An Event in Autumn: A Kurt Wallander Mystery

Chapter 26

Two weeks later, a few days before Christmas, Linda accompanied her father to the farm in Löderup. She had insisted that he should pay the place one more visit, then he could give the keys back to Martinson and begin looking seriously for another house.

It was a cold, clear day. Wallander said nothing, and had his cap pulled down low over his forehead. Linda wanted him to show her where Ivar Pihlak had died, and where her father had also thought death had come to collect him. Wallander pointed and mumbled, but when Linda wanted to ask questions he merely shook his head. There was nothing else to say.

Afterward they drove back to Ystad, and went to a pizzeria for a meal. Immediately after the food had been served Wallander started to feel sick. It was a sudden attack, and seemed to come from nowhere. He just managed to get into the men’s room before it was too late.

Linda looked at him in surprise when he came back.

“Are you ill?”

“I suppose it’s only just dawned on me how close I was to dying.”

He could see that the reality of it all had only just dawned on her as well. They sat there in silence for a long time. The food went cold. It occurred to Wallander later that they had hardly ever been as close to each other as they were at that time.

The following morning Wallander went early to the police station. He knocked on the door of Martinson’s office. There was nobody there. From another room he could hear the sound of Christmas carols on the radio. Wallander went into the room and put the house keys on Martinson’s desk.

Then he left the police station and walked down to the center of town. It was snowing — wet snow that melted and formed slush on the pavements.

Wallander stopped outside the biggest real estate agent’s in town. The windows were covered with pictures of houses for sale between Ystad and Simrishamn.

Wallander blew his nose into his fingers. There was a house just outside Kåseberga that interested him.

He went in. As he did so all thoughts of Ivar Pihlak and his story faded into memory. They might come to haunt him in the future, but they would always remain no more than a memory.

Wallander leafed through catalogues and examined photographs of various houses.

He lost interest in the house he had seen in the window, the one just outside Kåseberga. The plot was too small, the neighboring houses were too close. He continued looking through the catalogues. There were a lot of houses and farms to choose from, but the price was usually too high. Perhaps an underpaid police officer is condemned to live in an apartment, he thought ironically.

But he had no intention of giving up. He would find that house one day, and he would buy a dog. Next year he would leave Mariagatan for good. He had made up his mind.

The day after Wallander’s first visit to the real estate agent’s, there was a thin white layer of snow over the town and the brown fields.

Christmas that year was cold. Icy winds blew over Skåne from the Baltic.

Winter had arrived early.