Faceless Killers

FACELESS KILLERS

Henning Mankell is the prize-winning and internationally acclaimed author of the Inspector Wallander Mysteries, now dominating bestseller lists throughout Europe. He devotes much of his time to working with Aids charities in Africa, where he is also director of the Teatro Avenida in Maputo.

Steven T. Murray has translated numerous works from the Scandinavian languages, including the Pelle the Conqueror series by Martin Andersen Nexe and three of Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander novels. He is Editor-in-Chief of Fjord Press in Seattle.

ALSO BY HENNING MANKELL

Fiction

The Dogs of Riga

The White Lioness

The Man Who Smiled

Sidetracked

The Fifth Woman

One Step Behind

The Return of the Dancing Master

Before the Frost

Chronicler of the Winds

Depths

Kennedy's Brain

The Eye of the Leopard

Non-fiction /

Die, But the Memory Lives On

Young Adult Fiction A Bridge to the Stars Shadows in the Twilight When the Snow Fell

HENNING MANKELL

Faceless Killers

TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH BY

Steven T. Murray

FACELESS KILLERS

CHAPTER 1

He has forgotten something, he knows that for sure when he wakes up. Something he dreamt during the night. Something he ought to remember. He tries to remember. But sleep is like a black hole. A well that reveals nothing of its contents.

At least I didn't dream about the bulls, he thinks. Then I would have been hot and sweaty, as if I had suffered through a fever during the night. This time the bulls left me in peace.

He lies still in the darkness and listens. His wife's breathing at his side is so faint that he can scarcely hear it. One of these mornings she'll be lying dead beside me and I won't even notice, he thinks. Or maybe it'll be me. Daybreak will reveal that one of us has been left all alone. He checks the clock on the table next to the bed. The hands glow and register 4.45 a.m.

Why did I wake up? he asks himself. Usually I sleep till 5.30. I've done that for more than 40 years. Why did I wake now? He listens to the darkness and suddenly he is wide awake. Something is different. Something has changed. He stretches out one hand tentatively until he touches his wife's face. With his fingertips he can feel that she's warm. So she's not dead. Neither of them has been left alone yet. He listens intently to the darkness.

The horse, he thinks. She's not neighing. That's why I woke up. Normally the mare whinnies at night. I hear it without waking up, and in my subconscious I know that I can keep on sleeping. Carefully he gets up from the creaky bed. For 40 years they've owned it. It was the only piece of furniture they bought when they got married. It's also the only bed they'll ever have. He can feel his left knee aching as he crosses the wooden floor to the window.

I'm old, he thinks. Old and worn out. Every morning when I wake up I'm surprised all over again that I'm 70 years old. He looks out into the winter night. It's 7 January 1990, and no snow has fallen in Skåne this winter. The lamp outside the kitchen door casts its glow across the yard, the bare chestnut tree, and the fields beyond. He squints towards the neighbouring farm where the Lövgrens live. The long, low, white house is dark. The stable in the corner against the farmhouse has a pale yellow lamp above its black door. That's where the mare stands in her stall, and that's where she whinnies uneasily at night when something disturbs her. He listens to the darkness. The bed creaks behind him."What are you doing?" mutters his wife."Go back to sleep," he replies. "I'm just stretching my legs."

"Is your knee hurting again?""No."

"Then come back to bed. Don't stand there freezing, you'll catch cold."

He hears her turn over onto her side. Once we loved each other, he thinks. But he shields himself from his own thought. That's too noble a word. Love. It's not for the likes of us. Someone who has been a farmer for more than 40 years, who has worked every day bowed over the heavy Scanian clay, does not use the word "love" when he talks about his wife. In our lives, love has always been something totally different.

He looks at the neighbour's house, peering, trying to penetrate the darkness of the winter night. Whinny, he thinks. Whinny in your stall so I know that everything's all right. So I can he down under the quilt for a little while longer. A retired, crippled farmer's day is long and dreary enough as it is.

He realises that he's looking at the kitchen window of the neighbour's house. All these years he has cast an occasional glance at his neighbour's window. Now something looks different. Or is it just the darkness that's confusing him? He blinks and counts to 20 to rest his eyes. Then he looks at the window again, and now he's sure that it's open. A window that has always been closed at night is open. And the mare hasn't whinnied at all.

The mare hasn't whinnied because Lövgren hasn't taken his usual nightly walk to the stable when his prostate acts up and drives him out of his warm bed.

I'm just imagining things, he says to himself. My eyes are cloudy. Everything is as it always is. After all, what could happen here? In the village of Lunnarp, just north of Kade Lake, on the way to beautiful Krageholm Lake, right in the heart of Skåne? Nothing ever happens here. Time stands still in this village where life flows along like a creek without vigour or intent. The only people who live here are a few old farmers who have sold or leased out their land to someone else. We live here and wait for the inevitable.

He looks at the kitchen window once more, and thinks that neither Maria nor Johannes Lövgren would fail to close it. With age comes a sense of dread; there are more and more locks, and no-one forgets to close a window before nightfall. To grow old is to live in fear. The dread of something menacing that you felt when you were a child returns when you get old.

I could get dressed and go out, he thinks. Hobble through the yard with the winter wind in my face, up to the fence that separates our properties. I could see close to that I'm just imagining things.

But he doesn't move. Soon Johannes will be getting out of bed to make coffee. First he'll turn on the light in the bathroom, then the light in the kitchen. Everything will be the way it always is.

He stands by the window and realises that he's freezing. He thinks about Maria and Johannes. We've had a marriage with them too, he thinks, as neighbours and as farmers. We've helped each other, shared the hardships and the bad years. But we've shared the good times too. Together we've celebrated Midsummer and eaten Christmas dinner. Our children ran back and forth between the two farms as if they belonged to both. And now we're sharing the long-drawn-out years of old age.

Without knowing why, he opens the window, carefully so as not to wake Hanna. He holds on tight to the latch so that the gusty winter wind won't tear it out of his hand. But the night is completely calm, and he recalls that the weather report on the radio had said nothing about a storm approaching over the Scanian plain.

The starry sky is clear, and it is very cold. He is just about to close the window again when he thinks he hears a sound. He listens and turns, with his left ear towards the open window. His good ear, not his right that was damaged by all the time he spent cooped up in stuffy, rumbling tractors.

A bird, he thinks. A night bird calling. Suddenly he is afraid. Out of nowhere fear appears and seizes him. It sounds like somebody shouting. In despair, trying to be heard. A voice that knows it has to penetrate thick stone walls to catch the attention of the neighbours.

I'm imagining things, he thinks. There's nobody shouting. Who would it be? He shuts the window so hard that it makes a flower-pot jump, and Hanna wakes up.

"What are you doing?" she says, and he can hear that she's annoyed.As he replies, he feels sure. The terror is real.

"The mare isn't whinnying," he says, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "And the Lövgrens' kitchen window is wide open. And someone is shouting."She sits up in bed."What did you say?"

He doesn't want to answer, but now he's sure that it wasn't a bird that he heard.

"It's Johannes or Maria," he says. "One of them is calling for help."

She gets out of bed and goes over to the window. Big and wide, she stands there in her white nightgown and looks out into the dark.

"The kitchen window isn't open," she whispers. "It's smashed."

He goes over to her, and now he's so cold that he's shaking.

"There's someone shouting for help," she says, and her voice quavers."What should we do?""Go over there," she replies. "Hurry up!""But what if it's dangerous?""Aren't we going to help our best friends?"

He dresses quickly, takes the torch from the kitchen cupboard next to the corks and coffee cans. Outside, the clay is frozen under his feet. When he turns around he catches a glimpse of Hanna in the window. At the fence he stops. Everything is quiet. Now he can see that the kitchen window is broken. Cautiously he climbs over the low fence and approaches the white house. But no voice calls to him.

I am just imagining things, he thinks. I'm an old man who can't figure out what's really happening anymore. Maybe I did dream about the bulls last night. The bulls that I would dream were charging towards me when I was a boy, making me realise that someday I would die.

Then he hears the cry. It's weak, more like a moan. It's Maria. He goes over to the bedroom window and peeks cautiously through the gap between the curtain and the window frame.

Suddenly he knows that Johannes is dead. He shines his torch inside and blinks hard before he forces himself to look. Maria is crumpled up on the floor, tied to a chair. Her face is bloody and her false teeth lie broken on her spattered nightgown. All he can see of Johannes is a foot. The rest of his body is hidden by the curtain.

He limps back and climbs over the fence again. His knee aches as he stumbles desperately across the frozen clay. First he calls the police. Then he takes his crowbar from a closet that smells of mothballs."Wait here," he tells Hanna. "You don't need to see this."

"What happened?" she asks with tears of fright in her eyes.

"I don't know," he says. "But I woke up because the mare wasn't neighing in the night. I know that for sure." It is 7 January 1990. Not yet dawn.

CHAPTER 2

The incoming call was logged by the Ystad police at 5.13 a.m. It was taken by an exhausted officer who had been on duty almost without a break since New Year's Eve. He listened to the stammering voice on the phone and thought at first that it was just a deranged senior citizen. But something sparked his attention nevertheless. He started asking questions. When the conversation was over, he hesitated for just a moment before lifting the receiver again and dialling a number he knew by heart.

Kurt Wallander was asleep. He had stayed up far too long the night before, listening to recordings of Maria Callas that a good friend had sent him from Bulgaria. Again and again he had played her Traviata-, and it was close to 2 a.m. before he finally went to bed. When the telephone roused him, he was deep in an intense, erotic dream. As if to assure himself that he had only been dreaming, he reached out and felt next to him. But he was alone in the bed. Neither his wife, who had left him three months ago, nor the black woman with whom he had just been making fierce love in his dream, was there.

He looked at the clock as he reached for the phone. A car crash, he thought instantly. Treacherous ice and someone driving too fast and then spinning off the E65. Or trouble with refugees arriving from Poland on the morning ferry.

He sat up in bed and pressed the receiver to his cheek, feeling the sting of his unshaven skin. "Wallander.""I hope I didn't wake you." "No, damn it. I'm awake."

Why do I lie? he thought. Why don't I just tell the truth? That all I want is to go back to sleep and recapture in a fleeting dream the form of a naked woman."I thought I should call you ""Traffic accident?"

"No, not exactly. An elderly farmer called and said his name was Nyström. Lives in Lunnarp. He claimed that the woman next door was tied up on the floor and that someone was dead."

Wallander thought rapidly about where Lunnarp was. Not so far from Marsvinsholm, in a region that was unusually hilly for Skåne."It sounded serious. I thought it best to call you at home.""Who have you got at the station right now?"

"Peters and Norén are out trying to find someone who broke a window at the Continental. Shall I call them?"

"Tell them to drive to the crossroads between Kade Lake and Katslosa and wait till I get there. Give them the address. When did the call come in?""A few minutes ago.""Sure it wasn't just some drunk calling?"

"Didn't sound like it.""Huh. All right then."

Wallander dressed quickly without showering, poured himself a cup of the lukewarm coffee that was still in the thermos, and looked out the window. He lived on Mariagatan in central Ystad, and the facade of the building across from him was cracked and grey. He wondered fleetingly whether there would be any snow in Skåne this winter. He hoped not. Scanian snowstorms always brought periods of uninterrupted drudgery. Car wrecks, snowbound women going into labour, isolated old people, and downed power lines. With the snowstorms came chaos, and he felt ill-equipped to deal with chaos this winter. Anxiety at his wife's departure still burned inside him.

He drove down Regementsgatan until he came out onto Österleden. At Dragongatan he stopped at a red light, and he turned on the car radio to listen to the news. An excited voice was talking about a plane that had crashed on a far-off continent.

A time to live and a time to die, he thought as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He had adopted this incantation many years ago, when he was a young policeman cruising the streets of Malmö, his home town. A drunk had pulled out a big butcher's knife as he and his partner were trying to take him away in the squad car from Pildamm Park. Wallander was stabbed deep, right next to his heart. A few millimetres were all that saved him from an untimely death. He had been 23 then, suddenly profoundly aware of what it meant to be a policeman. The incantation was his way of fending off the memories.

He drove out of the city, passing the newly-built furniture warehouse at the edge of town, and caught a glimpse of the sea in the distance. It was grey but oddly quiet for the middle of the Scanian winter. Far off towards the horizon was the silhouette of a ship heading east.

The snowstorms are on their way, he thought. Sooner or later they'll be upon us. He shut off the car radio and tried to concentrate on what was in store for him. What did he actually know? An old woman tied up on the floor? A man who claimed he saw her through a window?

Wallander accelerated after he passed the turn-off to Bjare Lake, thinking that it was undoubtedly an old man who was struck by a flare-up of senility. In his many years on the force he had seen more than once how old, lonely people would call the police as a desperate cry for help.

The squad car was waiting for him at the side road towards Kade Lake. Peters had climbed out and was watching a hare bounding back and forth out in a field. When he saw Wallander approaching in his blue Peugeot, he raised his hand in greeting and got in behind the wheel.

Wallander followed the police car, the frozen gravel crunching under the tyres. They passed the turn-off towards Trunnerup and continued up a number of steep hills until they came to Lunnarp. They swung onto a narrow dirt road that was hardly more than a tractor rut. After a kilometre they were there. Two farms next to each other, two whitewashed farmhouses, and neatly-tended gardens.

An elderly man came hurrying towards them. Wallander saw that he was limping, as if one knee was hurting him. When Wallander got out of the car he noticed that the wind had started to blow. Maybe snow was on the way after all. As soon as he saw the old man he knew that something truly unpleasant awaited him. In the man's eyes shone a horror that could not be imaginary.

"I broke open the door," he repeated feverishly, over and over. "I broke open the door because I had to see. But she'll be dead soon too."

They went in through the damaged doorframe. Wallander was met by a pungent old-man smell. The wallpaper was fusty, and he was forced to squint to be able to see anything in the dim light."So what happened here?" he asked.

"In there," replied the old man. Then he started to cry.

The three policemen looked at each other. Wallander pushed open the door with one foot. It was worse than he had expected. Much worse. Later he would say that it was the worst he had ever seen. And he had seen plenty.

The couple's bedroom was covered in blood. It had even splashed onto the porcelain lamp hanging from the ceiling. Prostrate across the bed lay an old man with no shirt on and his long underwear pulled down. His face was crushed beyond recognition. It looked as though someone had tried to cut off his nose. His hands were tied behind his back and his left thigh was shattered. The white bone shone against all that red.

"Oh shit," he heard Norén moan behind him, and Wallander felt nauseated himself."Ambulance," he said, swallowing. "And make it quick."

Then they bent over the woman, half-lying on the floor, tied to a chair. Whoever had tied her up had rigged a noose around her scrawny neck. She was breathing feebly, and Wallander yelled at Peters to find a knife. They cut the thin rope that was digging deep into her wrists and neck, and laid her gently on the floor. Wallander held her head on his knee.

He looked at Peters and realised that they were both thinking the same thing. Who could have been cruel enough to do this? Tying a noose on a helpless old woman.

"Wait outside," said Wallander to the old man sobbing in the doorway. "Wait outside and don't touch anything."

He could hear that his voice sounded like a roar. I'm yelling because I'm scared, he thought. What kind of world are we living in? Almost 20 minutes passed before the ambulance arrived. The woman's breathing grew more and more irregular, and Wallander began to worry that it might come too late.

He recognised the ambulance driver, a man called Antonson. His assistant was a young man he had never seen before.

"Good morning," said Wallander. "He's dead. But the woman here is alive. Try to keep her that way.""What happened?" asked Antonson.

"I hope she'll be able to tell us, if she makes it Hurry up now!"

When the ambulance had vanished down the road, Wallander and Peters went outside. Norén was wiping his face with a handkerchief. The dawn was approaching. Wallander looked at his wristwatch. It was 7.28 a.m."It's a slaughterhouse in there," said Peters.

"Worse," replied Wallander. "Call in and request a full team. Tell Norén to seal off the area. I'm going to talk to the old man."

Just as he said that, he heard something that sounded like a scream. He jumped, and then the scream came again. It was a horse whinnying. They went over to the stable and opened the door. Inside in the dark a horse was rustling in its stall. The place smelled of warm manure and urine.

"Give the horse some water and hay," said Wallander. "Maybe there are other animals here too."

When he emerged from the stable he gave a shudder. Crows were screeching in a lone tree far out in a field. He sucked the cold air into his throat and noted that the wind was picking up.

"Your name is Nyström," he said to the man, who by now had stopped weeping. "You have to help me. If I understand correctly, you live next door."

The man nodded. "What happened here?" he asked in a quavering voice.

"That's what I'm hoping you can tell me," said Wallander. "Maybe we could go to your house."

In the kitchen a woman in an old-fashioned dressing gown sat slumped in a chair crying. But as soon as Wallander introduced himself she got up and started to make coffee. The men sat down at the kitchen table. Wallander noticed Christmas decorations still hanging in the window. An old cat lay on the windowsill, staring at him without blinking. He reached out his hand to pat it.

"He bites," said Nyström. "He's not used to people. Except for Hanna and me."

Wallander thought of his own wife, who had left him and wondered where to begin. A bestial murder, he thought. And if we're really unlucky, it'll be a double murder. Something occurred to him. He knocked on the kitchen window to get Norén's attention."Excuse me for a moment," he said, getting up.

"The horse had both water and hay," said Norén. "There aren't any other animals."

"See that someone goes over to the hospital," said Wallander. "In case she wakes up and says something. She must have seen everything."Norén nodded.

"Send somebody with good ears," said Wallander. "Preferably someone who can lip-read."

When he came back into the kitchen he took off his overcoat and laid it on the sofa.

"Now tell me," he said. "Tell me, and leave nothing out. Take your time."After two cups of weak coffee he could see that neither

Nyström nor his wife had anything significant to tell. He got the chronology of events, and the life story of the couple who had been attacked. He had two questions left to ask them.

"Do you know if they kept any large sums of money in the house?" he asked.

"No," said Nyström. "They put everything in the bank. Their pensions too. And they weren't rich. When they sold off the fields and the animals and the machinery, they gave the money to their children."

The second question seemed futile. But he asked it anyway. In this situation he had no choice."Do you know if they had any enemies?" he asked."Enemies?""Anybody who might possibly have done this?"

They didn't seem to understand the question. He repeated it. The two old people looked at each other, bewildered.

"People like us don't have enemies," the man replied, sounding offended. "Sometimes we quarrel with each other. About the upkeep of a wagon path, or the location of the field boundaries. But we don't kill each other."

Wallander nodded.

"I'll be in touch again soon," he said, getting up and taking his coat. "If you think of anything else, don't hesitate to call the police. Ask for me, Inspector Wallander.""What if they come back ... ?" asked the old woman.Wallander shook his head.

"They won't," he said. "It was probably robbers. They never come back. There's nothing for you to worry about."

He thought that he ought to say something more to reassure them. But what? What security could he offer to people who had just seen their close neighbour brutally murdered? Who had to wait and see whether his wife was also going to die?"The horse," he said. "Who will feed it?"

"We will," replied the old man. "We'll see that she gets what she needs."

Wallander went outside into the cold dawn. The wind was stronger, and he hunched his shoulders as he walked towards his car. He knew he ought to remain and give the crime-scene technicians a hand. But he was freezing and feeling lousy and didn't want to stay any longer. Besides, he saw through the window that it was Rydberg who had come with the team's car. That meant that the technicians wouldn't finish their work until they had turned over and inspected every lump of clay. Rydberg, who was supposed to retire in a couple of years, was a passionate policeman. He might appear pedantic and slow, but his presence was a guarantee that a crime scene would be treated the way it should be.

Rydberg had rheumatism and used a cane. Now he came limping across the yard towards Wallander.

"It's not pretty," Rydberg said. "It looks like a slaughterhouse in there.""You're not the first to say that," said Wallander.Rydberg looked serious. "Have we got any leads?"Wallander shook his head.

"Nothing at all?" There was something of an entreaty in Rydberg's voice.

"The neighbours didn't hear or see anything. I think it was ordinary robbers.""You call this insane brutality ordinary?"

Rydberg was upset, and Wallander regretted his choice of words. "I meant, of course, that it was particularly fiendish individuals who did this last night. The kind who make their living picking outfarms in isolated locations where lonely old people live."

"We have to find these people," said Rydberg. "Before they strike again."

"You're right," said Wallander. "Even if we don't catch anyone else this year."

He got into his car and drove off. On the narrow farm road he almost collided with a car coming around a curve towards him at high speed. He recognised the man driving. It was a reporter for one of the big national papers, who always showed up when something of more than local interest happened in the Ystad area.

Wallander drove back and forth through Lunnarp a few times. There were lights in the windows, but no-one was out and about. What were they going to think when they found out?

He was feeling uneasy. Being confronted with the old woman with the noose around her neck had shaken him. The cruelty of it was unthinkable. Who would do something like that? Why not hit her over the head with an axe so it would all be over in an instant? Why torture her?

He tried to plan the investigation in his head as he drove slowly through the village. At the crossroads towards Blentarp he stopped, turned up the heat in the car because he was cold, and then sat motionless, gazing off towards the horizon.

He was the one who would have to lead the investigation, he knew that. No-one else was even possible. After Rydberg, he was the criminal detective in Ystad who had the most experience, despite the fact that he was only 42 years old.

Much of the investigative work would be routine. Examining the scene of the crime, questioning people in Lunnarp and along the escape routes the robbers might have taken. Had anyone seen anything suspicious? Anything unusual? The questions were already running through his mind. But Wallander knew from experience that farm robberies were often difficult to solve. What he could hope for was that the old woman would survive. She had seen what happened. She knew. But if she died, a double murder would be even harder to solve.

He felt uneasy. Under normal circumstances this unease would have spurred him to greater energy and activity. Since these were the prerequisites for all police work, he had imagined that he was a good policeman. But right now he felt uncertain and tired. He forced himself to shift into first gear. The car rolled a few metres. Then he stopped again. It was as if he only now realised what he had witnessed on that frozen winter morning.

The senselessness and savagery of the attack on the helpless couple scared him. Something had happened that shouldn't have, not here. He looked out of the car window. The wind was rushing and whistling around the doors. I have to get started, he thought. It's as Rydberg said: we've got to find whoever did this.

He drove directly to the hospital in Ystad and took the lift up to the intensive care unit. In the corridor he immediately recognised the young police cadet Martinsson sitting on a chair outside one of the rooms. Wallander could feel himself getting annoyed. Was there really no-one else available to send to the hospital but a young, inexperienced cadet? And why was he sitting outside the door? Why wasn't he sitting at the bedside, ready to catch the slightest whisper from the brutalised woman?"Hello," said Wallander, "how is she?"

"She's unconscious," replied Martinsson. "The doctors don't seem too hopeful."

"Why are you sitting out here? Why aren't you in the room?""They said they'd tell me if anything happened."

Wallander noticed that Martinsson was starting to feel unsure of himself.

I sound like a grumpy schoolteacher, he thought. Carefully he pushed open the door and looked in. Various machines were sucking and pumping in death's waiting room. Tubes undulated like transparent worms along the walls. A nurse was standing there reading a chart."You can't come in here," she said sharply.

"I'm a police inspector," replied Wallander feebly. "I just wanted to hear how she's doing.""You've been asked to wait outside," said the nurse.

Before he could answer, a doctor came rushing into the room. Wallander thought he looked surprisingly young.

"We would prefer not to have any unauthorised persons in here," said the doctor when he caught sight of Wallander.

"I'm leaving. But I just wanted to hear how she's doing. My name is Wallander, and I'm a police inspector. Homicide," he added, not sure whether that made any difference. "I'm heading the investigation into the person or persons who did this. How is she?"

"It's amazing that she's still alive," said the doctor, nodding to Wallander to step over to the bed. "We can't tell yet the extent of the internal injuries she may have suffered. First we have to see whether she survives. But her windpipe has been severely traumatised. As if someone had tried to strangle her."

"That's exactly what happened," said Wallander, looking at the thin face visible among the sheets and tubes.

"She should have died," said the doctor.

"I hope she survives," said Wallander. "She's the only witness we've got."

"We hope all our patients survive," replied the doctor sternly, studying a monitor where green lines moved in uninterrupted waves.

Wallander left the room after the doctor insisted that he could tell him nothing more. The prognosis was uncertain. Maria Lövgren might die without regaining consciousness. There was no way to know."Can you Hp-read?" Wallander asked the cadet."No," Martinsson replied in surprise."That's too bad," said Wallander, and left.

From the hospital he drove to the brown police station that lay on the road out towards the east end of town. He sat down at his desk and looked out of the window, over at the old red water tower.

Maybe the times require another kind of policeman, he thought. Policemen who aren't distressed when they're forced to go into a human slaughterhouse in the Swedish countryside early on a January morning. Policemen who don't suffer from my uncertainty and anguish.

His thoughts were interrupted by the telephone. The hospital, he thought at once. They're calling to say that Maria Lövgren is dead. But did she wake up? Did she say anything? He stared at the ringing telephone. Damn, he thought. Damn. Anything but that.

But when he picked up the receiver, it was his daughter. He gave a start and almost dropped the phone on the floor.

"Papa," she said, and he heard the coin dropping into the pay phone."Hello," he said. "Where are you calling from?"

Just so long as it's not Lima, he thought. Or Katmandu. Or Kinshasa."I'm here in Ystad."He felt happy. That meant he'd get to see her.

"I came to visit you," she said. "But I've changed my plans. I'm at the train station. I'm leaving now. I just wanted to tell you that at least I thought about seeing you."

Then the conversation was cut off, and he was left sitting there with the receiver in his hand. It was like holding something dead, something hacked off. That damned kid, he thought. Why does she do things like this?

His daughter Linda was 19. Until she was 15 their relationship had been good. She came to him rather than to her mother when she had a problem or when there was something she really wanted to do but didn't quite dare. He had seen her metamorphose from a chubby little girl to a young woman with a defiant beauty. Before she was 15, she never gave any hint that she was carrying around secret demons that one day would drive her into a precarious and inscrutable landscape.

One spring day, soon after her 15th birthday, Linda had without warning tried to commit suicide. It happened on a Saturday afternoon. Wallander had been fixing one of the garden chairs and his wife was washing the windows. He had put down his hammer and gone into the house, driven by a sudden unease. Linda was lying on the bed in her room. She had used a razor to cut her wrists and her throat. Afterwards, when it was all over, the doctor told Wallander that she would have died if he hadn't come in when he did and had the presence of mind to apply pressure bandages.

He couldn't get over the shock. All contact between him and Linda was broken off. She pulled away, and he never managed to understand what had driven her to attempt suicide. When she finished school she took a string of odd jobs, and would abruptly disappear for long periods of time. Twice his wife had pressed him to report her missing. His colleagues had seen his pain when Linda became the subject of his own investigation. But then she would reappear, and the only way he could follow her travels was to go through her pockets and leaf through her passport on the sly.

Hell, he thought. Why didn't you stay? Why did you change your mind?

The telephone rang again and he snatched up the receiver."This is Papa," said Wallander without thinking.

"What do you mean?" said his father. "What do you mean by picking up the phone and saying Papa? I thought you were a policeman."

"I don't have time to talk to you right now. Can I call you later?""No, you can't. What's so important?"

"Something serious happened this morning. I'll call later."

"So what happened?"

His elderly father called him almost every day. On several occasions Wallander had told the switchboard not to put through any calls from him. But then his father saw through his ruse and started giving false names and disguising his voice to fool the operators.Wallander saw only one possibility of evading him.

"I'll come out and see you tonight," he said. "Then we can talk."

His father reluctantly let himself be persuaded. "Come at seven. I'll have time to see you then."

"I'll be there at seven. See you."

Wallander hung up and pushed the button to block incoming calls. For a moment he considered taking the car and driving down to the train station to try and find his daughter. Talk to her, try to rekindle the contact that had been lost so mysteriously. But he knew that he wouldn't do it. He didn't want to risk her running away from him for good.The door opened and Näslund stuck his head in."Hello," he said. "Should I show him in?""Show who in?"Näslund looked at his watch.

"It's nine o'clock. You told me yesterday that you wanted Klas Mansön here for an interview at nine." "Who's Klas Mansön?"

Näslund looked at him quizzically. "The guy who robbed the shop on Österleden. Have you forgotten about him?"

It came back to Wallander, and at the same time he realised that Näslund obviously hadn't heard about the murder that had been committed in the night.

"You deal with Mansön," he said. "We had a murder last night out in Lunnarp. Maybe a double murder. An elderly couple. You can take over Mansön. But put it off for a while. The thing we have to do first is plan the investigation at Lunnarp."

"Mansön's lawyer is already here," said Näslund. "If I send him away, he's going to raise hell."

"Do a preliminary questioning," said Wallander. "If the lawyer makes a fuss later, it can't be helped. Set up a case meeting in my office for ten o'clock. Make sure everyone comes."

Now he was in motion. He was a policeman again. His anxiety about his daughter and his wife would have to wait. Right now he had to begin the arduous hunt for a murderer. He removed the piles of paper from his desk, tore up a football lottery form he wouldn't get around to filling out anyway, and went out to the canteen and poured himself a cup of coffee.

At 10 a.m. everyone gathered in his office. Rydberg had been called in from the scene of the crime and was sitting in a chair by the window. Seven police officers in all, sitting and standing, filled the room. Wallander phoned the hospital and managed to ascertain that Mrs Lövgren's condition was still critical. Then he told them what had happened.

"It was worse than you could imagine," he said. "Wouldn't you say so, Rydberg?"

"You're right," replied Rydberg. "Like an American movie. It even smelt like blood. That doesn't usually happen."

"We have to find whoever did this," said Wallander, concluding his presentation. "We can't leave maniacs like this on the loose."

The policemen fell silent. Rydberg was drumming his fingertips on the arm of his chair. A woman could be heard laughing in the corridor outside. Wallander looked around the room. All of them were his colleagues. None of them was his close friend. And yet they were a team."Well," he said, "what are we waiting for? Let's get started."It was 10.40 a.m.

CHAPTER 3

At 4 p.m. that afternoon Wallander discovered that he was hungry. He hadn't had a chance to eat lunch. After the case meeting in the morning he had spent his time organising the hunt for the murderers in Lunnarp. He found himself thinking about them in the plural. He had a hard time imagining that one person could have been responsible for that blood bath.

It was dark outside when he sank into the chair behind his desk to try and put together a statement for the press. There was a pile of messages, left by one of the women from the switchboard. After searching in vain for his daughter's name among the slips, he placed them all in his in-tray. To escape the unpleasantness of standing in front of the TV cameras of News South and telling them that at present the police had no leads on the criminal or criminals who had carried the heinous murder of Johannes Lövgren, Wallander had appealed to Rydberg to take on that task. But he had to write and give the press release himself. He took a sheet of paper from a desk drawer. But what would he write? The day's work had involved little more than collecting a large number of questions.

It had been a day of waiting. In the intensive care unit the old woman who had survived the noose was fighting for her life. Would they ever find out what she had witnessed on that appalling night in the lonely farmhouse?

Or would she die before she could tell them anything?

Wallander looked out of the window, into the darkness. Instead of a press release he started writing a summary of what had been done that day and what the police actually had to go on. Nothing, he thought, when he was finished. Two elderly people with no enemies, no hidden cash, were brutally attacked and tortured. The neighbours heard nothing. Not until the attackers were gone had they noticed that a window had been broken and heard the old woman's cry for help. Rydberg had so far found no clues. That was it.

Old people in the countryside have always been targets for robbery. They have been bound, beaten, and sometimes killed. But this is different, thought Wallander. The noose tells a gruesome story of viciousness or hate, maybe even revenge. Something about this attack doesn't add up.

All they could do now was hope. All day long police patrols had been talking to the inhabitants of Lunnarp. Perhaps someone had seen something? In crimes of this nature those responsible had often cased the place in advance. Maybe Rydberg would find some clues at the farmhouse after all.

Wallander looked at the clock. How long since he'd last called the hospital? 45 minutes? An hour? He decided to wait until after he had written his press release. He popped a cassette of Jussi Björling into his Walkman and put on the headphones. The scratchy sound of the 1930s recording could not detract from the magnificence of the music from Rigoletto.

The press release ran to eight lines. Wallander took it to one of the clerks to type up and make copies. While this was being done he read through a questionnaire that was to be mailed to everyone living in the area around Lunnarp. Had anyone seen anything out of the ordinary? Anything that could be connected to the brutal attack? He didn't have much confidence that the questionnaire would produce anything but inconvenience. The telephones would ring incessandy and two officers would need to be assigned to listen to useless reports.

Still, it has to be done, he thought. At least we can satisfy ourselves that no-one saw anything. He went back to his office and phoned the hospital. Nothing had changed. Mrs Lövgren was still fighting for her life. Just as he put down the phone, Näslund came in."I was right," he said."What about?""Mansön's lawyer hit the roof."Wallander shrugged. "We'll just have to live with that."

Näslund scratched his forehead and asked how the investigation was going."Not a thing so far. We've started. That's about it.""I noticed that the preliminary forensic report came in."Wallander raised an eyebrow. "Why didn't I get it?"

"It was in Hansson's office.""That's not where it's supposed to be, damn it!"

Wallander got up and went out into the corridor. Always the same, he thought. Papers never end up where they're supposed to. More and more police work was recorded on computers, but even so there was a tendency for important papers to get lost.

Wallander knocked and went into Hansson's office. Hansson was talking on the phone. He saw that Hansson's desk had strewn all over it, hardly concealed, betting slips and form guides from racetracks around the country. It was common knowledge at the station that he spent the best part of his working day calling various horse trainers begging for tips. Then he spent his evenings figuring out all manner of betting systems that would guarantee him the maximum winnings. It was also rumoured that Hansson had hit it big on one occasion, but no-one knew this for certain. And Hansson wasn't exactly living the highlife.

When Wallander came in, Hansson put his hand over the mouthpiece.

"The forensic report," said Wallander. "Have you got it?"

Hansson pushed aside a form guide from Jagersro. "I was just about to bring it over to you."

"Number four in the seventh race is a sure thing," said Wallander, taking the plastic folder from the desk."What do you mean by that?""I mean it's a sure thing."

Wallander walked out, leaving Hansson gaping. He saw by the clock in the corridor that there was half an hour left until the press conference. He went back to his office and read carefully through the doctor's report.

The brutal nature of the murder of Johannes Lövgren was thrown into even sharper relief, if possible, than when he had arrived in Lunnarp that morning. In the preliminary examination of the body, the doctor had not been able to determine the actual cause of death. There were too many to choose from.

The body had received eight deep stab wounds with a sharp, serrated implement. The report suggested a compass saw. In addition, the right femur was broken, as were the left upper arm and wrist. The body showed signs of burn wounds, the scrotum was swollen, and the forehead was bashed in.

The doctor had made a note beside the official report. "An act of madness," he had written. "This man was subjected to injuries sufficient to kill him four or five times over."

Wallander put down the report. He was feeling worse and worse. Something here was beyond reason. Robbers who attacked old people weren't full of hate. They were after money. Why this insane degree of violence?

When Wallander realised that he couldn't come up with a satisfactory answer, he read again through the summary he had written. Had he forgotten something? Had he overlooked some detail that would later turn out to have been significant? Even though police work was mostly a matter of patiently searching for clues that could then be combined, he had also learnt from experience that the initial impression of the scene of a crime was important. More so when the officer was one of the first there after the crime had been committed.

There was something in his summary that puzzled him. Had he left out an important detail? He sat for a long time without managing to think what it might be.

A woman opened the door and handed him the typed press release and the copies. On the way to the press conference he went to the men's room and looked in the mirror. He saw that he needed a haircut. His brown hair was sticking out round his ears. And he ought to lose some weight too. In the three months since his wife had left him, he had put on seven kilos. In his apathetic loneliness he had eaten nothing but takeaways and pizza, greasy hamburgers and pastries.

"You flabby piece of shit," he said out loud. "Do you really want to look like a pitiful old man?"

He made a decision to change his eating habits at once. If it would help him lose weight, he might even consider taking up smoking again. He wondered why almost every policeman was divorced. Why their wives left them. Sometimes, when he read a crime novel, he discovered with a sigh that things were just as bad in fiction. Policemen were divorced. That's all there was to it.

The room where the press conference was to be held was full. He recognised most of the reporters. But there were a few unfamiliar faces too, including a young girl with a pimply face, who seemed to be casting amorous glances at him as she adjusted her tape recorder.

Wallander passed out the press release and sat down on the little dais at one end of the room. The Ystad chief of police should have been there too, but he was on his winter holiday in Spain. If Rydberg managed to finish with the TV crews, he had promised to attend. But otherwise Wallander was on his own.

"You've received the press release," he began. "I don't have anything to add at present."

"Can we ask questions?" said a reporter Wallander recognised as the local stringer for The Worker."That's why I'm here," replied Wallander.

"If you don't mind my saying so, this is an unusually poor press release," said the reporter. "You must be able to tell us more than this.""We have no leads on the offenders," said Wallander."So there were more than one?"

"Possibly."

"Why do you think so?" "We think there were. But we don't know." The reporter made a face, and Wallander nodded to another reporter he recognised. "How was Mr Lövgren killed?" "By external force.""That can mean a lot of different things!""Well, we don't know yet. The doctors haven't finished the forensic examination. It'll take a couple of days."

The reporter had more questions, but he was interrupted by the pimply girl with the tape recorder. Wallander could see by the letters on the lid that she was from the local radio station."What did the robbers take?"

"We don't know," replied Wallander. "We don't even know if it was a robbery." "What else could it be?" "We don't know."

"Is there anything that encourages you to believe that it wasn't a robbery?" "No."

Wallander could feel that he was sweating in the overheated room. He remembered how as a young policeman he had dreamt of holding press conferences. But they had never been stuffy and sweaty in his dreams.

"I asked a question," he heard one of the reporters say from the back of the room."I didn't hear it," said Wallander.

"Do the police regard this as an important crime?" asked the reporter.Wallander was surprised at the question.

"Naturally it's important that we solve this murder," he said. "Why shouldn't it be?""Will you be needing extra resources?"

"It's too early to comment on that. Of course we're hoping for a quick solution. I don't understand your question."

A very young reporter with the thick glasses pushed his way forwards. Wallander had never seen him before.

"In my opinion, no-one in Sweden cares about the elderly these days."

"We do," replied Wallander. "We will do eveiything we can to ensure that we arrest those responsible. In Skåne there are many elderly people living alone on isolated farms. We would like, above all, to reassure them that we are doing everything possible."

He stood up. "We'll let you know when we have more to report," he said. "Thank you for coming."

The young woman from the local radio station blocked his path as he was leaving the room."I have nothing more to say," he told her."I know your daughter Linda," she said.Wallander stopped. "You do? How?""We've met a few times. Here and there."

Wallander tried to think whether he knew her. Had the girls been classmates?She shook her head as if reading his mind.

"You and I have never met," she said. "You don't know me. Linda and I ran into each other in Malmö.""I see," said Wallander. "That's nice.""I think she's great. Could I ask you some questions now?"

Wallander repeated into her microphone what he had said earlier. Most of all he wanted to talk about Linda, but he didn't have a chance.

"Say hello to her," she said, packing up her tape recorder. "Say hello from Cathrin. Or Cattis.""I will," said Wallander. "I promise."

When he went back to his office he could feel a gnawing in his stomach. But was it hunger or anxiety? I've got to stop this, he thought. I've got to accept that my wife has left me. I've got to admit that all I can do is wait for Linda to contact me herself. I've got to take life as it comes ...

Just before 6 p.m. the investigative team gathered for another meeting. There was no news from the hospital. Wallander quickly drew up a roster for the night.

"Is that necessary?" wondered Hansson. "Just put a tape recorder in the room, then any nurse can turn it on if the old lady wakes up."

"It is necessary," said Wallander. "I can take midnight to six myself. Any volunteers until midnight?"

Rydberg nodded. "I can sit at the hospital just as well as anywhere," he said.

Wallander looked around. Everyone seemed pale in the glare from the fluorescent lights."Did we get anywhere?" he asked.

"We've checked out Lunnarp," said Peters, who had led the door-to-door inquiry. "Everybody says they didn't see a thing. But it usually takes a few days before people really think. People are pretty scared up there. It's damned unpleasant. Almost everyone is old. Except for a terrified young Polish family, who are probably here illegally. But I didn't bother them. We'll have to keep trying tomorrow."Wallander nodded and looked at Rydberg.

"There were plenty of fingerprints at the scene," he said. "Maybe that will produce something. But I doubt it. It's mostly the knot that interests me."Wallander gave him a searching look. "What knot?""The knot on the noose.""What about it?""It's unusual. I've never seen a knot like it."

"Have you ever seen a noose before?" interrupted Hansson, who was standing in the doorway, itching to leave.

"Yes, I have," replied Rydberg. "We'll see what this knot can tell us."

Wallander knew that Rydberg didn't want to say more. But if the knot interested him, it might be important.

"I'm driving back out to see the neighbours tomorrow morning," said Wallander. "Has anyone tracked down the Lövgrens' children yet, by the way?""Martinsson is working on it," said Hansson.

"I thought Martinsson was at the hospital," said Wallander, surprised."He traded with Svedberg.""So where the hell is he now?"

No-one knew where Martinsson was. Wallander called the switchboard and found out that he had left an hour earlier."Call him at home," said Wallander. Then he looked at his watch.

"We'll meet again in the morning at ten o'clock," he said. "Thanks for coming, see you then."

Everyone else had left by the time the switchboard connected him with Martinsson.

"Sorry," said Martinsson. "I forgot we had a meeting.""How are you getting on with the children?""Damned if Rickard doesn't have chicken pox.""I mean the Lövgrens' children. The two daughters."

Martinsson sounded surprised when he answered. "Didn't you get my message?""I didn't get any message.""I gave it to one of the girls at the switchboard.""I'll take a look. But tell me first."

"One daughter, who's 50, lives in Canada. Winnipeg, wherever that is. I completely forgot that it was the middle of the night over there when I called. She refused to believe what I was saying. It didn't sink in until her husband came to the phone. He's a policeman, by the way. A genuine

Canadian Mountie. I'm going to call them back tomorrow. But she's flying over, of course. The other daughter was harder to reach, even though she lives in Sweden. She's 47, the manager of the buffet at the Ruby Hotel in Goteborg. Evidently she's away coaching a handball team in Skien, in Norway. But they promised that they'd get word to her. I gave the switchboard a list of the Lövgrens' other relatives. There are lots of them. Most of them live in Skåne. Some of them will probably call tomorrow when they see the story in the papers."

"Good work," said Wallander. "Can you relieve me at the hospital tomorrow morning at six? If she doesn't die by then."

"I'll be there," said Martinsson. "But is it such a good idea for you to take that shift?" "Why not?"

"You're the one heading the investigation. You ought to get some sleep."

"I can handle it for one night," replied Wallander and hung up.

He sat completely still and stared into space. Are we going to get to the bottom of this? he thought. Or do they already have too much of a head start? He put on his overcoat, turned off the desk lamp, and left his office. The corridor leading to the reception area was deserted. He stuck his head in the glass cubicle where the operator on duty sat leafing through a magazine. He noticed that it was a form guide. Was everyone playing the horses these days?

"Martinsson should have left some papers for me," he said.

The operator, who was named Ebba and had been with the police department for more than 30 years, gave a friendly nod and pointed at the counter.

"We have a girl here from the youth employment bureau," she said, smiling. "Sweet and nice but completely incompetent. Maybe she forgot to give them to you."

Wallander nodded. "I'm leaving now," he said. "I'll probably be home in a couple of hours. If anything happens before then, call me at my father's place.""You're thinking of poor Mrs Lövgren," said Ebba.Wallander nodded."It's terrible."

"Yes, it is," said Wallander. "Sometimes I wonder what's happening to this country"

When he went out through the glass doors of the police station the wind hit him in the face. It was cold and biting, and he hunched his shoulders as he hurried to the car park. As long as it doesn't snow, he thought. Not until we catch whoever paid the visit to Lunnarp.

He clambered into his car and spent a long time looking through the cassettes he kept in the glove compartment. Without really making a decision, he shoved Verdi's Requieminto the tape deck. He had expensive speakers in the car, and the magnificent sounds surged in his ears. He set off, turning right, down Dragongatan towards Österleden. A few leaves whirled across the road, and a cyclist strained against the wind. Hunger gnawed at him again, and he crossed the main road and turned in at OK's Cafeteria. I'll change my eating habits tomorrow, he thought. If I get to Dad's place a minute past 7 p.m., he'll accuse me of abandoning him.

He ate a hamburger special. He ate it so fast that it gave him diarrhoea. As he sat on the toilet he noticed that he ought to change his underwear. He realised how exhausted he was. He didn't get up until someone banged on the door.

He filled the petrol tank, and drove east, through Sandskogen, turning off onto the road to Kaseberga. His father lived in a little farmhouse that seemed to have been flung onto a field between Loderup and the sea. It was just before 7 p.m. when he swung onto the gravel drive in front of the house. The drive had been the cause of the latest and most drawn-out of his arguments with his father. It had been a lovely cobblestone courtyard as old as the farmhouse itself. One day his father had got the idea of covering it with gravel. When Wallander had protested, he was outraged."I don't need a guardian!" he had shouted.

"Why do you have to destroy the beautiful cobblestone courtyard?" Wallander had asked.

Then they had quarrelled. And now the courtyard was covered with grey gravel that crunched under the car's tyres. He could see that a light was on in the shed. Next time it could be my father, he thought. The night-time killers might pick him out as a suitable old man to rob, maybe even to murder.

No-one would hear him scream for help. Not in this wind, half a kilometre from the nearest neighbour, an old man himself.

He listened to the end of "Dies Irae" before he climbed out of the car and stretched. He went over to the shed, which was his father's studio where he painted his pictures, as he had always done. This was one of Wallander's earliest childhood memories. The way his father had smelled of turpentine and oil. And the way he stood in front of his sticky easel in his dark-blue overalls and cut-off rubber boots.

Not until Wallander was 5 or 6 years old did he realise that his father wasn't working on the same painting year after year. It was just that the motif never changed. He painted a melancholy autumn landscape, with a shiny mirror of a lake, a crooked tree with bare branches in the foreground, and, far off on the horizon, mountain ranges surrounded by clouds that shimmered in an improbably colourful sunset. Now and then he would add a grouse standing on a stump at the far left edge of the painting.

At regular intervals men in silk suits with heavy gold rings on their fingers would visit the house. They came in rusty vans or shiny American gas-guzzlers, and they bought the paintings, with or without the grouse.

His father had been painting that same motif all his life. The family had lived off the sale of his paintings, which were sold at fairs and auctions. They had lived in Klagshamm outside Malmö, in a converted smithy. Wallander had grown up there with his sister Kristina, and their childhood had been wrapped in the pungent odour of turpentine.

When his father was widowed he sold the smithy and moved out to the country. Wallander had never really understood why, since his father was continually complaining about the loneliness.

He opened the door to the shed and saw that his father was working on a painting without the grouse. Just now he was painting the tree in the foreground. He muttered a greeting and continued dabbing with his brush. Wallander poured a cup of coffee from a dirty pot that stood on a smoking spirit stove.

He looked at his father, who was almost 80, short and stooped, but still radiating energy and strength of will. Am I going to look like him when I'm old? he thought. As a boy I took after my mother. Now I look like my grandfather. Maybe I'll be like my father when I get old.

"Have a cup of coffee," said his father. "I'll be ready in a minute.""I've got one," said Wallander."Then have another," said his father.

He's in a bad mood, thought Wallander. He's a tyrant with his changeable moods. What does he want with me, anyway?

"I've got a lot to do," said Wallander. "Actually I have to work all night. I thought there was something you wanted.""Why do you have to work all night?""I have to sit at the hospital.""How come? Who's sick?"

Wallander sighed. Even though he had carried out hundreds of interrogations himself, he would never be able to match his father's persistence in questioning him. And his father didn't even give a damn about his career. Wallander knew that his father had been deeply disappointed when he had decided, at 18, to become a policeman. But he was never able to find out what aspirations his father had actually had for him. He had tried to talk to him about it, but without success.

On the few occasions that he had spent time with his sister Kristina, who lived in Stockholm and owned a beauty salon, he had tried to ask her, since he knew that she and his father were close. But even she had no idea. He drank the lukewarm coffee, wondering whether his father had wanted him to take up the brush and continue to paint the same motif for another generation.

His father put down his brush and wiped his hands on a dirty rag. When he came over to him and poured a cup of coffee, Wallander could smell the stink of dirty clothes and his father's unwashed body.

How do you tell your father that he smells bad? he thought. Maybe he can't take care of himself any longer. And then what do I do? I can't have him at my place, that would never work. We'd murder each other. He watched his father rub his nose with one hand as he slurped his coffee.

"You haven't come out to see me in a long time," his father said reproachfully."I was here the day before yesterday, wasn't I?""For half an hour!""Well, I was here, anyway.""Why don't you want to visit me?""I do! It's just that I have a lot to do sometimes."

His father sat down on a rickety, ancient toboggan that creaked under his weight.

"I just wanted to tell you that your daughter came to visit me yesterday."Wallander was astounded."Linda was here?""Aren't you listening to what I'm telling you?" "Why did she come?" "She wanted a painting." "A painting?""Unlike you, she actually appreciates what I do."

Wallander had a hard time believing what he was hearing. Linda had never shown any interest in her grandfather, except when she was very small."What did she want?""A painting, I told you! You're not listening!"

"I am listening! Where did she come from? Where was she going? How the hell did she get out here? Do I have to drag everything out of you?"

"She came in a car," said his father. "A young man with a black face drove her.""What do you mean by black?""Haven't you heard of Negroes? He was very polite and

spoke excellent Swedish. I gave her the painting and then they left. I thought you'd like to know, since you have so litde contact with each other.""Where did they go?""How should I know?"

Wallander realised that neither of them knew where Linda actually lived. Occasionally she slept at her mother's house. But then she would quickly disappear again, off on her own mysterious paths. I've got to talk to Mona, he thought. Separated or not, we have to talk to each other. I can't stand this any more."Do you want a drink?" his father asked.

The last thing Wallander wanted was a drink. But he knew it was useless to say no."All right, thanks," he said.

A path connected the shed with the house, which was low-ceilinged and sparsely furnished. Wallander noticed at once that it was messy and dirty. He doesn't even see the mess, he thought. And why didn't I notice it before? I've got to talk to Kristina about it. He can't keep living alone like this. At that moment the telephone rang. His father picked it up.

"It's for you," he said, making no attempt to hide his annoyance.

Linda, he thought. It's got to be her. But it was Rydberg calling from the hospital. "She's dead," he said. "Did she wake up?"

"As a matter of fact, she did. For 10 minutes. The doctors thought the crisis was over. Then she died." "Did she say anything?"

Rydberg sounded thoughtful when he answered. "I think you'd better come back to town."

"What did she say?""Something you won't want to hear.""I'll come to the hospital."

"It's better if you go to the station. She's dead, I told you."Wallander hung up. "I've got to go," he said.His father glared at him. "You don't like me," he said.

"I'll be back tomorrow," replied Wallander, wondering what to do about the squalor his father was living in. "I'll come tomorrow for sure. We can sit and talk. We can make dinner. We can play poker if you want."

Even though Wallander was a wretched card player, he knew that a game would mollify his father. "I'll be here at seven," he said.

Then he drove back to Ystad. He walked back through the same glass doors that he had walked out of not much earlier. Ebba nodded at him."Rydberg is waiting in the canteen," she said.

He was there, hunched over a cup of coffee. When Wallander saw the other man's face, he knew that something unpleasant was in store for him.

CHAPTER 4

Wallander and Rydberg were alone in the canteen. In the distance they could hear the ruckus a drunk was making, loudly protesting at his arrest. Otherwise it was quiet. Only the faint whine of the radiator could be heard.Wallander sat down across from Rydberg.

"Take off your overcoat," said Rydberg. "Or else you'll freeze when you go back out in the wind again."

"First I want to hear what you have to say. Then I'll decide whether or not to take off my coat."Rydberg shrugged. "She died," he said."So I understand.""But she woke up for a while right before she died." "And she spoke?"

"That may be putting it too strongly. She whispered. Or wheezed.""Did you get it on tape?"

Rydberg shook his head. "It wouldn't have worked anyway," he said. "It was almost impossible to hear what she was saying. Most of it was just raving. But I wrote down what I'm sure I understood."

Rydberg took a battered notebook out of his pocket. It was held together by a wide rubber band, and a pencil was stuck in between the pages.

"She said her husband's name," Rydberg began. "I think she was trying to find out how he was. Then she mumbled something I couldn't understand. That's when I tried to ask her, 'Who was it that came in the night? Did you know them? What did they look like?' Those were my questions. I repeated them for as long as she was conscious. And I actually think she understood what I was saying.""So what did she answer?""I only managed to catch one word. 'Foreign'.""'Foreign'?""That's right. 'Foreign'."

"Did she mean that the people who attacked her and her husband were foreigners?" Rydberg nodded. "Are you sure?""Do I usually say I'm sure if I'm not?" "No."

"Well then. So now we know that her last message to the world was the word 'foreign'. In answer to the question: who committed this insane crime?"

Wallander took off his coat and got himself a cup of coffee."What the hell could she have meant?" he muttered.

"I've been sitting here thinking about that while I was waiting for you," replied Rydberg. "Maybe they looked un-Swedish. Maybe they spoke a foreign language. Maybe they spoke poor Swedish. There are lots of possibilities."

"What does an 'un-Swedish' person look like?" asked Wallander.

"You know what I mean," said Rydberg. "Or rather, you can guess what she thought.""So it could have been her imagination?" Rydberg nodded. "That's quite possible." "But not particularly likely?"

"Why should she use the last minutes of her life to say something that wasn't true? Elderly people don't usually lie."

Wallander took a sip of his lukewarm coffee.

"This means we have to start looking for one or more foreigners," he said. "I wish she'd said something different.""It's damned unpleasant, all right."

They sat in silence for a moment, lost in their own thoughts. They could no longer hear the drunk out in the corridor.

"You can just picture it," Wallander said after a while. "The only clue the police have to the double murder in Lunnarp is that those responsible are probably foreigners.""I can think of something much worse," replied Rydberg.

Wallander knew what he meant. Just 20 kilometres from Lunnarp there was a big refugee camp that had been the focus of attacks against foreigners on several occasions. Crosses had been burned at night in the courtyard, rocks had been thrown through windows, buildings had been spray-painted with slogans. The camp, in the old castle of Hageholm, had been established despite vigorous protests from the surrounding communities. And the protests had continued. Hostility to refugees was flaring up.

But Wallander and Rydberg knew something else that the general public did not know. Some of the asylum seekers being housed at Hageholm had been caught red-handed breaking into a business that rented out farm machinery. Fortunately the owner was not one of those most fiercely opposed to taking in refugees, so it was possible to keep the whole affair quiet. The two men who had committed the break-in were no longer in Sweden either, since they had been denied asylum. Wallander and Rydberg had discussed what might have happened if the incident had been made public on several occasions.

"I have a hard time believing that refugees seeking asylum could commit murder," said Wallander.

Rydberg gave Wallander a quizzical look. "You remember what I told you about the noose?""Something about the knot?"

"I didn't recognise it. And I know quite a bit about knots, because I spent my summers sailing when I was young."

Wallander looked at Rydberg attentively. "What are you saying?" he asked.

"What I'm saying is that this knot wasn't tied by someone who was a member of the Swedish Boy Scouts.""What the hell do you mean by that?""The knot was made by a foreigner."

Before Wallander could reply, Ebba came into the canteen to get some coffee.

"Go home and get some rest if you can," she said. "By the way, reporters keep calling and saying that they want you to make a statement.""About what?" asked Wallander. "About the weather?""They seem to have found out that the woman died."Wallander looked at Rydberg, who shook his head.

"We're not making a statement tonight," he said. "We're waiting till tomorrow."

Wallander got up and went over to the window. The wind was blowing hard, but the sky was still cloudless. It was going to be another cold night.

"We can hardly avoid mentioning what happened," he said. "That she managed to say something before she died. And if we say that much, then we'll have to tell them what she said. And then all hell will break loose."

"We could try to keep it internal," said Rydberg, getting up and putting on his hat. "For investigative reasons."

Wallander looked at him in surprise.

"And risk having it come out later that we withheld important information from the press? That we were shielding foreign criminals?"

"It's going to affect so many innocent people," said Rydberg. "What do you think will happen at the refugee camp when it gets out that the police are looking for some foreigners?"

Wallander knew that Rydberg was right. Suddenly he was full of doubt.

"Let's sleep on it," he said. "We'll have a meeting, just you and me, tomorrow morning at eight. We'll decide then."

Rydberg nodded and limped towards the door. There he stopped and turned to Wallander again.

"There is one possibility we shouldn't overlook," he said. "That it really was refugees who did it."

Wallander rinsed out his coffee cup and put it in the dish rack.

Actually I hope it was, he thought. I really hope that the killers are at that refugee camp. Then maybe it'll put an end to this arbitrary, lax policy that allows anyone at all, for any reason at all, to cross the border into Sweden. But of course he couldn't say that to Rydberg. It was an opinion he intended to keep to himself.

He fought his way through the strong wind out to his car. Even though he was tired, he had no desire to drive home. In the evenings the loneliness hit him. He turned on the ignition and changed the cassette. The overture to Fideliofilled the darkness inside the car.

His wife's departure had come as a complete surprise. But deep inside he knew, even though he still had a hard time accepting it, that he should have sensed the danger long before it happened. That he was living in a marriage that was slowly breaking apart because of its own dreariness. They had married when they were very young, and far too late realised that they were growing apart. Of the three of them, maybe it was Linda who had reacted most openly to the emptiness surrounding them.

On that night in October when Mona had said that she wanted a divorce, he realised that he had seen it coming; but the thought had been too painful for him and he had repeatedly pushed it aside, blaming it on the fact that he was working so hard. Too late, he saw that she had prepared her departure down to the smallest detail. One Friday evening she had talked about wanting a divorce, and by Sunday she had left him and moved into the flat in Malmö, which she had rented in advance. The feeling of being abandoned had filled him with both shame and anger. In an impotent rage he had slapped her face.

Afterwards there was only silence. She had picked up some of her things during the daytime when he wasn't home. But she left most of her belongings behind, and he had been deeply hurt that she seemed prepared to trade her entire past for a life that did not include him, even as a memory.

He had telephoned her. Late in the evenings they had spoken. Devastated by jealousy, he had asked whether she had left him for another man.

"Another life," she had replied. "Another life, before it's too late."

He had appealed to her. He had tried to give the impression that he was indifferent. He had begged her forgiveness for all the attention he had failed to give. But nothing he said changed her mind.

Two days before Christmas Eve the divorce papers had arrived in the post. When he opened the envelope and realised that it was all over, something had cracked inside him. As if in an attempt to flee, he had called in sick over the Christmas holidays and had set off on an aimless trip that had taken him to Denmark. In northern Sjaelland a sudden storm had left him snowbound, and he had spent Christmas in Gilleleje, in a freezing room at a pension near the beach. There he had written her long letters, which he had later torn to pieces and strewn out over the sea in a symbolic gesture, demonstrating that in spite of everything he had begun to accept what had happened.

Two days before New Year's he had returned to Ystad and gone back to work. He spent New Year's Eve working on a serious case involving spousal abuse in Svarte, and he had a terrifying revelation that he could just as easily have physically abused Mona.

The music from Fideliobroke off with a screech. The machine had swallowed the tape. The radio came on automatically, and he heard the commentary of an ice hockey game.

He pulled out of the car park, intending to drive towards home. But he drove in the opposite direction instead, out along the coast road heading west to Trelleborg and Skanor. When he passed the old prison he accelerated. Driving had always distracted his thoughts ...

He realised that he had driven almost all the way to Trelleborg. A big ferry was just entering the harbour, and on an impulse he decided to stay for a while. He knew that a number of former policemen from Ystad had become immigration officers at the ferry dock in Trelleborg. He thought some of them might be on duty tonight.

He walked across the harbour area, which was bathed in pale yellow light. A large lorry came roaring towards him like a ghostly prehistoric beast.

When he walked through the door with the sign "Authorised Personnel Only", he found he didn't know either of the officers. Wallander introduced himself. The older of the two had a grey beard and a scar across his forehead.

"That's a nasty business you've got in Ystad," he said. "Did you catch them?""Not yet," replied Wallander.

The conversation was interrupted as the passengers from the ferry approached passport control. The majority of them were Swedes returning from celebrating the New Year's holiday in Berlin. There were also some East Germans exercising their newly-won freedom by taking a trip to Sweden.

After 20 minutes there were only nine passengers left. All of them were trying in various ways to make it clear that they were seeking asylum in Sweden.

"It's pretty quiet tonight," said the younger of the two officers. "Sometimes up to a hundred asylum seekers arrive on one ferry. You can imagine what it's like."

Five belonged to the same Ethiopian family. Only one of them had a passport, and Wallander wondered how they had managed to make the long journey and cross all those borders with a single passport. Besides the Ethiopian family, two Lebanese and two Iranians were waiting at passport control.

Wallander found it difficult to decide whether the nine refugees looked hopeful or whether they were simply scared."What happens now?" he asked.

"Malmö will come and pick them up," replied the older officer. "It's their turn tonight. We get word over the radio when there are a lot of people without passports on the ferries. Sometimes we have to call for extra manpower."

"What happens in Malmö?" asked Wallander.

"They're put on one of the ships anchored out in the Oil Harbour. They have to stay there until they're moved on. If they're allowed to stay in Sweden, that is.""What do you think about these people here?"The policeman shrugged.

"They'll probably get in," he answered. "Do you want some coffee? It'll be a while before the next ferry."

Wallander shook his head. "Some other time. I have to get going.""Hope you catch them.""Right," said Wallander. "So do I."

On the way back to Ystad he ran over a hare. When he saw it in the beam of his headlights he hit the brakes, but it struck the left front wheel with a soft thud. He didn't stop to check whether the hare was still alive.What's wrong with me? he thought.

That night Wallander slept uneasily. Just after 5 a.m. he awoke with a start. His mouth was dry, and he had dreamt that somebody was trying to strangle him. When he realised that he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep, he got up and made some coffee.

The thermometer outside the kitchen window showed - 6° C. The light that hung on a wire suspended across the street was swaying in the wind. He sat down at the kitchen table and thought about his conversation with Rydberg the night before. What he had feared had happened. Mrs Lövgren had revealed nothing before she died that could give them a lead. Her mention of something "foreign" was just too vague. They didn't have a single clue to go on.

He got dressed, searching for a long time before finding the heavy sweater he wanted. He went outside, feeling

the wind tearing and biting at him, drove out of Österleden and turned onto the main road towards Malmö. Before he met Rydberg, he had to pay a return visit to the Nyströms. He couldn't shake the feeling that something didn't quite add up. Attacks like this one usually weren't random, but were preceded by rumours of money stashed away. And even though they could be brutal, they were hardly characterised by the methodical violence that he had witnessed at this murder scene.

People in the country get up early in the morning, he thought as he swung onto the narrow road that led to the Nyströms' house. Maybe they've had time to mull things over.

He stopped in front of the house and turned off the engine. At the same moment the light in the kitchen went out. They're scared, he thought. They probably think it's the killers coming back. He left the lights on as he got out of the car and walked across the gravel to the steps.

He sensed rather than saw the flash coming from a bush beside the house. The ear-splitting noise made him dive for the ground. A pebble slashed his cheek, and for an instant he thought he had been hit.

"Police!" he yelled. "Don't shoot! Damn it, don't shoot!"

A torch shone on his face. The hand holding the torch was shaking, and the beam wobbled back and forth. Nyström was standing in front of him, an ancient shotgun in his hand."Is it you?" he asked.

Wallander got up and brushed off the gravel. "What were you aiming at?""I shot straight up in the air," said Nyström.

"Do you have a permit for that gun?" Wallander asked. "Otherwise there could be trouble."

"I've been up all night, keeping watch," said Nyström. Wallander could hear how upset he was.

"I have to turn off my lights," said Wallander. "Then we'll talk, you and I."

Two boxes of shotgun shells lay on the kitchen table. On the sofa lay a crowbar and a big sledgehammer. The black cat was in the window, and stared menacingly at Wallander as he came in. Hanna Nyström stood at the stove stirring a pot of coffee.

"I had no idea that it was the police," said Nyström, sounding apologetic. "And so early."Wallander moved the sledgehammer and sat down.

"Mrs Lövgren died last night," he said. "I thought I'd come out and tell you myself."

Every time Wallander was forced to notify someone of a death, he had the same unreal feeling. To tell strangers that a child or a relative had died, and to do it with dignity, was impossible. The deaths that the police informed people of were always unexpected, and often violent and gruesome. Somebody drives off to buy something at the shops and dies. A child on a bicycle is run over on the way home from the playground. Someone is abused or robbed, commits suicide or drowns. When the police are standing in the doorway, people refuse to accept the news.

The couple were silent. The woman stirred the coffee with a spoon. The man fidgeted with his shotgun, and Wallander discreetly moved out of the line of fire."So, Maria is gone," Nyström said slowly."The doctors did everything they could."

"Maybe it was just as well," said Hanna Nyström, unexpectedly forceful. "What did she have left to live for after he was dead?"

The man put the shotgun down on the kitchen table and stood up. Wallander noticed that he put his weight on one knee.

"I'll go out and give the horse some hay," he said, putting on a tattered cap."Do you mind if I come with you?" asked Wallander."Why would I mind?" said the man, opening the door.

From her stall the mare whinnied as they entered the stable. With a practised hand Nyström flung an arm load of hay into the stall."I'll muck out later," he said, stroking the horse's mane."Why did they keep a horse?" Wallander wondered.

"To a retired dairy farmer an empty stable is like a morgue," replied Nyström. "The horse was company."

Wallander thought that he might just as well start asking his questions here in the stable.

"You stayed up to keep watch last night," he said. "You're scared, and I can understand that. You must have thought to yourself: 'Why were they the ones who were attacked?' You must have thought: 'Why them? Why not us?' "

"They didn't have any money," said Nyström. "Or anything else that was especially valuable. Anyway, nothing was stolen, as I told one of the policemen here yesterday. The only thing that might have been stolen was a wall clock.""Might have been?"

"One of their daughters might have taken it. I can't remember everything." "No money," said Wallander. "And no enemies." Something occurred to him.

"Do you keep any money in the house?" he asked. "Could it be that whoever did this got the wrong house?"

"All that we have is in the bank," replied Nyström. "And we don't have any enemies either."They went back to the house and drank coffee. Wallander saw that Hanna Nystrdm was red-eyed, as if she had been careful to cry while they were out in the stable.

"Have you noticed anything unusual recently?" he asked the couple. "Anyone visiting the Lövgrens you didn't recognise?"They looked at each other and then shook their heads."When was the last time you talked to them?"

"We were over there for coffee the day before yesterday," said Hanna. "As always. We drank coffee together every day. For over 40 years."

"Did they seem frightened of anything?" asked Wallander. "Worried?"

"Johannes had a cold," Hanna replied. "But otherwise everything was normal."

It seemed hopeless. Wallander didn't know what else to ask them. Each reply he got was like a door slamming shut.

"Did they have any acquaintances who were foreigners?" he asked.The man raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Foreigners?""Anyone who wasn't Swedish," Wallander ventured.

"One Midsummer a few years ago some Danes camped on their field."

Wallander looked at the clock. At 8 a.m. he was supposed to meet Rydberg, and he didn't want to be late.

"Try and think," he said. "Anything you can come up with may help."Nyström walked out to the car with him.

"I have a permit for the shotgun," he said. "And I didn't aim at you. I just wanted to scare you."

"You did a good job," replied Wallander. "But I think you ought to get some sleep tonight. Whoever did this isn't coming back."

"Would you be able to sleep?" asked Nyström. "Would you be able to sleep if your neighbours had been slaughtered like dumb animals?"

Since Wallander couldn't think of a good answer, he said nothing.

"Thanks for the coffee," he said, got in his car, and drove away.

This is all going to hell, he thought. Not one clue, nothing. Only Rydberg's strange knot, and the word "foreign". Two old people with no money under the bed, no antique furniture, are murdered in such a way that there seems to be something more than robbery behind it. A murder of hate or revenge.

There must be something out of the ordinary about them, he thought. If only the horse could talk! He had an uneasy feeling about that horse. It was just a vague hunch. But he was too experienced a policeman to ignore his unease.

Just before 8 a.m. he braked to a halt outside the police station in Ystad. The wind was down to light gusts. Still, it felt a few degrees warmer today. Just so long as we don't get snow, he thought.

He nodded to Ebba at the switchboard. "Did Rydberg show up yet?"

"He's in his office," replied Ebba. "They're calling already. TV, radio and the newspapers. And the county police commissioner.

"Stall them a while," said Wallander. "I have to talk with Rydberg first."

He hung up his jacket in his office before he went in to see Rydberg, whose office was a few doors down the corridor. He knocked and heard a grunt in reply.

Rydberg was standing looking out the window when Wallander entered. It was obvious that he hadn't had enough sleep.

"Good morning" said Wallander. "Shall I bring in some coffee?""Sure. But no sugar. I've cut it out."

Wallander went out to get two coffees in plastic mugs and then went back to Rydberg's office. Outside the door he stopped. What's my plan, anyway? he thought. Should we keep her last words from the press for "investigative reasons"? Or should we release them?

I don't have a plan, he thought, annoyed, and pushed open the door with his foot. Rydberg was sitting behind his desk combing his sparse hair. Wallander sank into a visitor's chair with worn-out springs."You ought to get a new chair," he said.

"There's no money for one," said Rydberg, putting away his comb in a desk drawer.Wallander set his cup on the floor beside his chair.

"I woke up so damned early this morning," he said. "I drove out and talked to the Nyströms. The old man was waiting in a bush and took a shot at me with a shotgun."Rydberg pointed at his cheek.

"Not from buckshot," said Wallander. "I hit the deck. He claimed he had a permit for the gun. Who the hell knows?""Did they have anything new to say?"

"Not one thing. Nothing out of the ordinary. No money, nothing. Provided they're not lying, of course.""Why would they be lying?""No, why would they?"

Rydberg took a slurp of coffee and made a face. "Did you know that policemen are unusually susceptible to stomach cancer?" he asked.

"I didn't know that.""If it's true, it's because of all the lousy coffee we drink." "But we solve our cases over our mugs of coffee." "Like now?"

Wallander shook his head. "What do we really have to go on? Nothing."

"You're too impatient, Kurt." Rydberg looked at him while he stroked his nose. "You'll have to excuse me if I seem like a schoolteacher," he went on. "But in this case I think we have to be patient."

They went over the progress of the investigation again. The technicians had taken fingerprints from the scene of the crime and were checking them against the national centralised records. Hansson was busy investigating the location of all known criminals with records of assault on old people, to find out whether they were in prison or had alibis. They would continue questioning the residents of Lunnarp, and perhaps the questionnaire they sent out would produce something. Both Rydberg and Wallander knew that the police in Ystad carried out their work precisely and methodically. Sooner or later something would turn up. A trace, a clue. It was just a matter of waiting. Of working methodically and waiting.

"The motive," Wallander persisted. "If the motive isn't money, or the rumour of money hidden away, then what is it? The noose? You must have thought the same thing I did. This crime has revenge or hate in it. Or both."

"Let's imagine a pair of suitably desperate robbers," said Rydberg. "Let's assume that they were convinced that Lövgren had money squirreled away. Let's assume that they were sufficiently indifferent to human life. Then torture isn't out of the question.""Who would be that desperate?"

"You know as well as I do that there are plenty of drugs that create such a dependency that people are ready to do anything."

Wallander did know that. He had seen the accelerating violence first hand, and narcotics trafficking and drug dependency almost always lurked in the background. Even though Ystad's police district was seldom hit by this increasing violence, he harboured no illusions: it was steadily creeping up on them.

There were no protected zones any more. An insignificant little village like Lunnarp was confirmation of that fact. He sat up straight in the uncomfortable chair."What are we going to do?" he said."You're the boss," replied Rydberg."I want to hear what you think."

Rydberg got up and went over to the window. With one finger he felt the soil in a flowerpot. It was dry.

"If you want to know what I think, I'll tell you. But you should know that I'm by no means sure that I'm on the right track. I think that no matter what we decide to do, there's going to be a big fuss. But maybe it would be a good idea to keep quiet for a few days anyway. There are plenty of things to investigate.""Like what?"

"Did the Lövgrens have any foreign acquaintances?" "I asked about that this morning. They may have known some Danes." "There, you see.""It couldn't have been Danish campers, could it?"

"Why not? No matter what, we'll have to check it out. And there are more people than just the neighbours to question. If I understood you correctly yesterday, the Lövgrens had a big family."

Wallander realised that Rydberg was right. There were investigative reasons to keep quiet about the fact that the police were searching for a person or persons with foreign connections.

"What do we know about foreigners who have committed crimes in Sweden?" he asked. "Do the national police have special files on that?"

"There are files on everything" Rydberg replied. "Put someone in front of a computer and link up to the central criminal database, and maybe we'll find something."

Wallander stood up.

Rydberg looked at him quizzically. "Aren't you going to ask about the noose?" "I forgot."

"There's supposed to be an old sail maker in Limhamn who knows all about knots. I read about him in a newspaper some time last year. I thought I'd try to track him down. Not because I'm confident anything will come of it. But just in case."

"I want you to come to the meeting first," said Wallander. "Then you can drive over to Limhamn."At 10 a.m. they were all gathered in Wallander's office.

The run through was very brief. Wallander told them what the woman had said before she died. For the time being, this piece of information was not to be disclosed. No-one seemed to have any objections.

Martinsson was put on the computer to search for foreign criminals. The officers who were going to continue with the questioning in Lunnarp went on their way. Wallander assigned Svedberg to concentrate on the young Polish family, who were presumably in the country illegally. He wanted to know why they were living in Lunnarp. Rydberg left for Limhamn to look for the sail maker.

When Wallander was alone in his office, he stood for a while looking at the map on the wall. Where had the killers come from? Which way did they go afterwards?

He sat down at his desk and asked Ebba to start putting through calls. For more than an hour he spoke with various reporters. But there was no word from the girl from the local radio station.A while later Norén knocked on the door.

"I thought you were going to Lunnarp," Wallander said, surprised."I was," said Norén. "But I just thought of something."

Norén sat on the edge of a chair, since he was wet. It had started to rain. The temperature had now risen to 1° C.

"This might not mean anything," said Norén. "It just crossed my mind.""Most things mean something," said Wallander."You remember that horse?" asked Norén.

"Sure.""You told me to give it some hay." "And water."

"Hay and water. But I never did." Wallander wrinkled his brow. "Why not?" "The horse already had hay. Water too." Wallander sat in silence for a moment, looking at Norén. "Go on," he said. "You're getting at something." Norén shrugged his shoulders.

"We had a horse when I was growing up," he said. "When the horse was in its stall and was given hay, it would eat all of it. I mean that someone must have given the horse some hay. Maybe just an hour or so before we got there."Wallander reached for the phone.

"If you're thinking of calling Nyström, don't bother," said Norén.

Wallander let his hand drop.

"I talked to him before I came here. And he hadn't given the horse any hay."

"Dead men don't feed their horses," said Wallander. "Who did?" Norén stood up. "It seems weird," he said. "First they kill a man. Then they put a noose on somebody else. And then they go out to the stable and give the horse some hay. Who the hell would do anything that weird?""You're right," said Wallander. "Who would do that?""It might not mean anything," said Norén.

"Or maybe it does," replied Wallander. "It was good of you to tell me."Norén said goodbye and left.

Wallander sat and thought about what he had just heard. His hunch had been correct. There wassomething about that horse.

His thoughts were interrupted by the telephone. Another reporter who wanted to talk with him. At 12.45 p«m. he left the police station. He had to visit a friend he hadn't seen in many, many years.

CHAPTER 5

Kurt Wallander turned off the E65 where a sign pointed towards the ruins of Stjarnsund Castle. He got out of the car and unzipped to have a leak. Through the roar of the wind he could hear the sound of accelerating jet engines at Sturup airport. Before he got back in the car, he scraped the mud from his shoes. The change in the weather had been abrupt. The thermometer in his car showed -50 C. Ragged clouds were racing across the sky as he drove on.

Beyond the castle ruin the gravel road forked, and he kept to the left. He had never come this way before, but he was positive it was the right road. Despite the fact that almost ten years had passed since it had been described to him, he remembered the route in detail. He had a mind that seemed programmed for landscapes and roads.

After about a kilometre the surface deteriorated. He went slowly forwards, wondering how large lorries ever managed to negotiate it. The road sloped sharply downward, and a large farm with long wings of stables lay spread out before him. He drove into the yard and stopped. A flock of crows cawed overhead as he climbed out of the car.

The farm seemed oddly deserted. A stable door flapped in the wind. For a moment he wondered whether he had taken the wrong road after all.

What desolation, he thought. The Scanian winter with its screeching flocks of crows. The clay that sticks to the soles of your shoes.

A young, fair-haired girl emerged from one of the stables. How like Linda she looked, he thought. She had the same blond hair, the same thin body, the same ungainly movements as she walked. He watched her closely.

The girl started tugging at a ladder that led to the stable loft. When she caught sight of him she let go of the ladder and wiped her hands on her grey breeches.

"Hello," said Wallander. "I'm looking for Sten Widén. Is this the right place?""Are you a policeman?" asked the girl."Yes," Wallander replied, surprised. "How could you tell?"

"I could hear it in your voice," said the girl, once more pulling at the ladder, which seemed to be stuck."Is he at home?" asked Wallander."Help me with the ladder," the girl said.

He saw that one of the rungs had caught on the cladding of the stable wall. He grabbed hold of the ladder and twisted it until the rung came free.

"Thanks," said the girl. "Sten is probably in his office" She pointed to a red brick building a short distance from the stable."Do you work here?" asked Wallander.

"Yes," said the girl, climbing quickly up the ladder. "Now I'd move away if I were you!"

With surprisingly strong arms she began heaving bales of hay through the loft doors. Wallander walked over towards the office. Just as he was about to knock on the heavy door, a man came walking around the end of the building.

It was more than ten years since Wallander had seen Sten Widén, but he didn't seem to have changed. The same tousled hair, the same thin face, the same red eczema near his lower lip.

"Well, this is a surprise," said the man with a nervous laugh. "I thought it was the blacksmith. But it's you. How long has it been, anyway?"

"Nearly eleven years," said Wallander. "Summer of '79."

"The summer all our dreams fell apart," said Sten Wid6n. "Would you like some coffee?"

They went into the red brick building. Wallander noticed the smell of oil emanating from the walls. A rusty combine harvester stood inside in the darkness. Widén opened another door. A cat ran out as Wallander entered a room that seemed to be a combination of office and living quarters. An unmade bed stood along one wall. There was a TV and a video, and a microwave on a table. An old armchair was piled high with clothes. Most of the rest of the space was taken up by a large desk. Widén poured coffee from a thermos next to a fax machine in one of the wide window recesses.

Wallander was thinking about Widén's lost dream of becoming an opera singer. About how in the late 1970s the two of them had imagined a future for themselves that neither of them could achieve. Wallander was supposed to become an impresario, and Widén's tenor would resound from the opera stages of the world.

Wallander had been a policeman back then. And he still was.

When Widén realised that his voice wasn't good enough, he had taken over his father's run-down racing stables. Their earlier friendship had not been able to withstand the shared disappointment. At one time they had seen each other every day, but now eleven years had passed since their last meeting. Even though they lived no more than 50 kilometres apart.

"You've put on weight," said Wid£n, moving a stack of newspapers from a wooden chair.

"And you haven't" said Wallander, conscious of his own irritation.

"Racehorse trainers seldom get fat," said Wid6n, laughing nervously again. "Skinny legs, skinny wallets. Except for the big time trainers, of course. Khan or Strasser. They can afford it."

"So how's it going?" asked Wallander, sitting down on the chair.

"So so," said Widén. "I get by. I've always got one horse in training that does well. I get in a few new colts and manage to keep the place going. But actually - " He broke off.

Then he stretched, opened a drawer in his desk, and pulled out a half-empty bottle of whisky."Want some?" he asked.

Wallander shook his head. "It wouldn't look good if a policeman got caught for being drunk in charge," he replied. "Though it happens once in a while."

"Well, skal, anyway," said Widén, drinking from the bottle.

He extracted a cigarette from a crumpled pack and rummaged through the papers and form guides before he found a lighter.

"How's Mona doing?" he asked. "And Linda? And your dad? And your sister, what's her name, Kerstin?""Kristina."

"That's it. Kristina. I've never had a particularly good memory, you know that." "You never forgot the music." "I didn't?"

He drank from the bottle again, and Wallander could see that something was troubling him. Maybe he shouldn't have dropped by. Maybe Sten didn't want to be reminded of what once had been.

"Mona and I have split up," Wallander said, "and Linda's got her own place. Dad is the same as ever. He keeps painting that picture of his. But I think he's becoming a little senile. I don't really know what to do with him.""Did you know that I got married?" said Widén.

Wallander wondered whether he'd heard a word he'd said. "I didn't know that."

"I took over these damned stables, after all. When Dad finally realised that he was too old to take care of the horses, he started doing some serious drinking. Before, he always had control over how much he put away. I realised that I couldn't handle him and his drinking mates. So I married one of the girls who worked here, mainly because she was so good with Dad. She treated him like an old horse. Didn't try to change his habits, but set limits for him. Took the hose and rinsed him off when he got too filthy. But when Dad died, it seemed to me as if she started to smell like him. So I got a divorce."

He took a swig from the bottle, and Wallander could see that he was beginning to get drunk.

"Every day I think about selling this place," he said. "I own the farm itself. I could probably get a million for the whole thing. After the mortgage is paid off, I might have 400,000 kronor left over. Then I'll buy a camper and hit the road.""Where to?"

"That's just it. I don't know. There's nowhere I want to go"

Wallander felt uncomfortable listening to this. Even though Widén was outwardly no different, on the inside he had gone through some big changes. It was the voice of a ghost talking to him, cracked and despairing. Ten years ago Sten Widén had been happy and high-spirited, the first to invite you to a party. Now his love of life seemed gone.

The girl who had asked if Wallander was a policeman rode past the window."Who's she?" he asked. "She could tell I was police."

"Her name is Louise," said Widén. "She could probably smell it. She's been in and out of institutions since she was 12. I'm her guardian. She's good with the horses. But she hates policemen. She claims that she was raped by one once."

He took another swig and gestured towards the unmade bed.

"She sleeps with me sometimes," he said. "That's how it feels at any rate. That she's taking me to bed, not the other way around. I suppose that's against the law, right?""Why should it be? She isn't a minor, is she?"

"She's 19. But are guardians allowed to sleep with their wards?"

Wallander thought he caught a hint of aggression in Widén's voice. He was sorry he had come. Even though he did have a reason for the visit that was connected with the investigation, he now wasn't sure whether it had been more than an excuse. Had he come to see Widén to talk about Mona? To seek out some sort of consolation? He no longer knew.

"I came here to ask you about horses," he said. "Maybe you saw in the paper that there was a double murder in Lunnarp?"

"I don't read newspapers," said Widén. "I read form guides and starting price lists. That's all. I don't give a damn about what's happening in the world."

"An old couple have been killed," Wallander continued. "And they had a horse."

"Was it killed too?"

"No. But I think the killers gave it some hay before they left. And that's what I wanted to talk to you about. How fast does a horse eat an arm load of hay?"Widén emptied the bottle and lit another cigarette.

"Are you kidding?" he asked. "You came all the way out here to ask me how long it takes a horse to eat an arm load of hay?"

"As it happens, I was thinking about asking you to come with me and take a look at the horse," said Wallander, making a quick decision. He could feel himself starting to get angry.

"I don't have time," said Widén. "The blacksmith is coming today. I've got 16 horses that need vitamin jabs." "Tomorrow, then?"

Widén gave him a glazed look. "Is there money involved?" "You'll be paid."

Widén wrote his telephone number on a dirty scrap of paper.

"Maybe," he said. "Call me in the morning." When they stepped outside, Wallander noticed that the wind had picked up. The girl came riding up on her horse. "Nice horse," he said.

"Masquerade Queen," said Widén. "She'll never win a race in her life. The rich widow of a Trelleborg contractor owns her. I was actually honest enough to suggest that she sell the horse to a riding school. But she thinks it can win. And I get my training fee. But there's no way in hell this horse will ever win a race."They said goodbye at the car."You know how my dad died?" asked Widén suddenly.

"No."

"He wandered off to the castle ruin one autumn night. He used to sit up there and drink. He stumbled into the moat and drowned. The algae are so thick there that you can't see a thing. But his cap floated to the surface. 'Live Life' the legend said on the cap. It was an ad for a travel bureau that sells sex holidays in Bangkok."

"It was nice to see you," said Wallander. "I'll call you tomorrow.""Whatever," said Widénand went off towards the stable.

Wallander drove away. In the rear-view mirror he could see Widén talking to the girl on the horse.

Why did I come here? he thought again. Once, a long time ago, we were friends. We shared an impossible dream. When the dream evaporated like a phantom there was nothing left. It may be true that we both loved opera. But perhaps that was just a fantasy too.

He drove fast, as if he were letting his agitation dictate the pressure he put on the accelerator. Just as he braked for the stop sign at the main road, his car phone rang. The connection was so bad he could hardly make out that it was Hansson.

"You'd better come in," the voice yelled. "Can you hear what I'm saying?""What happened?" Wallander yelled back.

"There's a farmer from Hagestad here who says he knows who killed them," Hansson shouted.Wallander felt his heart beating quicker."Who?" he shouted. "Who?"

The connection abruptly died. The receiver hissed and squawked."Damn," he said out loud.He drove back into Ystad. Much too fast, he thought. If Norén and Peters had been on traffic duty today, I'd have been in real trouble.

Just as he was going down the hill into the centre of town, the engine started coughing. He had run out of petrol. The warning light was obviously on the blink.

He managed to make it to the petrol station across from the hospital before the engine died completely. Getting out to put some money in the pump, he discovered that he didn't have any cash on him. He went next door to the locksmith in the same building and borrowed 20 kronor from the owner, who recognised him from an investigation of a break-in a few years back.

He parked and hurried into the station. Ebba tried to tell him something, but he dismissed her with a wave.

The door to Hansson's office was ajar, and Wallander went in without knocking. It was empty. In the corridor he found Martinsson, who was holding a handful of print-outs.

"Just the man I'm looking for," said Martinsson. "I dug up some stuff that might be interesting. I'll be damned if some Finns might not be behind this."

"When we don't have a lead, we usually say it's Finns," said Wallander. "I haven't time now. You know where Hansson is?""He never leaves his office, you know that."

"Then we'll have to put out an APB on him, because he's not there now."

He poked his head into the canteen, but there was only an office clerk there making an omelette. Where the hell is that Hansson? he thought, flinging open the door to his own office. Nobody there either. He called Ebba at the switchboard."Where's Hansson?" he asked."If you hadn't been in such a rush, I could have told

you when you came in," said Ebba. "He told me he had to go down to the Union Bank.""What was he going there for? Was anyone with him?""Yes. But I don't know who it was."

Wallander slammed down the phone. What the hell was he up to? He picked up the phone again.

"Can you get Hansson on the phone for me?" he asked Ebba."At the Union Bank?" "If that's where he is."

He very rarely asked Ebba for help tracking people down. If he needed something done, he did it himself. In the past he'd put it down to his upbringing. Only rich, arrogant people sent others out to do their footwork. Not being able to look up a number in the phone book and pick up a receiver was indefensible laziness.

The telephone rang, interrupting his thoughts. It was Hansson calling from the Union Bank.

"I thought I'd get back before you did," said Hansson. "You're probably wondering what I'm doing here.""You could say that.""We're taking a look at Lövgren's bank account." "Who's we?"

"His name is Herdin. But you'd better talk to him yourself. We'll be back in half an hour."

Wallander finally met the man called Herdin an hour and a half later. He was almost six foot six, thin and wiry, and Wallander felt like he was shaking hands with a giant.

"It took a while," said Hansson. "But we got results. You have to hear what Herdin has to say. And what we've discovered."

Herdin was sitting erect and silent on a wooden chair. Wallander guessed that the man had put on his Sunday best before coming to the police station. Even if it was only a worn suit and a shirt with a frayed collar.

"We'd better start at the beginning," said Wallander, picking up a pad.Herdin gave Hansson a bewildered look."Should I start all over again?" he asked."That would probably be best," said Hansson."It's a long story," Herdin began hesitantly.

"What's your name?" asked Wallander. "Let's start with that."

"Lars Herdin. I have a farm of 40 acres near Hagestad. I'm trying to make ends meet raising livestock. But things are pretty tight."

"I've got all his personal data," Hansson interrupted, and Wallander guessed that Hansson was in a hurry to get back to his form guides.

"If I understand correctly, you came here because you think you may have information relating to the murder of Mr and Mrs Lövgren," said Wallander, wishing he had expressed himself more simply."It's obvious that it was the money," Lars Herdin said."What money?""All the money they had!""Could you clarify that a little?""The German money."

Wallander looked at Hansson, who shrugged slightly. Wallander took this to mean that he had to be patient.

"I think we're going to need a little more detail on this," he said. "Do you think you could be more specific?"

"Lövgren and his father made money during the war," said Herdin. "They kept livestock in secret on some forest pastures up in Smaland. And they bought up worn-out old horses. Then they sold them on the black market to

Germany. They made an obscene amount of money on the meat. And nobody ever caught them. Lövgren was both greedy and clever. He invested the money, and it's been growing over the years." "You mean Lövgren's father?"

"His father died straight after the war. I mean Lövgren himself.""So you're telling me that the Lövgrens were wealthy?"

"Not the family. Just Lövgren. She didn't know a thing about the money."

"Would he have kept his fortune a secret from his own wife?"

Herdin nodded. "Nobody has ever been as foully cheated as my sister."Wallander raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"Maria Lövgren was my sister. She was killed because he had stashed away a fortune."

Wallander heard the barely concealed bitterness. So maybe it wasa hate crime, he thought.

"And this money was kept at home?""Only sometimes," replied Herdin."Sometimes?""When he made the large withdrawals.""Could you give me a little more detail?"

Suddenly something seemed to boil over inside the man in the worn-out suit.

"Johannes Lövgren was a brute," he said. "It's better now that he's gone. But that Maria had to die, that I can never forgive."

Lars Herdin's outburst came so suddenly that neither Hansson nor Wallander had time to react. He grabbed a solid glass ashtray from the table beside him and flung it full force at the wall, where it smashed close to Wallander's head. Splinters of glass flew in every direction, and Wallander felt a shard strike his upper lip.The silence after the outburst was deafening.

Hansson had sprung out of his chair and seemed ready to throw himself at the rangy Herdin, but Wallander raised his hand to stop him, and Hansson sat back down.

"I beg your pardon," said Herdin. "If you have a broom and dustpan I'll clean up the glass. I'll pay for it."

"The cleaners will take care of it," said Wallander. "I think we should go on with our talk."Herdin now seemed perfectiy calm.

"Johannes Lövgren was a beast," he repeated. "He pretended to be like everybody else. But the only thing he thought about was the money he and his father made from the war. He complained that everything was so expensive, and the farmers so poor. But he had his money, and it kept on growing and growing.""And he kept this money in the bank?"

Herdin shrugged. "In the bank, in shares and bonds, who knows what else.""Why did he keep the money at home sometimes?"

"Lövgren had a mistress," said Herdin. "There was a woman in Kristianstad whom he had a son with in the 1950s. Maria knew nothing about that either - not the woman, not the child. He gave his mistress more money every year than he spent on Maria in her whole life.""How much money are we talking about?"

"Two or three times a year he gave her 25 or 30 thousand. He withdrew the money in cash. Then he would think up some excuse and go to Kristianstad."

Wallander thought for a moment about what he had heard. He tried to decide which questions were the most important. It would take hours to work out all the details.

"What did they say at the bank?" he asked Hansson.

"If you don't have the search warrants all in order, the bank doesn't say anything," said Hansson. "They wouldn't let me look at his bank statements. But I did get the answer to one question: Had he been to the bank recently?""Well?"

Hansson nodded. "Last Thursday. Three days before he was killed.""Are they sure?""One of the clerks recognised him.""And he withdrew a large sum of money?"

"They wouldn't say exactly. But the clerk nodded when the bank manager turned his back."

"We'll have to talk to the prosecutor when we have written up this statement," said Wallander. "Then we can look into his assets and see where we are.""Blood money," said Herdin.

Wallander wondered whether he was going to start throwing things again.

"There are plenty of questions left," he said. "But one is more important than all the others right now. How do you know about all this? You say that Lövgren kept it secret from his wife. So how come you know?"

Herdin didn't answer the question. He stared mutely at the floor.Wallander looked at Hansson, who shook his head."You really have to answer the question," said Wallander.

"I don't have to answer at all," said Herdin. "I'm not the one who killed them. Would I murder my own sister?"

Wallander tried to approach the question from another angle. "How many other people know what you just told us?"Herdin didn't answer.

"Whatever you say won't go beyond this room," Wallander said.

Herdin stared at the floor. Wallander knew instinctively that he must wait.

"Would you get us some coffee?" he asked Hansson. "And see if you can find some pastries."

While Hansson was gone, Herdin kept staring at the floor, and Wallander waited. Hansson brought in the coffee, and Herdin ate a stale pastry.

Wallander thought it was time to ask the question again. "Sooner or later you'll have no choice but to answer," he said.Herdin raised his head and looked him straight in the eye.

"When they got married I already had a feeling that there was another person behind Johannes Lövgren's friendly yet taciturn exterior. I thought there was something fishy about him. Maria was my little sister. I wanted the best for her. I was suspicious of Lövgren from the first time he came to our parents' house to court her. It took me 30 years to work out who he was. How I did it is my business.""Did you tell your sister what you found out?"

"Never. Not a word.""Did you tell anyone else? Your own wife?" "I'm not married."

Wallander looked at the man sitting in front of him. There was something hard and dogged about him. Like a man who had been brought up eating gravel.

"One last question," said Wallander. "Now we know that Lövgren had plenty of money. Maybe he also had a large sum of money at home the night he was murdered. We'll have to find that out. But who would have known about it? Besides you."

Herdin looked at him. Wallander saw a glint of fear in his eyes.

"I didn't know about it," said Herdin. Wallander nodded.

"We'll stop here," he said, shoving aside the pad on which he had been taking notes. "But we're going to be needing your help again.""Can I go now?" said Herdin, getting up.

"You can go," replied Wallander. "But don't leave the district without talking to us first. And if you think of anything else, we'd like to hear from you."

As he was leaving, Herdin hesitated as if there was something more he wanted to say. Then he pushed open the door and was gone.

"Tell Martinsson to run a check on him," said Wallander. "Probably we won't find anything. But it's best to make sure."

"What do you think about what he said?" Hansson wondered.Wallander thought before replying.

"There was something convincing about him. I don't think he was lying or making things up. I believe he did discover that Johannes Lövgren was living a double life. I think he was protecting his sister.""Do you think he could have been involved?"

Wallander was certain when he answered. "Herdin didn't kill them. Nor do I think he knows who did. I believe he came to us for two reasons. He wanted to help us find the people responsible so he can both thank them and spit in their faces. As far as he's concerned, whoever murdered Lövgren did him a favour. And whoever murdered Maria ought to be beheaded in the public square."

Hansson got up. "I'll tell Martinsson. Anything else you need right now?"Wallander looked at his watch."Let's have a meeting in my office in an hour. See if you can get hold of Rydberg. He was supposed to go to Malmö to find a man who makes sails."Hansson gave him a questioning look."The noose. The knot. I'll fill you in later."

Hansson left, and Wallander was alone. A breakthrough, he thought. All successful criminal investigations reach a point where we break through the wall. We don't know what we're going to find. But there's always a solution somewhere.

He went over to the window and looked out into the twilight. A cold draught was seeping through the window frame, and he could see from the way a streetlight was swaying that the wind was blowing harder.

He thought about Nyström and his wife. For a lifetime they had lived in close contact with a man who had not been the man he pretended to be at all.

How would they react when the truth came out? With denial? Bitterness? Amazement?

He went back to the desk and sat down. The first feeling of relief that followed a breakthrough like this one often faded quite rapidly. Now there was a possible motive, the most common of all: money. But so far there was no invisible finger pointing in a specific direction. No murderer yet.

Wallander cast another glance at his watch. If he hurried, he could drive down to the hot dog stand at the railway station and get a bite to eat before the meeting. This day too was going to pass without a change in his eating habits.

He was just about to put on his jacket when the phone rang. At the same time there was a knock on the door. The jacket fell to the floor as he grabbed the phone and shouted, "Come in."

Rydberg stood in the doorway. He was holding a large plastic bag.

He heard Ebba's voice on the phone."The TV people insist on speaking to you," she said.

He quickly decided to talk to Rydberg before he had to deal with the media again.

"Tell them I'm in a meeting and won't be available for half an hour," he said."Are you sure?""Sure of what?"

"That you'll talk to them in half an hour? Swedish TV doesn't like to be kept waiting. They take it for granted that everyone will fall to their knees when they call."

"That I will not do. But I can talk to them in half an hour."He hung up.

Rydberg had sat down on the chair by the window. He was busy drying off his hair with a paper napkin."I've got good news," said Wallander.Rydberg went on drying his hair.

"I think we've got a motive. Money. And I think we should look for the killers among people who were close to the Lövgrens."Rydberg tossed the wet napkin into the wastebasket.

"I've had a miserable day," he said. "Good news is welcome."

Wallander spent 5 minutes recounting the meeting with the farmer, Lars Herdin. Rydberg stared gloomily at the shards of glass on the floor.

"Strange story," said Rydberg when Wallander was finished. "It's strange enough to be true."

"I'll try to sum it up," Wallander went on. "Someone knew that Johannes Lövgren from time to time kept large sums of money at home. This gives us robbery as a motive. And the robbery developed into a murder. If Herdin's description of Lövgren is right, that he was an unusually stingy man, he would naturally have refused to reveal where he had hidden the money. Maria Lövgren, who can't have understood much of what was happening on the last night of her life, was forced to accompany Johannes on his final journey. So the question is who besides Herdin knew about the irregular but substantial cash withdrawals. If we can answer that, we can probably answer everything."Rydberg sat there thinking after Wallander fell silent."Did I leave anything out?" asked Wallander.

"I'm thinking about what she said before she died," said Rydberg. "Foreign. And I'm thinking about what I've got in this plastic bag."

He stood up and dumped the contents of the bag onto the desk. A heap of pieces of rope. Each one artfully tied in a knot.

"I've been with an old sail maker in a flat that smells worse than anything you can imagine," said Rydberg with a grimace. "It turns out that this man is almost 90, and practically senile. I wonder whether I shouldn't contact the social services. He was so confused he thought I was his son. Later one of the neighbours told me that his son has been dead for 30 years. But he certainly knows about knots. When I finally got out of there, it was four hours later. These pieces of rope were a present.""Did you find out what you wanted to know?"

"The old man looked at the noose and said he thought the knot was ugly. Then it took me three hours to get him to tell me something about this ugly knot. In the meantime he managed to nod off for a while."

Rydberg gathered up the bits of rope in his plastic bag as he went on. "When he woke up he started talking about his days at sea. And then he said that he'd seen that knot in Argentina. Argentine sailors used that knot for making leads for their dogs." Wallander nodded.

"So you were right. The knot was foreign. The question now is how this all fits in with Herdin's story."

They went out in the corridor, Rydberg went to his office, and Wallander went to see Martinsson and study the print-outs. It turned out that there were exhaustive statistics on overseas-born citizens who had either committed or been suspected of committing crimes in Sweden. Martinsson had also managed to run a check on attacks involving old people. At least four different individuals or gangs were known to have assaulted old, isolated people in Skåne during the past twelve months. But Martinsson had also found out that every one of them was in prison. He was still waiting for word on whether any of them had been granted leave on the day in question.

They held the case meeting in Rydberg's office, since one of the office clerks had offered to sweep up the glass from Wallander's floor. Wallander's phone rang almost non-stop, but the clerk didn't pick it up.

The meeting was long. Everyone agreed that Lars Herdin's testimony was a breakthrough. Now they had a direction to go in. At the same time they went over everything that had been gleaned from the interviews with the residents of Lunnarp, and the people who had telephoned the police or responded to the questionnaire they had sent out. A car that had driven through a village a few kilometres from Lunnarp at high speed late on Saturday night attracted special attention. A lorry driver who had set out on a journey to Goteborg at 3 a.m. had almost been hit going around a tight curve. When he heard about the double murder he called the police. He wasn't sure, but after going through pictures of various cars he decided it was probably a Nissan.

"Don't forget rental cars," said Wallander. "People on the move want to be comfortable these days. Robbers rent cars as often as they steal them."

It was already 6 p.m. by the time the meeting was over. Wallander realised that all his colleagues were now on the offensive. There was palpable optimism after Lars Herdin's visit.

He went to his office and typed up his notes of the interview with Herdin. He had Hansson's notes of the earlier interview so he could compare them. He realised at once that Lars Herdin had not been evasive. The information was the same in both.

Just after 7 p.m. he put the papers aside. He realised that the TV people hadn't called back. He asked the switchboard whether Ebba had left any message before she went home.

The girl who answered was a temp. "There's nothing here," she said.

He went to the canteen and switched on the TV, on a whim. The local news had just started: He leaned on a table and distractedly watched a report about how short of funds the city of Malmö was.

He thought about Sten Widén. And Johannes Lövgren, who had sold meat to the Nazis during the war. He thought about himself, and about his stomach, which was far too big.

He was just about to turn off the TV when the anchor-woman started talking about the murders in Lunnarp. In astonishment he heard that the police in Ystad were concentrating their search on as-yet-unidentified foreign citizens. The police were convinced that those responsible were foreigners. It could not be ruled out that they might be refugees seeking asylum.

Finally the reporter talked about Wallander himself. Despite repeated efforts, it had been impossible to get any of the detectives in charge to comment on the information, which had been obtained from anonymous but reliable sources.

The reporter was speaking in front of a shot of the Ystad police station. Then she moved straight on to the weather report. A storm was approaching from the west. The wind would increase, but there was no risk of snow. The temperature would continue to stay above freezing level.

Wallander turned off the TV. He couldn't make up his mind whether he was upset or merely tired. Or maybe he was just hungry.

Someone at the police station had leaked the information. Perhaps nowadays people got paid for passing on confidential information. Did the state-run television monopoly have slush funds too?

Who? he wondered. It could have been anyone except me. And why? Was there some other explanation besides money? Racial hatred? Fear of refugees? As he walked back to his room, he could hear the phone ringing all the way down the corridor.

It had been a long day. He would have liked to drive home and cook himself some dinner. With a sigh he sat down and pulled over the phone. I guess I'll have to get started, he thought. Start denying the information on the TV. And hope that nobody burns any wooden crosses in the days to come.

CHAPTER 6

Overnight a storm moved in across Skåne. Kurt Wallander was sitting in his untidy flat as the winter wind tore at the roof tiles, drinking whisky and listening to a German recording of Aida, when everything went dark and silent. He went over to the window and looked out into the darkness. The wind was howling, and somewhere an advertising sign was banging against a wall.

The luminous hands on his wristwatch showed 2.50 a.m. Oddly enough, he no longer felt tired. It had been after midnight by the time he got away from the station. The last caller had been a man who refused to give his name. He had proposed that the police join forces with the domestic nationalist movements and chase the foreigners out of the country once and for all. For a moment Wallander had tried to listen to what the man was saying. Then he had slammed down the receiver, called the switchboard, and had all incoming calls held. He'd turned off the lights in his office, walked down the silent corridor, and driven straight home. By the time he unlocked his front door, he had decided to find out who had leaked the information. It wasn't really his business at all. If conflicts arose within the police force, it was the duty of the chief of police to intervene. In a few days Björk would be back from his winter holiday. Then he could deal with it. The truth would have to come out.

But as Wallander drank his first glass of whisky, it had occurred to him that Björk would do nothing. Even though each individual police officer was bound by an oath of silence, it could hardly be considered a criminal offence if an officer called up a contact at Swedish Television and told him what was discussed at a case meeting. Nor would it be easy to prove any irregularities if Swedish Television had paid its secret informant. Wallander wondered briefly how -Swedish Television entered such an expense in their books. And in any case Björk wouldn't be disposed to question internal loyalty in the middle of a murder investigation.

By the second glass of whisky he was back to worrying who could have been the source of the leak. Apart from himself, he felt he could safely eliminate Rydberg. But then why was he so sure of Rydberg? Could he see more deeply into him than into any of the others?

The storm had obviously knocked out the power. He sat alone in the dark, thinking. His thoughts about the murdered couple, about Lars Herdin, about the strange knot on the noose were mixed with thoughts of Sten Widén and Mona, of Linda and his ageing father. Somewhere in the dark a vast meaninglessness was beckoning. A sneering face that laughed scornfully at every attempt he made to manage his life.

He woke up when the power came back on. He had slept for over an hour. The record was still spinning on the record player. He emptied his glass and went to lie down on his bed.

I've got to talk to Mona, he thought. I've got to talk to her after all that's happened. And I've got to talk to my daughter. I have to visit my father and see what I can do for him. On top of all that I really ought to catch the murderers ...

He had dozed off again. He thought he was in his office when the telephone rang. Drowsily he snatched the phone. Who could be calling him at this hour? As he answered, he prayed that it was Mona.

At first he thought that the man on the line sounded like Sten Widén."Now you've got three days to make good," said the man."Who is this?" said Wallander.

"It doesn't matter who I am," replied the man. "I'm one of the Ten Thousand Redeemers."

"I refuse to talk to anyone if I don't know who it is," said Wallander, wide awake now.

"Don't hang up," said the man. "You now have three days to make up for shielding foreign criminals. Three days, no more."

"I don't understand what you're talking about," said Wallander, feeling uneasy at the unknown voice.

"Three days to catch the killers and put them on display," said the man. "Or else we'll take over.""Take over what? And who's 'we'?""Three days. No more. Then something's going to burn."The connection was broken off.

Wallander went into the kitchen, turned on the light and sat down at the table. He wrote down the conversation in an old notebook that Mona used to use for her shopping lists. At the top of the pad it said "bread". He couldn't read what she had written below that.

It wasn't the first time in his years as a policeman that Wallander had received an anonymous threat. Several years earlier, a man who considered himself unjustly convicted of assault and battery had harassed him with insinuating letters and night-time phone calls. It was Mona who finally got fed up and demanded that he do something about it.

Wallander had sent Svedberg to the man with a warning that he was risking a long jail sentence. Another time his tyres had been slashed.

But this man's message was different. "Something's going to burn," he had said. That meant anything from refugee camps to restaurants to houses owned by foreigners.

Three days - 72 hours. That meant Friday, or Saturday the 13th at the latest.

He went and lay down on the bed again and tried to sleep. The wind tore and ripped at the walls of the house. How could he sleep when he kept waiting for the man to call again?

At 6.30 a.m. he was back at the station. He exchanged a few words with the duty officer and learned that the stormy night had been peaceful at least. An articulated lorry had tipped over outside Ystad, and some scaffolding had blown down in Skarby. That was all.

He got himself some coffee and went to his office. With an old electric shaver that he kept in a desk drawer he got rid of the stubble on his cheeks. Then he went out for the morning papers. The more he looked through them, the more irritated he became. Despite the fact that he had been on the telephone talking to a number of reporters until late the night before, they had printed only vague and incomplete denials that the police were concentrating their investigation on foreign citizens. It was as though the papers had only reluctantly accepted the truth.

He decided to call another press conference for that afternoon and to present an account of the status of the investigation. He would also disclose the anonymous threat he had received during the night.

From a shelf behind his desk, he took down a folder in which he kept records on the various refugee centres in the region. Besides the big refugee camp in Ystad, several smaller ones were scattered throughout the district.

But what was there to prove that the threat actually had to do with a refugee camp in Ystad's police district? Nothing. The threat might equally be directed at a restaurant or a house. For instance, how many pizzerias were there in the Ystad area? Twelve? More?

There was one thing he was quite sure of. The threat had to be taken seriously. In the past year there had been too many incidents that confirmed that these were well-organised factions that would not hesitate to resort to open violence against foreigners living in Sweden or refugees seeking asylum.

He looked at his watch. It was 7.45 a.m. He picked up the phone and dialled the number of Rydberg's house. After ten rings he hung up. Rydberg was on his way.Martinsson stuck his head around the door."Hello," he said. "What time is the meeting today?"

"Ten o'clock," said Wallander."Awful weather, isn't it?""As long as we don't get snow. I can live with the wind."

While he waited for Rydberg, he looked for the note Sten Widén had given him. After Herdin's visit he realised that perhaps it wasn't so unusual for someone to have given the horse hay during the night. If the killers were among Johannes and Maria Lövgren's acquaintances, or even members of their family, they would naturally know about the horse. Maybe they also knew that Johannes Lövgren made a habit of going out to the stable in the night.

Wallander had only a vague idea of what Widénwould be able to add. Maybe the real reason he had called him was to avoid losing touch with him. No-one answered, even though he let the phone ring for over a minute. He hung up and decided to try again a little later.

He also had another phone call he wanted to make before Rydberg arrived. He dialled the number and waited.

"Public prosecutor's office," a cheerful female voice answered."This is Kurt Wallander. Is Akeson there?""He's on leave of absence^ Did you forget?"

He had forgotten. It had completely slipped his mind that public prosecutor Per Akeson was taking some university courses. And they had had dinner together as recently as the end of November.

"I can connect you with his deputy, if you'd like," said the receptionist."Do that," said Wallander.To his surprise a woman answered. "Anette Brolin.""I'd like to talk with the prosecutor," said Wallander."Speaking," said the woman. "What is this about"

Wallander realised that he hadn't introduced himself. He gave her his name and went on, "It's about this double murder. I think it's time we presented a report to the public prosecutor's office. I had forgotten that Per was on leave."

"If you hadn't called this morning, I would have called you," said the woman.

Wallander thought he detected a reproachful tone in her voice. Bitch, he thought. Are you going to teach me how the police are supposed to co-operate with the prosecutor's office?

"We actually don't have much to tell you," he said, noticing that his voice sounded a little hostile. "Is an arrest imminent?" "No. I was thinking more of a short briefing." "All right," said the woman. "Shall we say eleven o'clock

at my office? I've got a warrant application hearing at quarter past ten. I'll be back by eleven."

"I might be a little late. We have a case meeting at ten. It might run on."

"Try to make it by eleven."She hung up, and he sat there holding the receiver.

Co-operation between the police and the prosecutor's office wasn't always easy. But Wallander had established an informal and confidential relationship with Per Akeson. They often called each other to ask advice. They seldom disagreed on when detention or release was justified.

"Damn," he said out loud. "Anette Brolin, who the hell is she?"

Just then he heard the unmistakable sound of Rydberg limping by in the corridor. He stuck his head out of the door and asked him to come in. Rydberg was dressed in an outmoded fur jacket and beret. When he sat down he grimaced.

"Bothering you again?" asked Wallander, pointing at his leg.

"Rain is OK," said Rydberg. "Or snow. Or cold. But this damned leg can't stand the wind. What do you want?"

Wallander told him about the call he had received during the night.

"What do you think?" he asked when he'd finished. "Serious or not?""Serious. At least we have to proceed as if it is."

"I'm thinking about a press conference this afternoon. We'll present the status of the investigation and concentrate on Lars Herdin's story. Without mentioning his name, of course. Then I'll speak about the threat. And say that all rumours about foreigners being involved are groundless."

"But that's actually not true," Rydberg mused. "What do you mean?"

"The woman said what she said. And the knot may be Argentine."

"How do you intend to make that fit in with a robbery that was presumably committed by someone who knew Lövgren very well?"

"I don't know yet. I think it's too soon to draw conclusions. Don't you?"

"Provisional conclusions," said Wallander. "All police work deals with drawing conclusions, which you later discard or keep building on."Rydberg shifted his sore leg.

"What are you thinking of doing about the leak?" he asked. "I'm thinking of giving them hell at the meeting," said Wallander. "Then Björk can deal with it when he gets back." "What do you think he'll do?" "Nothing." "Exactly."Wallander threw his arms wide.

"We might as well admit it right now. Whoever leaked it to the TV people isn't going to get his nose twisted off. By the way, how much do you think Swedish Television pays policemen for leaks?"

"Probably far too much," said Rydberg. "That's why they don't have money for any good programmes."He got up from his chair.

"Don't forget one thing," he said as he stood with his hand on the doorframe. "A policeman who snitches can snitch again.""What does that mean?"

"He can insist that one of our leads does point to foreigners. It's true, after all."

"It's not even a lead," said Wallander. "It's the last confused words of a dying woman." Rydberg shrugged."Do as you like," he said. "See you in a while."

The case meeting went as badly as it could have. Wallander had decided to start with the leak and its possible consequences. He would describe the anonymous call he had received and then invite suggestions on a plan of action before the deadline. But when he announced angrily that there was someone at the meeting disloyal enough to betray confidential information, possibly for money, he was met by equally furious protests. Several officers said that the leak could have come from the hospital. Hadn't doctors and nurses been present when the old woman uttered those last words?

Wallander tried to refute their objections, but they kept protesting. By the time he finally managed to steer the discussion to the investigation itself, a sullen mood had settled over the meeting. Yesterday's optimism had been replaced by a slack, uninspired atmosphere. Wallander had got off on the wrong foot.

The effort to identify the car with which the lorry driver had almost collided had yielded no results. An additional man was assigned to concentrate on this.

The investigation of Lars Herdin's past was continuing. On the first check nothing remarkable had come to light. He had no police record and no conspicuous debts.

"We're going to run a vacuum cleaner over this man," said Wallander. "We have to know everything there is to know. I'm going to meet the prosecutor in a few minutes. I'll ask for authorisation to go into the bank."Peters delivered the biggest news of the day."Lövgren had two safe-deposit boxes," he said. "One at the Union Bank and one at the Merchants' Bank. I went through the keys on his key ring."

"Good," said Wallander. "We'll check them out later today."

The charting of Lövgren's family, friends and relatives would go on.

It was decided that Rydberg should take care of the daughter who lived in Canada, who would be arriving at the hovercraft terminal in Malmö just after 3 p.m.

"Where's the other one?" asked Wallander. "The handball player?"

"She's already arrived," said Svedberg. "She's staying with relatives."

"You go and talk to her," said Wallander. "Do we have any other tip-offs that might produce something? Ask the daughters if either of them was given a wall clock, by the way.

Martinsson had sifted through the tip-offs. Everything that the police learnt was fed into a computer. Then he did a rough sort. The most ridiculous ones never got beyond the print-outs.

"Hulda Yngveson phoned from Vallby and said that it was the disapproving hand of God that dealt the blow," said Martinsson.

"She always calls," sighed Rydberg. "If a calf runs off, it's because God is displeased.""I put her on the C.F. list," said Martinsson.

The sullen atmosphere was broken by a little amusement when Martinsson explained that C.F. stood for "crazy fools".

They had received no tip-offs of immediate interest. But every one would be checked. Finally there was the question of Johannes Lövgren's secret relationship in

Kristianstad and the child that they had together.

Wallander looked around the room. Thomas Näslund, a 30-year veteran who seldom called attention to himself but who did solid, thorough work, was sitting in a corner, pulling on his lower lip as he listened.

"You can come with me," said Wallander. "See if you can do a little footwork first. Ring Herdin and pump him for everything you can about this woman in Kristianstad. And the child too, of course."

The press conference was fixed for 4 p.m. By then Wallander and Näslund hoped to be back from Kristianstad. Rydberg had agreed to preside if they were late.

"I'll write the press release," said Wallander. "If no-one has anything more, we'll adjourn."

It was 11.25 a.m. when he knocked on Per Akeson's door in another part of the police building. The woman who opened the door was very striking and very young. Wallander stared at her.

"Seen enough yet?" she said. "You're half an hour late, by the way.""I told you the meeting might run over," he replied.

He hardly recognised the office. Per Akeson's spartan, colourless space had been transformed into a room with pretty curtains and potted plants round the walls.

He followed her with his eyes as she sat down behind her desk. She couldn't be more than 30. She was wearing a rust-brown suit that he was sure was of good quality and no doubt quite expensive.

"Have a seat," she said. "Maybe we ought to shake hands, by the way. I'll be filling in for Akeson all the time he's away. So we'll be working together for quite a while."

He put out his hand and noticed at the same time that she was wearing a wedding ring. To his surprise, he realised that he felt disappointed. She had dark brown hair, cut short and framing her face. A lock of bleached hair curled down beside one ear.

"I'd like welcome you to Ystad," he said. "I have to admit that I quite forgot that Per was on leave.""I assume we'll be using our first names. Mine is Anette.""Kurt. How do you like Ystad?"

She shook off the question brusquely. "I don't really know yet. Stockholmers no doubt have a hard time getting used to the leisurely pace of Skåne.""Leisurely?""You're half an hour late."

Wallander could feel himself getting angry. Was she provoking him? Didn't she understand that a case meeting might run over? Did she regard all Scanians as leisurely?

"I don't think Scanians are any lazier than anyone else," he said. "All Stockholmers aren't stuck-up, are they?""I beg your pardon?""Forget it."

She leaned back in her chair. He was having difficulty looking her in the eye.

"Perhaps you would give me a summary of the case," she said.

Wallander tried to make his report as concise as possible. He could tell that, without intending to, he had wound up in a defensive position. He avoided mentioning the leak in the police department. She asked a few brief questions, which he answered. He could see that despite her youth she did have professional experience.

"We have to take a look at Lövgren's bank statements," he said. "He also has two safe-deposit boxes we want to open."She wrote out the documents he needed.

"Shouldn't a judge look at this?" asked Wallander as she pushed them over to him.

"We'll do that later," she said. "And I'd appreciate receiving copies of all the investigative material."He nodded and got up to leave.

"This article in the papers," she inquired. "About foreigners who may have been involved?""Rumour," replied Wallander. "You know how it is."

"I do?" she asked.

When he left her office he noticed that he was sweating. What a babe, he thought. How the hell can someone like that become a prosecutor? Devote her life to catching small-time crooks and keeping the streets clean?

He stopped in the reception area of the station, unable to decide what to do next. Eat, he decided. If I don't get some food now, I never will. I can write the press release over lunch.

When he walked out of the police station he was almost blown over. The storm had not died down.

He ought to drive home and make himself a simple salad. Despite the fact that he had hardly had a thing all day, his stomach felt heavy and bloated. But instead he allowed himself to be tempted by the Hornpiper down by the square. He wasn't going to tackle his eating habits seriously today either.

At 12.45 he was back at the station. Since he had once again eaten too fast, he had an attack of diarrhoea and made for the men's room. When his stomach had settled somewhat, he handed the press release to one of the office clerks and then headed for Näslund's room.

"I can't get hold of Herdin," said Näslund. "He's on some kind of winter hike with a conservation group in Fyledalen."

"Then I suppose we'll have to drive out there and look for him," said Wallander.

"I thought I might as well do that, then you can check the safe-deposit boxes. If everything was so secret with this woman and their child, maybe there's something locked up there. We'll save time that way, I mean."

Wallander nodded. Näslund was right. He was charging like a bull at a gate.

"OK, that's what we'll do," he said. "If we don't make it today we'll go up to Kristianstad tomorrow morning."

Before he got into his car to drive down to the bank, he tried once more to get hold of Sten Widén. There was no answer this time either.He gave the number to Ebba at the reception desk.

"See if you can get an answer," he said. "Check whether this number is right. It's supposed to be in the name of Sten Widén. Or a racing stable with a name I don't know."

"Hansson probably knows," said Ebba."I said racehorses, not trotters.""He bets on anything that moves," said Ebba with a laugh.

"I'll be at the Union Bank if there's anything urgent," said Wallander.

He parked across from the book shop on the square. The powerful wind almost blew the parking ticket out of his hand after he put the money in the machine. The town seemed abandoned. The winds were keeping people indoors.

He stopped at the electrical shop by the square. He was considering buying a video in an attempt to conquer the loneliness of his evenings. He looked at the prices and tried to work out whether he could afford to buy one this month. Or should he invest in a new stereo instead? After all, it was music he turned to when he lay tossing and turning, unable to sleep.

He tore himself away from the window and turned down the pedestrian street by the Chinese restaurant. The Union Bank was right next door. He walked in through the glass doors, finding only one customer inside the small lobby. A farmer with a hearing aid, complaining about interest rates in a high, shrill voice. To the left, an office door stood open. Inside a man sat studying a computer screen. Wallander assumed this was where he was supposed to go. As he appeared in the doorway, the man looked up quickly, as though he might be a bank robber. He walked into the room and introduced himself.

"We're not happy about this at all," said the man. "In all the years I've been at this bank we've never had any trouble with the police."

Wallander was instantly annoyed by the man's attitude. Sweden had turned into a country where people seemed to be afraid of being bothered more than anything else. Nothing was more sacred than ingrained routine.

"It can't be helped," said Wallander, handing over the documents that Anette Brolin had drawn up. The man read them carefully.

"Is this really necessary?" he asked. "The whole point of a safe-deposit box is that it's protected from inspection."

"Yes, it is necessary," said Wallander. "And I haven't got all day."

With a sigh the man got up from his desk. Wallander could see that he had prepared himself for this visit. They passed through a barred doorway and entered the safe-deposit vault. Lövgren's box was at the bottom in one corner. Wallander unlocked it, pulled out the drawer, and put it on the table. He raised the lid and started going through the contents. There were some papers for burial arrangements and some title deeds to the farm in Lunnarp, some old photographs and a pale envelope with old stamps on it. That was all.Nothing, he thought. Nothing that I had hoped for.

The man stood to one side, watching him. Wallander wrote down the number of the title deed and the names on the burial documents. Then he closed the box."Will that be all?"

"For the time being," said Wallander. "Now I'd like to take a look at the accounts that Lövgren had here at the bank."

On the way out of the vault something occurred to him. "Did anyone else besides Lövgren have access to his safe-deposit box?" he asked."No," replied the bank official."Do you know whether he opened the box recendy?"

"I've checked the register," was the reply. "It has to be many years since he last opened the box."

The farmer was still complaining when they returned to the lobby. He had started on a tirade about the declining price of grain."I have all the information in my office," said the man.

Wallander sat down by his desk and went through two sheets of print-outs. Johannes Lövgren had four different accounts. Maria Lövgren was a joint signatory on two of them. The total amount in these two accounts was 90,000 kronor. Neither of the accounts had been touched for a long time. In the past few days interest had been paid into the accounts. The third account was left over from Lövgren's days as a working farmer. The balance in that one was 132 kronor and 97 ore.

There was one more. Its balance was almost a million kronor. Maria Lövgren was not a signatory to it. On January 1, interest of more than 90,000 kronor had been paid into the account. On 4 January, Johannes Lövgren had withdrawn 27,000 kronor. Wallander looked up at the man sitting on the other side of the desk.

"How far back can you trace records for this account?" he asked.

"Theoretically, for ten years. But it'll take some time, of course. We'll have to run a computer search."

"Start with last year. I'd like to see all activity in this account during 1989."

The official rose and left the room. Wallander started studying the other document. It showed that Johannes Lövgren had almost 700,000 kronor in various mutual funds that the bank administered.So far Herdin's story seems to hold up, he thought.

He recalled the conversation with Nyström, who had sworn that his neighbour didn't have any money. That's how much he knew about his neighbours.

After about 5 minutes the man came back from the lobby. He handed Wallander another print-out. On three occasions in 1989 Johannes Lövgren had taken out a total of 78,000 kronor. The withdrawals were made in January, July, and September."May I keep these papers?" he asked.The man nodded.

"I'd very much like to speak with the clerk who paid out the money to Johannes Lövgren the last time," he said."Britta-Lena Bodén," said the man.

The woman who came into the office was quite young. Wallander thought she was hardly more than 20."She knows what it's all about," said the man.

Wallander nodded and introduced himself. "Tell me what you know."

"It was quite a lot of money," said the young woman. "Otherwise I wouldn't have remembered it.""Did he seem uneasy? Nervous?""Not that I recall.""How did he want the money?""In thousand-krona notes."

"Only thousands?""He took a few five hundreds too.""What did he put the money in?"The young woman had a good memory.

"A brown briefcase. One of those old-fashioned ones with a strap around it.""Would you recognise it if you saw it again?""Maybe. The handle was tatty.""What do you mean by tatty?""The leather was cracked."

Wallander nodded. The woman's memory was excellent. "Do you remember anything else?" "After he got the money, he left." "And he was alone?" "Yes."

"You didn't see whether anyone was waiting for him outside?""I wouldn't be able to see that from the counter.""Do you remember what time it was?"

The woman thought before she replied. "I went to lunch straight afterwards. It was around midday."

"You've been a great help. If you remember anything else, please let me know."

Wallander got up and went into the lobby. He stopped for a moment and looked around. The young woman was right. From the counters it was impossible to see whether anyone was waiting on the street outside.

The farmer was gone, and new customers had arrived. Someone speaking a foreign language was changing money at one of the counters.

Wallander went outside. The Merchants' Bank was in Hamngatan close by.

A much friendlier bank officer accompanied him down to the vault. When Wallander opened the steel drawer, he was disappointed at once. The box was empty. No-one but Johannes Lövgren had access to this safe-deposit box either. He had rented it in 1962.

"When was he here last?" asked Wallander. The answer gave him a start.

"On the 4th of January," the official replied after studying the register of visitors. "At 1.15 p.m., to be precise. He stayed for 20 minutes."

But when Wallander asked all the employees, no-one remembered whether Lövgren had anything with him when he left the bank. No-one remembered him having a briefcase. That young woman from the Union Bank, he thought. Every bank ought to have someone like her.

Wallander struggled down windblown back streets to Fridolf's Cafe, where he had a cup of coffee and ate a cinnamon bun.

I would like to know what Lövgren did between midday and 1.15, he thought. What did he do between his first and second bank visits? And how did he get to Ystad? How did he get back? He didn't own a car.

He took out his notebook and brushed some crumbs off the table. After half an hour he had drawn up a summary of the questions that had to be answered as soon as possible.

On the way back to the car he went into a menswear shop and bought a pair of socks. He was shocked at the price but paid without protesting. Mona had always bought his clothes. He tried to remember the last time he had bought a pair of socks.

When he got back to his car, he found a parking ticket stuck under his windscreen wiper. If I don't pay it, they'll eventually start legal proceedings against me, he thought. Then acting public prosecutor Brolin will be forced to stand up in court and take me to task.

He tossed the ticket into the glove compartment, thinking again how good-looking she was. Good-looking and charming. Then he remembered the bun he'd just eaten.

It was 3 p.m. before Näslund rang. By then Wallander had decided to postpone the trip to Kristianstad.

"I'm soaked," Näslund said. "I've been tramping around in the mud after Herdin all over Fyledalen."

"Give him a thorough going over," said Wallander. "Put a little pressure on him. We want to know everything he knows.""Should I bring him in?" asked Näslund.

"Go home with him. Maybe he'll talk more freely at home at his own kitchen table."

The press conference started at 4 p.m. Wallander looked for Rydberg, but nobody knew where he was.

The room was full. Wallander saw that the reporter from the local radio was there, and he made up his mind to find out what she really knew about Linda.

He could feel his stomach churning. I'm repressing things, he thought. Along with everything else I don't have time for. I'm searching for the slayers of the dead and can't even manage to pay attention to the living. For a dizzying instant his entire consciousness was filled with only one urge. To take off. Flee. Disappear. Start a new life.

He stepped onto the little dais and welcomed his audience to the press conference.

After just under an hour it was over. Wallander thought that he probably came off pretty well by denying all rumours that the police were searching for foreign citizens in connection with the murders. He hadn't been asked any questions that gave him trouble. When he stepped down, he felt satisfied.

The young woman from the local radio waited while he was interviewed for television. As always when a TV camera was pointed at his face, he got nervous and stumbled over his words. But the reporter was satisfied and didn't ask for another take.

"You'll have to get yourself some better informants," said Wallander when it was all over."I might have to at that," replied the reporter and laughed.

When the TV crew had left, Wallander suggested that the young woman from the local radio station accompany him to his office.

He was less nervous with a radio microphone than in front of the camera. When she was finished, she turned off the tape recorder. Wallander was just about to bring up Linda when Rydberg knocked on the door and came in."We've almost finished," said Wallander."We have finished" said the young woman, getting up.

Crestfallen, Wallander watched her go. He hadn't managed to get in one word about Linda.

"More trouble," said Rydberg. "They just called from the refugee processing unit here in Ystad. A car drove into the courtyard and someone threw a bag of rotten turnips at an old man from Lebanon, hitting him in the head.""Damn," said Wallander. "What happened?"

"He's at the hospital getting bandaged up. But the director is nervous.""Did they get the registration number?"

"It all happened too quickly."Wallander thought for a moment.

"Let's not do anything conspicuous just now," he said. "In the morning there will be strong denials about the foreigners in all the papers. It'll be on TV tonight. Then we just have to hope that things calm down. We could ask the night patrols to check the camp.""I'll tell them " said Rydberg.

"Come back afterwards and we'll do an update," said Wallander.

It was 8.30 p.m. when Wallander and Rydberg finished.

"What do you think?" asked Wallander as they gathered up their papers.

Rydberg scratched his forehead. "It's obvious that this Herdin lead is a good one. As long as we can get hold of that mystery woman and the child, the son. There's a lot to indicate that the solution might be close at hand. So close that we can't see it. But at the same time..." Rydberg broke off."At the same time?"

"I don't know," Rydberg went on. "There's something funny about all this. Especially that noose. I don't know what it is."

He shrugged and stood up. "We'll have to go on tomorrow," he said.

"Do you remember seeing a brown briefcase at Lövgren's house?" Wallander asked. Rydberg shook his head.

"Not that I can recall," he said. "But a whole pile of old junk fell out of the wardrobes. I wonder why old people turn into such hoarders?"

"Send someone out there tomorrow morning to look for an old brown briefcase," said Wallander. "With a cracked handle."

Rydberg left. Wallander could see that his leg was bothering him a lot. He should find out whether Ebba had reached Sten Widén. But he didn't bother. Instead he looked up Anette Brolin's home address in a department directory. To his surprise he discovered that she was almost his neighbour.

I could ask her to dinner, he thought. Then he remembered that she wore a wedding ring.

He drove home through the storm and took a bath. Then he lay on his bed and flicked through a biography of Giuseppe Verdi.

He woke up with a start a few hours later because he was cold. His watch showed almost midnight. He felt dejected. Now he'd have another sleepless night. Driven by despondency, he got dressed. He might as well spend a few night-time hours in his office.

Outside, he noticed that the wind had died down. It was getting cold again. Snow, he thought. It'll be here soon.

He turned into Österleden. A lone taxi was heading in the opposite direction. He drove slowly through the empty streets. On an impulse, he decided to drive past the refugee camp on the west side of town.

The camp consisted of huts in long rows in an open field. Floodlights lit up the green-painted structures. He stopped in the car park and got out of the car. The waves were breaking on the beach not far away.

He looked at the camp. Put a fence around it and it'd be a concentration camp, he thought. He was just about to get back in his car when he heard a faint crash of glass breaking. In the next instant there was a dull boom.

Then tall flames were shooting out of one of the huts.

CHAPTER 7

He had no idea how long he stood there, stunned by the flames raging in the winter night. Perhaps it was minutes, perhaps only a few seconds. But when he managed to break out of his paralysis, he had enough presence of mind to grab the car phone and raise the alarm.

The static on the phone made it difficult to hear the man who answered.

"The refugee camp in Ystad is on fire!" shouted Wallander. "Get the fire department out here! The wind is blowing hard."

"Can I have your name?" asked the man at the emergency switchboard.

"This is Wallander of the Ystad police. I just happened to be driving past when the fire started."

"Can you identify yourself?" continued the voice on the phone, unmoved."Damn it! 4-7-1-1-2-1! And get a bloody move on!"

He hung up the phone to avoid answering any more questions. Besides, he knew that the emergency switchboard could identify all the police officers on duty in the district. He ran across the road towards the burning huts. The fire was blazing in the wind. He wondered fleetingly what would have happened if the fire had started the night before, during the heavy storm. Even now the flames were getting a firm grip on the hut next door.

Why didn't someone sound the alarm? he thought. But he didn't know whether there were refugees living in all the huts. The heat of the fire hit him in the face as he pounded on the door of the hut that had so far only been licked by the flames.

The hut where the fire had started was now completely engulfed. Wallander tried to approach the door, but was driven back. He ran around one side. There was only one window. He banged on the glass and tried to look inside, but the smoke was so thick that he found himself staring straight into a white haze. He looked around for something to break the glass with but found nothing. He tore off his jacket, wrapped it around his arm, and smashed his fist through the windowpane. He held his breath to keep from inhaling the smoke and groped for the latch. Twice he had to leap back to catch his breath before he managed to open the window."Get out!" he shouted into the fire. "Get out! Get out!"

Inside the hut were two bunk beds. He hauled himself up onto the window ledge and felt the splinters of glass cutting into his thigh. The upper bunks were empty. But someone was lying on one of the lower bunks.

Wallander yelled again but got no response. Then he heaved himself through the window, banging his head on the edge of a table as he fell to the floor. He was almost suffocating from the smoke as he fumbled his way towards the bed. At first he thought he was touching a lifeless body. Then he realised that what he had taken for a person was only a rolled-up mattress. At the same moment his jacket caught fire and he threw himself headfirst out of the window. He could hear sirens far off, and as he stumbled away from the fire he saw crowds of half-dressed people milling around outside the huts. Two more of the low buildings were now in flames. Wallander threw open doors and saw that people were living in these huts. But those who had been asleep inside had fled. His head was pounding and his thigh hurt, and he felt sick from the smoke he had inhaled. At that moment the first fire engine arrived, followed closely by an ambulance. He saw that the fire captain on duty was Peter Edler. He was in his mid 30s and Wallander remembered that his hobby was flying kites. Wallander had heard only favourable things about him. He was a man who was never unsure of himself. As Wallander staggered over to Edler, he realised that he had burns on one arm.

"The huts that are burning are empty," he said. "I don't know about the other ones."

"You look terrible," said Edler. "I think we can handle this."

The firemen were already hosing down the huts. Wallander heard Edler order a tractor to drag away those that were already burning in order to isolate the fire.

The first police car came to a skidding stop, its blue light flashing and its siren wailing. Wallander saw that it was Peters and Norén. He hobbled over to their car."What's happening?" asked Norén.

"It'll be OK," said Wallander. "Start cordoning off the area and ask Edler if he needs any help."

Peters stared at him. "You look awful. How did you happen to be here?"

"I was just driving by," replied Wallander. "Now get moving."

For the next hour a peculiar mixture of chaos and efficient fire-fighting prevailed. The dazed director of the refugee camp was wandering around aimlessly, and Wallander had to exert real pressure to get him to try to find out how many refugees should be at the camp and then

do a count. To his great surprise, it turned out that the Immigration Service's records were hopelessly confused. And the director couldn't help either. In the meantime a tractor dragged away the smouldering huts, and before long the fire-fighters had the blaze under control. The ambulance had taken only a few of the refugees to the hospital, most of them suffering from shock, although there was a little Lebanese boy who had fallen and hit his head on a rock.

Edler pulled Wallander aside. "Go and get yourself patched up."

Wallander nodded. His arm was stinging and burning, and he could feel that one leg was sticky with blood.

"I hate to think about what might have happened if you hadn't raised the alarm the moment the fire broke out," said Edler.

"Why the hell do they put the huts so close together?" asked Wallander.

Edler shook his head. "The boss here is starting to get tired. You're right of course - the buildings are too damn close."

Wallander went over to Norén, who had just finished cordoning off the area.

"I want that director in my office first thing tomorrow morning," he said.Norén nodded."Did you see anything?" he asked.

"I heard a crash. Then the hut exploded. But no cars. No people. If it was set, then it was done with a delayed-action detonator.""Shall I drive you home or to the hospital?""I can drive myself. But I'd better go now."

At the casualty ward, Wallander found that he had suffered more damage than he had supposed. On one forearm he had a large burn, his groin and one thigh had been cut by the glass, and above his right eye he had a big lump and several nasty abrasions. He had also bitten his tongue without being aware of it.

It was almost 4 a.m. by the time Wallander could leave the hospital. His bandages were too tight, and he still felt sick from the smoke.

As he left the hospital, a camera flashed in his face. He recognised the photographer from the biggest morning newspaper in Skåne. He waved his hand to dismiss a reporter who appeared out of the shadows, wanting an interview. Then he drove home.

To his own great amazement he was actually feeling sleepy. He undressed and crawled under the bed covers. His body ached, and flames were dancing in his head. And yet he fell asleep at once.

At 8 a.m. Wallander woke because somebody was pounding a sledgehammer inside his head. He had once again dreamed of the mysterious black woman. But when he stretched out his hand for her, Sten Widénwas suddenly there with the whisky bottle, and the woman had turned her back on Wallander and gone off with Sten.

He lay still, taking stock of how he felt. His neck and arm were stinging. His head was pounding. For a moment he was tempted to turn to the wall and go back to sleep. To forget all about the investigation and the night's blaze.

He didn't get a chance to decide. He was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. I don't feel like answering it, he thought.It was Mona."Kurt," she said. "It's Mona."He was filled with an overwhelming sense of joy.

Mona, he thought. Dear God! Mona! How I've missed you!

"I saw your picture in the paper," she said. "Are you all right?"

He remembered the photographer outside the hospital and the flash of a camera. "Fine," he said. "A little sore." "No worse than that?"

His joy was gone. Now the bad feelings came back, the sharp pain in his stomach."Do you really care how I am?""Why shouldn't I care?""Why should you?"He heard her breathing in his ear.

"I think you're so brave," she said. "I'm proud of you. The papers say that you risked your life to save people.""I didn't save anybody! What kind of rubbish is that?""I just wanted to be sure you weren't hurt.""What would you have done if I was?""What would I have done?"

"If I was hurt. If I was dying. What would you have done then?""Why do you sound so angry?"

"I'm not angry. I'm just asking you. I want you to come home. Back here. To me."

"You know I can't do that. But I wish we could talk to each other."

"You never call! So how are we supposed to talk to each other?"

He heard her sigh. That made him furious. Or maybe scared.

"Of course we can meet," she said. "But not at my place. Or at yours."

He made up his mind swiftly. What he said was not entirely true. But it wasn't really a lie either.

"There are a lot of things we need to talk about," he told her. "Practical matters. I can drive over to Malmö if you like."

There was a pause before she answered. "Not tonight," she said. "But I could tomorrow." "Where? Shall we have dinner? The only places I know are the Savoy and the Central." "The Savoy is expensive." "Then how about the Central? What time?" "Eight o'clock?" ‘I’ll be there."

The conversation was over. He looked at his pummelled face in the hall mirror. Was he looking forward to the meeting? Or did he feel uneasy? He wasn't sure. He felt confused. Instead of picturing his meeting with Mona, he saw himself with Anette Brolin at the Savoy. And although she was still the acting public prosecutor in Ystad, she was transformed into a black woman.

Wallander dressed, skipped his morning coffee, and went out to his car. It had turned warmer again. The remnants of a damp fog were drifting from the sea over the town. There was no wind at all.

He was greeted with friendly nods and pats on the back when he entered the police station. Ebba gave him a hug and a jar of pear jam. He felt embarrassed, but also a little proud.

Björk should have been here, he thought. In Ystad instead of in Spain. This was the kind of thing Björk dreamed of. Heroes on the force.

By 9.30 a.m. everything was back to normal. By then he had already managed to give the director of the refugee camp a tough lecture on the sloppy supervision of the refugees. The director, who was short and plump and who radiated apathy and laziness, nevertheless defended himself vigorously, insisting that he had followed the rules and regulations of the Immigration Service to the letter.

"It's the police's job to ensure that the camp is safe," he said, trying to turn Wallander's lecture on its head.

"How are we supposed to guarantee anything at all when you have no idea how many people are living in those damned huts or who they are?"The director was red-faced with fury when he left."I'm going to file a complaint," he said.

"Complain to the king," replied Wallander. "Complain to the prime minister. Complain to the European Court. Complain to whoever the hell you like. But from now on you're going to have accurate lists of how many people there are at your camp, what their names are, and which huts they live in."Just before the case meeting was due to start, Edler called."How do you feel?" he asked. "The hero of the day.""Piss off," replied Wallander. "Have you found anything?"

"It wasn't hard," replied Edler. "A handy little detonator that ignited some rags soaked in petrol.""Are you sure?"

"Damn right I'm sure! You'll have the report in a few hours."

"We'll have to try and run the arson investigation parallel with the murders. But if anything else happens, I'm going to need reinforcements from Simrishamn or Malmö."

"Are there any police left in Simrishamn? I thought the station there was closed down." "It was the volunteer fire-fighters who were disbanded.

In fact, I've heard rumours that we're going to have some new positions opening up down here."

Wallander started the meeting by reporting what Edler had told him. A brief discussion followed concerning possible motives for the attack. All were agreed that it was most likely a rather well-organised youthful prank, but no-one denied the seriousness of what had happened.

"It's important for us to catch those responsible," said Hansson. "Just as important as catching the killers at Lunnarp."

"Maybe it was the same people who threw the turnips at the old man," said Svedberg.Wallander noticed the contempt in his voice."Talk to him. Maybe he can give you a description.""I don't speak Arabic," said Svedberg.

"We have interpreters, for God's sake! I want to know what he has to say by this afternoon."

The meeting was brief. This was one of those days when the police officers were busy trying to establish facts. Conclusions and results were sparse.

"We'll skip the afternoon meeting," Wallander decided, "provided nothing out of the ordinary happens. Martinsson will go out to the camp. Svedberg, maybe you could take over whatever Martinsson was doing that can't wait."

"I'm searching for the car that the lorry driver saw," said Martinsson. "I'll give you my paperwork."

When the meeting was over, Näslund and Rydberg stayed behind in Wallander's office.

"We're starting to go into overtime," said Wallander. "When is Björk due back?"Neither man knew.

"Does he have any idea about what's happened?" Rydberg wondered.

"Does he care?" Wallander countered.

He called Ebba and got an answer at once. She even knew which airline he would be coming in on.

"Saturday night," he told the others. "But since I'm the acting chief, I'm going to authorise all the overtime we need."Rydberg raised his visit to the Lövgren farm.

"I've been snooping about," he said. "In fact I've turned the whole place upside down. I've even dug around in the hay bales out in the stable. But there was no brown briefcase."

Wallander knew that that was that. Rydberg never gave up until he was 100 per cent sure.

"So now we know this much," he said. "One brown briefcase containing 27,000 kronor is missing.""People have been killed for much less," said Rydberg.They sat in silence for a moment, pondering these words.

"I can't understand why it should be so hard to locate that car," said Wallander, touching the tender lump on his forehead. "I gave out its description at the press conference and asked the driver to contact us.""Patience," said Rydberg.

"What came out of the interviews with the daughters? If there are any reports, I can read them in the car on the way to Kristianstad. By the way, do either of you think that the attack last night had anything to do with the threat I received?"Both Rydberg and Näslund shook their heads.

"I don't either," said Wallander. "That means that we need to be prepared for something to happen on Friday or Saturday. I thought that you, Rydberg, could think this matter through and come up with some suggestions for action by this afternoon."

Rydberg made a face."I'm not good at things like that.""You're a good policeman. You'll do just fine."

Rydberg gave him a sceptical look. Then he stood up to go. He paused at the door.

"The daughter that I talked to, the one from Canada, had her husband with her. The Mountie. He wondered why we don't carry guns.""In a few years we probably will," said Wallander.

He was just about to brief Näslund on his conversation with Lars Herdin when the phone rang. Ebba told him that the head of the Immigration Service was on the line.

Wallander was surprised to be speaking to a woman. He assumed that all senior government officials were still elderly gentlemen full of arrogant self-esteem.

The woman had a pleasant voice, but what she said annoyed him instantly.

"We are most displeased," the woman said. "The police have an obligation to guarantee the safety of our refugees."Just like that damned director, thought Wallander.

"We do what we can," he said, trying to conceal his irritation. It occurred to him that it might be a breach of conduct for an acting police chief in a small town to contradict what the high priestess of a government civil service agency had to say."Obviously that is not sufficient."

"Our job would have been much easier if we had received up-to-date information about how many refugees were at each of the various camps.""The service has complete data on the refugees.""That's not my impression at all.""The Minister of Immigration is very concerned."

Wallander brought to mind a red-haired woman who was regularly interviewed on TV.

"She's welcome to contact us," said Wallander, making a face at Näslund, who was leafing through some papers.

"It's clear that the police are not allocating enough resources to the protection of these refugees."

"Or maybe there are just too many to cope with. And you have no idea where they are lodged."

"What do you mean by that?" The polite voice was now cool.Wallander felt his anger growing.

"Last night's fire highlighted the shocking disarray at the camp. That's what I mean. In general, it's difficult to get any clear directives from the Immigration Service. You often ask the police to instigate deportations, but we have no idea where to find the deportees. Sometimes we waste several weeks searching for the people we are supposed to deport."

What he said was true. He had heard of colleagues in Malmö being driven to despair at the inability of the Immigration Service to handle its job.

"That's simply not the case," said the woman, "and I'm not going to waste valuable time arguing with you."The conversation was over."Bitch," said Wallander, slamming down the phone."Who was that?" asked Näslund.

"The head of the Immigration Service," replied Wallander, "who's living in cloud-cuckoo-land. Feel like getting some coffee?"

Rydberg turned in transcripts of the interviews that he and Svedberg had held with Lövgren's two daughters. Wallander described his phone conversation.

"The Minister of Immigration will be calling soon, and she'll be concerned," said Rydberg, with a wicked laugh.

"You can deal with her" said Wallander. "I'll try to be back from Kristianstad by four."

When Näslund reappeared with the two mugs of coffee, Wallander no longer wanted his. He had to get out of the building. His bandages were too tight, and his head ached. A drive would do him good.

"Tell me about it in the car," he said, pushing the coffee away.Näslund looked doubtful.

"I don't really know where we should go. Herdin knew virtually nothing about the mystery woman, for all that he was well-informed about Lövgren's financial assets.""He must have known something."

"I gave him a thorough grilling," said Näslund. "I actually think he was telling the truth. The only thing he knew for sure was that she existed.""How did he know that?"

"He happened to be in Kristianstad once, and saw Lövgren and her in the street.""When was that?"Näslund flipped through his notes."Eleven years ago."Wallander toyed with his coffee.

"It doesn't fit," he said. "He has to know a great deal more. How can he be so sure that there's a son? How does he know about the payments to the woman? Couldn't you force it out of him?"

"He claimed that somebody had written to him and told him.""Who?""He wouldn't say."Wallander thought about this for a moment."We'll go to Kristianstad anyway," he said. "Our colleagues up there will have to help us. Then I'm going to take on Herdin myself."

They took a squad car. Wallander clambered into the back seat and left the driving to Näslund. When they had left town, Wallander noticed that Näslund was driving much too fast.

"This isn't an emergency," he said. "Slow down. I have to read these papers and think."Näslund drove more slowly.

The landscape was grey and foggy. Wallander stared out at the dreary desolation. Although he felt at home in the Scanian spring and summer, he felt alienated by the barren silence of autumn and winter.

He leaned back and closed his eyes. His body ached and the burn on his arm stung. And he was having palpitations. Divorced men have heart attacks, he thought. We put on weight from eating too much and feel tormented about being abandoned. Or else we throw ourselves into new relationships, and in the end our hearts just give out.

The thought of Mona made him both furious and sad. He opened his eyes and looked out again at the landscape of Skåne.

He read through the transcripts of the interviews with Lövgren's daughters. There was nothing there to give them a lead. No enemies, no simmering hostilities. And no money either. Johannes Lövgren had even kept his own daughters in the dark about his vast assets.

Wallander tried to imagine this man. How had he operated? What had driven him? What did he suppose would happen to the money after he was gone?

He was startled by his train of thought. Somewhere there should be a will. But if it wasn't in one of the safe-deposit boxes, then where was it? Did the murdered man have another safe-deposit box somewhere else?"How many banks are there in Ystad?" he asked Näslund.

Näslund knew everything about the town. "Ten, I should say."

"Tomorrow I want you to investigate the ones we haven't visited so far. Did Lövgren have more safe-deposit boxes? I also want to know how he got back and forth from Lunnarp. Taxi, bus, whatever."Näslund nodded. "He could have taken the school bus.""Someone would have seen him."

They took the Tomelilla route, crossing the main road to Malmö and continuing north.

"What did the inside of Herdin's house look like?" Wallander asked.

"Old-fashioned. But clean, tidy. Strangely enough, he uses a microwave to do his cooking. He offered me homemade rolls. He has a big parrot in a cage. The farm is well cared for. The whole place looks neat. No broken-down fences.""What make of car does he drive?""A red Mercedes.""A Mercedes?""Yes, a Mercedes.""I thought he told us it was hard making ends meet."

"Well, that Mercedes of his would have set him back 300,000 plus."

Wallander thought for a moment. "We need to know more about Lars Herdin. Even if he says he has no idea who killed them, he could easily know something without realising it himself.""What's that got to do with the Mercedes?"

"Nothing. I've just got a hunch that Herdin is more important to us than he thinks he is. And we might wonder how a farmer today can afford to buy a car for 300,000 kronor. Maybe he has a receipt that says he bought a tractor."

They drove into Kristianstad and parked outside the police station just as sleet started to fall. Wallander registered the first vague prickles in his throat, warning him that a cold was coming on. Damn, he thought. I can't get sick now. I don't want to meet Mona with a fever and sniffles.

The Ystad police and the Kristianstad police had no special relationship with each other beyond co-operating whenever the occasion arose. But Wallander knew several of the officers rather well from various conferences at county level. He was hoping, above all, that Goran Boman would be on duty. He was the same age as Wallander, and they had met over a whisky at Tylosand. Together they had endured a tedious study day organised by the educational department of the national police. The purpose had been to inspire them to improve and make more effective the staff policies at their respective workplaces. In the evening they sat and shared half a bottle of whisky and soon discovered that they had a lot in common. In particular, both their fathers had been extremely reluctant at their decision to go into police work.

Wallander and Näslund stepped into the reception. The young woman at the switchboard, who oddly enough spoke with a lilting Norrland accent, told them that Goran Boman was indeed on duty.

"He's in an interview at present," said the woman. "But it probably won't last long."

Wallander went out to use the toilet. He gave a start when he caught sight of himself in the mirror. The bruises and abrasions were bright red. He splashed his face with cold water. At that moment he heard Boman's voice in the corridor.

The reunion was a hearty one. Wallander was delighted to see Boman again. They got some coffee and took it to his office. Wallander noted that they had exactly the same kind of desk, but otherwise Boman's office was better furnished. It made his office more pleasant, in the same way that Anette Brolin had transformed the sterile office she had taken over.

Boman knew, of course, about the murders in Lunnarp, as well as the attack on the refugee camp and Wallander's rescue attempt that had been so exaggerated in the papers. They talked for a while about refugees. Boman had the same impression as Wallander, that people seeking asylum were dealt with in a chaotic and disorganised fashion. The Kristianstad police also had numerous examples of deportation orders that could be executed only with great difficulty. As recently as a few weeks before Christmas they had been advised that several Bulgarian citizens were to be expelled. According to the Immigration Service, they were living at a camp in Kristianstad. Only after several days' work did the police find out that the Bulgarians were living at a camp in Arjeplog, more than 1,000 kilometres to the north.

They switched to the reason for their visit. Wallander gave Boman a detailed run-down.

"And you want us to find her for you," said Boman when he was done."That wouldn't be a bad plan."Näslund had been sitting in silence.

"I've got an idea," he said. "If Johannes Lövgren had a son by this woman, and we assume that he was born in this town, we should be able to look it up in the town's records. Lövgren must have been listed as the child's father, don't you think?"

Wallander nodded. "Besides, we know approximately when the child was born. We can concentrate on a ten-year period, from about 1947 to 1957, if Herdin's story is correct. And I think it is."