone what he was up to, it could only have been because he was hoping he was wrong. There was simply no other reason for it. But Svedberg had been right, and that was why he was killed.
Wallander had almost reached the police barricades. There was still a little group of people gathered around the perimeter, trying to see something of the sombre tragedy that had taken place. When Wallander came over the sand dunes, Nyberg had just finished making some notes.
"We have some footprints," Nyberg said. "I mean that quite literally, since the killer was barefoot."
"Have you pieced together what happened?"
Nyberg put the notebook away. "The photographer was hit first," he said. "There's no doubt about that. The bullet entered his neck at an angle, so he may have had his back partially turned. If the first shot had been aimed at the couple, he would have turned around and been shot from the front."
"And next?"
"It's hard to say. I think the groom was probably the next to go. A man is more of a threat, physically. Then the girl last."
"Anything else?"
"Nothing you don't already know. This killer is in total control of his weapon."
"His hand doesn't shake?"
"Hardly."
"You see a calm and determined killer?"
Nyberg looked grimly at Wallander. "I see a cold-blooded and heartless madman."
When Wallander returned to the police station, the phones were going mad. One of the officers on duty gestured for him to come over. Wallander waited while he finished a phone call about a drunk driver sighted in Svarte. The officer promised to send out a squad car as soon as possible, but Wallander knew no squad car would be making it to Svarte for another 24 hours.
"A police officer from Copenhagen called you. The name was something like Kjær or Kræmp."
"What was it about?"
"The photograph of that woman."
Wallander took the piece of paper with the name and number on it and sat down at his desk to make the call without even removing his coat. The call had come in just before midnight. Kjær or Kræmp might still be there. The call was answered and Wallander said who he was looking for.
"Kjær."
Wallander was expecting a man's voice, but Kjær was a woman.
"This is Kurt Wallander from Ystad. I'm returning your call."
"We have some information for you about the picture of that woman. We've had two calls from people who claim to have seen her."
Wallander banged the table with his fist.
"At last."
"I've spoken with one of the callers myself. He seemed very reliable. His name is Anton Bakke. He's a manager at a company that makes office furniture."
"Does he know her personally?"
"No, but he was absolutely convinced he had seen her here in Copenhagen at a bar, close to the Central Station. He's seen her there several times."
"It's extremely important that we speak to this woman."
"Has she committed a crime?"
"We don't know that yet, but she is wanted in connection with a growing murder investigation. That's why we sent you her photograph."
"I heard about what happened over there. Those young people in the park. And the police officer."
Wallander told her about the latest events.
"And you think this woman had something to do with it?"
"Not necessarily, but I would like to ask her some questions."
"Bakke says there have been periods when he went to this bar as often as several times a week. He saw her there about half the time."
"Was she usually alone?"
"He wasn't sure, but he thought she sometimes came with someone else."
"Did you ask him when he saw her last?"
"When he was there last, sometime in the middle of June."
"What about the other caller?"
"It was a taxi driver who claimed he gave her a ride in Copenhagen a couple of weeks ago."
"A taxi driver sees a lot of people. How can he be sure?"
"He remembered her because she spoke Swedish."
"Where did he pick her up?"
"She waved him down on the street one night, or rather, early one morning. It was around 4.30 a.m., and she said she was catching the first ferry back to Malmö."
Wallander knew he had to make a decision. "We can't ask you to arrest her," he said. "But we do need you to bring her in. We must talk to her."
"We should be able to do that. We can invent a reason."
"Just tell me when she next shows up at that bar. What was its name?"
"The Amigo."
"What kind of a place is it?"
"It's pretty nice, actually, even though it's down on Istedgade."
Wallander knew that the street was in downtown Copenhagen.
"I appreciate your help on this."
"We'll let you know when she turns up."
Wallander wrote down Kjær's full name and her phone numbers. Her first name was Lone. Then he hung up.
It was 1.30 a.m. He rose slowly to his feet and went to the men's room, then drank some water in the canteen. Some dried-up sandwiches lay on a plate, and he picked one of them up. He heard Martinsson's voice out in the hall, speaking to one of the Malmö officers. They came into the canteen a few minutes later.
"How's it going?" he asked, between bites of the sandwich.
"No one's seen anyone other than that one swimmer."
"Do we have a description of him yet?"
"We're trying to piece together everything we've received so far."
"The Danish police called. They may have found Louise."
"Really?"
"Seems like it."
Wallander poured himself a cup of coffee. Martinsson was waiting for him to continue.
"Have they arrested her?"
"They have no grounds to do so. But reports have come in from both a taxi driver and a man who saw her in a bar. They recognised her from the photograph in the paper."
"So her name really is Louise?"
"We don't know that yet."
Wallander yawned. Martinsson did the same. One of the Malmö officers tried to rub the tiredness from his eyes.
"I'd like to see everyone in the conference room," Wallander said.
"Give us 15 minutes," Martinsson said. "I think Hansson's on his way over now, and I'll call Ann-Britt at home."
Wallander took his coffee with him to his office. He looked up and studied the map of Skåne hanging on his wall. First he located Hagestad, then Nybrostrand. Ystad lay nestled in between. The area was small, but this fact didn't lead anywhere in itself. Wallander finally picked up his notebook and walked over to the conference room. He was met by tired, despondent faces. Their clothes were wrinkled, their bodies heavy.
Our killer's probably sleeping peacefully as we speak, Wallander thought, while we're fumbling around in his footsteps.
They went through the various points that were currently under investigation and reported the latest findings. The biggest breakthrough was the fact that no one had seen anyone other than the lone swimmer. That strengthened the case against him.
Wallander looked through his notes. "Unfortunately our description of him is strange and rather contradictory," he said gloomily. "The witnesses can't seem to agree whether he has very short hair or is bald. Those who think he has hair can't agree on the colour. Everyone, however, seems to concur that he doesn't have a round face. It seems to be long, or 'horsey', as two independent witnesses have said. Furthermore, everyone seems to agree that he wasn't very tanned. He was of average height – though in reality that could mean anything between a dwarf and a giant. He was of average build and there was nothing remarkable about the way he moved. No one has been able to say what colour his eyes were. The area of greatest confusion is in regard to his age. We have reports that range from 20 to 60. More people have his age between 35 and 45, but no one seems to have any grounds for these statements."
Wallander pushed the notebook away. "In other words, we really have no description at all," he said.
The silence lay heavy in the room. Wallander realised he had to try to lighten the mood.
"We have to remember that it's impressive how much information we've been able to gather in such a short time," he said. "We'll be able to do even more tomorrow. And it's an enormous step to be able to focus on one suspect. I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to call this a breakthrough."
At 2.40 a.m. he called the meeting to an end. Martinsson was the only one who stayed on. He wanted to fill Wallander in on the information he had received regarding the Divine Movers. He started going through the reports that had come in from the United States and Interpol, but Wallander interrupted him impatiently.
"Has there ever been an incidence of violent crime?" he said. "Have members of this sect ever been the targets of attack?"
"Not from what I can see so far. But I've been told that more files are on their way, both from Washington and Brussels. I'll read through them tonight."
"You should go home and sleep," Wallander said sternly.
"I thought this was important."
"It is, but we can't do everything at once. We have to concentrate on Nybrostrand right now. That's where we got the closest to this madman."
"So, you've changed your mind?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, now you're talking about a 'madman'."
"A murderer is always crazy. But he can also be cunning and cowardly. He can be like you and me."
Martinsson nodded tiredly and didn't manage to stifle his yawn.
"I'm going home," he said. "Remind me why I ever became a policeman."
Wallander didn't answer. He went into his office to get his coat and remained standing in the middle of the room. What should he do now? He was too tired to think, but he was also too tired to sleep. He sat down in his chair and looked at the picture of Louise that was lying on his desk. He was struck again by the feeling that there was something strange about her face, but he still couldn't put his finger on it. In an absentminded way he picked up the photo and slipped it into his coat pocket. He closed his eyes to let them rest from the light, and fell asleep almost immediately.
He woke with a start without knowing where he was. It was just before 4 a.m. He had slept for almost an hour. His body ached, and he sat for a long time without a single thought in his head. Then he went to the men's room and splashed cold water on his face. Although he was still plagued by indecision, he knew he needed to sleep, if only for a few hours. He needed to bathe and change his clothes. Without having made a firm decision, he left the station and headed home.
But once he was in his car, he turned in the direction of Nybrostrand. There would be nobody there at 4 a.m., only the officers assigned to guard the area. Being alone at the crime scene could make it easier to see new details. It didn't take him long to get there. As he expected, there were no longer any onlookers crowded around the police barricades. One squad car, with someone sleeping behind the wheel, was parked down on the beach. Another officer was outside it, smoking a cigarette. Wallander walked over and said hello. He saw that it was the same man who had been assigned to the nature reserve that night.
"Everything looks pretty quiet," he said.
"Actually the last of the gawkers didn't leave until just a little while ago. I always wonder what they expect to see."
"They probably get a thrill from being in the presence of the unthinkable," Wallander said. "Knowing that they themselves are safe."
He crossed the police line to the crime scene. A lone spotlight was illuminating the well-trodden grass. Wallander walked over to where the photographer had stood, then slowly turned around and walked down the dune to where the hole was.
The guy with the striped towel knew everything, Wallander thought. He wasn't just well informed, he knew everything down to the last detail. It was as if he had been there when they made their plans.
Was that a possibility? If the killer was Rolf Haag's assistant, that would explain his knowledge of this photo session. But how would such an assistant know about the party in the nature reserve? And Bärnsö Island? And what about Svedberg?
Wallander dropped the thought for now, although he meant to take it up again. He walked back up the side of the dune, thinking about the motive for killing young people dressed up in costume. Svedberg was the exception, but this was easy enough to interpret. Svedberg had never been a target; he had simply come too close to the truth.
It occurred to him that Rolf Haag could be dismissed: he had simply been in the way. That left six victims. Six young people in different kinds of costume, six very happy people. He thought about Nyberg's words: seems like this madman hates happy people. So far it made some sort of sense, but it wasn't enough.
He walked up to the road where the getaway car must had been parked. Again, the killer had planned things down to the last detail. There were no houses nearby, no potential witnesses. He returned to the crime scene, where the officer on duty was still smoking.
"I'm still thinking about the gawkers," he said, throwing the butt on the ground and grinding it into the sand, where many others were already strewn about. "I guess we would be there too if we hadn't joined the force."
"Probably," Wallander said.
"You see so many strange people. Some of them pretend not to be interested, but they hang around for hours. One of the last people to leave this evening was a woman. She was already here when I arrived."
Wallander was only half-listening, but decided he may as well stay and chat while he was waiting for dawn.
"At first I thought it was someone I knew," the policeman said. "But it wasn't. I just thought I had seen her somewhere before."
It took a while for his words to sink in. Finally Wallander looked over at the policeman.
"What was that last thing you said?"
"I thought the woman hanging around here was someone I had seen before. But it wasn't."
"You thought you had seen her somewhere before?"
"I thought maybe she was someone I was related to."
"Well, which was it? Someone you thought you knew, or someone you thought you had seen before?"
"I don't know. There was something familiar about her, that's all."
It was a long shot, perhaps just grasping at straws, but Wallander hauled out the photograph of Louise that he had tucked into his coat pocket. It was still dark, but the policeman took out his torch.
"Yeah, that's her. How did you know?"
Wallander held his breath. "Are you sure?"
"Absolutely. I knew I had seen her somewhere before."
Wallander swore under his breath. A more attentive officer might have identified her on the spot and alerted the others. But he knew that was unfair. There were so many people coming and going. At least this policeman had noticed her.
"Show me where she was standing."
The policeman shone a torch over to a spot close to the beach.
"How long was she here?"
"Several hours."
"Was she alone?"
The policeman thought for a moment. "Yes." His tone was definite.
"And she was one of the last to leave?"
"Yes."
"Which direction did she go?"
"Towards the camping ground."
"Do you think she was staying there?"
"I didn't see exactly where she was headed, but she didn't look like a camper."
"Well, what do campers look like, in your opinion? And how was she dressed?"
"She was dressed in a blue suit of some kind, and in my experience campers tend to wear casual clothing."
"If she turns up again, let me know immediately," Wallander said. "Tell the others. Do you have this picture in the car?"
"I'll wake up my partner. He'll know."
"Don't bother."
Wallander gave him the photograph he had been holding. Then he left. It was almost 5 a.m., and he was already feeling less tired. His sense of excitement was mounting. The woman called Louise was not their lone swimmer. But she might just know who he was.
He woke up when the phone rang, sat up in bed with a jerk, then staggered out into the kitchen. It was Lennart Westin.
"Were you sleeping?" Westin asked apologetically.
"Not at all," Wallander answered. "But I was in the shower. Can I call you back in a couple of minutes?"
"No problem. I'm at home."
There was a pen on the table, but no piece of paper in sight, not even the newspaper. Wallander wrote the number down on the table. Then he hung up and put his head in his hands. He had a pounding headache and he was more tired now than before he had gone to bed. He rinsed his face with cold water, looked around for some aspirin, and put water on for coffee. But there was no more coffee. That was the last straw. Almost 15 minutes went by before he called Lennart Westin back. The kitchen clock read 8.09 a.m. Westin answered.
"I think you must have been asleep after all," he said. "But you did say to call if I thought of anything that might be important."
"We work around the clock," Wallander said. "It's hard to get enough sleep. But I'm glad you called."
"It's two things, really. One is about that policeman who came by earlier, the one who was shot. When I woke up this morning, I remembered something he had said as we were going out to the islands."
Wallander stopped him and went to the living room to get a notebook.
"He asked me if I had ferried any women to Bärnsö Island recently."
"And had you?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact."
"Who?"
"A woman called Linnea Vederfeldt, who lives in Gusum."
"Why was she going out to Bärnsö?"
"Isa's mother had ordered new curtains for the house. She and Vederfeldt knew each other from childhood. She was going out there to measure everything."
"Did you tell Svedberg this?"
"I didn't think it was any of his business, so I avoided going into details."
"How did he react?"
"Well, that's just it. He insisted that I tell him more about her. Finally I told him she was a childhood friend of Isa's mother and then he completely lost interest."
"Did he ask anything else?"
"Not that I can think of. But he became agitated when he realised that I had taken a woman out to Bärnsö. I remember it so clearly now that I don't know how I ever forgot it."
"What do you mean by agitated?"
"I'm not so good at describing these things, I guess. But I would say 'afraid' even."
Wallander nodded. Svedberg had been afraid it was Louise.
"What about the other thing? You said there were two."
"I must have slept really well. This morning I also thought of what it was I said to you as we were approaching that first landing. I said that you end up knowing everything about people, whether or not you want to. Do you remember that?"
"Yes."
"That's all. I hope it helps."
"Yes, it does. I'm glad you called."
"You should come out here sometime in the autumn," Westin added. "When it's quiet."
"Do I take that to mean you're inviting me?" Wallander asked.
"Take it any way you like," Westin laughed. "But you can normally take me at my word."
After they had finished the conversation, Wallander walked slowly into the living room. He remembered the conversation now, about delivering post in the islands. Suddenly he caught hold of the thought he had been trying to grasp for so long. They were looking for a killer who planned everything about his terrible crimes down to the last detail. This approach depended on his being able to get access to very specific information about his victims' lives without their knowing. Like being able to read other people's post. Wallander stood frozen in the middle of the living room. Who would have unlimited access to other people's letters? Lennart Westin had suggested a possibility: a postman. Someone who opened letters on the way, read them, sealed them again, and made sure they got to the intended address. No one would ever know they had been opened.
Something told Wallander it couldn't be this simple. This wasn't the way things worked. It was too far-fetched. Nonetheless, it answered one of the most difficult questions in the investigation: how the killer managed to gather all his information.
All trace of sleepiness was gone now. He realised he had hit on a possible explanation. There were weaknesses, of course, not least the consideration that the victims did not live along a single postal route. But perhaps it wasn't actually a postman. Could it be someone who sorted the post before it was carried out?
He quickly showered, put his clothes on, and left. It was 9.15 a.m. when he walked through the main doors of the police station. He felt the need to discuss his latest ideas with someone, and he knew exactly who that person was. He found her in her office.
"I hope I don't look like you do," said Höglund as he walked through her door, "if you'll excuse me for being so blunt. Did you sleep at all last night?"
"A couple of hours."
"My husband's leaving for Dubai in four days. Do you think we'll have closed the door on this hell by then?"
"No."
"Then I don't know what I'm going to do," she said and let her arms fall by her sides.
"You'll just work when you can, it's as simple as that."
"It's not simple at all," she replied. "But men rarely understand that."
Wallander didn't want to be pulled into a conversation about the problems of finding childcare, so he quickly changed the topic to the latest events. He told her about the policeman who had seen Louise out at Nybrostrand. He also told her about his conversation with Lone Kjær.
"So Louise exists. I was beginning to think she was a ghost."
"We still don't know if that really is her name, but she exists. I'm sure of it. And she's very interested in our investigation."
"Is she our killer?"
"I suppose we can't rule her out completely, but she could also be someone who has found herself in Svedberg's situation."
"Following in someone else's tracks?"
"Yes, something like that. I want everyone alerted to the fact that she may return to the crime scene."
Wallander now turned the conversation to Westin's phone call. Häglund listened attentively, but he could tell that she was sceptical.
"It's worth looking into," she said when he finished. "But I see a number of potential problems with your idea. For one, do people even write letters any more?"
"It's not perfect, but I see it more as an answer to part of the problem. An idea that may complete the picture, rather than give us the entire solution."
"We've come across a couple of postmen in the course of this investigation already, haven't we?"
"There have been two," Wallander said. "Westin, and the postman that Isa's neighbour, Erik Lundberg, mentioned had come by the day that Isa was taken to the hospital."
"Maybe we should find out if his voice matches the one that made the phone call to the hospital."
It took a moment for Wallander to follow her. "You mean the person who said he was Lundberg?"
"Yes. The postman knew she was in the hospital since Lundberg told him. He also knew that Lundberg knew."
Wallander's head was starting to spin. Was there something to all this? His fatigue was returning and he wasn't sure he could trust his own ability to reason any more.
"Then there's this matter with Svedberg," he said. He told her about the charges that had been filed. "I don't understand why he wouldn't investigate the alleged attack by Nils Stridh on his brother. He even resorted to threatening Stig Stridh, to protect Nils Stridh at all costs. Why? He was lucky the whole thing was dropped by the authorities. He could have been severely reprimanded."
"It doesn't sound like Svedberg at all."
"That's what makes me suspicious. He must have felt pressured to act in that way."
"By Nils Stridh?"
"Who else could it have been?"
They thought for a moment. "It sounds like blackmail to me," she said finally. "But what could Stridh have known about Svedberg?"
"That remains to be seen. But I think Bror Sundelius knows more than he's telling."
"We should put a little pressure on him."
"We will," Wallander answered. "As soon as we have some time to spare."
They had a meeting at 10 a.m. Martinsson, Hansson and the three officers from Malmö were there. Nyberg was still at the crime scene and Holgersson had barricaded herself in her office. She was dealing with the press. Thurnberg was keeping his distance, although Wallander caught sight of him in the hall. The meeting took a light-hearted turn when someone started passing around the complaint that had been filed by the jogger, Nils Hagroth, about Wallander's assault on him at the nature reserve. Wallander was the only one who failed to find it funny, not because he was bothered by the report itself, but because he didn't want his team to become distracted.
They had a lot to do. Wallander and Höglund would drive out to Köpingebro to talk with Malin Skander's parents, while Martinsson and Hansson would handle Torbjörn Werner's relatives. Wallander nodded off the moment he got into Höglund's car, and she let him sleep.
He woke up when she stopped the car, at a farm just outside Köpingebro. Although it was a beautiful day, an unnatural quiet reigned in the house and garden. All the doors and windows were shut. As they walked up to the main house, a man wearing a dark suit came walking towards them. He was well into middle age, tall and strongly built. His eyes were red. He introduced himself as Lars Skander, father of the bride.
"You'll have to talk to me," he said. "My wife isn't up to it."
"We offer you our condolences," Wallander said. "We're also sorry we couldn't leave you in peace, but it's imperative that we get answers to a few questions."
"Of course, if it can't wait." Lars Skander didn't try to hide either his bitterness or his sorrow. "You have to get this maniac."
The look he gave them was pleading. "How can someone do this? How can someone murder two people about to have their wedding pictures taken?"
Wallander was afraid that the man was going to break down, but Höglund took charge of the situation.
"We're only going to ask you a few essential questions," she said. "Only as much as we need in order to catch whoever did it."
"Can we sit outside?" Lars Skander asked. "It's so oppressive inside."
They walked in silence to the garden at the back of the house. A table and four chairs stood under an old cherry tree.
"Can you think who might have done this?" Wallander asked after they had gone through the most straightforward details about the murdered couple. "Did they have any enemies?"
Lars Skander stared back at him, uncomprehending. "Why would Malin and Torbjörn have had enemies? They were friends with everyone. You couldn't find more peace-loving people."
"It's an important question. I need you to think very carefully before answering."
"I have thought about it. I can't think of a single person."
Wallander moved on. Information, he thought. What we need to know is how the killer got the information he needed.
"When did they choose the day for their wedding?"
"I can't recall exactly. Sometime in May, I think. First week of June at the latest."
"When did they decide upon Nybrostrand as the place where their wedding pictures would be taken?"
"That I don't know. Torbjörn and Malin planned everything carefully in advance, and Torbjörn and Rolf Haag went way back, so I'm sure the plans for the photography were made early."
"Two months ago, then?"
"Something like that."
"Who knew that the wedding pictures were going to be taken on the beach?"
The answer came as a surprise. "Almost no one."
"Why not?"
"They wanted to be left alone during that time, between the church and the reception. Only they and Rolf knew where they were going. They said it would be like a secret honeymoon for a couple of hours."
Wallander and Höglund exchanged glances.
"This is extremely important," Wallander said. "I have to make sure I've understood you correctly. Apart from Malin and Torbjörn, only the photographer knew where the pictures were going to be taken?"
"That's right."
"And the location was chosen sometime at the end of May or beginning of June."
"Originally, they were going to have the pictures taken up by the Ale stones," Lars Skander said. "But then they changed their minds. It's become commonplace for couples to have their pictures taken up there, apparently."
Wallander frowned. "So you did know where they were going to have the pictures taken."
"I knew about the Ale stones plan. But then they changed their minds, like I said."
Wallander drew his breath in sharply. "When was it that they changed their minds?"
"Just a couple of weeks ago."
"And the new location was kept a secret?"
"Yes."
Wallander studied Lars Skander without speaking. Then he turned to Höglund. He knew they were thinking the same thing. The location had been changed only a few weeks ago, and the couple had been sure it was their secret. But someone had still managed to trespass into their private plans.
"Call Martinsson," Wallander said to Höglund. "Get him to confirm this with the Werner family."
She got up and walked away to make the call.
We haven't been this close before, Wallander thought. He tried to go through all the possibilities in his head. He still didn't know for sure if Rolf Haag had an assistant or not, and it was still possible that a close friend had known about the plans, despite what Lars Skander had told them.
At that moment, a window on the top floor of the house was flung open. A woman leaned out, screaming.
Wallander would retain the image of the screaming woman in his head for a long time. It had been one of the most beautiful days of an unusually warm summer, the garden was green and lush, and Höglund was leaning against the pear tree talking on her mobile phone while he sat across from Lars Skander in a white wooden chair. Both he and Höglund immediately thought it was too late, that the woman who had flung open the window was about to hurl herself down onto the flagstones. They would never get to her in time.
There was a moment of complete calm, as if everything was frozen. Then Höglund dropped her phone and ran towards the window, while Wallander yelled something – he hardly knew what. Lars Skander got to his feet very slowly. The woman in the window continued to scream. She was the mother of the dead bride, and her pain cut that warm August day like a diamond cuts glass. They agreed afterwards that it was her scream that shook them the most.
Höglund disappeared into the house, while Wallander remained under the window with outstretched arms. Lars Skander stood at his side like a ghost, staring up at the distraught woman in the window. Then Höglund appeared out of nowhere behind her and pulled her into the room. Everything went quiet.
When Wallander and Lars Skander entered the bedroom, Höglund was sitting on the floor with her arms around the woman. Wallander went back downstairs and called an ambulance. They returned to the garden at the back of the house once the ambulance had come and gone. Höglund picked up the phone that lay in the grass.
"Martinsson had just answered when it happened. He must have wondered what was going on," she said.
He sat back down in one of the chairs. "Call him," he said.
She sat down across from him. A bee buzzed back and forth between them. Svedberg had a phobia of bees. Now he was dead. That's why they were there, in the Skanders' garden. Many others were also dead. Too many.
"I'm afraid he's going to strike again," Wallander said. "Every second I think I'll get a call telling me he's done it again. I'm going crazy looking for signs that the nightmare will soon be over, that we won't have to kneel over any more bodies of people who have been shot, but I can't find them."
"All of us have that fear," she replied.
That was all that needed to be said. Höglund called Martinsson who, as expected, demanded to know what had happened. Wallander moved his chair over into the shade and took hold of his thoughts.
If the decision to move the photo session to Nybrostrand was made only a couple of weeks ago, who would have had access to that information? Why hadn't anyone confirmed whether or not Rolf Haag had an assistant?
Höglund finished her conversation and also moved her chair into the shade.
"He'll call me back," she said. "Apparently the Werners are both very old. Martinsson can't tell whether they're in shock or just senile."
"What about the question of Rolf Haag's assistant?" Wallander asked brusquely. "The Malmö police were going to take care of that for us. Do you remember Birch? We worked with him on a case last year."
"How could I forget?"
Birch was a police officer of the old school. It had been a pleasure to meet him.
"He moved to Malmö," she said. "I think he was put in charge of this."
"Then he's already done the work," Wallander said firmly.
He took up his phone and dialled the Malmö police station. He was in luck: Birch was in his office. After exchanging greetings, Birch got straight to the point.
"I called Ystad with my report," he said. "It hasn't reached you?"
"Not yet."
"Then I'll tell you the main points of interest. Rolf Haag's studio is located close to the Nobel plaza, and his main occupation was studio photography, though he also published some travel books."
"I'm going to interrupt you here," Wallander said. "What I really need to know is whether or not he had an assistant."
"Yes, he did."
"What's his name?" Wallander gestured for Höglund to give him a pen.
"Her name is Maria Hjortberg."
"Have you talked to her?"
"I couldn't. She's at her parents' house outside Hudiksvall for the weekend. It's a small place in the woods and they have no phone. She's coming back to Malmö this evening and I'm planning to meet her at the airport. But I very much doubt she's the person who shot her boss and this young couple."
This wasn't the answer that Wallander was looking for, and it irritated him, which he thought was probably a sign that he was a bad policeman.
"What I need to know is whether someone else knew where the wedding pictures were going to be taken."
"I searched the studio last night," Birch said. "It took half the night. I found a letter from Torbjörn Werner to Haag dated 28 July. In it he confirmed the time and place for the photo session."
"Where was it posted?"
"Ystad appears at the top of the page."
"There's no envelope? No postmark?"
"There's a big bag of paper in Haag's office, so it could be in there. Otherwise, I'm afraid it might already have been thrown away. It was written several weeks ago, after all."
"I need that envelope."
"Why is it so important? Can't we assume it was posted in Ystad, since that's where it was written?"
"I need to know if the envelope was opened by someone before it reached Haag. I want our forensics team to have a look at it, if only to rule out this possibility."
Birch didn't need further explanation. He promised to go down to the studio at once.
"That's some theory you've got," he said.
"It's all I have right now," Wallander answered.
Birch promised to call if he found anything.
It was already midday. Wallander went home, fried some eggs for lunch, then lay down to rest for half an hour. At 1.10 p.m. he was back at the police station.
Going through the notes in his office, he decided that the theory about someone having opened the letters needed to be explored before they dismissed it. He went out to the front desk and talked to the girl who filled in for Ebba on the weekends. He asked her if she knew where the post in Ystad was sorted. She didn't.
"Maybe you could find that out for me," Wallander said.
"But it's Sunday," she said.
"A regular working day, as far as I'm concerned."
"But surely not for the post office."
Wallander was starting to get angry, but he controlled himself.
"Post is collected even on Sundays," he said. "At least once. That means that someone is working down at the post office today."
She promised to try to find the answer to his question. Wallander hurried back to his office, feeling that he had disturbed her. Just as he closed his door, it struck him that he was wrong about one thing. He had told Höglund that two postmen already figured in this investigation. But there were actually three. What was it Sture Björklund had said that day? He had the feeling that someone had been at his house when he wasn't there. His neighbours knew how much he valued his privacy. The only person who came by regularly was the postman.
Could it have been the postman who put Svedberg's telescope in Björklund's shed? It wasn't just a wholly unreasonable idea, it was crazy. He was grasping at straws. He growled angrily to himself and started leafing through the various reports that lay on his desk. Before he'd got very far, Martinsson appeared in the doorway.
"How did it go?" Wallander asked.
"Ann-Britt told me about the woman who tried to jump out the window. We didn't have quite as bad a time of it, but it's so tragic. Torbjörn had just taken over the farm. The old couple were getting ready to hand over all the responsibility to the next generation. One son died in a car crash a few years ago. And now they have no one."
"The killer doesn't consider things like that," Wallander said.
Martinsson walked over and stood by the window. Wallander could see how shaken he was. Once upon a time, he had been an eager young recruit with all the best intentions – and at a time when becoming a police officer was no longer seen as something noble. Young people seemed to despise the profession, in fact. But Martinsson held fast to his ideals and genuinely wanted to be a good policeman. It was only during the last few years that Wallander had noticed his faith starting to slip. Now Wallander doubted that Martinsson would make it to retirement.
"He's going to do it again," Martinsson said.
"We don't know that for sure."
"Why wouldn't he? He kills for the sake of killing – there's no other motive."
"We don't know that. We just haven't found his motive yet.
"You're wrong."
Martinsson's last words were delivered with such force that Wallander took them as an accusation.
"In what way am I wrong?"
"Until a few years ago, I would have agreed with you: there's an explanation for all violence. But that just isn't the case any more. Sweden's undergone a fundamental change. A whole generation of young people is losing its way. They don't know what's right or wrong. And I don't know what is the point of being a policeman any more."
"That's a question only you can answer."
"I'm trying."
Martinsson sat down. "You know what Sweden has become?" he asked. "A lawless nation. Who would have thought that could ever happen?"
"We're not quite there yet," Wallander said. "Even though I agree with you that it's where things seem to be heading. This is why it's so important for us not to give up."
"That's what I used to say to myself. But I'm not sure I think it's possible for us to make a difference any more."
"There isn't one police officer in this country who hasn't asked himself these same questions," Wallander said. "But that doesn't change the fact that we have to keep working, we have to resist the direction our society has taken. We have to stop this madman, and we're very close to him right now. We're going to get him."
"My son is convinced that he wants to be a policeman too," Martinsson said after a while. "He asks me what it's like. I never know what to say."
"Send him to me," Wallander said. "I'll have a talk with him."
"He's eleven."
"That's a good age."
"All right, I'll send him."
Wallander took advantage of the shift in their conversation to return to the matter at hand.
"How much did the Werners know about the photo session?"
"Nothing more than the time."
Wallander let his hands fall onto the table.
"Then we have a breakthrough. Tell everyone I want a meeting at 3 p.m. this afternoon."
Martinsson nodded and got ready to leave. He turned when he reached the door.
"Do you mean what you said about talking to my son?"
"I'll do it the moment all this is over," Wallander said. "I'll answer all his questions and even let him try on my policeman's cap."
"You have one of those?" Martinsson asked with surprise.
"Somewhere. I just have to find it."
Wallander went to the meeting that afternoon with the feeling that he was going to end up having another confrontation with Thurnberg. Apart from the unfortunate incident in Nybrostrand, there had been no further contact. Wallander was still unsure what would come of the charges the jogger had filed against him. Although Thurnberg hadn't said anything about it, Wallander felt that there was an ongoing war between them.
After the meeting, he realised he was wrong. Thurnberg surprised him by offering support when the others faltered or started to disagree. Whenever he made a comment, it was short and to the point. Perhaps Wallander had been too quick to judge him. Was Thurnberg's arrogance just a bluff, perhaps a sign of insecurity?
Wallander paused for a moment as they were getting ready to leave, wondering if he should say something to Thurnberg. But he couldn't think of anything.
It was now 4.30 p.m. In two hours, Haag's assistant would be arriving at the airport. Wallander tried to call Birch, but there was no answer. He decided to do something he had never done before. He had an old alarm clock in his desk drawer, and he got it out and set it. He locked the door of his office, stretched out on the floor, and pushed an old briefcase under his head for a pillow. Someone knocked on the door right before he fell asleep, but he didn't answer. If he was going to have the energy to keep working, he would need an hour of sleep.
A rapid succession of disjointed images passed before him. A glimpse of his father, the smell of turpentine, the holiday in Rome. Suddenly Martinsson was there, standing at the foot of the Spanish Steps. He looked like a small child. Wallander called out to him, but Martinsson couldn't hear him. Then the dream was gone.
It took some effort to get to his feet. His joints cracked as he walked to the men's room. He hated this crippling fatigue. It was getting harder and harder to bear as he got older. He splashed cold water on his face and took a long leak. He avoided looking at his face in the mirror. He reached Sturup Airport at 6.45 p.m. When he entered the arrivals area, he spotted Birch's imposing figure almost immediately. He was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed. When he saw Wallander, his sombre face broke into a wide smile.
"You're here as well?"
"I thought you wouldn't mind the company."
"Let's go and grab a cup of coffee. Her plane's not due in for a while."
As they stood in line at the cafeteria, Birch told him he hadn't found the envelope Wallander was hoping for. "But I did talk to one of our forensic technicians," Birch said, as he helped himself to a piece of cake and a Danish pastry, "and he told me I'd never be able to tell if a letter had been opened and resealed. There have been new advances in this area, it seems. No more steam, like in the old days."
"I need that envelope," Wallander said. He forced himself not to follow Birch's example and kept to a cup of coffee. They walked over to the gate. Birch wiped crumbs from his mouth.
"I'm not sure I understand the relevance of the envelope. Of course, I'm also wondering why you decided to come out here. Maria Hjortberg must be important."
Wallander began to tell him about the latest developments as passengers started to stream in from the plane. Birch surprised Wallander by pulling a piece of paper from his coat pocket with Maria Hjortberg's name on it. He walked out into the middle of the gate area and held it up, while Wallander watched from the side.
Maria Hjortberg was a very beautiful woman, with intense dark eyes and long dark hair. She had a rucksack slung over one shoulder. She probably still didn't know that Rolf Haag was dead, but Birch was already telling her. She shook her head in disbelief. Birch took her rucksack, then led her over to Wallander and introduced him.
"Is anyone coming to pick you up?" Birch asked.
"I was going to take the bus."
"Then we'll give you a ride. Unfortunately we have some questions to ask you and they can't wait. But we can do this either at the police station or the studio."
"Is it really true?" she asked in a dazed voice. "Is Rolf really dead?"
"Yes. I'm sorry," Birch said. He asked her if she had more luggage, but she didn't. "How long have you worked as his assistant?"
"Not very long. Since April."
Her answer came as a relief to Wallander. Her grief wouldn't be too intense – unless, of course, she had been in a relationship with him. She told Birch that she preferred to speak to them at the studio.
"You take her in your car," Wallander said to Birch. "I have some phone calls to make."
Two hours later it became clear that Maria Hjortberg didn't have any crucial information to give them. She hadn't even known about Rolf Haag's photo session at Nybrostrand. He had told her that he would be attending a wedding on Saturday, but she had thought it was a personal invitation, not a job. She had never heard of Malin Skander or Torbjörn Werner. They had a calendar in the office where they noted their appointments, but there was nothing down for Saturday, August 17. When Birch showed her the letter he had found, she merely shook her head.
"He opened all the post," she said. "I helped him with the photo sessions, that was all."
"Who else could have seen this letter?" Wallander asked. "Who else has access to this studio? A cleaner?"
"We do our own cleaning. And clients didn't go into the office."
"So it was just you and Rolf?"
"Yes, although I was hardly ever here."
"Have there been any burglaries?"
"No."
"I looked for the envelope that this letter came in," Birch said. "I couldn't find it anywhere."
"It must have been thrown away," she said. "Rolf likes to keep things tidy. The rubbish is collected every Monday."
Wallander looked at Birch. There was no reason for her to lie. He didn't think they could get any further.
"How close was your relationship?" he asked.
She understood what he was getting at, but didn't seem to mind. "It was nothing personal," she said. "We worked well together and I learned a lot from him. I'm hoping to set up my own studio one day."
It was over. Birch said he would drive her home while Wallander drove back to Ystad. They parted outside on the street.
"I still don't understand it," she said. "I spent the last two days in an isolated house in an equally isolated forest, and I come back to this."
She began to cry and Birch put an arm around her protectively.
"I'll take her home now," he said. "Will you give me a call later?"
"I'll call you from Ystad," Wallander said. "Where are you going to be?"
"I'm going to search his flat later tonight."
Wallander made sure that he had Birch's mobile number, then crossed the street to his car. It was 10.30 p.m.
Before he had a chance to start the car, the phone buzzed in his pocket and he answered.
"Is this Kurt Wallander?"
"Yes."
"Lone Kjær here. I just wanted to tell you that the woman we're calling Louise is at the Amigo right now. What do you want us to do?"
Wallander made a quick decision. "I'm already in Malmö. I'll be right over. If she leaves, have someone follow her."
"There's a boat leaving at 11 p.m., I think. That brings you to Copenhagen at around 11.45 p.m. I'll meet you on this side."
"Just don't lose her," Wallander said. "I need this one."
"We'll watch over her well, I promise."
Wallander hung up and stared unseeing into the darkness, his excitement growing.
Wallander picked her out as soon as he got off the boat. She was wearing a leather coat, she had short blond hair, and she was younger than he imagined, and smaller. But there was no doubt that she was in the force. Why, he couldn't have said, but he could always pick out the police officer in a group of strangers.
He stopped in front of her and they exchanged greetings.
"Louise is still at the bar," she said.
"If that really is her name," Wallander said.
"Why is she so important to your investigation?"
Wallander had been thinking about this on the way over. He couldn't connect her to the crimes in any way. All he wanted to do was talk to her. He had so many questions.
"I think she may have interesting information for us. Of course, a bar is hardly the best place for this kind of a conversation."
"You can always use my office."
A police car was waiting for them, and they drove away in silence. Wallander thought about the last time he had been in Copenhagen. It was when he'd attended a performance of Tosca at Det Kongelige theatre. He'd gone to a bar after the performance and was dead drunk by the time he caught the last boat for Malmö.
Lone Kjær was speaking to someone on the car radio.
"She's still there," she said, pointing out the window. "It's across the street. Do you want me to wait for you?"
"Why don't you come in?"
The broken neon sign simply read "igo". Wallander was about to meet the woman he'd been wondering about since he'd found her photograph in Svedberg's secret compartment under the floorboards.
They opened the door, pushed aside the heavy red curtain, and entered the bar. It was warm and smoky inside, the lighting was tinged red, and it was full of people. A man walked towards them on his way out.
"All the way at the end of the bar," he said to Lone Kjær.
Wallander nodded to him, then left Kjær by the door and started making his way through the crowd.
He caught sight of her. She was sitting at the far end of the bar. Her hair looked just as it had in the photograph. Wallander stood frozen, watching her. She looked like she was alone, although there were people on either side of her. She was drinking a glass of wine. When she turned her head in his direction, he slipped behind a tall man who was drinking a beer. When Wallander looked again she was staring down at her glass of wine. Wallander turned, nodded to Kjær, and made his way over to Louise.
He was in luck. Just as he reached her, the man on her left stood up and left. Wallander sank down on the bar stool, and she glanced at him quickly.
"I think your name is Louise," Wallander said. "My name is Kurt Wallander, and I'm a police officer from Ystad. I need to speak to you."
She tensed up for a moment, then relaxed and smiled.
"All right, but I'd like to visit the ladies' room first, if you don't mind. I was just about to get up when you sat down."
She got up and walked towards the back of the room, where there were signs to the men's and women's lavatories.
The bartender caught Wallander's eye, but he shook his head to indicate he wouldn't be ordering anything. She doesn't speak with a Scanian dialect, he thought. But she is Swedish.
Kjær came closer. Wallander gave her a sign that everything was proceeding smoothly. The clock hanging on the wall advertised a brand of whisky that Wallander had never heard of. Four minutes went by. Wallander looked over at the area leading to the lavatories. A man walked by, then another. He tried to concentrate on his questions, wondering which he should ask first.
Seven minutes had gone by now, and he realised something was wrong. He got up and walked towards the lavatories. Kjær appeared at his side.
"Go into the ladies' room and look around."
"Why? She hasn't come out again. I would have seen her if she had tried to leave."
"Something's wrong," Wallander said. "I want you to check for me."
Kjær went into the women's lavatory and Wallander waited. She was back again almost immediately.
"She's not in there."
"Damn it," Wallander said. "Is there a window in there?"
Without waiting for an answer he jerked the door open and went in. Two women were adjusting their make-up in front of the mirror. Wallander hardly noticed them. Louise was gone. He ran out again.
"She must still be here somewhere," Kjær said in disbelief. "I would have seen her."
"But she isn't," Wallander said.
He made his way to the front door through a throng of people that seemed to be getting thicker all the time. The bouncer looked like a wrestler.
"Ask him," Wallander said. "We're looking for a woman with medium-length dark hair. Did anyone like that leave recently? It would have been ten minutes ago at the most."
Kjær asked the bouncer but he shook his head, and said something that Wallander didn't catch.
"He's sure," she yelled over the noise in the room.
Wallander turned and started pushing his way through the crowd again. He was looking for her, but part of him knew she was already gone.
Finally he gave up, and made his way over to the bartender. He couldn't see the glass of wine Louise had been drinking.
"Where's the glass that was here?" he asked.
"I've already washed it."
Wallander waved to Kjær and she came over. He pointed to the top of the bar.
"I don't know how likely we are to get anything, but let's try for some fingerprints."
"It'll be a first for me," she said. "I've never had to cordon off a section of a bar before. But I'll make sure it's done."
Wallander left and walked out into the street. He was drenched with sweat and shaking with anger. How could he have been so stupid? That smile, her willingness to speak with him, just a trip to the ladies' room first. Why hadn't he seen through it?
Kjær came out after ten minutes. "I really don't know how she did it," she said. "I know I would have seen her if she had tried to leave."
But the pieces were starting to fit together. Slowly Wallander understood what must have happened. There was only one answer. It was so unexpected that he needed time to grasp its full implication.
"Can we go to your office?" he asked. "I need time to think."
When they got there, Kjær brought him a cup of coffee and repeated her question.
"I just don't understand how she got away without being seen."
"That's because she never left," Wallander said. "Louise is still in there somewhere."
She looked at him with surprise. "Still there? Then why did we come here?"
Wallander shook his head dully. He was frustrated at his lack of awareness. He had sensed that there was something strange about her hair the first time he'd seen her picture in Svedberg's flat.
I should have seen it back then, he thought. That it was a wig.
She repeated her last question.
"In a way, Louise is still in the bar," he answered, "because Louise is just an act, put on by someone else. A man. That wrestler who was guarding the door said three men left the bar during the last ten minutes. One of them was Louise, with her wig in her pocket and all her make-up wiped off."
She didn't believe him, and he was too tired to go into more detail. The important thing was that he knew it. Still, he owed her an explanation. She had helped him. Although it was past midnight, he continued to explain.
"When she went into the lavatory, she took off her makeup and the wig, and then she walked out again," Wallander said. "She probably altered something about the way her clothing looked as well. Neither of us noticed anything, because we were waiting for a woman to come out. Who would have noticed a man?"
"The Amigo doesn't have a reputation as a transvestite bar."
"He may simply have gone there to play the role of a woman," Wallander said thoughtfully. "Not to be among his own kind."
"What does this mean for your investigation?"
"I don't know. It probably means a great deal, but I haven't thought it through yet."
She looked down at her watch.
"The last boat to Malmö has already left. The earliest leaves at 4.45 a.m. in the morning."
"I'll stay in a hotel," Wallander said.
She shook her head. "You can sleep on the sofa at my place," she said. "My husband comes home around this time. He's a waiter. We have sandwiches and a beer together before we go to bed."
They left the police station.
Wallander slept uneasily. At one point he got up and walked over to the window. He stared down at the empty street and wondered why all city streets resembled each other at night. He kept waiting for someone to appear, but all was quiet. He felt his anxiety grow stronger. The victims so far had been dressed up in costume. Just like Louise. When Wallander had told her who he was, she left.
It was him, he thought. There's no other explanation. I had the killer by my side without knowing it. But I didn't manage to see through his disguise, and he disappeared. Now he knows we're closing in, but he also knows we haven't guessed his real identity.
Wallander went back to the sofa and dozed until it was time to take the ferry back to Malmö.
He called Birch when he got to the other side, hoping he was an early riser. Birch answered and said he was just drinking his morning coffee.
"What happened to you last night? I thought we were going to be in touch."
Wallander explained what had happened.
"Were you really that close?"
"I let myself be fooled. I should have stood guard by the lavatories."
"It's easy to say so in hindsight," Birch said. "You're back in Malmö now, aren't you? You must be tired."
"The worst thing is that I can't get the car started. I left my lights on."
"I'll come over. I have jump leads," Birch said. "Where are you?"
Wallander gave him directions.
It took Birch less than 20 minutes to get there, during which time Wallander napped in his car.
Birch looked closely at Wallander. "You should really try to sleep for a few hours," he said. "It won't help matters if you collapse."
While they put the jump leads on, Birch told him he had searched Haag's flat but hadn't found anything significant.
"We'll do another search of the studio and his flat," Birch said. "And we'll stay in touch."
"I'll tell you how things go at our end," Wallander said.
He left Malmö. It was 6.25 a.m. At the turn-off for Jägersro, he pulled over to the side of the road and called Martinsson.
"I've been trying to reach you," Martinsson said. "We were supposed to have a meeting last night, but no one could contact you."
"I was in Denmark," Wallander said. "Tell everyone I want a meeting at 8 a.m."
"Has anything happened?"
"Yes, but I'll tell you about it later."
Wallander continued on towards Ystad. The weather was still beautiful. There were no clouds in the sky and no wind. He was feeling less tired, and his mind was starting to work again. He went through the meeting with Louise over and over, trying to home in on the face behind the wig and make-up. Sometimes he almost had it.
He reached Ystad at 7.40 a.m. Ebba was at the front desk. She sneezed.
"Caught a cold?" he asked. "In the middle of summer?"
"Even an old bag like me can have allergies," she replied good-naturedly. Then she looked sternly at him.
"You haven't had a wink of sleep, have you?"
"I was in Copenhagen. That's not conducive to a good night's sleep."
She didn't seem to see the humour in this. "If you don't start taking your health seriously, you'll pay for it," she said. "Mark my words."
He didn't answer. He was sometimes annoyed by her ability to see right through him. She was right, of course. He thought about the clumps of sugar in his bloodstream.
He got himself a cup of coffee and went into his office. Soon his colleagues would be waiting for him in the conference room. He would have to tell them what had happened the night before, how the killer had been there, gone to the lavatory, and disappeared.
A woman went up in smoke by taking on the form of a man. There was no Louise any more. All they had was an unknown man who simply removed his wig and disappeared without a trace. A man who had already killed eight people, and who might be preparing to strike again.
He thought about Isa Edengren, curled up in the cave behind the ferns, and shivered.
What do I tell them, Wallander thought. How do I find the right path through this unknown territory? We're pressed for time and can't afford to think through every possibility, every possible lead. How can I know which is the right way?
Wallander left his own questions unanswered and went to the men's room. He stared at his image in the mirror. He was swollen and pale, with watery bags under his eyes. For the first time in his life, the sight of his face made him nauseated.
I have to catch this killer, he thought. If only so I can go on medical leave and start taking control of my health.
It was now just after 8 a.m. Wallander left the men's room.
Everyone was already in the conference room when he entered. He felt like the tardy schoolboy, or perhaps the flustered teacher. There was Thurnberg, fingering his perfectly knotted tie. Holgersson smiled her quick, nervous smile. The others greeted him to the best of their exhausted capability: simply by being there.
Wallander sat down and told them exactly where things stood. How he had been inches away from the killer, and how he had let him slip away under his very nose. He told the story calmly, starting with Maria Hjortberg and ending with Louise's smile and her apparent willingness to talk to him, saying she just had to visit the lavatory first.
"He must have removed the wig while he was in there," he said. "It was the same one as in the picture, by the way. He must have wiped off his make-up as well. He's careful by nature, and he must have foreseen the risk of being recognised. He probably had some make-up remover with him. I didn't notice him slip out because I was waiting for a woman."
"What about his clothes?" Höglund said.
"Some kind of trouser suit," Wallander said. "And low-heeled shoes. I suppose it might have been obvious that he was a man if one knew to look carefully. But you couldn't see while he sat at the bar."
Höglund's was the only question.
"I have no doubts that he's the one," Wallander said after a pause. "Why else would he leave like that?"
"Did you consider the fact that he might have been on your boat this morning?" Hansson asked.
"I did think of it," Wallander said. "But by then it was too late."
They should blame me for this, he thought. For this and for many other aspects of the investigation. I should have known it was a wig from the moment I first saw the photograph. If we had known we were looking for a man from the beginning it would all have been different. The search for him would have taken precedence over everything else. But I didn't see it. I didn't understand what I was looking at.
Wallander poured himself a glass of mineral water. "We have to assume he could strike again at any moment, so we have no time to lose. We have to re-examine the facts of this investigation to see if we can find any trace of this man."
"The photograph," Martinsson said. "We can manipulate it on the computer and make it look more like a man."
"That's at the top of our list right now," Wallander said. "We'll have that done as soon as we leave this meeting. A face can be significantly altered with make-up and a wig, but it can't be completely changed."
There was a new surge of energy in the room. Wallander didn't want to keep them any longer, but Holgersson sensed he was about to bring the meeting to a close, and raised her hand.
"I want to remind you that Svedberg's funeral is tomorrow at 2 p.m. With the best interests of this investigation in mind, I'm cancelling the reception afterwards."
No one had any comments. Everyone seemed eager to leave.
Wallander went to his office to get his coat. There was something he wanted to follow up on even though it would most likely lead nowhere. He was just about to leave when Thurnberg appeared.
"Do we really have the resources to manipulate that photograph here?" he asked.
"Martinsson knows the most about that sort of thing," Wallander said. "If he has any doubts about his ability to do the job properly, he'll turn it over to the technicians, don't worry."
Thurnberg nodded. "I just wanted to make sure." But he clearly had something else to say. "I don't think you should blame yourself for letting him slip away in the bar. You couldn't have been expected to see through his disguise."
It seemed as if he really meant it. Was this his way of making amends? Wallander decided to accept him at face value.
"I appreciate your opinion," he said. "This investigation has been far from clear-cut."
"I'll get in touch if I think of anything that might be helpful," Thurnberg said.
Wallander left the station. He hesitated for a moment in the car park before deciding to walk. All he had to do was walk downtown, and he had to keep moving or else sleep would overtake him.
It took him ten minutes to reach the red building that was the central postal depot. Post was being unloaded from yellow postal vans. Wallander had never been down here before. He looked around for an entrance and found one. It was locked. He pressed a small buzzer and was let in.
The man who greeted him was the manager, a young man hardly more than 30 years old. His name was Kjell Albinsson, and he made a good impression. Albinsson escorted him to his office, where a fan placed on top of a filing cabinet was going at high speed. Wallander got out a pen and paper, wondering how he should go about phrasing his questions, such as "Do your postal workers ever open other people's post?" It was an impossible question to ask, an insult to the profession. Wallander thought of Westin, who would no doubt have been deeply offended. He decided instead to start from the beginning.
It was 10.43 a.m. on Monday, 19 August.
A map hung on the wall in Albinsson's room. Wallander started there, asking him about the rural postal routes. Albinsson wanted to know why the police were so interested in this information, and Wallander came close to telling him. Then he realised how preposterous it would sound if he said that the police suspected one of his staff of being a mass murderer, so he kept his explanations as vague as possible, making sure that Albinsson knew not to expect further clarification.
Albinsson described the various routes to him with great enthusiasm. Wallander took occasional notes.
"How many postmen work here?" Wallander asked after Albinsson had finished with the map and sat down at his desk.
"Eight."
"Do you have their names written down anywhere? Photographs would be helpful too."
"The Post Office is a proactive business these days," Albinsson said. "We have an information brochure that I think is just what you're looking for."
As Albinsson left the room, Wallander thought to himself that he had just had a stroke of luck. From the photographs of the postal workers he would immediately be able to determine if the man in Copenhagen worked here or not. Then he would have identified the killer in a single stroke.
Albinsson came back with the brochure, and Wallander looked around for his glasses, to no avail.
"Maybe mine will work," Albinsson suggested. "What's your prescription?"
"I don't know, around ten-point-five, I think."
Albinsson looked at him curiously. "That would mean you were blind," he said. "I take it you mean one-point-five. I'm a two, so go ahead and try them."
Wallander put on the glasses and found that they helped. He unfolded the brochure and looked closely at the pictures of the eight postal workers. There were four men and four women. Wallander studied the men's faces, but none of them bore any likeness to Louise. He hesitated for a moment at the face of a man called Lars-Goran Berg, but quickly realised that it couldn't be him. He looked briefly at the women, and recognised one who regularly delivered post to his father's house in Löderup.
"Can I keep this?" he asked.
"You can have more copies if you like."
"Just one will do."
"Have I answered all your questions?"
"Not quite. There's one more point I need to cover. All of the post is sorted here in this building, right? Do the postmen sort their own post?"
"Yes."
He gave the glasses back to Albinsson. "That's all. I won't keep you from your work any longer."
He stood up. "What is it you're trying to find out?" Albinsson asked.
"Just what I said. This is a routine check."
Albinsson shook his head. "I don't believe that. Why would the chief inspector on a pressing murder case drop by as a matter of routine? You're trying to solve the murder of one of your colleagues, as well as that of those youngsters in the Hagestad nature reserve, and the newly-weds. Your visit here has something to do with all that, doesn't it?"
"That wouldn't change the fact that this is still a routine check," Wallander said.
"I think you're looking for something in particular," Albinsson said.
"I've told you as much as I can."
Albinsson didn't ask any more questions. They parted at the front door, and Wallander walked out into the sunny yard. What a strange August this is, he thought. The heat just won't let up, and there's never even a hint of a breeze.
He walked back to the station, wondering whether to wear his uniform at Svedberg's funeral. He also wondered whether Höglund was regretting having promised to give a speech, let alone one she hadn't written herself.
When he walked into reception, Ebba said that Holgersson wanted to speak to him. Ebba seemed depressed.
"How are things with you these days?" he asked. "We never have time to talk any more."
"Things are as they are," she said.
It was the kind of thing his father used to say when he spoke of getting old.
"As soon as all this is over, we'll talk," he said.
She nodded. Wallander sensed that something was different about her, but he had no time to ask more. He went to Holgersson's office. Her door was wide open as usual.
"This is a significant breakthrough," she said as soon as he had sat down in the comfortable armchair across from her. "Thurnberg is impressed."
"Impressed by what?"
"You'll have to ask him that. But you're living up to your reputation."
Wallander was surprised. "Are things really so bad?"
"I'd say just the opposite."
Wallander made an impatient gesture with his hand. He didn't want to talk about his own performance, especially since he knew it was seriously flawed.
"The national chief of police will officiate at the funeral tomorrow," she said, "together with the minister of justice. They're landing at Sturup tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. I'll be there to greet them and escort them back here. They have both requested a briefing on the state of our investigation, so I've scheduled that for 11.30 a.m., in the large conference room. It'll be you, me, and Thurnberg."
"Could you handle it on your own, or with Martinsson? He can speak more eloquently than I can."
"You're the one in charge of the investigation," she said. "It'll only take half an hour, then we'll break for lunch. They fly back to Stockholm straight after the funeral."
"I'm dreading this funeral," Wallander said. "It's different when the dead person has been brutally murdered."
"You're thinking about your old friend Rydberg?"
"Yes."
The phone rang and she picked it up, listened for a moment, and then asked the caller to get back to her later.
"Have you chosen the music?" Wallander asked.
"We let the cantor choose it for us. I'm sure it'll be appropriate. What is it usually? Bach and Buxtehude? And then the old standard hymns, of course."
Wallander got up to leave. "I hope you'll make the most of this opportunity," he said. "What with the national chief of police and the minister of justice here."
"What opportunity?"
"To tell them they can't let things go on like this. The cuts in staff and funding are starting to look like a conspiracy to make us unable to do our jobs, not like a matter of fiscal responsibility. The criminal element is taking over. Tell them it will be the end of all of us if they don't do something to stop it. We're not quite there yet, but we will be soon."
Holgersson shook her head in amazement. "I don't think we see eye to eye on this."
"I know you've noticed it too."
"Why don't you tell them yourself?"
"I probably will. But I have a killer to track down in the meantime."
"Not you," she corrected him. "We."
Wallander went to Martinsson's office. Höglund was with him and they were studying a picture on the computer screen: Louise's face. Martinsson had erased her hair.
"I'm using a programme developed by the FBI," Martinsson told him. "We can add details such as hairstyles, beards and moustaches. You can even add pimples."
"I don't think he had any of those," Wallander said. "The only thing I'm interested in is what was under his wig."
"I called a wigmaker in Stockholm about that," Höglund said. "I asked him how much hair you could hide under a wig, but it was hard to get a clear answer from him."
"So he could have bushy hair for all we know," Wallander said.
"The programme can do other things, too," Martinsson said "We can fold out the ears and flatten the nose."
"We don't have to fold out or flatten anything," Wallander said. "The photograph is already so similar to his face."
"What about the eye colour?" Martinsson asked.
Wallander thought for a moment. "Blue," he answered.
"Did you see her teeth?"
"Not her teeth. His teeth."
"Did you see them?"
"Not very closely. But I think they were white and well kept."
"Psychopaths are often fanatics about oral hygiene," Martinsson said.
"We don't know if he's a psychopath," Wallander said.
Martinsson entered the information about eyes and teeth into the computer.
"How old was she?" Höglund asked.
"You mean he," Wallander said.
"But the person you saw was a woman. You only realised later that she had to be a man."
She was right. He had seen a woman, not a man, and that was the image he had to return to in order to judge the person's age.
"It's always hard to tell with women who wear a lot of make-up," he said. "But the photograph we have must be fairly recent. I would say around 40 years old."
"How tall was she?" Martinsson asked.
Wallander tried hard to remember. "I'm not sure," he answered. "But I think she was quite tall, between 170 and 175 centimetres."
Martinsson entered in the numbers. "What about her body?" he said. "Was she wearing falsies?"
Wallander realised he hadn't noticed very much about her at all.
"I don't know," he said.
Höglund looked at him with a hint of a smile. "The latest studies indicate that the first thing a man notices about a woman is her breasts," she said. "He registers whether they are small or large, then usually proceeds to her legs, and finally her behind."
Martinsson chuckled from his place at the computer. Wallander saw the absurdity of the situation. He was supposed to describe a woman who was actually a man, but who should still be regarded as a woman, at least until Martinsson had finished entering the data into the computer.
"She was wearing a jacket," he said. "Maybe I'm an unusual male, but I really didn't notice her breasts. And the bar hid most of her body. I didn't see much of her when she stood up and went to the ladies' room, because she was swallowed up by the crowd. It was a full house."
"We have quite a lot already," Martinsson said reassuringly. "We just have to work out what kind of hairstyle he had under the wig."
"There must be a hundred different styles," Wallander said. "Let's try circulating the face without any hair. Someone may recognise his features."
"According to the FBI, that's almost impossible."
"Let's do it anyway."
Something else occurred to Wallander. "Who questioned the nurse who received the call from the man pretending to be Erik Lundberg?"
"I did," Höglund said.
"What did she remember about his voice?"
"Not very much. He had a Scanian accent."
"Did it sound real?"
She looked at him with surprise. "Actually, no. She said there was something funny about his dialect, although she couldn't put her finger on it."
"So it could have been fake?"
"Yes."
"Was it a low or high voice?"
"Low."
Wallander thought back to his time in the Amigo. Louise had smiled at him, then excused herself, and her voice had been deep, although she had tried to make it sound feminine.
"I think we can assume it was him," Wallander said. "Even though we have no proof."
He told them about his visit to the postal depot. "I've only been able to find one common denominator so far," he said. "Isa Edengren and Sture Björklund had the same postman. The other people in this investigation bring the number of postmen involved to three, in addition to someone who works outside of Ystad altogether. It therefore seems reasonable to ditch this theory, since it's absurd to think there's a conspiracy between postal workers."
He sat back in his chair and looked at the other two. "I see no pattern yet," he said. "We have costumes and secrets, but nothing more."
"What happens if we ignore the costumes?" Höglund said. "What do we have then?"
"Young people," Wallander said. "Happy people, having a party or getting married."
"You don't think Haag is a target?"
"No. He falls outside the parameters."
"What about Isa Edengren?"
"She was supposed to have been there."
"That changes our picture," Höglund said. "A new motive emerges. She's not allowed to escape, but escape what? Is it revenge, or hatred? There also doesn't seem to be any point of connection between the young people and the wedding couple. And then there's Svedberg. What lead was he following?"
"I think I can answer the last question," Wallander said. "At least for now. Svedberg knew this man who dresses as a woman. Something made him suspicious. Over the course of the summer, his investigation confirmed his suspicion. That's why he was killed – he knew too much. But he didn't have time to tell us what he knew."
"But what does it all add up to?" Martinsson said. "Svedberg told his cousin he was involved with a woman called Louise. Now it turns out she's a man. Svedberg must have known that after all these years, so where does that lead us? Was Svedberg a transvestite? Was he homosexual after all?"
"A number of explanations are possible," Wallander said. "I doubt that Svedberg had a passion for dressing up in women's clothing, but he may very well have been homosexual without any of us knowing about it."
"One person in our investigation seems to be growing in importance," Höglund said.
Wallander knew to whom she was referring: Bror Sundelius.
"I agree," he said. "We need to maintain that end of the investigation, not as an alternative but as part of our search for the killer. We need to know more about the people involved in charges filed against Svedberg. He may very well have been the victim of blackmail or had some other reason to keep Stridh quiet."
"If Bror Sundelius has deviant tendencies then it all starts to make sense," Martinsson said.
Wallander bristled at Martinsson's words. "In this day and age, homosexuality can hardly be regarded as 'deviant'," he said. "Maybe in the 1950s, but not now. That people might still want to conceal their sexual preferences is another matter entirely."
Martinsson registered Wallander's disapproval, but said nothing.
"The question is what connected these three men, Sundelius, Stridh, and Svedberg," Wallander said. "A bank director, a petty criminal and a policeman, whose surnames all start with the letter 'S'."
"I wonder if Louise was in the picture at that point," Höglund said.
Wallander made a face. "We have to call him something else," he said. "Louise disappeared in the lavatory of that bar back in Copenhagen. We'll confuse ourselves if we don't use another name."
"What about Louis?" Martinsson said. "That would make it easy."
They all agreed, and Louise was renamed. Now they were looking for a man called Louis. They decided that Martinsson should spend part of his time keeping an eye on Sundelius. Wallander left the room and went back to his office. He bumped into Edmundsson on his way.
"We didn't find anything in that area of the nature reserve you wanted us to search," he said. It took Wallander a moment to remember what this had been about.
"Nothing?"
"We found a wad of chewing tobacco by a tree," Edmundsson said. "That was it."
Wallander looked closely at him. "I hope you collected that wad of chewing tobacco, or at least alerted Nyberg."
Edmundsson surprised him with his answer. "Actually, I did."
"This could be more important than you realise," he said.
He kept walking towards his office. He was right. The killer had been there that night, hiding where he had the best view of their comings and goings. He had spat out a wad of chewing tobacco, just like on the beach. And later he had turned up outside the police barricades at Nybrostrand, although this time he was disguised as a woman.
He's following us, Wallander thought. He's somewhere close by, both a step ahead and a step behind. Is he trying to find out what we know? Or is he trying to prove to himself that we can't find him?
Something occurred to him and he called Martinsson. "Is there anyone who has shown an unexpected interest in our investigation?"
"You mean like a journalist?"
"Let people know to be on the lookout for someone who takes an interest in the case, something out of the ordinary. I don't think I can give you a more precise description – just someone who seems odd."
Martinsson promised to pass it on. Wallander hung up.
It was midday and he felt nauseated with hunger. He left the station and walked to a restaurant in the middle of town. He got back at 1.30 p.m., took off his coat, and looked through the brochure that he had picked up at the post office.
The first postman was called Olov Andersson. Wallander picked up the receiver and dialled his number, wondering how long he could keep going.
He returned to Ystad shortly after 11 a.m. Since he didn't want to risk running into the policeman who had found him in Copenhagen, he took the ferry from Helsing0r. When he arrived at Helsingborg, he took a taxi to Malmö where his car was parked. The unexpected inheritance he'd received from a relative meant he no longer had to worry about money. He watched the car park from a distance before approaching his car. There had never been a moment when he doubted that he would get away with it, just as he hadn't doubted the fact that he would get away the night before at the Amigo. That had been a major triumph. He hadn't expected a policeman to stroll in and sit down beside him, but he hadn't panicked or lost control of himself, only done what he had long ago planned to do in such a situation.
He walked calmly into the women's lavatory, took off his wig and tucked it inside his shirt above his belt, removed his make-up with the cream he always carried with him, and then left, timing his departure so it coincided with a man leaving the men's room. He still had the ability to escape. It had not failed him.
When he was certain that the car park wasn't under surveillance, he got into the car and drove to Ystad. Once he was back at home he'd taken a long shower and crawled into bed in the soundproofed room. There was so much he had to think through. He didn't know how that policeman Wallander had found him. He must inadvertently have left a trace of himself behind. That upset him more than it worried him. The only thing he could think of was that Svedberg had kept a photo of him in his flat after all. A photograph of Louise. He hadn't found it during his search. Nonetheless, this thought calmed him. The policeman was expecting to talk to a woman. Nothing suggested that he had seen through the disguise, although by now he might have put two and two together.
The thought of his narrow escape excited him. It spurred him on, although he now encountered a problem. He hadn't selected any more people to kill. According to his original plans, he was going to wait for a whole year before acting again. He needed to plan his next move carefully so he could outdo himself. He would wait just long enough for people to start to forget about him, and then he would show himself again.
But his recent encounter with the policeman changed everything. Now he couldn't stand the idea of waiting a whole year before striking again. He stayed in bed all afternoon, analysing his situation methodically. There were a number of courses of action to be evaluated. A few times he almost gave up.
At last he thought he had hit upon a solution. It went against the original plan, which was its biggest flaw, but he felt he had no alternative. It was also a great temptation. The more he thought about it, the more it struck him as ingenious. He would create something completely unexpected, a riddle no one would see through.
It would have to be Wallander, the policeman, and soon. Svedberg's funeral was tomorrow. He would need that day for his preparations. He smiled at the thought that Svedberg would actually come to his aid. During the funeral, the policeman's flat would be empty. Svedberg had told him on several occasions that Wallander was divorced and lived alone. He would wait no longer than Wednesday. The idea filled him with exhilaration. He would shoot him first, and then give him a disguise. A very particular disguise.
Monday had been a wasted day. That was the first thought that went through Wallander's mind when he woke up Tuesday morning. For the first time in a long while he felt fully rested, as he'd left the station at 9 p.m. the night before.
It was 6 a.m. and he lay motionless in his bed. Through the gap in the curtains he saw blue sky. Monday had been a wasted day because it hadn't brought them closer to their goal. He'd spoken to two of the postal workers assigned to rural routes, but neither one had been able to tell him anything of significance. Around 6 p.m., Wallander had conferred with the other members of the investigative team. By then they had covered all six postal workers. But what were they supposed to have asked, and what answers had they been expecting?
Wallander was forced to admit that his hunch had been wrong. And it wasn't just the postmen who had proved a dead end; Lone Kjær had called from Copenhagen to say that they hadn't been able to recover any prints from the bar top at the Amigo. They had even worked on the bar stool. Wallander knew it had been unlikely that they'd get anything, but he'd still been hoping that they would. A print would have identified the killer beyond doubt. Now they had to carry around that vague and disconcerting anxiety that this lead would also turn out to be false; that the man in the dark wig was only a step along the path, not the answer itself.
They'd spent a long time wondering whether or not to publish the digitally enhanced picture of Louis – too long for Wallander's liking. He'd sent for Thurnberg. The members of his team had wildly differing opinions, but Wallander had insisted that it should be published. Someone might recognise the face now that the wig was gone. All they needed was one person. Thurnberg had joined the discussion for the first time, supporting Wallander. In his opinion, the picture should be released to the press as soon as possible.
They decided to wait until Wednesday, the day after the funeral.
"People love these composite sketches," Wallander had said. "It doesn't matter if it really looks like him or not. There's something extraordinary, almost magical about this act of throwing out a half-finished face in the hope that someone will bite."
They had worked non-stop all Monday afternoon. Hansson had searched the various databases of the Swedish Police for information on Bror Sundelius. As expected, there was nothing. In terms of digital records at least, he was clean. They'd decided that Wallander would go back and talk to him on Wednesday, pressing him harder this time. Wallander knew that Sundelius was coming to the funeral, and he'd reminded the others of this fact.
Other things had come up on that Monday afternoon, even though Wallander now saw the day as a waste. Shortly after 4 p.m., a journalist from one of the national papers had called him to say that Eva Hillström had been in contact with them. The parents of the young murder victims were planning to criticise the police investigation. They didn't think the police had done enough, and they felt they had been denied information that they'd had a right to. The reporter had told him that their criticism was strong. In addition, Eva Hillström seemed to regard Wallander as the person responsible, or rather, the one who was not responsible enough. It would be a big article, and it would come out the day after next. The reporter had called to give Wallander a chance to respond to the allegations. Somewhat to his own surprise, Wallander had sharply declined to comment. He'd said he would be in touch when he had read the article and seen for himself what the parents had to say. If he had any reason to disagree with their claims, he would send a rebuttal. End of story.
After speaking to the journalist he'd felt a new knot in his already overtaxed stomach. This one took up residence right next to the fear that the killer was going to strike again. He'd gone over it all again in his mind, asking himself if they could have done more, if they had really done everything in their power up to this point. The reason that they hadn't caught the killer yet was because the investigation was so complicated, not because of laziness, lack of focus, or poor police work. They had so little to go on. The internal blunders made along the way were another matter. The perfect investigation didn't exist; not even Eva Hillström could claim otherwise.
After the 6 p.m. meeting, when they had ruled out the postal workers and studied different images of Louis with exhausted eyes, Wallander told them about his conversation with the newspaper reporter. Thurnberg, immediately concerned, had questioned Wallander's decision not to respond to the allegations.
"There just isn't time to do everything at once," Wallander had said. "We're so overworked right now that even these allegations will have to wait."
"The national chief of police is going to be here tomorrow," Thurnberg had replied, "and the minister of justice. It's particularly unfortunate that this article is going to coincide with their visit."
Wallander had suddenly understood Thurnberg's real concern. "Not even a shadow of these allegations falls on you," he'd said. "It seems that Eva Hillström and the other parents are critical of the work of the police, not the chief prosecutor's office."
Thurnberg had had nothing else to say. Shortly afterwards they'd called it a day. Höglund had followed Wallander out into the hall and told him that Thurnberg had been asking questions about events in the nature reserve on the day the jogger, Nils Hagroth, claimed to have been assaulted by Wallander. On hearing this, Wallander had been hit by another a wave of exhaustion. Didn't they have enough on their plates without Nils Hagroth's absurd charges? That had been the moment when, despite the consistently high level of activity, the entire day had begun to seem like a waste.
Wallander reluctantly got out of bed at 7.30 a.m. He was already dreading this day. His uniform hung on the cupboard door. He had to put it on now, because there wouldn't be enough time between his meeting with the national chief of police and the minister of justice and the funeral itself. He looked at himself in the mirror after he put it on. The trousers strained alarmingly across his belly. He would have to leave the top button undone. He couldn't remember when he had last worn his uniform but it must have been a long time ago.
On the way to the station he stopped at a news-stand and bought a paper. The reporter had not been exaggerating. It was a big article, with pictures. The parents' allegations were threefold. First, the police had waited too long before acting on the disappearance of their children. Second, they felt the investigation had not been as organised as it could have been. Third, they felt they had been poorly informed of the developments in the case.
The national chief isn't going to be very happy, Wallander thought. It's not going to matter if we tell him that these allegations are unjust. The fact that they've been made will hurt the police.
Wallander approached the station feeling shaken and angry. It was just before 8 a.m. It was going to be a long and depressing day, although the weather was still warm and beautiful.
Holgersson called him from her car at 11.30 a.m. They were on their way from Sturup and would arrive at the station in five minutes. Wallander walked out to reception to greet them. Thurnberg was already there. They exchanged pleasantries, neither of them mentioning the article. The car pulled up outside and everyone got out. The national chief of police and the minister of justice were appropriately dressed for a funeral. Everyone was introduced, and they all proceeded to Holgersson's office for coffee. Before they entered the room, Holgersson pulled Wallander aside.
"They read the article on the plane," she said, "and the national chief is not pleased."
"What about the minister?"
"She seemed more eager to hear your side of the story before giving an opinion."
"Should I say something?"
"No. Only if they bring it up."
They sat down with their coffee and Wallander received their condolences for Svedberg's death. After that, it was his turn to say something. As usual he had forgotten to bring the piece of paper he'd scribbled some notes on. But it didn't really matter. He knew what he wanted to tell them: that they had a lead. They had identified the killer. Things were picking up, there were new developments.
"This whole matter is very unfortunate," the national chief said when Wallander finished. "A policeman and some innocent youngsters murdered. I hope we can count on you to wrap this up shortly. I'm pleased to hear you have a breakthrough."
It was clear that he was extremely anxious.
"No society will ever be free of lunatics," the minister said. "Mass murders happen in democracies and dictatorships the world over."
"And lunatics don't act according to a predictable pattern," Wallander added. "They can't be easily categorised. They plan their deeds carefully, often appearing from nowhere, with no previous criminal record."
"Community policing," the national chief said. "That's where it has to start."
Wallander didn't quite understand the link between lunatics and community policing but he said nothing. The minister asked Thurnberg some questions, then it was over. As they were about to leave for lunch, the national chief noticed that some papers were missing from his briefcase.
"I have a temporary secretary right now," he said glumly. "I never know where anything is. I hardly have time to learn their names before they leave again."
As they toured the station, the minister of justice fell in beside Wallander.
"I heard someone's filed charges against you. Is there anything to it?"
"I'm not concerned about it," Wallander said. "The man was trespassing at the scene of a murder investigation. There was no assault involved."
"I didn't think so," she said encouragingly.
Once they had returned to the reception area, the national chief asked Wallander the same question.
"The timing is very unfortunate," he said.
"It's always unfortunate," Wallander said. "But I have to give you the same answer that I gave the minister. The allegations of an assault are unfounded."
"Then what was it?"
"A man who was trespassing on the scene of a police investigation."
"It's important for the police to maintain a good relationship with the public and the media."
"Once this case is completed, I'll issue a statement to the papers," Wallander said.
"I'd like to see that before it goes to press," the national chief said.
Wallander promised to oblige. He declined to accompany them to lunch, and stopped by Höglund's office instead. It was empty. He returned to his own office and sat down at his desk. The germ of an idea was dancing somewhere deep in his mind, but he couldn't quite catch it. Was it something the minister had said? The national chief? It was gone.
At 2 p.m., Saint Mary's Cathedral by the main square was full of people. Wallander was one of the pallbearers. The coffin was white and simply adorned with roses. They carried it into the church.
Wallander searched the crowd for a man's face, although he wasn't expecting Louis to be there. He didn't see him. But Bror Sundelius was there. Wallander greeted him. Sundelius asked him how the investigation was proceeding.
"We've had a breakthrough," Wallander replied. "That's all I can tell you."
"Just be sure you get him," Sundelius said.
Svedberg's murder had obviously shaken him. Wallander wondered if Sundelius knew what Svedberg had known. Did he feel the same fear? He must talk to him again as soon as possible.
Wallander sat in the front row of the cathedral with a sense of dread in his stomach. Dread at the idea of his own annihilation. He wondered if funerals really had to be such an ordeal. The minister of justice spoke about democracy and the right to a secure life, the national chief of police about the tragic nature of this death. Wallander wondered if he was going to weave in a piece about community policing, then decided he was being unfair. There was no reason for him to question the man's sincerity. When the national chief was finished, it was Ann-Britt Höglund's turn. Wallander had never seen her in her uniform before. She read Wallander's words in a loud, clear voice, and to his surprise he didn't cringe when he heard them.
It was towards the end of the service, right before the processional, when Wallander finally seized the thought that had been skirting the edges of his consciousness. The national chief had said something while rifling through his papers, something about temporary employees who came and went and whose names one never learned before they were gone. At first he didn't know why this comment had stayed with him, but then he suddenly saw the connection. Postal workers must have substitutes who filled in for them when they were away.
It was past 5 p.m. when Wallander was able to return home and take off his tight uniform. He called the postal depot, but no one answered. Before trying to reach Albinsson, he showered and changed, found a pair of glasses and looked in the phone book. Kjell Albinsson lived in Rydsgård. He dialled the number and Albinsson's wife answered. Her husband was playing football for the post office team. She didn't know where the game was being played, but she promised she would have him return Wallander's call.
Wallander heated up tomato soup and ate some slices of crisp bread, then lay on his bed, exhausted despite his good night's sleep. The funeral had tired him out. He was woken by the phone at 7.30 p.m. It was Kjell Albinsson.
"How was the game?" Wallander asked.
"Not so good. We were playing a slaughterhouse team. They have some good players. But it was only a pre-season game. The regular season doesn't start for a while."
"It's a great way to stay in shape."
"Or get your bones broken."
Wallander decided to launch straight into his question. "There was one thing I forgot to ask you the other day. I take it you sometimes employ substitute postal workers."
"That's right. Both short-term and long-term."
"Who do you normally use?"
"We prefer to use people with experience, and we've been pretty lucky. With today's unemployment, we have many to choose from. There are two people who do most of our substituting. One is a woman called Lena Stivell. She had a permanent position, but chose to go to part-time and then to occasional work."
"Is the other one also a woman?"
"No, he's a man called Åke Larstam. He used to be an engineer, but he retrained."
"To become a postal worker?"
"It's not as strange as it sounds. The hours are good and you meet a lot of people."
"Is he working at the moment?"
"He subbed for someone about a week ago. I'm not sure what he's up right now."
"Is there anything else you can tell me about him?"
"He's a very private person, but conscientious. I think he's about 44 years old, and he lives here in Ystad – at number 18, Harmonigatan, if I'm not mistaken."
Wallander thought for a moment. "And these substitutes might be placed on any of your routes?"
"It's supposed to work that way. You never know when someone's going to come down with a cold."
"Which route was Larstam working on last time?"
"The district to the west of Ystad."
Wrong again, Wallander thought. Neither the nature reserve nor Nybrostrand lay to the west.
"Thanks, that's all I wanted to know," he said. "I appreciate you taking the time to call me back."
Wallander hung up and decided to return to the station. The investigative team had no plans to meet that evening, but he would use the time to re-examine material in the case files. The phone rang. It was Albinsson again.
"I made a mistake," he said. "I mixed up Lena's and Åke's assignments. Lena took the route to the west of Ystad."
"And was Åke Larstam also working?"
"That's where I was wrong. He last subbed on a route in Nybrostrand."
"When was that?"
"In July. The assignment was only for a couple of weeks."
"Do you remember the route he had before that?"
"He had a long-term assignment out towards Rögla. That must have been from March to June."
"Thanks for telling me," Wallander said.
He replaced the receiver. Åke Larstam had recently been delivering post in the area where Torbjörn Werner and Malin Skander lived. Before then, he had been delivering post in an area that included Skårby, where Isa Edengren lived. It was probably mere coincidence, but he couldn't help taking out the phone book and looking for Larstam's entry. There was no one by that name in the book. He called information and was told that Larstam had an unlisted number.
Wallander dressed and went down to the station. To his surprise, Höglund was also there. She was in her office, looking through a thick pile of papers.
"I didn't think anyone else would be here," he said.
She was still dressed in her uniform. Wallander had already complimented her on her speech earlier in the day.
"My babysitter is there tonight," she said. "I have to make the most of it. There's so much paperwork to do."
"Same here. That's why I came down too."
He sat down in her visitor's chair. She saw he wanted to discuss something with her, and she pushed her pile of paper to the side. Wallander told her about the idea he'd had after hearing the national chief mention his temporary secretary. Then he described his conversation with Albinsson.
"From his description, he hardly sounds like a mass murderer," she said.
"Who does? My point is that we finally have someone whose activities we can trace to three of the victims' homes."
"So what are you suggesting we do?"
"I just came here to talk to you about it, nothing more."
"We've talked to the regular postal workers, so we should talk to these substitutes too. Is that what you want?"
"I don't think we need to bother with Lena Stivell."
Höglund looked down at her watch. "We could take a short walk," she said. "Get some fresh air. We could walk by Harmonigatan and ring Larstam's bell. It's not that late."
"Even I hadn't thought that far," he said. "But I like your idea."
It took them ten minutes to walk to Harmonigatan, which lay in the western part of the city. Number 18 was an older, three-storey block of flats. Larstam lived on the top floor. Wallander rang the bell and they waited. He rang it again.
"I suppose he isn't home," she said. Wallander crossed the street and looked up at the flat. Two of the windows were lit. He went back and tried the front door. It was open, so they walked in. There was no elevator. They walked up the wide stairs. Wallander rang the doorbell, and they heard it ring inside. Nothing happened. He rang it three times. Höglund bent down and looked through the post slot.
"There's no sound," she said. "But the light's on."
Wallander rang the bell one last time, then Höglund banged on the door.
"We'll have to try again tomorrow," she said.
Wallander was struck by the feeling that something wasn't quite right. She noticed it immediately.
"What are you thinking?"
"I don't know. That something doesn't add up."
"He's probably not home. The manager at the post office said that he's not working at the moment. He might have gone somewhere for a few days. That's a logical explanation."
"You're probably right," Wallander said doubtfully.
She started down the stairs. "Let's try again tomorrow," she said.
"That is if we don't try to go in tonight anyway."
She looked up at him with genuine surprise. "Are you suggesting that we break in? Is he even a suspect?"
"It's just that we happen to be here now."
She shook her head vigorously. "I can't let you do it. It goes against all the rules."
Wallander shrugged. "You're right. We'll try again tomorrow."
They returned to the station. During the walk they discussed how the workload should be distributed over the next couple of days. They parted in reception, and Wallander returned to his office to deal with some pressing paperwork.
Shortly before 11 p.m. he dialled the number of the Stockholm restaurant where Linda worked. For once he succeeded in getting through, but Linda was very busy. They agreed that she would call him in the morning.
"How is everything?" he asked. "Have you decided where you're going to go?"
"Not yet. I will."
The conversation gave him a burst of energy. He returned to his paperwork. At 11.30 p.m., Höglund came to say she was leaving.
"I'll try to be here before 8 a.m.," she said. "We can start by visiting Larstam again."
"We'll fit it in when we have the time," Wallander said.
Wallander waited for five minutes, then took a set of skeleton keys out of his desk drawer and left the office. He had already made up his mind while they were deliberating outside Larstam's door. If she didn't want to be party to breaking in, he would do it alone. There was something about Åke Larstam that bothered him.
He walked back to Harmonigatan. It was just before midnight and there was a soft, easterly breeze. Wallander thought he could feel a touch of autumn chill in the air. Maybe the heat wave was nearing its end. He rang the bell from downstairs and noted that the same lights were on. When there was no answer, he pushed open the front door and walked up the stairs.
He had a feeling of being back where it all began; of reliving the night when he and Martinsson had gone up to Svedberg's flat. He shuddered, then listened intently outside the door of the flat. Not a sound. He carefully opened the post slot. No sound, just a soft beam of light. He rang the doorbell and waited, then rang it again. After waiting for five minutes, he got out the skeleton keys, and looked closely at the door. It was fitted with the most elaborate set of locks he had ever seen in his life. Åke Larstam was clearly a person who valued his privacy. There was no way he would be able to open these locks with his skeleton keys. At the same time, the need to get inside seemed more pressing than ever. He hesitated for only a moment before getting out his phone and calling Nyberg.
Nyberg answered in his usual irritated tone. Wallander didn't need to ask if he had been asleep.
"I need your help," he said.
"Don't tell me it's happened again," Nyberg groaned.
"No one's dead," Wallander said. "But I need your help opening a door."
"You don't need a technician for that."
"In this case I do."
Nyberg growled on the other end, but he was fully awake now. Wallander described the locks to him and gave him the address. Nyberg promised to come. Wallander walked quietly down the stairs and waited for him out on the street. He would need to explain to him what was going on, and Nyberg was probably going to protest loudly. With good reason.
Wallander knew he was doing something he shouldn't.
Nyberg arrived within ten minutes. Wallander guessed he was wearing pyjamas under his coat. As he had expected, Nyberg immediately issued a furious protest.
"You can't just break into the homes of innocent people."
"I need you to open the door," Wallander said. "Then you're free to go. I take full responsibility, and I won't tell a soul you've been here."
Nyberg still expressed his reluctance, but when Wallander insisted he walked up the stairs and studied the locks carefully.
"No one will believe you," he said. "There's no way you'd get past this on your own."
Then he got to work. At just before 1 a.m., the door finally opened.
The first thing he noticed was the smell. After he stepped into the hall, he stood absolutely still to and listened for sounds within the flat. That's when it hit him. Nyberg stayed where he was on the other side of the door. The smell was overpowering.
He realised that it was merely the smell of a place that was never aired. The air had actually gone bad. Wallander gestured for Nyberg to follow him in, which he did unwillingly. Wallander told him to wait there and walked into the rest of the flat on his own. There were three rooms and a little kitchen, all clean and orderly. The neatness contrasted strongly with the bad air.
The door to one of the rooms differed from the others. It looked as if it had been specially made. When Wallander pushed it open he saw that it was extremely thick. It reminded him of a door to a recording studio, like the ones he had seen on the few occasions he'd done radio interviews. Wallander stepped inside. There was something strange about the room. There were no windows and the walls were reinforced. There was a bed and a lamp in the room, nothing else. The bed was made, but there was a faint imprint of a body on the bedspread. It took him a while to put it together: the room looked as it did because it had been soundproofed. His curiosity piqued, Wallander walked through the rest of the flat again, hoping to find a picture of the man who lived there. There were shelves full of porcelain figures, but not a single photograph. Wallander came to a halt in the living room, suddenly overtaken by the sense that he was violating someone's privacy.
He had no business being here. He should leave at once. But something held him back. He returned to the hall where Nyberg was waiting.
"Five more minutes," he said. "That's all."
Nyberg didn't reply. Wallander returned to the flat, conducting a methodical search now. He knew what he was looking for. He went through the three cupboards one by one. In the first two he found only men's clothing. He was about to close the door of the third when he caught sight of something. He reached into one end of the cupboard, where some clothes had been hung behind the others, and pulled out a hanger. It held a red dress. He started going through the drawers with equal concentration, feeling underneath the neatly folded piles of men's clothing. The sense that time was running out, that he had to hurry, spurred him on. Again, he came up lucky. Various articles of women's underclothing were hidden away. He returned to the third cupboard, crept around on hands and knees, and found some women's shoes. He was careful to return things as they had been. Nyberg came out into the living room as he worked.
Wallander could see that he was furious. Or possibly afraid.
"It's been almost 15 minutes," he hissed. "What the hell are we doing here?"
Wallander didn't answer. Now he was looking around for a desk. There was an old secretary's desk in the corner. It was locked. He motioned for Nyberg to work on it, but Nyberg objected.
Wallander interrupted his protests, giving him the shortest possible answer he could think of.
"Louise lives here," he said. "You know, the woman in the picture we found in Svedberg's flat. The woman in Copenhagen. The one who doesn't really exist. She lives here."
"You could have said that a little earlier," Nyberg said.
"I didn't know for sure," Wallander said. "Not until this moment. Could you open that desk for me, without leaving any marks?"
Nyberg unlocked it quickly with his tools. The lid folded down into a writing surface.
It had often seemed to Wallander that police work was characterised by a series of expectations that were inevitably disappointed. What he had been expecting at this particular moment, he was later unable to determine, but it could not have been what actually awaited his gaze.
There was a plastic folder full of newspaper clippings, all related to the murder investigation. There was a copy of Svedberg's obituary, which Wallander hadn't seen until then.
Nyberg was waiting behind him. "You should take a look at this," Wallander said slowly. "It'll explain what we're doing in this flat."
Nyberg took a few steps forward, flinched, then looked at Wallander.
"We could leave," Wallander said, "and put the house under surveillance. Or we could call for reinforcements and start going through the flat right away."
"He's killed eight people," Nyberg said. "That means he's armed and dangerous."
It hadn't occurred to Wallander that they might be in danger. That made up his mind for him: they'd get reinforcements. Nyberg closed the desk. Wallander went into the kitchen, where he had seen some glasses on the counter. He wrapped one of them in paper and put it in his pocket. He was about to leave the kitchen when he noticed that the back door was slightly ajar. He felt a wave of fear so powerful it almost knocked him over. He thought someone was about to push the door open and shoot. But nothing happened. Gingerly he approached the back door and nudged it gently. The back stairs were empty. Nyberg was already on his way out of the flat by the front door. Wallander joined him.
They listened carefully. Nothing. Nyberg softly closed the front door. He examined the threshold with a torch.
"There are a few scratches," he said. "But they're not noticeable unless you're really looking for them."
Wallander thought about the back door that had been slightly ajar. He decided to keep it to himself for now. When they got to the station, Wallander literally ran down the corridor to his office. The first person he called was Martinsson, since he wanted him there as soon as possible.
During the next ten minutes he talked to a number of sleepy people who became surprisingly alert when he told them about his find. Martinsson was the first to arrive, then Höglund and the others in rapid succession.
"I'm lucky," she said. "My mother's visiting."
"I went back to Harmonigatan," Wallander said. "I had the feeling it couldn't wait."
By 2 a.m., everyone was assembled. Wallander looked around the table. He wondered briefly how Thurnberg had found the time to get such a perfect knot in his tie. Then he told them about his discovery.
"What made you go over there in the middle of the night?" Hansson asked.
"I'm usually sceptical of my intuition," Wallander said. "But this time I was right."
He shook off his tiredness. Now he had to shape his investigative team into hunters, stalking their prey in ever-narrowing circles until he was caught.
"We don't know where he is right now," he said. "But the back door was open. Given the nature of the locks on his front door, I think we can assume he heard us working on them and fled. In other words, he knows we're closing in on him."
"That means he's not likely to return," Martinsson said.
"We don't know that for sure. I'd like to put the place under surveillance. One car is fine, as long as there are several others close by."
Wallander brought his palms down heavily on the table.
"This man is extremely dangerous," he said. "I want everyone to be fully armed."
Hansson and one of the reinforcements from Malmö volunteered to take the first watch. Nyberg said he would take them to the flat and see if there had been any change in the lights in the window.
"I want to talk to Kjell Albinsson in Rydsgård," Wallander continued. "A car should be sent out to bring him in."
No one remembered Albinsson. Wallander explained that he was the manager at the postal depot and moved on.
"We need to check if Åke Larstam turns up in any police records," he said. "That's your responsibility, Martinsson. It may be the middle of the night to everyone else, but to us it's a normal working day. Feel free to call anyone you can think of who may have important information. Albinsson will give us some details about Larstam, but it may not be enough. This man dresses up as a woman and takes on other personas. His name may not even be Larstam. We have to look everywhere we can think of for clues. Everywhere."
Wallander now took out the glass he had taken from the flat and placed it on the table.
"If we're lucky, there are prints on this glass," he said. "And if I'm right, they're going to match the ones we found in Svedberg's flat, as well as the ones in the nature reserve."
"What about Sundelius?" Höglund asked. "Shouldn't we wake him up as well? He may know something about Larstam."
Wallander nodded and glanced briefly at Thurnberg, who seemed to have no objections.
"Why don't you do the honours, Ann-Britt? Don't let him off easily this time. He's been hiding something from us, I'm sure of it. Now we have no more time for secrets."
Thurnberg nodded. "That sounds reasonable enough," he said. "But let me just ask this: is there any possibility that we're mistaken?"
"No," Wallander said. "We're not mistaken."
"I just want to make sure, since the only thing we really have on this man is a file of newspaper clippings."
Wallander felt perfectly calm as he answered. "It's him. There's not a single doubt in my mind."
They made the conference room their provisional headquarters. Wallander was still in his chair at the end of the table when they brought in Kjell Albinsson. He was very pale and seemed bewildered at having been woken up in the middle of the night and brought to the police station. Wallander asked someone to bring him a cup of coffee. In the background he saw Höglund go by with an indignant Sundelius.
"I want to explain the whole situation to you," he began. "We think Åke Larstam is the person who killed a police officer by the name of Svedberg a few weeks ago, the same man who was buried yesterday."
Albinsson went whiter still. "That's just not possible."
"There's more," Wallander said. "We're also convinced he killed three young people in Hagestad's nature reserve, as well as a young woman on an island in the Östergöt-land archipelago, and finally a couple of newly-weds out in Nybrostrand. What I'm telling you is that this person has killed eight people in a relatively short space of time, making him one of the worst mass murderers that Sweden has ever had."
Albinsson simply shook his head. "There has to be some mistake. It can't be Åke."
"I wouldn't be talking with you now if I wasn't utterly certain. You must take my word for it, and make sure you answer my questions as thoroughly as you can. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
Thurnberg walked in and sat across the table from Albinsson without a word.
"This is chief prosecutor Thurnberg," Wallander said. "The fact that he's here means you're not being charged with anything."
Albinsson didn't seem to understand. "I'm not charged with anything?"
"That's what I said. Now try to concentrate on my questions."
Albinsson nodded. The realisation of where he was and why seemed slowly to be sinking in.
"Åke Larstam lives at number 18, Harmonigatan," Wallander said. "We know he isn't there now, and we suspect he's fled. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"
"I don't really know him outside work."
"Does he have a summer house? Any close friends?"
"Not that I know of."
"You must know something."
"There's some information about him in the employee records. But all that's kept at the depot."
Wallander swore under his breath. He should have thought of that himself. "Then we'll get it," he said. "Now."
He called in some patrol officers and sent them off with Albinsson. When he returned to his seat, Thurnberg was making notes on a pad.
"How did you enter the flat in the first place?" he said.
"I broke in," Wallander said. "Nyberg was present but the responsibility was wholly mine."
"I hope you're right about Larstam. Otherwise this is going to look very bad."
"I envy you that you should have time to think about such things right now."
"You have to understand my position," Thurnberg said. "Sometimes people make mistakes."
Wallander controlled his temper with some difficulty.
"I don't want another murder on my hands," he said. "That's the bottom line. And Åke Larstam is the man we've been looking for."
"No one wants any more murders," Thurnberg said. "But we also don't want any more police errors."
Wallander was about to ask Thurnberg what he meant by this when Martinsson came in.
"Nyberg called," he said. "The lights in the window haven't changed."
"What about the neighbours?" Wallander asked.
"Where do you want me to start?" Martinsson asked. "With Larstam and the police records? Or with the neighbours?"
"You should do both at the same time. But if we can find anything on Larstam in our files, it would be useful."
Martinsson left and silence filled the room. Somewhere a dog barked and Wallander wondered absently if it was Kall. It was just before 3 a.m. Wallander left to get some coffee. The door to Höglund's office was closed. She was in there with Sundelius. For a moment he wondered if he should go in, but he decided against it.
Wallander returned to the conference room and saw that Thurnberg had left. He glanced at his pad to see what Thurnberg had written. Dashes, ashes, lashes. A random series of rhyming words. Wallander shook his head.
Five minutes went by, then Albinsson came in. He was less pale now. He held a yellow folder in his hands.
"These are confidential records," he said. "I should really consult the postmaster before handing them over."
"If you do that I'll get the chief prosecutor back in here," Wallander said, "and have you arrested for obstruction of justice and aiding a criminal."
Albinsson seemed to take this seriously. Wallander stretched out his hand and took the file. The records confirmed what Albinsson had already told him. From the beginning of March to the middle of June Larstam had worked on the Skårby route. In July he had delivered post in Nybrostrand.
There was little personal information. Åke Larstam had been born on 10 November 1952, in Eskilstuna. His full name was Åke Leonard Larstam. He had graduated from high school in 1970, had done his compulsory military training in Skövde the following year, then had enrolled at the prestigious Chalmers School of Engineering in Gothenburg in 1972. He had graduated from Chalmers in 1979 and taken a job in Stockholm with Strand Consulting. He'd worked there until 1985, when he'd given notice and started to retrain for the postal service. That year he had moved first to Höör and then to Ystad. He was unmarried and had no children. The space allotted to "emergency contact" was blank.
"Doesn't this man even have any relatives?"
"Apparently not," Albinsson said.
"But he must have socialised with someone."
"He was very private, as I said."
Wallander put down the file. All of the facts would be verified, but for now Wallander had to concentrate on finding where Larstam was.
"No one is completely without personal relationships," Wallander said. "Who did he talk to? Who did he have coffee with? Did he have any strong opinions? There has to be something more you can say about him."
"We talked about him sometimes," Albinsson said. "He was so hard to get to know. But since he was always so friendly and helpful, everyone left him alone. You can grow fond of people you know nothing about."
Wallander thought about what Albinsson had just said. Then he chose a different tack.
"Some of these jobs were long-term, some just a matter of days. Did you ever know him to turn down an assignment?"
"No."
"So he didn't seem to have another job?"
"Not that we knew about. He could get ready at a few hours' notice."
"That means you always managed to get hold of him."
"Yes."
"He was always at home waiting for the phone to ring?"
Albinsson was very serious when he answered. "It seemed like that."
"You've described him as conscientious, helpful, careful and responsible. And introverted. Did he ever do anything that surprised you?"
Albinsson thought for a while. "He sang to himself."
"Sang?"
"Yes. He hummed melodies under his breath."
"What kinds of things?"
"Mainly hymns, I think. He would do it as he was sorting the post, or as he was walking out to his car. I don't know how to describe it. He sang in a very low voice, probably because he didn't want it to bother anyone."
"He sang hymns?"
"Or religious songs."
"Was he religious?"
"How would I know that?"
"Just answer the question."
"There's a thing called freedom of religion in this country. Åke Larstam could be a Buddhist for all I know."
"Buddhists don't go around shooting people," Wallander said sharply. "Did he have any other peculiar characteristics?"
"He washed his hands a lot."
"Anything else?"
"The only time I saw him in a bad mood was when people around him were laughing. But that seemed to pass quickly enough."
Wallander stared at Albinsson. "Can you elaborate on what you just said?"
"Not really. It's just what I told you."
"He didn't like people being happy?"
"I wouldn't say that, but he seemed to withdraw more when other people were laughing. I suppose you could call that being happy. It seemed to irritate him."
Wallander had a flashback to the crime scene at Nybrostrand. Nyberg had turned to him and said that the killer didn't seem to like happy people.
"Did he ever show any violent tendencies?"
"Never."
"Any other tendencies?"
"He had no tendencies. You hardly noticed him."
Wallander sensed there was something else that Albinsson was trying to get at. He waited.
"Maybe you could say that his strongest characteristic was the fact that he didn't seem to want to be noticed. He was the kind of person who never turns his back to a door."
"What do you mean by that?"
"That he always wanted to know who was coming and going."
Wallander thought he knew what Albinsson was saying. He looked at his watch. It was 3.41 a.m. He called Höglund.
"Are you still with Sundelius?"
"Yes."
"I'd like to see you out in the hall for a moment."
Wallander got up. "Can I go home now?" Albinsson asked. "I know my wife must be worried."
"Please feel free to call her. But you can't go home just yet."
Wallander went out into the hall and closed the door. Höglund was already waiting for him.
"What did Sundelius say?"
"He claims he doesn't know who Åke Larstam is. He keeps repeating that he and Svedberg never did anything but look at stars, and that once they went to a natural healer together. He's very upset. I don't think he's comfortable talking to a female police officer."
Wallander nodded thoughtfully. "I think we can send him home for now," he said. "He probably didn't know Larstam. I think what we have is two separate nests of secrets. We have Larstam, who eavesdropped on his victims' most intimate affairs. And we have Svedberg, who kept a part of his life secret from Sundelius."
"And what would that have been?"
"Just think about it."
"You mean there's a love triangle of sorts behind all this?"
"Not behind. In the middle of."
She nodded. "I'll send him home. When are Hansson and the others supposed to be relieved?"
Wallander realised he had already made up his mind.
"They can stay. We're going in. Åke Larstam isn't coming back tonight. He's holed up somewhere – the question is where. If we're going to find the answer, our best place to start is in his flat."
Wallander returned to the conference room while Albinsson was talking on the phone to his wife. Wallander signalled for him to finish his call.
"Have you been able to think of anything else?" he asked. "Where could Åke Larstam have gone?"
"I don't know. But that makes me think of another way to describe him."
"How?"
"That he was always trying to hide."
Wallander nodded. "I'll have someone take you home now," he said. "But give me a call if you think of anything else."
They went back into Åke Larstam's flat at 4.15 a.m. Wallander gathered everyone outside the door to the soundproofed bedroom.
"We're looking for two things," he said. "The first is where he could be hiding. Does he have a secret hiding place? How do we force him to show himself? The second is whether he is planning to kill again. That's the most important point. It would also be useful if anyone found a picture of him."
He took Nyberg aside when he finished. "We need fingerprints," he said. "Thurnberg is nervous. We have to have something that places Larstam at the scene of the crime. This has to take precedence over anything else."
"I'll see what I can do," Nyberg said.
"Don't see what you can do, just do it," Wallander said.
Wallander went into the soundproofed room and sat down on the bed. Hansson appeared in the doorway, but Wallander waved him away.
Why build a soundproofed room? To keep sounds out, or to keep them in? Why, in a town like Ystad? Traffic is never that bad. His thoughts wandered. The bed was uncomfortable to sit on. He got up and looked under the sheets. There was no mattress, just the hard platform of the bedframe. He's a masochist, Wallander thought. Why? He stooped to peer under the bed. There was nothing there, not even a speck of dust. Wallander tried to summon forth the spirit of the man who lived here. Åke Larstam, 44 years of age. Born in Eskilstuna, a graduate of Chalmers. An engineer turned postal worker. You suddenly go out and kill eight people. Apart from Svedberg and the photographer, your victims were all dressed up. The photographer just happened to be in the way, and you killed Svedberg because he was on to you. His worst fears were confirmed. But the others were dressed up, and they were happy. Why did you kill them? Was it in here, in your soundproofed chamber, that you planned everything?
Wallander didn't feel any closer to the killer's thoughts. He walked out into the living room, and looked around at all the porcelain figures. Dogs, roosters, dolls in 19th-century dress, gnomes and trolls. It's like a doll's house, Wallander thought. A doll's house inhabited by a lunatic with bad taste. He wondered why Larstam kept all these kitsch souvenirs.
Höglund came in from the kitchen and interrupted his train of thought. Wallander knew immediately that she had found something.
"I think you'd better take a look at this," she said. Wallander followed her into the kitchen. One of the drawers had been pulled out and placed on the table. At the top of a pile of papers in the drawer was a piece of mathematical paper. Something was written on it in pencil. If that was Larstam's handwriting, he wrote in an unusually spiky style. Wallander put on his glasses and read what it said.
There were only ten words, forming a macabre poem of sorts. Number 9. Wednesday 21. He giveth and He taketh away. The meaning was immediately clear to Wallander, as it must have been to Höglund.
"He's already killed eight people," Wallander said. "This is about victim number nine."
"It's the 21st today," she said. "And it's Wednesday."
"We have to find him," Wallander said, "before he gets a chance to do this."
"What about the last part? What does he mean by 'He giveth and He taketh away'?"
"It means Larstam hates happy people. He wants what they have to be taken from them."
Wallander told her what Albinsson had said.
"How do you go about locating happy people?" she asked.
"You go out and look for them."
He felt the knot in his stomach return.
"One thing is strange," she said. "This number nine sounds like a single person. But if you disregard Svedberg, he's always gone for a group of some sort in the past."
"You're right to disregard Svedberg. He's not part of the pattern. It's a good point."
It was 4.20 a.m. Wallander walked over to the window and looked out into the night. It was still dark. Åke Larstam was out there in that darkness. Wallander felt a sudden twinge of panic. We're not going to get him in time, he thought. We're going to be too late. He's already chosen his victim and we have no idea who it is. We're scurrying around like blind mice, not knowing where to turn. We know nothing.
Wallander put on a pair of rubber gloves and starting going through the rest of the papers in the drawer.
The sea. That would be his place of last resort, if it ever came to that. He imagined himself walking straight out, slowly sinking down to the place where eternal darkness and silence reigned. A place where no one would ever find a single trace of him.
He took one of his cars and drove down to the sea, just west of Ystad. Mossbystrand was deserted this August evening. Few cars went by on the road to Trelleborg. He parked so that none of the lights from oncoming traffic would hit him, and so that he could make a quick getaway if he was being followed.
There was one detail about the latest events that disturbed him. He had been lucky. If his bedroom door had been completely closed, as it usually was, he would never have heard them breaking into the flat that evening. He had woken up with a start, realised what was happening, and slipped out the back door. He had no idea if he had remembered to close it behind him. The only thing that he had grabbed, apart from some clothes, was his gun.
Although he had been shaken, he'd forced himself to drive calmly. He didn't want to risk having an accident.
Now it was 4 a.m. and it would be a while before the sun came up. He thought about everything that had happened and wondered if he had made a mistake. But he couldn't find anything. He was not going to alter his plans.
Everything had gone well. During Svedberg's funeral he had gone to the policeman's flat on Mariagatan. It was easy enough to pick the lock. He'd looked through the flat and quickly established that the man lived alone. Then he'd made his plans. It was easier than he expected; he found a set of spare keys to the flat in a kitchen drawer. He wouldn't have to pick the lock next time. For fun he lay down on the policeman's bed, but it was much too soft. He felt as though he was drowning.
Afterwards he had gone home, showered, eaten and rested in the soundproofed room. Later he'd done something that he had been planning to do for a long time. He polished all his porcelain figurines. That had taken quite a while. When he was done, he'd eaten his supper and gone to bed. He had been sleeping for several hours when he'd heard the policemen at the door.
He thought about the fact that the police were in his flat right now, pulling out drawers, dirtying the floor, moving his porcelain figurines around. It enraged him, and he could hardly control his desire to rush back and shoot them all. But self-preservation was more important than revenge, and he knew they would find nothing in the flat to help them in their search. He kept no photographs there, no private documents, nothing. They didn't know about the safe-deposit box he kept at the bank under an assumed name. That's where all the important documents were, such as his car registration and his financial information.
They would probably be in his flat for many hours but sooner or later the policeman would return home, exhausted after his sleepless night. And he would be there waiting for him.
He returned to the car. The most important thing was for him to catch up on the sleep he had missed. He could of course sleep in one of his cars, but there was a slight chance that he could be discovered. He also disliked the idea of curling up in the back seat. It was undignified. He wanted to stretch out in a real bed, one where he could remove the mattress to give him the firm support he liked.
He considered checking into a hotel under a false name, but dismissed the possibility when he had a sudden flash of inspiration. There was one place he could go where no one would disturb him. And there was always the back door if someone turned up unexpectedly. He started the engine and turned on the headlights. It was almost time for the sun to rise. He needed to sleep, to rest in preparation for the coming day.
He turned on to the main road and drove back to Ystad.
It was close to 5 a.m. when Wallander started to realise how best to describe the kind of person Åke Larstam was. He was someone who left no trace of himself. They had nearly finished their search of the flat and hadn't managed to find even one object that revealed anything about the person who lived there. There was no post, not even a piece of paper with Åke Larstam's name on it.
"I've never seen anything like it," Wallander said. "Åke Larstam doesn't seem to exist. We can't find a single document that verifies his existence, even though we know he's real."
"Maybe he keeps another flat somewhere," Martinsson said.
"Maybe he has ten other flats," Wallander answered. "He might have all kinds of villas and summer houses, but if so we have nothing here that will lead us to them."
"Perhaps he took everything with him when he fled," Hansson said. "He may have known we were closing in on him."
"The state of this flat doesn't suggest that," Wallander said. "I think he lived like this. The man has a professionally soundproofed room. But you may be right. I hope you are; then perhaps we'll find something after all."
The piece of paper lay on the table in front of them.
"Are we misinterpreting it?" Höglund asked.
"It says what it says. Nyberg claims it was written recently. He can tell that from the consistency of the graphite, or something like that."
"Why do you think he wrote it?"
Martinsson was the one who asked the last question, and Wallander knew it was an important one.
"You're right," he said. "It stands out as the only personal item we've found. What does it mean? I'm assuming that he was here when Nyberg and I were at the door. The unlocked back door seems to imply a hasty departure."
"Then this was something he left behind inadvertently?" Martinsson asked.
"That's the most plausible explanation. Or rather the most obvious. But is it the right one?"
"What would the alternative be?"
"That he wanted us to find it."
No one seemed to grasp what Wallander was getting at. He knew it was a flimsy theory.
"What do we know about Åke Larstam? We know he's good at getting the information he needs. He ferrets out other people's secrets. I'm not saying he has access to our investigation, but I think the information he does have is aided by a fair amount of foresight. He must have considered the possibility that we would find him. The fact that I turned up at that bar in Copenhagen, if nothing else, would have forced him to think about this. What does he do? He prepares to flee, but first he prepares a greeting for us. He knows we'll find it, since there's nothing much else here to find."
"But that still doesn't tell us why," Martinsson said.
"He's teasing us. That's not so unusual. Lunatics like this often enjoy taunting the police. He must have exulted over his triumph in Copenhagen. There he was, parading around as Louise just after the Danish papers had run her picture, and he still managed to get away."
"It still strikes me as strange that we would find this piece of paper on the very day he's planning to kill again."
"He couldn't have known when we would get here."
But the words sounded unconvincing even to his ears. Wallander let it drop.
"We have to take his threats seriously," he said. "We have to assume he intends to strike again."
"Do we have any leads whatsoever?" The question came from Thurnberg, who had appeared in the doorway.
"No," Wallander said. "We have nothing. We might as well be honest about that."
No one said anything. Wallander knew he had to counteract the sense of hopelessness that was spreading through the team. It was 5.20 a.m. Wallander suggested that they report back at 8 a.m. That would give everyone an opportunity to rest for an hour or so. They would station a couple of officers outside the block of flats, and they would also start questioning the neighbours about Larstam.
Nyberg waited until everyone except Wallander had left the room.
"He keeps a clean house," he said. "But we have fingerprints."
"Anything else?"
"Not really."
"Any weapons?"
"No, I would have already told you about something like that."
Wallander nodded. Nyberg's face was ashen with exhaustion.
"I think you were right about the killer and happy people."
"Will we find him?"
"Sooner or later. But I dread what may happen today."
"Couldn't we make some kind of announcement?"
"Saying what exactly? That people should avoid laughing today? He's already chosen his victim. It's probably someone who isn't giving a thought to the idea of being followed."
"I guess we might have a better chance of locating his hideout if we keep quiet."
"That's my thought, too. I just don't know how much time we have."
"Shouldn't we also consider the possibility that he may not have an extra flat or summer house to run to? What then? Where would he go?"
Nyberg was right. Wallander hadn't considered this possibility. The fatigue had wrung his brain dry. "What do you think?" he asked.
Nyberg shrugged. "We know he has a car. Maybe he's curled up in the back seat. It's still warm enough to sleep outside. That's another possibility. Or he may have a boat. There are a number of options."
"Too many," Wallander said. "We have no time to look for him."
"I understand the hell you're in right now," Nyberg said. "Don't think I don't."
It was rare for Nyberg to express anything remotely close to emotion. Wallander sensed his support, and for once felt somewhat less alone.
Once Wallander was out on the street, he was no longer sure what to do. He knew he needed to go home, shower, and sleep for at least half an hour. But anxiety drove him to keep going. A squad car took him back to the station. He felt queasy and thought about trying to eat something, but instead he drank some more coffee and took his medication. He sat down at his desk and started working through the file again. He saw himself back at Svedberg's flat, with Martinsson close behind. Åke Larstam was the one who had been there and killed Svedberg. Wallander still couldn't see their relationship clearly, but the photo Svedberg had was of Larstam dressed as a woman. Now he knew why the flat had looked the way it did. Larstam's greatest fear was leaving traces of himself. After shooting Svedberg, he had turned the flat upside down looking for that photograph. But Svedberg had had a secret of his own.
The team met promptly at 8 a.m. When Wallander saw the fatigue and anxiety on the faces around him, he worried that he had failed them. Not that he had led them down the wrong path, but that he hadn't led them down the right one. They were still fumbling around in a no-man's-land, not knowing which way to turn. He had one clear thought in his head.
"From now on we work together," he said. "This room will be our headquarters and our meeting place."
The others went to their offices to get the materials they needed. Only Martinsson lingered in the doorway.
"Have you slept at all?" he asked.
Wallander shook his head. "You have to," Martinsson said firmly. "We can't do this if you collapse."
"I can keep going a while longer."
"You've already crossed the line. I slept for an hour. It helped."
"I'll take a walk soon," Wallander said. "I'll go home and change my shirt."
Martinsson looked as if he was going to add something, but Wallander held his hand up to stop him. He didn't have the energy to listen. He didn't know if he was ever going to have the energy to get up from his chair again. They all filed back into the room and closed the door. Thurnberg loosened his tie and actually looked tired. Holgersson sent a message saying that she was in her office dealing with the press.
Everyone looked at Wallander.
"We have to try to understand the way he thinks," he said. "And we have to figure out where can we look for answers. We're not only going to look back through our files on this investigation; some of us will have to examine this man's past. We need to know if he has any living relatives at all, if anyone remembers him from his time at Chalmers, or his old workplace. Where did he retrain to become a postal worker? Our biggest problem is time. We have to assume that the note we found was a message to us about his intentions. Somehow we have to decide what information to look for first."
"We should find out about his parents," Höglund said. "We can only hope his mother is still alive. A mother knows her children; we've learned that lesson."
"Why don't you look into that?" Wallander said.
"One more thing," she said. "I think there's something strange about his career switch from engineer to postal worker. That needs to be explored."
"I recently heard about a bishop who started driving a taxi," Hansson said.
"This is different," she said. "I heard about that bishop, too. He was already 55 – maybe he wanted to try something completely different before he got too old. But Åke Larstam made his switch before he turned 40."
Wallander sensed that this was important. "You mean that something happened?"
"Yes, something significant had to have happened to make him change his life so completely."
"He moved, too," Thurnberg said. "That suggests that Ann-Britt is right."
"I'll look into this myself," Wallander said. "I'll call that engineering firm – what was it called?"
Martinsson flipped through his papers. "Strand Consulting. He left in 1985, which means he was then 33 years old."
"We'll start there," Wallander said. "The rest of you will keep looking through the material we already have. You're trying to find out where he might be, and who his next victim is."
"What about bringing in Kjell Albinsson again?" Thurnberg asked. "He might think of something else, particularly if he participates in our discussion."
"You're right," Wallander said. "We'll bring him back. Someone also has to run Larstam's name through the database."
"His name isn't there," Martinsson said. "I've already checked."
Wallander was surprised that he had found the time to do it, but then he realised that Martinsson must have lied when he said he had slept for an hour. He had been working as hard as Wallander, but had lied out of consideration. He didn't know if he should be touched or angry. He decided against both, and pushed on.
"Get me the number of that firm."
He dialled the number that was read out to him and reached a recording stating that the number had been changed. He dialled the new number, which was in Vaxholm, an island very close to Stockholm. This time someone answered.
"Strand Consulting," a female voice said.
"My name is Kurt Wallander. I'm a detective with the criminal division in Ystad. I need some information about a former employee at your company."
"And who might that be?"
"An engineer by the name of Åke Larstam."
"There's no one here by that name."
"I know. That's what I just said. He's a former employee. Please listen."
"There's no need to take that tone with me. How do I know you're really from the police, anyway?"
Wallander was about to pull the phone out of the wall but managed to calm himself.
"Of course you have no way of knowing who I am," he said. "But all the same, I need information on Åke Larstam. He left the firm in 1985."
"That was before my time. You'd better speak with Persson."
"Why don't I give you my number? That way he can double-check that I'm calling from the Ystad police station."
She wrote down the number.
"This is an urgent matter. Is Persson available?"
"He's meeting with a client right now, but I'll have him call you when he's done."
"That's not soon enough," Wallander said. "He'll have to interrupt his meeting and call me back immediately."
"I'll tell him it's important, but that's all I can do."
"Then tell him this: if he doesn't return my call in three minutes, a police helicopter will be dispatched from Stockholm to bring him in for questioning."
Wallander hung up, aware that everyone was staring at him. He looked over at Thurnberg, who burst out laughing.
"I'm sorry about that," Wallander said. "I had to say something."
Thurnberg nodded. "I didn't hear you say anything."
The phone rang in less than two minutes. The man on the other end said he was Hans Persson. Wallander told him what he needed to know, without saying that Åke Larstam was wanted for murder.
"According to our information, he stopped working for you in 1985," Wallander said.
"That's right. It was in November, if I recall."
"You remember?"
"Vividly."
Wallander pushed the receiver closer to his ear.
"Why was it so memorable? What happened?"
"He was fired. He's the only engineer I've ever let go. I should explain at this point that I founded this company. There's never been a 'Strand' here, I just thought Strand sounded better than Persson."
"So you fired Åke Larstam. Why?"
"It's hard to explain, but he just didn't fit in here."
"Why not?"
"It will sound strange when I explain it."
"I'm a policeman, I'm used to strange things."
"He wasn't independent enough. He always agreed with everything, even when we knew he had a different opinion. It isn't possible to have constructive discussions with people who are only out to please others. You can't get anywhere with them."
"That's how he was?"
"Yes. It just wasn't working out. He never came up with any ideas of his own."
"How were his technical abilities?"
"Excellent. That was never the issue."
"How did he react to his termination?"
"He didn't show any emotion at all, as far as I could tell. I was expecting to keep him on for another half a year at least, but he left immediately. He walked out of my office, got his coat, and just left. He didn't even pick up the severance pay due to him. It was as if he vanished into thin air."
"Did you have any contact with him after that?"
"I tried to, but I never managed to speak with him in person."
"Did you know he went to work for the post office?"
"I heard about it. There was some paperwork that came through from the employment office."
"Did he have any close friends that you were aware of?"
"I knew nothing about his personal life. He wasn't particularly close to anyone at this office. Sometimes he looked after other people's flats when they were gone, but otherwise I think he simply kept to himself."
"Do you know if his parents were still alive, or if he had any siblings?"
"I have no idea. His life outside this office was a complete blank. That's a real problem at a small firm."
"I understand. Thanks for your help."
"You'll understand if my curiosity has been piqued," Persson said. "Can you tell me what this is about?"
"You'll hear about it soon enough," Wallander said. "I can't tell you more than that right now."
Wallander hung up abruptly. He was struck by something Persson had said, something about how Larstam looked after other people's flats when they were away on holiday. He hesitated, but decided it should be looked into.
"Has anything been done with Svedberg's flat?" he asked.
"Ylva Brink said at the funeral that she was going to empty it soon, but she hasn't started yet."
Wallander thought about the keys that were still in his desk drawer.
"Hansson," he said. "You and someone else should go down to his flat and look around. See if you can tell if anyone's been there recently. The keys are in my top drawer."
Hansson left with one of the officers from Malmö. It was just before 9 a.m. Höglund was trying to find Larstam's parents. Martinsson went back to double-check the database. Wallander went to the men's room, refusing to look at himself in the mirror. When he returned to the conference room, someone was passing around a plate of sandwiches, but he shook his head. Höglund appeared in the doorway.
"Both of his parents are dead," she said.
"Any siblings?"
"Two older sisters."
"Find them."
She left, and Wallander thought about his own sister, Kristina. How would she describe him if the police came around asking questions?
He heard someone shouting in the corridor. Wallander got up quickly as a policeman appeared in the door.
"Gunfire," he shouted. "Down at the main square."
Wallander knew what it meant. "It must be Svedberg's flat," he shouted back. "Anyone injured?"
"I don't know. But the gunfire has been confirmed."
Four cars with blaring sirens were on their way in less than a minute. Wallander sat in the back seat with his gun held tightly in his hand. Larstam was there, he thought. What had happened to Hansson and the colleague from Malmö? He feared the worst, but pushed the thought away. It was too unbearable.
Wallander was out of the car before it came to a halt. A crowd had gathered at the door to the block of flats on Lilla Norregatan. Wallander dived through the crowd at full speed, bellowing, he was later told, like a charging bull. Then he saw both Hansson and the officer from Malmö. They were unhurt.
"What happened?" Wallander yelled.
Hansson was pale and shaking. The Malmö officer was sitting on the kerb.
"He was there," Hansson said. "I had just unlocked the door and stepped inside. He appeared out of nowhere and fired his gun. Then he was gone. It was pure luck we weren't hit. We turned and ran. It was sheer luck."
Wallander didn't say anything, but he knew luck had nothing to do with it. Larstam was an excellent marksman. He could have taken out both of them if he had wanted to. But he hadn't. Someone else was marked as his victim.
The flat was now empty. The back door was ajar. A greeting, Wallander thought when he saw it. A second door left open. He's showing us how good he is at getting away.
Martinsson emerged from Svedberg's bedroom.
"He's been sleeping in there," he said. "Now at least we know how he thinks. He takes shelter in empty nests."
"We know how he thought," Wallander corrected. "He won't do the same thing twice."
"Are you sure?" Martinsson said. "He's probably trying to figure out how we think. Maybe it makes sense to leave some men here. We don't expect him to return here, so that may be exactly what he does."
"He can't read our thoughts."
"It seems to me," Martinsson said, "that he gets pretty damn close to that. He always manages to stay one step ahead of us and one step behind at the same time."
Wallander didn't reply. He was thinking the same thing.
It was 10.30 a.m. There was only one thing Wallander was sure of and that was that Larstam had not yet killed victim number nine. If he had, Hansson would have been number ten, and their colleague from Malmö number eleven.
Why is he waiting, Wallander thought. Because he has to? Is his victim out of reach, or is there another explanation? Wallander left Svedberg's flat with nothing but more questions. I might as well face it, he thought. I'm back to square one.
He felt a sense of regret when it was over. Should he have aimed at their heads after all? He knew that it had to be the police. Who else would have reason to visit Karl Evert's flat, now that he was dead and buried? He also knew that they were trying to track him down. There was no other reasonable explanation.
Once again he had managed to escape, something that was both reassuring and satisfying. Although he hadn't expected them to come looking for him there, he had taken the necessary precautions by unlocking the back door and propping a chair against the front door. It would fall to the ground if someone tried to enter. The gun lay loaded on the bedside table. He slept with his shoes on.
The noise from the street disturbed him. It wasn't like sleeping in his soundproofed room. How many times had he tried to convince Karl Evert to renovate his bedroom? But nothing had come of it, and now it was too late.
The images had been blurry and indistinct, but he'd known he was dreaming of his own childhood. He was standing behind the sofa. He was very young. Two people were fighting, probably his parents. There was the harsh, domineering voice of a man. It swooped over his head like a bird of prey. Then there was a woman's voice, weak and afraid. When he heard it, he thought he was hearing his own voice, though he was still safely hidden behind the sofa.
That was when he was woken by the sounds from the hall. They entered his dreams by force. By the time the chair fell over, he was on his feet, the gun cocked in his hand. It would have meant changing his plans, but he should have shot them. He had left the building, his gun tucked into his coat pocket. The car was parked down at the railway station. He'd heard sirens in the distance. He'd driven out past Sandskogen, towards Österlen. He stopped in Kåseberga and took a walk down to the harbour. He thought about what he should do next. He needed more sleep, but it was getting late and he had no idea when Wallander would return home. He had to be there when he did. He had already decided that it should happen today, and he couldn't risk changing his plans.
When he arrived at the far end of the pier, he made up his mind. He drove back to Ystad and parked at the back of the block of flats on Mariagatan. No one saw him slip in through the front door of the building. He rang the doorbell and listened carefully. No one was home. He unlocked the door, walked in, and sat down on the sofa in the living room. He put his gun down on the coffee table. It was a few minutes after 11 a.m.
Hansson and the Malmö officer were still so shaken that they had to be sent home. This meant that the team shrank by two people, and Wallander detected a new level of tension among members of the group when they gathered after the chaotic events at Lilla Norregatan.
Holgersson took him aside to ask if it was time to send for more reinforcements. Wallander wavered, exhausted and starting to doubt his judgment, but then answered with an emphatic no. They didn't need reinforcements, they just needed to focus.
"Do you really think we can find him?" she asked. "Or are you just hoping there will be another breakthrough?"
"I don't know," he admitted.
They sat back down at the conference table. Martinsson had still not been able to find anything on Larstam in the police registers, so he turned the matter over to a subordinate who would search the files in the basement. Höglund hadn't yet managed to find anything on the two sisters. Now that Hansson was out of the game, Wallander asked her to hold off on that. He needed to have her close by; the sisters would have to wait. They had to concentrate on finding Larstam before he turned to victim number nine.
"We have to ask ourselves what we know," Wallander said, for the umpteenth time.
"He's still in town," Martinsson said. "That must mean he's preparing to strike somewhere close by."
"He's not unaffected by us," Thurnberg said, who rarely commented on the action. "He knows we're on his heels."
"It's also possible he likes it this way," Wallander said.
Kjell Albinsson, who was sitting silently in a corner of the room, now indicated that he wanted to speak. Wallander nodded to him and he got up and approached the table.
"I don't know if this is anything," he said. "But I just remembered that last summer someone at work claimed to have seen Larstam down at the marina. That might mean he owns a boat."
Wallander hit the table with the flat of his hand. "How seriously can we take this?"
"It was one of the other postmen who saw him. He was sure it was him."
"Did he ever actually see Larstam climb onto one of the boats?"
"No, but he said he was carrying a container of petrol."
"Then it can't be a sailing boat," said one of the Malmö officers. But this comment met with a storm of protests.
"Sailing boats often have engines as well," Martinsson said. "We can't rule anything out, even a little sea plane."
Martinsson's last suggestion met with even more protests. Wallander silenced them.
"A boat is a good hiding place," he said. "The question is how much stock we put in this."
He turned to Albinsson again. "Are you sure you're right?"
"Yes."
Wallander looked over at Thurnberg, who nodded.
"Get some plainclothes officers to look around the marina," Wallander said. "Make the whole thing as discreet as possible. If there's even a hint of a suspicion that Larstam is there, they should turn back. We'll have to decide how to proceed at that point."
"There are probably a lot of people down there," Höglund said, "with this weather we've been having."
Martinsson and one of the Malmö officers headed down to the marina. Wallander asked Albinsson to sit at the table.
"If you have any more of these boat stories up your sleeve, I'd love to hear them."
"I've been trying to think of everything I can, but it's just making me realise how little I knew about him," Albinsson said.
Wallander checked his watch. It was 11.30 a.m. We're not going to get him in time, he thought. At any moment the phone will ring with the news of another murder.
Höglund started talking about Larstam's motive.
"It must be some kind of revenge," Wallander said.
"For what?" she asked. "Because he was fired from his job? What would the newly-weds have to do with that?"
Wallander got up to get some coffee and Höglund came along.
"You're right. There's another motive here," Wallander said, as they were nursing their mugs of coffee in the canteen. "There may be an element of revenge at the bottom of it, but Larstam kills people who are happy. Nyberg was struck by this thought in Nybrostrand. Albinsson confirmed it. Åke Larstam doesn't like it when people laugh."
"Then he's more disturbed than we realised. You don't kill people just because they're happy. What kind of world is this?"
"Good question," Wallander said. "We ask ourselves what kind of world we live in, but it's too painful to face the truth. Maybe our worst fears have already been realised – maybe the justice system has collapsed. More and more people are feeling overlooked and superfluous, and that feeds the escalation of senseless violence we're seeing. Violence has become part of our daily reality. We complain about the way things are, but sometimes I think things are even worse than we're admitting."
Wallander was about to continue with this line of thought when he was told that Martinsson was on the phone. He spilled coffee on his shirt as he ran back to the conference room.
"We haven't found anything," Martinsson said. "There isn't a boat registered under Larstam's name."
Wallander thought for a moment. "He may have registered his boat under someone else's name," he said.
"These marinas are so small that people generally know each other," Martinsson said. "I doubt he would have felt safe using an assumed name."
But Wallander wasn't prepared to let go of the idea just yet. "Did you check under Svedberg's name?"
"I did, actually. But there wasn't anything."
"I want you to check the register one more time. Try anyone's name who's been associated with this investigation, either centrally or otherwise."
"You're thinking of names like Hillström and Skander?"
"Exactly."
"I see what you're saying, but do you really think it's a reasonable assumption?"
"Nothing is reasonable. Just do it. Call me if you find anything."
Wallander hung up, and looked down at the large coffee stain on his shirt. He was fairly sure he had at least one clean shirt in his cupboard, and it would take him only 20 minutes to go home and change. But he decided to wait until he heard from Martinsson again.
Thurnberg came over. "I'd like to send Albinsson home," he said. "I don't think he has anything to add at this point."
Wallander got up, walked over to Albinsson, and shook his hand. "You've been a great help to us."
"I still don't understand any of this."
"None of us do."
"Nothing should go further than this room," Thurnberg said.
Albinsson promised to keep quiet.
"Does anyone know where Nyberg is?" Wallander asked.
"He's using the phone in Hansson's office."
"That's where I'll be if Martinsson calls."
Wallander went to Hansson's office, where Nyberg sat with the telephone receiver pressed to his ear. He was writing something on a pad. He looked up when Wallander came in.
"We'll know whether or not it's Larstam's thumb before the end of the day," Nyberg said when he'd hung up.
"It is his thumb," Wallander said. "We just need confirmation."
"What will you do if it isn't his thumb?"
"Resign from this investigation."
Nyberg pondered these words. Wallander sat down in Hansson's chair.
"Do you remember the telescope?" Wallander asked. "Why was it over at Björklund's house? Who put it there?"
"You don't think it was someone other than Larstam, do you?"
"Why did he put it there?"
"Maybe to cause confusion. Perhaps a half-hearted attempt to pin the blame on Svedberg's cousin."
"He must have thought of everything."
"If he hasn't, we'll get him."
"His prints should be on the telescope."
"If he didn't think to wipe it off first."
The phone rang and Wallander grabbed it. It was Martinsson.
"You're right," he said.
Wallander jumped to his feet so fast the chair was knocked over.
"What do you have?"
"A berth registered in Isa Edengren's name. I even saw the contract and it looks like he imitated her signature. I recall what her handwriting looked like. Someone in the office remembers the person who signed it. He says it was a dark-haired woman."
"Louise."
"Exactly. She even told them her brother would often be using the boat."
"He's good," Wallander said.
"It's a small wooden boat," Martinsson said. "Big enough for a couple of sleeping berths below deck. There's another boat on one side but nothing on the other."
"I'm coming down," Wallander said. "Keep your distance, and above all stay vigilant. We have to assume he's being very careful now and he won't approach the marina unless he's sure the coast is clear."
"I guess we haven't kept as low a profile as we should have."
Wallander hung up and told Nyberg what had happened. He returned to the conference room and placed Höglund and Thurnberg in charge of coordinating assistance in the event that he needed it.
"What will you do if you find him?" she asked.
Wallander shook his head. "I'll think about that when I get there."
It was almost 1 p.m. when Wallander arrived at the docks. It was warm, and there was an occasional breeze from the southwest. He took out the binoculars he had remembered to bring and took his first look at the boat.
"It looks empty," Martinsson said.
"Is there anyone on the boat to the left?" Wallander asked.
"No."
Wallander let the binoculars glide over the rest of the boats. There were people on many of them.
"We can't risk any shots being fired," Martinsson said. "But I also don't see how we can evacuate the entire marina."
"We can't wait," Wallander said. "We have to know if he's there or not, and if he is, we have to bring him in."
"Should we start cordoning off the area around the boat?"
"No," Wallander said. "I'm climbing aboard."
Martinsson jumped. "Are you insane?"
"It would take us at least an hour to secure the area. We don't have the luxury of time in this case. I'm going in, and you'll have to back me up from the pier. I'll be as quick as I can. I doubt he's keeping a lookout. If he's there, he's probably sleeping."
"I can't let you do this," Martinsson said. "It's suicide."
"Keep in mind that Larstam didn't kill Hansson or the Malmö officer, and not because he missed. Neither was his ninth victim. This man is very particular about who he kills, and when."
"So he won't shoot you?"
"I think I have a good chance, that's all."
But Martinsson wasn't about to give in. "He has no escape route this time. What's he going to do? Jump into the water?"
"We have to take that chance," Wallander said. "I know that his not having an escape route could change everything."
"It's irresponsible."
Wallander's mind was made up. "All right then, we'll proceed with the necessary caution. Return to the station and see to it that we get the proper reinforcements. I'll stay here and keep an eye on the boat."
Martinsson left. Wallander instructed the Malmö officer to guard the car park. He walked out onto the pier, thinking that he was about to violate the most fundamental rule of police work. He was about to confront a ruthless killer, alone, without a single person to back him up, in an area that wasn't properly secured. Some children were playing on the pier. Wallander made himself sound as stern as possible and ordered them to move their games. His hand squeezed the gun in his pocket. He had already disengaged the safety catch. He studied the boat carefully and realised there was no way to approach it from the pier. If Larstam was on board he would see him. The only chance he had was to approach the boat from behind, but for that he needed a dinghy. He looked around. There was a party going on in the boat next to him, and a little red dinghy lay tied to its side. Wallander didn't hesitate. He climbed aboard and showed the surprised revellers his police identification.
"I need to borrow your dinghy," he said.
A bald man with a glass of wine in his hand stood up.
"Has there been an accident?"
"No," Wallander said. "But I have no time to explain it to you. Everyone stays put, no one climbs out onto the dock. Understood?"
No one argued with him. Wallander stepped clumsily into the dinghy and fumbled with the oars, dropping one. As he reached for it, the gun almost slid out of his pocket. He swore and broke out into a sweat. Eventually he got the oars under control and made his way into the harbour. He wondered if the dinghy was going to sink under his weight, but managed to approach the back of Larstam's boat without a mishap. He grabbed it with one hand and felt his heart pounding. He secured his dinghy, careful to avoid setting the other boat in motion. Then he stopped and listened. The only sound he heard was his own heart. Gun in hand, he slowly undid the fastenings of the covering on the back of the boat. Still no sound. Once he had undone a big enough portion of the covering he faced the hardest part. Now he had to flip the covering off and then throw himself to one side to avoid the person who might be waiting inside with a gun aimed at his head. His mind was blank, and the hand holding his gun was trembling and sweaty.
All at once he performed the manoeuvre. The dinghy rolled so hard he thought he was going to end up in the water. But he grasped a railing on the side of the boat and kept his balance. Nothing happened. He peeked inside and saw that the boat was empty. The small doors to the lower cabin were open, and he could see all the way in. No one was there. He climbed aboard, still holding his gun in front of him. It was two steps down to the bunk area. He saw that the bunks were not made up. The mattresses were covered with plastic.
The man with the bald head grabbed the mooring line when Wallander returned the dinghy. "Now maybe you'll tell us what that was all about," he said.
"No," Wallander replied.
He was in a hurry now. The others might already be on their way and he had to stop them. Larstam wasn't in the boat. That could mean they were one step ahead of him for the first time. Wallander paused on the pier and called Martinsson.
"We're on our way," Martinsson said.
"Abort!" yelled Wallander. "I don't want to see a single car! Come down here alone."
"Has anything happened?"
"He's not here."
"How do you know for sure?"
"I just know."
Martinsson was silent. "You went aboard," he said finally.
"We're under pressure," Wallander said. "We'll discuss this some other time."
Martinsson arrived in five minutes and Wallander told him about his hunch that they were one step ahead of Larstam at last. When Martinsson caught sight of the flapping covering at the back of the boat, he shook his head in disapproval.
"We'll have to fix that," Wallander said quickly. "You stand guard in case he's on his way."
Martinsson stayed on the pier while Wallander climbed aboard and into the cabin. He looked around but saw nothing. When he had fastened the covering, he returned to the pier.
"How did you manage it?" Martinsson asked.
"I borrowed a dinghy."
"You're crazy."
"Maybe. But I don't think so."
Wallander walked up to the Malmö officer guarding the car park and told him to keep an eye on the harbour and the marina. He also called the station and posted more officers on the job.
"You should go home and change your shirt," Martinsson said, staring at Wallander.
"I will," he said. "I just want to talk this through with the others."
No one at the station asked him how he had got onto the boat. No one seemed to think to ask him if he had done it alone. Martinsson sat through the meeting as if he had been struck dumb. Wallander realised how upset he was, but he would have to deal with that later.
"We have to keep looking for him," Wallander said. "He used Isa Edengren's name to rent his berth. He doesn't seem to be following a pattern, but somewhere we're going to run across a clue that will blow this whole case wide open. I'm sure of it."
Wallander felt for a moment as if he were preaching to the converted, but he didn't know what else to do.
"Why did Larstam choose Isa Edengren's name?" he said. "Is it a coincidence, or is there something more here?"
"Isa's funeral is the day after tomorrow," Martinsson said.
"Call her parents. Tell them I want them to come down so someone can ask them about the boat."
Wallander got to his feet. "Right now I'm going to excuse myself for 20 minutes so I can run home and change my shirt."
Ebba came into the room with a plate full of sandwiches. "If you give me your keys, I'll go and get it for you," she said. "It's no bother."
Wallander thanked her but declined her offer. He needed to get away, if only for a short while. He was about to leave the room when the phone rang. Höglund answered and immediately gestured for him to stay in the room.
"It's the Ludvika police," she says. "That's where one of Åke Larstam's sisters lives."
Wallander decided to stay. He looked around for Ebba, but she had left. Martinsson took over the call from Ludvika, while Höglund called Isa Edengren's parents. Wallander stared down at his coffee stain. Martinsson hung up.
"Berit Larstam," he said. "She's 47, an unemployed social worker. She lives in Fredriksberg, wherever that is."
"That's where the weapons were stolen," Wallander said. "Maybe Larstam was visiting his sister at the time."
Martinsson waved a small piece of paper at him, then dialled the number.
Wallander felt he was no longer needed for the moment. He looked for Ebba in reception, but couldn't see her, so he returned to the conference room.
"Axel Edengren, the father, has promised to come in," Höglund said. "I think we can expect a pompous arse who doesn't think much of the police."
"What makes you say that?"
"He lectured me at length about how incompetent we were. I almost lost my temper."
"That's what you should have done."
Martinsson ended his conversation. "Åke Larstam visited her about once every three years. They weren't particularly close."
Wallander stared at him with surprise. "Is that all?"
"What do you mean?"
"Didn't you ask her anything else?"
"Of course I did, but she asked if she could return my call later. She was in the middle of something."
Wallander was starting to get irritable, and Martinsson was on the defensive. Tension filled the air. Wallander left and went to reception. Ebba was there.
"I think I will ask you to get it for me after all," he said, handing her the keys. "There should be a clean shirt in the cupboard. If not, you'll have to take the cleanest one you find from the hamper."
"I'll take care of it."
"Can anyone give you a ride?"
"I have my trusty old Volvo," she said. "You haven't forgotten about it, have you?"
Wallander smiled. He watched her as she walked out the front doors. He thought again about how hard these last few years had been on her. He returned to the conference room and apologised to Martinsson for his bad temper. They continued their work.
Ebba still wasn't back with his shirt by the time Axel Edengren arrived at the station. Wallander started wondering what was taking so long. Was she having trouble finding a clean shirt? Wallander felt somewhat ill at ease as he walked out to reception to greet Axel Edengren. Not so much because of the large coffee stain on his chest as because of his recollection of the strange way in which the Edengrens had treated their daughter. Wallander wondered what kind of man he was about to meet, and for once the reality matched his expectations. Axel Edengren was a big, powerfully built man, with a spiky crew-cut and intense blue eyes. He was one of the largest men Wallander had ever seen, and there was something unappealing about his bulk. His handshake was dismissive. As Wallander showed him to his office, he felt as though he was being followed by a bull about to skewer him with his horns. Axel Edengren started speaking before they sat down.
"You were the one who found my daughter," he said. "What brought you to Bärnsö in the first place?" He used the polite form of the Swedish "you" in addressing Wallander.
"Please feel free to use the informal 'you' with me," Wallander said.
Edengren's reply was swift and unexpected. "I prefer to use the polite form of address with people I don't know, and whom I plan to meet only once. What were you doing in Bärnsö, Inspector?"
Wallander felt a spark of anger, but he didn't think he had the energy to wield his usual authority.
"I had reason to believe Isa had gone there. And it turned out I was right."
"I've heard about the sequence of events. I can't believe you allowed it to happen."
"I didn't let anything happen. If I had had even the slightest inkling of what was about to happen, I would have done everything in my power to prevent it. I assume that goes for you too, not only in the case of Isa, but with Jörgen."
Edengren flinched at the sound of his son's name. It was as if he had been knocked to his knees while running at top speed. Wallander took the opportunity to turn the conversation around.
"We're pressed for time, so let me simply express my condolences for what happened. I met Isa several times and thought she was a nice young woman."
Edengren was about to say something, but Wallander pressed on. "There's a berth at the marina here in Ystad that has been rented in Isa's name."
Edengren regarded Wallander with suspicion. "That's a lie."
"No, it's quite true."
"Isa doesn't have a boat."
"That's what I thought. Do you have a berth here?"
"No, my boats are in a marina in Östergötland."
Wallander had no reason to doubt him. "We think someone else rented the berth in your daughter's name."
"Who would that be?"
"The person we believe killed your daughter."
Edengren stared at him. "Who is that?"
"His name is Åke Larstam."
There was no reaction. Edengren didn't recognise the name.
"Have you arrested him?"
"Not yet."
"Why not? You believe he killed my daughter, don't you?"
"We haven't managed to locate him. That's why we asked you to come down. We're hoping you can make our task easier."
"Who is he?"
"For security reasons I can't give you all the information right now. Let's just say he's been working as a postman for the past couple of years."
Edengren shook his head. "Is this some kind of joke? The postman killed my daughter?"
"Unfortunately it's no joke."
Edengren was about to ask him something else, but Wallander stopped him. The moment of low energy had passed.
"Did Isa have any contact with the sailing club that you know of? Did any of her friends have boats?"
Edengren's answer came as a surprise. "Not Isa, but Jörgen did. He had a sailing boat. In the summer he kept it in Gryt. He sailed all around Bärnsö. The rest of the year it was kept down here."
"But Isa never used the boat?"
"Only with her brother. They got along well together, at least most of the time."
For the first time Wallander sensed something like sorrow in his voice. There was nothing to read on the surface, but Wallander thought there was probably a volcano of feelings locked up inside his enormous body.
"How long did Jörgen sail for?"
"He started in 1992. He had a little informal sailing club with regular meetings. They had parties and sent letters back and forth in bottles. Jörgen was often the secretary. I had to show him how to write up the minutes."
"Do you still have those records?"
"I remember putting all the minutes in a box after he died. They must still be there."
I need names, Wallander thought.
"Can you think of the names of any of his friends?"
"Some, but not all."
"But the names are probably recorded in the minutes."
"Probably."
"Then I'd like you to go and get them," Wallander said. "It could be important."
Wallander offered to send a police car to Skårby, but Edengren wanted to get them himself. He turned around in the doorway.
"I don't know how I'm going to stand it," he said. "I've lost both my children. What else is there?"
He didn't wait for an answer, and Wallander would not have been able to give him one. He got up and walked to the conference room. Ebba wasn't there, and no one had seen her. Wallander called his home number. The phone rang eight times but no one answered. Ebba must be on her way back.
Edengren returned after 40 minutes, and handed Wallander a big brown envelope.
"That's all I have. I think there are eleven sets of minutes in there. They seem not to have taken it so seriously."
Wallander leafed through the papers. They were typewritten and contained a number of mistakes. He found seven names altogether, but recognised none of them. Another dead end, he thought. I'm still looking for a pattern, but Åke Larstam doesn't follow one. He went to the conference room, showed the material to Martinsson and asked him to look over the names. Wallander was about to walk out the door when Martinsson gave a yell. Wallander turned and walked back. Martinsson pointed to the name "Stefan Berg".
"Wasn't one of the postmen called Berg?"
It had slipped Wallander's mind, but he now realised that Martinsson was right.
"I'll call him," Martinsson said.
Wallander returned to Edengren. He paused before walking into the room. Was there anything else he needed to ask? He didn't think so. He pushed open the door. Edengren was standing at the window and turned when he heard Wallander come in. To his surprise, Wallander saw that his eyes were red.
"You're free to go home now," he said. "We have no reason to keep you."
Edengren looked searchingly at him. "Will you get him? The bastard who killed Isa?"
"Yes, we'll get him."
"Why did he do it?"
"We don't know."
Edengren shook his hand and Wallander followed him out to reception. Still no sign of Ebba.
"We'll stay in Sweden until after the funeral," Edengren said. "Then I don't know. Maybe we'll leave Sweden, sell the house in Skårby and in Bärnsö too. The thought of going back there is too unbearable."
Edengren left without waiting for a response. Wallander stood for a long time after he had gone. When he returned to the conference room, Martinsson was getting off the phone.
"We were right," he said. "Stefan Berg is the postman's son. He's enrolled in a college in Kentucky right now."
"Where does that lead us?"
"Nowhere, really. Berg told me everything he could, I think. He said he often talked about himself and his family when he was at work. That means Åke Larstam would have had many opportunities to hear about Stefan and the sailing club."
Wallander sat down. "But where does it really lead us? Is there anything here that can point us in the right direction?"
"It doesn't seem like it."
Wallander suddenly erupted and swept the pile of papers in front of him onto the floor.
"We're not going to find him!" he yelled. "Where the hell is he? Who the hell is the ninth victim!"
The others in the room looked at him to see if he was done. Wallander threw his arms out in apology and left the room. He started walking up and down the hall. He checked to see if Ebba had come back, but she was still gone. She probably had trouble finding a clean shirt and went to buy me a new one, he thought.
It was 3.27 p.m., and there were only eight and a half hours left for Åke Larstam to do what he had promised to do.
Wallander went back to the conference room and waited until he caught Höglund's eye. When she came over to talk to him, he told her to get Martinsson and join him in his office.
"Let's think this through together," Wallander said when they were assembled. "We still have two questions. We need to know where he is, and who he's planning to kill. Even if he's planning his deed for the stroke of midnight, we have less than nine hours to go."
He knew that Martinsson and Höglund must have thought of this as well, but it seemed as if the full implications were only hitting them now.
"Where is he?" Wallander repeated. "What is he thinking? We found him in Svedberg's flat, which suggests he didn't think we would look for him there. But we did. Then there's his boat. But he may already assume it's too dangerous to use it. Then what will he do?"
"If his earlier crimes are anything to judge by," Martinsson said, "he'll choose a victim and a situation that poses little threat to himself. The way in which he's toying with us is different. He knows we're after him. He knows we've seen through his disguise."
"He's asking himself how we think," Höglund said.
Wallander felt that they were all thinking along the same track now. "You're Larstam," he said. "What are you thinking?"
"He's intending to go through with number nine. He's fairly sure we don't know who that is."
"How can he be so sure of that?"
"Because if we knew, we would have surrounded that person with police protection. He's made sure of the fact that this hasn't been done."
"We could also come to a different conclusion," Martinsson said. "He could be concentrating on finding a secure hiding place. He may not be overly concerned about getting to number nine yet."
"That may be what he wants us to think," Höglund said.
"So we have to think differently," Wallander said. "We have to take yet another step into the unknown."
"He must have chosen the most unlikely place for us to look for him."
"In that case he should be here, in the basement of the station," Martinsson said.
Wallander nodded. "Or some symbolic equivalent to the station. What could that be?"
None of them had a suggestion.
"Does he assume we know what he looks like as a man by now?"
"He can't take any chances."
Wallander suddenly thought of something. He turned to Martinsson. "Did you ask his sister for a photograph?"
"I did, but she said the only one she had was of Larstam as a 14-year-old, and that it wasn't a very good one."
"No help there then."
"Where is Åke Larstam at this exact moment?"
No one had an answer, because there was nothing to go on. Just this strenuous speculation. Wallander felt a hint of panic. Time was ticking inexorably by.
"What about the person he's after?" Wallander said. "He's killed six young people so far, as well as an older photographer and a middle-aged policeman. I think we should discount the last two. That leaves us with six young people, killed on two separate occasions in two groups."
"Three," Höglund objected. "He killed Isa Edengren on a separate occasion, alone on an island in the middle of nowhere."
"That tells us that he finishes what he starts," Wallander said. "He follows through, whatever it takes. Is there anything unfinished in his present situation? Or is he embarking on a new project?"
Before anyone could answer this last question, there was a knock on the door. It was Ebba. She held a shirt on a hanger in her hand.
"I'm sorry it took so long," she said. "I took the opportunity to run some other errands, and then I had a lot of trouble with the lock on your front door."
Wallander frowned. There was nothing wrong with his lock as far as he knew. Ebba must have tried the wrong key. He took the shirt and thanked her for her efforts. Then he excused himself to go and change.
"Even when you're on your way to your own execution, it feels good to be wearing a clean shirt," he said when he came back. He stuffed the stained shirt in his desk drawer. "Where were we?"
"There's no unfinished business that we can think of," Martinsson said. "No one except for Isa was also due to attend the Midsummer celebration. And only two people get married at a time."
"We have to start again," Wallander said. "The worst possible case. We have nothing to go on."
The room became silent. There seemed to be nothing else to say. Of two impossible alternatives, we have to choose the one that seems less impossible, he thought.
"We're never going to figure out where he's hiding," he said finally. "Our only choice is to focus on his potential victim. This is what we have to concentrate on from now on, before he has a chance to do his deed. Are you with me?"
Wallander knew this was still an impossible task.
"Do you think it will do any good?" Höglund asked.
"We can't give up," Wallander replied.
They started again. It was past 4 p.m. Wallander's stomach ached from hunger and anxiety. He was so tired it was starting to feel like his natural state. He sensed the same desperate fatigue in the other two.
"In broad strokes," Wallander prompted, "what do we have? Happy people. Joyful people. What else?"
"Young people," Martinsson said.
"People in costume," Höglund added.
"I don't think he repeats himself," Wallander said. "But we can't be sure of that. The question then is where we can find out about happy, young people in costume who are gathering for some reason today, other than for a wedding or a midnight picnic in a nature reserve."
"Perhaps someone's having a masquerade?" Martinsson suggested.
"The newspaper," Wallander said suddenly. "What's going on in Ystad tonight?"
He had hardly finished the sentence before Martinsson had rushed out of the room.
"Should we return to the conference room?" Höglund asked.
"Not just yet. We'll go back soon enough. But I'd like to have something to bring to the table, even if it's just a red herring."
Martinsson stormed back into the office with the Ystad Allehanda in his hand. They laid it on the table and leaned over it. There was a fashion show in Skurup that immediately drew Wallander's attention.
"Models are dressed up," he said. "And we can assume they're generally feeling good about themselves."
"That's not until next Wednesday," Höglund said. "You misread it."
They kept flipping the pages, then all three of them saw it at the same time. That evening there was going to be an event at the Continental Hotel for the "Friends of Ystad" Society. Members were asked to attend in 17th-century dress. Wallander was doubtful from the start. Something told him it wasn't right, but Martinsson and Höglund didn't share his doubts.
"This must have been planned in advance," Martinsson said. "He's had a long time to make his preparations."
"The members of this type of society are rarely very young," Wallander said.
"The ages are often quite mixed," Höglund said. "That's my impression, anyway."
Wallander couldn't shake off his doubts, but they didn't have anything to lose. The dinner was scheduled for 7.30 p.m. They had a couple of hours to go. Just in case, they finished looking through the paper to see if there were any other events to consider, but found nothing.
"It's up to you," Martinsson said. "Do we focus on this or not?"
"It's not my decision," Wallander said. "It's ours. And I agree with you: what do we have to lose?"
They returned to the conference room. Wallander wanted both Thurnberg and Holgersson to be present, so someone was sent to get them. While they were waiting, Martinsson was trying to find out who was responsible for arranging the party that evening.
"Call the hotel," Wallander said. "They'll know who made the reservation."
Although Martinsson was standing right next to him, Wallander heard himself raise his voice. The fatigue and tension were taking their toll.
When Thurnberg and Holgersson entered the room, Wallander made a point of closing the door, underscoring the seriousness of the moment. He described the reasoning that had led them to the conclusion that Åke Larstam was planning to strike at a party at the Continental Hotel later that evening. They could be wrong in their assumptions; it might turn out to be another dead end. But it was all they had. The alternative was simply to wait. He thought Thurnberg would have strong objections and might dismiss the plan out of hand, but to his great surprise Thurnberg approved. He used the same argument they had: what else was there to do?
At these words they were under way. It was 5.15 p.m. and they had two hours to make their preparations. Wallander took Martinsson and went down to the Continental, while Höglund remained in the conference room. They called in reinforcments for the evening and Wallander insisted everyone be equipped with the highest level of protection. Åke Larstam was a dangerous man.
"I don't think I've ever worn a bulletproof vest," Wallander said. "Except during training exercises."
"It'll help, if he's still using his gun," Martinsson said. "The only problem is that he shoots people in the head."
Martinsson was right. Wallander made a call from the car and ordered helmets to go with the vests. They parked outside the main entrance to the hotel.
"The manager of the restaurant is called Orlovsky," Martinsson said.
"I've met him before," Wallander said.
Orlovsky had been notified of their visit and was waiting for them in the lobby. He was a tall, trim man in his 50s. Wallander decided to tell him exactly what was going on. Together they walked into the room where preparations for the evening's festivities were under way.
"We need to be as efficient as possible," Wallander said. "Could someone show Martinsson around while you and I talk?"
Orlovsky beckoned to a waiter who was setting the table. "He's been here for 20 years."
The waiter's name was Emilsson. He looked surprised at the request but obediently accompanied Martinsson out of the room. Wallander told Orlovsky enough to let him know what was going on.
"Wouldn't it be best to cancel the event altogether?" Orlovsky asked when Wallander had finished.
"Perhaps. But we won't do that unless we decide that the security of the guests will be compromised, and we're not quite there yet."
Wallander wanted to know how the guests would be seated and asked to see the seating arrangement. They were expecting 34 people. Wallander paced around the room and tried to imagine Larstam's preparations. He doesn't want to be caught, Wallander thought. He'll have his avenue of escape well prepared. I doubt he's planning to kill all 34 people, but he'll need to get close to the tables.
A thought struck him. "How many waiters will be working tonight?" he asked.
"Six altogether."
"Do you know them all personally?"
"All except one who's been hired for this evening."
"What's his name?"
Orlovsky pointed to a small, pudgy man of around 65 who was setting out the glasses.
"His name is Leijde and he's often called in to help with larger dinners. Would you like to talk to him?"
Wallander shook his head. "What about the kitchen staff? The bartender? Who's working the coat check?"
"They're all permanent employees."
"Do you have any guests staying at the hotel?"
"A couple of German families."
"Will anyone else be here tonight?"
"No, the whole dining area has been reserved for the party, although we have room for more. That leaves only the receptionist."
"Is it still Hallgren?" Wallander said. "I've met him before."
Orlovsky confirmed that Hallgren still worked there. Martinsson and the waiter Emilsson returned from the kitchen. Emilsson went back to setting the table, while Martinsson sat down to sketch an approximation of the dining area, lavatories, and kitchen with Orlovsky's help. Wallander wondered briefly if the staff should be given protective gear as well, but decided against it. It would tip Larstam off. All of a sudden Wallander had the distinct impression that he was somewhere close by, that he was surveying the comings and goings at the hotel.
Time was running out. Wallander and Martinsson returned to the station, where they were told that reinforcements were on their way. Höglund and Holgersson had moved quickly.
Martinsson's sketch was put onto a transparency. "Here's what we're going to do," Wallander said. "At some point Larstam will try to enter the hotel. Meanwhile we have to surround the entire building, although I want our men to be invisible, hard as I know that is. Otherwise we'll scare him off."
He looked around, but no one had any comments. He continued. "If he somehow manages to break through our outer ring of officers, we'll have a team placed inside the dining room. I suggest Martinsson and Höglund dress up as members of the waiting staff."
"With a bulletproof vest and helmet?" Martinsson said.
"No. If he enters the dining room, we have to get him at once. All exits from the dining room have to be blocked. I'm going to be circulating the entire area, since I'm the only person who can actually identify him."
Wallander paused. Before the meeting broke up he had one more thing to add.
"We can't overlook the fact that he may be dressed up as a woman. Not Louise, but someone else. We can't even know he's going to turn up for sure."
"What if he doesn't?"
"Then we go home and get a good night's sleep. That's what we need most, after all."
They took up their positions at the hotel a little after 7 p.m. Martinsson and Höglund put on waiters' uniforms, and Wallander positioned himself behind the reception desk. He was in radio contact with eight other officers outside the building, as well as one stationed in the kitchen. He had his gun in his pocket. The guests started arriving. Höglund was right. Many of them were quite young, as young as Isa Edengren. They were dressed up and the atmosphere was joyful. Laughter filled the lobby and dining room. Åke Larstam would have hated this display of happiness.
It was now 8 p.m. Wallander checked continually with the other officers, but no one saw anything suspicious. At 8.23 p.m. there was an alarm from Supgränd, just south of the hotel. A man had stopped on the footpath and was looking up at the hotel windows. Wallander rushed to the spot but the man was gone before he arrived. One of the police officers identified him as the owner of an Ystad shoe shop. Wallander returned to the lobby, where he heard drinking songs coming from the dining room. Someone got up and made a toast.
Still nothing happened. Martinsson showed up at the entrance to the dining room. Wallander felt the constant grip of tension. It showed no sign of letting up. There were more drinking songs, more toasts. At 10.40 p.m., the party was beginning to come to a close. Larstam hadn't showed up. We were wrong, Wallander thought. He didn't show up. Or else he saw our men.
He felt a mixture of disappointment and relief. The ninth person, whoever he was, was still alive. Tomorrow they would go through the evening's guest list one by one and try to identify the intended victim. But Larstam was still on the loose somewhere.
At 11.30 p.m. the streets were deserted once more. The guests had gone home, all the officers were back at the station. Wallander made sure that the marina and the flat on Harmonigatan would be kept under surveillance all night. He returned to the station along with Martinsson and Höglund, but none of them had the energy to discuss what had happened. They decided to meet at 8 a.m. the next morning. Thurnberg and Holgersson agreed. They would have to figure out why Larstam hadn't shown up the next day.
"We've gained some time," Thurnberg said. "If nothing else, this manoeuvre gave us that."
Wallander went back to his office and locked his gun in one of the drawers. Then he drove back to Mariagatan. It was just before midnight when he started up the stairs to his flat.
Wallander put his key in the lock and turned it. From the back of his mind came Ebba's words about the lock having been stiff. The door was hard to open if it was locked from the other side with the key still in it, which only happened if someone was already there. Linda did this. When he came home and the lock was stiff, it was a reminder that she was staying with him.
His exhaustion was slowing down his thought processes. He unlocked the door, thinking about what Ebba had said, but now the lock was working smoothly. The reason for this dawned on him as he opened the door. He sensed more than saw the figure at the end of the hall. He threw himself to one side and felt a searing pain as something tore open his right cheek. He then flung himself down the stairs, thinking each moment was about to be his last.
Larstam.
This was not the situation Hansson and the Malmö officer had encountered earlier in the day. Nor was it the situation Ebba had been in, although Larstam must have been there when she entered the flat. I am the ninth victim, Wallander thought. He reached the bottom of the stairs, ripped open the front door, and ran. When he reached the end of the street he stopped and turned. There was no one there. The street was deserted. Blood gushed from the wound on his cheek. His whole head thudded with pain. He reached for the gun in his pocket, then remembered he had locked it in his desk. The whole time, he kept his eyes on the door to his building, waiting for Larstam to come out. He took cover in the shadows of another doorway. The only thing he could do when Larstam showed up was to keep running. Now he finally knew where he was, and this time there was no back door for Larstam to use for his escape. There was only one way out, and that was through the front door.
Wallander fumbled for his mobile phone with his bloody hands. Was it in his car? But then he remembered putting the phone down on his desk at work. He let out a stream of curses under his breath. No gun and no phone. He couldn't call anyone for help. His mind worked frantically to find a solution, but nothing came to him. How long he stood there in the shadows, his coat collar pressed against his bleeding cheek, he didn't know. He kept his eyes on the door the whole time. Every once in a while he cast a glance at the dark windows of his flat. Larstam is up there, he thought. He can see me down here, but he doesn't know I'm unarmed. After a while, when no police cars show up he'll get the picture. That's when he'll make his move.
He looked up at the sky. There was nearly a full moon, although clouds obscured it. What am I doing, he thought, and what is going through Larstam's mind? He looked at his watch. It was 12.07 a.m., on Thursday, 22 August. The fact that it was past midnight wasn't likely to help him now. Larstam had trapped him. Had he guessed Wallander and his colleagues would be distracted by the masquerade party at the hotel?
Wallander tried to work out how Larstam had broken into his flat. Suddenly he saw what must have happened, and it gave him a sense of how Larstam worked. He took advantage of opportunity. The day before, during Svedberg's funeral, every police officer in town had been at the church. That would have given Larstam plenty of time to work on the lock. Once inside, he had probably found the spare keys.
Wallander's thoughts were racing, his cheek burned, and fear still throbbed in his body. The most important question was why Larstam had chosen him as his victim, but he pushed it aside for the time being.
I have to do something, he thought. Without merely attracting enough attention for someone to call the police. If they do, I won't have a chance to explain to the patrol officers the situation they're heading into. Chaos will result.
He heard footsteps. A man came around the corner and walked straight towards Wallander, who emerged from his shadowy doorway. He was youngish, probably in his 30s. His hands were pushed deep into the pockets of his suede jacket. When he saw Wallander, he pulled them out with a start and took a step back, looking frightened.
"I'm a police officer," Wallander said. "There's been an accident. I need your help."
The man looked at him, uncomprehending.
"Don't you understand what I'm saying? I'm a police officer and I need you to contact the station. Tell them Larstam is in Wallander's flat on Mariagatan. Tell them to be careful. Understood?"
The man shook his head, then said something in a foreign language. It sounded like Polish. Oh, hell, Wallander thought. That's just my luck. He tried his speech in English, but the man said only a few broken words in reply. Wallander, about to lose his patience, moved closer to the man and raised his voice, and the man fled.
Wallander was alone again. Larstam was still up there behind the dark windows, and soon, very soon, he would guess why no one was showing up. Then Wallander's only option would be to run. He tried to gather his thoughts. There had to be something he could do. He lifted his hand as if signalling to someone across the street. He pointed up to his flat and yelled a few words. Then he walked around the corner, out of sight of the dark windows where he presumed Larstam was standing. He can't know there's no one there, Wallander thought. Maybe it'll buy me some time, although there's also a chance he'll just take off.
Then something he hadn't even been hoping for happened. A car turned onto the street. Wallander jumped out in front of it, waving his arms. The driver seemed reluctant to have anything to do with him, especially after he saw Wallander's bloody face. But Wallander thrust his hand in through the half-open window and opened the door. A man in his 50s was driving the car, a much younger woman at his side. Wallander immediately had a bad feeling about them, but pushed these thoughts aside.
"I'm a police officer," he said. "There's been an accident and I need to use your phone." He managed to get his police badge out to show them.
"I don't have a phone."
Doesn't everybody have mobile phones these days? Wallander thought desperately. "What's happened?" the man asked anxiously.
"Never mind that. I need you to drive straight down to the police station. Do you know where that is?"
"No, I'm not from around here," the man said.
"I know where it is," the woman said.
"Just go there and tell them that Larstam is in Wallander's flat. Can you repeat that for me?"
The man nodded. "Larstam is in Wallgren's flat."
"It's Wallander, damn it."
"Larstam is in Wallander's flat."
"Tell them Wallander needs assistance, but that they must approach carefully."
The man repeated his words, then they drove off. Wallander hurried back to the corner of Mariagatan and surveyed the scene. He couldn't have been gone more than a minute, hardly enough time for Larstam to get away. Wallander looked down at his watch. It would take ten minutes at most for the first police car to arrive. How long was Larstam planning to wait?
A quarter of an hour went by with no sign of the police. Wallander finally realised the couple had lied. They had no intention of delivering his message. That put him back where he had started. He was trying to think of another solution when he heard a noise.
It was the sound of a car engine and it came from the back of the building. Without being able to explain why, he immediately knew it was Larstam. How had he escaped without being seen? He must have gone over the roof. There was a window leading to the roof in the stairwell just above his flat. Larstam must have seen it and climbed down to street level from the back of the house.
Wallander made it to the end of the street in time to see a red car flash by. He didn't catch a glimpse of the driver but he knew it was Larstam. Without a second thought, he jumped into his own car and took up the chase. He soon had Larstam's rear lights in view. He knows I'm after him, Wallander thought. But he doesn't know I'm unarmed.
They turned onto Highway 19 in the direction of Kristianstad. Larstam drove very fast. Wallander looked down at his fuel indicator and saw it was approaching the red strip just before "empty". He tried to think where Larstam could be headed. He was probably simply driving aimlessly. They drove through Stora Herrestad. There was almost no traffic. Wallander had passed only two cars going in the opposite direction.
What do I do if Larstam suddenly stops his car? he thought. What if he gets out holding his gun? He had to be ready to stop if need be. Larstam suddenly increased his speed. They were at a section of the highway where there were a number of tight bends in the road. Wallander started losing sight of Larstam's car, and tried to steel himself for the possibility that Larstam was stopped around the next bend, ready to take aim at him as he appeared. He tried to think of what he should do. He was alone. No one knew where he was; he wasn't going to be able to tell anyone to send him the help he needed.
Then he caught sight of Larstam's car again. It was making the turn into Fyledalen, and Larstam had turned off his headlights. Wallander slammed on the brakes and approached the turn-off carefully. The moon appeared through the clouds from time to time, but otherwise it was pitch black outside. Wallander parked by the side of the road and turned off his own lights. There was no sound. Larstam must have parked his car as well. Wallander headed out into the darkness, tucking his white shirt collar inside his dark blue jacket. He brushed his cheek, which started bleeding again. Wallander clambered down through a ditch and reached a meadow. His foot came down on something that made a sudden crunching noise. He swore silently and crept away from the spot. I'm not the only one listening for sounds, he thought.
He continued carefully towards some bushes, where he paused. If he was right, he was now straight across from the road leading into the nature reserve. When he shifted his foot, he came up against another object. He put down his hand and realised it was a broken-off piece of timber. He picked it up.
I'm turning into a man from the Stone Age, he thought. The Swedish Police Force has started incorporating wooden planks in their armoury. Is this the truth about the way things are going in Sweden? A return to the age-old laws of revenge and retaliation that justify the taking of blood?
Now the moon emerged from behind the clouds. Wallander crouched down, smelling the earth and clay. He saw Larstam's car. It was parked just a little way in from the main highway. There was no movement around it. Wallander scoured the area, but the clouds came back and darkness returned.
Larstam must have left the car, he thought. But what is he planning? He knows that I'm still pursuing him. He probably still thinks I'm armed, but he must also know by now that I've failed to establish contact, and that we're completely alone out here in Fyledalen. Two armed men.
Wallander tried to work out what his options were, while straining to hear any sound. Several times he felt an unpleasant puff of chilly air on the back of his neck that made him think Larstam was right next to him, the gun pointed at his head. The gun that had already been fired once at his forehead. Wallander never heard the gun go off – all he had felt was the pain and something cutting open his cheek. Larstam had used a silencer.
How was his mind working right now? He couldn't have anticipated this chase, and so he couldn't have planned his escape route. Wallander sensed that Larstam was as confused as he was. He couldn't remain in the car, he didn't know whether he was staying close to it or whether he was proceeding deeper into the nature reserve. He can hardly see in this darkness either, Wallander thought. We're in the same boat.
Wallander decided to cross the street and approach the car from the side. The moon was still completely covered, so he ran in a crouched position across the road and plunged into some bushes on the other side. Larstam's car was now only 20 metres away. He listened, but there were no sounds. He held the plank firmly in his hands. That's when he heard it. A twig snapped somewhere in front of him. Wallander pressed closer into the bushes, then heard the sound again, fainter this time. Larstam was moving away from the car in the direction of the valley. Larstam must have been biding his time, just like Wallander. But now he had started moving. If Wallander hadn't crossed the road when he did, he would never have heard the faint sounds.
I finally have the advantage, he thought. I can hear you, but you have no idea I'm close by. There was another crunching noise. Larstam must have brushed up against a tree. The sounds were getting further and further away. Wallander slid out from behind the bushes and started walking along the road. He stayed in a crouch the whole time, and kept close to the undergrowth along the side of the road. After every fifth step he stopped and listened. When he had gone about 50 metres he stopped for 5 minutes or so. An owl hooted nearby. There was no further sound of Larstam moving. Had he stopped as well, or was he somewhere up ahead, out of earshot? Wallander's fear returned. Was he walking into a trap? Had Larstam snapped those branches knowingly, to attract Wallander's attention? His heart thudded loudly in his chest. Larstam and his gun must be somewhere close by.
Wallander glanced up at the sky. A break in the clouds was approaching. Soon the moon would be out, and he couldn't stay where he was when that happened. If Larstam was springing a trap, he had to be somewhere just up ahead. Wallander crossed to the other side of the road and moved up a small incline. There he positioned himself behind a tree and waited.
The moon came out. Suddenly the landscape was awash in blue. Wallander stared at the road in front of him, but saw nothing. The bushes were thinning ahead, and he was approaching a rolling hillside. At the top of the hill was a single tree.
The moon was swallowed up by the clouds. Wallander thought about the tree at the crime scene in the nature reserve. He was sure Larstam had used it as his hiding place. He's like a cat, Wallander thought. He seeks out lofty and secluded places in order to maintain his sense of control.
He was convinced that Larstam was hidden behind that tree on the hill. There was no reason for him not to keep going until he killed Wallander, both to secure his escape and because he had singled him out as an intended victim. This was Wallander's only opportunity. Larstam's attention would be on the road. That's where he thought Wallander would be coming from.
Wallander knew what he had to do. He had to make a long detour down along the road, across to the left side of the hill and then up to some point right behind the tree from the back. What he would do then he didn't know, nor did he care to think about it just now.
He proceeded in three phases. First he walked back down along the road. Then he crept up the hillside, very slowly so he wouldn't attract any attention. Then he walked up, parallel to the road. He stopped. The clouds blocking the moon became thicker, and he had trouble seeing where he was. It was 2.06 a.m.
The moon didn't shine again until 2.27 a.m. It was enough to show Wallander that he was positioned some distance below the tree. He couldn't tell if there was a person behind it or not. He was too far away, and there was thick brush in the way. But he tried to memorise the terrain between him and the tree.
The moon disappeared. The owl hooted more distantly. Wallander tried to reason with himself. Larstam doesn't think I'll be creeping up on him from behind, he thought. But I can't underestimate him, either. Larstam will be ready for me wherever I come from.
Wallander started making his approach. He went very slowly, like a blind person fumbling in the darkness. Sweat poured from his body and his heart was beating so hard he thought it was loud enough for Larstam to hear. At last he reached an area of thick brush that he knew was 20 or 30 metres away from the tree.
It took almost 20 minutes for the moon to come out again, but when it did he finally saw him. Larstam. He was leaning up against the tree trunk, and seemed completely absorbed in watching the road. Wallander could see both his hands. The gun must be tucked in his pocket. It would take him a few seconds to get it out and turn around. That's all the time Wallander had. He tried to estimate the exact distance to the tree, searching out every possible obstacle in his path. He couldn't see one. He looked up at the sky and saw that the moon was about to go behind a cloud again. If he was to have any hope of reaching Larstam he would have to make his approach at the very moment the moon disappeared. He clenched the plank in his hands.
This is insanity, he thought. I'm doing something I know I shouldn't do. But I have to do it.
The moonlight was fading now. He slowly rose to his feet. Larstam hadn't moved. At the moment the light disappeared, he sprang up. Somewhere deep inside he felt the desire to utter a war cry. It would maybe give him a couple of extra seconds, if it scared Larstam. But no one knew how that man was likely to react. No one.
Wallander leaped forward and dashed at the tree. He was nearly there and Larstam hadn't turned around. There was almost no light. Then his foot hit a rock or root. He lost his balance and pitched forward at Larstam's feet just as he turned around. Wallander grabbed his leg, but Larstam grunted and pulled away. As he tried to get his gun out, Wallander rushed him again. With the first swing of his plank, he hit only the tree behind Larstam. There was a splintering sound. He aimed what remained of the plank at Larstam's chest, then threw a punch. He didn't even know where the sudden surge of strength came from, but with sheer luck he hit Larstam right on the jaw. It gave way with a wet, unpleasant sound and Larstam slumped down. Wallander threw himself on top of him and hit him again and again, before he realised that the man under him was unconscious. Then he reached for Larstam's gun, the one that had killed so many people. For a split second he wanted to place it against Larstam's forehead and pull the trigger. But he restrained himself.
He dragged Larstam down along the road. He was still unconscious, and it was only once they had reached Wallander's car that he started making low moans. Wallander got a length of rope out of the back of the car and tied his arms together behind his back, then tied him securely to the front seat. Wallander got in behind the wheel and looked over at Larstam.
Suddenly it seemed to him that the person in the other seat was Louise.
Wallander arrived at the station at 3.45 a.m. When he got out of the car, it was starting to rain. He let the drops run down his face before he went in to speak to the officer on duty. To his surprise he saw that it was Edmundsson. He was drinking a cup of coffee and eating a sandwich. Edmundsson flinched at the sight of Wallander's face. His clothes were muddy and covered with twigs and leaves.
"What's wrong?"
"No questions," Wallander said firmly. "There's a man tied to the front seat of my car. Get someone to go with you and bring him in. Make sure he's handcuffed."
"Who is it?"
"Åke Larstam."
Edmundsson stood up, his sandwich still in his hand. It looked like ham and cheese. Without thinking twice, Wallander took it out of his hand and started eating it. It made his cheek hurt, but his hunger won out.
"You mean to say the killer is tied up in your car?"
"You heard what I said. Put some handcuffs on him, take him to a room, and lock the door. What's Thurnberg's number?"
Edmundsson quickly brought it up on his computer and then left. Wallander finished the sandwich, chewing slowly. There was no reason to hurry any more. He dialled Thurnberg's number. After a long time a woman answered. Wallander told her who he was, and Thurnberg came on the line.
"It's Wallander. I think you should come down here."
"What for? What time is it?"
"I don't care what time it is, you have to come down here and make the formal arrest of Åke Larstam."
Wallander heard Thurnberg catch his breath. "Can you repeat that?"
"I have Larstam."
"How in God's name did you do that?"
It was the first time Wallander had heard Thurnberg caught completely off guard.
"I found him out in the woods."
Thurnberg seemed finally to have understood that he was in earnest. "I'll be right there."
Edmundsson and another officer walked by with Larstam between them. Wallander met his gaze. Neither of them spoke. Wallander walked to the conference room and laid Larstam's gun on the table.
Thurnberg arrived quickly. He too flinched at the sight of Wallander, who still hadn't been to the men's room to check his appearance, although he had managed to find some painkillers in a desk drawer. He also found his mobile phone, which he threw into the rubbish in a sudden rage.
Wallander told Thurnberg what had happened as succinctly as possible. He pointed to Larstam's gun. As if to mark the solemnity of the moment, Thurnberg fished a tie out of his pocket and put it on.
"So you got him. Not bad."
"Oh, it was bad all right," Wallander said. "But we can go into that another time."
"Maybe we should call the others and let them know," Thurnberg said.
"What for? Why not let them sleep for once?"
Thurnberg dropped the suggestion. He left to go and see Larstam. Wallander got heavily to his feet and walked to the men's room. The cut in his cheek was deep and probably needed stitches, but the thought of dragging himself to the hospital made him weak. It would have to wait. It was now 5.30 a.m. He went to his office and closed the door behind him.
Martinsson was the first to arrive the next morning. He had slept badly and anxiety had forced him to come into the station. Thurnberg was still there and told him the news. Martinsson then called Höglund, Nyberg and Hansson in quick succession. Shortly afterwards Holgersson arrived. It was only when they had all gathered at the station that someone asked where Wallander was. Thurnberg told them he had disappeared. They assumed he had gone to the hospital to have his cheek looked at.
At 8.30 a.m. Martinsson called Wallander at home but there was no answer. That was when Höglund wondered whether he was in his office. They went there together. The door was closed. Martinsson knocked gently. When there was no answer, they pushed open the door. Wallander was stretched out on the floor, the phone book and his jacket tucked under his head for a pillow. He was snoring.
Höglund and Martinsson looked at each other. Then they pulled the door shut and let him rest.