The Man Who Smiled

Chapter 8

The painful silence.

Afterward, Wallander recalled the explosion as a large space with all the oxygen squeezed out, the sudden arrival of a strange vacuum on the E65 in the middle of a November night, a black hole in which even the blustery wind had been silenced. It happened very quickly, but memory has the ability to stretch things out and in the end he remembered the explosion as a series of events, each one rapidly replacing the other but nevertheless distinct.

What surprised him most was that his telephone was lying on the wet asphalt just a few meters away. That was the most incomprehensible part, not the fact that his car was enveloped by intense flames and seemed to be melting away.

Nyberg had reacted quickest. He grabbed hold of Wallander and dragged him away, possibly afraid there would be another explosion from the blazing car. Höglund had flung herself out of Nyberg’s car and sprinted to the other side of the road. Perhaps she had screamed, but it seemed to Wallander he might have been the one to scream, or Nyberg, or none of them; perhaps he had imagined it.

On the other hand, he thought he should have screamed. He should have screamed and yelled and cursed the fact that he had gone back to duty, that Sten Torstensson had been to see him in Skagen and dragged him into a murder investigation he should never have been involved in. He should never have gone back, he should have signed the documents Björk had prepared for him, attended the press conference and allowed himself to be interviewed for a feature in Swedish Police magazine, on the back page no doubt, and gotten out of it all.

In the confusion following the explosion there had been a moment of painful silence when Wallander had been able to think perfectly clearly as he looked at the telephone lying in the road and his old Peugeot going up in flames on the hard shoulder. His thoughts had been lucid and he had been able to reach a conclusion: the first indication that the double murder of the lawyers, the mine in Mrs. Dunér’s garden, and now the attempted murder of himself had a pattern, not itself clear as of yet and with many locked doors still to open.

But a conclusion had been possible and unavoidable, amid the chaos, and it had been a terrifying one: somebody thought Wallander knew something they did not want him to know. He was convinced that whoever had put the explosives in the gas tank had not planned to kill Ann-Britt Höglund. That merely revealed another aspect of the people who lurked in the shadows: they didn’t care about human life.

Wallander recognized, with a mixture of fear and despair, that these people who hid in cars with stolen license plates were wrong. He could have made an honest public statement that it was all based on a mistake and that he knew nothing about what lay behind the murders, or the mine, or even the suicide of the accountant Lars Borman, if indeed it was suicide.

The truth was that he knew nothing. But while his car was still ablaze and Nyberg and Höglund were directing inquisitive late-night drivers away from the scene and calling the police and firefighters, he had continued to stand in the middle of the road, thinking things through to their conclusion. There was only one starting point for the awful mistake of thinking he knew something, and that was Sten’s visit to Skagen. The postcard from Finland had not been sufficient. They had followed Sten to Jutland, they had been there among the dunes, hidden in the fog. They had been watching the art museum where Wallander had drunk coffee with Sten, but they had not been close enough to hear what was said, for if they had been, they would have known that Wallander knew nothing, since Sten knew nothing either; the whole business was no more than suspicions. But they had not been able to take the risk. That’s why his old Peugeot was burning by the side of the road; and that’s why the neighbor’s dog had been barking while they had been talking to the Forsdahls.

The painful silence, he thought. That’s what’s enveloping me, and there is one more conclusion to draw, perhaps the most vital one of all. For it means we have made a breakthrough in this awful case, we have found a point around which we can all gather and say: this is our starting point. It might not take us to the Holy Grail, but it might lead to something else that we need to find.

The chronology was right, he thought. It started with that muddy field where Gustaf Torstensson met his end almost a month ago. Everything else, including the execution of his son, must derive from what happened that night, when he was on his way home from Farnholm Castle. We know that now, which means we now know what we should be doing.

He bent to retrieve his telephone. The emergency number for the Malmö police was staring him in the face. He turned off the phone and established that it had not been damaged by the blast or by being dropped on the road.

The fire engine had arrived. He watched as they put out the flames, covering the car with white foam. Nyberg appeared at his side. Wallander could see that he was sweating and afraid.

“That was a close call,” he said.

“Yes,” Wallander said. “But not close enough.”

Nyberg looked at him in surprise.

At that moment a senior officer from the Malmö police came up to Wallander. They had met before but Wallander could not remember the man’s name.

“I gather it was your car that got torched,” he said. “Rumor had it you’d left the force. But you come back, and your car gets set on fire.”

Wallander was not sure if the man was being ironic, but he decided he wasn’t, that it was a natural reaction. At the same time he wanted to ensure that there were no misunderstandings.

“I was on my way home with a colleague,” he said.

“Ann-Britt Höglund,” said the man from Malmö. “I’ve just spoken to her. She passed me on to you.”

Well done, Wallander thought. The fewer people who comment, the easier it is to keep the thing under control. She’s learning fast.

“I had the feeling something wasn’t as it should be,” Wallander said. “We stopped and got out. I called my colleague Nyberg here. The car blew up almost as soon as he got here.”

The senior officer from Malmö eyed him skeptically. “This is the official version, I assume,” he said.

“Well, the car will have to be examined,” Wallander said. “But nobody’s been hurt. For the moment you can report just what I said. I’ll ask Björk to get in touch with you—he’s the chief of police in Ystad. Forgive me, but I’m afraid I can’t remember your name.”

“Roslund.”

Wallander remembered.

“We’ll cordon the scene off,” Roslund said. “I’ll leave a car here.”

Wallander checked his watch. It was 4:15.

“I think it’s time for us to go home to bed.”

They all got into Nyberg’s car. Nobody had anything to say. They dropped Höglund outside her house, then Nyberg drove Wallander home to Mariagatan.

“We’ll have to get to grips with this a few hours from now,” Wallander said before getting out. “We can’t put it off.”

“I’ll be at the station by seven,” Nyberg said.

“Eight will be soon enough. Thanks for your help.”

Wallander had a quick shower, then stretched himself out between the sheets. He was still awake at 6:00. He got up again shortly before 7:00. He knew it was going to be a long day. He wondered how he would cope.

Thursday, November 4, began with a sensation.

Björk came to work unshaven. This had never happened before. But when the door of the conference room was closed at 8:05, everybody could see that Björk had more stubble than anybody could have imagined. Wallander knew that he was still not going to have the opportunity to talk to Björk about what had happened before his visit to Farnholm Castle. But it could wait: they had more important things to figure out first.

Björk slapped his hands down on the table and looked around the room.

“What’s going on?” he demanded to know. “I get a phone call at 5:30 in the morning from a senior officer in Malmö who wants to know if they should send their own forensic people to examine Inspector Wallander’s burned-out car that’s standing near Svedala on the E65, or were we going to send Nyberg and his team? There I am in my kitchen, it’s 5:30 in the morning, wondering what in the world I should say because I haven’t the slightest idea what’s going on. What happened? Has Kurt been injured or even killed in a crash that ended with his car going up in flames? I know nothing at all. But Roslund from Malmö is a sensible man who is able to fill me in. I am grateful to be told roughly what’s been going on. But the fact is that I’m mostly in the dark.”

“We have a double murder to solve,” Wallander said. “We have an attempted murder on Mrs. Dunér to keep us occupied. Until yesterday we had next to nothing to go on. The investigation was up against a brick wall, we all agree on that, I think. Then we hear about these threatening letters. We discover a name and a link with a hotel in Helsingborg. Ann-Britt and I go there to investigate. That could have waited until today, I admit. We pay a visit to some people who knew Borman. They are able to supply us with useful information. On the way to Helsingborg, Ann-Britt notices that we’re being followed. When we get to Helsingborg we stop, and manage to get one or two relevant license plate numbers. Martinsson starts tracking down those numbers. While Ann-Britt and I are talking to Mr. and Mrs. Forsdahl, who used to run the Linden Hotel, which is closed down now, somebody plants explosives in our gas tank. Purely by chance, on the way home I get suspicious. I get Martinsson to phone Nyberg. Shortly after he gets there the car blows up. Nobody is hurt. This happens outside Svedala, in the Malmö police district. That’s what happened.”

Nobody spoke when Wallander finished. It seemed to him he might just as well continue. He could give them the whole picture, everything he had thought about as he stood there in the road while his car was burning before his very eyes.

The moment of painful silence.

Also the moment of clarity.

He reported scrupulously on his thoughts, and immediately noticed that his deductions won the meeting’s approval. His colleagues were experienced police officers. They could distinguish between sensible theories, and a fantastic but nevertheless plausible series of events.

“I can see three lines of attack,” Wallander said in conclusion. “We can concentrate on Gustaf Torstensson and his clients. We must delve deeply but rapidly into just what he was up to those last five years while he devoted himself more or less exclusively to financial advice and similar matters. But to save time we should start off with the last three years during which time, according to Mrs. Dunér, he started to change. I would also like somebody to have a word with the Asian woman who cleans the office. Mrs. Dunér has her address. She might have seen or heard something.”

“Does she speak Swedish?” Svedberg said.

“If not we’ll have to arrange for an interpreter,” Wallander said.

“I’ll talk to her,” Höglund said.

Wallander took a sip of his cold coffee before going on. “The second line of attack is Lars Borman. I have a suspicion that he can still be of help to us, even though he’s dead.”

“We’ll need the support of our colleagues in Malmö,” Björk said. “Klagshamn is in their territory.”

“I would rather not,” Wallander said. “It would be quicker to deal with it ourselves. As you keep pointing out, there are all kinds of administrative problems when police officers from different districts try to help each other.”

While Björk pondered his response, Wallander took the opportunity to finish what he had to say. “The third line is to find out who’s following us. Perhaps I should ask whether anybody else has had a car trailing them?”

Martinsson and Svedberg shook their heads.

“There’s every reason for you to keep your eyes peeled,” Wallander said. “I could be wrong, it might not just be me they’re after.”

“Mrs. Dunér is being guarded,” Martinsson said. “And in my view you ought to be as well.”

“No,” Wallander said. “That’s not necessary.”

“I can’t go along with that,” Björk said firmly. “In the first place you must never go out on duty alone. And furthermore you must be armed.”

“Never,” Wallander said.

“You’ll do as I say,” Björk said.

Wallander didn’t bother to argue. He knew what he was going to do anyway.

They divided the work between them. Martinsson and Höglund would go to the lawyers’ offices and begin sifting through the Gustaf Torstensson files. Svedberg would do a thorough search into the cars that had been following them to Helsingborg. Wallander would concentrate on Borman.

“For some days now I have had the feeling that this is all very urgent,” he said. “I don’t know why. But let’s get a move on.”

The meeting broke up and they went their different ways. Wallander could sense the resolve in everybody’s attitude, and he noted that Höglund was coping well with her exhaustion.

He got another cup of coffee and went back to his office to work out what to do next. Nyberg stuck his head in the door and announced that he was about to set off for the burned-out car at Svedala.

“I take it you want me to see if there’s any similarity to the explosion in Mrs. Dunér’s garden,” he said.

“Yes,” Wallander said.

“I don’t expect to be able to establish that,” Nyberg said, “but I’ll give it a try.”

Nyberg went on his way and Wallander called reception.

“It’s awful, these terrible things happening,” Ebba said.

“Nobody was hurt,” Wallander said. “That’s the main thing.” He came raight to the point.

“Can you get hold of a car for me, please? I have to go to Malmö in a few minutes. Then I’d like you to phone Farnholm Castle and get them to send me a copy of their overview of Alfred Harderberg’s business empire. I did have a file but it got burned up in the car.”

“I’d better not tell them that,” Ebba said.

“Maybe not. But I need that file as quickly as they can manage it.”

He hung up. Then a thought struck him. He went down the corridor to Svedberg’s office, and found him just starting to go through Martinsson’s notes about the cars from the previous night.

“Kurt Ström,” he said. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

Svedberg thought for a moment. “A police officer in Malmö? Or am I wrong?”

“That’s right,” Wallander said. “I’d like you to do something for me when you’ve finished with the cars. Ström left the force many years ago. There was a rumor that he resigned before he was going to be fired. Try and find out what happened. Be discreet.”

Svedberg made a note of the name. “Could I ask why? Does it have anything to do with the lawyers? The car that got blown up? The mine in the garden?”

“Everything has to do with that,” Wallander said. “Ström is working now as a top security guard at Farnholm Castle. Gustaf Torstensson had been there the night he died.”

“I’ll look into it,” Svedberg said.

Wallander went back to his office and sat down at his desk. He was very tired. He didn’t even have the strength to think about how close he and Höglund had been to getting killed. Later, he thought. Not now. Borman dead is more important just now than Wallander alive.

He looked up the Malmöhus county offices in the phone book. He knew from past experience that it was located in Lund. He dialed the number and got an answer immediately. He asked the operator to put him through to one of the bosses in the finance department.

“They’re not available today,” the operator said.

“Surely there must be somebody available?”

“They’re in a budget meeting all day,” the girl explained patiently.

“Where?”

“At the conference center in Höör,” the girl said. “But there’s no point calling there.”

“What’s the name of the man in charge of auditing? Is he there as well?”

“His name’s Thomas Rundstedt,” the girl said. “Yes, he’s in Höör too. Perhaps you could try again tomorrow?”

“Many thanks for your help,” Wallander said, and hung up.

He had no intention of waiting until the next day. He got yet another cup of coffee and thought through all he knew about Lars Borman. He was interrupted by Ebba, who called to say there was a car waiting for him outside the police station.

It was 9:15. A clear autumn day, blue skies, and Wallander noted that the wind had died down. He found himself looking forward to his drive.

It was just turning 10:00 when he drove up to the conference center near Höör. He parked the car and went to the reception desk. A notice on a blackboard and easel informed him that the big conference hall was occupied by the County Offices Budget Conference. A red-haired man behind the desk gave Wallander a friendly smile.

“I’m trying to get hold of some people taking part in the budget conference,” he said.

“They’ve just had their coffee break,” the receptionist replied. “They’ll be in session until lunch at 12:30. I’m afraid it’s not possible to disturb them before then.”

Wallander produced his police ID. “I’m afraid it’s sometimes necessary to disturb people,” he said. “I’ll write a note for you to take in.”

He pulled over a notepad and started writing.

“Has something happened?” the receptionist said, sounding worried.

“Nothing too serious. But it can’t wait, I’m afraid.” He tore off the page. “It’s for a man called Thomas Rundstedt, the chief auditor,” he said. “I’ll wait here.”

The receptionist went out. Wallander yawned. He felt hungry. He could see a dining room through a half-open door. He went to investigate. There was a plate of cheese sandwiches standing on a table. He took one and ate it. Then another. Then he went back to the sofa in reception.

It was another five minutes before the receptionist reappeared. He was accompanied by a man Wallander assumed was the person he was looking for, Mr. Rundstedt.

The man was tall and broad-shouldered. It occurred to Wallander that he had always thought accountants were short and thin. The man facing him could have been a boxer. He was also bald, and eyed Wallander up and down suspiciously.

“My name’s Kurt Wallander and I’m a detective inspector with the Ystad police,” he said, reaching out his hand. “I take it you’re Thomas Rundstedt and auditor-in-chief at the Malmöhus county offices.”

The man nodded abruptly. “What’s this all about?” he said. “We specifically asked not to be disturbed. The financial affairs of the county offices are not to be treated lightly. Especially just now.”

“I’m sure they’re not,” Wallander said. “I won’t keep you long. Does the name Lars Borman mean anything to you?”

Rundstedt raised his eyebrows in surprise. “That was before my time,” he said. “Borman was an accountant at the county offices, but he’s dead. I’ve only been working there for six months.”

Shit, Wallander thought. I’ve come here for nothing.

“Was there anything else?” Rundstedt said.

“Who did you replace?” Wallander asked.

“Martin Oscarsson,” Rundstedt said. “He retired.”

“And he was Lars Borman’s boss?”

“Yes.”

“Where can I get hold of him?”

“He lives in Limhamn. On the Sound. In Möllevägen. I can’t remember the number. I assume he’ll be in the phone book.”

“That’s all, thank you very much,” Wallander said. “I apologize for disturbing you. Do you know how Borman died, by the way?”

“They say it was suicide,” Rundstedt said.

“Good luck with the budget,” Wallander said. “Will you be raising the council tax?”

“Who knows?” Rundstedt said, and went back to his meeting.

Wallander waved a salute to the receptionist and went back to his car. He called directory assistance and wrote down Martin Oscarsson’s address, Möllevägen 32.

He was there before noon.

The house was stone-built, around the turn of the century—it said 1912 over the big entrance. He went through the gate and rang the doorbell. The door was opened by an old man in a tracksuit. Wallander explained who he was, showed his ID, and was invited in. In contrast to the dreary facade, the house inside was filled with light-colored furniture, had pretty curtains in pastel shades, and had large, uncluttered spaces. Music could be heard from another room. Wallander thought he recognized the voice of Ernst Rolf, the popular variety artist. Oscarsson showed him into the living room and asked if Wallander might like a cup of coffee. He declined.

“I’ve come to talk to you about Lars Borman,” he said. “I was given your name by Thomas Rundstedt. About a year ago, shortly before you retired, Borman died. The official explanation was suicide.”

“Why do you want to talk about Lars Borman?” Oscarsson said, and Wallander noted the unfriendly tone in his voice.

“His name has come up in a criminal investigation we’re dealing with,” Wallander said.

“What sort of criminal investigation?”

Wallander decided that he might as well not beat around the bush. “You’ll have seen in the newspapers that a lawyer in Ystad was murdered a few days ago,” he said. “The questions I need to ask are about Borman’s connection with that investigation.”

Oscarsson stared at him for some time before replying. “Although I’m an old man, tired but perhaps not yet quite finished, I admit to being curious. I’ll answer your questions, if I can.”

“Borman was an accountant at the county offices,” Wallander said. “What exactly did he do? And how long had he been working there?”

“An accountant is an accountant,” Oscarsson said. “The job title tells you what he did. He kept the books, in this case the county council books. He checked that all the regulations were being observed, that budgets laid down by the appropriate authority were not exceeded. He also checked to make sure people were paid what they should be paid. You have to remember that a county office is like a large business, or rather an industrial empire associated with a small duchy. Its main responsibility is health spending, but it oversees a lot of other things as well. Education, culture, and so on. Borman wasn’t our only accountant, of course. He came to the county offices from the municipal corporation at the beginning of the Eighties.”

“Was he a good accountant?”

“He was the best accountant I ever came across.”

“Why so?”

“He worked quickly but with no loss of accuracy. He was very involved in his work and was always coming up with suggestions for how we could save money for the council.”

“I’ve heard it said that he was a particularly honest man,” Wallander said.

“Of course he was,” Oscarsson said. “But that’s not exactly earth-shattering—accountants are mostly honest. There are exceptions, of course, but they could never survive in the kind of environment you get at county offices.”

Wallander thought for a moment before continuing.

“And out of the blue he committed suicide,” he said. “Was that unexpected?”

“It certainly was unexpected,” Oscarsson said.

Looking back, Wallander was never quite sure what had happened when those words were spoken. There was a slight change of tone in Oscarsson’s voice, a faint trace of doubt, perhaps reluctance, that made itself felt in the way he replied. As far as Wallander was concerned, the conversation changed character at that moment, and straightforward questions and answers were replaced by alertness.

“You worked closely with Borman,” Wallander said. “You must have known him well. What was he like as a man?”

“We were never friends. He lived for his work and for his family. He had an integrity that nobody ever questioned. And if anybody came too close, he would withdraw into his shell.”

“Could he have been seriously ill?”

“That I don’t know.”

“You must have thought about his death a lot.”

“It was a very unpleasant time. It cast a shadow over my final months at work before I retired.”

“Can you tell me about his last day at work?”

“He died on a Sunday, so the last time I saw him was on the Friday afternoon. There was a meeting of the financial heads of the county council. It was quite a lively meeting, unfortunately.”

“In what way?”

“There were arguments about how a particular problem should be resolved.”

“Which problem was that?”

Oscarsson looked hard at Wallander. “I’m not sure I should answer that question,” he said.

“Why not?”

“In the first place I’m retired now. And also there are laws regarding those aspects of public administration that are confidential.”

“We have a right-of-access principle in Sweden,” Wallander said.

“But that doesn’t apply to specific cases which for various reasons are deemed unsuitable to be made public.”

“On the last day Borman was at work, he was at a meeting with the finance heads of the county council,” he said. “Is that right?”

Oscarsson nodded.

“And at that meeting a problem was discussed, sometimes heatedly, which was later designated unsuitable, et cetera. In other words, the minutes of that meeting are locked away somewhere. Correct?”

“No, not correct,” Oscarsson said. “There were no minutes.”

“In which case it can’t have been an official meeting,” Wallander said. “If it had been, minutes would have to have been taken and kept, and in due course submitted for approval and signed.”

“It was a confidential discussion,” Oscarsson said. “But it’s all water under the bridge now, and I don’t think I’m going to answer any more questions. My memory isn’t what it was. I’ve forgotten what happened.”

Wallander thought, Oscarsson has forgotten nothing. What was it they were discussing that Friday?

“I can’t oblige you to answer my questions, of course,” Wallander said. “But I can resort to a public prosecutor who can. Or I can go to the executive committee of the county council. I can do all kinds of things to find out what the problem was, it’s just that they would all take time and I don’t have that luxury.”

“I’m not going to answer any more questions,” Oscarsson said, getting to his feet.

Wallander remained seated. “Sit down,” he said firmly. “I have a suggestion.”

Oscarsson hesitated, but then sat down again.

“Let’s do what you did that Friday afternoon,” Wallander said. “I’m not going to make any notes. Let’s call this a confidential conversation. There are no witnesses to say that it ever took place. I can give you my word that I shall never refer to you, regardless of what you’re going to say.”

Oscarsson thought over the proposal. “Rundstedt knows you’ve come to see me.”

“He doesn’t know what about,” Wallander said.

He waited while Oscarsson struggled with his conscience. But he knew what would happen. Oscarsson was a wise old bird.

“I’ll go along with your suggestion,” he said eventually, “but I won’t guarantee I’ll be able to answer all your questions.”

“Be able to or be willing to?”

“That’s a matter for me and me alone,” Oscarsson said.

Wallander nodded. They had a deal.

“The problem,” Wallander said. “What was it?”

“Malmöhus County Council had been swindled,” Oscarsson said. “We didn’t know at the time how much money was involved, but we do now.”

“How much?”

“Four million kronor. Of taxpayers’ money.”

“What had happened?”

“So that it makes sense, I’ll start by sketching in how a county council works,” Oscarsson said. “Our annual budget runs to several million kronor, handled by a variety of departments and activities. Financial supervision is centralized and computerized. Safety devices are built in at various levels to protect against embezzlement and other illegal practices. There are even precautions checking what the top executives do, but I don’t need to go into detail about them in this case. What it’s important to understand, though, is that there is a constant, continuous audit of all payments. Anyone who wants to defraud a county council is going to have to be very familiar with methods of juggling sums of money between accounts. Anyway, that’s the background in brief.”

“I think I understand,” Wallander said.

“What happened made it clear that our precautions were inadequate,” Oscarsson said. “They’ve been radically altered since then. A similar fraud wouldn’t be possible now.”

“Take your time,” Wallander said. “I’d like to have as much detail as possible about what happened.”

“There are things we still don’t know,” Oscarsson said. “But what we do know is this: as you may be aware, the whole administration of public services in Sweden has undergone far-reaching changes in recent years. In many ways you could say it’s undergone an operation without quite enough anesthetic. Those of us civil servants from the older generation especially have found it hard to cope with the enormous changes. The reforms are still not finished, and it will be some time before we can make a judgment on all the consequences. The bottom line is that public authorities should be managed in the same way as business enterprises, taking market forces and competition into account. Some public authorities have been turned into limited companies, and others have been sent out to tender from the private sector. All of them have had to satisfy increased demands for efficiency. One of the outcomes, as far as we were concerned, was that a company had to be formed in order to handle all the purchases made by the council. Having the county council as a customer is one of the best things that can happen to a private enterprise, whether it’s lawnmowers or laundry detergent they’re manufacturing or selling. In connection with the formation of that company we hired a firm of consultants with a wide-ranging mandate, one item being to evaluate the applications for the newly established top executive posts that had been advertised. And that is where the fraud took place.”

“What is the name of the firm of consultants?”

“They’re called STRUFAB. I can’t remember what the acronym stands for.”

“Who was behind the firm?”

“It belonged to a division of the investment company Smeden, which is a listed company.”

“Is there one principal owner?”

“As far as I know, both Volvo and Skanska had large shareholdings in Smeden at that time. It might be different now, though.”

“We can come back to that,” Wallander said. “Let’s get back to the fraud. What happened?”

“We had a series of meetings in late summer and early autumn to put the finishing touches on the formation of the company. The consultants were very efficient and our lawyers gave them high praise, as did the financial supremos at the county council. We even went so far as to propose that STRUFAB should be given a long-term contract by the council.”

“Who were the individual consultants?”

“Egil Holmberg and Stefan Fjällsjö. On a few occasions a third one was there as well, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten his name.”

“And all of these people turned out to be swindlers?”

Oscarsson’s reply surprised him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “The fraud was carried out in such a way that, in the end, it wasn’t possible to put a finger on any one individual. Nobody was guilty. But the money had disappeared.”

“That sounds pretty odd,” Wallander said. “What actually happened?”

“We have to go back to the afternoon of Friday, August 14, 1992,” Oscarsson said. “That’s when the scam was set up, and carried out in a very short period of time. As far as we could determine with hindsight, it was all very carefully planned. We met the consultants in a conference room at the Finance Unit. We started at one p.m. and thought we’d be finished by five. When the meeting started, Holmberg announced that he had to leave at four, but that it shouldn’t have any effect on the meeting. At 1:55 the Finance Director’s secretary came in to announce that there was an important phone call for Fjällsjö. I think it was said to be from the Ministry of Technology. Fjällsjö apologized and went out with the secretary in order to take the call in her office. She explained later that she intended to leave the room so that Fjällsjö could take the call in private and he told her that the call would last for at least ten minutes. What happened next we can’t be absolutely sure, but we are clear on the outline. Fjällsjö laid the receiver on the desk—we don’t know where the call came from, except that it wasn’t from the Ministry of Technology. He then went from the secretary’s office through the connecting door to the finance director’s office, and authorized the transfer of four million kronor to a business account at Handelsbanken in Stockholm. It was described specifically as a consultancy fee. No countersignature was required, so there was no problem. The authorization referred to a contract number with the nonexistent consultancy firm, which I seem to remember was called Sisyphus. Fjällsjö confirmed the transfer in writing, forging the signature of the finance director and using the appropriate form. Then he keyed his authorization into the computer. He put the hard copy in the interoffice mail, then went back to the secretary’s office, continued talking to whoever it was at the other end of the line, and hung up when the secretary returned. That was the end of the first stage of the fraud. Fjällsjö returned to the conference room. Less than a quarter of an hour had passed.”

Wallander was listening intently. Because he was not making notes, he was afraid of forgetting details.

Oscarsson continued: “Just before four Holmberg made his apologies and left. We realized afterward that he didn’t leave the building, but went down to the next floor where the chief clerk had his office. I should perhaps mention that it was empty, because the chief clerk was attending our meeting. He didn’t usually do so, but on this occasion the consultants had specifically asked for him to be present. In other words, the whole thing was meticulously prepared. Holmberg hacked into his computer, entered the invented contract number, and inserted an authorization for a payment of four million kronor back-dated a week. He phoned the Handelsbanken head office in Stockholm and requested payment. And then he sat back and waited calmly for the response. Ten minutes later Handelsbanken called back to check. He took the call and confirmed the transaction. There was only one thing left to do: he called the county council’s own bank and authorized the payment, and then left the premises. Early the following Monday morning, somebody collected the money from Handelsbanken in Stockholm. The person was authorized by Sisyphus to sign on behalf of the company, and claimed to be called Rickard Edén. We have reason to believe that it was Fjällsjö who collected the money, using this alias. It was about a week before the fraud was discovered. The police were called in, and it did not take long to work out what must have happened. But there was no proof, naturally. Needless to say, Fjällsjö and Holmberg were vociferous in denying all knowledge. We severed all links with the consultancy firm, but we were unable to get any further. In the end, the public prosecutor wrote the whole thing off and we managed to hush it up. Everybody agreed that was what we had to do—apart from one person.”

“Borman?”

Oscarsson nodded slowly. “He was truly upset. We all were, of course, but Borman took it hardest. He seemed to take it personally because we weren’t prepared to force the public prosecutor and the police to follow the case through. I suppose he took it so badly because he thought we’d failed in our duty.”

“Did he take it badly enough to commit suicide?”

“I believe so.”

Some progress, Wallander thought. But where does the law firm in Ystad fit in? They must be involved, in light of Borman’s letters.

“Do you know what Holmberg and Fjällsjö are doing now?”

“Their consultancy firm changed its name. That’s all I know. We warned county councils the length and breadth of the country about them, discreetly to be sure.”

“You said that the consultancy firm was part of a bigger concern, an investment company. But you didn’t know who owned it. Who was chairman of the board of Smeden?”

“From what I’ve read in the newspapers, Smeden has been transformed during the last year or so. It’s been split up, several sectors have been sold off, and new elements have been acquired. It might not be going too far to say that Smeden has quite a poor reputation. Volvo have sold their shares. I forget who bought them. But somebody at the stock exchange could tell you.”

“You’ve been a great help,” Wallander said.

“You won’t forget our agreement?”

“I never forget anything,” Wallander said. “But tell me, did it ever occur to you that Borman might have been murdered?”

Oscarsson stared at him in evident unease.

“No,” he said. “Never. Why on earth would I have thought that?”

“I was only asking,” Wallander said. “Many thanks for your help. I might need to be in touch again.”

Oscarsson stood on the steps, watching him leave. Wallander was now so exhausted he wanted nothing more than to lie down in the car and go to sleep, but he forced himself to think ahead. The natural thing would have been to return to Höör, call Thomas Rundstedt out from his budget conference, and ask him some quite different questions.

He set off for Malmö while allowing a decision to mature in his mind, then he stopped on the hard shoulder and called the Malmö police. He asked for Roslund, gave his name, and said he had an urgent matter to discuss. It took the operator less than a minute to find Roslund.

“It’s Wallander here, from Ystad,” he said. “We met last night.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Roslund said. “They told me you had something urgent to discuss.”

“I’m in Malmö,” Wallander said. “I’d like to ask you a favor.”

“I’m listening.”

“About a year ago, at the beginning of September, the first or second Sunday in the month, a man called Lars Borman hanged himself in a clearing in the woods at Klagshamn. There must be an incident report, some notes about death by unnatural causes, and a postmortem report. I’d be very grateful if you could dig them out for me. If at all possible I’d like to get in touch with one of the officers who answered the call and took the body down. Do you think this might be possible?”

“What was the name again?”

Wallander spelled it out.

“I don’t know how many suicides we get per year,” Roslund said. “I don’t recall this one. But I’ll look for the documents and see if one of the officers called out is in today.”

Wallander gave him his cell phone number.

“I’ll drive to Klagshamn in the meantime,” he said.

It was 2:00. He tried in vain to shake off his exhaustion, but was forced to give in and turned off onto a road that he knew led to an old quarry. He switched off the engine and pulled his jacket tightly around him. A minute later he was asleep.

He woke up with a start. He was freezing cold and didn’t know where he was at first. Something had strayed into his consciousness, something he had dreamed, but he couldn’t remember what it was. A feeling of depression gripped him when he looked around at the gray landscape on every side. It was 2:35, so he had been asleep for half an hour. He felt as if he had been roused from a long period of unconsciousness.

That is about as close as one can get to the greatest loneliness of all, he thought. Being all alone in the world. The final human being, forgotten about.

He was roused from his thoughts by the phone ringing. It was Roslund.

“You sound half asleep,” he said. “Have you been taking a nap in the car?”

“Not at all,” Wallander said. “I have a bit of a cold.”

“I’ve found the stuff you asked for,” Roslund said. “I have the papers here on my desk. I also have the name of the police officer: Magnus Staffansson. He was in the car that was called out when a jogger found a body hanging from a birch tree. No doubt he can explain how a man can hang himself in a birch, of all trees. Where would you like to meet him?”

Wallander could feel his exhaustion slipping away. “At the slip road for Klagshamn,” he said.

“He’ll be there in a quarter of an hour,” Roslund said. “By the way, I spoke to Sven Nyberg a few minutes ago. He hasn’t found anything in your car.”

“I’m not surprised,” Wallander said.

“You won’t have to see the wreck when you drive back home,” Roslund said. “We’ve just arranged for it to be towed away.”

“Thanks for your help.”

He drove straight to Klagshamn and parked at the meeting place. After a few minutes a police car drove up. Wallander had gotten out of his car and was walking up and down; Magnus Staffansson was in uniform, and saluted. Wallander responded with an awkward wave. They sat in Wallander’s car. Staffansson handed over a plastic file containing photocopies.

“I’ll glance through this,” Wallander said. “Meanwhile, you can try to remember what happened.”

“Suicide is something you’d prefer to forget,” Staffansson said, in a thick Malmö accent. Wallander smiled to hear how he too used to speak, before his move to Ystad had changed his dialect.

He read swiftly through the terse reports, the postmortem document, and the record of the decision to abandon the investigation. There were no suspicious circumstances.

I wonder, Wallander thought. Then he put the file on the shelf on the dashboard and turned to Staffansson.

“I think it would be a good idea to take a look at the place where it happened. Can you remember how to get there?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s a few kilometers outside the village. I’ll go first.”

They left Klagshamn and drove south along the coast. A container ship was on its way through the Sound. A bank of clouds hovered over Copenhagen. The housing estates petered out and soon they were surrounded by fields. A tractor made its way slowly over one of them.

They were there almost before he knew it. There was a stretch of deciduous woods to the left of the road. Wallander pulled up behind Staffansson’s police car and got out. The path was wet and he thought he better put on his rubber boots, but on his way to the trunk to get them he realized they had been in his Peugeot.

Staffansson pointed to a birch tree, bigger than the rest. “That’s where he was hanging,” he said.

“Tell me about it,” Wallander said.

“Most of it’s in the report,” Staffansson said.

“It’s always better from the horse’s mouth.”

“It was a Sunday morning,” Staffansson began. “About eight. We’d been called out to calm down an angry passenger on the morning ferry from Dragør who claimed he had gotten food poisoning from the breakfast during the crossing. That was when we got the emergency call: a man hanging from a tree. We got a location and headed there. A couple of joggers had come across him. They were in shock, of course, but one of them had run to the house on the hill over there and called the police. We did what we’re trained to do and took him down, as it sometimes happens that they’re still alive. Then the ambulance arrived, the CID took over, and eventually it was put down as a suicide. That’s all I can remember. Oh, I forgot to say he had gotten there on a bike. It was lying here among the bushes.”

Wallander examined the tree while listening to what Staffansson had to say. “What kind of a rope was it?” he said.

“It looked like a hawser from a boat, about as thick as my thumb.”

“Do you remember the knot?”

“It was an ordinary running noose.”

“How did he do it?”

Staffansson stared at him, bewildered.

“It’s not all that easy to hang yourself,” Wallander said. “Did he stand on something? Did he climb up the tree?”

Staffansson pointed at the trunk. “He probably pushed off from that bulge in the trunk,” he said. “That’s what we guessed. There was nothing he could have stood on.”

Wallander nodded. The postmortem made it clear Borman had choked to death. His neck was not broken. He had been dead for an hour at most when the police arrived.

“Can you remember anything else?” he asked.

“Such as what?”

“Only you can answer that.”

“You do what you have to do,” Staffansson said. “You write your report and then you try to forget it as soon as you can.”

Wallander knew how it was. There’s an atmosphere of depression about a suicide unlike anything else. He thought of all the occasions when he himself had been forced to deal with suicides.

He went over what Staffansson had said. It lay like a sort of filter over what he had already read in the report. But he knew that there was something that did not add up.

He thought of all he had heard about Borman: even if the descriptions were incomplete, even if there had been some murky areas, it seemed clear that Borman had been in every way a well-organized sort of person. And yet when he had decided to take his own life he had bicycled out to some woods and chosen a tree that was highly unsuitable for what he planned to do. That already told Wallander there was something fishy about Borman’s death. But there was something else. He could not put his finger on it at first, but then he stared down at the ground a few meters from the tree.

The bicycle, he thought. That’s telling quite a different story.

Staffansson had lit a cigarette and was pacing up and down to keep warm.

“The bicycle,” Wallander said. “There are no details about it in your reports.”

“It was a very good one,” Staffansson said. “Ten gears, good condition. Dark blue, as I remember.”

“Show me exactly where it was.”

Staffansson pointed straight at the spot.

“How was it lying?” Wallander asked.

“Well, what can one say? It was just lying on the ground.”

“It hadn’t fallen over?”

“There was a stand, but it hadn’t been opened.”

“Are you sure?”

He thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said, “I’m certain.”

“So he had just let the bike fall down any which way? More or less like a kid does when he’s in a hurry?”

“Exactly,” Staffansson said. “It had been flung down. As if he was in a hurry to get it all over with.”

Wallander nodded thoughtfully. “Just one more thing,” he said. “Ask your colleague if he can confirm that the stand hadn’t been opened up.”

“Is that so important?”

“Yes,” Wallander said. “It’s much more important than you think. Call me if your colleague disagrees.”

“The stand wasn’t opened,” Staffansson said. “I’m absolutely certain.”

“Call me anyway,” Wallander said. “Now let’s get out of here. Many thanks for your help.”

Wallander started the drive back to Ystad, thinking about Borman. An accountant at the County Council. A man who would never have just tossed his bicycle to the ground, not even in extremis.

One more step forward, Wallander thought. I am onto something without quite knowing what it is. Somewhere between Borman and the law firm in Ystad there is a link. I need to find it.

He had passed the spot where his car had blown up before he noticed. He turned off at Rydsgård and had a late lunch at the local inn. He was the only person in the dining room. He really must call Linda that night, no matter how tired he was. Then he would write to Baiba.

He was back at the station in Ystad by 5:00. Ebba informed him that there was not going to be a meeting—everybody was busy and didn’t have time to advise their colleagues that they had nothing of significance to advise them about. They would meet the following morning instead, at 8:00.

“You look dreadful,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll get some sleep tonight.”

He went to his office and shut the door behind him. There were several notes on his desk, but nothing so important that it could not wait until morning.

He hung up his jacket and spent half an hour writing a summary of what he had done during the day. Then he dropped his pen and leaned back in his chair.

We really must break through now, he thought. We just have to find the missing link.

He had just put on his jacket when there was a knock on the door and Svedberg came in. Wallander could see right away that something had happened. Svedberg seemed worried.

“Have you got a minute?” he said.

“What happened?”

Svedberg looked uneasy, and Wallander could feel the last of his patience dwindling away.

“I assume there’s something you want to say since you’ve come here,” he said. “I was just going home.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to go to Simrishamn,” Svedberg said.

“Why?”

“They phoned.”

“Who did?”

“Our colleagues.”

“The police in Simrishamn? What did they want?”

Svedberg seemed to make sure both feet were planted firmly on the ground before replying.

“They’ve had to arrest your father,” he said.

“The Simrishamn police have arrested my father? What for?”

“Apparently he’s been involved in a violent fight,” Svedberg said.

Wallander stared at him for quite a while without speaking. Then he sat down at his desk.

“Tell me again,” he said. “Slowly.”

“They called about an hour ago,” Svedberg said. “Since you were out they spoke to me. A few hours ago they arrested your father. He had started fighting in the liquor store in Simrishamn. It was apparently pretty violent. Then they discovered he was your father. So they called here.”

Wallander sighed, but said nothing. He got slowly to his feet.

“I’ll drive over then,” he said.

“Would you like me to come with you?”

“No thanks.”

Wallander left the station. He didn’t know whether he was coming or going.

An hour later he walked into the police station in Simrishamn.