One Step Behind

ONE STEP BEHIND

Henning Mankell was born in Stockholm in 1948. He is the prize-winning author of the eight novels in the Inspector Wallander series which has been translated into many languages and consistently tops the best-seller lists throughout Europe. His novel Sidetracked won the CWA Gold Dagger in 2001. Mankell has worked as an actor, theatre director and manager in Sweden and in Mozambique, where he is head of Teatro Avenida in Maputo.

Ebba Segerberg teaches English at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

BY HENNING MANKELL

Faceless Killers

The Dogs of Riga

The White Lioness

Sidetracked

The Fifth Woman

One Step Behind

The Dancing Master

Firewall

Henning Mankell

ONE STEP BEHIND

TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH BY

Ebba Segerberg

There are always many more disordered than

ordered systems

FROM THE SECOND LAW OF

THERMODYNAMICS

The Overture to Rigoletto

GIUSEPPE VERDI

PROLOGUE

The rain stopped shortly after 5 p.m. The man crouching beside the thick tree trunk carefully removed his coat. The rain hadn't lasted for more than half an hour, and it hadn't been heavy, but damp had nonetheless seeped through his clothing. He felt a sudden flash of anger. He didn't want to catch a cold. Not now, not in the middle of summer.

He laid the raincoat on the ground and stood up. His legs were stiff. He started swaying back and forth gently to get his circulation going, at the same time looking around for any signs of movement. He knew that the people he was waiting for wouldn't arrive before 8 p.m. That was the plan. But there was a chance, however small, that someone else would come walking down one of the paths that snaked through the nature reserve. That was the only factor that lay beyond his control, the only thing he couldn't be sure of. Even so, he wasn't worried. It was Midsummer's Eve. There weren't any camping or picnic areas in the reserve, and the people had chosen the spot with care. They wanted to be alone.

They had decided on this place two weeks ago. At that point he had been following them closely for several months. He had even come to look at the spot after he learned of their decision. He had taken great pains not to let himself be seen as he wandered through the reserve. At one point an elderly couple came walking along one of the paths and he had hidden himself behind some trees until they passed.

Later, when he found the spot for their Midsummer festivities, he had immediately been struck by how ideal it was. It lay in a hollow with thick undergrowth all around. There were a few trees further up the hill. They couldn't have chosen a better spot - not for their purposes, nor his own.

The rain clouds were dispersing. The sun came out and it immediately became warmer. It had been a chilly June. Everyone had complained about the early summer in Skane, and he had agreed. He always did. It's the only way to sidestep life's obstacles, he thought, to escape whatever crosses one's path. He had learned the art of agreeing.

He looked up at the sky. There would be no more rain. The spring and early summer had really been quite cold. But now, as evening approached on Midsummer's Eve, the sun came out at last. It will be a beautiful evening, he thought. As well as memorable.

The air smelt of wet grass. He heard the sound of flapping wings somewhere. To the left below the hill was a glimpse of the sea. He stood with his legs apart and spat out the wad of chewing tobacco that had started to dissolve in his mouth, then stamped it into the sand. He never left a single trace. He often thought that he should stop using tobacco. It was a bad habit, something that didn't suit him.

They had decided to meet in Hammar. That was the best place, since two of them were coming from Simrishamn and the others from Ystad. They would drive out to the nature reserve, park their cars, and walk to the spot they had chosen. They had not been able to agree upon anything for a long time. They had discussed various alternatives and sent the proposals back and forth. But when one of them finally suggested this place, the others had quickly assented, perhaps because they had run out of time. One of them took care of the food, while another went to Copenhagen and rented the clothes and wigs that were needed. Nothing would be left to chance. They even took the possibility of bad weather into account. At 2 p.m. on Midsummer's Eve, one of them put a big tarpaulin in his red duffel bag. He also included a roll of tape and some old aluminium tent pegs. If it rained, they would have shelter.

Everything was ready. There was only one thing that could not have been anticipated. One of them suddenly became ill. It was a young woman, the one who had perhaps been looking forward to the Midsummer's Eve plans most of all. She had met the others less than a year before. When she woke up that morning she had felt nauseated. At first she thought it was because she was nervous. But some hours later, when it was already midday, she had started vomiting and running a temperature. She still hoped it would pass. But when her lift arrived, she stood at the door on trembling legs and said that she was too ill to go.

Consequently, there were only three of them in Hammar shortly before 7.30 p.m on Midsummer's Eve. But they did not allow this to spoil the mood. They were experienced; they knew that these things happened. One could never guard against sudden illness.

They parked outside the nature reserve, took their baskets, and disappeared down one of the paths. One of them thought he heard an accordion in the distance. But otherwise there were just birds and the distant sound of the sea.

When they arrived at the selected spot they knew at once that it had been the right choice. Here they would be undisturbed and free to await the dawn.

The sky was now completely free of clouds. The midsummer night would be clear and beautiful. They had made the plans for Midsummer's Eve at the beginning of February, when they had spoken of their longing for light summer nights. They had drunk large quantities of wine and quarrelled at length about the precise meaning of the word dusk. At what point did this particular moment between light and dark arrive? How could one really describe the landscape of twilight in words? How much could you actually still see when the light passed into this obscure state of transition, defined by a certain length of the shadows? They had not come to an agreement. The question of dusk had remained unsolved. But they had started planning their celebration that evening.

They arrived at the hollow and put down their baskets, then separated and changed behind some thick bushes. They wedged small make-up mirrors in the branches so they could check that their wigs were on straight.

None of them sensed the man who observed their careful preparations from a distance. Getting the wigs to sit straight turned out to be the easiest part. Putting on the corsets, padding and petticoats was more difficult, as was arranging the cravat and the ruffles, not to mention applying the thick layers of powder. They wanted every detail to be perfect. They were playing a game, but the game was in earnest.

At 8 p.m. they came out from behind their bushes and looked at each other. It was a breathtaking moment. Once more they had left their own time for another age. The age of Bellman, the bacchanalian 18th-century poet.

They drew closer and burst into laughter. But then they regained their composure. They spread out a large tablecloth, unpacked their baskets and put on a tape with several renditions of the most famous songs from Bellman's work, Fredman's Epistles. Then the celebration began.

When winter comes, they said to each other, we will think back on this evening. They were creating yet another secret for themselves.

At midnight he had still not made up his mind. He knew he had plenty of time. They would be staying until dawn. Perhaps they would even stay and sleep all morning. He knew their plans down to the last detail. It gave him a feeling of unlimited power. Only he who had the upper hand would escape.

Just after 11 p.m., when he could tell that they were tipsy, he had carefully changed his position. He had picked out the starting point for his actions on his first visit. It was a dense thicket a bit higher up the hill. Here he had a full view of everything that was happening on the light-blue tablecloth. And he could approach them without being seen. From time to time they left the tablecloth in order to relieve themselves. He could see everything they did.

It was past midnight. Still he waited. He waited because he was hesitating. Something was wrong. There should have been four of them. One of them had not come. In his head he went through the possible reasons. There was no reason. Something unexpected must have happened. Had the girl changed her mind? Was she sick?

He listened to the music and the laughter. From time to time he imagined that he too sat down there on the light-blue tablecloth, a wineglass in his hand. Afterwards he would try on one of the wigs. Perhaps some of the clothes, too? There was so much he could do. There were no limits. He could not have had more power over them if he had been invisible.

He continued to wait. The laughter rose and fell. Somewhere above his head a night bird swooped by.

It was 3.10 a.m. He couldn't wait any longer. The moment was at hand, the hour he alone had appointed. He could barely remember the last time he had worn a watch. The hours and minutes ticked continuously within him. He had an inner clock that was always on time.

Down by the light-blue tablecloth everything was still. They lay with their arms wrapped around one another, listening to the music. He didn't know if they were sleeping, but they were lost in the moment, and did not sense that he was right behind them.

He picked up the revolver with the silencer that had been lying on his raincoat. He looked around quickly, then made his way stealthily to the tree located directly behind the group, and paused for a few seconds. No one had noticed anything. He looked around one last time. But there was no one else there. They were alone.

He stepped out and shot each of them once in the head. He couldn't help it that blood splattered onto the white wigs. It was over so quickly that he barely had time to register what he was doing. But now they lay dead at his feet, still wrapped around each other, just like a few seconds before.

He turned off the tape recorder that had been playing and listened. The birds were chirping. Once again he looked around. Of course there was no one there. He put his gun away and spread a napkin out on the cloth. He never left a trace.

He sat down on the napkin and looked at those who had recently been laughing and who now were dead. The idyll hasn't been affected, he thought. The only difference is that we are now four. As the plan had been all along.

He poured himself a glass of red wine. He didn't really drink, but now he simply couldn't resist. Then he tried on one of the wigs. He ate a little of the food. He wasn't particularly hungry.

At 3.30 a.m. he got up. He still had much to do. The nature reserve was frequented by early risers. In the unlikely event that someone left the path and found their way into the hollow, they must not find any traces. At least not yet.

The last thing he did before he left the spot was look through their bags and clothes. He found what he was looking for. All three had been carrying their passports. Now he put them into his coat pocket. Later that day he would burn them.

He looked around one last time. He took a little camera out of his pocket and took a picture.

Only one. It was like looking at a painting of a picnic from the 18th century, except that someone had spilled blood on this painting.

It was the morning after Midsummer's Eve. Saturday, June 22. It was going to be a beautiful day. Summer had come to Skane at last.

Part One

CHAPTER ONE

On Wednesday, 7 August 1996, Kurt Wallander came close to being killed in a traffic accident just east of Ystad. It happened early in the morning, shortly after 6 a.m. He had just driven through Nybrostrand on his way out to Osterlen. Suddenly he had seen a truck looming in front of his Peugeot. He heard the truck's horn blaring as he wrenched the steering wheel to one side.

Afterwards he had pulled off the road. That was when the fear set in. His heart pounded in his chest. He felt nauseated and dizzy, and he thought he was about to faint. He kept his hands tightly clenched on the wheel. As he calmed down he realised what had happened. He had fallen asleep at the wheel. Nodded off just long enough for his old car to begin to drift into the opposite lane. One second longer and he would have been dead, crushed by the heavy truck.

The realisation made him feel suddenly empty. The only thing he could think of was the time, a few years earlier, when he had almost hit an elk outside Tingsryd. But then it had been dark and foggy. This time he had nodded off at the wheel.

The fatigue. He didn't understand it. It had come over him without warning, shortly before the start of his holiday at the beginning of June. This year he had taken his holiday early, but the whole holiday had been lost to rain. It was only when he returned to work shortly after Midsummer that the warm and sunny weather had come to Skane. The tiredness had been there all along. He fell asleep whenever he sat down. Even after a long night's undisturbed sleep, he had to force himself out of bed. Often when he was in the car he found himself needing to pull over to take a short nap.

His daughter Linda had asked him about his lack of energy during the week that they had spent sightseeing together in Gotland. It was on one of the last days, when they had stayed in an inn in Burgsvik. They had spent the day exploring the southern tip of Gotland, and had eaten dinner at a pizzeria before returning to the inn. The evening was particularly beautiful.

She had asked him point-blank about the fatigue. He had studied her face in the glow of the kerosene lamp and realised that her question had been thought out in advance, but he shrugged it off. There was nothing wrong with him. Surely the fact that he used part of his holiday to catch up on lost sleep was to be expected. Linda didn't ask any more questions. But he knew that she hadn't believed him.

Now he realised that he couldn't ignore it any longer. The fatigue wasn't natural. Something was wrong. He tried to think if he had other symptoms that could signal an illness. But apart from the fact that he sometimes woke in the middle of the night with leg cramps, he hadn't been able to think of anything. He knew how close to death he had been. He couldn't put it off any longer. He would make an appointment with the doctor that day.

He started the engine, rolling down the windows as he drove on. Although it was already August, the heat of summer showed no sign of easing. Wallander was on his way to his father's house in Loderup. No matter how many times he went down this road, he still found it hard to adjust to the fact that his father wouldn't be sitting there in his studio, wreathed in the ever-present smell of turpentine, before the easel on which he painted pictures with a recurring and unchanging subject: a landscape, with or without a grouse in the foreground, the sun hanging from invisible threads above the trees.

It had been close to two years now since Gertrud had called him at the police station in Ystad to tell him that his father was lying dead on the studio floor. He could still recall with photographic clarity his drive out to Loderup, unable to believe it could be true. But when he had seen Gertrud in the yard, he had known he could not deny it any longer. He had known what awaited him.

The two years had gone by quickly. As often as he could, but not often enough, he visited Gertrud, who still lived in his father's house. A year went by before they began to clean up the studio in earnest. They found a total of 32 finished paintings. One night in December of 1995, they sat down at Gertrud's kitchen table and made a list of the people who would receive these last paintings. Wallander kept two for himself, one with a grouse, the other without. Linda would get one, as would Mona, his ex-wife. Surprisingly, and to Wallander's disappointment, his sister Kristina hadn't wanted one. Gertrud already had several, and so they had 28 paintings to give away. After some hesitation, Wallander sent one to a detective in Kristianstad with whom he had sporadic contact. But after giving away 23 paintings, including one to each of Gertrud's relatives, there were five paintings remaining.

Wallander wondered what he should do with them. He knew that he would never be able to make himself burn them. Technically they belonged to Gertrud, but she had said that he and Kristina should have them. She had come into their father's life so late.

Wallander passed the turn-off to Kaseberga. He would be there soon. He thought about the task that lay before him. One evening in May, he and Gertrud had taken a long walk along the tractor paths that wound their way along the edges of the linseed fields. She had told him that she no longer wanted to live there. It was starting to get too lonely.

"I don't want to live there so long that he starts to haunt me," she had said.

Instinctively, he knew what she meant. He would probably have reacted the same way. They walked between the fields and she asked for his help in selling the house. There was no hurry; it could wait until the summer's end, but she wanted to move out before the autumn. Her sister was recently widowed and lived outside the town of Rynge, and she wanted to move there.

Now the time had come. Wallander had taken the day off. At 9 a.m. an estate agent would come out from Ystad, and together they would settle on a reasonable selling price. Before that, Wallander and Gertrud would go through the last few boxes of his father's belongings. They had finished packing the week before. Martinsson, one of his colleagues, came out with a trailer and they made several trips to the dump outside Hedeskoga. Wallander experienced a growing sense of unease. It seemed to him that the remnants of a person's life inevitably ended up at the nearest dump.

All that was left of his father now - aside from the memories - were some photographs, five paintings, and a few boxes of old letters and papers. Nothing more. His life was over and completely accounted for.

Wallander turned down the road leading to his father's house. He caught a glimpse of Gertrud waiting in the yard. To his surprise he saw that she was wearing the same dress she had worn at their wedding. He immediately felt a lump in his throat. For Gertrud, this was a moment of solemnity. She was leaving her home.

They drank coffee in the kitchen, where the doors to the cupboards stood ajar, revealing empty shelves. Gertrud's sister was coming to collect her today. Wallander would keep one key and give the other to the estate agent. Together they leafed through the contents of the two boxes. Among the old letters Wallander was surprised to find a pair of children's shoes that he seemed to remember from his childhood. Had his father saved them all these years?

He carried the boxes out to the car. When he closed the car door, he saw Gertrud on the steps. She smiled.

"There are five paintings left. You haven't forgotten about them, have you?"

Wallander shook his head. He walked towards his father's studio. The door was open. Although they had cleaned it, the smell of turpentine remained. The pot that his father had used for making his endless cups of coffee stood on the stove.

This may be the last time I am here, he thought. But unlike Gertrud, I haven't dressed up. I'm in my baggy old clothes. And if I hadn't been lucky I could be dead, like my father. Linda would have had to drive to the dump with what was left after me. And among my stuff she would find two paintings, one with a grouse painted in the foreground.

The place scared him. His father was still in there in the dark studio. The paintings were leaning against one wall. He carried them to the car. Then he laid them in the boot and spread a blanket over them. Gertrud remained on the steps.

"Is there anything else?" she asked.

Wallander shook his head. "There's nothing else," he answered. "Nothing."

At 9 a.m. the estate agent's car swung into the yard, and a man got out from behind the wheel. To his surprise, Wallander realised that he recognised him. His name was Robert Akerblom. A few years earlier his wife had been brutally murdered and her body dumped in an old well. It had been one of the most difficult and grisly murder investigations that Wallander had ever been involved in.

He frowned. He had decided to contact a large estate agent with offices all over Sweden. Akerblom's business did not belong to them, if it even still existed. Wallander thought he had heard that it had shut down shortly after Louise Akerblom's murder.

He went out onto the steps. Robert Akerblom looked exactly as Wallander remembered him. At their first meeting in Wallander's office he had wept. The man's worry and grief for his wife had been genuine. Wallander recalled that they had been active in a non-Lutheran church. He thought they were Methodists.

They shook hands. "We meet again," Robert Akerblom said.

His voice sounded familiar. For a second Wallander felt confused. What was the right thing to say? But Robert Akerblom beat him to it.

"I grieve for her as much now as I did then," he said slowly. "But it's even harder for the girls."

Wallander remembered the two girls. They had been so young then. They had been unable to fully understand what had happened.

"It must be hard," Wallander said. For a moment he was afraid that the events of the last meeting would repeat themselves; that Robert Akerblom would start crying. But that didn't happen.

"I tried to keep the business going," Akerblom said, "but I didn't have the energy. When I got the offer to join the firm of a competitor, I took it. I've never regretted it. I don't have the long nights of going over the books any more. I've been able to spend more time with the girls."

Gertrud joined them and they went through the house together. Akerblom made notes and took some photographs. Afterwards they had a cup of coffee in the kitchen. The price that Akerblom came up with seemed low to Wallander at first, but then he realised that it was three times what his father had paid for the place.

Akerblom left a little after 11 a.m. Wallander thought he should stay until Gertrud's sister came to get her, but she seemed to sense his thoughts and told him she didn't mind being left alone.

"It's a beautiful day," she said. "Summer has come at last, even though it's almost over. I'll sit in the garden."

"I'll stay if you like. I'm off work today."

Gertrud shook her head. "Come and see me in Rynge," she said. "But wait a couple of weeks. I have to get settled in."

Wallander got in his car and drove back to Ystad. He was going straight home to make an appointment with his doctor. Then he would sign up to use the laundry and clean his flat. Since he wasn't in a hurry, he chose the longer way home. He liked driving, just looking at the landscape and letting his mind wander. He had just passed Valleberga when the phone rang. It was Martinsson. Wallander pulled over.

"I've been trying to get hold of you," Martinsson said. "Of course no one mentioned that you were off work today. And do you know that your answerphone is broken?"

Wallander knew the machine sometimes jammed. He also immediately knew that something had happened. Although he had been a policeman for a long time, the feeling was always the same. His stomach tensed up. He held his breath.

"I'm calling you from Hansson's office," Martinsson said. "Astrid Hillstrom's mother is here to see me."

"Who?"

"Astrid Hillstrom. One of the missing young people. Her mother."

Now Wallander knew who he meant.

"What does she want?"

"She's very upset. Her daughter sent her a postcard from Vienna."

Wallander frowned. "Isn't it good news that she's finally written?"

"She claims her daughter didn't write the postcard. She's upset that we're not doing anything."

"How can we do anything when a crime doesn't seem to have been committed, when all the evidence indicates that they left of their own accord?"

Martinsson paused for a moment before answering. "I don't know what it is," he said. "But I have a feeling that there's something to what she's saying. Maybe."

Wallander immediately grew more attentive. Over the years he had learned to take Martinsson's hunches seriously. More often than not, they were proved right.

"Do you want me to come in?"

"No, but I think you, me, and Svedberg should talk this over tomorrow morning."

"What time?"

"How about 8 a.m.? I'll tell Svedberg."

Wallander sat for a moment when the conversation was over, watching a tractor out on a field. He thought about what Martinsson had said. He had also met Astrid Hillstrom's mother on several occasions. He went over the events again in his mind. A few days after Midsummer's Eve some young people were reported missing. It happened right after he had returned from his rainy holiday. He had reviewed the case together with a couple of his colleagues. From the outset he had doubted that a crime had been committed and, as it turned out, a postcard arrived from Hamburg three days later, with a picture of the central railway station on the front. Wallander could recall its message word for word. We are travelling around Europe. We may be gone until the middle of August.

Today it was Wednesday, 7 August. They would be home soon. Now another postcard written by Astrid Hillstrom came from Vienna. The first card was signed by all three of them. Their parents recognised the signatures. Astrid Hillstrom's mother hesitated, but she allowed herself to be convinced by the others.

Wallander glanced in his rear-view mirror and drove out onto the main road. Perhaps Martinsson was right about his misgivings.

Wallander parked on Mariagatan and carried the boxes and five paintings up to his flat. Then he sat down by the phone. At his regular doctor's office he only reached an answerphone message telling him that the doctor wouldn't be back from holiday until August 12th. Wallander wondered if he should wait until then, but he couldn't shake the thought of how close to death he had come that morning. He called another doctor and made an appointment for 11 a.m. the following morning. He signed up to do his laundry, then started cleaning his flat. He was already completely exhausted after doing the bedroom. He ran the vacuum cleaner back and forth a few times over the living room floor, then put it away. He carried the boxes and paintings into the room that Linda used on her sporadic visits. He drank three glasses of water in the kitchen, wondering about his thirst and the fatigue. What was causing them?

It was already midday, and he realised he was hungry. A quick look in the refrigerator told him there wasn't much there. He put on his coat and went out. It was a nice day. As he walked to the centre of town, he looked at the properties for sale in the windows of three separate real estate offices, and realised that the price Robert Akerblom had suggested was fair. They could hardly get more than 300,000 kronor for the house in Loderup.

He stopped at a takeaway restaurant, ate a hamburger and drank two bottles of mineral water. Then he went into a shoe shop where he knew the owner, and used the lavatory. When he came back out onto the street, he felt unsure of what to do next. He should have used his day off to do his shopping. He had no food in the house, but he didn't have the energy to go back for the car and drive to a supermarket.

Just past Hamngatan, he crossed the train tracks and turned down Spanienfararegatan. When he arrived down at the waterfront, he strolled along the pier and looked at the sailing boats, wondering what it would be like to sail. It was something he had never experienced. He realised he needed to pee again, and used the lavatories at the harbour cafe, drank another bottle of mineral water, and sat down on a bench outside the red coast guard building.

The last time he had been here it had been winter, the night Baiba left. It was already dark as he drove her to Sturup Airport, and the wind made whirls of snow dance in the headlights. They hadn't said a word. After he had watched her disappear past the checkpoint, he had returned to Ystad and sat on this bench. The wind had been very cold and he was freezing, but he sat here and realised that everything was over. He wouldn't see Baiba again. Their breakup was final.

She came to Ystad in December of 1994. His father had recently died and he had just finished one of the most challenging investigations of his career. But that autumn he had also, for the first time in many years, been making plans for the future. He decided to leave Mariagatan, move to the country, and get a dog. He had even visited a kennel and looked at Labrador puppies. He was going to make a fresh start. And above all, he wanted Baiba to come and live with him. She visited him over Christmas and Wallander could tell that she and Linda got along well. Then, on New Year's Eve 1995, the last few days before she was due to return to Riga, they talked seriously about the future. Maybe she would move to Sweden permanently as early as next summer. They looked at houses together. They looked at a house on a subdivision of an old farm outside Svenstorp several times. But then, one evening in March, when Wallander was already in bed, she called from Riga and told him she was having doubts. She didn't want to get married, didn't want to move to Sweden - at least not yet. He thought he would be able to get her to change her mind, but the conversation ended with an unpleasant quarrel, their first, after which they didn't speak for more than a month. Finally, Wallander called her and they decided he would go to Riga that summer. They spent two weeks by the sea in a run-down old house that she had borrowed from one of her colleagues at the university.

They took long walks on the beach and Wallander made a point of waiting for her to broach the question of the future. But when she finally did, she was vague and noncommittal. Not now, not yet. Why couldn't things stay as they were?

When Wallander returned to Sweden, he felt dejected and unsure of where things stood. The autumn went by without another meeting. They had talked about it, made plans, and considered various alternatives, but nothing had eventuated. Wallander became jealous. Was there another man in Riga? Someone he didn't know anything about? On several occasions he called her in the middle of the night and although she insisted that she was alone, he had the distinct feeling that there was someone with her.

Baiba had come to Ystad for Christmas that year. Linda had been with them on Christmas Eve before leaving for Scotland with friends. And it was then, a couple of days into the new year, that Baiba had told him she could never move to Sweden. She had gone back and forth in her mind for a long time. But now she knew. She didn't want to lose her position at the university. What could she do in Sweden, especially in Ystad? She could perhaps become an interpreter, but what else? Wallander tried in vain to persuade her to change her mind. Without saying so explicitly, they knew it was over. After four years there was no longer any road leading into the future. Wallander spent the rest of that winter evening on the frozen bench, feeling more abandoned than ever before. But then another feeling had crept over him. Relief. At least he now knew where things stood.

A motorboat sped out of the harbour. Wallander got up. He needed to find a lavatory again.

They called each other from time to time, but gradually that had stopped too. Now they hadn't been in touch for over six months. One day when he and Linda were walking around Visby she had asked if things with Baiba were finally over.

"Yes," he replied. "It's over."

She had waited for him to continue.

"I don't think either of us really wanted to break it off," he had told her. "But it was inevitable."

When he got home, he lay down on the sofa to read the paper but fell asleep almost immediately. An hour later he woke up with a start in the middle of a dream. He had been in Rome with his father. Rydberg had also been with them, and some small, dwarf-like creatures who insisted on pinching their legs.

I'm dreaming about the dead, he thought. What does that mean? I dream about my father almost every night and he's dead. So is Rydberg, my old colleague and friend, the one who taught me everything I can claim to know. And he's been gone for almost five years.

He went out to the balcony. It was still warm and calm. Clouds were starting to pile up on the horizon. Suddenly it struck him how terribly lonely he was. Apart from Linda, who lived in Stockholm and whom he saw only occasionally, he had almost no friends. The people he spent time with were people from work. And he never saw them socially.

He went into the bathroom and washed his face. He looked in the mirror and saw that he had a tan, but the tiredness still shone through. His left eye was bloodshot. His hairline had receded further. He stepped on the scales, and noted that he weighed a couple of kilos less than he had at the start of the summer, but it was still too much.

The phone rang. It was Gertrud.

"I just wanted to let you know that I made it safely to Rynge. Everything went well."

"I've been thinking about you," Wallander told her. "I should have stayed there with you."

"I think I needed to be alone with all my memories. But things will be fine here. My sister and I get along well. We always have."

"I'll be out to see you in a week or so."

After he had hung up the phone rang again immediately. This time it was his colleague Ann-Britt Hoglund.

"I just wanted to hear how it went," she said.

"How what went?"

"Weren't you supposed to meet with an estate agent today to discuss selling your father's house?"

Wallander recalled that he had mentioned it to her the day before.

"It went pretty well," he said. "You can buy it for 300,000 kronor if you like."

"I never even got to see it," she replied.

"It feels quite strange," he told her. "The house is so empty now. Getrud has moved and someone else will buy it. It'll probably be used as a summer house. Other people will live in it and not know anything about my father."

"All houses have ghosts," she said. "Except the newest ones."

"The smell of turpentine will linger for a while," Wallander said. "But when that's gone there will be nothing left of the people who once lived there."

"That's so sad."

"It's just the way it is. I'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for calling."

Wallander went to the kitchen and drank some water. Ann-Britt was a very thoughtful person. She remembered things. He would never have thought to do the same if the situation had been reversed.

It was already 7 p.m. He fried some Falu sausage and potatoes and ate in front of the TV. He flipped through the channels, but nothing seemed interesting. Afterwards he took his cup of coffee and went out onto the balcony. As soon as the sun went down, it grew cooler, and he went back in again.

He spent the rest of the evening going through the things he had brought back from Loderup earlier that day. At the bottom of one of the boxes there was a brown envelope. When he opened it he found a couple of old, faded photographs. He couldn't recall ever having seen them before. He was in one of them, aged four or five, perched on the hood of a big American car. His father was standing beside him so he wouldn't fall off.

Wallander took the photograph into the kitchen and got a magnifying glass from one of the kitchen drawers.

We're smiling, he thought. I'm looking straight into the camera and beaming with pride. I've been allowed to sit on one of the art dealer's cars, one of the men who used to buy my father's paintings for outrageous prices. My father is also smiling, but he's looking at me.

Wallander sat with the snapshot for a long time. It spoke to him from a distant and unreachable past. Once upon a time he and his father had been very close, but all that had changed when he decided to become a policeman. In the last few years of his father's life, they had slowly been retracing their steps back to the closeness that had been lost.

But we never made it this far, Wallander thought. Not all the way back to the smile I had as I sat on the hood of this gleaming Buick. We almost got there in Rome, but it still wasn't like this.

Wallander tacked the photo to his kitchen door. Then he went back out onto the balcony. The clouds had come closer. He sat down in front of the TV and watched the end of an old movie.

At midnight he went to bed. He had a meeting with Svedberg and Martinsson the next day, and he had to go to the doctor. He lay awake in the darkness for a long time. Two years ago he had thought about moving from the flat on Mariagatan. He had dreamed of getting a dog, of living with Baiba. But nothing had come of it. No Baiba, no house, no dog. Everything had stayed the same.

Something's got to happen, he thought. Something that makes it possible for me to start thinking about the future again.

It was almost 3 a.m. before he finally fell asleep.

CHAPTER TWO

The clouds started clearing during the early hours of the morning. Wallander was already awake at 6 a.m. He had been dreaming about his father again. Fragmented and unconnected images had flickered through his subconscious. In the dream he had been both a child and an adult. There had been no coherent story. Recalling the dream was like trying to follow a ship into fog.

He got up, showered, and drank some coffee. When he walked out onto the street he noticed that the warmth of summer still lingered and that it was unusually calm. He drove to the police station. It was not yet 7 a.m., and the corridors were empty. He got another cup of coffee and went into his office. For once his desk was virtually free of folders and he wondered when he'd last had so little to do. During the past few years Wallander had seen his workload increase in proportion to the diminishing resources of the police force. Investigations were rushed or ignored altogether. Often a preliminary report resulted in a suspected crime going uninvestigated. Wallander knew that this would not be the case if only they had more time, if only there were more of them.

Did crime pay? That age-old question was still open to debate. Even those who felt that crime now had the upper hand were hard-pressed to pinpoint the moment when the tables had turned. Wallander was convinced that the criminal element had a stronger hold in Sweden than ever before. Criminals engaged in sophisticated financial dealings seemed to live in a safe haven, and the judicial system seemed to have capitulated completely.

Wallander often discussed these problems with his colleagues. He noticed that civilian fears at these developments were growing. Gertrud talked about it. The neighbours he ran into in the laundry talked about it. Wallander knew their fears were justified. But he didn't see any signs of preventive measures being taken. On the contrary, the reduction of numbers within the police force and judicial personnel continued. He took off his coat, opened the window, and looked out at the old water tower.

During the last few years, vigilante groups had been on the rise in Sweden, groups like The Civilian Guard. Wallander had long feared this development. When the justice system started to break down, the lynching mentality of the mob took over. Taking justice into one's own hands came to seem normal.

As he stood there at the window, he wondered how many illegal weapons were floating around Sweden. And he wondered what the figures would be in a couple of years.

He sat down at his desk. His door was slightly ajar and he heard voices out in the corridor, and a woman's laugh. Wallander smiled. That was their chief of police, Lisa Holgersson. She had replaced Bjork a few years ago. Many of Wallander's colleagues had resisted the idea of a woman in such a high position, but Wallander gained respect for her early on.

The phone rang. It was Ebba, the receptionist.

"Did it go well?" she asked.

Wallander realised she meant yesterday. "The house isn't sold yet, of course," he said. "But I'm sure it will go well."

"I'm calling to see if you have time to talk to some visitors at 10.30 this morning."

"Visitors at this time of year?"

"It's a group of retired marine officers who meet in Skane every August. They have some sort of society. I think they call themselves 'The Sea Bears'."

Wallander thought about his doctor's appointment. "I think you'll have to ask someone else this time," he answered. "I'm going to be out between 10.30 and midday."

"Then I'll ask Ann-Britt. These old sea captains might enjoy talking to a woman police officer."

"Or else they'll think just the opposite," Wallander said.

By 8 a.m. Wallander had not managed to do anything more than rock back and forth in his chair and look out the window. Tiredness gnawed at his body, and he was worried about what the doctor would find. Were the fatigue and cramps signs of a serious illness?

He got up out of his chair and walked to one of the conference rooms. Martinsson was already there, looking clean-cut and tanned. Wallander thought about the time, two years earlier, when Martinsson had come very close to giving up his career. His daughter had been attacked in the playground because her father was a policeman. But he had stuck it out. To Wallander he would always be the young man who had just joined the force, despite the fact that he had worked in Ystad longer than most of them.

They sat down and talked about the weather. After five minutes Martinsson said, "Where the hell is Svedberg?"

His question was justified, since Svedberg was known for his punctuality.

"Did you talk to him?"

"He had already gone when I tried to reach him. But I left a message on his answerphone."

Wallander nodded in the direction of the telephone that stood on the table.

"You should probably give him another call."

Martinsson dialled the number.

"Where are you?" he asked. "We're waiting for you."

He put the receiver down. "I'm just getting the machine."

"He must be on his way," Wallander said. "Let's start without him."

Martinsson leafed through a stack of papers. Then he pushed a postcard over to Wallander. It was an aerial shot of central Vienna.

"This is the card that the Hillstrom family found in their letter box on Tuesday, 6 August. As you can see, Astrid Hillstrom says that they're thinking of staying a little longer than they had originally planned. But everything is fine and they all send their regards. She asks her mother to call around and tell everyone that they're well."

Wallander read the card. The handwriting reminded him of Linda's. It was the same round lettering. He put it back.

"Eva Hillstrom came here, you said."

"She literally burst into my office. We knew she was the nervous type, but this was something else. She's clearly terrified and convinced that she's right."

"What's she so sure of?"

"That something's happened to them. That her daughter didn't write that postcard."

Wallander thought for a moment. "Is it the handwriting? The signature?"

"It resembles Astrid Hillstrom's writing. But her mother claims it's a very easy style to copy, as is her signature. She's right about that."

Wallander pulled over a notebook and a pen. In less than a minute he had perfected Astrid Hillstrom's handwriting and signature.

"Eva Hillstrom is anxious about her daughter's welfare and turns to the police. That's understandable. But if it isn't the handwriting or the signature that's worrying her, then what is it?"

"She couldn't say."

"But you did ask her."

"I asked her about everything. Was there something about the choice of words? Or was there something in the way she put it? She didn't know. But she was certain that her daughter hadn't written the card."

Wallander made a face and shook his head. "It must have been something."

They looked at each other.

"Do you remember what you said to me yesterday?" Wallander asked. "That you were starting to get worried yourself?"

Martinsson nodded. "Something doesn't add up," he said. "I just can't put my finger on it."

"Let's put the question another way," Wallander said. "If they haven't left on this unplanned holiday, then what's happened? And who's writing these cards? We know that their cars and their passports are missing."

"I'm obviously mistaken," Martinsson answered. "I was probably influenced by Eva Hillstrom's anxiety."

"Parents always worry about their children," Wallander said. "If you only knew how many times I've wondered what Linda was up to. Especially when you get postcards from strange places all around the world."

"So what do we do?" Martinsson asked.

"We continue to keep the situation under surveillance," Wallander said. "But let's go over the facts from the beginning, just to make sure we haven't missed anything."

Martinsson summarised the events in his unfailingly clear fashion. Ann-Britt Hoglund had once asked Wallander if he realised that Martinsson had learned how to make presentations by observing him. Wallander had scoffed at this, but Hoglund had stood her ground. Wallander still didn't know if it was true.

The chain of events was simple enough. Three people, all between the ages of 20 and 23, decided to celebrate Midsummer's Eve together. One of them, Martin Boge, lived in Simrishamn, while the other two, Lena Norman and Astrid Hillstrom, came from the western part of Ystad. They were old friends and spent a lot of time together. Their parents were all wealthy. Lena Norman was studying at Lund University while the other two had temporary jobs. None of them had ever had any problems with the law or with drugs. Astrid Hillstrom and Martin Boge still lived at home; Lena Norman lived in halls of residence in Lund. They didn't tell anyone where they were planning to hold their Midsummer's Eve party. Their parents had talked to one another and to their friends but no one seemed to know anything. This was not unusual, since they were often secretive and never divulged their plans to outsiders. At the time of their disappearance, they had two cars at their disposal: a Volvo and a Toyota. These cars disappeared at the same time as their owners, on the afternoon of 21 June. After that no one had seen them again. The first postcard was sent on 26 June from Hamburg, stating their intention to travel through Europe. A couple of weeks later, Astrid Hillstrom had sent a second postcard from Paris in which she explained that they were on their way south. And now she had apparently sent a third postcard.

Martinsson stopped talking.

Wallander reflected on what he had said. "What could possibly have gone wrong?" he asked.

"I have no idea."

"Is there any indication of anything out of the ordinary in relation to their disappearance?"

"Not really."

Wallander leaned back in his chair. "The only thing we have is Eva Hillstrom's anxiety," he said. "A worried mother."

"She claims her daughter didn't write the cards."

Wallander nodded. "Does she want us to file a missing persons report?"

"No. She wanted us to do something. That was how she put it: 'You have to do something.'"

"What can we really do other than file the report? We've alerted Customs."

They fell silent. It was already 8.45 a.m. Wallander looked questioningly at Martinsson.

"Svedberg?"

Martinsson picked up the receiver and dialled Svedberg's number, then hung up.

"The answerphone again."

Wallander pushed the postcard back across the table to Martinsson. "I don't think we're going to get much further," he said. "But I think I'll have a talk with Eva Hillstrom. Then we'll evaluate what action to take from here. But we have no grounds for declaring this a missing persons case, at least not yet."

Martinsson wrote her number on a piece of paper. "She's an accountant."

"And the father?"

"They're divorced. I think he called once, just after Midsummer."

Wallander got up while Martinsson collected the papers. They left the conference room together.

"Maybe Svedberg did the same thing I did and took a day off without us being told about it."

"He's already been on holiday," Martinsson said emphatically. "He hasn't got any holidays left."

Wallander looked at him with surprise. "How do you know that?"

"I asked him if he could switch one of his weeks with me. But he couldn't because for once he wanted an unbroken chunk of time."

"I don't think he's ever done that before," Wallander said.

They parted outside Martinsson's office and Wallander went to his office. He sat down at his desk and dialled the first phone number Martinsson had given him. Eva Hillstrom answered the phone. They agreed that she should come by the police station later that afternoon.

"Has anything happened?" she asked.

"No," Wallander answered. "I just think I should talk to you as well."

He hung up and was about to go and get a cup of coffee when Hoglund appeared at his door. Although she had just returned from a holiday, she was as pale as ever. Wallander thought her pallor came from within. She still hadn't recovered from a serious gunshot wound of two years earlier. She was healed physically, but Wallander doubted how well she was emotionally. Sometimes he felt that she was still afraid. It didn't surprise him. Almost every day, he thought about the time that he had been stabbed. And that had happened more than 20 years ago.

"Is this a good time?"

Wallander gestured to the chair opposite his desk, and she sat down.

"Have you seen Svedberg?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"He was supposed to come to a meeting with me and Martinsson, but he didn't show up."

"He's not one to miss a meeting."

"You're right. But he did today."

"Have you called him at home? Is he sick?"

"Martinsson left several messages on his answerphone. And besides, Svedberg is never sick."

They contemplated Svedberg's absence for a while.

"What was it you wanted to talk to me about?" Wallander asked finally.

"Do you remember those Baltic car smugglers?"

"How could I forget? I worked on that miserable case for two years before we got them. At least the ones in Sweden."

"Well, it seems as though it's started up again."

"Even with the leaders in jail?"

"It looks like others have stepped in to fill their shoes. Only this time they aren't working out of Gothenburg. Their tracks point towards Lycksele, among other places."

Wallander was surprised. "Lapland?"

"With today's technology you can operate from virtually anywhere."

Wallander shook his head, but he knew that Hoglund was right. Organised criminals always made use of the latest technology.

"I don't have the energy to start again," he said. "No more car smuggling for me."

"I'll take it on. Lisa asked me to. I think she realises how tired you are of stolen cars. But I'd like you to outline the situation for me, as well as give me a couple of pointers."

Wallander nodded. They set a time for the next day, then went and got some coffee and sat down by an open window in the canteen.

"How was your holiday?" he asked.

Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. Wallander went to say something but she stopped him with a gesture.

"It wasn't so great," she said when she had regained her composure. "But I don't want to talk about it."

She picked up her cup of coffee and got up quickly. Wallander watched her leave. He remained seated, thinking about her reaction.

We don't know very much, he thought. They don't know much about me and I don't know much about them. We work together, maybe over the course of an entire career, and what do we learn about each other? Nothing.

He looked down at his watch. He had plenty of time, but he decided to set off walking down to Kapellgatan, where the doctor's office was. He was filled with dread.

The doctor was young. He was called Goransson and came from somewhere up north. Wallander told him about his symptoms: the fatigue, the thirst, the increased urination. He also mentioned his leg cramps.

The doctor's diagnosis was swift, and surprised him.

"It sounds like too much sugar," he said.

"Sugar?"

"Diabetes."

For a split second Wallander was paralysed. The thought had never occurred to him.

"You look like you weigh a little too much," the doctor said. "We'll find out if that's the case. But I want to start off by listening to your heart. Do you know if you have high blood pressure?"

Wallander shook his head. Then he took off his shirt and lay down on the table.

His pulse was normal, but his blood pressure was too high. 170 over 105. He got on the scale: 92 kilos. The doctor sent him for a urinalysis and a blood test. The nurse smiled at him. Wallander thought she looked like his sister Kristina. After she had finished, he went back in to see the doctor.

"Normally you should have a blood-sugar level of between 2.5 and 6.4," Goransson said. "Yours is 15.3. That's much too high."

Wallander started to feel sick.

"This explains your fatigue," Goransson continued. "It explains your thirst and the leg cramps. It also explains why you need to urinate so often."

"Is there medication for this?" Wallander asked.

"First we'll try to control it by changing your diet," Goransson said. "We also have to reduce your blood pressure. Do you exercise frequently?"

"No."

"Then you'll have to start right away. Diet and exercise. If that doesn't help we'll have to go a step further. With this blood-sugar level you're wearing down your whole system."

I'm diabetic, Wallander thought. At that moment it struck him as something shameful.

Goransson seemed to sense his dismay. "This is something we can control," he said. "You won't die from it. At least not yet."

They took more blood tests, and Wallander was given dietary guidelines, and was told to come back on Monday morning.

He left the surgery at 11.30 a.m. He walked over to the cemetery and sat down on a bench. He still couldn't grasp what the doctor had told him. He found his glasses and started reading the meal plans.

He got back to the police station at 12.30. There were some phone messages for him, but nothing that couldn't wait. He bumped into Hansson in the corridor.

"Has Svedberg turned up?" Wallander asked.

"Why, isn't he in?"

Wallander didn't elaborate. Eva Hillstrom was supposed to come in shortly after 1 p.m. He knocked on Martinsson's half-open door, but the room was empty. The thin folder from their meeting that day was lying on the desk. Wallander took it and went into his office. He quickly leafed through the few papers there were and stared at the three postcards, but he was having trouble concentrating. He kept thinking about what the doctor had told him.

Finally Ebba called him from the reception desk and told him that Eva Hillstrom had arrived. Wallander walked out to meet her. A group of older, jovial men were on their way out. Wallander guessed they were the retired marine officers who had come for a tour.

Eva Hillstrom was tall and thin. Her expression was guarded. From the first time he met her, Wallander formed the impression that she was the kind of person who always expected the worst. He shook her hand and asked her to follow him to his office. On the way he asked her if she wanted a cup of coffee.

"I don't drink coffee," she said. "My stomach can't take it."

She sat down in the visitor's chair without taking her eyes off him.

She thinks I have news for her, Wallander thought. And she expects the news to be bad.

He sat down at his desk. "You spoke with my colleague yesterday," he said. "You brought by a postcard you received a couple of days earlier, signed by your daughter and sent from Vienna. But you claim it wasn't written by her. Is that correct?"

"Yes." Her answer was forceful.

"Martinsson said you couldn't explain why you felt this way."

"That's right, I can't."

Wallander took out the postcards and laid them in front of her.

"You said that your daughter's handwriting and signature are easy to forge."

"Try for yourself."

"I've already done that. And I agree with you; her handwriting isn't very hard to copy."

"Then why do you have to ask?"

Wallander looked at her for a moment. She was just as tense as Martinsson had described.

"I'm asking these questions in order to confirm certain statements," he said. "It's sometimes necessary."

She nodded impatiently.

"We have no real reason to believe that someone other than Astrid wrote these cards," Wallander said. "Can you think of anything else that makes you doubt their authenticity?"

"No, but I know I'm right."

"Right about what?"

"That she didn't write this card, or any of the others."

Suddenly, she stood up and started to scream at him. Wallander was completely unprepared for the violence of her reaction. She was leaning over his desk, and she grabbed his arms and shook him, screaming the whole time.

"Why don't you do anything? Something must have happened!"

Wallander freed himself from her grasp with some difficulty and stood up.

"I think you'd better calm down," he said.

But Eva Hillstrom kept screaming. Wallander wondered what people walking by his door were thinking. He went around his desk, grabbed her firmly by the shoulders, pushed her down in the chair and and held her there. Her outburst stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Wallander slowly loosened his grip and returned to his chair. Eva Hillstrom stared down at the floor. Wallander waited, thoroughly shaken. There was something about her reaction, something about her conviction, that was contagious.

"What is it that you think has happened?" he asked after a little while.

She shook her head. "I don't know."

"There is nothing to indicate an accident or anything else."

She looked at Wallander.

"Astrid and her friends have gone on trips before," he said. "Although perhaps not for as long as this one. They had cars, money, passports. My colleagues have gone over this before. What's more, they're of an age when you're inclined to act on impulse without having made prior plans. I have a daughter myself who is a couple of years older than Astrid. I know how it is."

"I just know," she said. "I know I tend to worry. But this time there's something that doesn't feel right."

"The other parents don't seem quite as worried as you do. What about Martin Boge's and Lena Norman's parents?"

"I don't understand them."

"We take your concern seriously," he said. "That's our job. I promise to review this case one more time."

His words seemed to reassure her momentarily, but then the anxiety returned. Her face was open and vulnerable. Wallander felt sorry for her.

The conversation was over. She got up, and he followed her out to the reception area.

"I'm sorry I lost control," she said.

"It's natural to be worried," Wallander said.

She shook his hand quickly, then disappeared through the glass doors.

Wallander went back to his room. Martinsson stuck his head out the door of his office and looked at him with curiosity.

"What were you doing in there?"

"She's genuinely frightened," Wallander said. "We have to acknowledge that; but I don't know what to do about it." Wallander looked thoughtfully at Martinsson. "I'd like to do a thorough review of this case tomorrow with everyone who has the time. We have to decide if we should declare them missing or not. Something about this whole thing worries me."

Martinsson nodded. "Have you seen Svedberg?" he asked.

"He still hasn't been in touch?"

"No. Just the same old answerphone message."

Wallander grimaced. "That's not like him."

"I'll try him again."

Wallander continued to his room. He closed the door and called Ebba. "No calls for the next half hour," he said. "Anything from Svedberg, by the way?"

"Should there be?"

"I was just wondering."

Wallander put his legs up on the desk. He was tired and his mouth was dry. On an impulse, he grabbed his coat and left the room.

"I'm going out," he told Ebba. "I'll be back in an hour or two."

It was still warm and calm. Wallander went down to the central library on Surbrunnsvagen. With some effort he found his way to the medical section. Soon he found what he was looking for: a book about diabetes. He sat down at a table, put his glasses on, and started reading. After an hour and a half he thought he had a better idea of what diabetes entailed. He realised he only had himself to blame. The foods he ate, his lack of exercise, and his on-and-off dieting had all contributed to the disease. He put the book back on the shelf. A sense of failure and disgust came over him. He knew there was no way out. He had to do something about his lifestyle.

It was already 4.20 p.m. when he returned to the police station. There was a note on his desk from Martinsson saying that he still hadn't managed to get in touch with Svedberg.

Once more Wallander read through the summary of events regarding the disappearance of the three young people. He scrutinised the three postcards. The feeling that there was something he was overlooking returned. He still couldn't pin it down. What was there he wasn't seeing?

He felt his anxiety increase and could almost see Eva Hillstrom in front of him. Suddenly the gravity of the situation struck him. It was very simple. She knew her daughter hadn't written that card. How she knew this was irrelevant. She was sure and that was enough. Wallander got up and stopped in front of the window. Something had happened to them. The question now was what.

CHAPTER THREE

That evening Wallander tried to start his new regime. All he had for dinner was some bouillon soup and a salad. He was concentrating so hard on making sure that only the right things found their way onto his plate that he forgot he had signed up for the laundry, and by the time he remembered it was too late.

He tried to convince himself that what had happened could be viewed as something positive. An elevated blood-sugar level was not a death sentence; he had been given a warning. If he wanted to stay healthy, he would have to take some simple precautions. Nothing drastic, but he would have to make significant changes.

When he was done eating, he still felt hungry, and ate another tomato. Then, still sitting at the kitchen table, he tried to make a meal plan for the coming days from his dietary guidelines. He also decided to walk to work from now on. On the weekends he would drive to the beach and take long walks. He remembered that he and Hansson once talked about playing badminton. Perhaps that could still be arranged.

At 9 p.m. he got up from the kitchen table and went out onto the balcony. The wind was blowing softly from the south, but it was still warm. The dog days were here.

Wallander watched some teenagers walking past on the street below. It was hard to concentrate on his meal plans and recommended weight chart. Thoughts of Eva Hillstrom and her anxiety kept returning to him. Her outburst had shaken him. The fear she felt at her daughter's disappearance was plain to see, and it was genuine.

Sometimes parents don't know their children, he thought. But sometimes a parent knows her child better than anyone else, and something tells me that this is the case with Eva Hillstrom and her daughter.

He went back into the flat and left the door to the balcony open. He had the feeling that he was overlooking something that would indicate how they should proceed; something that would lead them to a well-founded, investigative hypothesis, and to determine whether Eva Hillstrom's concerns were justified.

He went out into the kitchen and made some coffee, wiping the table clean while he waited for the water to boil. The phone rang. It was Linda. She was calling from the restaurant where she worked, which surprised him since he thought it was open only during the day.

"The owner changed the hours," she said in answer to his question, "and I make more money working in the evenings. I have to make a living."

He could hear voices and the rattle of pots and pans in the background. He had no idea what Linda's plans for her future were. For a time she wanted to become a furniture upholsterer, then she changed her mind and started exploring the world of theatre. Then that plan also came to an end.

She seemed to read his thoughts. "I'm not going to be a waitress all my life," she said. "But I'm saving some money right now and next winter I'm going to travel."

"Where to?"

"I don't know yet."

It wasn't the right time to discuss this in detail, so he mentioned that Gertrud had moved and that her grandfather's house was on the market.

"I wish we had kept it," she said. "I wish I had the money to buy it."

Wallander understood. Linda had been close to her grandfather. There were even times when seeing them together had made him jealous.

"I have to go now," she said. "I just wanted to hear how you were."

"Everything is fine," Wallander replied. "I went to the doctor today. He didn't find anything wrong with me."

"Didn't he even tell you to lose weight?"

"Apart from that, he said that everything was fine."

"That doctor was too nice. Are you still as tired as you were on holiday?"

She sees right through me, Wallander thought helplessly. And why don't I tell her the truth, that I'm becoming a diabetic, that I may already be one? Why am I behaving as if it were something shameful?

"I'm not tired," he said. "That week on Gotland was an exception."

"If you say so," she said. "I've got to go now. If you want to reach me here in the evenings you'll have to call a new number."

He quickly memorised it. Then the conversation was over.

Wallander took his coffee with him into the living room and turned on the TV. He turned the sound down, then jotted down the phone number she had given him on the corner of a newspaper. He wrote sloppily. No one else would have been able to read the number. It was at that moment that he realised what was bothering him. He pushed his coffee cup away and looked at his watch. It was 9.15 p.m. He wondered briefly if he should call Martinsson, and wait until the following day before making up his mind. He went into the kitchen, got out the phone book, and sat down at the kitchen table.

There were four families called Norman in Ystad, but Wallander remembered seeing the address among Martinsson's papers. Lena Norman and her mother lived on Karinggatan, north of the hospital. Her father was called Bertil Norman and had the title "CEO" next to his name. Wallander knew that he owned a company that supplied heating systems for pre-fabricated houses.

He dialled the number and a woman answered. Wallander introduced himself, trying to sound as friendly as possible. He didn't want to worry her. He knew how unnerving it was to be called by the police, especially after hours.

"Am I speaking to Lena Norman's mother?"

"This is Lillemor Norman."

Wallander recognised the name.

"This conversation could really have waited until tomorrow," he said. "But there is something I need to know and unfortunately policemen work all hours of the day and night."

She did not seem particularly concerned. "How can I help you? Or would you like to speak with my husband? I can get him for you. He's just helping Lena's brother with his maths homework."

Her answer surprised him. He hadn't realised that schools still had anything called homework.

"That won't be necessary," he said. "What I want is a sample of Lena's handwriting. Do you have any letters from her?"

"Well, apart from the postcards, we haven't received anything. I thought the police knew that."

"I mean an old letter."

"Why do you need it?"

"It's just routine procedure. We need to compare some handwriting samples, that's all. It's not particularly important."

"Do policemen really bother calling people at night about such unimportant matters?"

Eva Hillstrom is afraid, Wallander thought. Lillemor Norman, on the other hand, is suspicious.

"Do you think you can help me?"

"I have a number of letters from Lena."

"One is enough. About half a page."

"I'll find one. Will someone be by to pick it up?"

"I'll come myself. Expect me in about 20 minutes."

Wallander went back to the phone book. In Simrishamn he found only one entry for the name "Boge", an accountant. Wallander dialled the number and waited impatiently. He was just about to hang up when someone answered.

"Klas Boge."

The voice that answered sounded young. Wallander assumed it was Martin Boge's brother. He told him who he was.

"Are your parents home?"

"No, I'm alone. They're at a golf dinner."

Wallander wasn't sure he should continue. But the boy seemed reasonably mature.

"Has your brother Martin ever written a letter to you? Anything you might have saved?"

"Not this summer."

"Earlier, perhaps?"

The boy thought for a moment. "I have a letter he wrote to me from the United States last year."

"Was it handwritten?"

"Yes."

Wallander calculated how long it would take him to drive to Simrishamn. Perhaps he should wait until the next morning.

"Why do you want one of his letters?"

"I just need a sample of his handwriting."

"Well, I could fax it over to you if you're in a hurry."

The boy was a fast thinker. Wallander gave him the number of one of the faxes at the police station.

"I'd like you to mention this matter to your parents," he said.

"I'm planning to be asleep when they get back."

"Could you tell them about it tomorrow?"

"Martin's letter was addressed to me."

"It would be best if you mentioned it anyway," Wallander said patiently.

"Martin and the others will be back soon," the boy said. "I don't know why that Hillstrom lady is so worried. She calls us every day."

"But your parents aren't worried?"

"I think they're relieved that Martin's gone. At least Dad is."

Somewhat surprised, Wallander waited to see if the boy would go on, but he didn't.

"Thanks for your help," he said finally.

"It's like a game," the boy said.

"A game?"

"They pretend they're in a different time. They like to dress up, like children do, even though they're grown up."

"I'm not sure that I follow," Wallander said.

"They're playing roles, like you would in the theatre. But it's for real. They might have gone to Europe to find something that doesn't really exist."

"So that was what they normally did? Play? But I'm not sure I would call a Midsummer's Eve celebration a game. It's just the same eating and dancing as at any other party."

"And drinking," the boy said. "But if you put on costumes, that makes it something else, doesn't it?"

"Is that what they did?"

"Yes, but I don't know more. It was secret. Martin never said much about it."

Wallander didn't completely follow what the boy was saying. He looked down at his watch. Lillemor Norman would be expecting him shortly.

"Thanks for your help," he said, bringing the conversation to an end. "And don't forget to tell your parents that I called and what I asked for."

"Maybe," the boy replied.

Three different reactions, Wallander thought. Eva Hillstrom is afraid. Lillemor Norman is suspicious. Martin Boge's parents are relieved he's gone, and his brother in turn seems to prefer it when their parents are gone. He picked up his coat and left. On the way out, he reserved a new time at the laundry for Friday.

Although it wasn't far to Karinggatan, he took the car. The new exercise regimen would have to wait. He turned onto Karinggatan from Bellevuevagen, and stopped outside a white two-storey house. The front door opened as he was opening the gate, and he recognised Lillemor Norman. In contrast to Eva Hillstrom, she looked robust. He thought about the photographs in Martinsson's file and realised that Lena Norman and her mother looked alike.

The woman was holding a white envelope.

"I'm sorry to bother you," Wallander said.

"My husband will have a few words with Lena when she comes back. It's completely irresponsible of them to go away like this without a word."

"They're adults and can do as they please," Wallander said. "But of course it's both irritating and worrying."

He took the letter and promised to return it. Then he drove to the police station and went to the room where the officer on duty was manning the phones. He was taking a call as Wallander stepped into the room, but pointed to one of the fax machines. Klas Boge had faxed his brother's letter as promised. Wallander went to his office and turned on the desk lamp. He laid the two letters and the postcards next to each other, then angled the light and put on his glasses.

He leaned back in his chair. His hunch was correct. Both Martin Boge and Lena Norman had irregular, spiky handwriting. If someone had wanted to forge any one of the three's handwriting, the choice would have been clear: Astrid Hillstrom. Wallander felt profoundly disturbed by this, but his mind kept working methodically. What did this mean? It was nothing, really. It didn't supply an answer to why someone would want to write postcards in their names, and who would have had access to their handwriting. Nonetheless, he couldn't shake off his concern.

We have to go through this thoroughly, he thought. If something has happened, they've been missing for almost two months.

He got himself a cup of coffee. It was 10.15 p.m. He read through the description of events one more time but found nothing new. Some good friends had celebrated Midsummer's Eve together, then left for a trip. They sent a few postcards. And that was all.

Wallander shuffled the letters together and put them in the folder along with the postcards. There was nothing more he could do tonight. Tomorrow he would talk to Martinsson and the others, go through this Midsummer's Eve case one last time, and then decide if they would proceed with a missing persons investigation.

Wallander turned off the light and left the room. In the corridor he realised that Ann-Britt Hoglund's light was on. The door was slightly ajar, and he pushed it open gently. She was staring down at her desk but there were no papers in front of her. Wallander hesitated. She almost never stayed this late at the station. She had children to take care of, and her husband travelled often with his job and was rarely at home. He recalled her emotional behaviour in the canteen. And now here she was staring down at an empty desk. She probably wanted to be left alone. But it was also possible that she wanted to talk to somebody.

She can always ask me to leave, Wallander thought.

He knocked on the door, waited for her answer, and stepped inside.

"I saw your light," he said. "You aren't normally here so late, not unless something has happened."

She looked back at him without answering.

"If you want to be left alone, just say the word."

"No," she replied. "I don't really want to be left alone. Why are you here yourself? Is something going on?"

Wallander sat down in her visitor's chair. He felt like a big, lumbering animal.

"It's the young people who went missing at Midsummer."

"Has anything turned up?"

"Not really. There was just something I wanted to double-check. But I think that we'll need to do a thorough reexamination of the case. Eva Hillstrom is seriously concerned."

"But what could really have happened to them?"

"That's the question."

"Are we going to declare them missing?"

Wallander threw his arms out. "I don't know. We'll have to decide tomorrow."

The room was dark except for the circle of light projected onto the floor by the desk lamp.

"How long have you been a policeman?" she asked suddenly.

"A long time. Too long, maybe. But I'm a policeman through and through. That's not going to change, at least until I retire."

She looked at him for a long time before asking her next question. "How do you keep going?"

"I don't know."

"Don't you ever run out of steam?"

"Sometimes. Why do you ask?"

"I'm thinking of what I said in the canteen earlier. I told you I'd had a bad summer and that's true. My husband and I are having problems. He's never at home. It can take us a week to get back to normal after his trips, and then he just has to leave again. This summer we started talking about a separation. That's never an easy thing, especially when you have children."

"I know," Wallander said.

"At the same time I've started questioning my work. I read in the paper that some of our colleagues in Malmo were arrested for racketeering. I turn on the television and learn that senior members of the force are involved in the world of organised crime. I see all this and I realise it's happening more and more. Eventually it leads me to wonder what I'm doing. Or, to put it another way, I wonder how I'm going to last another 30 years."

"It's all coming apart at the seams," Wallander agreed. "It's been going on for a long time. Corruption in the justice system is nothing new and there have always been police officers willing to cross the line. It's worse now, of course, and that's why it's even more important that people like you keep going."

"What about you?"

"That applies to me too."

"But how do you do it?"

Her questions were full of anger. He recognised a part of himself in her. How many times had he sat staring into his own desk, unable to find a reason to continue?

"I try to tell myself that things would be even worse without me," he said. "It's a consolation at times. A small one, but if I can't think of any other I take it."

She shook her head. "What's happening to our country?"

Wallander waited for her to continue, but she didn't. A truck rattled past on the street outside.

"Do you remember that violent attack last spring?" Wallander asked.

"The one in Svarte?"

"Two boys, both 14 years old, attack a third boy who is only 12. There's no provocation, no reason behind it. When he's lying there unconscious they start stomping on his chest. Finally he's not just unconscious, he's dead. I don't think it ever hit me so clearly before. People have always had fights, but they would stop when the other person was down. You can call it what you like. Fair play. Something you take for granted. But that's not the way it is any more, because these boys never learned it. It's as if a whole generation has been abandoned by their parents. Or as if not caring has become the norm. You have to rethink what it means to be a police officer because the parameters have changed. The experience you've acquired after years and years of grinding work doesn't apply any more."

He stopped. They heard voices from the corridor. Some of the officers on night duty were talking about a drunk driver. Then everything went quiet again.

"How have you been these past few years?" he asked her.

"You mean since I was shot?"

He nodded.

"I dream about it," she said. "I dream that I die or that the bullet hits me in the head. I think that's almost worse."

"It's easy to lose your nerve," Wallander said.

She got up. "The day I get seriously scared I'll quit," she said. "But I'm not quite there yet. Thanks for stopping by. I'm used to dealing with my problems on my own, but tonight I needed someone to talk to."

"It takes some strength to admit that."

She put her coat on and smiled her pale smile. Wallander wondered how well she was sleeping, but he didn't ask her.

"Can we talk about the car smugglers tomorrow?" she asked.

"How about in the afternoon? Don't forget we have to talk about these young people in the morning."

She looked at him closely.

"Are you really worried?"

"Eva Hillstrom is, and I can't disregard that."

They walked out together. She rejected his offer of a ride home.

"I need to walk," she said. "And it's so warm. What an August it's been!"

"We're in the dog days," he said. "Whatever that saying means."

They said goodbye. Wallander drove home. He drank a cup of tea and leafed through the Ystad daily paper, then went to bed. He left the window slightly open since it was so warm, and fell asleep at once.

A violent pain woke him up with a start. His left calf muscle was locked in a spasm. He lowered his leg onto the floor and flexed it. The pain disappeared. He lay down again carefully, afraid that the cramp would return. The alarm clock on the bedside table read 1.30 a.m. He had been dreaming about his father again, in a disjointed way. They walked around the streets of a city that Wallander didn't recognise. They were looking for someone. Who, he never found out.

The curtain in front of the window moved slowly. He thought about Linda's mother, Mona. He had been married to her for a long time. Now she was living a new life with another man who played golf and probably did not have elevated blood-sugar levels.

His thoughts kept wandering. All at once he saw himself walking along Skagen's endless beaches with Baiba. Then she was gone.

Suddenly he was wide awake. He sat up in bed. He didn't know where the thought came from; it simply appeared among the others and fought its way to the front: Svedberg.

The fact that he hadn't called in sick didn't make sense. Not only was he never sick, if something had happened he would have let them know. He should have thought of it before. If Svedberg hadn't been in contact, it could only mean one thing: something was preventing him from communicating with them.

Wallander felt himself getting worried. Of course it was just his imagination. After all, what could have happened to Svedberg? But the feeling of unease was strong. Wallander looked at the clock again, then went out into the kitchen, searched for Svedberg's number, and dialled it. After a few rings the machine picked up. Wallander hung up. Now he was sure that something was wrong. He put on his clothes and went down to the car. The wind had picked up but it was still warm. It took him only a few minutes to drive to the main square. He parked the car and walked towards Lilla Norregatan where Svedberg lived. The lights were on inside his flat. Wallander felt relieved, but only for a few seconds. Then the worry returned even more strongly. Why didn't Svedberg pick up the phone if he was at home? Wallander tried the door to the building. It was locked. He didn't know the security code, but the crack between the front doors was wide enough. Wallander took out a pocketknife and looked around. Then he slipped the thickest blade between the doors and pushed. They opened.

Svedberg lived on the fourth floor. Wallander was out of breath by the time he made it up the stairs. He pressed his ear against the door but heard nothing. Then he opened the letter slot. Nothing. He rang the bell, the sound echoing inside the flat. He rang three times, then pounded on the door. Still nothing.

Wallander tried to gather his thoughts. He felt a strong urge not to be alone. He groped for his mobile phone but realised it was still on the kitchen table at home. He went down the stairs and pushed a small stone between the two front doors. Then he hurried out to one of the telephone booths on the main square, and dialled Martinsson's number.

"I'm sorry to have to wake you up," Wallander said when Martinsson answered, "but I need your help."

"What is it?"

"Did you ever get hold of Svedberg?"

"No."

"Then something must have happened."

Martinsson didn't reply, but Wallander sensed that he was now fully awake.

"I'm waiting for you outside his block of flats on Lilla Norregatan," Wallander said.

"Ten minutes," Martinsson said. "At the most."

Wallander went to his car and unlocked the boot. He had some tools wrapped up in a dirty plastic bag. He took out a crowbar, then returned to Svedberg's building.

After less than ten minutes Martinsson drove up. Wallander saw that he was wearing his pyjama top under his jacket.

"What do you think has happened?"

"I don't know."

They walked upstairs together. Wallander nodded to Martinsson to ring the doorbell. Still no one answered. They looked at each other.

"Maybe he keeps some spare keys in his office."

Wallander shook his head.

"It'll take us too long," he said.

Martinsson took a step back. He knew what would be next. Wallander wedged the crowbar into the door, and forced it open.

CHAPTER FOUR

The night of 8 August 1996 became one of the longest of Kurt Wallander's life. When he staggered out from the flat building on Lilla Norregatan at dawn, he still hadn't managed to rid himself of the feeling that he was caught up in an incomprehensible nightmare.

But everything he had seen during that long night had been real, and this reality was horrifying. He had witnessed the remains of a bloody and brutal drama many times in the course of his career, but never had it touched him as closely as now.

When he forced open the door to Svedberg's flat he still didn't know what lay in store for him. Yet from the moment he wedged the crowbar in the door he had feared the worst, and his fears had been confirmed.

They walked silently through the hall as if they were about to enter enemy territory. Martinsson stayed close behind. Lights were shining further down the hall. For a brief moment they stood there without making a sound. Wallander heard Martinsson's anxious breathing behind him. In the doorway to the living room, he jerked back so violently that he collided with Martinsson, who then bent forward to look at what Wallander had seen.

Wallander would never forget the sound Martinsson made, the way he whimpered like a child in front of the inexplicable thing before him on the floor.

It was Svedberg. One of his legs was hanging over the broken arm of a chair that had been knocked over. The torso was strangely twisted, as if Svedberg had no spine.

Wallander stood in the doorway, frozen with horror. There was no doubt in his mind about what he was seeing. The man he had worked with for so many years was dead. He no longer existed. He would never again sit in his usual place at the table in one of the conference rooms, scratching his bald spot with the end of a pencil.

Svedberg didn't have a bald spot any more. Half of his head was blown away.

A short distance from the body lay a double-barrelled shotgun. Blood was spattered several metres up the white wall behind the overturned chair. A confused thought went through Wallander's mind: now Svedberg will never be troubled by his phobia for bees again.

"What happened?" Martinsson said in an unsteady voice. Wallander realised that Martinsson was close to tears. He was a long way from such a reaction. He couldn't cry over something he didn't yet fully comprehend. And he really didn't comprehend the scene in front of him. Svedberg couldn't be dead. He was a 40-year-old police officer who would be in his usual chair again tomorrow when they had one of their regular team meetings. Svedberg with his bald spot, his fear of bees, who used the police station's sauna on his own every Friday night. It simply couldn't be Svedberg who lay there. It was someone else who looked just like him.

Wallander glanced instinctively at his watch. It was 2.09 a.m. They stood in the doorway for a few more seconds, then walked back out into the hall. Wallander turned on the light. He saw that Martinsson was shaking. He wondered what he looked like himself.

"Tell them to put all units on red alert."

There was a phone on a table in the hall, but no answerphone. Martinsson nodded and was about to pick up the receiver when Wallander stopped him.

"Wait," he said. "We need time to think."

But what was there really to think about? Maybe he was hoping for a miracle, that Svedberg would suddenly appear behind them and that nothing they had seen would turn out to be real.

"Do you know Lisa Holgersson's number?" he asked. He knew from experience that Martinsson had a good head for addresses and numbers. There used to be two with this particular gift: Martinsson and Svedberg. Now only one was left.

Martinsson recited the number, stammering. Wallander dialled and Lisa Holgersson picked up on the second ring. Her phone must be right beside her bed, he thought.

"This is Wallander. I'm sorry to wake you up."

She seemed awake at once.

"You should come down here right away," he said. "I'm in Svedberg's flat on Lilla Norregatan. Martinsson is also here. Svedberg is dead."

He heard her groan. "What happened?"

"I don't know. He's been shot."

"That's terrible. Is it murder?"

Wallander thought about the shotgun on the floor.

"I don't know," he said. "Murder or suicide, I don't know which."

"Have you been in touch with Nyberg?"

"I wanted to call you first."

"I'll be right over, I just have to get dressed."

"We'll contact Nyberg in the meantime."

Wallander handed the phone to Martinsson. "Start with Nyberg," he said.

The living room was accessible from two directions. While Martinsson used the phone, Wallander walked out through the kitchen. A kitchen drawer lay on the floor. The door to a cupboard was ajar. Papers and receipts lay strewn all over the room.

Wallander made a mental note of everything he saw. He could hear Martinsson explaining to Nyberg, the head of forensics in Ystad, what had happened. Wallander kept walking. He looked carefully where he was going before putting his feet down. He came to Svedberg's bedroom. All three drawers in a chest of drawers were pulled out. The bed was unmade and the blanket lay on the ground. With a feeling of boundless sorrow he noted that Svedberg had slept in flowery sheets. His bed was a meadow of wildflowers. Wallander kept going, arriving at a little study between the bedroom and living room. There were some bookcases and a desk. Svedberg was a neat person. His desk at the police station was kept meticulously free of clutter. But here his books had been pulled from their shelves, and the contents of the desk lay on the floor. There was paper everywhere.

Wallander entered the living room again, this time from the other side. Now he was closer to the shotgun, with Svedberg's twisted body at the far end. He stood completely still and took in the whole scene, every detail, everything that had been frozen and left behind as a marker of the drama that had taken place. The questions raced through his mind. Had someone heard the shot or shots? The scene suggested that a burglary had taken place. But when did it happen? And what else happened here?

Martinsson appeared in the doorway on the other side of the living room.

"They're on their way," he said.

Wallander slowly retraced his steps. When he was back in the kitchen he heard the bark of a German shepherd and then Martinsson's agitated voice. He hurried out to the hall and bumped into a dog patrol. Some people in bathrobes were huddled in the background. The patrol officer with the dog was called Edmundsson and had recently moved to Ystad.

"We received a call about a possible burglary," he said uncertainly when he saw Wallander. "At the flat of someone called Svedberg."

Wallander realised that Edmundsson had no idea which Svedberg the caller had been talking about.

"Good. There has been an incident here. By the way, it's Officer Svedberg's flat."

Edmundsson went pale. "I didn't know."

"How could you? But you can go back to the station. Back-up is on its way."

Edmundsson looked inquiringly at him. "What's happened?"

"Svedberg is dead," Wallander answered. "That's all we know."

He immediately regretted having said even that much. The neighbours were listening. Someone could take it into their heads to call the press. What Wallander wanted least of all was to have reporters hanging about. A policeman dying in mysterious circumstances was always news.

As Edmundsson disappeared down the stairs, Wallander thought fuzzily that he didn't know what the dog was called.

"Can you take care of the neighbours?" he said to Martinsson. "If nothing else, they must have heard the shots. Maybe we can establish a time of death."

"Was there more than one shot?"

"I don't know, but someone must have heard something."

The front door slammed below them and they heard approaching footsteps. Martinsson started rounding up the sleepy and anxious people and herded them into the flat next door. Lisa Holgersson came rushing up the stairs.

"I want you to prepare yourself," Wallander said.

"Is it that bad?"

"Svedberg was shot in the head with a shotgun at close range."

She made a face, then steeled herself. Wallander followed her into the hall and pointed to the living room. She went up to the doorway then quickly turned away and swayed as if she were about to faint. Wallander took her by the arm and helped her into the kitchen. She sank down on a blue kitchen chair, and looked up at Wallander with wide eyes.

"Who did this?" she asked.

"I don't know."

Wallander took a glass and gave her some water.

"Svedberg was away yesterday," he said. "Without telling anyone."

"That's unusual," said Holgersson.

"Very unusual. I woke up in the middle of the night with a feeling that things weren't quite right, so I drove over."

"So you don't think it happened yesterday?"

"No. Martinsson is talking to the neighbours to see if anyone heard anything unusual, which they probably did. A shotgun is loud. But we'll have to wait for the autopsy report."

Wallander heard his factual statement echo inside his head. He felt nauseated.

"I know he wasn't married," said Holgersson. "Did he have any family?"

Wallander thought back. He knew that Svedberg's mother had died a couple of years earlier. He didn't know anything about his father. The only relative Wallander knew about for sure was one he had met a few years earlier during a murder investigation.

"He has a cousin called Ylva Brink. She's an obstetric nurse. I can't think of anyone else."

They heard Nyberg's voice out in the hall.

"I'll stay here for a few minutes," said Holgersson.

Wallander went out to talk to Nyberg, who was kicking off his shoes.

"What the hell happened here?"

Nyberg was a brilliant forensic specialist, but he was moody and could be hard to work with. He seemed not to have understood that this emergency concerned a colleague. A dead colleague. Maybe Martinsson had forgotten to tell him.

"Do you know where you are?" Wallander asked carefully.

Nyberg shot him an angry look.

"Some flat on Lilla Norregatan," he answered. "But Martinsson was unusually muddled on the phone. What's going on?"

Wallander looked at him steadily. Nyberg noticed his demeanour and became quiet.

"It's Svedberg," Wallander said. "He's dead. It looks like he's been murdered."

"You mean Kalle?" Nyberg said incredulously.

Wallander nodded and felt a lump in his throat. Nyberg was one of the few who called Svedberg by his first name. His name was actually Karl Evert. Nyberg used his nickname, Kalle.

"He's in there," Wallander said. "Shot in the face with a shotgun."

Nyberg grimaced.

"I don't have to tell you what that looks like," Wallander said.

"No," Nyberg said. "You don't have to do that."

Nyberg went in. He turned away like the others when he reached the doorway. Wallander waited briefly, to give Nyberg a moment to comprehend what he saw in front of him. Then he walked over.

"I already have a question for you," he said. "One of the most important. As you see, the gun is at least two metres away from the body. My question is, could it have ended up over there if Svedberg committed suicide?"

Nyberg thought about it, then shook his head. "No," he said. "That's impossible. A shotgun aimed by himself wouldn't be thrown that far."

For a moment Wallander felt strangely relieved. Svedberg didn't kill himself, he thought.

People were beginning to congregate in the hall. The doctor arrived, as did Hansson. A technician was unpacking his bag.

"Please listen, everybody," Wallander said. "The person lying in there is your colleague, Officer Svedberg. He's dead, probably murdered. I want to prepare you for the fact that it's a terrible sight. We knew him and we grieve for him. He was our friend as well as our colleague and that makes our job much harder."

Wallander stopped. He felt he should say more but couldn't think of anything. He lacked the words. He returned to the kitchen while Nyberg and his assistants got to work. Holgersson was still sitting at the table.

"I have to call his cousin," she said. "If she's the closest living relative."

"I can do it," Wallander said. "After all, I already know her."

"Give me an overview of the events. What happened here?"

"I'll need Martinsson for that. I'll get him."

Wallander went out onto the stairs. The door to the next flat was slightly ajar. He knocked and went in. Martinsson was in the living room with four people. One of them was fully dressed, the others were still in their dressing gowns. There were two women and two men. He signalled for Martinsson to come with him.

"Please remain here for now," he told the others.

They went into the kitchen. Martinsson was very pale.

"Let's start from the beginning," Wallander said. "When was the last time anyone saw Svedberg?"

"I don't know if I was the last one," Martinsson said. "But I caught a glimpse of him in the canteen on Wednesday morning at around 11 a.m."

"How did he seem?"

"Since I didn't think about it, I suppose he must have been like he always was."

"You called me that afternoon. We decided to have a meeting on Thursday morning."

"I went into Svedberg's office straight after our conversation, but he wasn't there. At the front desk they told me he'd gone home for the day."

"What time did he leave?"

"I didn't ask."

"What did you do then?"

"I called him at home and left a message about the meeting. Then I called back a couple of times but I didn't get an answer."

Wallander thought hard. "Sometime on Wednesday, Svedberg leaves the police station. Everything seems normal. On Thursday he doesn't show up, which is unusual, regardless of whether he heard your message. Svedberg never stayed away without letting someone know."

"That means it could have happened as early as Wednesday," Lisa Holgersson said.

Wallander nodded. At what point does the normal suddenly become the abnormal? he thought. That's the moment we have to find.

Another thought struck him - Martinsson's remark about his own answerphone not working.

"Wait here a minute," he said and left the kitchen.

He walked into Svedberg's study. His answerphone was on the desk. Wallander went into the living room where Nyberg was kneeling beside the shotgun, and took him back into the study.

"I'd like to listen to the answerphone, but I don't want to destroy any clues."

"We can get the tape to return to the same place," Nyberg said. He was wearing plastic gloves. Wallander nodded and Nyberg pressed the play button. There were three messages from Martinsson. Each time he stated the time of day. There were no other messages.

"I'd also like to hear Svedberg's greeting," Wallander said.

Nyberg pressed another button.

Wallander flinched when he heard Svedberg's voice. Nyberg also seemed upset by it.

I'm not here, but please leave a message. That was all.

Wallander went back into the kitchen. "Your messages are still on the machine," he said. "But we can't tell if anyone listened to them or not."

The room was quiet. Everyone was thinking about what Wallander had said.

"What do the neighbours say?" he asked.

"No one heard anything," Martinsson answered. "It's quite strange. No one heard a shot and almost everyone was at home."

Wallander frowned. "It's not possible that no one heard anything."

"I'll keep talking to them."

Martinsson left. A police officer came into the kitchen.

"There's a reporter outside," he said.

Goddamn it, Wallander thought. Someone had already contacted the press. He looked at Holgersson.

"We have to notify his relatives first," she said.

"We can't put it off any longer than midday," Wallander said.

He turned to the waiting police officer. "No comment right now," he said. "But we'll issue a statement later this morning."

"At 11 a.m.," Holgersson said.

The officer disappeared. Nyberg shouted at someone in the living room. Then everything was quiet again. Nyberg had a bad temper but his outbursts were always brief. Wallander went out into the study and picked up a phone book off the floor. He looked up Ylva Brink's number at the kitchen table and looked questioningly at Holgersson.

"You make the call," she said.

Nothing was as difficult as notifying a relative of a sudden death. Whenever possible, Wallander tried to make sure he was accompanied by a police minister. Although he had gone through this many times, he never became accustomed to it. And even if Ylva Brink was only Svedberg's cousin, it would be hard enough. He heard the first ring and noticed himself start to tense up.

Her answerphone came on with a message saying that she was working the night shift at the hospital. Wallander put the receiver back down. He suddenly remembered visiting her at the hospital with Svedberg two years ago. And now Svedberg was dead. He still couldn't comprehend it.

"She's at the hospital," he said. "I'll have to go and see her in person."

"It really can't wait," Lisa Holgersson said. "Svedberg might have had other relatives that we don't know about."

Wallander nodded. She was right.

"Do you want me to come with you?" she asked.

"That's not necessary."

It occurred to Wallander that he would have liked to have Ann-Britt Hoglund with him, and then he realised that no one had contacted her.

She should be here working on this with the others, he thought.

Holgersson got up and left the kitchen. Wallander sat down in her chair and dialled Hoglund's number. A man's sleepy voice came on the line.

"I need to speak to Ann-Britt. This is Wallander."

"Who?"

"Kurt. From the police."

The man was still sleepy but now he sounded angry as well.

"What the hell is going on?"

"Isn't this Ann-Britt Hoglund's number?"

"There's no bitch by that name around here," the man grunted and slammed down the phone. Wallander could almost feel the impact. He had dialled the wrong number. He tried again slowly and Hoglund picked up after the second ring, as quickly as Holgersson had.

"It's Kurt."

She didn't sound particularly sleepy. Maybe she had been awake? Maybe her problems were keeping her awake. Now she'll have one more to add to the list, Wallander thought.

"What's happened?"

"Svedberg has been killed, probably murdered."

"That can't be true."

"Unfortunately it is. It happened in his home, the flat on Lilla Norregatan."

"I know where it is."

"Can you come down here?"

"I'm on my way."

Wallander hung up and remained at the kitchen table. One of the technicians looked in, but Wallander waved him away. He needed to think, if only for a minute. There was something strange about all this, he realised. Something that didn't add up. The crime technician came back into the kitchen.

"Nyberg wants to talk to you."

Wallander got up and went out into the living room, where the discomfort and distress of the people at work was palpable. Svedberg hadn't been a colourful personality, but he was well liked. And now he was dead.

The doctor was kneeling by the body. Now and then a flash went off in the room. Nyberg was making notes. He came over to Wallander, who stopped in the doorway.

"Did Svedberg have any weapons?"

"You mean the shotgun?"

"Yes."

"I don't know, but I can't imagine he did."

"It's just strange that the killer would leave his weapon behind."

Wallander nodded. That had been one of his first thoughts.

"Have you noticed anything else strange around here?" he asked.

Nyberg narrowed his eyes. "Isn't everything about a colleague having his head blown off strange?"

"You know what I mean."

But Wallander didn't wait for an answer. He turned and walked away, bumping into Martinsson in the hall.

"How did it go? Have you established a time?"

"No one heard anything, and if I'm right in my calculations there has been someone in the building continuously since Monday. Either on this level or in the flat below."

"And no one heard anything? That's impossible."

"There was a retired high school teacher who seemed a little hard of hearing, but the others were fine."

Wallander didn't understand it. Someone must have heard the shot or shots.

"You'll have to keep working on this," he said. "I have to drop by the hospital. Do you remember Svedberg's cousin, Ylva Brink? The midwife?"

Martinsson nodded.

"She's probably his nearest relative."

"Didn't he have an aunt somewhere in Vastergotland?"

"I'll ask Ylva."

Wallander went down the stairs. He needed to get some air. A reporter was waiting outside the front door. Wallander recognised him as a reporter from Ystad's daily paper.

"What's going on? All units called out in the middle of the night to the home of a police officer by the name of Karl Evert Svedberg."

"I can't tell you anything," Wallander said. "We're issuing a statement to the press at 11 a.m."

"You can't say anything or you won't?"

"I really can't."

The reporter, whose name was Wickberg, nodded.

"That means someone's dead, and you can't say anything until the next of kin has been notified. Am I right?"

"If that were the case I could have picked up the phone."

Wickberg smiled in a firm but not unfriendly way.

"That's not how it's done. You get hold of a police minister first, if one's available. So Svedberg's dead?"

Wallander was too tired to get angry.

"Whatever you want to guess or think is your business," he said. "We'll release information at 11 a.m. Before then I won't say another word."

"Where are you going?"

"I need to get some air."

He walked along Lilla Norregatan and continued a few blocks, then looked back. Wickberg was not following him. Wallander turned right onto Sladdergatan, then left onto Stora Norregatan. He was thirsty and had to take a leak. There were no cars around. He walked up to a building and relieved himself. Then he kept going.

Something's wrong, he thought. Something about this whole thing is completely odd. He couldn't think of what it was, but the feeling became stronger. There was a gnawing pain in his stomach. Why had Svedberg been shot? What was it about the terrible image of the man with his head blown off that didn't add up?

Wallander arrived at the hospital, walked around to the emergency entrance, and rang the bell. He took the elevator to the maternity ward, a rush of images of him and Svedberg on their way to talk to Ylva Brink flitting through his mind. But this time there was no Svedberg. It was as if he had never existed.

Suddenly he caught sight of Ylva Brink through the double glass doors. She met his gaze, and he saw that it took her a couple of seconds to remember who he was. She walked over to the doors and let him in. At that moment he saw that she realised something was wrong.

CHAPTER FIVE

They sat down in the office. It was 3 a.m. Wallander told her the facts. Svedberg was dead. He had been killed with a shotgun. Who the killer was, why it had happened and when, remained unanswered. He avoided giving her too much detail of the crime scene.

When he finished, one of the nurses on the night shift came in to ask Ylva Brink a question.

"Can it wait?" Wallander said. "I've just notified her of a death in the family."

The nurse was about to leave when Wallander asked if he could have a glass of water. He was so dry that his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth.

"We're all in shock," Wallander said after the nurse left. "It's completely incomprehensible."

Ylva Brink didn't say anything. She was very pale but had not lost her composure. The nurse returned with the glass of water.

"Let me know if I can do anything else," she said.

"We're fine right now," Wallander answered.

He emptied his glass, but it didn't quench his thirst.

"I just can't get it into my head," she said. "I don't understand."

"I can't either," Wallander said. "It'll be a while before that happens, if ever."

He found a pencil in his coat pocket, but as usual he didn't have a notebook handy. There was a wastepaper basket next to the chair. He took out a piece of paper on which someone had doodled stick figures, smoothed it out, and took a magazine from the table to lean on.

"I have to ask you some questions," he said. "Who were his next of kin? I must admit you're the only one I can think of."

"His parents are gone and he had no siblings. Besides me there's only one cousin. I'm a cousin on his father's side and he has a cousin on his mother's side as well. His name is Sture Bjorklund."

Wallander noted down the name.

"Does he live here in Ystad?"

"He lives on a farm outside of Hedeskoga."

"So he's a farmer?"

"He's a professor at Copenhagen University."

Wallander was surprised. "I can't recall Svedberg ever mentioning him."

"They hardly ever saw each other. If you're asking which relatives Svedberg had any contact with, then the answer is just me."

"He'll still have to be notified," Wallander said. "As you can understand, this will be making a lot of headlines. A police officer who dies a violent death is big news."

She looked at him carefully. "A violent death? What do you mean by that?"

"That he was murdered."

"Well, what else could it have been?"

"That was going to be my next question for you," Wallander said. "Could it have been suicide?"

"Isn't it always a possibility? Under the right circumstances?"

"Yes."

"Can't you tell by looking at the body if he's been murdered or if he's committed suicide?"

"Yes, we'll probably be able to, but certain questions are a matter of routine."

She thought for a while before answering.

"I've considered it myself during a particularly difficult time. God only knows all that I've been through. But it's never occurred to me that Karl would do anything like that."

"Because he had no reason to?"

"He wasn't what I would call an unhappy person."

"When did you last hear from him?"

"He phoned me last Sunday."

"How did he seem?"

"He sounded perfectly normal."

"Why did he call?"

"We talk to each other once a week. If he didn't get in touch, I did, and vice versa. Sometimes he came over and had dinner, other times I went over to his place. As you may remember, my husband isn't home very often. He works on an oil tanker. Our children are grown up."

"Svedberg could cook?"

"Why wouldn't he be able to?"

"I've never imagined him in a kitchen."

"He cooked very well, particularly fish."

Wallander went back a little. "So he called you last Sunday. That was 4 August. And everything seemed fine?"

"Yes."

"What did you talk about?"

"This and that. I remember him telling me how tired he was. He said he was completely overworked."

Wallander looked at her intently. "Did he really say that he was overworked?"

"Yes."

"But he had just taken his holiday."

"I remember it very clearly."

Wallander thought hard before asking his next question. "Do you know what he did on his holiday?"

"I don't know if you know this, but he didn't like to leave Ystad. He usually stayed home. He might have taken a short trip to Poland."

"But what did he do at home? Did he stay in the flat?"

"He had various interests."

"Such as?"

She shook her head. "You must know as well as I do. He had two big passions: amateur astronomy and Native American history."

"I knew about the Indians, and how he sometimes went to Falsterbo to do some bird-watching. But the astronomy is new to me."

"He had a very expensive telescope."

Wallander couldn't remember seeing one in the flat.

"Where did he keep it?"

"In his study."

"So that's what he did on his holidays? Looked at stars and read about Indians?"

"I think so. But this summer was a little unusual."

"In what way?"

"We usually see a lot of each other over the summer, more so than during the rest of the year. But this year he had no time. He turned down several invitations to dinner."

"Did he say why?"

She hesitated before answering. "It was as if he didn't have the time."

Wallander sensed that he was nearing a crucial point.

"He didn't say why?"

"No."

"That must have puzzled you."

"Not really."

"Did you notice a change in his behaviour? Did something seem to be bothering him?"

"He was just the same as always. The only thing was that he seemed to be pressed for time."

"When did you first notice this?"

She thought about it. "Shortly after Midsummer, right about the time he took his holiday."

The nurse reappeared in the doorway. Ylva Brink got up.

"I'll be right back," she said.

Wallander looked for a washroom. He drank two more glasses of water and relieved himself. When he came back to the office Ylva was waiting for him.

"I think I'll go now," he told her. "Other questions can wait."

"I can call Sture, if you like. We have to make the funeral arrangements."

"Try to call in the next couple of hours," Wallander said. "We'll be issuing a statement to the press at 11 a.m."

"It still feels unreal," she said.

Her eyes had filled with tears. Wallander had trouble keeping his own eyes from welling up. They sat quietly, both fighting back their tears. Wallander tried to concentrate on the clock hanging on the wall, counting the seconds as they ticked by.

"I have one last question," he said after a while. "Svedberg was a bachelor. I never heard mention of a woman in his life."

"I don't think there ever was one," she answered.

"You don't think that something like that could have happened this summer?"

"You mean that he met a woman?"

"Yes."

"And that was why he was overworked?"

Wallander realised it seemed absurd. "These are questions I have to ask," he repeated. "Otherwise we won't get anywhere."

She followed him to the glass doors.

"You have to catch the person who did this," she said and gripped Wallander's arm tightly.

"You have my word," Wallander said. "Svedberg was one of us. We won't stop until we've caught whoever killed him."

They shook hands.

"Do you know if he used to keep large sums of money in the flat?"

She looked at him with disbelief. "Where would he have got large sums of money? He always complained about how little he earned."

"He was right about that."

"Do you know how much a midwife makes?"

"No."

"I'd better not tell you. You could say we wouldn't be comparing who makes more but who makes even less."

When Wallander left the hospital he drew a deep breath. Birds were chirping. It was barely 4 a.m. There was only a faint trace of wind and it was still warm. He started walking slowly back to Lilla Norregatan. One question seemed more important than the others. Why had Svedberg felt overworked when he had just been on holiday? Could it have something to do with his murder?

Wallander stopped in his tracks on the narrow footpath. In his mind he went back to the moment when he had stood in the doorway of the living room and first witnessed the devastation. Martinsson had been right behind him. He had seen a dead man and a shotgun. But almost at once he was struck by the feeling that something wasn't quite right. Could he make out what it was? He tried again without success.

Patience, he thought. I'm tired. It's been a long night and it's not over yet.

He started walking again, wondering when he would have time to sleep and think about his diet. Then he stopped again. A question suddenly came to him.

What if I die as suddenly as Svedberg? Who will miss me? What will people say? That I was a good policeman? But who will miss me as a person? Ann-Britt? Maybe even Martinsson?

A pigeon flew by close to his head. We don't know anything about each other, he thought. What did I really think of Svedberg? Do I actually miss him? Can you miss a person you didn't know?

He started walking again, but he knew these questions would follow him.

Going into Svedberg's flat again was like walking back into a nightmare. Gone was all feeling of summer, sun, and birdsong. Inside, beneath the harsh beams of the spotlights, there was only death.

Lisa Holgersson had returned to the police station. Wallander beckoned Hoglund and Martinsson to follow him into the kitchen. He stopped himself at the last moment from asking them if they had seen Svedberg. They sat down around the kitchen table, grey-faced. Wallander wondered what his own face looked like.

"How is it going?" he asked.

"Can it be anything other than a burglary?" Hoglund asked.

"It could be a lot of other things," Wallander answered. "Revenge, a lunatic, two lunatics, three lunatics. We don't know, and as long as we don't know we have to work with what we can see."

"And one other thing," Martinsson said slowly.

Wallander nodded, sensing what Martinsson was about to say.

"The fact that Svedberg was a policeman," Martinsson said.

"Have you found any clues?" Wallander asked. "How is Nyberg's work going? What's in the medical report?"

They both rifled through the notes they had made. Hoglund finished first.

"Both barrels of the shotgun were fired," she read. "The pathologist and Nyberg are sure that the shots came in quick succession. The shots were fired directly at Svedberg's head at close range."

Her voice shook. She took a deep breath and continued. "It isn't possible to determine whether or not Svedberg was sitting in the chair when the shots were fired, nor what the exact distance was. From the arrangement of the furniture and the size of the room it cannot have been more than four metres, but it could have been much closer."

Martinsson got up and mumbled something, then disappeared into the bathroom. They waited. He returned after a few minutes.

"I should have quit two years ago," he said.

"We're needed now more than ever," Wallander said sharply, but he understood Martinsson only too well.

"Svedberg was fully dressed," Hoglund continued. "That means he wasn't forced out of bed, but we still have no time frame."

Wallander looked at Martinsson.

"I've been over this point again and again," he said. "But none of the neighbours heard anything."

"What about noise from the street?" Wallander asked.

"I don't think it would cover the sound of a shotgun going off. Twice."

"So we have no way of pinpointing the time of the crime. We know that Svedberg was dressed, which may allow us to eliminate the very late hours of the night. I've always been under the impression that Svedberg went to bed early."

Martinsson agreed.

"How did the killer enter the flat? Do we know that?"

"The door shows no signs of a forced entry."

"But remember how easy it was for us to get in," Wallander said.

"Why did he leave his weapon behind? Was it panic?"

They had no answers to Martinsson's question. Wallander looked at his colleagues, who were tired and depressed.

"I'll tell you what I think," he said. "For what it's worth. As soon as I came into the flat I had the feeling that something was odd. What it was I don't know. There's been a murder that suggests a burglary. But if it isn't a burglary, then what? Revenge? Or is it possible to imagine that someone came here not to steal anything but rather to find something?"

He got up, picked up a glass from the kitchen counter, and poured himself some more water.

"I've talked to Ylva Brink at the hospital," he said. "Svedberg had almost no family. He had two cousins, one of whom is Ylva. They seem to have been in close contact. She mentioned one thing that I found odd. When she talked with Svedberg last Sunday he complained of being overworked. But he had just returned from holiday. It doesn't make any sense."

Hoglund and Martinsson waited for him to continue.

"I don't know if it means anything," Wallander said. "But we need to know why."

"Was it something to do with Svedberg's investigation?" Hoglund asked.

"The young people who went missing?" Martinsson said.

"There must have been something else as well," Wallander said, "since that wasn't a formal investigation. Anyway, he went on holiday just a few days after the parents first notified us."

No one could come up with an answer.

"One of you will have to find out what he was working on," Wallander said.

"Do you think he had a secret of some kind?" Martinsson asked carefully.

"Doesn't everybody have one?"

"So is that what we're looking for? Svedberg's secret?"

"We're looking for the person who killed him. That's all."

They decided to meet again at the station at 8 a.m. Martinsson immediately returned to the flat next door to continue his interviews with the neighbours. Hoglund lingered. Wallander looked at her tired and ravaged face.

"Were you awake when I called?"

He regretted the question as soon as it came out. He had no business asking whether or not she had been up. But she didn't seem to mind.

"Yes," she said. "I was wide awake."

"You came down here so quickly that I assume your husband must be at home with the children."

"When you called, we were in the middle of an argument. Just a stupid little argument, the kind you have when you don't have the energy for the big ones any more."

They sat quietly. Now and then they heard Nyberg's voice.

"I just don't understand it," she said. "Who would want to hurt Svedberg?"

"Who was closest to him?" Wallander said.

She looked surprised. "I thought it was you."

"No, I didn't know him that well."

"But he looked up to you."

"I have trouble imagining that."

"You didn't see it, but I did. Maybe the others noticed it as well. He always took your side, even when you were wrong."

"That still doesn't answer our question," Wallander said, and asked it again. "Who was closest to him?"

"No one was close to him."

"Well, we have to get close to him now. Now that he's dead."

Nyberg came into the kitchen, a cup of coffee in his hand. Wallander knew that he always had a thermos ready in case he was called out in the middle of the night.

"How's it going?" Wallander asked.

"It looks like a burglary," Nyberg said. "What we don't know is why the killer left his gun."

"We don't have a time of death," Wallander said.

"That's up to the pathologist."

"I still want to hear your opinion."

"I don't like to make guesses."

"I know, but you have a certain experience in these matters. I promise I won't hold you to it."

Nyberg rubbed his hand over his unshaven chin. His eyes were bloodshot.

"Maybe 24 hours," he said. "I doubt it's less than that."

They let his words sink in. That means Wednesday night or early Thursday, Wallander thought. Nyberg yawned and left the kitchen.

"You should go home now," Wallander said to Hoglund. "We have to be ready to organise the investigation at 8 a.m."

The clock on the wall read 5.15 a.m. She put on her coat and left. Wallander stayed in the kitchen. A pile of bills lay on the window sill. He leafed through them. We have to start somewhere, he thought. Next he went in to Nyberg and asked for a pair of rubber gloves. He returned to the kitchen and looked slowly around. He went through the cupboards and drawers methodically and noted that Svedberg kept his kitchen as neat as his office at work.

He left the kitchen and went into the study. Where was the telescope? He sat down in the desk chair and looked around. Nyberg came by and said they were ready to take Svedberg's body away. Did he want to see it again? Wallander shook his head. The image of Svedberg with half his head blown off was forever fixed in his mind. It was an image that didn't spare a single gruesome detail.

He let his gaze continue to wander around the room. The answerphone was on the desk, as well as a pencil holder, some old tin soldiers, and a pocket calendar. Wallander picked up the latter and leafed through it month by month. On 11 January, at 9.30 a.m., Svedberg had had a dentist's appointment. 7 March was Ylva Brink's birthday. On 18 April Svedberg had written the name "Adamsson". The name was also jotted down on 5 and 12 May. In June and July there were no notes at all.

Svedberg had taken his holiday. Afterwards he complained that he was completely overworked. Wallander kept turning the pages, more slowly now, but there were no more notes. The last days of Svedberg's life were a complete blank. 18 October was Sture Bjorklund's birthday, and the name Adamsson appeared again on 14 December. That was all. Wallander put the pocket calendar back in its place, and leaned back in the chair, which was very comfortable. He felt tired and thirsty. He closed his eyes, wondering who Adamsson was.

Then he leaned forward and picked up the business cards that were tucked into a corner of the brown desk pad. There was a card from Boman's Second Hand Book Shop in Gothenburg, and the Audi specialist in Malmo. Svedberg had been a loyal customer and had always driven an Audi, the same way that Wallander always traded in his Peugeot for another Peugeot. Wallander put the desk pad back and looked through a packet of letters and postcards. Most of the letters were more than ten years old, and almost all of them were from Svedberg's mother.

He put them back and looked at a couple of the postcards. To his surprise he found one that he had sent from Skagen. The beaches here are amazing, it said. Wallander sat looking at the card for a while.

That had been three years ago. He had taken an extended medical leave, doubting that he would ever return to active duty. He had spent part of that time wandering along Skagen's wintery and abandoned beaches. He didn't remember writing the postcard. His memories from that period in his life were few.

Eventually he had returned to Ystad and started working again. He remembered Svedberg on his first day back at work. Bjork had just welcomed Wallander, and the conference room grew quiet. None of them had expected him to return. The person who finally broke the silence was Svedberg. Wallander could still remember exactly what he said.

"Thank God you finally came back, because I really don't think we could've made it another day without you."

Wallander held on to the memory and tried to see Svedberg clearly. He was the quiet type, but someone who could often ease an uncomfortable situation. He was a good policeman, not outstanding in any way, but good. Stubborn and conscientious. He didn't have a lot of imagination and he wasn't a particularly accomplished writer. His reports were often poorly written, and they irritated the prosecutors. But he had been an important part of the team.

Wallander got up and went into Svedberg's bedroom. There was no sign of the telescope. He sat down on the bed and picked up a book off the bedside table. It was called A History of the Sioux Indians and was written in English. Svedberg didn't speak very good English, but perhaps he was better at reading it.

Wallander flipped through the book absentmindedly and found himself staring at a remarkable picture of Sitting Bull. Then he got up and went into the bathroom. He opened a mirrored cabinet and found nothing that surprised him. His own bathroom cabinet was exactly the same.

Now only the living room remained. He would have preferred to skip it, but knew he couldn't. He went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water. It was close to 6 a.m. and he was very tired.

Finally he went out into the living room. Nyberg had put on knee-guards and was crawling around the black leather sofa that stood against a wall. The chair was still overturned and no one had moved the shotgun. The only thing that had been moved was Svedberg's body.

Wallander looked around the room and tried to imagine the events that had taken place. What had happened right before the fatal moment, before the gun went off? But he couldn't see anything. The feeling that he was ignoring something important came over him again. He stood completely still and tried to coax the thought to the surface, but he got nothing.

Nyberg came up to him and they looked at each other.

"Do you understand this?" Wallander asked.

"No," Nyberg answered. "It's strangely like a painting."

Wallander looked closely at him. "What do you mean 'a painting'?"

Nyberg blew his nose and carefully refolded his handkerchief.

"Everything is such a mess," he said. "Chairs have been overturned, drawers pulled out, papers and china thrown all over the place. It's almost as if it's too messy."

Wallander knew what he meant, although he had not yet followed this thought to its conclusion.

"You mean it looks arranged."

"Of course it's only a thought at this point. I don't have anything to back it up with."

"What exactly gave you this feeling?"

Nyberg pointed to a little porcelain rooster that lay on the ground.

"It seems plausible to assume that it came from that shelf over there," he said, and pointed it out to Wallander. "Where else could it have come from? But if it fell because someone was pulling out the drawers and going through them, why would it have landed all the way over here?"

Wallander nodded.

"There's probably a completely rational explanation," Nyberg said. "But if so, you'll have to tell me what it is."

Wallander didn't say anything. He stayed in the living room for a few more minutes, then left the flat. When he came out on the street it was already morning. A police car stood parked outside the building, but there were no onlookers. Wallander assumed that the police officers had been instructed not to give out any information.

He stood completely still and drew a couple of deep breaths. It was going to be a beautiful, late summer's day. Only now was he starting to sense the overwhelming nature of his sorrow, which stemmed as much from genuine affection as from the reminder of his own mortality. Death had come close this time. It was not like when his father had died. This frightened him.

It was 6.25 a.m. on Friday, 9 August. Wallander walked slowly to his car. A cement mixer started up in the distance.

Ten minutes later he walked through the doors of the police station.

CHAPTER SIX

They gathered in the conference room shortly after 8 a.m. and held an impromptu memorial service. Lisa Holgersson lit a candle at the place where Svedberg normally sat. All those at the station that morning were gathered in the room, filling it with a palpable sense of shock and sadness. Holgersson said only a few words, fighting to keep her composure. Everyone in the room prayed for her not to break down. It would make the situation unbearable. After she had spoken, they stood for a minute's silence. Uneasy images floated through Wallander's mind. He was already having trouble picturing Svedberg's face. He had experienced the same thing when his father died, and earlier with Rydberg.

Although one can certainly remember the dead, it's as if they never existed, he thought.

The impromptu service came to an end, people started to leave. Apart from the members of the investigative team, Holgersson was the only one to stay behind. They sat down at the table. The flame of the candle flickered when Martinsson closed one of the windows. Wallander looked questioningly at Holgersson, but she shook her head. It was his turn to speak.

"We're all tired," he began. "We're upset and sad and confused. What we've always feared the most has finally occurred. Normally we try to solve crimes, even violent crimes, that do not affect people from our own world. This time it's happened in our midst, but we still have to try to approach it as if it were a regular case."

He paused and looked around. No one spoke.

"Let's go over the facts," Wallander said. "Then we can begin to plot our strategy. We know very little. Svedberg was shot sometime between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday evening. It happened in his flat, which shows no signs of forced entry. We can assume that the shotgun lying on the floor was the murder weapon. The flat looks like it was burgled, which may indicate that Svedberg was confronted by an armed assailant. We don't know if this was the case; it is simply a possibility. We cannot disregard other scenarios. We have to keep our search as broad as possible. We also cannot disregard the fact that Svedberg was a policeman. This may or may not be significant. We have no exact time of death yet, and a perplexing fact is that none of the neighbours heard any shots. We therefore have to wait for the autopsy report."

He poured himself a glass of water and emptied it before continuing.

"This is what we know. The only thing to add is that Svedberg did not turn up for work on Thursday. We all appreciate how unusual this is. He gave no reason for his absence, and the only rational assumption is that there was something preventing him from coming in. We know what that means."

Nyberg interrupted him with a gesture.

"I'm not a pathologist," he said, "but I doubt that Svedberg died as early as Wednesday."

"Then we have to deal with the question of what could have prevented Svedberg from coming to work yesterday," Wallander said. "Why didn't he call in? When was he killed?"

Wallander described his conversation with Ylva Brink. "Apart from telling me about the only other relative that Svedberg was in touch with, she said something that stuck in my mind. She said that in the last few weeks Svedberg complained about feeling overworked. But he had just returned from holiday. It doesn't make any sense, particularly if you know that he didn't tend to take strenuous trips on his holiday."

"Did he ever leave Ystad?" Martinsson asked.

"Not very often. He made a day-trip to Bornholm or occasionally took the ferry to Poland. Ylva Brink confirmed this. But he seems mostly to have spent time on his two hobbies, which were Native American history and amateur astronomy. Ylva Brink told me that he owned an expensive telescope, but we haven't found it yet."

"I thought he went bird-watching," said Hansson, who had been silent until now.

"Sometimes, but apparently not so often," Wallander said. "I think we should assume that Ylva Brink knew him quite well, and according to her it was stars and Indians that mattered."

He looked around. "Why was he overworked? What does that mean? It may not be important at all, but I can't help thinking that it is."

"I looked over what he was working on before our meeting," Hoglund said. "Just before he went on holiday, he spoke to all the parents of the young people who are missing."

"Which young people?" Holgersson asked, surprised. Wallander explained and Hoglund continued.

"The last two days before he went on holiday, he visited the Norman, Boge, and Hillstrom families, one after the other. But I can't find any notes from those visits even though I searched thoroughly."

Wallander and Martinsson looked at each other.

"That can't be right," Wallander said. "All three of us had a thorough meeting with those families. We had never talked about pursuing them for further questioning, since there was no indication of a crime."

"Well, it looks like he went and saw them anyway," Hoglund said. "He's noted the exact times of his visits in his calendar."

Wallander thought for a moment. "That would mean that Svedberg was pursuing this on his own without telling us about it."

"That's not like him," Martinsson said.

"No," Wallander agreed. "It's as strange as him staying home from work without notifying anyone."

"We can easily verify this information," Hoglund said.

"Please do," Wallander said. "And find out what questions Svedberg was asking."

"This whole situation is absurd," Martinsson said. "We've been trying to meet with Svedberg with regard to these young people since Wednesday and now he's gone and here we are still talking about them."

"Have there been any new developments?" Holgersson asked.

"Nothing apart from the fact that one of the mothers has become extremely anxious. Her daughter sent her another postcard."

"Isn't that good news?"

"According to her, the handwriting was faked."

"Who would do that?" Hansson asked. "Who the hell forges postcards? Cheques I understand. But postcards?"

"I think we should keep the two cases separate for now," Wallander said. "Let's work out how to tackle the investigation of Svedberg's killer or killers."

"Nothing indicates that there was more than one," Nyberg said.

"Can you be sure that there wasn't?"

"No."

Wallander let his palms fall flat onto the table. "We can't be sure about anything right now," he said. "We have to cast a wide net. In a couple of hours we're going to release the news of Svedberg's death, and then we'll really have to move."

"This will take top priority, of course," Holgersson said. "Everything else can wait."

"The press conference," Wallander said. "Let's take care of that right now."

"A police officer has been murdered," Holgersson said. "We'll tell them exactly what happened. Do we have any leads?"

"No." Wallander's answer was firm.

"Then that's what we'll say."

"How detailed should we get?"

"He was shot at close range. We have the murder weapon. Is there any reason to withhold that information?"

"Not really," Wallander said, and he looked around the table. No one had any objections.

Holgersson got up. "I'd like you to be there," she said. "Maybe all of you should be there. After all, a colleague and friend has been killed."

They decided to meet 15 minutes before the press conference.

Holgersson left. The candle went out when the door closed. Hoglund lit it again. They went through what they knew one more time and divided up the work at hand. They were returning to work mode. They were just about to stop when Martinsson raised one more issue.

"We should probably decide now if the young people should be left aside for now or not."

Wallander felt unsure. But he knew it was up to him.

"We'll put it aside for now," he said. "At least for the next few days. Then we'll revisit it, unless of course Svedberg was asking some extraordinary questions."

It was 9.15 a.m. Wallander got a cup of coffee and went into his office. He got out a pad of paper and wrote a single word at the top of the first page: Svedberg. Underneath it he drew a cross that he immediately scratched out. He didn't get any further. He had been meaning to write down all the thoughts that had come to him during the night. But he put down the pen and walked to the window. The August morning was sunny and warm. The thought that there was something not quite right about this case returned. Nyberg felt there was something arranged about the murder scene. If so, then why, and by whom?

He looked for Sture Bjorklund's number in the phone book and dialled it. The phone rang several times.

"Please accept my condolences," Wallander said, when the man answered.

Sture Bjorklund's voice sounded strained and distant.

"Likewise. You probably knew my cousin better than I did. Ylva called me at 6 a.m. this morning to tell me what had happened."

"Unfortunately this will make headlines in the papers," Wallander said.

"I know. As it happens it's the second murder case in our family."

"Really?"

"Yes, in 1847, or more precisely on 12 April 1847, a man who was Karl Evert's great-great-great-great-uncle was killed with an axe somewhere on the outskirts of Eslov. The murderer was a soldier by the name of Brun, who had been given a dishonourable discharge from the army for a number of reasons. The murder was simply a matter of money. Our ancestor was a cattle man and fairly wealthy."

"What happened?" Wallander asked, trying to hide his impatience.

"The police, which I guess consisted of a sheriff and his assistant, made heroic efforts and arrested Brun on his way to Denmark a few days later. He was sentenced to death and executed. When Oscar I became king he took on the business of processing death sentences blocked by his predecessor, Charles XV. As many as 14 prisoners were executed as soon as he came to power. Brun was beheaded, somewhere in the vicinity of Malmo."

"What a strange story."

"I did some research into our ancestry a couple of years ago. Of course the case of Brun and the murder in Eslov was already known."

"If it's all right with you, I'd like to come out to see you as soon as possible."

Sture Bjorklund immediately put up his guard.

"What about?"

"We're trying to clarify our picture of Karl Evert." It felt unnatural to use his first name.

"I didn't know him very well, though, and I have to go to Copenhagen this afternoon."

"This is urgent and it won't take much time."

The man was quiet at the other end of the line. Wallander waited.

"What time?"

"Around 2 p.m.?"

"I'll call Copenhagen and let them know I won't be in today."

Sture Bjorklund gave Wallander directions. His house didn't seem hard to find.

After the phone conversation, Wallander spent a half hour writing out a summary of the case. He was still searching for the thought he had had when he first saw Svedberg lying on the floor - the thought that something wasn't quite right, the same idea that had also struck Nyberg. Wallander realised that it could simply be a reaction to the unbearable and incomprehensible experience of seeing a colleague dead. But he still tried to explore what might have caused it.

A little after 10 a.m. he went to get another cup of coffee. A number of people were gathered in the canteen. There was a general atmosphere of shock and dismay. Wallander lingered for a while, talking to some traffic officers. Then he walked back to his office and called Nyberg on his mobile phone.

"Where are you?" Wallander asked.

"Where do you think?" he replied sourly. "I'm still in Svedberg's flat."

"You haven't seen a telescope, by any chance?"

"No."

"Anything else?"

"We have a number of prints on the shotgun. We'll be able to get complete copies of at least two or three of them."

"Then we'll hope he's already in the database. Is that it?"

"Yes."

"I'm on my way to question Svedberg's other cousin, who lives outside Hedeskoga. After that I'll be back to do a more thorough search of the flat."

"We'll be done by then. I'm also planning to attend the press conference."

Wallander couldn't remember Nyberg ever coming to a meeting that involved the press before. Maybe it was Nyberg's way of expressing how upset he was. Wallander was suddenly moved.

"Have you found any keys?" he asked after a moment.

"There are some car keys and a key to the basement storage area."

"Nothing in the attic?"

"There don't seem to be storage areas in the attic, only in the basement. You'll get the keys from me at the press conference."

Wallander hung up and went to Martinsson's office.

"Where's Svedberg's car?" he asked. "The Audi."

Martinsson didn't know. They asked Hansson, who didn't know either. Hoglund wasn't in her office.

Martinsson looked at his watch.

"It's got to be in a car park close to the flat," he said. "I think I have time to check before 11 a.m."

Wallander went back to his office. He saw that people had started to send flowers. Ebba looked like she had been crying, but Wallander didn't say anything to her. He hurried past her as fast as he could.

The press conference started on time. Afterwards Wallander remembered thinking that Lisa Holgersson conducted the proceedings with dignity. He told her that no one could have done a better job. She was wearing her uniform and standing in front of a table with two bouquets of roses. Her speech was clear and to the point. She told the press the known facts, and her voice did not fail her this time. A respected colleague, Karl Evert Svedberg, had been found murdered in his flat. The exact time of death and the motive were not yet known, but there were indications that Svedberg was attacked by an armed burglar. The police did not have any leads. She concluded by describing Svedberg's career and his character. Wallander thought her description of Svedberg was very good, not exaggerated in any way. Wallander answered the few questions that were asked. Nyberg described the murder weapon as a Lambert Baron shotgun.

It was all over in half an hour. Afterwards, Holgersson was interviewed by the Sydnytt newspaper, while Wallander spoke to some reporters from the evening papers. It was only when they asked him to pose outside the block of flats on Lilla Norregatan that he let his impatience show.

At midday Holgersson asked the members of the investigative team to a simple lunch at her home. Wallander and Holgersson spoke about some of their memories of Svedberg. Wallander was the only one who had heard Svedberg explain why he had decided to become a police officer.

"He was afraid of the dark," Wallander said. "That's what he said. The fear had been with him since his earliest childhood, and he had never been able to understand it or overcome it. He became a police officer because he thought it would be a way to fight this fear, but it never left him."

A little before 1.30 p.m. they returned to the station. Wallander drove back with Martinsson.

"She handled that very well," Martinsson said.

"Lisa's good at her job," Wallander answered. "But you knew that already, didn't you?"

Martinsson didn't answer.

Wallander suddenly remembered something. "Did you find the Audi?"

"There's a private car park at the back of the building. It was there. I looked it over."

"Did you see a telescope in the boot?"

"There was only a spare tyre and a pair of boots. And a can of insecticide in the glove compartment."

"August is the month for bees," Wallander said glumly.

They went their separate ways when they arrived at the station. Wallander had got a bunch of keys from Nyberg at the lunch, but before he returned to the fiat he drove to Hedeskoga. Sture Bjorklund's directions were very clear, Wallander thought, as he turned into a little farmhouse that lay just outside the town. There was a fountain in front of the house, and the large lawn had plaster statues dotted all over it. Wallander saw to his surprise that they all looked like devils, all with terrifying, gaping jaws. He wondered briefly what he would have expected a professor of sociology to have in his garden, but his thoughts were interrupted by a man wearing boots, a worn leather coat, and a torn straw hat. He was very tall and thin. Through the tear in the hat Wallander could see one similarity between Svedberg and his cousin: they were both bald.

Wallander was thrown for a moment. He hadn't expected Professor Bjorklund to look like this. His face was sunburnt, and had a couple of days' worth of stubble. Wallander wondered whether professors in Copenhagen really appeared unshaven at their lectures. But then he reminded himself that the semester had not yet started and that Bjorklund probably had other business across the strait.

"I hope this isn't too much of an inconvenience," Wallander said.

Sture Bjorklund threw his head back and laughed. Wallander noted a certain amount of derision in his laughter.

"There's a woman I meet in Copenhagen every Friday," Sture Bjorklund said. "I suppose you would call her a mistress. Do policemen in the Swedish countryside have mistresses?"

"Hardly," Wallander said.

"It's an ingenious solution to the problems of coexistence," Bjorklund said. "Each time may be the last. There's no co-dependence, no late-night discussions that might get out of hand and lead to things like furniture buying or pretending that one takes the idea of marriage seriously."

This man in the straw hat with the shrill laugh was starting to get on Wallander's nerves.

"Well, murder is something to take seriously," he said.

Sture Bjorklund nodded and took off the hat, as if he felt compelled to show a sign of something resembling mourning.

"Let's go in," he said.

The house was not like anything Wallander had ever seen before. From the outside it looked like a typical Scanian farmhouse. But the world that Wallander entered was completely unexpected. There were no walls left on the inside of the house - it was simply one big room that stretched all the way to the rafters. Here and there were little tower-like structures with spiral staircases made out of wrought iron and wood. There was almost no furniture and the walls were bare. One of the walls at the end of the house was entirely taken up by a large aquarium. Sture Bjorklund led him to a huge wooden table flanked by a church pew and a wooden stool.

"I've always thought that chairs should be hard," Bjorklund said. "Uncomfortable chairs force you to finish what you have to do more quickly, whether it's eating, thinking, or talking to a policeman."

Wallander sat down in the pew. It really was very uncomfortable.

"If my notes are correct, you're a professor at Copenhagen University," he said.

"I teach sociology, but I try to keep my course load down to an absolute minimum. My own research is what interests me, and I can do that from home."

"This is probably not relevant, but what is it you do your research on?"

"Man's relationship to monsters."

Wallander wondered if Sture Bjorklund was joking. He waited for him to continue.

"Monsters in the Middle Ages were not the same as they were in the 18th century. My ideas are not the same as those of future generations will be. It's a complicated and fascinating world: hell, the home of all terror, is constantly changing. Above all, this kind of work gives me a chance to make extra money, a factor which is not insignificant."

"In what way?"

"I work as a consultant for American film companies that make horror movies. Without boasting, I think I can claim to be one of the most sought-after consultants in the world when it comes to commercial terror. There's some Japanese man in Hawaii, but other than that it's just me."

Just as Wallander was starting to wonder if the man sitting across from him on the little stool was insane, he handed him a drawing that had been lying on the table.

"I've interviewed seven-year-olds in Ystad about monsters. I've tried to incorporate their ideas into my own work and have come up with this figure. The Americans love him. He's going to get the starring role in a cartoon series aimed at frightening seven- and eight-year-olds."

Wallander looked at the picture. It was extremely unpleasant. He put it down.

"What do you think, Inspector?"

"You can call me Kurt."

"What do you think?"

"It's unpleasant."

"We live in an unpleasant world."

He laid the straw hat on the table and Wallander smelt a strong odour of sweat.

"I've just decided to cancel my telephone service," he said. "Five years ago I got rid of the TV. Now I'm getting rid of the phone."

"Isn't that a little impractical?"

Bjorklund looked at him seriously. "I'm going to exercise my right to decide when I want to have contact with the outside world. I'll keep the computer, of course. But the phone is going."

Wallander nodded and took the opportunity to change the subject.

"Your cousin, Karl Evert Svedberg, has been killed. Apart from Ylva Brink, you are the only remaining relative. When was the last time you saw him?"

"About three weeks ago."

"Can you be more precise?"

"Friday, 19 July, at 4.30 p.m."

The answer came so quickly that Wallander was surprised. "How can you remember the time of day so well?"

"We had decided to meet at that time. I was going to Scotland to see some friends, and Kalle was going to house-sit, like he always did. That was really the only time we saw each other, when I was going away and when I came back."

"What was involved in house-sitting?"

"He lived here."

The answer came as a surprise to Wallander, but he had no reason to doubt Bjorklund.

"This happened regularly?"

"For the last ten years at least. It was a wonderful arrangement."

Wallander thought for a moment. "When did you come back?"

"27 July. Kalle picked me up at the airport and drove me home. We chatted for a bit and then he went back to Ystad."

"Did you have the feeling that he was overworked?"

Bjorklund threw his head back and laughed his shrill laugh again.

"I take it you meant that as a joke, but isn't it disrespectful to joke about the dead?"

"I meant the question seriously."

Bjorklund smiled. "I suppose we can all seem a bit overworked if we indulge in passionate relationships with women, can't we?"

Wallander stared at Bjorklund.

"What do you mean?"

"Kalle met his woman here while I was gone. That was part of the arrangement. They lived here whenever I went to Scotland or anywhere else."

Wallander gasped.

"You seem surprised," Bjorklund said.

"Was it always the same woman? What was her name?"

"Louise."

"What was her last name?"

"I don't know. I never met her. Kalle was quite secretive about her, or perhaps one should say 'discreet'."

Wallander was caught completely by surprise. He had never heard of Svedberg having any relationship with a woman, let alone a long-term one.

"What else do you know about her?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"But Kalle must have said something?"

"Never. And I never asked. Our family is not one for idle curiosity."

Wallander had nothing more to ask. What he needed now was time to digest this latest piece of information. He got up, and Bjorklund raised his eyebrows.

"Was that it?"

"For now. But you'll hear from me again."

Bjorklund followed him out. It was warm and there was almost no breeze.

"Do you have any idea who might have killed him?" Wallander asked when they reached his car.

"Wasn't there a break-in? Who knows what criminal is lurking just around the corner?"

They shook hands and Wallander got into the car. He had just started the engine when Bjorklund leaned down to the window.

"There's just one more thing," he said. "Louise changed her hair colour pretty often."

"How do you know?"

"The hairs left in the bathroom. One year it was red, then black, then blond. It was always different."

"But you think it was the same woman?"

"I actually think Kalle was very much in love with her."

Wallander nodded. Then he drove away. It was 3 p.m. One thing was certain, Wallander thought. Svedberg, our friend and colleague, may have been dead for just a couple of days, but we already know more about him than when he was alive.

At 3.10 p.m., Wallander parked his car in the town square and walked up to Lilla Norregatan. Without knowing why, he quickened his step. Something about this had suddenly become a matter of urgency.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Wallander went down into the basement. The steep stairs gave him the feeling that he was on his way to something far deeper than a normal basement; that he was journeying to the underworld. He arrived at a blue steel door, found the right key among the ones Nyberg had given him, and unlocked it. It was dark inside and the air smelt dank and musty. He took out the torch he had brought with him from the car and let the beam travel over the walls until he found the light switch. It was placed unusually low, as if for very small people. He walked into a narrow corridor with storage areas behind grilles on both sides. It occurred to him that Swedish basement storage lockers were not unlike rough prison cells, except that they didn't contain prisoners, but instead guarded old sofas, skis, and piles of suitcases. Svedberg's storage locker was all the way at the end of the corridor. The wire netting was reinforced with steel bars. A padlock hung around two of the bars. Svedberg must have reinforced this himself, Wallander thought. Is there something in there that he couldn't risk losing?

Wallander put on a pair of rubber gloves, opened the lock carefully, then turned on the light in the storage area and looked around. It was full of the things one would expect, and it took him only about an hour to go through everything there. He found nothing unusual. Finally, he straightened up and looked around again, looking for something that should have been there but wasn't, like the expensive telescope. He left the basement and locked it up.

He came back up into daylight. Since he was thirsty, he walked over to a cafe on the south side of the main square and drank some mineral water and a cup of coffee. He fought an inner battle over buying a Danish pastry. He knew he shouldn't but did it anyway.

Less than half an hour later he was back at the door of Svedberg's flat. It was deathly silent inside. Wallander held his breath before going in. The usual police tape was plastered across the door. He unpeeled the tape from the lock, got out the key, and let himself in. Immediately he heard the cement mixer from the street. He walked into the living room, cast an involuntary glance at the spot where Svedberg had lain, and walked over to the window. The rumble of the cement mixer seemed magnified among the buildings. Construction materials were being unloaded from a large truck. A thought suddenly came to Wallander. He left the flat and walked down to the street. An older man who had taken his shirt off was spraying water into the mixer. The man nodded at Wallander and seemed to know immediately that he was a police officer.

"It's terrible what happened," he yelled above the sound of the mixer.

"I need to speak to you," Wallander yelled back.

The man called out to a younger worker who was smoking in the shade. He came over and grabbed the hose. They went around the corner, where it was quieter.

"Do you know what has happened?" Wallander asked him.

"Some policeman by the name of Svedberg was shot."

"That's right. What I want you to tell me is how long you've been working here. It looks like you're just getting started."

"We started on Monday. We're rebuilding the entryway to the building."

"When did you start using the mixer?"

The man thought about it. "It must have been on Tuesday," he said. "At around 11 a.m."

"Has it been on since then?"

"Pretty much continuously from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m. Sometimes even a little longer."

"Has it been in the same spot the whole time?"

"Yes."

"So you've had a clear view of everyone coming and going from the building."

The man suddenly realised the importance of Wallander's question and became very serious.

"Of course you don't know the people who live here," Wallander said. "But you've probably seen a number of people more than once."

"I don't know what that policeman looked like, if that's what you're asking."

Wallander hadn't thought of this.

"I'll get someone to come down and show you a photograph," he said. "What's your name?"

"Nils Linnman, like the man who does those nature programmes."

Wallander was of course familiar with Nils Linnman, the Swedish television personality.

"Have you noticed anything unusual during the time you've been working here?" Wallander asked while he desperately searched for something to write on.

"How do you mean?"

"Someone who may have seemed very nervous, or as if they were in a hurry. Sometimes you notice things that just don't seem quite right."

Linnman thought it over and Wallander waited. He needed to pee again.

"No," Linnman said finally. "I can't think of anything. But Robban may have seen something."

"Robban?"

"The young guy who took over for me. But I doubt it. I think the only thing on his mind is his motorbike."

"We'd better ask him," Wallander said. "And if you think of anything later, please call me right away."

For once Wallander had a card with him, which Linnman tucked into the front pocket of his baggy overalls.

"I'll get Robban."

The ensuing conversation with Robban was very brief. His full name was Robert Tarnberg and he had heard only vague mention of someone being killed in the building. He had not noticed anything unusual. Wallander suspected he wouldn't even have noticed an elephant walking across the street, so he didn't bother giving him his card. He returned to the flat. At least he now had a satisfactory answer for why no one had heard the shots.

He went out into the kitchen and called the station. Hoglund was the only one available. Wallander asked her to come down with a photo of Svedberg to show to the construction workers.

"We already have officers down there going door to door," she said.

"But they seem to have overlooked the workers."

Wallander walked out into the hall, then stopped and tried to rid himself of all extraneous thoughts. Many years ago, when Wallander had just moved to Ystad from Malmo, Rydberg had given him the following advice: slowly peel away all the extraneous layers. There are tracks and marks left at every crime scene, like shadows of the event itself. That's what you have to find.

Wallander opened the front door and immediately noticed at least one detail that wasn't right. In a basket under the hall mirror there was a stack of newspapers, all copies of the local paper, Ystad Allehanda, which Svedberg subscribed to. But there was no copy on the floor under the post slot, although at least one should have been there.

Maybe even two or three by now. Someone had moved them. He walked into the kitchen and saw that the Wednesday and Thursday editions lay on the counter. Friday's edition lay on the kitchen table.

Wallander called Nyberg's mobile phone. He answered right away. Wallander started by telling him about the cement mixer. Nyberg sounded doubtful.

"Sound travels inwards," he said. "People on the street would be unable to hear shots from inside if the cement mixer had been on, but inside the building it would be a different story. Sound travels differently in buildings. I read about it somewhere."

"Maybe we should do some test shots," Wallander said. "With and without the cement mixer on and without telling the neighbours about it beforehand."

Nyberg agreed.

"But what I'm really calling about is the paper," Wallander said. "Ystad Allehanda!'

"I put it on the kitchen table," Nyberg said. "But someone else is responsible for the ones lying on the counter."

"We should test them for prints," Wallander said. "We don't know who might have put them there."

Nyberg was silent for a moment. "You're right," he said. "How the hell could I have missed it?"

"I won't touch them," Wallander told him.

"How long are you going to be there?"

"Two or three hours at least."

"I'll come down."

Wallander pulled out one of the kitchen drawers and found a couple of pens and a pad of paper where he remembered seeing them before. He wrote down Nils Linnman's and Robert Tarnberg's names and noted that someone should talk to the newspaper delivery person. Then he returned to the hall. Traces and shadows, Rydberg had told him. He held his breath while he let his gaze travel over the room. The leather coat Svedberg wore both winter and summer hung by the door. Wallander searched the pockets and found his wallet.

Nyberg has been sloppy, he thought.

He returned with it to the kitchen and emptied the contents onto the table. There was 847 kronor, a cash card, a card for petrol, and some personal identification cards. Detective Inspector Svedberg, he read. He compared the police ID and the driver's licence. The photo on the driver's licence was the older. Svedberg stared glumly into the lens. It looked like it had been taken in the summertime; the top of Svedberg's head was sunburned.

Louise should have told you to wear a hat, Wallander thought. Louise. Only two people claimed she existed. Svedberg and his cousin, the monster maker. But he had never seen her, only strands of her hair. Wallander made a face. It didn't make sense.

He picked up the phone and called Ylva Brink at the hospital. He was told she would be in that evening. Wallander looked up her home phone number and got her machine.

He went back to the contents of the wallet. The photo on the police ID was recent. Svedberg's face was a little fuller but just as glum. Wallander looked through the rest of the contents and found some stamps. That was all. He got out a plastic bag and dumped everything into it. Then he went out into the hall for the third time. Peel everything away, find the traces, Rydberg had said.

Wallander went into the bathroom and relieved himself. He thought about what Sture Bjorklund had said about the different coloured hairs. The only thing that Wallander knew about the woman in Svedberg's life was that she dyed her hair. He went out into the living room and stood beside the overturned chair. Then he changed his mind. You're proceeding too quickly, Rydberg would have told him. Traces of a crime need to be coaxed out, not rushed.

He returned to the kitchen and called Ylva Brink again. This time she answered.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you," he said. "I know you work all night."

"I can't sleep anyway," she said.

"A lot of questions have come up and I need to ask you some of them right away."

Wallander told her about his talk with Sture Bjorklund and Bjorklund's claim that Svedberg had a woman called Louise.

"He never told me any of this," she said when Wallander had finished.

He sensed that the information disturbed her.

"Who never told you? Kalle or Sture?"

"Neither one."

"Let's start with Sture. What kind of relationship do you two have? Are you surprised that he never told you about this?"

"I just can't believe it."

"But why would he lie?"

"I don't know."

Wallander realised that the conversation needed to be continued in person. He looked at the time. It was 5.40 p.m. He needed another hour in the flat.

"It's probably best if we meet," he suggested. "I'm free after 7 p.m. tonight."

"How about at the station? That's close to the hospital, and I could come by on my way to work."

Wallander hung up and returned to the living room. He approached the broken and overturned chair, looked around the room, trying to imagine the actions that had taken place. Svedberg had been shot straight on. Nyberg had mentioned the possibility that the buckshot had entered slightly from below, suggesting that the killer held the shotgun at hip or chest level. The bloodstain on the wall confirmed this upward trajectory. Svedberg must have then fallen to the left, most probably taking the chair down with him, at which point one of its arms broke. But had he been about to sit down, or get up?

Wallander realised the importance of this at once. If Svedberg had been sitting in the chair he must have known his killer. If a burglar had surprised him, he would hardly have sat down or remained sitting.

Wallander went over to the spot where the shotgun had been found. He turned around and looked at the room from his new vantage point. This may not have been the point from which the shot was fired, but it would have been close. He kept still and tried to coax the shadows from their hiding places. The feeling that something about the case was very strange grew stronger. Had Svedberg come in from the hall and surprised a burglar? If this was the case, he would have been in the way. This would also have been true if Svedberg had entered from the bedroom. It was reasonable to assume that a burglar would not have had the shotgun at the ready. Svedberg would no doubt have tried to attack him. He may have been afraid of the dark, but he was certainly not afraid to take action when necessary.

The cement mixer was suddenly turned off. Wallander listened. The sound of traffic was not very loud.

There is another alternative, he thought. The person who entered the flat was someone Svedberg knew. He knew him so well that it would not have worried him to see the shotgun. Then something happened, Svedberg was killed, and the unknown assailant turned the flat inside out looking for something.

Perhaps he simply tried to make it look like a burglary. Wallander thought about the telescope again. It was missing, but who could say if anything else was gone? Maybe Ylva Brink would know the answer.

Wallander went up to the window and looked down at the street. Nils Linnman was locking up a work shed. Robert Tarnberg must already have gone. He had heard the roar of a motorbike being started up a couple of minutes ago.

The doorbell rang. Wallander jumped. He opened the door, and Ann-Britt Hoglund came in.

"The construction workers have gone home," Wallander said. "You're too late."

"I showed them Svedberg's picture," she said. "No one saw him, or at least they don't remember it."

They sat down in the kitchen and Wallander told her about his meeting with Sture Bjorklund. She listened attentively.

"If he's right then that changes our picture of Svedberg quite dramatically," she said when Wallander had finished.

"Why did he keep her a secret for so long?" Wallander asked.

"Maybe she was married."

"An illicit affair? Do you think they met only at Bjorklund's house? That doesn't seem feasible. They only had access to it a couple of times a year. She can't have come to this flat without anyone ever seeing her."

"Whatever the case, we have to find her," Hoglund answered.

"There's something else I've been thinking about," Wallander said slowly. "If he kept her a secret, what else might he have hidden from us?"

He could see she was following his train of thought.

"You don't think it's a burglary."

"I doubt it. A telescope is missing, and Ylva Brink may be able to tell us if anything else is gone, but it doesn't add up. There's no coherence to the scene of the crime."

"We've checked his bank accounts," Hoglund said. "At least the ones we've managed to find. There's nothing of note, no outlandish deposits or debts. He has a loan of 25,000 kronor for his car. The bank said that Svedberg always managed his affairs conscientiously."

"One shouldn't speak ill of the dead," Wallander said, "but to tell the truth I thought he was downright miserly."

"How do you mean?"

"We'd always share the tab when we went out, but I'd always leave the tip."

Hoglund slowly shook her head. "It's funny how differently we can see people. I never thought of him like that."

Wallander told her about the cement mixer. He had just finished when they both heard a key turning in the lock. They were both struck by the same fleeting sense of dread until they heard Nyberg clearing his throat.

"Those damn newspapers," he said. "I don't know how I could have overlooked them."

He put them into a plastic bag and sealed it.

"When can we find out about prints?" Wallander asked.

"Monday at the earliest."

"What about the autopsy report?"

"Hansson's in charge," Hoglund said. "But it should be done pretty quickly."

Wallander asked Nyberg to sit down, then recounted the story of Louise one more time.

"That sounds completely implausible," Nyberg said. "Was there a more confirmed bachelor than Svedberg? What about his lone sauna stints on Friday evenings?"

"It's even more implausible that a professor at Copenhagen University is lying to us," Wallander said. "We have to assume he's telling the truth."

"What if Svedberg simply invented her? If I understood you correctly, no one actually saw her."

Wallander thought about this. Could Louise be a figment of Svedberg's imagination?

"What about the hairs in Bjorklund's bathtub? They're clearly not an invention."

"Why would anyone invent a story like that about himself?" Nyberg asked.

"Because he's lonely," Hoglund answered. "People can go to great lengths to invent the companionship missing from their lives."

"Have you found any hairs in the bathroom?" Wallander asked.

"No," Nyberg answered. "But I'll go and have another look."

Wallander got up. "Come with me for a minute," he said.

They went into the living room and Wallander walked them through the various thoughts that had come to him.

"I'm trying to come up with a provisional starting point for this case," he said. "If this is a burglary, there are many issues that need clearing up. How did the killer enter? Why was he carrying a shotgun? At what point did Svedberg appear? What besides the telescope has been stolen? And why was Svedberg shot? There's no sign of a struggle. There's a mess in almost every room, but I doubt they chased each other around the flat. I can't get the various pieces to fit together, and so I ask myself, what happens if we push the burglary hypothesis aside for a moment? What do we see then? Is it a matter of revenge? Insanity? Since there's a woman in the picture, we can entertain the idea of jealousy. But would a woman shoot Svedberg in the face? I doubt it. What other possibilities are there?"

No one spoke. This silence confirmed Wallander's impression that there was no obvious logic to this case, no simple way to categorise it as a burglary, crime of passion, or something else. There was no apparent reason for Svedberg's murder.

"Can I leave now?" Nyberg said finally. "I still have some reports to finish tonight."

"We're going to have another meeting tomorrow morning."

"What time?"

"We'll aim for 9 a.m."

Nyberg left the other two in the living room.

"I've tried to see an unfolding drama," Wallander said. "What do you see?"

He knew that Hoglund could be sharp-sighted, and there was nothing wrong with her analytical skills.

"What if we start with the state of the flat?"

"Yes, what then?"

"There are three possible explanations for the mess. A nervous or hurried burglar, a person looking for something, which of course could also apply to a burglar although he wouldn't know what he was looking for. The third possibility is a person bent on destruction for its own sake. Vandalism."

Wallander followed her train of thought closely.

"There's a fourth possibility," he said. "A person who acts out of uncontrollable rage."

They looked at each other, and each knew what the other was thinking. Occasionally Svedberg would become so angry that he lost all self-control. His rage seemed to come out of the blue. Once he had almost destroyed his office.

"Svedberg could have done this himself," Wallander said. "It's not totally out of the realm of possibility. We know it's happened before. It leads us to a very important question."

"Why?"

"Exactly. Why?"

"I was there when Svedberg trashed his office, but I never understood why he did it," Hoglund said.

"It was when Bjork was chief of police. He accused Svedberg of stealing confiscated material."

"What kind of material?"

"Some valuable Lithuanian icons, among other things," Wallander answered. "It was loot from a big racketeering case."

"So Svedberg was accused of stealing?"

"No - incompetence and sloppy police work. But, of course, the suspicion was implicit."

"What came of it?"

"Svedberg felt humiliated and smashed everything in his office."

"Did the icons ever turn up?" she asked.

"No, but no one was ever able to prove anything. The racketeers were prosecuted successfully anyway."

"But Svedberg felt humiliated?"

"Yes."

"Unfortunately it doesn't help us. Svedberg trashes his own flat, but then what?"

"We don't know," Wallander said.

They left the living room.

"Did you ever hear of Svedberg receiving threats?" Wallander asked her when they had reached the hall.

"No."

"Has anyone else received any?"

"You know how it is - strange letters and calls are par for the course," she said. "But naturally there would be a record of it."

"Why don't you go through everything that's come in lately," Wallander said. "I'd also like you to talk to whoever delivers the newspapers."

Hoglund wrote his requests in her notebook. Wallander opened the front door.

"At least it wasn't Svedberg's gun," she said. "He had no registered weapons."

"That's good to know."

She started walking down the stairs and Wallander returned to the kitchen. He drank a glass of water and thought that he should eat something soon. He was tired. He sat down with his head against the wall and fell asleep.

He was surrounded by snowy mountains that sparkled in the strong sun. His skis looked like the ones he had seen down in Svedberg's basement. He was going faster and faster and he was heading straight down towards a thick layer of fog. Suddenly a ravine opened up in front of him.

He woke up with a start. He looked at the kitchen clock and saw that he had been asleep for eleven minutes.

He sat still and listened to the silence. Then the phone rang. It was Martinsson.

"I thought that's where you were."

"Has anything happened?"

"Eva Hillstrom has been to see me again."

"What did she want?"

"She said she was going to go to the papers if we don't do something."

Wallander thought for a moment before answering. "I think I may have been misguided this morning," he said. "I'd been meaning to talk about it tomorrow morning anyway."

"What about?"

"Naturally our first priority is Svedberg. But we can't shelve the case of the missing young people. Somehow we have to find the time to do both."

"How are we going to do that?"

"I don't know. But it's not the first time we've had so much work to do."

"I promised Mrs Hillstrom I would call her after speaking with you."

"Good. Try to calm her down. We're going to move on it."

"Are you coming by?"

"I'm on my way. I'm going to see Ylva Brink."

"Do you think we'll solve Svedberg's murder?"

Wallander sensed Martinsson's concern.

"Yes," he said. "Of course we will. But I have a feeling it'll be complicated."

He hung up. Some pigeons flew by the window and a thought suddenly came to Wallander.

Hoglund had said that the murder weapon was not registered in Svedberg's name. The reasonable conclusion to make was that Svedberg had no weapons. But reality was rarely reasonable. Weren't there countless unregistered guns floating around Swedish society? It was a constant source of concern for the police. Couldn't a police officer in fact also possibly be in possession of an unregistered weapon? What would that mean? What if the murder weapon did belong to Svedberg? Wallander felt his sense of urgency return. He got up quickly and left the flat.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Istvan Kecskemeti had come to Sweden exactly 40 years earlier, part of that stream of Hungarian immigrants who were forced to leave their country after the failed revolution. He had been 14 years old when he came to Sweden with his parents and his three younger siblings. His father was an engineer who at the end of the 1920s had visited the Separator factories outside of Stockholm. That's where he was hoping to find work. But they never got further than Trelleborg. On the way down the steep stairs of the ferry terminal, he suffered a stroke. His second encounter with Swedish soil was when his body smacked into the wet asphalt. He was buried in the graveyard in Trelleborg, the family stayed in Skane, and now Istvan was 54 years old. He had long been the owner and manager of one of the many pizzerias dotting the length of Ystad's Hamngatan.

Wallander had heard Istvan's story a long time ago. Wallander ate there from time to time, and if there weren't many customers around, Istvan would happily sit down and talk. It was 6.30 p.m. when Wallander walked in, with half an hour to spare before meeting Ylva Brink. There were no other customers, just as Wallander had expected. From the kitchen came the sound of a radio and of someone banging a meat cleaver. Istvan was just finishing a phone call by the bar, and waved to Wallander as he sat down at a table in the corner. He came over with a serious expression.

"Is it true what I've heard? That a policeman is dead?"

"Unfortunately yes," Wallander answered. "Karl Evert Svedberg. Did you meet him?"

"I don't think he ever came in," Istvan said. "Do you want a beer? It's on the house." Wallander shook his head.

"I'd like to have something that's quick," he said. "And appropriate for someone with high blood-sugar levels."

Istvan looked at him with concern.

"Have you become diabetic?"

"No. But my sugar level is too high."

"Then you are a diabetic."

"Well, perhaps temporarily. I'm in a bit of a hurry right now."

"How about a small steak, sauteed in a little oil, and a green salad?"

"That sounds good."

Istvan left and Wallander wondered why he reacted as if diabetes was something to be ashamed of. Maybe it wasn't so strange. He hated the fact that he was overweight. He wanted to pretend the problem wasn't there.

As usual he ate much too fast. He drank a cup of coffee while Istvan was tending to a group of Polish tourists. Wallander was happy to avoid having to answer questions about Svedberg's murder. He paid his bill and left.

He got to the police station just after 7 p.m. Ylva Brink had not yet arrived. He went straight to Martinsson's office. Hansson was also there.

"How is it going?" he asked.

"There are almost no leads from the public, which is a little unusual."

"Anything from Lund?"

"Not yet," Hansson said. "We'll have to wait until Monday."

"We need to establish the time of death," Wallander said. "As soon as we get that, we'll have a starting point."

"I've checked the files," Martinsson said. "Neither the murder nor the burglary matches any previous case."

"We don't know it was a burglary," Wallander said.

"What else could it have been?"

"I don't know. I have to go and see Ylva Brink now. I'll see you two tomorrow at 9 a.m."

He went to his office and found a note on his desk from Lisa Holgersson, who wanted to speak to him as soon as possible. Wallander tried to call her but she had left. Wallander decided to call her at home later that evening.

A few minutes later Ylva Brink arrived. Wallander asked her if she wanted some coffee but she said no. He decided to use a tape recorder for this interview. Normally he found it distracting, as if a third party were eavesdropping on the person he was interviewing, but he wanted to have access to this conversation word for word. He asked Ylva Brink if she had any objections, but she didn't.

"It's not like it's an interrogation," he said. "It's just that I want to remember what we talk about. This machine is better at that than I am."

He pushed the record button and the tape started turning. It was 7.19 p.m.

"Friday, 9 August, 1996," Wallander stated. "Interview with Ylva Brink in connection with Inspector Karl Evert Svedberg's death by manslaughter or homicide."

"Well, what other possibilities are there?" she asked.

"Police language is full of these redundant expressions," Wallander said. He too had thought that it sounded stilted.

"It's been a few hours," he began. "You've had some time to think. You've probably been asking yourself why it happened. A murder often seems senseless to everyone except the murderer."

"I still can't quite believe it's true. I talked to my husband several hours ago - it's possible to place satellite calls to the boat. He thought I was crazy. But when I heard the words come out of my mouth, the reality hit me."

"I would have liked to be able to wait before pressing you to talk about it. But we can't wait. We have to catch the killer as soon as possible. He has a head start and it's getting bigger all the time."

She seemed to be steeling herself for his first real question.

"This woman Louise," Wallander said. "Apparently Karl Evert had been meeting her for years. Did you ever see her?"

"No."

"Did you ever hear him talk about her?"

"No."

"What was your first reaction when I told you about her?"

"I didn't think it was true."

"What do you think now?"

"That it's true, but still completely incomprehensible."

"You and Karl Evert must have talked at some point about why he had never married. What did he say?"

"That he was a confirmed bachelor and happy that way."

"Was there anything unusual about the way he said this?"

"How do you mean?"

"Did he seem nervous? Could you tell if he was lying?"

"He was completely convincing."

Wallander detected a note of hesitation in her voice.

"I have the feeling you might just have thought of something."

She didn't answer immediately. The tape recorder was whirring in the background.

"Occasionally I wondered if he was different . . ."

"You mean, if he was gay?"

"Yes."

"Why did that occur to you?"

"Isn't it a natural reaction?"

Wallander recalled that he himself had sometimes been conscious of this possibility.

"Yes, of course it is."

"It came up in conversation once. He was invited over for Christmas dinner, quite a few years ago. We were discussing whether or not a person that we both knew was homosexual. I remember very clearly how vehemently disgusted he was."

"By the friend's supposed homosexuality?"

"By homosexuality in general. It was very unpleasant. I had always considered him a tolerant person."

"What happened after that?"

"Nothing. We never spoke of it again."

Wallander thought for a moment. "How do you think we could go about finding this Louise?"

"I have no idea."

"Since he never left Ystad, she must live here or in the near vicinity."

"I suppose so."

She looked at her watch.

"When do you have to be at work?" Wallander asked.

"In half an hour. I don't like to be late."

"Just like Karl Evert. He was always very punctual."

"Yes, he was. What's that saying? Someone you could set your watch by."

"What kind of a person was he, really?"

"You've already asked me that."

"Well, I'm asking you again."

"He was nice."

"How do you mean?"

"Nice. A nice person. I don't know how else to put it. He was a nice person who could sometimes fly into a rage, although that didn't happen very often. He was a little shy. Dutiful. Some people probably thought him boring. He might have seemed a bit aloof and slow, but he was intelligent."

Wallander thought her description of Svedberg was accurate and close to something he might have said if their roles had been reversed.

"Who was his best friend?"

Her answer shocked him.

"I thought you were."

"Me?"

"He always said so. 'Kurt Wallander is the best friend I have.'"

Wallander was dumbstruck. For him Svedberg had always been a colleague. They never saw each other outside of work. He hadn't become a friend in the way that Rydberg had been, and that Hoglund was slowly becoming.

"That comes as quite a surprise," he said finally. "I didn't think of him in that way."

"But he may have considered you his best friend, regardless of what you thought."

"Of course."

Wallander suddenly realised how lonely Svedberg must have been. His definition of friendship had been grounded on the lowest common denominator, an absence of animosity. He stared into the tape recorder, then forced himself to continue.

"Did he have any other friends or people he spent a lot of time with?"