The Man Who Smiled

Chapter 7

Fear was like a beast of prey.

Afterward, Wallander remembered it as being like a claw clamped around his neck—an image that seemed even to him childish and inadequate, but it was the comparison he eventually used even so. Who would he describe the fear to? His daughter Linda, and perhaps also Baiba, in one of the letters he sent regularly to Riga. But hardly to anyone else. He never discussed with Höglund what he had felt in that car; she never asked, and he was never sure whether she had noticed he was frightened. Nevertheless, he had been so terrified that he was shaking, and was convinced he would lose control of the car and plunge into the ditch at high speed, perhaps even hurtle to his death. He remembered with crystal clarity that he wished he had been alone in the car. That would have made everything much simpler for him. A large part of his fear, the weight of the giant beast, was the worry that something might happen to her, the woman in the passenger seat. Superficially, he had played the role of the experienced police officer who was unmoved by a minor matter like discovering that he was being followed from Staffanstorp to Lund, but he had been scared out of his wits until they reached the outskirts of the city. Shortly after crossing the boundary, when she had announced that the car was still following them, he had pulled into one of the big gas stations that had twenty-four-hour service. They had seen the car drive past, a dark blue Mercedes, but had been unable to catch the registration number or make out how many people were inside. Wallander had stopped by one of the pumps.

“I think you’re wrong,” he said.

She shook her head. “The car was following us,” she said. “I can’t swear that it was waiting for us outside the police station, but I noticed it early on. It was there when we passed the rotary on the E65. It was just a car then, any old car. But when we’d turned a couple of times and it still hadn’t passed us, it started to be something else.”

Wallander got out and unscrewed the gas cap. She stood by his side, watching him. He was thinking as hard as he could.

“Who would want to follow us?” he asked as he replaced the nozzle.

She remained standing by the car while he went to pay. She couldn’t possibly be right, he thought. His fear had started to wear off.

They continued through the town. The streets were deserted, and the traffic lights seemed very reluctant to change. Once they had left Lund behind them and Wallander increased speed along the motorway heading north, they started to check the traffic behind them once again. But the Mercedes had gone, and it didn’t reappear. When they took the exit for Helsingborg south, Wallander slowed down. A dirty truck overtook them, then a dark red Volvo. Wallander pulled up at the side of the road, released his seat belt, and got out. He walked around to the back of the car and crouched down, as if he were inspecting one of the back wheels. He knew she would keep an eye on every car that passed. He counted four cars overtaking them, and a bus which had something wrong one of its cylinders, judging by the sound of its engine. He got back into the car and turned to her.

“No Mercedes?”

“A white Audi,” she said. “Two men in front, maybe another in the back.”

“Why pick on that one?”

“They were the only ones who didn’t look at us. They also picked up speed.”

Wallander pointed to the car phone. “Call Martinsson,” he said. “I take it you made a note of the registration number. Not just the Audi, the others as well. Give them to him. Tell him it’s urgent.”

He gave her Martinsson’s home number and drove on, keeping his eye open for a phone booth where he hoped he might find a phone book with a map of the area. He heard her speaking to one of Martinsson’s children, probably his little daughter. After a short pause Martinsson came on the line and she gave him the registration numbers. Then she handed the phone to Wallander.

“He wants to speak to you,” she said.

Wallander braked and pulled over before taking the phone.

“What’s going on?” Martinsson asked. “Can’t these cars wait until tomorrow?”

“If Ann-Britt calls you and says it’s urgent, then it’s urgent,” he said.

“What have they done, these cars?”

“It would take too long now. I’ll tell you tomorrow. When you’ve got the information you can call us here in the car.”

He brought the call to an end, so as to give Martinsson no chance to ask any more questions. He saw that Höglund had been offended.

“Why can’t he trust me? Why does he have to check with you?”

Her voice had become shrill. Wallander wondered if she could not control her disappointment, or did not want to.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “It takes time to get used to changes. You are the most shattering thing that’s happened to the police station in Ystad for years. You’re surrounded by a pack of old dogs who haven’t the slightest desire to learn new tricks.”

“Does that include you?”

“Of course it does,” Wallander said.

Wallander failed to find a phone booth before they had reached the ferry terminal. There was no sign of the white Audi. Wallander parked outside the railway station, and found a dirty map on the wall inside showing Gjutargatan on the eastern edge of the town. He memorized the route, and returned to the car.

“Who could it be that’s following us?” she said as they turned left and passed the white theater building.

“I don’t know,” Wallander said. “There’s too much about Gustaf and Sten Torstensson that’s odd. I get the feeling we’re always going off in the wrong direction.”

“I have the feeling we’re standing still,” she said.

“Or that we’re going around in circles,” Wallander said. “And we don’t see that we’re walking in our own footsteps.”

Still no sign of the Audi. They drove into a housing estate. There was no one about. Wallander parked at number twelve, and they got out of the car. The wind threatened to blow the doors off their hinges. The house was a red-brick bungalow with an attached garage and a modest garden. Wallander thought he could see the outline of a boat under a tarpaulin.

The door opened before he had chance to ring the bell. An elderly white-haired man in a tracksuit eyed them up and down with an inquisitive smile.

Wallander produced his ID.

“My name’s Wallander,” he said. “I’m a detective inspector, and this is Ann-Britt Höglund, a colleague. We’re from the Ystad police.”

The man took Wallander’s ID and scrutinized it—he was obviously short-sighted. His wife appeared in the hall, and welcomed them inside. Wallander had the impression he was standing on the threshold of a contented couple’s home. They invited them into their living room, where coffee and cakes were prepared. Wallander was about to sit down when he noticed a picture on one of the walls. He could not believe his eyes at first—it was one of his father’s paintings, one without a grouse. He saw that Höglund had noticed what he was looking at, and she gave him a questioning look. He shook his head, and sat down. This was the second time in his life he had gone into a strange house and discovered one of his father’s paintings. Four years ago he had found one in an apartment in Kristianstad, but there had been a grouse in the foreground of that one.

“I apologize for visiting you so late,” Wallander said, “but I’m afraid we have some questions that simply can’t wait.”

“I hope you have time for a cup of coffee,” said the lady of the house.

They said that of course they did. It occurred to Wallander that Höglund had been eager to accompany him so that she could find out how he conducted an interview of this nature, and he felt insecure. There’s been a lot of water under this bridge, he thought. It’s not a case of me teaching her, but of me relearning how to do it, trying to remember all that I had written off as the end of an era in my life, until a couple of days ago.

His mind went back to those limitless beaches at Skagen. His private territory. Just for a moment, he wished he were back there. But that was history. More water under the bridge.

“Until a year ago you ran a hotel, the Linden Hotel,” he began.

“For forty years,” Bertil Forsdahl said, and Wallander could hear he was proud of what he had achieved.

“That’s a long time,” he said.

“I bought it in 1952,” Forsdahl said. “It was called the Pelican Hotel in those days, a bit on the scruffy side—it didn’t have a good reputation. I bought it from a man called Markusson. He was an alcoholic, and just didn’t want to be bothered. The last year of his tenancy the rooms were used mainly by his drunken cronies. I have to admit I got the hotel cheaply. Markusson died the following year. His wake was a drunken orgy in Elsinore. We renamed the hotel. In those days there was a linden tree outside. It was next to the old theater—that’s been demolished now, of course, like everything else. The actors used to stay with us sometimes. Inga Tidblad was our overnight guest on one occasion. She wanted an early-morning cup of tea.”

“I expect you’ve kept the ledger with her name in it,” Wallander said.

“I’ve kept all of them,” Forsdahl said. “I’ve got forty years of history tucked away downstairs.”

“We sometimes sit down after dinner,” Forsdahl’s wife said, “and we leaf through them all, remembering the good old days. You see the names and you remember the people.”

Wallander exchanged glances with Höglund. They already had the answer to one of their key questions.

A dog started barking in the street outside.

“Next door neighbor’s guard dog,” Forsdahl explained apologetically. “He keeps an eye on the whole street.”

Wallander took a sip of the coffee, and noticed that it said Linden Hotel on the cup.

“I’ll explain why we’re here,” he said. “You have the name of your hotel on the coffee cups, and you had printed letterheads and envelopes. In July and August last year, two letters were mailed from here in Helsingborg. One was in one of your printed envelopes. That must have been during the last few weeks you were open.”

“We closed on September 15,” Forsdahl said. “We made no charge for the final night.”

“Might I ask why you closed down?” Höglund said.

Wallander was irritated by her intervention, but he hoped she would not notice his reaction. As if it were natural for a woman to be answered by another woman, it was Forsdahl’s wife who responded.

“What else could we do?” she said. “The building was condemned, and the hotel wasn’t making any money. No doubt we could have kept going for another year or two if we’d wanted, and if we’d been allowed. But that wasn’t how it turned out.”

“We tried to maintain the highest standards for as long as we could,” Forsdahl said. “But in the end it was just too expensive for us. Color TV in every room and that kind of thing. It was just too much outlay.”

“It was a very sad day, September 15,” his wife said. “We still have all the room keys. We had number seventeen. The site’s a parking lot now. And they’ve cut the linden tree down. They said it was rotten. I wonder if a tree can die of a broken heart.”

The dog was still barking. Wallander thought about the tree that no longer existed.

“Lars Borman,” he said eventually. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

The response was a complete surprise. “Poor man,” Forsdahl said.

“A very sad story,” his wife said. “Why are the police interested in him now?”

“So you know who he is?” Wallander said. He saw that Höglund had produced a notebook from her handbag.

“Such a nice man,” Forsdahl said. “Calm, quiet. Always friendly, always polite. They don’t make them like him anymore.”

“We’d very much like to get in touch with him,” Wallander said.

Forsdahl exchanged looks with his wife. Wallander had the impression they were ill at ease.

“Lars Borman’s dead,” Forsdahl said. “I thought the police knew that.”

Wallander thought for a while before answering. “We know next to nothing about Borman,” he said. “All we do know is that last year he wrote two letters, and one of them was in one of your hotel’s envelopes. We wanted to get in touch with him. Obviously that isn’t possible now. But we’d like to know what happened. And who he was.”

“A regular customer,” Forsdahl said. “He stayed with us about every four months for many years. Usually two or three nights.”

“What was his line of work? Where was he from?”

“He worked at the county offices,” Mrs Forsdahl said. “Something to do with finance.”

“An accountant,” Forsdahl said. “A very conscientious and honest civil servant at the Malmöhus county offices.”

“He lived in Klagshamn,” his wife added. “He had a wife and children. It was a terrible tragedy.”

“What happened?” Wallander said.

“He committed suicide,” Forsdahl said. Wallander could see it pained him to revive the memory. “If there was one person we never would have expected to take his own life it was Lars Borman. Evidently he had some kind of secret we never imagined.”

“What happened?” Wallander asked again.

“He’d been in Helsingborg,” Forsdahl said. “It was a few days before we closed down. He did whatever he had to do during the day and spent the evenings in his room. He would read a lot. That last morning he paid his bill and checked out. He promised to keep in touch even though the hotel was closing. Then he drove away. A few weeks later we heard that he’d hanged himself in a clearing outside Klagshamn, a few kilometers from his house. There was no explanation, no letter to his wife and children. It came as a shock to us all.”

Wallander nodded slowly. He had grown up in Klagshamn, and wondered which clearing it was Borman had hanged himself in. Perhaps it was somewhere he had played as a child?

“How old was he?”

“He’d passed fifty, but he can’t have been much older than that,” Mrs Forsdahl said.

“So he lived in Klagshamn,” Wallander said, “and worked as an accountant at the county offices. It seems a little unusual to me, staying in a hotel. It’s not that far between Malmö and Helsingborg.”

“He didn’t like driving,” Forsdahl said. “Besides, I think he enjoyed it here. He could shut himself away in his room in the evening and read his books. We used to leave him in peace, and he appreciated that.”

“You have his address in your ledgers, of course,” Wallander said.

“We heard his wife sold the house and moved,” Mrs Forsdahl said. “She couldn’t cope with staying there after what had happened. And his children are grown up.”

“Do you know where she moved to?”

“To Spain. Marbella, I think it’s called.”

Wallander looked at Höglund, who was making copious notes.

“Do you mind if I ask you a question now?” Forsdahl said. “Why are the police interested in Borman so long after his death?”

“It’s pure routine,” Wallander said. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you more than that. Except that there’s no question of his being suspected of any crime.”

“He was an honest man,” Forsdahl insisted. “He thought people ought to lead a simple life and always do the right thing. We talked quite a lot over the years. He would always get angry when we touched on the dishonesty that seems to be common nowadays in society.”

“Was there really no explanation for why he had committed suicide?” Wallander asked.

Both Forsdahl and his wife shook their heads.

“OK,” Wallander said. “Just one more thing. We’d like to take a look at the record books for the final year, if you don’t mind.”

“They’re in the basement,” Forsdahl said, getting to his feet.

“Martinsson might call,” Höglund said. “I’d better go get the car phone.”

Wallander gave her the keys and Mrs. Forsdahl went with her. He heard her slamming the car door without the neighbor’s dog starting to bark. When she returned they all went down into the basement. In a room that was surprisingly big for a basement was a long row of ledgers on a shelf running the whole length of one wall. There was also the old hotel sign, and a board with seventeen room keys hanging on it. A museum, Wallander thought, how touching. This is where they hide their memories of a long working life. Memories of a little hotel that got to a point where it was no longer viable.

Forsdahl took down the last of their ledgers and put it on a table. He looked up August, then the 26th, and pointed to one of the columns. Wallander and Höglund leaned forward to examine it. Wallander recognized the handwriting. He also thought the letter had been written by the same pen Borman used when he signed the register. He was born on October 12, 1939, and described himself as a county offices accountant. Höglund noted his address in Klagshamn: Mejramsvägen 23. Wallander did not recognize the street name. It was probably one of the housing estates that had sprung up after he had left. He turned back to the records for June, and found Borman’s name there again, on the day that the first of the letters had been mailed.

“Do you understand any of this?” Höglund said, quietly.

“Not a lot,” Wallander said.

The mobile phone rang, and Wallander nodded to indicate she should answer it. She sat down on a stool and started writing down what Martinsson had to say. Wallander closed the ledger and watched Forsdahl return it to its place. When the call was finished they went back upstairs, and on the way Wallander asked what Martinsson had said.

“It was the Audi,” she said. “We can talk about it later.”

Wallander and Höglund prepared to leave.

“I am sorry we’re here so late,” Wallander said. “Sometimes the police can’t wait.”

“I hope we’ve been of some help,” Forsdahl said. “Even though it’s painful to be reminded of poor old Lars Borman.”

“I understand how you feel,” Wallander said. “If you should remember anything else, please call the Ystad police.”

“What else is there to remember?” asked Forsdahl, in surprise.

“I don’t know what it might be,” Wallander said, shaking hands.

They left the house and got into the car. Wallander switched on the interior light. Höglund had taken out her notebook.

“I was right,” she said, looking at Wallander. “It was the white Audi. The number didn’t fit the car. The license plate had been stolen. It should have been on a Nissan that hasn’t even been sold yet. It’s registered with a showroom in Malmö.”

“And the other cars?”

“All in order.”

Wallander started the engine. It was 11:30, and there was no sign of the wind dropping. They drove out of town. There was not much traffic on the highway. And there were no cars behind them.

“Are you tired?” Wallander said.

“No,” she replied.

“In that case let’s stop for a while,” he said. He drove into a twenty-four-hour gas station with an attached café that was just south of Helsingborg. “We can have a little late-night conference, just you and me, and see if we can figure out how far we got this evening. We can also see what other cars stop. The only one we don’t need to worry about is a white Audi.”

“Why not?”

“If they do come back they’ll be using a different car,” Wallander said. “Whoever they are, they know what they’re doing. They won’t appear twice in the same car.”

They went into the café. Wallander ordered a hamburger, but Höglund didn’t want anything. They found a seat with a view of the parking area. A couple of Danish truck drivers were drinking coffee, but the other tables were empty.

“So, what do you think?” Wallander said. “About an accountant with the county offices writing threatening letters to a couple of lawyers, then going out to the forest to hang himself.”

“It’s hard to know what to say,” she said.

“Try,” Wallander said.

They sat in silence, lost in thought. A truck from a rental firm pulled up outside. Wallander’s burger was called; he got up to get it and returned to the table.

“The accusation in Borman’s letter is injustice,” she said. “But it doesn’t say what the injustice was. Borman wasn’t a client. We don’t know what their relationship was. In fact, we don’t know anything at all.”

Wallander put down his fork and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “I’m sure you’ve heard about Rydberg,” he said. “An old detective inspector who died a couple of years ago. He was a wise bird. He once said that police officers always tend to say they know nothing, whereas in fact we always know a lot more than we think.”

“That sounds like one of those pearls of wisdom they were forever feeding us at college,” she said. “The kind we used to write down and then forget as quickly as possible.”

Wallander was annoyed. He did not like anybody questioning Rydberg’s competence. “I couldn’t care less what you wrote down or didn’t write down at the police academy,” he said. “But at least pay attention to what I say. Or what Rydberg said.”

“Have I made you angry?” she said, surprised.

“I never get angry,” Wallander said, “but I think your summary of what we know about Lars Borman was poor.”

“Can you do any better, then?” she said, her voice shrill again.

She’s thin-skinned, he thought. No doubt it’s a lot harder than I think to be a lone woman among the Ystad detectives.

“I don’t really mean your summary was poor,” he said. “But I do think you’re overlooking a few things.”

“I’m listening,” she said. “I know I’m good at that.”

Wallander slid his plate to one side and went to get a cup of coffee. The Danish truck drivers had left, leaving the two police officers as the only customers. A radio could be heard faintly from the kitchen.

“It’s obviously impossible to draw any reliable conclusions,” Wallander said, “but we can make a few assumptions. We can try fitting a few pieces of the puzzle together and see what they look like, see if we can work out a motive perhaps.”

“I’m with you so far,” she said.

“Borman was an accountant,” Wallander said. “We also know that he seemed to be an honest, upright man. That was the most characteristic thing about him, according to the Forsdahls. Apart from the fact that he was quiet and liked reading. In my experience it’s quite rare for anybody to start by categorizing a man like that. Which suggests he really was a passionately honest man.”

“An honest accountant,” she said.

“This honest man suddenly writes two threatening letters to the Torstenssons’ law firm in Ystad. He signs them with his own name, but he crosses out the name of the hotel on one of the envelopes. This provides us with several assumptions we can deduce.”

“He didn’t want to be anonymous,” Höglund said. “But he didn’t want to involve the hotel in the business. An honest man upset about injustice. The question is, what injustice?”

“Here we can make my last assumption except for one,” Wallander said. “There’s a missing link. Borman wasn’t a client of the Torstenssons’, but there might have been somebody else, somebody who was in contact both with Borman and with the law firm.”

“What does an accountant actually do?” Höglund said. “He checks that money is being used properly. He goes through receipts, he certifies that the proper practices have been adhered to. Is that what you mean?”

“Gustaf Torstensson gave financial advice,” Wallander said. “An accountant makes sure the rules and regulations are obeyed. The emphasis is a bit different, but an accountant and a lawyer in fact do very similar things. Or should do.”

“And your last assumption?” she said.

“Borman writes two threatening letters. He may have written more, but we don’t know that. What we do know is that the letters were simply put away in an envelope.”

“But now both the lawyers are dead,” Höglund said, “and someone tried to kill Mrs. Dunér.”

“And Borman committed suicide,” Wallander said. “I think that’s where we should begin. With his suicide. We have to get in touch with our colleagues in Malmö. There must be a document somewhere that rules out the possibility that the death was murder. There has to have been a doctor’s certificate.”

“There’s a widow living in Spain,” she said.

“The children are presumably still in Sweden. We must talk to them as well.”

They stood up and left the café.

“We should do this more often,” Wallander said. “It’s fun talking to you.”

“Even though I don’t understand anything,” she said, “and make poor summaries?”

Wallander shrugged. “I talk too much,” he said.

They got back into the car. It was almost 1:00. Wallander shuddered at the thought of the empty apartment that awaited him in Ystad. It felt as if something in his life had come to an end a long time ago, long before he knelt in the fog in the military training ground near Ystad. But he hadn’t figured out what it was. He thought about his father’s painting that he had seen in the house in Gjutargatan. In the old days, his father’s paintings had always seemed to him something to be ashamed of, to be taking advantage of people’s bad taste. It now seemed to him there might be another way of looking at it. Perhaps his father painted pictures that gave people a feeling of balance and normality they were looking everywhere for, but only found in those unchanging landscapes.

“A penny for your thoughts,” she said.

“Not sure,” he said vaguely. “I think I’m just tired.”

Wallander drove on toward Malmö. Even though it was the long way around, he wanted to stick to the main roads back to Ystad. There was not much traffic, and there was no sign of anybody following them. The gusting wind was buffeting the car.

“I didn’t think that kind of thing happened around here,” she said suddenly. “Being followed by some stranger in a car, I mean.”

“I didn’t think so either until a few years ago,” Wallander said. “Then things changed. They say Sweden changed slowly and imperceptibly, but I think it was rather open and obvious. If you only knew where to look.”

“Tell me,” she said, “what it used to be like. And what happened.”

“I don’t know if I can,” he said. “I just see things from the point of view of the man in the street. But in our everyday work, even in an insignificant little town like Ystad, we could see a change. Crime became more frequent and more serious: different, nastier, more complicated. And we started finding criminals among people who’d previously been irreproachable citizens. But what set it all off I have no idea.”

“That doesn’t explain why we have a record for solving crimes worse than practically everywhere else in the world, either,” she said.

“Talk to Björk about that,” Wallander said. “It keeps him awake at night. I sometimes think that his ambition is for the Ystad force to make up for the rest of the country put together.”

“But there must be an explanation,” she insisted. “It can’t just be that the Swedish force is undermanned, and that we don’t have the resources which everybody talks about without anybody being able to say what they actually should be.”

“It’s like two different worlds meeting head-on,” Wallander said. “Many police officers think as I do, that we got our training and experience at a time when everything was different, when crime was more transparent, morals were clearer, and the authority of the police unchallenged. Nowadays, we need a different kind of training and different experiences in order to be as efficient. But we don’t have that. And the ones who come after us, such as you, don’t as yet have much chance to influence what we do, to decide where our priorities should lie. It often feels as if there’s nothing to stop criminals getting even further ahead of us than they are already. And all society does in response is to manipulate the statistics. Instead of giving the police rein to solve every crime committed, a lot of them are just written off. What used to be considered a crime ten years ago is now judged a noncrime. Things change by the day. What people were punished for yesterday can be something nobody thinks about twice today. At best it might spark off a report that then disappears in some invisible shredder. All that’s left is something that never happened.”

“That can’t be good,” she said hesitantly.

Wallander glanced at her. “Who said that it was?”

They had passed Landskrona and were approaching Malmö. An ambulance passed them at high speed, blue light flashing. Wallander was tired. Without really knowing why, just for a moment he felt sorry for the woman sitting beside him. Over the coming years she would constantly have to reassess her work as a police officer. Unless she was an exceptional person, she would experience an unbroken sequence of disappointments, and very little joy.

He had no doubt about that. But he also thought that the reputation that had preceded her seemed to be true. He could remember Martinsson’s first year when he’d just graduated from the police academy and joined the Ystad force. He had not been much use then, but now he was one of their best detectives.

“Tomorrow we’ll make a thorough assessment of all the material we have,” he said in an attempt to cheer her up. “There must be a chance of breaking through somewhere along the line.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said. “But one of these days things could get so bad here that we start to regard certain types of murder as incidents that are best left alone.”

“If that happens, the police force will have to mutiny,” Wallander said.

“The police commissioner would never go along with that.”

“We’ll rise up when he’s out of the country eating fancy dinners in the name of PR,” Wallander said.

“We’ll have plenty of opportunities, then,” she said.

The conversation died out. Wallander stayed on the highway to the east of Malmö, concentrating on the road with only the occasional vague thought about what had happened during the day.

It was when they had left Malmö behind and were heading for Ystad on the E65 that Wallander suddenly had the feeling that something was wrong. Höglund had closed her eyes and her head had sunk down on one shoulder. There was no sign of headlights in the rearview mirror.

He was suddenly wide awake. I’ve been on the wrong track, he thought. Instead of establishing that we weren’t being followed, I should have been wondering why. If Ann-Britt Höglund was right, and I have no reason to doubt that somebody has been following us from the moment we left the police station, then the absence of a car behind us could indicate that they no longer considered it necessary.

He thought about the mine in Mrs. Dunér’s garden.

Without a second thought he braked and pulled up on the hard shoulder with his hazard lights blinking. Höglund woke up. She stared at him drowsily.

“Get out of the car,” Wallander said.

“Why?”

“Do as I say,” he shouted.

She flung aside her seat belt and was out of the car before he was.

“Take cover,” he said.

“What’s wrong?” she said, as they stood staring at the warning lights. It was cold, and the wind was gusty.

“I don’t know,” Wallander said. “Maybe nothing. I got worried because nobody was following us.”

He did not need to explain further. She understood right away. That convinced Wallander on the spot that she was already a good police officer. She was intelligent, she knew how to react to the unexpected. But he also felt for the first time in ages that he now had somebody with whom he could share his fear. On that stretch of hard shoulder, just before the Svedala exit, he had the feeling that all that endless walking up and down the beach at Skagen had come to an end.

Wallander had been sufficiently alert to take the car phone with him. He started to dial Martinsson’s number. “He’ll think I’ve gone out of my mind,” he said as he waited for a reply.

“What do you think’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know. But people who can bury a mine in a garden in Sweden would have no problem doing something to a car.”

“If it’s the same people,” she said.

“Yes,” Wallander said. “If it’s the same people.”

Martinsson answered. Wallander could tell that he was half asleep.

“It’s Kurt,” he said. “I’m on the E65 just outside Svedala. Ann-Britt’s here with me. I’d like you to phone Nyberg and ask him to come out here.”

“What’s happened?”

“I want him to have a look at my car.”

“If your engine’s dead you could call for roadside assistance,” Martinsson said, puzzled.

“I don’t have time to explain,” Wallander said, and could feel his irritation rising. “Do as I say. Tell Nyberg he should bring with him equipment to test whether I’ve been driving around with a bomb under my feet.”

“A car bomb?”

“You heard.”

Wallander switched off the phone and shook his head. “He’s right, of course,” he said. “It sounds ridiculous—we’re on the E65 in the middle of the night and I think there might be a bomb in the car.”

“Is there?”

“I don’t know,” Wallander said. “I’m not sure.”

It took Nyberg an hour to reach them. By then Wallander and Höglund were frozen to the bone. Wallander expected Nyberg to be annoyed, being woken up by Martinsson for reasons that must have seemed dubious, to say the least, but to his surprise Nyberg was friendly and prepared to believe that something serious had happened. Despite her protests, Wallander insisted that Höglund should get into Nyberg’s car and warm up.

“There’s a thermos in the passenger seat,” Nyberg said. “I think the coffee’s still hot.”

Then he turned to Wallander, who could see that he was still in his pajamas under his overcoat. “What’s wrong with the car?” he asked.

“I was hoping you could tell me that,” Wallander said. “There’s a real possibility that there’s nothing wrong at all.”

“What am I supposed to be looking for?”

“I don’t know. All I can tell you is an assumption. The car was left unwatched for about half an hour. It was locked.”

“Do you have an alarm?” Nyberg said.

“I’ve got nothing,” Wallander said. “It’s an old car. A piece of junk. I’ve always assumed nobody would want to steal it.”

“Go on,” Nyberg said.

“Half an hour,” Wallander repeated. “When I started the engine, nothing happened. Everything was normal. From Helsingborg to here is about a hundred kilometers. We stopped on the way and had a cup of coffee. I’d filled the tank in Helsingborg. It must be about three hours since the car was left unattended.”

“I wouldn’t touch it,” Nyberg said. “Not if you suspect it might blow up.”

“I thought that happened when you started the engine,” Wallander said.

“Nowadays you can set explosions to go off whenever you like,” Nyberg said. “They could be anything from built-in, self-triggering delay mechanisms to radio-controlled ignition devices that can be set off from miles away.”

“Maybe it’s best just to leave it,” Wallander said.

“Could be,” Nyberg said. “But I’d like to take a look at it even so. Let’s say I’m doing it of my own free will. You’re not ordering me to do it.”

Nyberg went back to his car and came back with a powerful flashlight. Wallander accepted a mug of coffee from Höglund, who had now gotten out of the car. They watched Nyberg as he lay down beside the car and shone his flashlight underneath. Then he started to walk around it, slowly.

“I think I’m dreaming,” Höglund murmured.

Nyberg had stopped by the open door on the driver’s side. He peered inside and shone his flashlight inside. An overloaded Volkswagen van with a Polish license plate drove past on its way to the ferry in Ystad. Nyberg switched off his flashlight and came back toward them.

“Did I hear wrongly?” he asked. “Didn’t you say you’d filled up with gas on the way to Helsingborg?”

“I filled up in Lund,” Wallander said. “Right to the top.”

“Then you drove to Helsingborg? And to here?”

Wallander thought a moment. “It can’t have been more than about a hundred and fifty kilometers,” he said.

Nyberg frowned.

“What’s the matter?” Wallander asked.

“Have you ever had reason to think there was something wrong with your gas gauge?”

“Never. It’s always been correct.”

“How many liters does the tank hold?”

“Sixty.”

“Then explain to me why the indicator suggests you’ve only got a quarter of a tank left,” he said.

It didn’t sink in at first. Then Wallander realized the significance of what Nyberg had said. “Somebody must have drained the tank,” he said. “The car uses less than one liter per ten kilometers.”

“Let’s move further back,” Nyberg said. “I’m going to move my own car further back as well.”

They watched him drive further away. The hazard lights were still flashing on Wallander’s car. The wind was still gusty. Another overfull car with a Polish license plate passed them going east. Nyberg came to join them. They all looked at Wallander’s car.

“If somebody drains gas from a tank, they do it to make room for something else,” Nyberg said. “Somebody might have planted explosives with some kind of delayed ignition that is gradually eaten away by the gas. Eventually it blows up. Does your gas gauge usually go down when the car’s in neutral?”

“No.”

“Then I think we should leave the car here till tomorrow,” Nyberg said. “In fact, we should close off the E65 altogether.”

“Björk would never agree to that,” Wallander said. “Besides, we don’t know for sure that anybody’s put anything in the gas tank.”

“I think we should call people out to cordon the area off, no matter what,” Nyberg said. “This is the Malmö police district, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid it is,” Wallander said. “But I’ll phone them even so.”

“My handbag’s still in the car,” Höglund said. “Can I get it?”

“No,” Nyberg said. “It’ll have to stay there. And the engine can keep running.”

Höglund got back into Nyberg’s car. Wallander called the police in Malmö. Nyberg had wandered off to the side of the road to urinate. Wallander looked up and contemplated the stars while he waited to be connected.

It was 3:04 in the morning.

Malmö answered. Wallander saw Nyberg zipping up his fly.

Then the night exploded in a flash of white. The telephone was ripped from Wallander’s hand.