An Event in Autumn: A Kurt Wallander Mystery

Chapter 25

Even from a distance Wallander could see that there was a faint light in one of the windows. There was no longer any doubt. His suspicion had been correct. Ivar Pihlak had come to the house where he had once lived with his parents.

Wallander drove onto the shoulder and switched off the engine. Apart from that faint light in the window, everything around him was dark. He picked up the flashlight that he always kept under the driver’s seat, and started walking. The wind was lashing at his face. When he reached the house he saw that two lamps in the living room were lit. A kitchen window was broken, and the hasps unfastened. Pihlak had placed a garden chair so that he could climb in. Wallander looked in through the window but could see no sign of him. He decided to enter the house the same way as Pihlak, through the broken kitchen window. He didn’t think he needed to be worried. The man inside the house was old — an old man whose fate had caught up with him.

Wallander climbed in. He stood motionless on the kitchen floor and listened. He regretted that he had driven out to the farm alone. He felt in his jacket pocket for his cell phone, then remembered that he had put it down on the car seat when he had been feeling for the flashlight. He tried to make a decision. Should he stay where he was, or climb out through the window again and ring for Martinson? He opted for the latter, squeezed out through the window and started walking toward the car.

Whether it was an instinctive reaction or if he had heard a noise behind him was something he could never work out afterward, but something hit him on the back of his head before he had time to turn around. Everything went black before he hit the ground.

When he came around he was sitting on a chair. His trousers and shoes were covered in mud. A dull pain was nagging away inside his head.

Standing in front of him was Ivar Pihlak. He had a gun in his hand. An old German army — issue pistol, Wallander could see. Pihlak’s eyes were still blue, but the smile had disappeared. He simply looked tired. Tired, and very old.

Wallander started thinking. Pihlak had been out there in the darkness and had knocked him out. Then the old man had dragged him into the house. Wallander glanced at his watch: half past six. So he hadn’t been unconscious for very long.

He tried to assess the situation. The gun aimed at him was dangerous, despite the fact that the man holding it was eighty-six years old. Wallander must not underestimate Ivar Pihlak. He had knocked him out, and earlier in the day he had stolen a car and driven out to Löderup.

Wallander felt scared. Speak calmly, he told himself quietly. Speak perfectly calmly, listen, don’t complain; simply speak and listen very calmly.

“Why did you come?” asked Pihlak.

His voice sounded sorrowful again, as Wallander had thought it sounded at Ekudden. But he was also tense.

“Why did I come here, or why did I go to where you live?”

“Why did you come? I’m an old man and I shall soon be dead. I don’t want to feel anxious. I’ve been anxious all my life.”

“All I want is to understand what happened,” said Wallander slowly. “A few weeks ago I came out here to look at this house. Possibly to buy it. And then, purely by chance, I stumbled upon a piece of a skeleton, a hand, in the garden.”

“It’s not true,” said Pihlak.

He suddenly sounded irascible and impatient; his voice had become falsetto. Wallander held his breath.

“You lot have always been after me,” said Pihlak. “You’ve been chasing after me for sixty years. Why can’t I be left in peace? I mean, all that’s left is the epilogue: the fact that I shall die.”

“It was pure coincidence. We’re just trying to find out who it was that died.”

“That’s not true. You want to put me in prison. You want me to die in a prison cell.”

“In Sweden all crimes are statute-barred after twenty-five years. Nothing will happen to you, no matter what you say.”

Pihlak pulled a chair toward him and sat down. All the time the pistol was pointed at Wallander.

“I promise not to do anything,” said Wallander. “You’re welcome to tie me up if you want. But put that pistol away.”

Pihlak said nothing. He kept the gun pointing steadily at Wallander’s head.

“I was afraid all those years, of course — afraid that you would find me,” he said after awhile.

“Have you ever been back here? During all those years?”

“Never.”

“Never?”

“Not a single time. I studied to become an engineer at the Chalmers technical university in Gothenburg. Then I worked for an engineering company in Örnsköldsvik until the mid-sixties. Then I moved back to Gothenburg and worked at the Eriksberg shipyard for a few years. Then I went to Malmö — but never here. Never ever. Until I moved into Ekudden.”

Wallander could hear that the man was beginning to hold forth. It was the beginning of the tale he wanted to tell. Wallander tried to surreptitiously change his posture so that the pistol was no longer pointing straight at his face.

“Why couldn’t you leave me in peace?”

“We have to find out who those dead people are. That’s what the police do.”

Ivar Pihlak suddenly burst out laughing.

“I never thought they would be discovered. Not during my lifetime, at least. But they were. Earlier today you stood there in the doorway and started asking me questions. Tell me what you know.”

“We found two skeletons, a man and a woman. Both in their fifties. They’ve been lying there for at least fifty years. Both had been killed. That’s all.”

“That’s not much.”

“There’s one more thing I know. The woman had a lot of fillings in her teeth, but the man’s teeth were quite different.”

Pihlak nodded slowly. “He was tightfisted. Not with himself, but with everybody else.”

“Are you referring to your father?”

“Who else would I be talking about?”

“I ask questions I need answers to. Nothing else.”

“He was so incredibly mean. And evil. He wouldn’t let her go to the dentist until her teeth had started to rot away. He treated my mother as if she were totally devoid of dignity. He used to humiliate her by waking her up in the middle of the night, forcing her to lie naked on the floor and repeat over and over again how worthless she was, until dawn. She was so scared of him that she started shaking whenever he was near.”

Ivar Pihlak suddenly fell silent. Wallander waited. The gun was still pointing straight at him. Wallander had the feeling that this trial of strength could last awhile. But he had to wait for the moment when the man lost concentration. Then Wallander would have the opportunity of attacking him and taking away his gun.

“During those years I often wondered about my mother,” said Pihlak. “Why couldn’t she simply leave him? It made me both despise her and feel sorry for her. How can you possibly have such contrasting feelings for the same person? I still haven’t found a satisfactory answer to that. But if she had left him, it would never have happened.”

Wallander suspected there was deep-seated anguish in everything Ivar Pihlak said. But he still wasn’t sure what caused that feeling.

“One day she’d had enough,” said Pihlak. “She hanged herself in the kitchen. I couldn’t take any more...”

“So you killed him?”

“It was during the night. I must have woken up when she kicked the chair away. But my father carried on sleeping peacefully. I hit him on the head with a hammer. I dug the graves that same night. By dawn they were already buried and the surface soil had been replaced.”

“But some of the currant bushes ended up in the wrong place.”

Pihlak looked at Wallander in surprise.

“Is that how you caught on to it?”

“What happened next?”

“It was all straightforward. I reported that they had both left Sweden. Nobody checked up on that information: the war was still on, everything was in chaos, people were fleeing all over the place, without identities, without roots, without aims. And so I moved, first to Sjöbo, and then, after the war, to Gothenburg. I lived in various apartments while I was studying. I supported myself by working in the docks. I had strong arms in those days.”

The gun was still pointing at Wallander, but he had the feeling that Ivar Pihlak’s concentration was less intense. Wallander cautiously moved his feet so that when the moment came he would be able to brace himself before throwing himself at the old man.

“My father was a monster,” said Pihlak. “I have never regretted what I did. But I was unable to avoid my punishment. I see his shadow around me all the time. I think I see my father’s face and hear him saying: ‘You will never be able to shake me off.’ ”

He suddenly burst into tears. Wallander hesitated, but realized the moment had come. He jumped up off the chair and threw himself at Ivar Pihlak — but he had misjudged the old man’s alertness. He swayed to one side and hit Wallander on the head with the butt of his pistol. It was not a hard blow, but it was sufficient to knock Wallander out. When he came back to his senses, Pihlak was leaning over him.

“You should have left me alone,” Pihlak yelled. “You should have let me die with my shame and my secret. That was all I asked. But now you’ve come and ruined everything.”

Wallander was horrified to note that Pihlak had now passed beyond his limit. He would shoot at any moment. Trying to attack him again was bound to fail.

“I’ll leave you in peace,” said Wallander. “I understand why you did what you did. I shall never say anything.”

“It’s too late. Why should I believe you? You threw yourself at me. You thought you’d be able to sort out an old codger like me without any difficulty.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“Nobody does. But we all do in the end.”

Ivar Pihlak took a step toward him. He was holding the gun with both hands now. Wallander wanted to close his eyes, but he didn’t dare. Linda’s face flitted past in his mind’s eye.

Pihlak pulled the trigger. But no bullet hit Wallander. No bullet emerged at all. When Ivar Pihlak pulled the trigger, the gun exploded. Bits of metal from the ancient pistol hit Pihlak in the forehead, making a deep hole, and he was dead before his body hit the floor.

Wallander sat there for ages without moving. He felt incomprehensibly happy inside. He was alive, but the old man was dead. The gun Ivar Pihlak had held in his hands had not obeyed him during the last second of his life.

Wallander eventually stood up and staggered out to his car. He phoned Martinson and told him what had happened.

He remained outside the house, buffeted by the wind, waiting. He was thinking of nothing, and he wanted nothing. Being able to continue living was quite enough.

It was fourteen minutes before he saw the first of the blue lights approaching.