Faceless Killers

"How many children are born over a ten-year period in Kristianstad?" asked Boman. "It would have taken an awfully long time to check before we had computers."

"It's of course, possible that the record will state 'father unknown," said Wallander. "But then we just have to go through all of those cases with extra care."

"Why don't you just put out a public appeal for the woman?" asked Boman. "And ask her to contact you."

"Because I'm quite sure that she wouldn't do that," said Wallander. "It's just a feeling I have. It may not be particularly professional. But I think I'd rather try this route instead."

"We'll find her," said Boman. "We live in a society and an age when it's almost impossible to disappear. Unless you commit suicide in such an ingenious fashion that your body is completely obliterated. We had a case like that last summer. At least that's what I assume happened. A man who was sick of it all. He was reported missing by his wife. His boat was gone. We never found him. And I don't think we're ever going to, either. I think he put out to sea, scuttled the boat, and drowned himself. But if this woman and her son exist, we'll find them. I'll put an officer on it right away."

Wallander's throat hurt. He had started to sweat. He would have liked most of all to stay sitting there, discussing the case with Boman. He had the feeling that Boman was a talented policeman. His opinion would be valuable. But Wallander was too tired. They tied up the loose ends and Boman accompanied them out to the car.

"We'll find her," he repeated.

"Let's get together some evening," said Wallander. "In peace and quiet. And have some whisky."

Boman nodded. "Maybe on another pointless study day," he said.

The sleet was still coming down. Wallander felt the dampness seeping into his shoes. He crawled again into the back seat and huddled up in the corner. Soon he fell asleep.

He didn't wake until Näslund pulled up in front of the police station in Ystad. He was feverish and miserable. It continued to sleet. He managed to beg a couple of aspirin from Ebba. He knew that he ought to go home to bed, but he couldn't resist getting an update on the day's developments. And he wanted to hear what Rydberg had come up with regarding protection for the refugees.

His desk was piled high with phone messages. Anette Brolin was among the many people who had called. And his father. But not Linda. Or Widén. He shuffled through the messages and then put them aside except for the ones from Anette Brolin and his father. Then he called Martinsson.

"Bingo," said Martinsson. "I think we've found it. A car that fits the description was rented last week by an Avis office in Goteborg. It hasn't been returned. There's just one thing that's strange.""What's that?""The car was rented by a woman." "What's strange about that?""I have a little trouble picturing a woman as the killer."

"Now you're on the wrong track. We have to get hold of that car. And the driver. Even if it is a woman. Then we'll see if they were involved. Eliminating someone from an investigation is just as important as getting a positive lead. And give the registration number to the lorry driver in case he recognises it."He hung up and went into Rydberg's office."How's it going?" he asked.

"This is certainly not much fun," replied Rydberg gloomily."Who said police work was supposed to be fun,"

But Rydberg had made a thorough job of it, just as Wallander had known he would. The various camps were pinpointed, and Rydberg had written a brief memo about each one. For the time being he suggested that the night patrols should make rounds of the camps according to a schedule he had devised.

"Good," said Wallander. "Just make sure the patrols understand that it's a serious matter."

He gave Rydberg a report of his visit to Kristianstad. Then he stood up."I'm going home now," he said."You're looking a little bedraggled."

"I'm coming down with a cold. But everything seems to be moving along by itself right now."

He went straight home, made some tea, and crawled into bed. When he woke up several hours later, the teacup was still at his bedside untouched. He was feeling a little better. He threw out the cold tea and made coffee instead. Then he called his father.

Wallander realised he had heard nothing about the fire. "Weren't we going to play cards?" he snapped."I'm ill," said Wallander."But you're never ill.""I've got a cold.""I don't call that being ill."

"Not everybody is as healthy as you are." "What does that mean?"

Wallander sighed. If he didn't come up with something, this conversation with his father was going to end badly.

"I'll come out and see you early tomorrow," he said. "Around eight o'clock. If you're up by then.""I never sleep past four.""No, but I do."

He said goodbye and hung up the phone. In the same instant he regretted the arrangement. Starting off the day by driving out to visit his father was equivalent to accepting a whole day filled with feelings of depression and guilt.

He looked around his flat. There were layers of dust everywhere. Even though he frequently aired the place out, it still smelled musty. Lonely and musty.

He thought about the black woman, who visited to him, night after night. Where did she come from? Where had he seen her? Was she in a photograph in the newspaper, or had he seen her on TV?

He wondered why it was that in his dreams he had an erotic obsession that was so different from his experience with Mona. The thought excited him. Perhaps he should call Anette Brolin. But he couldn't bring himself to do that. Angrily he sat down on the floral-patterned sofa and switched on the TV. He found one of the Danish channels, where the news was just about to start.

The anchorman reviewed the top stories. Another catastrophic famine. Chaos spreading in Romania. A huge cache of drugs confiscated in Odense. Wallander reached for the remote control and turned off the TV. He couldn't take any more news.

He thought about Mona. But his thoughts took an unexpected turn. He was no longer sure that he really wanted her back. How could he be sure anything would be better? He couldn't. He was just fooling himself.

Restless, he went out to the kitchen and drank a glass of juice. Then he sat down and wrote a detailed progress report on the investigation. When he had finished, he spread out all his notes on the table and looked at them as if they were pieces of a puzzle. He had a strong feeling that they might not be too far from finding a solution. Even though there were still a lot of loose ends, a number of details did fit together.

It wasn't possible to point to a particular person. There weren't even any actual suspects. But still he had the feeling that the police were close. This made him feel both gratified and uneasy. Too many times he had been in charge of a complicated criminal investigation that seemed promising at first but later petered out in a dead end, and in the worst instances they had had to drop the case altogether.Patience, he thought. Patience.

Once more he though of calling Anette Brolin. But he had no idea what he would say to her. And her husband might answer the phone.

He sat down and switched on the TV again. To his immense surprise he was confronted by his own face. He heard the droning voice of a woman reporter. The gist of it was that Wallander and the police in Ystad seemed to be showing no concern for the safety of the refugees in their various camps.

Wallander's face disappeared and was replaced by a woman being interviewed outside a large office block. When her name appeared on the screen, he realised that he should have recognised her. It was the head of the Immigration Service, whom he had talked to that very day.

- "It cannot be ruled out that there may be an element of racism behind the lack of interest shown by the police," she stated.

Bitterness welled up inside him. You're a bitch, he thought. And what you're saying is a bloody lie. And why didn't those damned reporters contact me? I could have shown them Rydberg's protection plan. Racists? What was she talking about? His anger was mixed with the shame of being unjustly accused.

Then the phone rang. He considered not answering it. But then he went out to the hall and picked up the receiver.

It was the same voice. A little hoarse, muffled. Wallander guessed that the man was holding a handkerchief over the mouthpiece.

"We're waiting for results," he said."Go to hell!" roared Wallander."By Saturday at the latest."

"Were you the bastards who started the fire last night?" he shouted into the phone."Saturday at the latest," repeated the man, unmoved. Then the line went dead.

Wallander felt sick He couldn't rid himself of a sense of foreboding. It was like an ache in his body, slowly spreading.

Now you're scared, he thought. Now Kurt Wallander is scared. He went back to the kitchen and stood at the window, looking out into the street. There was no wind. The streetlight was hanging motionless.

Something was going to happen. He was sure of it. But what? And where?

CHAPTER 8

In the morning he got out his best suit. He stared despondently at a spot on a lapel.

Ebba, he thought. This is a good project for her. When she hears that I'm going to meet Mona, she'll put her heart into getting rid of this spot. Ebba is a woman who thinks that the level of divorces is a considerably greater threat to the future of our society than the increase in crime and violence.

He laid the suit on the back seat and drove off. A thick cloud cover hung over the town. Is this snow? he wondered. Snow that I really don't want. He drove slowly eastwards, through Sandskogen, past the abandoned golf course, and turned off towards Kaseberga.

For the first time in days he felt that he had had enough sleep. Nine hours straight. The swelling on his forehead had started to go down, and the burn on his arm didn't sting any longer.

Methodically he rehearsed the summary he had written the night before. The vital thing was to find Lövgren's mystery woman. And their son. Somewhere, in the circles surrounding these people, those responsible would be found. The murders had to be connected to the missing 27,000 kronor, maybe even to Lövgren's other assets.

Someone who knew about the money, and who had taken the time to feed the horse before making off. People who were familiar with Johannes Lövgren's routine.

The rental car from Goteborg didn't fit the puzzle. Maybe it had nothing at all to do with the case. He looked at his watch. 7.40 a.m. Thursday, 11 January.

Instead of driving straight to his father's house, he went a few kilometres past it and turned off on the little gravel road that wound through rolling sand dunes up towards Backakra, Dag Hammarskjold's old estate, which the statesman had bequeathed to the Swedish people. Wallander left his car in the car park and walked up the hill. From there he could see the sea stretching out along the strand below him.

There was a stone circle there. A stone circle of contemplation, erected some years earlier. It was an invitation to solitude and peace of mind. He sat down on a stone and looked out to sea.

He had never been particularly inclined to philosophical meditation, never felt a need to delve into himself. Life for him was a matter of juggling practical questions that needed resolution. Whatever lay ahead was inescapable, something he could not change, no matter how much he tried to give it meaning.

Having a few minutes of solitude was another thing altogether. Not having to think at all, just listen, observe, sit motionless, gave him great peace.

There was a boat on its way somewhere. A large sea bird glided soundlessly on the breeze. Everything was quiet. After 10 minutes he stood up and went back to the car.

His father was in his studio painting when Wallander walked in. This time it was going to be a canvas with a grouse. His father looked at him crossly. Wallander could see that the old man was filthy. And he smelled terrible. "Why are you here?" his father said.

"We made a date yesterday.""Eight o'clock, you said.""Good grief, I'm only 11 minutes late."

"How the hell can you be a policeman if you can't keep track of time?"

Wallander didn't answer. Instead he thought about his sister Kristina. Today he would have to make time to call her. Ask her whether she was aware of their father's rapid decline. He had always imagined that senility was a slow process. That wasn't the case at all, he realised now.

His father was searching for a colour with his brush on the palette. His hands were still steady. Then he confidently daubed a hint of pale red on the grouse's plumage.

Wallander sat down on the old toboggan to watch. The stench of his father's body was acrid. Wallander was reminded of a foul-smelling man lying on a bench in the Paris Metro, when he and Mona were on their honeymoon.

I have to say something, he thought. Even if my father is on his way back to his childhood, I still have to speak to him as if he's an adult.

His father went on painting with great concentration. How many times has he painted that same motif? Wallander wondered. A quick and incomplete reckoning in his head came up with the figure of 7,000. He'd painted 7,000 sunsets.

He got up and poured coffee from the kettle steaming on the kerosene stove."How are you feeling?" he asked.

"When you're as old as I am, how you're feeling is how you're feeling," his father replied brusquely."Have you thought about moving?"

"Where would I move to? And why should I move anyway?"

The answers were like the cracks of a whip. "To a retirement home."

His father pointed his brush at him ferociously, as if it were a weapon."Do you want me to die?""Of course not! It would be for your own good."

"How do you think I'd survive with a bunch of old fogies? And they certainly wouldn't let me paint in my room.""Nowadays you can have your own flat."

"I've already got my own house. Maybe you didn't notice that. Or maybe you're too ill to notice?""I just have a little cold."

At that moment he realised that the cold hadn't come to anything. He had been through this a few times before. When he had a lot to do, he refused to permit himself to get ill. But once the investigation was over, he would succumb almost at once."I'm going to see Mona tonight," he said.

Continuing to talk about an old people's home or a flat in sheltered accommodation was pointless. First he had to talk to his sister."If she left you, she left you. Forget her.""I have absolutely no wish to forget her."

His father kept on painting. Now he was working on the pink clouds. The conversation had died."Is there anything you need?" asked Wallander.

His father replied without looking at him. "Are you leaving already?"

The reproach was unconcealed. Wallander knew it would do no good to try and stifle the guilt that flared up in him.

"I've got a job to do," he said. "I'm the acting chief. We're trying to solve a double murder. And track down some pyromaniacs."

His father snorted and scratched his crotch. "Chief of police. Is that supposed to impress me?" Wallander got up.

"I'll be back, Dad," he said. "I'm going to help you clean up this mess."

The old man flung his brush to the floor and stood in front of his son shaking his fist. The outburst took Wallander completely by surprise.

"You think you can come here and tell me this place is a mess?" he shouted. "You think you can come here and meddle in my life? Let me tell you this: I have both a cleaning woman and a housekeeper here. And by the way, I'm taking a trip to Rimini for my winter holiday. I'm going to have a show there. I'm demanding 25,000 kronor per canvas. And you come here talking about old people's homes. But you're not going to kill me off, I can tell you that!"

He walked out of the studio, slamming the door behind him.

He's off his perch, thought Wallander. I've got to put a stop to this. Maybe he really imagines he has a cleaning woman and a housekeeper. That he's going to Italy to open a show. He wasn't sure if he should follow his father inside. He could hear him banging around in the kitchen. It sounded as if he was throwing pots and pans on the floor.

Wallander went out to his car. The best thing would be to call his sister. Now, right away. Together maybe they could persuade their father that he couldn't go on like this.

At 9 a.m. he walked into station and left his suit with Ebba, who promised to have it cleaned and pressed by that afternoon.

At 10 a.m. he called a case meeting for all the team members who were still in the station. The ones who had seen the spot on the news the night before shared his indignation. After a brief discussion they agreed that Wallander should write a sharp rebuttal and distribute it on the wire service.

"Why doesn't the chief of the national police respond?" Martinsson wondered.His question was met with disdainful laughter.

"That guy?" said Rydberg. "He only responds if he has something to gain from it. He doesn't give a damn about how the police in the provinces are doing."

Nothing new had happened that demanded the attention of the investigators. They were still laying the groundwork. Material was collected and gone over, various tip-offs were checked and entered in the daily log.

Everyone agreed that the mystery woman in Kristianstad and her son were the hottest lead. No-one had any doubt either that the murder they were trying to solve had robbery as a motive. Wallander asked whether things had been quiet at the various refugee camps.

"I checked the nightly report," said Rydberg. "It was calm. The most dramatic thing to happen last night was an elk running about on the E65.

"Tomorrow is Friday," said Wallander. "Yesterday I got another anonymous phone call. The same individual. He repeated the threat that something was going to happen tomorrow or Saturday at the latest."

Rydberg suggested that they contact the national police. Let them decide whether additional manpower should be provided.

"Let's do that," said Wallander. "We might as well be on the safe side. In our own district we'll send out an extra night patrol to concentrate on the refugee camps."

"Then you'll have to authorise overtime," said Hansson.

"I know," said Wallander. "I want Peters and Norén on this special night detail. And I want someone to call and talk to the directors at all of the camps. Don't scare them. Just ask them to be a little more vigilant."

After about an hour the meeting was finished. Wallander was left alone in his office, getting ready to write the response to Swedish Television.The telephone rang. It was Goran Boman in Kristianstad."I saw you on the news last night," he said, laughing."Wasn't that a bugger?""You're right. You ought to protest.""I'm writing a letter as we speak.""What the hell are those reporters thinking of?"

"Not about the truth, that's for sure, but how big a headline they can get.""I've got good news for you."Wallander felt himself go tense."Did you find her?"

"Maybe. I'm faxing you some papers now. We've found nine possibilities. The register of citizens isn't such a silly thing to have. I thought you ought to take a look at what we came up with. Call me and tell me which ones you want us to check first.""Great, Goran," said Wallander. "I'll call you."

The fax machine was in the reception. A young female temp he hadn't never seen before was just taking a fax sheet out of the tray."Which one is Kurt Wallander?" she asked.

"That's me," he said. "Where's Ebba?""She had to go to the dry cleaners," said the woman.

Wallander felt ashamed. He was making Ebba run his personal errands.Boman had sent four pages in all. Wallander went back to his room and spread them on the desk. He studied one woman after another, their birth dates, when their babies with "fathers unknown" had been born. It didn't take him long to eliminate four. That left five who had given birth to sons during the 1950s.

Two were still living in Kristianstad, one in Gladsax outside Simrishamn. Of the other two, one lived in Strömsund and one had emigrated to Australia. He smiled at the idea that the investigation might require someone to be sent to the other side of the world.He called Goran Boman.

"This looks promising," he said. "If we're on the right track, we've got five to choose from.""Should I start bringing them in for a talk?"

"No, I'll take care of it myself. Or rather, I thought we might do it together. If you have time, I mean.""I'll make time. Are we starting today?"Wallander looked at his watch.

"Let's wait till tomorrow," he said. "I'll try to get up there by nine. If there's no trouble tonight, that is."He quickly told Goran about the anonymous threats. "Did you catch the arsonist from the other night?" "Not yet."

"I'll set things up for tomorrow, and I'll make sure none of them has moved."

"Maybe I should meet you in Gladsax," Wallander suggested. "It's about halfway."

"Nine o'clock at the Hotel Svea in Simrishamn," said Boman. "A cup of coffee to start the day with.""Sounds good. See you there. And thanks for your help."

Now, you bastards, thought Wallander after he hung up. I'm going to let you have it. He wrote the letter to Swedish Television. He did not mince words, and he decided to send copies to the Immigration Service, the Immigration Ministry, the county chief of police, and the chief of the national police.

In the corridor, Rydberg read through what he had written.

"Good," he said. "But don't think they'll do anything about it. Reporters in this country, especially on television, can do no wrong."

He dropped the letter off to be typed and went into the canteen to get himself some coffee. He hadn't had time to think about eating yet. It was almost 1 p.m., and he decided to go through all his phone messages before he went out to eat.

The night before, he had felt sick to his stomach when he took the anonymous phone call. Now he had cast off all sense of foreboding. If anything happened, the police were ready.

He punched in the number for Sten Widén. But before the phone started to ring, he put the receiver down. Widén could wait. There would be time enough later to amuse themselves by measuring how long it took a horse to finish off a ration of hay.

Instead he tried the number of the public prosecutor's office. The woman at the switchboard told him that Anette Brolin was in. He hung up and walked to the other wing of the building. Just as he raised his hand to knock, the door opened.She had her coat on. "I'm just on my way to lunch.""May I join you?"

She seemed to think about it for a moment. Then she gave him a quick smile. "Why not?"

Wallander suggested the Continental. They got a window table, and both ordered salted salmon.

"I saw you on the news yesterday," said Anette Brolin. "How can they broadcast such inaccurate and biased reports?"Wallander, who had braced himself for criticism, relaxed.

"Reporters regard the police as fair game," he said. "Whether we do too much or too little, we get criticised for it. And they don't understand that sometimes we have to hold back certain information for investigative reasons."

He told her about the leak. How furious he had been when information from the case meeting had gone straight to a TV broadcast. He noticed that she was listening, and felt that he had discovered someone human behind the prosecutor's role and the expensive clothes.After lunch they ordered coffee."Did your family move here too?" he asked.

"My husband is still in Stockholm," she said. "And the children aren't going to change schools for a year."

Wallander's disappointment was palpable. Somehow he had hoped that the wedding ring meant nothing.

The waiter came with the bill, and he reached out to pay."We'll split it," she said. They ordered more coffee.

"Tell me about this town," she said. "I've looked through a number of criminal cases from the last few years. It's a lot different from Stockholm."

"That's changing fast," he said. "Soon the entire Swedish countryside will be nothing but suburbs of the big cities. There were no narcotics here twenty years ago. Ten years ago drugs had come to towns like Ystad and Simrishamn, but we still had some control over what was happening. Today drugs are everywhere. When I drive by one of the beautiful old Scanian farms, I sometimes think: there might be a huge amphetamine factory hidden in there."

"There are fewer violent crimes," she said. "And they're not quite as brutal."

"It's coming," he said. "Unfortunately, I guess I'm supposed to say. But the differences between the big cities and the countryside have been almost erased. Organised crime is widespread in Malmö. The open borders and all the ferries coming in are like candy for the underworld."

"Still, there's a sense of calm here," she said pensively. "Something that's been totally lost in Stockholm."

They left the Continental. Wallander had parked his car in Stickgatan nearby."Are you really allowed to park here?" she asked.

"No," he replied. "But when I get a ticket I pay it. Although it might be an interesting experience to say to hell with it and get taken to court."They drove back to the police station.

"I was thinking of asking you to dinner some evening," he said. "I could show you round the area.""I'd like that," she said."How often do you go home?" he asked."Every other week.""And your husband? The children?"

"He comes down when he can. And the children when they feel like it."

I love you, thought Wallander. I'm going to see Mona tonight and I'm going to tell her that I love another woman.They said goodbye in reception.

"You'll get a briefing on Monday," said Wallander. "We're starting to get a few leads.""Any closer to an arrest?""No. But the searches at the banks produced good results."

She nodded.

"Preferably before ten on Monday," she said. "The rest of the day I have detention hearings and negotiations in the district court."

They settled on 9 a.m. Wallander watched her as she disappeared down the corridor. He felt strangely exhilarated when he got back to his office. Anette Brolin, he thought. In a world where everything is said to be possible, anything could happen.

He devoted the rest of the day to reading the notes from various interviews that he had only skimmed before. The definitive autopsy report had also arrived. Once again he was shocked at the degree of violence the old couple had been subjected to. He read the reports of the interviews with the two daughters and the door-to-door canvassing in Lunnarp. All the information matched and added up.

No-one had any idea that Johannes Lövgren was a significantly more complex person than he had appeared. The simple farmer had been hiding a split personality. Once during the war, in the autumn of 1943, he had been taken to court in a case of assault and battery. But he had been acquitted. Someone had dug up a copy of the report, and Wallander read through it carefully. But he could not see a reasonable motive for revenge. It seemed to have been an ordinary quarrel that led to blows at the community centre at Erikslund.

Ebba brought in his suit."You're an angel," he said.

"Hope you have a wonderful time tonight," she said with a smile.

Wallander felt a lump in his throat. She really meant what she said.

He spent the time until 5 p.m. filling in a football lottery form, making an appointment to have his car serviced, and thinking through the important interviews he had the following day. He also wrote a reminder to himself that he had to prepare a memo for Björk for his return.

Just after 5 p.m., Thomas Näslund stuck his head round the door."Are you still here?" he said. "I thought you'd gone home." "Why would I have done that?" "That's what Ebba said."

Ebba keeps watch over me, he thought with a smile. Tomorrow I'll bring her some flowers before I leave for Simrishamn.Näslund came into the room."Do you have time right now?" he asked."Not much.""I'll make it quick. It's about Klas Mansön."

Wallander had to think for a moment before he remembered who that was."The one who robbed that shop?"

"That's the one. We have witnesses who can identify him, even though he had a stocking over his head. A tattoo on his wrist. There's no doubt that he's the one. But this new prosecutor doesn't agree with us."Wallander raised his eyebrows. "What do you mean?""She thinks the investigation was sloppy."

"Was it?"

Näslund looked at him in amazement. "It was no sloppier than any other investigation. It's a cut-and-dried case." "So what did she say?"

"If we can't come up with more convincing proof she's considering opposing the detention order. It's bullshit that a Stockholm bitch like that can come here and pretend she's somebody!"

Wallander could feel himself getting angry, but he was careful not to betray his feelings.

"Per wouldn't have given us a problem," Näslund went on. "It's bloody obvious that this bastard is the one who robbed the shop.""Have you got the report?" asked Wallander."I asked Svedberg to read it through.""Leave it here for me so I can look at it tomorrow."

Näslund stood up."Somebody ought to tell that bitch," he said.

Wallander nodded and smiled. "We can't have a prosecutor coming down from Stockholm and interfering with the way we do things.""I thought you'd say that," said Näslund and left.

An excellent excuse to have dinner, thought Wallander. He put on his jacket, hung his clean suit over his arm, and turned off the light.

After a quick shower he made it to Malmö just before 7 p.m. He found, a park near Stortorget and went down the steps to Kock's Tavern. He would knock back a couple of drinks before meeting Mona at the restaurant.

Even though the price was outrageous, he ordered a large whisky. He would have preferred a malt, but an ordinary blend would have to do.

At the first gulp he spilled some on himself. Now he'd have a new spot on his lapel. Almost in the same place as the old one. I'm going home, he thought, full of self-reproach. I'll go home and go to bed. I can't even hold a glass without spilling it all over myself. At the same time he knew this feeling was pure vanity. Vanity and nervousness at seeing

Mona. It might be their most important meeting since the occasion on which he had proposed to her. Now he was trying to prevent a divorce that was already set in motion.

But what did he really want? He wiped off his lapel with a paper napkin, drained the glass, and ordered another. He would have to go in 10 minutes. By then he would have to make up his mind. What was he going to say to Mona? And what would her answer be?

His drink came and he tossed it back. The liquor burned in his temples, and he could feel himself starting to sweat. Deep inside he hoped that Mona would say the words he was waiting to hear.

She had been the one who wanted the divorce, so she was also the one who should take the initiative and put a stop to it.

He paid his bill and left. He walked slowly so as not to arrive too early.

He decided two things while he waited for the light to turn green on the corner of Vallgatan. He was going to have a serious talk with Mona about Linda. And he would ask her advice about his father. Mona knew the old man well. Even though they hadn't really got along, she understood his changeable moods.

I should have called Kristina, he thought as he crossed the street. I probably forgot about it on purpose. He walked across the canal bridge and was passed by a carload of youths. A boy, obviously drunk, was leaning right out of the open window and bellowing something.

Wallander remembered how he used to walk across this bridge more than 20 years before. In these neighbourhoods the city still looked the same. He had walked the beat here as a young policeman, usually with an older partner, and they would go into the railway station to check up on things. Occasionally they had to throw out someone who was drunk and didn't have a ticket, but there was seldom any violence.

That world doesn't exist any more, he thought. It's gone, and we'll never get it back. He went into the station. It had changed a lot, but the stone floor was the same. And the sound of the screeching carriage wheels and braking engines.

Suddenly he caught sight of his daughter. At first he thought he must be imagining it. It could just as easily have been the girl tossing hay at Sten Widén's farm. But then he was sure. It was Linda. She was standing with a coal-black man, trying to get a ticket from the automatic machine. He was almost a foot and a half taller than she was. He had frizzy black hair and was dressed in purple overalls.

As if he were on surveillance, Wallander swiftly drew back behind a pillar. The man said something and Linda laughed. He realised it had been years since he had seen his daughter laugh.

What he saw saddened him. He sensed that he couldn't reach her. She was beyond his grasp, even though she was so close.

My family, he thought. I'm in a railway station spying on my daughter. And her mother, my wife, has probably already arrived at the restaurant so that we can meet and have dinner and maybe manage to talk without starting to shout and scream at each other.

He realised that he was having a hard time seeing. His eyes were misted over with tears. He hadn't had tears in his eyes for a long time. It was as distant a memory as the last time he had seen Linda laugh.

The black man and Linda were walking towards the platform. He wanted to rush after her, pull her to him. Then they were gone from his field of vision, and he continued his surveillance. He slunk along in the shadows of the platform where the icy wind from the sound blew. He watched them walk hand in hand, laughing. The last thing he saw was the blue doors hissing shut and the train leaving towards Landskrona or Lund.

He tried to focus on the fact that she had looked happy. Just as carefree as when she was a young girl. But all he seemed to feel was his own misery. Pathetic Inspector Wallander and his pitiful family life.

Now he was late. By now Mona would have turned on her heel and left. She was always punctual and hated having to wait. Especially for him.

He started along the platform at a run. A bright-red engine screeched alongside him like an angry beast. He was in such a hurry that he stumbled on the stairs leading to the restaurant. The shaven-headed doorman gave him a sour look."Where do you think you re going?" he asked.

Wallander was paralysed by the question. Its implication was immediately clear to him. The doorman thought he was drunk. He wasn't going to let him in."I'm going to have dinner with my wife," he said.

"No, I don't think you are," said the doorman. "I think you'd better go on home."Wallander felt his blood boil.

"I'm a police officer!" he shouted. "And I'm not drunk, if that's what you think. Now let me in before I really get angry."

"Piss off!" said the doorman. "Before I call the police." For a moment he felt like punching the doorman in the nose. Then he regained composure and calmed down.

He took his identity card out of his inside pocket.

"I really am a police officer" he said. "And I'm not drunk. I stumbled. And my wife is here waiting for me."

The doorman gave the card a sceptical scrutiny. Then his face lit up.

"Hey, I recognise you," he said. "You were on TV the other night."Finally, some benefit from the TV, he thought."I'm with you," said the doorman. "All the way.""With me about what?"

"Keeping those damned niggers oh a short leash. What kind of shit are we letting into this country, going around killing old people? I'm with you, we should kick 'em all out. Chase 'em out with a stick."

Wallander could see that there was no point to getting into a discussion with the man. Instead, he attempted a smile.

"Well, I guess I'll go and have dinner, I'm starving," he said.The doorman held open the door for him."You understand we have got to be careful?"

"No problem," replied Wallander and went into the warmth of the restaurant.

He hung up his coat and looked around. Mona was sitting at a window table with a view over the canal. He wondered whether she had been watching him arrive. He sucked in his stomach as best he could, ran his hand over his hair, and walked over to her.

Everything went wrong right from the start. He saw that she noticed the spot on his lapel, and this made him furious. And he didn't know if he entirely succeeded in hiding his fury."Hello," he said, sitting down across from her.

"Late as usual," she said. "And you've really put on weight!"

She had to start off with an insult. Not even a friendly word, no affection."But you look just the same. You've got a lovely tan." "We spent a week in Madeira."

Madeira. First Paris, then Madeira. Their honeymoon. The hotel perched way out on the cliffs, the little fish restaurant down by the beach. And now she had been there again. With someone else."I see," he said. "I thought Madeira was our island."

"Don't be childish!""I mean it!""Then you are being childish.""Of course I'm childish! What's wrong with that?"

The conversation was spinning out of control. When a friendly waitress came to their table it was like being rescued from a deep hole in the ice.

The wine arrived and the mood improved. Wallander sat looking at the woman who had been his wife and thought that she was extremely beautiful. He tried to avoid thoughts that gave him a sharp stab of jealousy.

He did his best to give the impression of being very calm, which he definitely was not. They said skal and raised their glasses."Come back," he begged. "Let's start again."

"No," she said. "You have to understand that it's finished. All over."

"I went to the station while I was waiting for you," he said. "I saw Linda there." "Linda?""You seem surprised.""I thought she was in Stockholm."

"What would she be doing in Stockholm?" "She was supposed to visit a college to see if it might be the right place for her." "I'm not blind. It was her." "Did you talk to her?"

Wallander shook his head. "She was just getting onto a train. I didn't have time." "Which train?""Lund or Landskrona. She was with an African." "That's good, at least." "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean that Herman is the best thing that's happened to Linda in a long time." "Herman?"

"Herman Mboya. He's from Kenya." "He was wearing purple overalls!" "He does have an amusing way of dressing sometimes.""What's he doing in Sweden?""He's in medical school. He'll be a doctor soon."Wallander listened in amazement. Was she pulling his

leg? "A doctor?"

"Yes! A doctor! A physician, or whatever you call it. He's warm, thoughtful, and has a good sense of humour." "Do they live together?" "He has a student flat in Lund." "I asked you if they were living together!" "I think Linda has finally decided." "Decided what?" "To move in with him.""Then how can she go to the college in Stockholm?" "It was Herman who suggested that."

The waitress refilled their glasses. Wallander could feel himself starting to get drunk.

"She called me one day," he said. "She was in Ystad. But she never came to say hello. If you see her, you can tell her that I miss her.""She does what she wants.""All I'm asking is for you to tell her!""I will! Don't shout!""I'm not shouting!"

Just then the roast beef arrived. They ate in silence. Wallander couldn't taste a thing. He ordered another bottle of wine and wondered how he was going to get home.

"You seem to be well," he said.She nodded, firmly and maybe defiantly too.

"And you?"

"I'm having a hell of a time. Otherwise, everything's fine.""What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

He had forgotten that he had been supposed to think of an excuse for their meeting. Now he had no idea what to say. The truth, he thought wryly. Why not try the truth?

"I just wanted to see you," he said. "The other stuff was all lies."She smiled."I'm glad that we could see each other," she said.Suddenly he burst into tears."I miss you terribly," he mumbled.

She reached out her hand and put it on his. But she said nothing. And it was in that instant that Wallander knew that it was over. The divorce wouldn't change anything. Maybe they'd have dinner once in a while. But their lives were irreversibly going in different directions. Her silence told him that.

He started thinking about Anette Brolin. And the black woman who visited him in his dreams. He had been unprepared for loneliness. Now he would be forced to accept it and maybe gradually build a new life."Tell me one thing," he said. "Why did you leave me?"

"If I hadn't left you, I would have died," she said. "I wish you could understand that it wasn't your fault. I was the one who felt the separation was necessary, I was the one who decided. One day you'll understand what I mean.""I want to understand now."

When they were about to leave she wanted to pay her share. But he insisted he'd pay and she gave in."How are you getting home?" she asked.

"There's a night bus," he replied. "How are you getting home?""I'm walking," she said."I'll walk with you part of the way."She shook her head.

"We'll say goodbye here," she said. "That would be best. But call me again sometime. I want to stay in touch."

She kissed him quickly on the cheek. He watched her walk across the canal bridge with a vigorous stride. When she disappeared between the Savoy and the tourist bureau, he followed her. Earlier that evening he had shadowed his daughter. Now he was tailing his wife.

Near the television shop at the corner of Stortorget a car was waiting. She got into the front seat. Wallander ducked into a stairwell as the car drove past. He had a quick glimpse of the man behind the wheel.

He walked to his car. There was no night bus to Ystad. He stopped at a phone box and called Anette Brolin at home. When she answered he hung up at once. He got back into his car and pushed in the Maria (Dallas cassette and closed his eyes.

He woke up with a start because he was cold. He had slept for almost two hours. Even though he wasn't sober, he decided to drive home. He would take the back roads through Svedala and Svaneholm. That way he wouldn't risk running into any police patrols.

But he did. He had completely forgotten that the night patrols from Ystad were watching the refugee camps. And he was the one who had given the order.

Peters and Norén came upon an erratic driver between Svaneholm and Slimminge, after they had checked that everything was quiet at Hageholm. Normally either of them would have recognised Wallander's car, but it didn't occur to them that he might be out driving around at this time of night. Besides, the licence plate was so covered with mud that it was unreadable. Not until they had stopped the car and knocked on the windscreen, and Wallander had rolled down the window did they recognise their acting chief.

None of them said a word. Norén's torch shone into Wallander's bloodshot eyes."Everything quiet?" Wallander asked finally.Norén and Peters looked at each other."Yes," said Peters. "Everything seems quiet."

"That's good," said Wallander, about to roll up the window.Then Norén stepped forward."You'd better get out of the car," he said. "Now, right away."

Wallander looked questioningly at the face he could hardly recognise in the sharp glare from the torch. Then he did as he was told. He got out of the car. The night was cold. He was freezing.Something had come to an end.

CHAPTER 9

The last thing Wallander felt like was a laughing policeman as he stepped into the Svea Hotel in Simrishamn at 7 a.m. on Friday morning. Almost impenetrable sleet was falling over Skåne, and water had seeped into his shoes on his way from the car to the hotel.

Also he had a headache. He asked the waitress for a couple of aspirin. She came back with a glass of water fizzing with white powder. As he drank his coffee, he noticed that his hand was shaking.

He reckoned it was as much from fear as from relief. A few hours earlier, when Norén had ordered him out of his car on the highway road between Svaneholm and Slimminge, he had thought that it was all over. He wouldn't be a policeman any more. The charge of driving under the influence would mean immediate suspension. And even if someday he were allowed to return to active duty on the force, having served a jail sentence, he would never be able to look his former colleagues in the eye.

He had explored the possibility that he might become head of security for some company. Or he might slip through the background check of some less choosy guard service. But his 20-year career with the police would be over. And he was a policeman to the core.

He didn't even consider trying to bribe Peters and Norén. He knew that was impossible. The only thing he could do

was plead. Appeal to their team spirit, to their camaraderie, to a friendship which didn't really exist. But he didn't have to do that.

"Go with Peters, and I'll drive your car home," Norén had said.

Wallander recalled his feeling of relief, but also the unmistakable hint of contempt in Norén's voice. Without a word he got into the back seat of the patrol car. Peters said not a word the whole way to Mariagatan in Ystad.

Norén had followed close behind; he parked the car and handed the keys to Wallander."Did anyone see you?" asked Norén."Nobody but you.""You were damned lucky."

Peters nodded. And then Wallander realised that nothing was going to happen. Norén and Peters were committing a serious breach of duty for his sake. He had no idea why."Thank you," he said.

"That's all right," Norén replied. And then they had driven off.

Wallander went into his flat and polished off the dregs of a bottle of whisky. Then he fell asleep for several hours, lying on top of his bed. Without thinking, without dreaming. At 6.15 a.m. he got into his car again, after giving himself a cursory shave.

He knew, of course, that he was still intoxicated. But now there was no danger of running into Peters and Nor6n. They went off duty at 6 a.m.

He tried to concentrate on what was in store for him. He was going to meet Goran Boman, and together they would go seek a missing link to the investigation of the murders at Lunnarp.

Wallander pushed all other thoughts aside. He would let them come back when he had the energy to deal with them. When he no longer had a hangover, when he had managed to put everything in perspective.

He was the only person in the hotel dining room. He gazed out at the grey sea, barely visible through the sleet. A fishing boat was on its way out of the harbour, and he tried to read the number painted in black on the hull.

A beer, he thought. A good old Pilsner is what I need right now.

It was a strong temptation. He also thought that it would be as well to drop in at the state liquor outlet, so he would have something to drink in the evening. He realised that he wasn't ready to sober up too quickly.

A rotten policeman, that's what I am, he thought. A dubious cop.

The waitress refilled his coffee cup. He imagined himself going into a hotel room with her. Behind drawn curtains he would forget that he existed, forget everything around him, and sink into a world free from reality.

He drank the coffee and picked up his briefcase. He still had a litde time to read through the investigation reports. Restless, he went out to the reception and called the police station in Ystad. Ebba answered."Did you have a nice evening?" she asked.

"Couldn't have been better," he replied. "And thanks again for your help with my suit.""Any time."

"I'm calling from the Svea Hotel in Simrishamn if you need to get hold of me. Later I'll be on the move with Boman from the Kristianstad police. But I'll call in.""Everything's quiet. No trouble at the refugee camps."He hung up and went into the men's room to wash his face. He avoided looking at himself in the mirror. With his fingertips he gingerly felt the bump on his forehead. It hurt. When he stretched he feel a twinge shoot through his thigh.

When he returned to the dining room, he ordered breakfast. He leafed through all his papers as he ate.

Boman was punctual. On the stroke of 9 a.m. he walked into the dining room."What awful weather!" he said."It's better than a snowstorm," said Wallander.

While Boman drank his coffee they worked out what had to be done in the course of the day.

"It seems we're in luck," said Boman. "It's going to be possible to get hold of the woman in Gladsax and the two in Kristianstad without much trouble."They started with the woman in Gladsax.

"Her name is Anita Hessler," said Boman, "and she's 58. She married a couple of years ago; her husband is an estate agent.""Is Hessler her maiden name?" Wallander wondered.

"Her name is Johanson now. Her husband is Klas Johanson. They live in a suburb not far outside the town. We've done a little snooping. As far as we know, she's a housewife."He checked his papers.

"On 9 March 1951, she gave birth to a son at Kristianstad's maternity ward. At 4.13 a.m., to be exact. As far as we know, he's her only child. But Klas Johanson has four children from a previous marriage. He's also six years younger than she is."

"So her son is 39," said Wallander. "He was christened Stefan," said Boman. "He lives in Anus and works as a tax-assessment supervisor in

Kristianstad. His finances are in order. He has a terrace house, a wife and two children."

"Do tax-assessment supervisors usually commit murder?" asked Wallander."Not very often," replied Boman.

They drove out to Gladsax. The sleet had changed to a steady rain. Just before entering the town, Boman turned left.

The two-storey houses in the residential neighbourhood were in sharp contrast to the low white buildings of the town itself. Wallander thought that it could just as well have been an affluent suburb outside any large city.

The house was at the end of a terrace. A huge satellite dish stood on a slab of cement next to the house. The yard was well kept. They sat in the car for a few minutes and stared at the red-brick building. A white Nissan was parked in the drive in front of the garage.

"The husband probably isn't home," said Boman. "His office is in Simrishamn. Apparently he specialises in selling property to well-heeled Germans.""Is that legal?" asked Wallander, in surprise.Boman shrugged.

"They use dummy owners," he said. "The Germans pay well and the deeds are placed in Swedish hands. There are people in Skåne who make a good living by assuming the illegal ownership of residential property."

All of a sudden they caught a glimpse of movement behind the curtains. It was so fast that only the practised eye of the police would have noticed.

"Somebody's home," said Wallander. "Shall we go and say hello?"

The woman who opened the door was astoundingly attractive. Her radiance was unmistakable, even though she was wearing a baggy tracksuit. It occurred to Wallander fleetingly that she didn't look Swedish.

He also thought that their initial introduction might be just as important as all their questions put together. How would she react when they told her that they were policemen?

The only thing he noticed was that she slightly raised one eyebrow. Then she smiled, revealing even rows of white teeth. Wallander wondered whether Boman was right. Was she really 58? If he hadn't known better, he would have guessed 45."This is unexpected," she said. "Come in."

They followed her into a tastefully-furnished living room. The walls were covered with crowded bookshelves. A top-of-the-line Bang & Olufsen TV stood in the corner. Tiger-striped fish swam in an aquarium. Wallander had trouble associating this room with Johannes Lövgren. There was nothing to suggest a connection."Can I offer you gentlemen anything?" asked the woman.They declined and sat down.

"We've come to ask you some questions," said Wallander. "My name is Kurt Wallander, and this is Goran Boman from the Kristianstad police."

"How exciting to have a visit from the police," said the woman, still smiling. "Nothing unusual ever happens here in Gladsax."

"We just wanted to ask you whether you know a man named Johannes Lövgren," said Wallander. She gave him a look of surprise. "Johannes Lövgren? No. Who's he?" "Are you sure?" "Of course I'm sure!""He was murdered a few days ago along with his wife, in a village called Lunnarp. Maybe you read about it in the newspapers." Her surprise looked genuine.

"I don't understand," she said. "I remember seeing something about it in the paper. But what does this have to do with me?"

Nothing, thought Wallander and glanced at Boman, who seemed to share his opinion. What could this woman have to do with Johannes Lövgren?

"In 1951 you had a son in Kristianstad," said Boman. "On all the documents in various records you listed the father as unknown. Is it possible that a man by the name of Johannes Lövgren might have been this unknown father?"She gazed at them for a long time before she answered.

"I don't understand why you're asking these questions," she said. "And I understand even less what this has to do with that murdered farmer. But if it's any help, I can tell you that Stefan's father was named Rune Stierna. He was married to someone else. I knew what I was getting into, and I chose to thank him for the child by keeping his identity secret. He died twelve years ago. And Stefan got along well with his father throughout his childhood."

"I know that these questions must seem strange," said Wallander. "But sometimes we have to ask odd questions."

They asked a few more questions and took some notes. Then it was over.

"I hope you will excuse us for disturbing you," said Wallander, as he got to his feet."Do you think I'm telling the truth?" she asked.

"Yes," said Wallander. "We think you're telling the truth. But if you're not, we'll find out. Sooner or later."She burst out laughing. "I'm telling the truth," she said.

"I'm not a very good liar. But feel free to come back if you have more strange questions."They left the house and went back to the car."Well, that's that," said Boman.

"She's not the one," said Wallander."Do we need to talk to the son in Ahus?"

"I think we can skip him. For the time being, at any rate."

They got into Wallander's car and drove straight back to Kristianstad. The rain had stopped falling and the sky had begun to clear by the time they reached the hills around Brosarp. Outside the police station in Kristianstad they switched to a police car and continued.

"Margareta Velander," said Boman, "is 49, and owns a beauty shop called 'The Wave' on Krokarpsgatan. Three children, divorced, remarried, divorced again. Lives in a terrace house out towards Blekinge. Gave birth to a son in December 1958. The son's name is Nils. Evidently quite an entrepreneur. Used to go around to markets and sell imported knick-knacks. Also listed as the owner of a company dealing in women's novelty underwear. Lives in Solvesborg, of all places. Who the hell would buy women's novelty underwear sold by a mail order company from a town like that?""Plenty of people," said Wallander.

"Once did time for assault and battery," Boman continued. "I haven't seen the report. But he got one year. That means the assault must have been pretty serious."

"I want to see that report," said Wallander. "Where did it happen?"

"He was sentenced by the Kalmar district court. They're looking for the paperwork on the case." "When did it happen?"

"In 1981, I think."

Wallander sat and thought while Boman drove through the town.

"So she was only 17 when the boy was born. And if we're taking Lövgren to be the father, there was a big age difference.""I've thought of that. But that could mean a lot of things."

The beauty salon was in the basement of a block of flats on the outskirts of Kristianstad.

"Maybe I should come here," said Boman. "Who cuts your hair, by the way?"

Wallander was just about to say that Mona took care of that."It varies," he replied evasively.

There were three chairs in the salon. Each was occupied. Two women were sitting under hair dryers while a third was having her hair washed. The woman who was washing the customer's hair looked up at them in surprise.

"I only work by appointment," she said. "I'm booked up today. And tomorrow too if you want to make an appointment for your wives.""Margareta Velander?" asked Goran Boman.He showed her his identity card."We'd like to talk to you," he said.Wallander could see that she was frightened."I can't leave right now," she said."We'd be happy to wait," said Boman.

"You can wait in the back room," said Margareta Velander. "I won't be long."

It was a very small room. A table covered with oilcloth and a couple of chairs took up practically all the space. Between some coffee cups and a grimy coffee maker on a shelf there was a stack of tabloid newspapers. Wallander studied a black-and-white photograph pinned to the wall. It was a blurred and faded image of a young man in a sailor's uniform. Wallander could read the word Hollandon the band around the cap.

"Holland?he said. "Was that a cruiser or a destroyer?""A destroyer. Scrapped ages ago."

Margareta Velander came into the room. She was drying her hands on a towel."I've got a few minutes now," she said. "What's it about?"

"We wonder whether you know a man named Johannes Lövgren," began Wallander."Is that so?" she said. "Would you like some coffee?"

They both declined, and Wallander was annoyed that she had turned her back to him when he asked the question.

"Johannes Lövgren," he repeated. "A farmer from a village outside of Ystad. Did you know him?"

"The man who was murdered?" she asked, looking him straight in the eye.

"Yes," he said. "The man who was murdered. That's the one."

"No," she replied, pouring coffee into a plastic cup. "Why should I know him?"

The police officers exchanged glances. There was something about her voice that suggested she felt pressured.

"In December 1958 you gave birth to a son who was christened Nils," said Wallander. "You listed the father as unknown."

The instant he mentioned the name of her son, she started to cry. The coffee cup tipped over and fell to the floor."What has he done?" she asked. "What has he done now?" They waited until she had calmed down.

"We're not here to bring you bad news," Wallander assured her. "But we'd like to know whether Johannes Lövgren was Nils's father.""No."

Her answer was not convincing. "Then we'd like you to tell us the name of his father." "Why do you want to know?" "It's important for our investigation." "I've told you that I don't know anybody named Johannes Lövgren." "What's the name of Nils's father?" "I can't tell you."

"It won't go any further than this room." She paused a little too long before she answered. "I don't know who Nils's father was." "Women usually know."

"I was sleeping with more than one man at the time. I don't know who it was. That's why I listed the father as unknown."She stood up quickly.

"I've got to get back to work," she said. "The old ladies are going to be boiled alive under those dryers." "We can wait."

"But I don't have anything else to tell you!" She seemed more and more upset."We have some more questions."

Ten minutes later she was back. She was holding some notes that she stuffed into her purse, which was hanging on the back of a chair. She now seemed composed and ready for an argument."I don't know anyone called Lövgren," she said.

"And you insist that you don't know who was the father of your son, born in 1958?"

"That's correct."

"Do you realise that you may have to answer these questions under oath?" "I'm telling the truth." "Where can we find Nils?" "He travels a lot."

"According to our records, his place of residence is in Solvesborg.""So go out there then!" "That's what we plan to do." "I have nothing more to say."

Wallander hesitated for a moment. Then he pointed at the photograph pinned on the wall."Is that Nils's father?" he asked.

She had just lit a cigarette. When she exhaled, it sounded like a hiss.

"I don't know any Lövgren. I don't know what you're talking about."

"All right then," said Boman. "We'll be off now. But you may be hearing from us again."

"I have nothing more to say. Why can't you leave me alone?"

"Nobody gets left alone when the police are looking for a murderer," said Boman. "That's the way it goes."

When they came outdoors, the sun was shining. They stood next to the car for a moment."What do you think?" asked Boman."I don't know. But there's something there."

"Shall we try to find the son before we move on to the third woman?""I think so."

They drove over to Solvesborg and with great difficulty located what appeared to be the right address: a dilapidated wooden house outside the centre of the town, surrounded by wrecked cars and pieces of machinery. A ferocious German shepherd was barking and pulling on its iron chain. The house looked deserted. Boman leaned forwards and looked at a sign with sloppy lettering that was nailed to the door."Nils Velander," he said. "This is the place."

He knocked several times, but no-one answered. They walked all the way around the house."What a bloody rat hole," said Boman.

When they got back to the door, Wallander tried the handle. The house wasn't locked. Wallander looked at Boman, who shrugged."If it's open, it's open," he said. "Let's go in."

They stepped into a musty hallway and listened. Silence. They both jumped when a hissing cat leaped out of a dark corner and vanished up the stairs to the first floor. The room on the left seemed to be some sort of office. There were two battered filing cabinets and an exceedingly messy desk with a phone and an answering machine. Wallander lifted the top of a box sitting on the desk. Inside was a set of black leather underwear and a mailing label.

"Fredrik Aberg of Dragongatan in Alingsas ordered this stuff," he said with a grimace. "Plain brown wrapper, no doubt."

They moved on to the next room, which was a storeroom for Nils Velander's novelty underwear. There were also a number of whips and dog collars. Everything was jumbled up, with no appearance of organisation.

The next room was the kitchen, with dirty dishes stacked by the sink. A half-eaten chicken lay on the floor. The room stank of cat piss. Wallander threw open the door to the pantry. Inside was a home distillery and two large vats. Boman sniggered and shook his head.

They went upstairs and peeked into the bedroom. The sheets were dirty and clothes lay in heaps on the floor. The curtains were drawn, and together they counted seven cats scurrying off.

"What a pigsty," repeated Boman. "How can anybody live like this?"The house looked as if it had been abandoned in a hurry.

"Maybe we'd better leave," said Wallander. "We'll need a search warrant before we can give the place a thorough going-over."

They went back downstairs. Boman stepped into the office and punched the button on the answering machine. A man they assumed was Nils Velander stated that no-one was in the Raff-Sets office at the moment, but you were welcome to leave your order on the answering machine.

The German shepherd jerked on its chain as they came out into the courtyard. At the corner, on the left-hand side of the house, Wallander discovered a basement door almost hidden behind the remains of an old mangle.

He opened the unlocked door and stepped into the darkness. He fumbled his way over to a fuse box. An old oil furnace stood in the corner. The rest of the basement room was filled with empty birdcages. He called to Boman, who joined him.

"Leather underpants and empty birdcages," said Wallander. "What exactly is this guy up to?""I think we'd better find out," replied Boman.

As they were about to leave, Wallander noticed a small steel cabinet behind the furnace. He bent down and pressed on the handle. It was unlocked, like everything else in the house. He put his hand in and grabbed hold of a plastic bag. He pulled it out and opened it.

"Look at this," he said to Boman.

The plastic bag contained a bundle of 1,000-krona notes. Wallander counted 23.

"I think we're going to have to have a talk with this chap," said Boman.

They stuffed the money back and went outside. The German shepherd was still barking.

"We'll have to talk to our colleagues here in Solvesborg," said Boman. "They can check him out for us."

At the Solvesborg police station they found an officer who was quite familiar with Velander.

"He's probably mixed up in all kinds of illegal activities," said the policeman. "But the only thing we have on him is suspicion of illegally importing caged birds from Thailand. And operating a distillery."

"He was once sentenced for assault and battery," said Boman.

"He doesn't usually get into fights," replied the officer. "But I'll try to check up on him for you. Do you really think he's graduated to murdering people?"

"We don't know," said Wallander. "But we need to find him."

They set off for Kristianstad. It was raining again. They had formed a good impression of the police officer in Solvesborg and were counting on him to find Velander for them. But Wallander had doubts.

"We don't know anything," he said. "1,000-krona notes in a plastic bag aren't proof of anything.""But something is going on there," said Boman.

Wallander agreed. There was something about the owner of the beauty salon and her son.They stopped for lunch at a hotel restaurant. Wallander thought he ought to check in with the station in Ystad, but the pay phone he tried was broken.

It was 1.30 p.m. by the time they got back to Kristianstad. Before they went to find the third woman on their list, Boman wanted to check in at his office. The young woman at the reception desk flagged them down.

"There was a call from Ystad," she said. "They want Inspector Wallander to call back.""Let's go to my office," said Boman.

Full of foreboding, Wallander dialled the number while Boman went to get some coffee. Without a word Ebba connected him to Rydberg.

"You'd better come back," said Rydberg. "Some idiot has shot a Somali refugee at Hageholm.""What the hell do you mean by that?"

"Exactly what I said. This Somali was out taking a stroll. Someone blasted him with a shotgun. I've had a hell of a time tracking you down. Where have you been?""Is he dead?""His head was blown off."

Wallander felt sick to his stomach. "I'm on my way," he said.

He hung up the phone just as Boman came in, balancing two mugs of coffee. Wallander gave him a rundown of what had happened.

"I'll get you emergency transport," said Boman. "I'll send your car over later with one of the boys."

Everything happened fast. In a few minutes Wallander was on his way to Ystad in a car with sirens wailing. Rydberg met him at the station and they drove at once to Hageholm."Do we have any leads?" asked Wallander."None. But the newsroom at Sydsvenskangot a call only a few minutes after the murder. A man said that it was revenge for the murder of Johannes Lövgren. And that next time they would take a woman for Maria Lövgren."

"This is insane," said Wallander. "We don't have foreign suspects any more, do we?"

"Somebody seems to have a different opinion. Thinks that we're shielding some foreigners.""But I've already denied that."

"Whoever did this doesn't give a shit about your denials. They see a perfect case for pulling out a gun and shooting foreigners.""This is crazy!""You're damn right it's crazy. But it's true!""Did the newspaper tape the phone conversation?""Yes."

"I want to hear it. To see if it's the same person who's been calling me."The car raced through the landscape of Skåne."What are we going to do now?" asked Wallander.

"We've got to catch the Lunnarp killers," said Rydberg. "And damned fast."

At Hageholm everything was in chaos. Distressed and weeping refugees had gathered in the dining hall, reporters were interviewing people, and phones were ringing. Wallander stepped out of the car onto a muddy dirt road several hundred metres from the residential buildings. The wind was blowing again, and he turned up the collar of his jacket. An area near the road had been cordoned off. The dead man was lying face down in the mud.Wallander cautiously lifted the sheet covering the body.

Rydberg hadn't been exaggerating. There was almost nothing left of the head."Shot at close range," said Hansson who was standing nearby. "Whoever did this must have jumped out of hiding and fired the shots from a few metres away." "Shots?" said Wallander.

"The camp director says that she heard two shots, one after the other." Wallander looked around."Car tracks?" he asked. "Where does this road go?" "Two kilometres further along you come out on the E65. "And no-one saw anything?"

"It's hard to question refugees who speak 15 different languages. But we're working on it.""Do we know who the dead man is?"

"He had a wife and nine children."

Wallander stared at Hansson in disbelief. "Nine children?"

"Just imagine the headlines tomorrow morning," said Hansson. "Innocent refugee murdered taking a walk. Nine children left without a father."Svedberg came running from one of the police cars."The police chief is on the phone," he said.Wallander looked surprised.

"I thought he wasn't due back from Spain until tomorrow."

"Not him. The chief of the national police."

Wallander got into the car and picked up the phone. The chief's voice was emphatic, and Wallander was immediately annoyed by what he said.

"This looks very bad," said the chief. "We don't need racist murders in this country.""No," said Wallander.

"This investigation must be given top priority." "Yes. But we already have the murders in Lunnarp on our hands."

"Are you making any progress there?" "I think so. But it takes time."

"I want you to report to me personally. I'm going to take part in a discussion programme on TV tonight, and I need all the information I can get."‘I’ll see to it."He hung up.

Wallander remained sitting in the car. Näslund will have to handle this, he thought. He'll have to feed the paperwork to Stockholm. He felt depressed. His hangover was gone, and he remembered what had happened the night before, as he saw Peters approaching from a police car that had just arrived.

He thought about Mona and the man who had picked her up. And Linda laughing, the black man at her side. His father, painting his everlasting landscape. He thought about himself too.A time to live, and a time to die.

Wallander forced himself out of the car to take charge of the criminal investigation. Nothing else had better happen, he thought. We can't handle anything else.It was still raining.

CHAPTER 10

Wallander stood in the driving rain, freezing. It was late afternoon, and the police had rigged floodlights around the murder scene. He watched two ambulance attendants squishing through the mud with a stretcher. They were taking away the dead Somali. When he looked at the sea of mud he wondered whether even as skilful a detective as Rydberg would be able to find any tracks.

Still, he felt slightly relieved. Until ten minutes ago the officers had been surrounded by a hysterical woman and nine howling children. The wife of the dead man had thrown herself down in the mud, and her wails were so piercing that several of the policemen couldn't tolerate the sound and had moved away. To his surprise, Wallander saw that the only one who was able to handle the grieving woman and the anguished children was Martinsson. The youngest policeman on the force, who so far in his career had never even been forced to notify someone of a relative's death. He had held the woman, kneeling in the mud, and in some way the two were able to understand each other across the language barrier. A priest who had been called out was unable to do anything, of course. But gradually Martinsson succeeded in getting the woman and the children back to the main building, where a doctor was ready to take care of them.

Rydberg came tramping through the mud. His trousers were splattered all the way up his thighs.

"What a hell of a mess," he said. "But Hansson and Svedberg have done a fantastic job. They managed to find two refugees and an interpreter who actually think they saw something.""What did they see?"

"How should I know? I don't speak either Arabic or Swahili. But they're on their way to Ystad right now. The Immigration Service has promised us some interpreters. I thought it would be best if you handled the interviews."Wallander nodded. "Have we got anything to go on?"Rydberg took out his grimy notebook.

"He was killed at 1 p.m. precisely," he said. "The director was listening to the news on the radio when she heard the noise. There were two shots. But you know that already. He was dead before he hit the ground. It seems to have been regular buckshot. Gyttorp brand, I think. Nytrox 36, probably. That's about all.""That's not much."

"It's absolutely nothing. But maybe the eyewitnesses will have something to tell us."

"I've authorised overtime for everyone," said Wallander. "Now we'll have to bust our guts night and day if necessary."

Back at the station, the first interview almost drove him to despair. The interpreter, who was supposed to know Swahili, could barely understand the dialect spoken by the witness, a young man from Malawi. It took him almost 20 minutes to discover that the man for some strange reason knew Luvale, a language spoken in parts of Zaire and Zambia. One of the Immigration Service people knew a former missionary who spoke fluent Luvale. She was close to 90 and lived in sheltered accommodation in Trelleborg. After calling his colleagues there, he was promised that the missionary would be given police transport to Ystad. Wallander suspected that a 90-year-old missionary might not be very sharp, but he was wrong. A little white-haired lady with lively eyes appeared at the door of his office, and before he knew it she was involved in an intense conversation with the young man.

But, it turned out that the man hadn't seen a thing. "Ask him why he volunteered as a witness," Wallander said wearily.

The missionary and the young man went off into a lengthy exchange.

"He just thought it was rather exciting," she said at last. "And that's understandable.""It is?" Wallander wondered.

"You must have been young once yourself," said the woman.

The young man from Malawi was sent back to Hageholm, and the missionary returned to Trelleborg. The next witness actually had something to tell them. He was an Iranian who worked as an interpreter and who spoke fluent Swedish. Like the murdered Somali, he had been walking close to Hageholm when the shots were fired.

Wallander picked out a section of the map that showed the area around Hageholm. He put an X at the scene of the murder, and the Iranian was able to point at once to where he had been when he heard the shots. Wallander calculated the distance as about 300 metres."After the shots I heard a car," said the man."But you didn't see it?""No. I was in the woods. I couldn't see the road." The Iranian pointed again. To the south. Then he really surprised Wallander. "It was a Citroen," he said. "A Citroen?""The kind you call a turtle here in Sweden." "How can you be sure of that?"

"I grew up in Tehran. When we were boys we learned to recognise the makes of cars by the sound of the engine. Citroens are easy. Most of all the turtle."

Wallander had a hard time believing what he heard. "Come out to the car park with me, and when you get outside, turn your back and shut your eyes."

Outside in the rain he started his Peugeot and drove around the car park. He watched the Iranian carefully the whole time.

"All right," he said when he returned. "What was that?" "A Peugeot," replied the Iranian with the utmost confidence."Good," said Wallander. "Damned amazing."

He sent the man home and gave the instruction that an APB be issued on a Citroen that might have been seen between Hageholm and the E65 to the west. The wire service was also advised that the police were looking for a Citroen that was believed to be linked to the murder.

The third witness was a young woman from Romania. She sat in Wallander's office nursing her baby during the interview. Her interpreter spoke poor Swedish, but Wallander still had a good idea of what the woman was saying.

She had walked the same way as the Somali, and she had passed him on her way back to the camp.

"How long?" asked Wallander. "How long was it from when you passed him to when you heard the shots?""Maybe three minutes.""Did you see anyone else?"

The woman nodded, and Wallander leaned over the desk in suspense."Where?" he asked. "Show me on the map!"

The interpreter held the baby while the woman searched on the map.

"There," she said, pressing the pen to the map. Wallander saw that the spot was very near the scene of the murder.

"Tell me about it," he said. "There's no hurry. Think carefully."The woman thought for a while.

"A man in blue overalls," she said. "He was standing out in the field.""What did he look like?""He didn't have much hair.""How tall was he?"

"Normal height."

"Am I a man of normal height?" Wallander stood up straight. "He was taller." "How old was he?""He wasn't young. Not old either. Maybe 45." "Did he see you?" "I don't think so.""What was he doing out in the field?""He was eating.""Eating?""He was eating an apple."

Wallander thought for a moment. "A man in blue overalls standing in a field near the road and eating an apple. Did I understand you correctly?""Yes.""Was he alone?""I didn't see anyone else. But I don't think he was alone." "Why not?""He seemed to be waiting for someone.""Did this man have a weapon of any kind?"The woman thought again. "There might have been

a brown package at his feet. Maybe it was just mud." "What happened after you saw the man?" "I hurried home as fast as I could." "Why in a hurry?""It's not a good idea to run into strange men in the woods." Wallander nodded. "Did you see a car?" he asked. "No. No car.""Can you describe the man in more detail?"She thought for a long time before she replied."He looked strong," she said. "I think he had big hands.""What colour was his hair? What little he had."

"Swedish colour.""Blond hair?""Yes. And he was bald like this."She drew a half moon in the air.

Then she was allowed to go back to the camp. Wallander went to get a cup of coffee. Svedberg asked if he wanted pizza. He nodded.

At 9 p.m. the team met in the canteen. Wallander thought that everyone apart from Näslund still looked surprisingly alert. Näslund had a cold and a fever but stubbornly refused to go home.

As they divided up pizzas and sandwiches, Wallander tried to sum up. At one end of the room he had taken down a picture and projected a slide that showed a map of the murder scene. He had put an X on the site of the crime and drawn in the location and movements of both witnesses.

"So we aren't totally out in the cold here," he began. "We've got the time, and we have two reliable witnesses. A few minutes before the first shot, the female witness sees a man in blue overalls standing in a field very close to the road. This fits exactly with the time it should have taken the dead man to reach that point. And we know that the killer took off in a Citroen and headed southwest."

Wallander's summary was interrupted when Rydberg came into the canteen. All the team members began to laugh. Rydberg was covered in mud all the way up to his chin. He kicked off his wet and filthy shoes and took a sandwich that someone handed him. Wallander repeated his summary of the interviews for Rydberg.

"You're just in time," said Wallander. "What have you found?"

"I've been slogging around in that field for hours," Rydberg replied. "The Romanian woman pointed out pretty well where the man was most likely standing. We took casts of some footprints there. From rubber boots. She said that's what the man was wearing. Ordinary green rubber boots. And I found an apple core."Rydberg took a plastic bag out of his pocket.

"With a little luck we might get some prints from it," he said.

"Can you take fingerprints from an apple core?" Wallander wondered.

"You can take prints from anything," said Rydberg. "There might be a strand of hair, a little saliva, skin fragments."

He set the plastic bag on the table, carefully, as if it were made of porcelain.

"Then I followed the footprints," he went on. "And if the Apple Man is the killer, then this is how I think it happened."

Rydberg took his pen out of the notebook and went over to the map projected onto the wall.

"He saw the Somali coming up the road. He threw away the apple core and walked straight onto the road in front of him. I could see his tracks. There he fired off his two shots at a distance of about 4 metres. Then he turned around and ran about 50 metres down the road from the murder scene. The road widens a little, making it possible for a car to turn around. Sure enough, there were tyre tracks. And I also found two cigarette butts."He took the next plastic bag from his pocket.

"The man hopped in the car and drove south. That's how I think it happened. By the way, I think I'll send my cleaning bill to the police department."

"I'll sign for it," promised Wallander. "But now we have to think."Rydberg raised his hand, as if he were in school.

"I've got a couple of ideas," he said. "First of all, I'm sure there were two of them. One the driver and one the shooter.""Why do you think that?" asked Wallander.

"People who choose to eat an apple in a tense situation are probably not smokers. I think there was one person waiting by the car. A smoker. And a killer who ate an apple.""That sounds reasonable."

"Also, I've got a feeling that the whole thing was well-planned. It doesn't take much to figure out that the refugees at Hageholm use this road to take walks. Most often they probably go in groups. But now and then someone will be walking alone. If you then dress like a farmer, no-one would think it looked suspicious. And the spot was well chosen, because the car could wait right nearby without being seen. So I think that this was a cold-blooded execution. The only thing the killers didn't know was who would come walking up that road alone. And they didn't care."

Silence fell over the canteen. Rydberg's analysis had been so clear that no-one had anything to say. The ruthlessness of the murder was now obvious.

It was Svedberg who finally broke the silence. "A messenger brought over a cassette tape from Sydsvenskan?he said.

Someone found a tape recorder. Wallander recognised the voice. It was the same man who had called him twice and threatened him.

"We'll send this tape up to Stockholm," he said. "Maybe they can figure out something by analysing it."

"I also think we should find out what kind of apple he was eating," said Rydberg. "With a little luck we might track down the shop where he bought it."They moved on to the motive.

"Racial hatred," said Wallander. "It can be so many things. But I assume we have to start poking around in these Swedish Neo-Nazi groups. Obviously we've entered a new and more serious phase. They're not just painting slogans any more. They're throwing fire bombs and killing people. But I don't think the same people did this as set fire to the huts in Ystad. I still think that was more of a prank or the act of a drunk who got worked up about refugees. This murder is different. It's individuals either acting on their own or in some way involved in one of these movements. We'll have to give them a good shake-up. We also need to go out and appeal to the public for tip-offs. I'm thinking of asking Stockholm for help in charting these Swedish Neo-Nazi movements. This murder is of national concern. That means we can have all the resources we need. And, someone must have seen that Citroen."

"There's a club for Citroen owners," said Näslund in a hoarse voice. "We could match their list against the list of registered vehicles. The people in the club probably know just about every Citroen on the road in the whole country."

The assignments were given out. It was almost 10.30 p.m.

before the meeting was over. No-one had even thought of' going home.

Wallander arranged an impromtu press conference in the reception of the police station. Again he urged anyone who had seen a Citroen on the E65 to get in touch with the police. He also gave a preliminary description of the murderer. When he was finished, the questions rained down."Not now," he said. "I've said all I'm going to say."

When Wallander was on the way back to his office, Hansson came and asked if he wanted to see a video tape of the discussion programme on which the chief of the national police had been a guest."I'd rather not," he replied. "Not right now, at least."

He cleared his desk. He stuck the note reminding him to call his sister on his telephone receiver. Then he called Goran Boman at home.Boman answered. "How's it going?" he asked.

"We've got a good deal to go on," said Wallander. "We'll have to work hard.""I've got good news for you too.""I was hoping you would."

"Our colleagues in Solvesborg found Nils Velander. Apparently he has a boat at a shipyard that he goes and works on once in a while. The transcript of the interview is coming tomorrow, but they told me the key things. He claims that he earned the money in the plastic bag from his underwear business. And he agreed to exchange the notes for new ones, so we can check for fingerprints."

"I'll have to visit the Union Bank here in Ystad," said Wallander. "We need to find out whether the serial numbers can be traced."

"The money is arriving tomorrow. But honestly, I don't think he's the one."

"Why not?" "I don't know."

"I thought you said you had good news?" "I do. Now I'm getting to the third woman. I didn't think you'd mind if I looked her up by myself." "Of course not."

"As you recall, her name is Ellen Magnusson. She's 60 and she works at one of the chemists here in Kristianstad. I had in fact met her once before. Several years ago she ran over and killed a road worker. That was outside the airport at Everod. She said that she had been blinded by the sun, which was no doubt true. In 1955 she had a son and listed the father as unknown. The son's name is Erik, and he lives in Malmö. He's a civil servant at the county council. I drove out to her house. She seemed frightened and upset, as if she'd been waiting for the police to turn up. She denied that Johannes Lövgren was the father of her boy. But I had a strong feeling that she was lying. If you trust my judgement, I'd like to focus on her. But of course I won't exclude the bird dealer and his mother."

"For the next 24 hours I doubt I'll be able to do much beyond what I'm working on right now," said Wallander. "I'm grateful for all the time you're devoting to this."

"I'll send over the papers," said Boman. "And the money. I assume you'll have to give us a receipt for them."

"When all this is over we'll sit down and have that whisky," said Wallander.

"There's going to be a conference at Snogeholm Castle in March on the new narcotics routes in Eastern Europe," said Boman. "How would that be?""That sounds fine," said Wallander.They hung up, and he went over to Martinsson's room

to hear whether any information had come in on the Citroen.Martinsson shook his head. Nothing yet.

Wallander went back to his office and put his feet up on his desk. It was 11.30 p.m. Slowly he let his thoughts take shape. First he methodically played out in his mind the murder outside the refugee camp. Had he forgotten anything? Was there any gap in Rydberg's account of what had happened, or something else that they ought to be working on right away?

He concluded that the investigation was rolling along as efficiently as could be expected. All they had to do now was wait for the various technical analyses and hope that the car could be traced. He shifted in his chair, loosened his tie, and thought about what Boman had told him. He had full confidence in his judgement. If Boman felt the woman was lying, then that was undoubtedly the case. But why was he going so easy on Nils Velander?

He took his feet down from the desk and pulled over a blank sheet of paper. He made a list of everything he had to do in the next few days. He decided to try to get the Union Bank to open its doors for him tomorrow, even though it was Saturday.

When he finished his list, he stood up and stretched. It was just after midnight. Out in the corridor he could hear Hansson talking with Martinsson, but he couldn't hear what they were saying.

Outside the window a streetlight was swaying in the wind. He felt sweaty and dirty and considered taking a shower downstairs in the changing room. He opened the window and breathed in the cold air.

He felt restless. How would they be able to stop the murderer from striking again?

The next one was to be a woman, in retribution for Maria Lövgren's death. He sat down at his desk and pulled over the folder with the data on the refugee camps in Skåne.

It was improbable that the murderer would return to Hageholm. But there were any number of alternatives. And if the murderer was going to select his victim as randomly as he had at Hageholm, they had even less to go on. Besides, it was impossible to require the refugees to stay indoors.

He shoved the folder aside and rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter. He thought he might as well write his memo to Björk. Just then the door opened and Svedberg came in."News?" asked Wallander."You might call it that," said Svedberg, looking unhappy. "What is it?"

"I don't quite know how to tell you. But we just got a call from a farmer out by Loderup." "Did he see the Citroen?"

"No. But he claimed that your father was walking around out in the fields in his pyjamas. With a suitcase in his hand."

Wallander was stunned. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"The farmer sounds lucid enough. It was you he actually wanted to talk to. But the switchboard put it through to me by mistake. I thought you ought to decide what to do."Wallander sat quite still, his expression blank.

Then he stood up. "Where?" he asked.

"It sounded like your father was walking down by the main highway."

"I'll handle this myself. I'll be back as soon as I can. Call me if anything happens.""Do you want me or somebody else to go along?"

Wallander shook his head.

"My father is senile," he said. "I have to see about getting him into a home somewhere."

Just as Wallander was going out the main doors, he noticed a man standing in the shadows outside. He recognised him as a reporter from one of the afternoon papers."I don't want him following me," he told Svedberg.

Svedberg nodded. "Wait till you see me back out and stall in front of his car. Then you can get away."

Wallander waited. He saw the reporter making rapidly for his car. Seconds later, Svedberg drove up and turned off his ignition, blocking the reporter's way. Wallander drove away.

He drove fast. Much too fast. He ignored the speed limit through Sandskogen. He was alone. Hares fled terrified across the rain-slicked road.

When he reached the village where his father lived, he didn't even have to look for him. He caught the old man in his headlights, in his blue-trimmed pyjamas, squishing barefoot through a field. He was wearing his old hat and carrying a big suitcase. When the headlights blinded him, his father held his hand in front of his eyes in annoyance. Then he kept on walking. Energetically, as if on his way to some specific destination.

Wallander turned off his engine but left the headlights on and walked out into the field."Dad!" he yelled. "What the hell are you doing?"

His father didn't answer but kept going. Wallander followed him. He tripped and fell and got wet up to his waist"Dad!" he shouted again. "Stop! Where are you going?"

No answer. His father seemed to pick up speed. Soon they would be down by the main highway. Wallander ran and stumbled to catch up with him, grabbing him by the arm. But his father pulled away and kept going.

Wallander got angry. "Police," he yelled. "If you don't stop, we'll fire a warning shot."

His father stopped and turned around. Wallander saw him blinking in the glare of the headlights.

"What did I tell you?" the old man screamed. "You want to kill me!"

Then he flung his suitcase at Wallander. The lid flew open and revealed the contents: dirty underwear, tubes of paint, and brushes. Wallander felt a huge sadness well up inside him. His father had tramped out into the night with the bewildered notion that he was on his way to Italy.

"Calm down, Dad," he said. "I just thought I'd drive you down to the railway station. Then you won't have to walk."

His father gave him a sceptical look. "I don't believe you," he said.

"Of course I'd drive my own father to the station if he's going on a journey."

Wallander picked up the suitcase, closed the lid, and started for the car. He put the bag in the boot and stood waiting. His father looked like a wild beast caught in the headlights. An animal chased to exhaustion, waiting for the fetal shot.

He started to walk towards the car. Wallander couldn't decide whether what he saw was an expression of dignity or humiliation. He opened the rear door and his father crawled in. Wallander had taken a blanket from the boot, and now he wrapped it around his father's shoulders.

He gave a start when a man stepped out of the shadows. An old man, dressed in dirty overalls.

"I'm the one who telephoned," said the man. "How's it going?"

"Everything's fine," replied Wallander. "And thanks for the call.""It was pure chance that I saw him." "I understand. Thanks again."

He got behind the wheel. When he turned his head he could see that his father was so cold he was shaking beneath the blanket.

"Now I'll drive you to the station, Dad," he said. "It won't take long."

He drove straight to the emergency entrance of the hospital. He was lucky enough to run into the young doctor he had met at Maria Lövgren's deathbed. He explained what had happened.

"We'll admit him overnight for observation," said the doctor. "He may be suffering from exposure. Tomorrow the social worker will try to find a place for him.""Thank you," said Wallander. ‘I’ll stay with him a while."His father had been dried off and was lying on a stretcher."Sleeping car to Italy," he said. "I'm finally on my way."Wallander sat on a chair next to the stretcher."That's right," he said. "Now you'll get to Italy."

It was past 2 a.m. when he left the hospital. He drove the short distance to the station. Everyone except Hansson had gone home. Hansson was watching the taped discussion programme with the chief of the national police."Anything going on?" asked Wallander.

"Not a thing," said Hansson. "A few tip-offs, of course. But nothing earthshaking. I took the liberty of sending people home to get a few hours' sleep.""That's good. Funny mat nobody has called about the car."

"I was just thinking that. Maybe he just drove out on the E65 a littie way and then took off on one of the back roads.

I've looked at the maps. There's a whole maze of little roads in that area. Plus a big nature reserve, where no-one goes in the winter. The patrols that check the camps are running a fine-tooth comb over those roads tonight." Wallander nodded.

"We'll send in a helicopter when it gets light," he said. "The car might be hidden somewhere in that nature reserve." He poured a cup of coffee.

"Svedberg told me about your father," said Hansson. "How did it go?"

"It went all right. The old boy is going senile. He's at the hospital. But it was OK.""Go home and sleep for a few hours. You look exhausted.""I've got some things to write up."Hansson turned off the video."I'll stretch out on the sofa for a while," he said.

Wallander went into his office and sat down at the typewriter. His eyes stung with fatigue. And yet the weariness brought with it an unexpected clarity. A double murder is committed, he thought. And the manhunt triggers another murder. Which we have to solve fast, so as to prevent more murders. All this has happened in less than a week.

He wrote his memo to Björk, deciding to make sure that it was delivered to him by hand at the airport. He yawned. It was 3.45 a.m. He was too tired to think about his father. He was only afraid that the social worker at the hospital wouldn't be able to come up with a good solution.

The note with his sister's name on it was still sticking to the telephone. In a few hours, when it was morning, he would have to call her.

He yawned again and sniffed his armpits. He stank. Just then Hansson appeared in the half-open door. Wallander saw at once that something had happened.

"We've got something," said Hansson. "What?"

"A guy from Malmö just called and said his car has been stolen." "A Citroen?" Hansson nodded.

"How come he discovers it at four o'clock in the morning?""He said he was leaving to go to a trade fair in Goteborg.""Did he report this to our colleagues in Malmö?"Hansson nodded. Wallander grabbed the phone."Then let's get moving," he said.

The police in Malmö promised to speed up their interrogation of the man. The registration number of the stolen car, the model, year and colour were already being sent all over the country.

"BBM 160," said Hansson. "A dove-blue turtle with a white roof. How many of those can there be in this country? A hundred?"

"If the car isn't buried, we'll find it," said Wallander. "What time is sunrise?""Around eight or nine o'clock," replied Hansson.

"As soon as it gets light we need a helicopter over the reserve. You take care of that."

Hansson nodded. He was just leaving the room when he stopped."Damn it! There was one more thing."

"Yes?"

"The man who called and said that his car was stolen. He was a policeman." Wallander gave Hansson a puzzled look. "A policeman? What do you mean?" "I mean that he was a policeman. Like you and me."

CHAPTER 11

Wallander went into one of the holding cells in the station and lay down for a nap. After a great deal of effort, he managed to set the alarm function on his watch. He was going to allow himself to sleep for two hours. When the beeping sound on his wrist woke him up, he had a slight headache. The first thing he thought about was his father. He took a few aspirin out of the first aid kit he found in a cupboard and washed them down with a cup of lukewarm coffee. Then he hesitated, trying to decide whether he should take a shower first or call his sister in Stockholm.

Finally he went down to the changing room and got into the shower. Slowly his headache evaporated. But he felt weighed down with weariness as he sank into the chair behind his desk. It was 7.15 a.m. His sister was always up early. She picked up the phone almost as soon as it started ringing. As gently as possible he told her what had happened.

"Why didn't you call me before?" she asked indignantly. "You must have noticed what was going on.""I guess I noticed too late," he replied warily.

They agreed that she would wait until after he had spoken to the social worker before she decided when to come to Skåne.

"How are Mona and Linda?" she asked as the conversation was drawing to a close.

It dawned on him that she didn't know about the separation.

"Fine," he said. ‘I’ll call you later."

He drove to the hospital. The temperature had fallen below freezing again. An icy wind was blowing through the town from the southwest.

A nurse, who had just received a report from the night staff, told Wallander that his father had slept fitfully. But he had not suffered from his night-time promenade through the fields. Wallander decided to see the social worker first.

Wallander distrusted social workers. All too often in his career he had encountered welfare people, called in when the police had caught juvenile offenders with misguided views on what action should be taken. Social workers were often too soft and yielding when they ought in his opinion to be making tough decisions. More than once he had raged at the welfare authorities because he felt that their pussy-footing encouraged young criminals to continue their activities.

Maybe this one is different, he thought. After a short wait he was greeted by a woman in her 50s. Wallander described his father's sudden decline. How unexpected it was, how helpless he felt.

"It might be temporary," said the social worker. "Sometimes elderly people suffer from periods of confusion. If it passes, it might be enough to see that he gets regular home care. If it turns out that he really is senile, then we'll have to come up with some other solution."

They decided that his father should stay in over the weekend. Then she would discuss with the doctors what to do next. Wallander stood up. This woman seemed to know what she was talking about."It's hard to be sure what to do," he said.

She nodded. "Nothing is as troublesome as when we're forced to become parents to our own parents," she said.

"I know. My mother finally became so difficult that I couldn't keep her at home."

Wallander went to see his father, who was in a room with four beds. All were occupied. One man was in a cast, another was curled up as if he had severe stomach pains. Wallander's father was lying staring at the ceiling."How are you, Dad?" he asked.

It was a moment before his father answered. "Leave me alone."

He spoke in a low voice. There was no hint of petulance. Wallander had the impression that his father's voice was full of sorrow. He sat on the edge of the bed for a while. Then he left."I'll be back, Dad. And Kristina says hello."

Wallander hurried out of the hospital, filled with a sense of helplessness. The icy wind whipped his face. He didn't feel like going back to the station, so he called Hansson on the scratchy car phone.

"I'm driving over to Malmö," he said. "Have we got a helicopter in the air?"

"It's been up for half an hour," replied Hansson. "Nothing yet. We have two dog patrols out too. If that damned car is anywhere in the reserve, we'll find it."

Wallander drove to Malmö. The morning traffic was fierce and intense. He was frequently forced over towards the shoulder by drivers passing without enough room. I should have taken a squad car, he thought. But maybe that doesn't make any difference these days.

Wallander arrived at the Malmö police station where the man who had had his car stolen was waiting for him. Before Wallander went in to see him, he talked to the officer who had taken the report of the theft.

"Is it true that he's a policeman?" Wallander asked. "He was," the officer replied. "But he took early retirement." "Why was that?"

The officer shrugged. "Problems with his nerves. I honestly don't know." "Do you know him?"

"He mostly kept to himself. Even though we worked together for ten years, I can't say that I really knew him." "But surely someone does?"

The police officer shrugged again. "I'll find out," he said. "But remember, anybody can have his car stolen."

Wallander went into the room and said hello to the man, whose name was Rune Bergman. He was 53 and had been retired for four years. He was thin, with nervous, flitting eyes. Along one side of his nose he had a scar from what looked like a knife wound.

Wallander immediately sensed that the man sitting in front of him was on guard. He couldn't say why. But the feeling was palpable, and it grew stronger as the conversation progressed.

"Tell me what happened," he said. "At four o'clock in the morning you discovered your car was missing."

"I was going to drive to Goteborg. I like to get started before dawn when I'm going on a long drive. When I went outside, the car was gone.""From the garage or from a parking place?"

"From the street outside my house. I have a garage. But there's so much junk in it that there's no room for the car.""Where do you live?""In a suburb near Jagersro.""Do you think any of your neighbours saw anything?" "I asked them. But no-one heard or saw anything."

"When did you last see your car?""I was inside all day. But the car was there the night before.""Locked?""Of course it was locked.""Did it have a lock on the steering wheel?""Unfortunately, no. It was broken."

His answers came easily. But Wallander couldn't rid himself of the feeling that the man was on guard."What kind of trade show were you going to?" he asked.

The man sitting across from him looked surprised. "What does that have to do with this?""Nothing. I just wondered.""An air show, if you must know."

"An air show?""I'm interested in old planes. I build model planes myself.""Is it true that you took early retirement?""What the hell does that have to do with my stolen car?"

"Nothing."

"Why don't you start looking for my car instead of poking around in my personal life?"

"We're already onto it. As you know, we think that the person who stole your car may have committed a murder. Or maybe I should say an execution."

The man looked him straight in the eye. The nervous flitting had stopped."That's what I heard," he said.

Wallander had no more questions. "I thought we'd go over to your place. So I can see where the car was parked." "I can't invite you in for coffee. The place is a mess." "Are you married?" "I'm divorced."

They went out to Wallander's car. The neighbourhood was an old one, situated just beyond the trotting track at

Jagersro. They stopped outside a yellow brick house with a small front lawn.

"This is where the car was, right where you're parked," said the man. "Right here."

Wallander backed up a few metres and they got out. Wallander noticed that the car must have been parked between two streetlights.

"Are there a lot of cars parked on this street at night?" he asked.

"Usually one in front of every house. A lot of people who live here have two cars. Their garages only hold one."

Wallander pointed at the streetlights. "Do they work?" he asked.

"Yes. I always notice if any of them are broken." Wallander looked around, thinking. He had no further questions."I assume that we'll be talking to you again," he said."I want my car back," replied the man.Wallander realised that he did have one more question.

"Do you have a licence to carry a gun?" he asked. "Do you own any guns?"

The man stiffened. At that moment a crazy idea flashed through Wallander's mind. The car theft was pure fiction. The man standing beside him was one of the two men who had shot the Somali the day before.

"What the hell do you mean?" said the man. "A gun licence? Don't tell me you're so fucking stupid that you think I had anything to do with that?"

"You were a policeman, so you should know that we have to ask these questions," said Wallander. "Do you have any guns in your house?""I have guns and a licence.""What kind of guns?"

"I like to shoot once in a while. I have a Mauser for hunting moose." "Anything else?"

"A shotgun. A Lanber Baron. It's a Spanish gun. For shooting rabbits.""I'll send someone over to pick them up." "Why is that?"

"Because the man who was killed yesterday was shot at close range with a shotgun."

The man gave him a disdainful look. "You're crazy," he said. "You're out of your fucking mind."

Wallander left. He drove straight back to the Malmö police station. He called Ystad. The car hadn't been found. Then he asked to speak to the officer in charge of the department for homicide and violent crimes in Malmö. Wallander had met him once before and found him to be overbearing and self-important. It had been on the same occasion that he met Goran Boman.Wallander explained the case he was working on.

"I want his weapons checked," he said. "I want his house searched. I want to know whether he has any connections with racist organisations."

The police officer gave him a long look. "Do you have any reason whatsoever to believe that he made up the story about a stolen car? That he might be involved in the murder?""He owns guns. And we have to investigate everything."

"There are hundreds of thousands of shotguns in this country. And what makes you think I can get authorisation to search his house when the case is about a stolen car?"

"This case has top priority," said Wallander, starting to get annoyed. "I'll call the county police chief. The national police chief, if necessary."

"I'll do what I can," said the officer. "But no-one likes it when you dig around in the private life of a colleague. And what do you think would happen if this got out to the press?"

"I don't give a shit," said Wallander. "I've got three murders on my hands. And somebody who's promised me a fourth. Which I intend to prevent."

On his way to Ystad, Wallander stopped at Hageholm. The technicians were just wrapping up their investigation. At the scene he went over Rydberg's theory about how the murder occurred, and he decided he was right. The car had probably been parked at the spot Rydberg had pinpointed. He realised that he hadn't asked the policeman whether he smoked. Or whether he ate apples.

He continued on to Ystad. On his way in he ran into a temp who was on her way out to lunch. He asked her to pick up a pizza for him.He looked into Hansson's office: still no car.

"Case meeting in my office in 15 minutes," said Wallander. "Try to round everybody up. Anyone who isn't here should be reached by phone."

Without taking off his overcoat, Wallander sat down and called his sister again. They agreed that he would pick her up at Sturup airport at 10 a.m. the following morning.

He felt the lump on his forehead, which was now changing colour, shifting to yellow and black and red. Within 20 minutes, everyone except Martinsson and Svedberg was there.

"Svedberg is out digging around in a gravel pit," said Rydberg. "Somebody called and said they saw a mysterious car out there. Martinsson is trying to track down a man in the Citroen club who apparently knows about all the Citroens on the road in Skåne. A dermatologist from Lund.""A dermatologist from Lund?" Wallander asked in surprise.

"There are hookers who collect stamps," said Rydberg. "Why shouldn't a dermatologist be into Citroens?"

Wallander reported on his meeting with the ex-policeman in Malmd. He could hear how hollow it sounded when he said that he had ordered a thorough investigation of the man.

"That doesn't sound very likely," said Hansson. "A policeman who wants to commit a murder wouldn't be dumb enough to report his own car stolen, would he?"

"Maybe not," said Wallander. "But we can't afford to ignore a single lead, no matter how unlikely it seems."The discussion turned to the missing car.

"We aren't getting tip-offs from the public," said Hansson. "Which reinforces my belief that the car never left the area."

Wallander unfolded a detailed map, and they leaned over it as if preparing for battle.

"The lakes," said Rydberg. "Krageholm Lake, Svaneholm Lake. Let's assume that they drove out there and ditched the car. There are minor roads all over the place."

"It still sounds risky," objected Wallander. "Somebody could easily have seen them."

They decided at any rate to drag the lakes. And to send some men out to search through abandoned barns. A dog patrol from Malmö had been out searching without finding a single trace. The helicopter search had produced no results either.

"Could your Iranian have been mistaken?" wondered Hansson.Wallander thought about this for a moment.

"We'll bring him in again," he said. "We'll test him on six different kinds of cars. Including a Citroen."

Hansson was detailed to take care of the witness. They moved on to a summary of the search for the killers in Lunnarp. Here, too, the car that the early-morning lorry driver had seen still eluded them.

Wallander could see that his colleagues were tired. It was Saturday, and many of them had been working non-stop for a long time.

"We'll put Lunnarp on hold until Monday morning," he said. "Right now we're going to concentrate on Hageholm. Whoever isn't needed at the moment should go home and get some rest. It looks like next week is going to be just as busy as this one."

Then he remembered that Björk would be back at work on Monday.

"Björk will be taking over," he said. "So I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their efforts so far.""Did we pass?" asked Hansson sarcastically."You get the highest marks," replied Wallander.

After the meeting he asked Rydberg to stay behind for a moment. He needed to talk through the situation with somebody in peace and quiet. And Rydberg was, as usual, the one whose opinion he respected most. He told him about Boman's efforts in Kristianstad. Rydberg nodded thoughtfully. Wallander saw that he was hesitant.

"It might be a dud," said Rydberg. "This double murder is puzzling me more and more, the longer I think about it.""In what way?" asked Wallander.

"I can't get away from what the woman said before she died. I have a feeling that deep inside her tormented and wounded consciousness, she must have realised that her husband was dead. And that she was going to die too. I think it's human instinct to offer a solution to a mystery if there's nothing else left. And she said only one word: 'foreign'. She repeated it. Four or five times. It has to mean something. And that noose. The knot. You said it yourself. That murder smells of revenge and hatred. But still we're looking in a completely different direction."

"Svedberg has made a chart of all of Lövgren's relatives," said Wallander. "There are no foreign connections. Only Swedish farmers and one or two craftsmen."

"Don't forget his double life," said Rydberg. "Nyström described the neighbour he had known for 40 years as an ordinary man. With few assets. After two days we discovered that none of this was true. So what's to prevent us from finding other false bottoms to this story?""So what do you think we should do?"

"Exactly what we are doing. But be open to the possibility that we might be on the wrong track."

They turned to the murdered Somali. Ever since he left Malmö, Wallander had been toying with an idea."Can you stay a little longer?" he asked."Sure," replied Rydberg, surprised. "Of course I can."

"There was something about that police officer," said Wallander. "I know it's mostly a hunch. An extremely unreliable trait in a policeman. But I thought we ought to keep an eye on that gentleman, you and I. Through the weekend, in any case. Then we can see whether we should continue and bring in more manpower. But if I'm right, that he might be involved, that his car wasn't stolen, then he should be feeling a little uneasy right now."

"I agree with Hansson that no policeman would be dim enough to pretend his car had been stolen if he were planning to commit a murder," Rydberg objected.

"I think you're both wrong," Wallander replied. "The same way that he was wrong in thinking that just because he had once been a policeman, that alone would steer all suspicion away from him."Rydberg rubbed his aching knee."We'll do as you say, then," he said. "What I believe or don't believe is neither here or there if you think it's important."

"I want him under surveillance," said Wallander. "We'll split up the shifts until Monday morning. It'll be rough, but we can do it. I can take the night shifts, if you like."

Rydberg said that he might as well handle the watch until midnight. Wallander gave him the address. The temp came into the office with the pizza he had ordered."Have you eaten?" Wallander asked.

"Yes," replied Rydberg hesitantly."No you haven't. Take this one and I'll get another."

Rydberg ate the pizza at Wallander's desk. He wiped his mouth and stood up."Maybe you're right," he said."Maybe," replied Wallander.

Nothing happened the rest of the day. The car continued to elude them. The fire department dragged the lakes, finding only parts of an old combine. Few tip-offs came in from the public.

Reporters from the newspapers, radio and TV called constantly, wanting updates. Wallander repeated his appeal for information on a missing pale blue Citroen with a white roof. Directors of the various refugee camps called in, anxious and demanding increased police protection. Wallander answered as patiendy as he could.

An old woman was hit and killed by a car in Bjaresjo. Svedberg, back from the gravel pit, took on that case, even though Wallander had promised him the afternoon off.

Näslund called at 5 p.m., and Wallander could tell that he was tipsy. He wanted to know whether anything was happening, or whether he could go to a party in Skillinge. Wallander told him to go ahead.

He called the hospital twice to ask about his father. Each time they told him that he was tired and uncommunicative. He also called Sten Widén. A familiar voice answered the phone.

"I was the one who helped you with the ladder up to the loft," Wallander said. "The man you guessed was a policeman. I'd like to talk to Sten, if he's there.""He's in Denmark buying horses," replied Louise."When is he back?""Maybe tomorrow.""Would you ask him to call me?"‘I’ll do that."

He hung up. Wallander had the distinct impression that Sten Widénwas not in Denmark at all. Maybe he was even standing right next to the young woman, listening. Maybe they were together in the unmade bed when he called.

Wallander gave his memo to one of the patrol officers, who promised to hand it to Björk the minute he stepped off the plane at Stump airport that evening.

He decided to go through his bills, which he had forgotten to pay on the first of the month. He filled out a bunch of giro slips and enclosed a cheque in the manila envelope. He wasn't going to be able to afford either a video or a stereo this month.

Next he answered an inquiry about a trip to the Royal Opera in Copenhagen at the end of February. He said yes. Woyzeckwas an opera he hadn't seen staged.

It was 8 p.m. He read through Svedberg's report on the fatal accident in Bjaresjo. He could see at once that there was no question of criminal proceedings. The woman had stepped out into the road slap in front of a car travelling within the speed limit. The farmer who was driving the car was not at fault, all the eyewitness accounts agreed on that. He made a note to see to it that Anette Brolin read through the report after the autopsy was done.

At 8.30 p.m. two men started slugging each other in a block of flats on the outskirts of Ystad. Peters and Norén swiftly separated the combatants. They were two brothers, well known to the police. They got into a fight about three times a year.

A greyhound was reported lost in Marsvinsholm. The dog had been seen heading west, so the report was passed to the station in Skurup.

At 10 p.m. Wallander left the police station. It was cold and the wind was blowing in gusts. The sky was clear and filled with stars. Still no snow. He went home and put on heavy-duty long underwear and a woollen cap. Absent-mindedly he watered the drooping plants in the kitchen window. Then he drove to Malmö.

Norén was duty officer that night. Wallander had promised to call in regularly. But presumably Norén would have his hands full with Björk, who would be coming home to discover that his holiday was definitely over.

Wallander stopped at a hotel restaurant in Svedala. He hesitated before deciding on only a salad. He doubted that this was a wise moment to change his eating habits, but he knew that he might fall asleep if he ate too much before an all-night shift.

He drank several cups of strong coffee after his meal. An elderly woman came over to his table and tried to sell him The Watch Tower. He bought a copy, thinking that it would be sufficiently dull to last all night.

Wallander pulled out onto the E65 again and drove the last stretch to Malmö. He began to doubt the value of this assignment. Was he justified in trusting his intuition? Shouldn't Hansson's and Rydberg's objections have been enough for him to drop the idea of this surveillance? He felt unsure of himself. Irresolute. And the salad had not been enough.

It was 11.35 pm when he turned onto a street near the yellow house where Bergman lived. He pulled his cap over his ears as he stepped out into the freezing night. All around him were darkened houses. In the distance he heard the screech of car tyres. He kept to the shadows as far as possible and turned down the street called Rosenalle.

Almost at once he caught sight of Rydberg, who was standing under a tall chestnut tree. The trunk was so thick that it nearly hid him entirely.

Wallander slipped into the shadow of the huge tree trunk. Rydberg was freezing. He was rubbing his hands together and stamping his feet."Anything going on?" asked Wallander.

"Not much in twelve hours," replied Rydberg. "At four, he went to buy groceries. Two hours later he came out to close the gate, which had blown open. But he's definitely on his guard. I think you may be right after all."Rydberg pointed at the house next door.

"That one's empty," he said. "From the yard you can see both the street and his back door. He might take it into his head to slip out that way. There's a bench where you can sit. If your clothes are warm enough."

Wallander had noticed a phone box on his way over to Bergman's house. He asked Rydberg to go over and call Norén. If nothing urgent was happening, Rydberg could get in his car and drive home.

"I'll be back around seven," said Rydberg. "Don't freeze to death."

He vanished without a sound. Wallander stood still for a moment, looking at the yellow house. Lights were on in two of the windows, one on the lower floor and one upstairs. The curtains were drawn. He looked at his watch. Just after midnight. Rydberg had not returned. So everything must be quiet at the station in Ystad.

He hurried across the street and opened the gate to the yard of the empty house. He fumbled his way in the dark and found the bench that Rydberg had mentioned. From there he had a good view. To keep warm, he started pacing, five steps forwards and five steps back.

The next time he looked at his watch, it was only 12.50 a.m. It was going to be a long night. He was already feeling cold. He tried to make the time pass by studying the starry sky. When his neck started to hurt, he resumed his pacing.

At 1.30 a.m. the light on the ground floor went out. Wallander thought he could hear a radio on the second floor. Mr Bergman keeps late hours, he thought. Maybe that's what happens if you take early retirement. At 1.55 a.m. a car drove past, immediately followed by another one. Then all was quiet again. The light was still on upstairs. Wallander was freezing.

At 2.55 a.m. the light went out. Wallander listened for the radio. But everything was quiet. He flapped his arms to keep warm. In his head he hummed the melody of a Strauss waltz.The sound was so slight that he almost missed it.

The click of a door latch. That was all. Wallander stood stock-still and listened. Then he noticed the shadow.

The man must have been moving very quietiy. Even so, Wallander caught a glimpse of Rune Bergman as he slipped through the back yard of his house. Wallander waited a few seconds. Then cautiously he climbed over the fence. It was hard to get his bearings in the dark, but he could just make out a narrow passage between a shed and the yard opposite Bergman's house. He moved fast. Too fast, considering how little he could see.

He emerged onto the street parallel to Rosenalle. One second later and he would not have seen Bergman vanish down a cross-street to the right.

For a moment Wallander hesitated. His car was only 50 metres away. If he didn't get it now, and Bergman had another car parked somewhere nearby, he would have no chance of following him.

He ran like a madman. His frozen joints creaked and he was soon out of breath. He fumbled with his keys, and yanked open the door, deciding to try to intercept Bergman.

He turned into the street that he thought was the right one. Too late he saw that it was a dead end. He swore and backed up. Bergman probably had any number of streets to choose from. There was also a park nearby.

Make up your mind, he thought furiously. Make up your mind, damn it.

He drove towards the big car park between the Jagersro track and some large department stores. He was just about to give up when he caught sight of Bergman. He was in a phone box over by a new hotel next to the stables.

Wallander pulled over and turned off his engine and headlights. The man in the phone box hadn't noticed him.

A few minutes later a taxi pulled up and Bergman got into the back. Wallander started the car. The taxi took the motorway heading towards Goteborg. Wallander had to let a lorry go by before he took up the chase. He glanced at the petrol gauge. He wasn't going to be able to follow the taxi further than Halmstad. Suddenly it indicated a right turn. He was going to take the exit for Lund. Wallander followed.

The taxi stopped at the railway station. As Wallander drove past, Bergman was paying the driver. He turned off the main road and parked hurriedly. Bergman was walking fast. Wallander followed him, hugging the shadows.

Rydberg had been right. The man was on his guard. Without warning he stopped short and looked around. Wallander threw himself headlong into a doorway. He struck his forehead on the edge of a step and could feel the lump above his eye split open. Blood ran down his face. He wiped it off with his glove, counted slowly to ten, and took up his pursuit. The blood over his eye was sticky.

Bergman stopped outside a building covered with scaffolding and protective sacking. Again he looked around, and Wallander crouched down behind a parked car.

Then he was gone. Wallander waited until he heard a door shut. Soon afterwards the lights went on in rooms on the third floor.

He ran across the street and pushed his way behind the sacking. Without hesitating, he climbed up onto the scaffolding. It creaked and groaned under him. He had to keep wiping away the blood trickling into his eye. He heaved himself up onto the second level. The lit windows were barely a metre above his head. He took out his handkerchief and tied it around his head to stem the blood.

Cautiously he hauled himself up onto the next platform. The effort so exhausted him that he had to remain lying down for over a minute before he could go on. He crept forwards along the freezing planks, which were covered with scraped off stucco. He dared not think how far above the ground he was, or he would get vertigo at once.

He peered over the window ledge into the first lit room. Through the net curtains he could see a woman sleeping in a double bed. The covers next to her had been thrown back as if someone had got out in a hurry.

He crawled further along. When he looked over the next window ledge, he saw Bergman talking to a man wearing a dark-brown dressing gown. Wallander felt as if he had actually seen him before. That was how well the Romanian woman had described the man standing in the field eating an apple.

He felt his heart pounding. So he had been right after all. It had to be the same man. They were talking in low voices. Too low to hear what they were saying. The man in the dressing gown disappeared through a door and at the same moment Bergman looked straight at Wallander.

Caught, he thought, as he pulled back his head. Those bastards won't hesitate to shoot me. He was paralysed with fear. I'm going to die, he thought desperately. They're going to blow my head off. But nothing happened.

Finally he got up the nerve to peer inside again. The man in the dressing gown was standing there, eating an apple. Bergman was holding two shotguns. He laid one of them on a table. The other one he stuffed under his coat. Wallander realised he had seen more than enough. He turned and crept back the way he had come.How it happened, he would never know.

He lost his footing in the dark. When he reached for the scaffolding, his hand grabbed at empty space. He fell. He had no time to think that he was going to die. One of his legs caught between two planks. He jerked to a halt, the pain excruciating. He was hanging upside down with his head a metre above the ground.

He tried to wriggle loose. But his foot was wedged tight. He was hanging in midair, unable to do anything. The blood was pounding in his temples. The pain was so bad that he had tears in his eyes. At that moment he heard the outside door open.

Bergman had left the flat. Wallander bit his knuckles to keep from screaming. Through the sacking he saw the man stop suddenly. Right in front of him. He saw a flash. The shot, thought Wallander. Now I'm going to die.

He realised that Bergman had lit a cigarette. The footsteps moved away. Wallander was about to pass out. An image of Linda flickered before him.

With enormous effort he swung his body and with one hand managed to grab hold of one of the uprights on the scaffolding. He pulled himself up far enough to get a grip on the planks where his foot was wedged tight. He gathered all his remaining strength. Then he tugged hard. His foot broke loose, and he lost his grip. He landed on his back in a mound of gravel. He lay perfectly still, trying to feel if anything was broken.

When he stood up, he was so dizzy that he had to hold on to the wall so he wouldn't fall. It took him almost 20 minutes to make his way back to the car. He saw the hands of the station clock pointing to 4.30 a.m.

Wallander sank into the driver's seat and closed his eyes. Then he drove back to Ystad. I have to get some sleep, he thought. Tomorrow is another day. Then I'll do what has to be done.

He groaned when he saw his face in the bathroom mirror. He rinsed his wounds with warm water.

It was almost 6 a.m. by the time he crawled between the sheets. He set the alarm clock for 6.45. He didn't dare sleep any later than that.

He tried to find the position that hurt the least. Just as he was falling asleep, he was jerked awake by a bang on the front door. The morning paper. Then he stretched out again. In his dreams Anette Brolin was coming towards him. Somewhere a horse neighed.

It was Sunday, 14 January. The day dawned with increased wind from the northeast.Kurt Wallander slept.

CHAPTER 12

He thought he had slept for a long time, but when he woke up and looked at the clock, he realised that he had been asleep only briefly. The telephone had woken him. Rydberg was calling from a phone box in Malmö.

"Come on back," said Wallander. "You don't have to stand there freezing. Come here, to my place.""What happened?""It's him.""Are you sure?""Absolutely positive.""I'm on my way."

Wallander climbed painfully out of bed. His body ached and his temples were throbbing. While the coffee was brewing, he sat at the kitchen table with a pocket mirror and a piece of cotton wool. With great difficulty he succeeded in fastening a gauze pad over the wound on his forehead. His whole face was a palette of shades of blue and purple.

Rydberg appeared in the doorway less than an hour later. While they drank coffee, Wallander told him his story.

"Good," Rydberg said afterwards. "Excellent work. Now we'll bring in those bastards. What was the name of the guy in Lund?"

"I forgot to look at the name in the doorway. And we're not the ones who'll bring them in. That's Björk's job.""Is he back?"

"He was supposed to get in last night.""Then let's haul him out of his bed."

"The prosecutor too. And we'll have to co-ordinate with Malmö and Lund, right?"

While Wallander was dressing, Rydberg was on the phone. Wallander was gratified to hear that he wasn't taking no for an answer. He wondered whether Anette Brolin's husband was visiting this weekend.

Rydberg stood in the bedroom doorway and watched him knot his tie.

"You look like a boxer," he said, laughing. "A punch-drunk boxer.""Did you get Björk?"

"He seems to have spent the evening catching up with everything that's happened. He was relieved to hear that we had solved one of the murders, at least.""The prosecutor?""She'll come right away."

"Was she the one who answered the phone?"

Rydberg looked at him in surprise. "Who else would have answered?""Her husband, for instance.""What difference would that have made?"

Wallander didn't feel like answering. "God, I feel like shit," he said instead. "Let's go."

They went out into the early dawn. A gusty wind was still blowing and the sky was overcast with dark clouds."You think it's going to snow?" asked Wallander.

"Not before February," said Rydberg. "I can feel it. But then it'll be a hard winter."

A Sunday calm prevailed at the station. Norén had been relieved by Svedberg. Rydberg gave him a swift run down of what had happened during the night.

"Well, I'll be damned," said Svedberg. "A policeman?""An ex-policeman.""Where did he hide the car?"

"We don't know yet.""Is the case airtight?""I think so."

Björk and Anette Brolin arrived at the station at the same moment. Björk, who was 54 and originally from Vastmanland, had a nice tan. Wallander had always imagined him to be the ideal chief for a medium-sized police district. He was friendly, not too intelligent, and at the same time extremely concerned with the good name and reputation of the police.

He gave Wallander a dismayed look. "You look really terrible.""They beat me up," said Wallander. "Beat you up? Who?"

"The other officers. That's what happens when you're acting chief. They let you have it." Björk laughed.

Anette Brolin looked at him with what seemed to be genuine sympathy."That must hurt," she said."I'll be all right," replied Wallander.

He turned his face away when he answered, remembering that he had forgotten to brush his teeth. They all went into Björk's office. Since there was no written report, Wallander gave a summary of the case. Björk and Anette Brolin both asked a lot of questions.

"If it had been anyone but you who dragged me out of bed on Sunday morning with this kind of cops-and-robbers story, I wouldn't have believed it," said Björk.

Then he turned to Anette Brolin. "Do we have enough to detain them? Or should we just bring them in for questioning?"

"I'll get the detention order on them based on the interrogation results," said Anette Brolin. "Then, of course, it would be good if that Romanian woman could identify the man in Lund in a line-up.""We'll need a court order for that," said Björk.

"Yes " said Anette Brolin. "But we could do a provisional identification."Wallander and Rydberg looked at her with interest.

"We could bring in the woman," she went on. "Then they could pass each other in the corridor by chance."

Wallander nodded in approval. Anette Brolin was a prosecutor who was Per Akeson's equal when it came to taking a flexible view of the rules.

"Right," said Björk. "I'll get in touch with our colleagues in Malmö and Lund. Then we'll pick up the suspects in two hours. At ten o'clock."

"What about the woman in the bed?" asked Wallander. "The one in Lund?"

"We'll bring her in too," said Björk. "How should we divide up the interrogations?"

"I want Bergman," said Wallander. "Rydberg can talk to the man who munches on apples."

"At 3 p.m. we'll decide about the detention order," said Anette Brolin. "I'll be at home until then."

Wallander accompanied her out to the reception. "I was thinking about asking you to dinner last night," he said. "But something came up."

"There'll be plenty more evenings," she said. "I think you've done a good job on this case. How did you work out that he was the one?""I didn't. It was just a hunch."

He watched her as she headed towards town. It came to him that he hadn't thought of Mona at all since the evening they had had dinner together.

Everything started to move very fast. Hansson was wrenched out of his Sunday peace and told to collect the Romanian woman and an interpreter.

"Our colleagues don't sound happy," Björk said with concern. "It's never anyone's idea of fun to bring in someone from your own force. It's going to be a wretched winter because of this.""What do you mean by wretched?" asked Wallander."Fresh attacks on the police force.""He'd retired early, hadn't he?"

"Even so. The papers will be screaming about the fact that the murderer was a policeman. There will be new persecution of the force."

Shortly before 10 a.m. Wallander arrived at the building that was covered in scaffolding and sacking. He had four plain clothes policemen from Lund with him.

"He has guns," said Wallander while they were still sitting in the car. "And he has committed a cold-blooded execution. Still, I think we can take it easy. He's certainly not anticipating us. Two guns drawn should be enough."

Wallander had brought along his revolver. On the way to Lund he tried to remember when he had last taken it out. He'd realised that it was more than three years earlier, in the course of the capture of an escaped convict from Kumla prison who had barricaded himself in a summer-house near Mossby beach.

Now they were sitting in a car outside the building in Lund. Wallander realised that he had climbed much higher than he had thought. If he had fallen all the way to the ground, he would have crushed his spine.

That morning the police in Lund had sent out an inspector pretending to do the paper round to case the flat.

"Let's review the situation," said Wallander. "No back stairs?"The officer sitting next to him shook his head. "No scaffolding on the rear side?" "Nothing."

According to the officer, the flat was occupied by a man named Valfrid Ström. He wasn't listed in any police files. Nor did anyone know how he made his living.

At 10 a.m. on the dot they got out of the car and crossed the street. One officer stayed at the main door of the building. There was an intercom system, but it wasn't working. Wallander jemmied the door open with a screwdriver.

"One man should stay in the stairwell," he said. "You and I will go upstairs. What's your name?""Enberg.""You've got a first name, haven't you?" "Kalle.""OK, Kalle, let's go."

They listened in the dark outside the door. Wallander drew his revolver and nodded to Enberg to do the same. Then he rang the doorbell.

The door was opened by a woman wearing a dressing gown. Wallander recognised her. It was the same woman who had been asleep in the double bed. He hid his revolver behind his back.

"We're with the police," he said. "We're looking for your husband, Valfrid Ström."

The woman, who was in her 40s and had a harried expression, looked scared. She stepped aside and let the policemen in.

Suddenly Valfrid Ström was standing in front of them. He was dressed in a green tracksuit.

"Police," said Wallander. "We need to ask you to come with us."

The man with the half-moon-shaped bald patch looked at him tensely. "Why?" "For questioning." "About what?""You'll find out at the station."

Wallander turned to the woman. "You'd better come along too. Put on some clothes."

The man seemed completely calm. "I'm not going anywhere if you don't tell me why," he said. "Perhaps you could start by showing me some identification."

When Wallander put his right hand in his inside pocket, he couldn't hide the fact that he was carrying a gun. He switched it over to his left hand and fumbled for his wallet, where he kept his identity card.

In the same instant Ström leapt straight at him. He butted Wallander right in the forehead, smack in the middle of his wound. Wallander went sailing backwards, and the revolver flew out of his hand. Enberg didn't have time to react before the man in the green tracksuit had disappeared out the door. The woman shrieked, and Wallander fumbled for his revolver. He dashed down the stairs after the man, yelling a warning to the two officers posted below.

Ström was fast. He gave the policeman standing inside the door an elbow to the chin. The man outside was rammed by the front door when Ström flung himself out into the street. Wallander, who could hardly see for the blood streaming into his eyes, stumbled over the unconscious policeman in the stairwell. He pulled at the safety catch on his revolver, which was stuck.

Then he was out on the street.

"Which way did he go?" he called to the bewildered policeman who was entangled in the sacking. "Left."

Wallander ran. He caught sight of Ström's tracksuit just as he disappeared into an underpass. He tore off his cap and wiped his face. Several elderly women, who looked as though they were on their way to church, jumped aside in fright. He ran into the underpass just as a train rumbled overhead.

When he reached street level again, he just had time to see Ström stop a car, drag the driver out, and drive off.

The only vehicle nearby was a large horsebox. The driver was pulling a pack of condoms from a vending machine on a shop wall. When Wallander came racing up, his gun drawn and blood streaming down his face, the man dropped the condoms and ran for his life.

Wallander climbed into the driver's seat. He heard a horse whinny behind him. The engine was still running, and he threw it into first gear.

He thought he had lost sight of Ström, but then he saw the car again. It drove through a red light and continued down a narrow street straight towards the cathedral. Wallander was changing gears fast, trying not to lose sight of the car. Horses were whinnying behind him, and he smelled the odour of warm manure.

In a tight curve he almost lost control. He bounced off two parked cars, but finally managed to straighten up.

The chase proceeded towards the hospital and then through an industrial area. Wallander saw that the horsebox was equipped with a phone. He tried dialling the emergency number with one hand while struggling to keep the heavy vehicle on the road.

Just as the emergency operator answered, he had to negotiate a curve. The phone fell from his grasp, and he realised that he wouldn't be able to recover it without stopping.

This is crazy, he thought in desperation. Stark raving mad. And then he remembered his sister. He was supposed to be meeting her at Sturup airport right now.

In the roundabout by the entrance to Staffanstorp the chase ended.

Ström was forced to brake hard to avoid a bus that was heading across his path. He lost control, and the car ran straight into a concrete pillar. Wallander, about 100 metres behind him, saw flames shooting out of the car. He braked so hard that the horsebox slid into the ditch and toppled over. The back doors flew open and two horses disentangled themselves and galloped away across the fields.

Ström had been flung out of the car on impact. One foot was sliced off. His face had been gashed by shards of glass. Even before he reached him Wallander could tell that he was dead.

People came running from the nearby houses. Cars pulled over to the side of the road. Too late he realised that he had his gun in his hand. A few minutes later the first squad car arrived. Then an ambulance. Wallander showed his identity card and made a call from the squad car. He asked to be put through to Björk.

"Did it go all right?" asked Björk. "Bergman has been picked up and is on the way here. Everything went without a hitch. And the Yugoslav woman is waiting here with her interpreter."

"Send them over to the morgue at Lund General Hospital," said Wallander. "She'll have to identify a corpse. By the way, she's Romanian."

"What the hell do you mean by that?" said Björk.

"Just what I said," replied Wallander and hung up.

At that moment he saw one of the horses come galloping back across the field. It was a beautiful white stallion. He didn't think he'd ever seen such a beautiful horse.

When he got back to Ystad the news of Ström's death had already made the rounds. The woman who was his wife had collapsed, and a doctor refused to let the police interrogate her.

Rydberg told Wallander that Bergman denied everything. He hadn't stolen his own car and then ditched it. He hadn't been at Hageholm. He hadn't visited Ström the night before. He demanded to be taken back to Malmö at once."What a damned weasel," said Wallander. "I'll crack him."

"Nobody is doing any cracking here," said Björk. "That ludicrous high-speed chase through Lund has caused enough trouble already. I don't understand why five full-grown policemen can't manage to bring in one unarmed man for questioning. By the way, do you know that one of those horses was run over? Its name was Super Nova, and its owner put a value of a hundred thousand kronor on it."

Wallander felt anger welling up inside him. Why couldn't Björk grasp that it was support he needed? Not this officious whining.

"Now we're going to wait for the Romanian woman's identification," said Björk. "Nobody talks to the press or the media except me.""Thank heavens for that," said Wallander.

He went back to his office with Rydberg and closed the door."Do you have any idea how you look?" Rydberg asked. "Don't tell me, please.""Your sister called. I asked Martinsson to drive out and collect her from the airport. I assumed that you had forgotten. He said he'd take care of her until you were free."

Wallander nodded gratefully. A few minutes later, Björk barrelled in.

"The identification is positive," he said. "We've got the murderer we were looking for." "She recognised him?"

"Not a shadow of a doubt. It was the man who was eating the apple out in the field." "Who was he?" asked Rydberg.

"Ström called himself a businessman," replied Bjdrk. "He was 47. But the Security Police in Stockholm didn't take long to answer our inquiry. He has been engaged in nationalist movements since the 1960s. First in something called the Democratic Alliance, later in much more militant factions. But how he ended up a cold-blooded murderer is something Bergman may be able to tell us. Or his wife."Wallander stood up. "Now we'll tackle Bergman," he said.

All three of them went into the room where Bergman sat smoking. Wallander led the interrogation. He went on the offensive at once."Do you know what I was doing last night?" he asked.

Bergman gave him a look of contempt. "How would I know that?""I tailed you to Lund."

Wallander thought he caught a fleeting shift in the man's face.

"I followed you to Lund," repeated Wallander. "And I climbed up on the scaffolding outside the building where Ström lived. I saw you exchange your shotgun for another one. Now Ström is dead. But a witness has identified him as the murderer at Hageholm. What do you have to say to all that?"

Bergman didn't say anything. He lit another cigarette and stared into space.

"OK, we'll take it from the top," said Wallander. "We know how everything happened. There are only two things we don't know yet. First, what did you do with your car? Second, why did you shoot the Somali?"

Bergman wasn't talking. Just after 3 p.m. he was formally put under arrest and assigned a legal aid lawyer. The charge was murder or accessory to murder.

At 4 p.m. Wallander briefly questioned Valfrid Ström's wife. She was still in shock, but she answered his questions. He learned that Ström imported exclusive cars. She told him that Ström was violently opposed to Sweden's policy on refugees. She had been married to him for just a little over a year. Wallander formed the conviction that she would get over her loss rather quickly.

After the interrogation he talked with Rydberg and Björk. Then they released the woman with a warning not to leave Lund and she was taken home.

Wallander and Rydberg made another attempt to get Bergman to talk. The legal aid lawyer was young and ambitious, and he claimed that there were no grounds for submission of evidence, and that in his opinion the arrest was equivalent to a preliminary miscarriage of justice.They talked some more, and Rydberg had an idea.

"Where was Ström trying to escape to?" he asked Wallander.He pointed at a map.

"The chase ended at Staffanstorp. Maybe he had a warehouse there or somewhere in the vicinity. It's not far from Hageholm, if you know the back roads."

A call to Ström's wife confirmed that Rydberg was on the right track. He did indeed have a warehouse between

Staffanstorp and Veberod. It was where he kept his imported cars. Rydberg drove there in a squad car. Very soon he called Wallander."Bingo," he said. "There's a pale-blue Citroen here."

"Maybe we ought to teach our children to identify cars by their sound," said Wallander.He tackled Bergman again. But the man said nothing.

Rydberg returned to Ystad after a preliminary examination of the Citroen. In the glove compartment he found a box of shotgun shells. In the meantime the police in Malmö and Lund searched Bergman's and Ström's apartments.

"It seems as though these two gentlemen were members of some sort of Swedish Ku-Klux-Klan movement," said Bjdrk. "I'm afraid this is going to be difficult to untangle. There might be more people involved."And Bergman still wasn't talking.

Wallander was greatly relieved that Björk was back and could deal with the media. His face stung and burned, and he was very tired. By 6 p.m. he finally had time to call Martinsson and talk to his sister. Then he drove over and picked her up. She was startled when she saw his battered face.

"It might be best if Dad didn't see me," said Wallander. "I'll wait for you in the car."

His sister said she had already visited their father. The old man was still tired, but he brightened up a little when he saw his daughter.

"I don't think he remembers much about that night," she said as they drove up to the hospital."Maybe that's just as well."

Wallander sat in the car and waited while she visited their father again. He closed his eyes and listened to a Rossini opera. When she opened the car door, he jumped. He had fallen asleep. Together they drove to the house in Loderup.

Wallander could see that his sister was shocked at their father's decline. Together they cleaned out the stinking rubbish and filthy clothes.

"How could this happen?" she asked, and Wallander felt that she was blaming him.

Maybe she was right. Maybe he could have done more. At least recognised his father's decline earlier. They stopped and bought groceries and then returned to Mariagatan. Over dinner they talked about what would happen to their father."He'll die if we put him in a retirement home," she said.

"What's the alternative?" asked Wallander. "He can't live here. He can't live with you. The house in Loderup won't work either. What's left?"

They agreed that it would be best, all the same, if their father could keep on living in his own house, with regular home visits.

"He has never liked me," said Wallander as they were drinking coffee."Of course he does.""Not since I decided to be a policeman."

"You think maybe he had something else in mind for you?""Yes, but what? He's never said."

Wallander made up the sofa for his sister. When they had no more to say about their father, Wallander told her everything that had happened. And in the telling he realised that the old sense of intimacy, which had always bound them before, was gone. We haven't seen each other often enough, he thought. She doesn't even dare ask me why Mona and I went our separate ways.

He brought out a half-empty bottle of cognac. She shook her head, so he poured one for himself.

The late news was dominated by the story of Ström. Bergman's identity was not revealed. Wallander knew that it was because of his having been a policeman. He assumed that the chief of the national police was hard at work setting out the necessary smoke screens so they could keep Bergman's identity secret for as long as possible. Sooner or later, of course, the truth would have to come out.When the news was finished, the telephone rang.

Wallander asked his sister to answer it. "Find out who it is and say you'll check to see if I'm home," he told her.

"It's someone called Brolin," she said when she came back from the corridor.Painfully, he got up from his chair and took the telephone."I hope I didn't wake you," said Anette Brolin."Not at all. My sister is visiting."

"I just thought I'd call and say that I think all of you did an extraordinary job.""Mostly we were lucky."

Why is she calling? he wondered. He made a quick decision."How about a drink?" he suggested. "Great. Where?" He could hear that she was surprised. "My sister is just going to bed. How about your place?" "That's fine."

He hung up and went back into the living room. "I wasn't planning to go to bed at all," said his sister. "I have to go out for a while. Don't wait up for me. I don't know how long I'll be."

The cool evening made it easy to breathe. He turned down Regementsgatan and felt a sudden sense of relief. They had solved the murder in Hageholm within 48 hours. Now they had to turn their attention back to the murders in Lunnarp.

He knew that he'd done a good job. He had trusted his intuition, acted without hesitation, and it had produced results. The thought of the crazy chase with the horsebox gave him the shakes. But the relief was still there.

Anette Brolin lived on the third floor of a turn-of-the-century building. He called her on the intercom and she answered. The flat was large but sparsely furnished. Against one wall were several paintings still waiting to be hung up.

"Gin and tonic?" she asked. "I'm afraid I don't have much of a selection."

"Please," he said. "Right now anything is fine. Just so as long as it's strong."

She sat down across from him on a sofa and pulled her legs up under her. He thought she was extremely beautiful.

"Do you have any idea how you look?" she asked with a laugh."A lot of people ask me that," he replied.

Then he remembered Klas Mansön. The man who robbed the shop, whom Anette Brolin had refused to detain. He really didn't think he should talk about work, but he couldn't help it."Klas Mansön," he said. "Do you remember that name?"She nodded.

"Hansson told me that you thought our investigation was poor. That you didn't intend to apply for Mansön's remand in custody to be extended unless it was done more carefully."

"The investigation was poor, sloppily written. Insufficient evidence. Vague testimony. I'd be in dereliction of my duty if I sought further detention based on material like that."

"The investigation was no worse than most. Besides, you forgot one important fact.""What was that?"

"That Klas Mansön is a guilty man. He's robbed shops before."

"Then you'll have to come up with better investigative work."

"I don't think there's anything wrong with the report. If we let the man loose, he'll just commit more crimes.""You can't just put people in jail willy-nilly."

Wallander shrugged. "Will you hold off releasing him if I rustle up some more exhaustive testimony?" he asked.

"That depends on what the witness says."

"Why are you so stubborn? Mansön is guilty. If we just hold him for a while, he'll confess. But if he has the slightest inkling that he can get out, he'll clam up."

"Prosecutors have to be stubborn. Otherwise what do you think would happen to law and order in this country?"

Wallander could feel that the gin had made him reckless.

"That question can also be asked by an insignificant, provincial police detective," he said. "Once I believed that being on the force meant that you were involved in protecting the property and safety of ordinary people. Probably I still believe it. But I've seen law and order being eroded away. I've seen young people who commit crimes being almost encouraged to continue. No-one intervenes. No-one cares about the increasing number of victims. It just gets worse and worse."

"Now you sound like my father," she said. "He's a retired judge. A true old-fashioned, reactionary civil servant."

"Could be. Maybe I am conservative. But I mean what I say. I actually understand why people sometimes take matters into their own hands."

"So you probably also understand how some misguided individuals can fatally shoot an innocent asylum seeker?"

"Yes and no. The insecurity in this country is enormous. People are afraid. Especially in farming communities like this one. You'll soon find out that there's a big hero right now at this end of the country. A man who is applauded behind drawn curtains. The man who saw to it that there was a municipal vote that said no to accepting refugees."

"So what happens if we put ourselves above the decisions of parliament? We have a policy for refugees in this country and it must be adhered to."

"Wrong. It's precisely the absence of a clear policy on refugees that creates chaos. Right now we're living in a country where anyone for any reason can come across the border in any manner. Control has been eliminated. The customs service is paralysed. There are plenty of unsupervised airfields where the dope and the illegal immigrants are unloaded every night."

He was aware that he was losing his cool. The murder of the Somali was a crime with many layers.

"Bergman, of course, must be locked up with the most severe punishment," he went on. "But the Immigration Service and the government have to take their share of the blame.""That's nonsense."

"Is it? People who belonged to the fascist secret police in Romania are starting to show up here in Sweden. Seeking asylum. Should it be granted to them?""The principle has to apply equally.""Does it really? Always? Even when it's wrong?"

She got up from the sofa and refilled their glasses. Wallander was starting to feel depressed. We're too different, he thought. We talk for 10 minutes and a chasm opens.

He felt aggressive. And he looked at her and could feel himself getting aroused. How long was it since the last time he and Mona had made love? A year ago almost. A whole year with no sex.He groaned at the thought."Are you in pain?" she asked.

He nodded. He wasn't, but he yielded to his desire for sympathy."Maybe it would be best if you went home," she said.

That was the last thing he wanted to do. He didn't feel that he even had a home since Mona moved out. He finished his drink and held out his glass for a refill. Now he was so intoxicated that he was starting to shed his inhibitions."One more," he said. "I've earned it.""Then you have to go," she said.

Her voice had suddenly turned cool. But he didn't let it bother him. When she brought his glass, he grabbed her and pulled her down in the chair.

"Sit here by me," he said, laying his hand on her thigh.

She pulled herself free and slapped him. She hit him with the hand with the wedding ring, and he could feel it tear his cheek."Go home now," she said.

He put his glass down on the table. "Or you'll do what?" he asked. "Call the police?"

She didn't answer, but he could see that she was furious. He stumbled when he stood up. Suddenly he realised what he had tried to do."Forgive me," he said. "I'm exhausted."

"We'll forget all about this," she replied. "But now you have to go home."

"I don't know what came over me," he said, putting out his hand.She took it."We'll just forget it," she said. "Good night."

He tried to think of something more to say. Somewhere in his muddled consciousness the thought gnawed at him that he had done something both unforgivable and dangerous. Just as he had driven his car home from the meeting with Mona when he was drunk. He left, and heard the door close behind him.

I have to stop drinking, he thought angrily. I can't handle it. Down on the street he sucked the cool air deep into his lungs.

How the hell could anyone be so stupid? he thought. No better than a drunken boy who doesn't know a thing about himself, women, or the world.

He went home to Mariagatan. The next day he would have to get back onto the hunt for the Lunnarp killers.

CHAPTER 13

Early on Monday morning, 15 January, Wallander drove out to the shopping centre on the Malmö road and bought two bouquets of flowers. Just over a week earlier he had driven the same road, towards Jenarp and the scene of the crime that was still demanding all of his attention. The past week had been the most intense of his career. When he looked at his face in the rearview mirror, he thought that every scratch, every lump, every discolouration from purple to black was a memento of the week's events.

It was - 6° C. There was no wind. The white ferry from Poland was making its way into the harbour.

When Wallander arrived at the police station a little after 8 a.m., he gave one of the bouquets to Ebba. At first she refused to take it, but he could see that she was pleased. He took the other bouquet with him to his office. He took a card from his desk drawer and pondered a long time what to write to Anette Brolin. Too long. By the time he managed a few lines, he had abandoned all attempts to find the perfect words. He simply apologised for his rash behaviour the night before. He blamed his rashness on fatigue.

"I'm actually quite shy by nature," he wrote. Which was not entirely true. But he thought this might give Anette Brolin the opportunity to turn the other cheek.

He was on the point of going over to the prosecutor's office when Björk came in. As usual, he had knocked so softly that Wallander hadn't heard him.

"Somebody sent you flowers?" said Björk. "You deserve them, as a matter of fact. I'm impressed how quickly you solved the murder of the Negro."

Wallander disliked Björk referring to the Somali as the Negro. A person lying under that tarpaulin was what there had been. But he had no intention of getting into an argument about it.

Björk was wearing a flowery shirt that he had bought in Spain. He sat down on the rickety wooden chair near the window.

"I thought we ought to go over the murders at Lunnarp," he said. "I've looked through the investigation reports. There seem to be a lot of gaps. I've been thinking that Rydberg should take over the primary responsibility for the investigation while you concentrate on getting Bergman to talk. What do you think about that?"

Wallander countered with a question. "What does Rydberg say?""I haven't talked to him yet."

"I think we should do it the other way around. Rydberg has a bad leg, and there's still a lot of footwork to be done in that investigation."

What Wallander said was true enough, but it wasn't concern for Rydberg's rheumatism that made him suggest reversing the responsibilities. He didn't want to give up the hunt for the Lunnarp killers. Police work was a team effort, but he thought of the murderers as belonging to him.

"There's a third option," said Björk. "We could let Svedberg and Hansson handle Bergman." Wallander nodded. He'd go along with that. Björk got up from the rickety chair. "We need some new furniture," he said.

"We need more manpower," replied Wallander.

After Björk had left, Wallander sat down at his typewriter and typed up a comprehensive report on the arrest of Rune Bergman and the death of Valfrid Ström. He made a particular effort to compile something that Anette Brolin would not object to. It took him over two hours. Finally, he pulled the last page out of the typewriter, signed it, and took it to Rydberg.

Rydberg was sitting at his desk. He looked tired. When Wallander came into his office, he was just putting the telephone down.

"I hear that Bjdrk wants to split us up," he said. "I'm glad to be spared dealing with Bergman."

Wallander put his report on the desk. "Read through it," he said. "If you have no quarrel with it, give it to Hansson."

"Svedberg had a go at Bergman this morning," said Rydberg. "But he still refuses to talk. Even though the cigarettes match. The same brand that was lying in the mud next to where the car must have been."

"I wonder what's going to turn up," said Wallander. "What's behind this whole thing? Neo-Nazis? Racists with connections all over Europe? Why would someone commit a crime like this anyway? Jump out into the road and shoot a complete stranger? Just because he happened to be black?"

"No way of knowing," said Rydberg. "But it's something we're going to have to learn to live with."

They agreed to meet again in half an hour, after Rydberg had been through the report. Then they would start on the Lunnarp investigation in earnest.

Wallander went over to the prosecutor's office. Anette Brolin was in district court. He left the flowers with the young woman at reception.

"Is it her birthday?" she asked. "Sort of" said Wallander.

When he got back to his office, Kristina was waiting for him. She had already left the flat by the time he woke up that morning. She told him that she had talked to both a doctor and the social worker.

"Dad seems better," she said. "They don't think he's slipping into chronic senility. Maybe it was just a temporary period of confusion. We agreed to try regular home care. I was thinking about asking you to drive us out there around midday today. If you can't do it, maybe I could borrow your car."

"Of course I can drive you. Who's going to do the home care?"

"I'm supposed to have a meeting with a woman who doesn't live far from Dad."

Wallander nodded. "I'm glad you're here. I couldn't have handled this alone."

They agreed that he would come to the hospital right after midday. After his sister left, Wallander straightened up his desk and placed the thick folder of material on the Lövgren case in front of him. It was time to get started.

Björk had told him that for the time being, there would be four people on the investigative team. Since Näslund was laid up with the flu, only three of them were at the case meeting in Rydberg's office. Martinsson had nothing to say and seemed to have a hangover. But Wallander remembered the decisive manner with which he had taken care of the hysterical widow at Hageholm.

They began with a thorough review of all the material. Martinsson was able to add information produced by his work with the central criminal records. Wallander felt a great sense of security in this methodical and meticulous scrutiny of details. To an outside observer such work would probably seem unbearably tedious. But that was not the case for the three police officers. The solution and the truth might be found through the combination of the most inconsequential information.

They isolated the loose ends that had to be dealt with first.

"You take Lövgren's trip to Ystad," Wallander said to Martinsson. "We need to know how he got to town and how he got home. Are there other safe-deposit boxes? What did he do during the hour between his appearances at the two banks? Did he go into a shop and buy something? Who saw him?"

"I think Näslund has already started calling around the banks," said Martinsson.

"Call him at home and find out," said Wallander. "This can't wait until he's feeling better."

Rydberg was to pay a visit to Lars Herdin and Wallander to drive over to Malmö again to talk to the man called Erik Magnusson, the one Goran Boman thought might be Lövgren's secret son.

"All the other items will have to wait," said Wallander. "We'll start with these and meet again at five o'clock."

Before he left for the hospital, Wallander called Boman in Kristianstad.

"Erik Magnusson works for the county council," said Boman. "Unfortunately, I haven't discovered exactly what he does. We've had an unusually rowdy weekend up here with a lot of fights and drunkenness. I haven't had time for much besides hauling people in."

"No problem. I'll find him," said Wallander. "I'll call you tomorrow morning at the latest."Just after midday he set off for the hospital. His sister was waiting in the reception. They took the lift up to the ward where their father had been moved after the first 24 hours of observation.

By the time they arrived, he had already been discharged and was sitting in the corridor, waiting for them. He had his hat on, and the suitcase full of dirty underwear and tubes of paint was by his side. Wallander didn't recognise the suit he was wearing.

"I bought it for him," his sister said. "It must be 30 years since he bought himself a new suit.""How are you Dad?" asked Wallander.

His father looked him in the eye. Wallander could see that he had recovered.

"It'll be nice to get back home," he said curtly and stood up.

Wallander picked up the suitcase as his father leaned on Kristina's arm. She sat with him in the back seat on the drive to Loderup.

Wallander, who was in a hurry to get to Malmd, promised to come back around 6 p.m. His sister was going to stay the night, and she asked him to buy food for dinner. His father had immediately changed out of his suit and into his painting overalls. He was already at his easel, working on the unfinished painting.

"Do you think he'll be able to get by with home care?" asked Wallander."We'll have to wait and see," replied his sister.

It was almost 2 p.m. when Wallander pulled up in front of the county council's main building in Malmö. He parked his car and went into the large reception.

"I'm looking for Erik Magnusson," he told the woman who shoved the glass window open.

"We have at least three Erik Magnussons working here," she said. "Which one are you looking for?"

Wallander took out his police identity card and showed it to her."I don't know," he said. "But he was born in the late 1950s."The woman behind the glass knew at once who it was.

"Then it must be Erik Magnusson in central supply," she said. "The two other Erik Magnussons are much older. What did he do?"Wallander smiled at her undisguised curiosity.

"Nothing," he said. "I just want to ask him some questions."

She told him how to get to central supply. He thanked her and returned to his car. The county council's supply warehouse was located on the northern outskirts, near the Oil Harbour. Wallander wandered around for a long time before he found the right place.

He went through a door marked Office. Through a big glass window he could see yellow fork-lift trucks driving back and forth between long rows of shelves.

The office was empty. He went down some stairs and into the enormous warehouse. A young man with hair down to his shoulders was piling up big plastic sacks of toilet paper. Wallander went over to him."I'm looking for Erik Magnusson," he said.

The young man pointed to a yellow fork-lift which had stopped next to a loading dock where a van was being unloaded.

The man in the cab of the yellow fork-lift had fair hair. It seemed unlikely that Maria Lövgren would have thought about foreigners if this blonde man was the one who put the noose around her neck. He pushed the thought away with annoyance. He was getting ahead of himself again.

"Erik Magnusson!" he shouted over the engine noise. The man gave him an inquiring look before he turned off the engine and jumped down."Erik Magnusson?" asked Wallander."Yes?"

"I'm a policeman. ‘I’d like to have a word with you for a moment."

Wallander scrutinised his face. There was nothing unexpected about his reaction. He merely looked surprised. Quite naturally surprised."Why is that?" he asked.

Wallander looked around. "Is there somewhere we can sit down?" he asked.

Magnusson led the way to a corner with a coffee vending machine. There was a dirty wooden table and several makeshift benches. Wallander fed two one-krona coins into the machine and got a cup of coffee. Magnusson settled for a pinch of snuff.

"I'm from the police in Ystad" he began. "I have a few questions for you regarding a particularly nasty murder in a village called Lunnarp. Maybe you read about it in the papers?""I think so. But what does that have to do with me?"

Wallander was beginning to wonder the same thing. The man named Erik Magnusson seemed completely unruffled by a visit from the police at his place of work."I have to ask you for the name of your father."The man frowned."My dad?" he said. "I don't have a dad." "Everybody has one." "Not one that I know about, at any rate." "How can that be?""Mum wasn't married when I was born."

"And she never told you who your father was?" "No.""Did you ever ask her?"

"Of course I've asked her. I bugged her about it my whole childhood. Then I gave up.""What did she say when you asked her about it?"

Magnusson stood up and pressed the button for a cup of coffee. "Why are you asking about my dad? Does he have something to do with the murder?"

"I'll get to that in a minute," said Wallander. "What did your mother say when you asked her about your father?""It varied.""How do you mean?"

"Sometimes she would say that she didn't really know. Sometimes that it was a salesman she never saw again. Sometimes something else.""And you were satisfied with that?"

"What the hell was I supposed to do? If she won't tell me, she won't tell me."

Wallander thought about the answers he was getting. Was it really possible to be so uninterested in who your father was?"Do you get along well with your mother?" he asked."What do you mean by that?""Do you see each other often?"

"She calls me now and then. I drive over to Kristianstad once in a while. I got along better with my stepfather."

Wallander gave a start. Boman had said nothing about a stepfather."Is your mother remarried?"

"She lived with a man while I was growing up. They probably weren't ever married. But I still called him my dad. Then they split up when I was about 15.1 moved to Malmö a year later." "What's his name?"" Washis name. He's dead. He was killed in a car crash.""And you're sure that he wasn't your real father?"

"You'd have to look hard to find two people as unlike each other as we were."

Wallander tried a different tack. "The man who was murdered at Lunnarp was named Johannes Lövgren," he said. "Is it possible that he might have been your father?"

The man sitting across from Wallander gave him a look of surprise."How the hell would I know? You'll have to ask my mother.""We've already done that. But she denies it."

"So ask her again. I'd like to know who my father is. Murdered or not."

Wallander believed him. He wrote down Magnusson's address and personal identity number and then stood up."You may hear from us again," he said.The man climbed back into the cab of the fork-lift.

"That's fine with me," he said. "Say hello to my mum if you see her."

Wallander returned to Ystad. He parked near the square and headed down the street to buy some gauze bandages at the chemist. The salesman gazed sympathetically at his battered face. He bought food for dinner in the supermarket on the square. On his way back to the car he changed his mind and retraced his steps to the state liquor oudet. There he bought a bottle of whisky. Even though he couldn't really afford it, he chose malt.

By late afternoon Wallander was back at the station. Neither Rydberg nor Martinsson was there. He went over to the prosecutor's office. The girl at the reception desk smiled."She loved the flowers," she said. "Is she in her office?" "She's in district court."

Wallander headed back. In the corridor he ran into Svedberg."How's it going with Bergman?" asked Wallander.

"He's still not talking," said Svedberg. "But he'll soften up eventually. The evidence is piling up. The laboratory technicians think they can connect the weapon to the crime.""What else have we got on this?"

"It looks as if Ström and Bergman were both active in a number of nationalist groups. But we don't know whether they were operating on their own or were acting under the instruction of an organisation.""In other words, everybody is perfectly happy?"

"I'd hardly say that. Björk was saying how anxious he was to catch the murderer, but then it turned out to be a policeman. I suspect they're going to play down Bergman's importance and dump it all on Ström, who has nothing more to say about it. Personally, I think Bergman was equally up to his neck in the whole thing."

"I wonder whether Ström was the one who called me at home," said Wallander. "I never heard him say enough to tell for sure."Svedberg gave him a searching look. "Which means?"

"That in the worst case, there are others who are prepared to take over the killing from Bergman and Ström."

"I'll tell Björk that we have to continue our patrols of the camps," said Svedberg. "By the way, we have a number of tip-offs indicating that it was a gang of youths who set the fire here in Ystad."

"Don't forget the old man who got a sack of turnips in the head," said Wallander."How's it going with Lunnarp?"

Wallander hesitated with his answer. "I'm not really sure," he said. "But we're doing some serious work on it again."

At 5.30 p.m. Martinsson and Rydberg were in Wallander's office. He thought that Rydberg still looked tired and worn-out. Martinsson was in a bad mood.

"It's a mystery how Lövgren got to Ystad and back again on Thursday, 4 January," he said. "I talked to the bus driver on that route. He said that Johannes and Maria used to ride with him whenever they went into town. Either together or separately. He was absolutely certain that Johannes Lövgren did not ride in his bus any time after New Year's. And no taxi had a fare to Lunnarp. According to Nyström, they took the bus whenever they had to go anywhere. And we know that Lövgren was tightfisted."

"They always drank coffee together," said Wallander. "In the afternoon. The Nyströms must have noticed if Lövgren went off to Ystad or not."

"That's exactly what's such a mystery," said Martinsson. "Both of them claim that he didn't go into town that day. And yet we know that he went to two different banks between 11.30 a.m. and 1.15 p.m. He must have been gone from home at least three or four hours."

"Strange," said Wallander. "You'll have to keep working on it."

Martinsson referred to his notes. "At any rate, he doesn't have any other safe-deposit boxes in town.""Good," said Wallander. "At least we know that much."

"But he might have one in Simrishamn," Martinsson said. "Or Trelleborg. Or Malmö."

"Let's concentrate on his trip to Ystad first," said Wallander, turning to Rydberg.

"Herdin stands by his story," he said after glancing at his worn notebook. "Quite by chance he ran into Lövgren and the woman in Kristianstad in the spring of 1979. And he says that it was from an anonymous letter that he found out they had a child together.""Could he describe the woman?"

"Vaguely. In the worst case we could line up all the ladies and have him point out the right one. If she's one of them, that is," he added."You sound as though you have some doubt."Rydberg closed his notebook with an irritable snap.

"I can't get anything to fit," he said. "You know that. Obviously we have to follow up the leads we have. But I'm not at all sure that we're on the right track. What bothers me is that I can't see an alternative path to take."

Wallander told them about his meeting with Erik Magnusson.

"Why didn't you ask him for an alibi for the night of the murder?" wondered Martinsson in surprise.

Wallander felt himself starting to blush behind his black and blue marks. It had slipped his mind. But he didn't tell them that.

"I decided to wait," he said. "I wanted to have an excuse to visit him again."

He could hear how lame that sounded. But neither Rydberg nor Martinsson appeared to react to his explanation. The conversation came to a halt. Each was wrapped up in his own thoughts. Wallander wondered how many times he had found himself in exactly this same situation. When an investigation suddenly ceases to breathe. Like a horse that refuses to budge. Now they would be forced to tug and pull at the horse until it started to move.

"How should we continue?" asked Wallander at last, when the silence became too oppressive.

He answered his own question. "For your part, Martinsson, it's a matter of finding out how Lövgren could go to Ystad and back without anyone noticing. We have to work that out as soon as possible."

"There was a jar full of receipts in one of the kitchen cupboards," said Rydberg. "He might have bought something in a shop on that Friday. Maybe a salesman would remember seeing him."

"Or maybe he had a flying carpet," said Martinsson. "I'll keep working on it."

"His relatives," said Wallander. "We have to go through all of them."

He pulled out a list of names and addresses from the thick folder and handed it to Rydberg.

"The funeral is on Wednesday," said Rydberg. "In Villie Church. I don't care much for funerals. But I think I'll go to this one."

"I'm going back to Kristianstad tomorrow," said Wallander. "Boman was suspicious of Ellen Magnusson. He didn't think she was telling the truth."

It was just before 6 p.m. when they finished their meeting. They decided to meet again on the following afternoon.

"If Näslund is feeling better, he can work on the stolen rental car," said Wallander. "By the way, did we ever find out what that Polish family is doing in Lunnarp?"

"The husband works at the sugar refinery in Jordberga," said Rydberg. "All his papers are in order. Even though he wasn't fully aware of it himself."

Wallander sat in his office for a while after Rydberg and

Martinsson left. There was a stack of papers on his desk that he was supposed to go through, including all the material from the assault case he had been working on over New Year's. There were also reports pertaining to everything from missing bullocks to lorries that had tipped over during the last storm. At the bottom of the stack he found a note informing him that he had been given a pay rise. He worked out that he would be taking home an extra 39 kronor per month.

By the time he had made his way through the pile of papers, it was almost 7.30 p.m. He called Loderup and told his sister that he was on his way."We're starving," she said. "Do you always work this late?"

Wallander selected a cassette of a Puccini opera and went out to his car. He had wanted to make sure that Anette Brolin had put out of her mind what had happened the night before after all. But this would have to wait.

Kristina told him that the help for their father had turned out to be a solid woman in her 50s who would have no trouble taking care of him.

"He couldn't ask for anyone better," she said when she came out to the driveway and met him in the dark."What's Dad doing?""He's painting," she said.

While his sister made dinner, Wallander sat on the toboggan in the studio and watched the autumn motif emerge. His father seemed to have completely forgotten about what had happened.

I have to visit him more regularly, thought Wallander. At least three times a week, and preferably at specific times.

After dinner they played cards with their father for a couple of hours. At 11 p.m. he went to bed.

"I'm going home tomorrow," said Kristina. "I can't be away any longer.""Thanks for coming," said Wallander.

They decided that he would pick her up at 8 a.m. the next morning and drive her to the airport.

"The plane was full out of Sturup," she said. "I'm leaving from Everod."

That suited Wallander just fine, since he had to drive to Kristianstad anyway.

Just after midnight he walked into his apartment on Mariagatan. He poured himself a big glass of whisky and took it with him into the bathroom. He lay in the bath for a long time, thawing out his limbs in the hot water.

He tried to push them away, but Rune Bergman and Valfrid Ström kept popping into his thoughts. He was trying to understand. The only thing he came up with was the same idea he had had so many times before. A new world had emerged, and he hadn't even noticed it. As a policeman, he still lived in another, older world. How was he going to learn to live in the new? How would he deal with the great uneasiness he felt at these changes, at so much happening so fast?

The murder of the Somali had been a new kind of murder. The double murder in Lunnarp, however, was an old-fashioned crime. Or was it really? He thought about the savagery, and the noose. He wasn't sure.

It was 1.30 a.m. when finally he crawled between the chilly sheets. He felt more lonely there than ever.

For the next three days nothing happened. Näslund came back to work and succeeded in solving the problem of the stolen car. A man and a woman went on a robbery spree and then left the car in Halmstad. On the night of the murder they had been staying in a boarding house in Bastad. The owner vouched for their alibi.

Goran Boman talked to Ellen Magnusson. She resolutely denied that Johannes Lövgren was the father of her son.

Wallander visited Erik Magnusson again and asked for the alibi he had forgotten to get during their first encounter. He had been with his fiancee. There was no reason to doubt him. Martinsson got nowhere with Lövgren's trip to Ystad. The Nyströms were quite sure about their story, as were the bus drivers and taxi companies. Rydberg went to the funeral, and talked to nineteen different relatives of the Lövgrens.Nothing gave them any leads.

The temperature hovered around freezing point. One day there was no wind, the next day it was gusty. Wallander ran into Anette Brolin in the corridor. She thanked him for the flowers. But he couldn't be certain that she really had decided to forget about what had happened that night.

Bergman still refused to talk, even though the evidence against him was overwhelming. Various extreme nationalist movements tried to take credit for the crime. The press and the rest of the media became involved in a violent debate about Sweden's immigration policy. Although all was calm in Skåne, crosses burned in the night outside various refugee camps in other parts of the country.

Wallander and his colleagues on the investigative team shielded themselves from all of this. Only rarely were any opinions expressed that were not directly related to the deadlocked investigation. But Wallander realised that he was not alone in his feelings of uncertainty and confusion at the new society that was emerging.

We live as if we were in mourning for a lost paradise, he thought. As if we longed for the car thieves and safecrackers of the old days, who doffed their caps and behaved like gentlemen when we came to take them in. But those days have irretrievably vanished, and nor is it certain that they were as idyllic as we remember them.

Then on Friday, 19 January, everything happened at once.

The day did not start off well for Wallander. At 7.30 a.m. he had his Peugeot checked out and barely managed to avoid having it declared unfit for the road. When he went through the inspection report, he saw that his car needed repairs that would cost thousands of kronor. Despondent, he drove to the police station.

He hadn't even taken off his overcoat when Martinsson came storming into his office.

"Damn it," he said. "I know how Johannes Lövgren got to Ystad and back home again."

Wallander forgot all about the car and felt himself instantly seized with excitement.

"It wasn't a flying carpet, after all," continued Martinsson. "The chimney sweep drove him."Wallander sat down in his desk chair."What chimney sweep?"

"Master chimney sweep Arthur Lundin from Slimminge. Out of the blue Hanna Nyström has remembered that the chimney sweep had been that Thursday, 4 January. He cleaned the chimneys at both houses and then left. When she told me that he cleaned the Lövgrens' flues second and that he left around 10.30 a.m., bells started to go off in my head. I just talked to him. He was cleaning the hospital chimney in Rydsgard. It turned out that he never listens to the radio or watches TV or reads the papers. He cleans chimneys and spends the rest of his time drinking aquavit and looking after pet rabbits. He had no idea that the

Lövgrens had been murdered. But he told me that he gave Johannes Lövgren a lift into Ystad. Since he has a van and Lövgren was sitting in the windowless back seat, it's not so strange that nobody saw him.""But didn't the Nyströms see the car coming back?"

"No," replied Martinsson triumphantly. "That's just it. Lövgren asked Lundin to stop on Veberodsvagen. From there you can walk along a dirt road right up to the back of Lövgren's house. It's about a kilometre. If the Nyströms were sitting in the window, it would have looked as if Lövgren were coming in from the stable."Wallander frowned. "It still seems odd."

"Lundin was very frank. He said that Lövgren promised him a bottie of vodka if he would drive him home. He let Lövgren out in Ystad and then went on to a couple of houses north of town. He picked up him up at the agreed time, dropped him off on Veberodsvagen, and got his bottle of vodka.""Good," said Wallander. "Do the times match up?""They fit perfectly."

"Did you ask him about the briefcase?" "Lundin seemed to remember that he had a briefcase with him.""Did he have anything else?" "Lundin didn't think so.""Did he see whether Lövgren met anybody in Ystad?" "No."

"Had Lövgren said anything about what he was going to do in town?" "No, nothing."

"And you don't think that this chimney sweep knew about Lövgren having 27,000 kronor in his briefcase?" "Hardly. He seemed the least likely person to be a robber.