An Event in Autumn: A Kurt Wallander Mystery

Chapter 15

The following day, Friday, November 8, Wallander woke up early. He was sweaty. He tried to remember what he had been dreaming about — it was something to do with Linda, perhaps a rerun of the confrontation they had had the previous day. But his memory was empty. The dream had closed all the doors surrounding it.

It was ten minutes to five. He lay there in the darkness. The rain was pounding against his bedroom window. He tried to go back to sleep, but failed. After tossing and turning until six o’clock, he got up. He paused outside Linda’s door: she was asleep, snoring softly.

He made some coffee and sat down in the kitchen. The rain was coming and going. Without really thinking about it, he decided to begin his working day by making another visit to the property where they had found the skeleton. He had no idea what he hoped to gain by doing so, but he often returned to crime scenes, not least to reassess his first impressions.

He left Ystad half an hour later, and when he arrived at the house in Löderup it wasn’t yet light. The police tape was still in place, cordoning off the scene. He walked slowly around the house and garden. All the time he was looking out for something he hadn’t noticed before. He had no idea what that might be. Something that didn’t fit in, something that stood out. At the same time he tried to imagine a possible sequence of events.

Once upon a time a woman lived here, but never left the place. Yet somebody must have wondered what had happened to her. And it is obvious that nobody has ever been here, looking for her. Nobody has suspected anything that has led to the police investigating this property.

He paused next to the grave, which was now covered by a dirty tarpaulin.

Why was the body buried just here? The garden is large. Somebody must have thought about alternatives, and made a decision. Here, just here, not anywhere else.

Wallander started walking again, but stored away in his memory the questions he had formulated. He could hear a tractor in the background. A lone red kite was soaring up above, then swooped down onto one of the fields that surrounded the property. He went back to the grave, and looked around. He suddenly noticed a place next to some currant bushes. At first he didn’t know what had attracted his attention: it was something to do with the relationship of the bushes to one another. A characteristic of the garden as a whole was symmetry: everything was planted in a way that created a pattern. Even though the garden was neglected and very overgrown, he could still see all those patterns. And there was something about the currant bushes that didn’t fit in.

The bushes were an exception that went against the rule that held sway in the garden as a whole.

After a few minutes the penny dropped. It wasn’t a pattern that had been broken: it was a pattern that was no longer there. Several currant bushes were in the wrong place, in this garden that was based on a pattern of straight lines.

He went back and examined the area more closely. There was no doubt about it, some of the bushes were in the wrong place. But as far as he could see the bushes had not been planted at different times — they all seemed to be the same age.

He thought for a while. The only explanation he could think of was that at some point the bushes had been dug up, and then replanted by somebody with no sense of the garden’s symmetry.

But then it occurred to him that there might be another explanation. Whoever dug up the bushes and then replanted them might have been in a hurry.

It was starting to get light now. It was almost eight o’clock. He sat down on one of the moss-covered stone chairs and continued to study the currant bushes. Was he just imagining it all, despite everything?

After another quarter of an hour he was certain. The haphazard planting of the currant bushes told a story. About somebody who was either careless, or had been in a hurry. Or of course the person might come into both categories.

He took out his cell phone and rang Nyberg, who had just arrived at the police station.

“I’m sorry I rang you so late the other day,” said Wallander.

“If you were really sorry you’d have stopped ages ago ringing me at all hours of the day and night. You’ve frequently rung me at four or five in the morning without having any questions that couldn’t have waited until a decent time of day. I don’t recall you apologizing any of those times.”

“Perhaps I’ve become a better person.”

“Don’t talk shit! What do you want?”

Wallander told him where he was, and about his feeling that something was wrong. Nyberg was a person who would understand the significance of currant bushes planted in the wrong place.

“I’ll come out there,” said Nyberg when Wallander had finished. “But I’ll be on my own. Do you have a spade in your car?”

“No. But no doubt there’ll be one in the shed somewhere.”

“That’s not what I meant. I have my own spade. I just wanted to make sure that you wouldn’t start rooting around yourself before I got there.”

“I’ll do nothing at all until you arrive.”

They hung up. Wallander sat in his car, as he was feeling cold. He listened somewhat absentmindedly to the car radio. Somebody was going on about a new infectious disease that they suspected was spread by common ticks.

He switched off the radio and waited.

Nineteen minutes later Nyberg turned into the yard. He was wearing Wellington boots, overalls and a strange old hunting hat pulled down over his ears. He took a spade out of the trunk.

“I suppose we can be pleased that you didn’t stumble over that hand after the frost had made it impossible to dig in the soil.”

“Surely the ground doesn’t get frozen before Christmas in these parts? If it ever does.”

Nyberg mumbled something inaudible in response. They went to the spot in question at the back of the house. Wallander could see that Nyberg had understood the significance of his observations about the currant bushes without needing further explanation. Nyberg tested the ground with the edge of his spade, as if he were looking for something.

“The soil is pretty tightly packed,” he said. “Which suggests that it’s been a long time since anybody was digging here. The roots from the bushes bind the soil together.”

He started digging. Wallander stood to one side, watching. After only a few minutes, Nyberg stopped digging and pointed down at the soil. He picked up something that looked like a stone and handed it to Wallander.

It was a tooth. A human tooth.