An Event in Autumn: A Kurt Wallander Mystery

Chapter 3

Wallander walked back to Mariagatan. He felt exhilarated, but also doubtful. Just as he got into the car it started pouring down. He drove out of Ystad, joined the Österleden motorway, and it occurred to him that it had been many years since he had last taken this route.

How long had his father been dead now? It took him some time to recall the year of his death. It was a long time ago. Many years had passed since they made that final journey together to Rome.

He recalled following his father, who had sneaked off to wander around Rome on his own. Wallander still felt a bit ashamed of having spied on him. The fact that his father was old and not fully in control of his senses was not a sufficient excuse. Why hadn’t he left his father in peace to look around Rome and soak up his memories? Why had Wallander insisted on following him?

It wasn’t good enough to say that he’d been concerned about his father, worried that something might have happened. Wallander could still recall his emotions from that time. He hadn’t been especially worried. He had simply been curious.

Now, it was as if time had shrunk. Surely it could have been only yesterday that he drove out here to visit his father, to play cards with him, maybe have a drink and then start quarreling about something of no significance.

I miss the old man, Wallander thought. He was the only father I’ll ever have. He was often a pain in the neck and could drive me up the wall. But I miss him. There’s no getting away from that.

Wallander turned off into a familiar road and glimpsed the roof of his father’s old house. But he continued past the side road and turned in the other direction instead.

He stopped after two hundred meters and got out of the car. It was only drizzling now.

Karl Eriksson’s house was in a neglected and overgrown garden. It was an old Scanian farmhouse, and would originally have had two wings. One had disappeared — maybe it had burned down, maybe it had been demolished. The house and garden were well away from the road, apparently in the middle of a field. The soil had been tilled, and was waiting for its winter covering of snow and ice. In the distance Wallander could hear the noise of a tractor.

Wallander opened the squeaking gate and entered the yard. The sandy path had certainly not been raked for many years. A small flock of crows was cawing away in a tall chestnut tree directly in front of the house. Perhaps it was originally the family’s magic tree — planted in the old days to stand guard over the house and be a home to the trolls and fairies and spirits who looked after the welfare of the inhabitants. Wallander stood still underneath it and listened — he needed to like the noise surrounding a house before he could start thinking about the possibility of living in it. If the sound of the wind or even the silence wasn’t right, he might just as well get back in his car and drive away. But he was duly impressed by what he heard. It was the stillness of autumn, the Scanian autumn, waiting for the onset of winter.

Wallander walked around the building. Behind it were a few apple trees, currant bushes and some dilapidated stone tables, chairs and benches. He strolled around among the fallen autumn leaves, stumbling over something lying on the ground — possibly the remains of an old rake — and returned to the front of the house. He guessed which of the keys would open the front door, inserted it in the keyhole and turned it.

The house was musty and stuffy inside and there was a distinct smell of old man. He explored the rooms one by one. The furniture was old-fashioned and worn; crocheted proverbs hung on the walls. An ancient television set stood in what must have been the old man’s bedroom. Wallander went into the kitchen. There was a refrigerator that had been switched off. In the sink were the remains of a dead mouse. He went upstairs, but the upper floor was simply an unfurnished loft. The house would need a lot of work, that was obvious. And it wouldn’t be cheap, even if he were able to do much of it himself.

He returned downstairs, sat down cautiously on an old sofa, and dialed the number of the Ystad police station. It was several minutes before Martinson answered.

“Where are you?” Martinson asked.

“In the old days people used to ask how you were,” said Wallander. “Now they ask where you are. The way we greet each other really has undergone a revolution.”

“Did you ring me in order to tell me that?”

“I’m sitting inside the house.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. It feels unfamiliar.”

“But it’s the first time you’ve been there, isn’t it? Of course it feels unfamiliar.”

“I’d like to know what kind of price you’re asking for it. I don’t want to start thinking seriously about it until I know that. I take it you know there’s a lot of work that needs doing.”

“I’ve been there. I know that.”

Wallander waited. He could hear Martinson breathing.

“It’s not easy to do business with good friends,” said Martinson eventually. “I can see that now.”

“Regard me as an enemy,” said Wallander cheerfully. “But preferably a poverty-stricken enemy.”

Martinson laughed.

“We’ve been thinking in terms of a bargain price. Five hundred thousand. No haggling.”

Wallander had already decided that he could pay a maximum of 550,000.

“That’s too expensive,” he said.

“The hell it is! For a house in much sought-after Österlen?”

“The place is a ramshackle hovel.”

“If you spend a hundred thousand on it, it will be worth well over a million.”

“I can stretch to four hundred and seventy-five thousand.”

“No.”

“That’s that, then.”

Wallander hung up. Then he stood with the cell phone in his hand, waiting. Counting the seconds. He got as far as twenty-four before Martinson rang.

“Let’s say four hundred and ninety thousand.”

“Let’s shake on that over the phone,” said Wallander. “Or rather, I’ll pay a deposit twenty-four hours from now. I need to talk to Linda first.”

“Do that, then. And say yea or nay by this evening.”

“Why the rush? I need twenty-four hours.”

“OK, you can have them. But no more.”

They ended the call. Wallander felt a surge of elation. Was he now, at long last, about to acquire the house in the country he had dreamed about for so long? And in the vicinity of his father’s house, where he had spent so much time?

He worked his way through the house once more. In his mind’s eye he was already knocking down partition walls, installing new electricity sockets, papering the walls, buying furniture. He was tempted to phone Linda, but managed to control himself.

It was too early to tell her. He still wasn’t totally convinced.

He walked around the ground floor once again, pausing here and there to listen before continuing into the next room. Hanging on the walls were faded photographs of the people who used to live there. Between two windows in the biggest room was also a colored aerial photograph of the house and grounds.

He thought about the possibility of people who had once lived there still being present and breathing in the walls. But there are no ghosts here, he thought. There aren’t any because I don’t believe in ghosts.

Wallander went out into the garden. It had stopped raining, and the clouds were dispersing. He pushed and pulled the handle of a pump in the middle of the courtyard. There were squeaking and grinding noises, and the water that eventually appeared was first brown, but then turned crystal clear. He tasted it, and found himself already imagining a dog drinking water from a bowl by his side.

He walked around the outside of the house one more time, then returned to the car.

Just after opening the car door he paused: a thought had struck him. At first he couldn’t understand what it was that was preventing him from sitting down behind the steering wheel. He frowned. Something was nagging away inside him. Something he had seen. Something that didn’t fit in.

He turned to face the house. Something or other had etched itself into his brain.

Then it dawned on him. He had stumbled over something lying on the ground at the back of the house. The remains of a small rake, or perhaps the root of a tree. That was what was preventing him from leaving the place.

It was something he had seen. Without seeing it properly.