Faceless Killers

Chapter eleven

Kurt Wallander went into one of the holding cells in the police 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 two hours of sleep. 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 headache tablets out of the first-aid kit he found in a cupboard and washed them down with a cup of lukewarm coffee. Then he stood there for a long time, trying to decide whether he should take a shower first or call his sister in Stockholm. Finally he went down to the officers’ locker room and got into the shower. His headache slowly faded. But he felt weighed down with weariness as he sank onto the chair behind his desk. It was seven fifteen. He knew that his sister was always up early. And she picked up the phone almost as soon as it started ringing. As gently as possible he told her about 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 evasively.

They agreed that she would wait to hear about his talk with the hospital 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.

He realized that she didn’t know about the separation.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll call you back later.”

Then he drove over to the hospital. The temperature had dropped 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 during the night. But apparently he had not suffered any physical harm from his nighttime promenade through the fields.

Wallander decided to put off facing his father until he had met with the social worker.

Wallander mistrusted social workers. All too often in his experience he had seen various social-welfare people who were called in when the police had caught juvenile offenders and who had misguided views about what should actually be done. Social workers were too soft and yielding when, in his opinion, they ought to make specific demands instead. More than once he had raged at the welfare authorities because he felt that their lax attitude encouraged young criminals to continue their activities.

But maybe the hospital social worker is different, he thought.

After a short wait he met with a woman in her fifties. 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 chronically senile, then we’ll have to come up with some other solution.”

They decided that his father should stay through the weekend. Then she would talk to the doctors about 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.”

Kurt Wallander went to see his father, who was in a room with four beds. All of them were occupied. One man was in a cast, another was curled up as if he had severe stomach pains. Wallander’s father was lying in bed staring at the ceiling.

“How are you doing, Dad?” he asked.

It took a moment before his father answered. “Leave me alone.”

He spoke in a low voice. There was no hint of ill-humored 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 powerlessness. The icy wind bit into his face. He didn’t feel like going back to the police station, so he called Hanson on the screechy car phone.

“I’m driving over to Malmö,” he said. “Have we gotten a chopper in the air?”

“It’s been searching for half an hour,” replied Hanson. “Nothing yet. We have two canine patrols out too. If that damned car is anywhere in the preserve, we’ll find it.”

Wallander drove to Malmö. The morning traffic was fierce and intense.

He was constantly forced over toward the shoulder by drivers who were passing without enough room.

I should have taken a marked squad car, he thought. But maybe that doesn’t make any difference these days.

It was nine fifteen when he entered the room in the Malmö police station where the man who had had his car stolen was waiting for him. Before Wallander went in to see the man, he talked to the officer who had taken the report of the theft.

“Is it true that he’s a cop?” Wallander asked.

“He was,” the officer replied. “But he took early retirement.”

“Why was that?”

The officer shrugged. “Nerve problems. I don’t really know.”

“Do you know him?”

“He kept mostly to himself. Even though we worked together for ten years, I can’t say that I really knew him. To be honest, I don’t think anybody did.”

“But surely someone knows him?”

The police officer shrugged again. “I’ll find out,” he said. “But anybody could have his car stolen.”

Wallander went into the room and said hello to the man, whose name was Rune Bergman. He was fifty-three years old 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 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 quite clear, and it grew stronger as the conversation progressed.

“Tell me what happened,” he said. “At four in the morning you discovered your car was missing.”

“I was going to drive to Göteborg. I like to start out before dawn when I’m taking a long drive. When I went outside, the car was gone.”

“From the garage or from a parking spot?”

“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 row-house neighborhood near Jägersrö.”

“Do you think any of your neighbors saw anything?”

“I asked them. But no one heard or saw anything.”

“When did you last see your car?”

“I stayed 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 notion 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 the case?”

“Nothing. I just wondered.”

“An air show, if you want to know.”

“An air show?”

“I’m interested in old planes. I build a lot of 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 on 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 suddenly 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 took Wallander’s car. The row-house neighborhood was an old one, located just beyond the trotting track at Jägersrö. 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 meters 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.

“There’s usually one parked 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 suddenly realized that he had one more question.

“Do you have a permit to carry a weapon?” he asked. “Do you own any weapons?”

The man stiffened.

At that instant a crazy idea flashed through Kurt Wallander’s mind.

The car theft was completely made up.

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 by that?” said the man. “A weapons permit? Don’t tell me you’re so fucking stupid that you think I had anything to do with that?”

“You’ve been a cop, so you should know that we have to ask all kinds of questions,” said Wallander. “Do you have any weapons in your house?”

“I have weapons and a permit.”

“What kind of weapons?”

“I like to hunt once in a while. I have a Mauser rifle for hunting moose.”

“Anything else?”

“A shotgun. A Lanber Baron. It’s a Spanish gun. For hunting rabbits.”

“I’m thinking of sending someone over to pick up the weapons.”

“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 fucking out of your mind.”

Wallander left. He drove straight back to the Malmö police station. He borrowed a phone and called Ystad. No car had been found yet. 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. That was on the same occasion when he met first Göran Boman.

Wallander explained the case he was working on.

“I want to have his weapons checked,” he said. “I want his house searched. I want to know whether he has any connections with racist organizations.”

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 authorization 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 chief of the National Police, if necessary.”

“I’ll do what I can,” said the officer. “But it’s never popular to mess around in the personal 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 one. Which I intend to prevent.”

On his way to Ystad, Wallander stopped at Hageholm. The crime technicians were just wrapping up their investigation. At the scene he went over Rydberg’s theory about how the murder most likely occurred, and he thought he was right. The car had probably been parked at the spot Rydberg had pointed out.

Suddenly he realized that he had forgotten to ask the policeman whose car was stolen whether he smoked. Or whether he ate apples.

He continued on to Ystad. It was noon. 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 stuck his head in Hanson’s door; still no car.

“Meeting in my office in fifteen minutes,” said Wallander. “Try to round everybody up. You should be able to reach anybody who isn’t here by phone.”

Without taking off his overcoat, Wallander sat down and called his sister again. They decided that he would pick her up at Sturup airport at ten o’clock the following morning.

Then he touched the lump on his forehead, which was now changing color, shifting to yellow and black and red.

Twenty minutes later everyone except Martinson and Svedberg had shown up.

“Svedberg is out digging around in a gravel pit,” said Rydberg. “Somebody called and said they saw a mysterious car out there. Martinson is trying to track down someone in the Citroen club who supposedly knows everything about all the Citroëns on the road in Skane. Some dermatologist from Lund.”

“A dermatologist from Lund?” Wallander asked in surprise.

“There are hookers who collect stamps,” said Rydberg. “Why shouldn’t a dermatologist love Citroëns?”

Wallander reported on his meeting with the cop in Malmö.

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 Hanson. “A cop 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.”

Then the discussion turned to the missing car.

“We aren’t getting many tips from the public,” said Hanson. “Which just reinforces my belief that the car never left the area.”

Wallander unfolded the topographic 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 little 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 along the shore. And to send some men out to search through abandoned barns.

A canine patrol from Malmö had been out searching without finding a single trace. The helicopter search had produced no results either.

“Could your Arab have been mistaken?” wondered Hanson.

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 Citroën.”

Hanson promised to take care of the witness.

Then they moved on to a summary of the search for the perpetrators in Lenarp. Here too the car that the early-morning truck driver had seen still eluded them.

Wallander could see that the officers were tired. It was Saturday, and many of them had been working nonstop for a long time.

“We’ll put Lenarp 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 to 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 Hanson sarcastically.

“You get the highest marks,” replied Wallander.

After the meeting he asked Rydberg to stay behind for a moment. He realized that 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 Göran Boman’s efforts in Kristianstad. Rydberg nodded thoughtfully. Wallander saw that he was obviously 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 realized 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 then we have that noose. The knot. You said it yourself. That murder smells of revenge and hatred. But we’re still 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 neighbor he had known for forty years as an ordinary man. With no 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.”

Then they switched over to talking about the murdered Somali.

Ever since he left Malmö, Wallander had been carrying around an idea.

“Can you hang in there 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 dubious trait in a cop. But I thought we ought to keep an eye on that guy, you and I. Through the weekend, in any case. Then we can see whether we should keep it up and bring in more manpower. But if I’m right, that he might be involved himself, that his car wasn’t stolen at all, then he should be feeling a little uneasy right now.”

“I agree with Hanson when he said that no cop would be stupid enough to pretend his car had been stolen if he were planning to commit a murder,” Rydberg objected.

“I think you’re both wrong,” replied Wallander. “The same way that he was wrong. Thinking that just because he had once been a cop, that fact 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 irrelevant as long as you think it’s important that we proceed.”

“I want to put 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.”

It was noon. Rydberg said that he might as well handle the surveillance until midnight. Wallander gave him the address.

At that instant 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 while sitting at Wallander’s desk. Then 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 without finding anything except parts of an old combine.

Only a few tips came in from the public.

Reporters from the newspapers, radio, and TV called incessantly, wanting updated status reports. Wallander repeated his appeal for tips about a pale blue Citroen. Nervous directors of the refugee camps called in, demanding increased police protection. Wallander answered as patiently as he could.

At four o’clock an old woman was hit by a car and killed in Bjäresjö. Svedberg, who had returned from the gravel pit, led the investigation, even though Wallander had promised him the afternoon off.

Näslund called at five o’clock, and Wallander could hear 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. They told him that his father was tired and uncommunicative.

Right after his conversation with Naslund, he called up Sten Widen. 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 cop. I’d like to talk to Sten, if he’s there.”

“He’s in Denmark buying horses,” replied the young woman, whose name was Louise.

“When will he be back?”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“Would you ask him to call me?”

“I’ll do that.”

He hung up. Wallander had the distinct impression that Sten Widen was not in Denmark at all. Maybe he was even standing right next to the young woman and listening in.

Maybe they were together in the unmade bed when he called.

There was no word from Rydberg.

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

Then Wallander went through his bills, which he had forgotten to pay on the first of the month. He filled out a bunch of postal banking forms and enclosed a check in the manila envelope. He realized that he wasn’t going to be able to afford either a VCR or a stereo this month.

Then he answered an inquiry about whether he intended to participate in a tour to the Royal Opera in Copenhagen at the end of February. He said yes. Woyzeck was one of the operas he had never seen staged.

At eight o’clock he read through Svedberg’s report on the fatal accident in Bjäresjö. He could see at once that there was no question of any kind of criminal proceedings. The woman had stepped right out into the road in front of a car traveling at a low speed. The farmer who was driving the car was not at fault. All the eyewitness accounts agreed. He made a note to see to it that Anette Brolin read through the investigation report after the autopsy on the woman was done.

At eight thirty two men started slugging each other in an apartment building on the outskirts of Ystad. Peters and Norén quickly managed to separate the combatants. They were two brothers who were well known to the police. They got into a fight about three times a year.

A greyhound was reported lost in Marsvinsholm. Since the dog had been seen heading west, he passed the report on to his colleagues in Skurup.

At ten o’clock he 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 long underwear and a woolen cap. Absentmindedly he also watered the drooping plants in the kitchen window. Then he drove to Malmö.

Norén was on duty 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 vacation was definitely over.

Wallander stopped at a motel restaurant in Svedala. He hesitated for a long time before deciding on only a salad. He doubted that this was the proper time 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 he finished eating. An elderly woman came over to his table and wanted to sell him The Watch Tower. He bought a copy, thinking that it would be sufficiently dull reading to last all night.

Just after eleven he pulled out onto E14 again and drove the last stretch to Malmö. He suddenly started to doubt the value of the assignment he had given Rydberg and himself. How justified was he in trusting his intuition? Shouldn’t Hanson’s and Rydberg’s objections have been enough for him to drop the idea of this nighttime stakeout?

He felt unsure of himself. Irresolute.

And the salad had not filled him up.

It was a few minutes past eleven thirty when he turned onto a cross street near the yellow row house where Rune Bergman lived. He pulled his cap over his ears as he stepped out into the cold night. All around him were dark houses. In the distance he heard the screech of car tires. He kept to the shadows as much as possible and turned down the street called Rosenallé.

Almost at once he caught sight of Rydberg, who was standing next to a tall chestnut tree. The trunk was so thick that it hid him entirely. Wallander discovered him only because it was the only conceivable hiding place that allowed a view of the yellow row house.

Wallander slipped into the shadow of the mighty 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 o’clock he went over to a local store to buy groceries. Two hours later he came out to close the gate, which had blown open. But he’s definitely on guard. I think you may be right after all.”

Rydberg pointed at the house next to the one where Rune Bergman lived.

“That one’s empty,” he said. “From the yard you can see both the street and his back door. In case he takes 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 booth 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. Three minutes past midnight. Rydberg had not returned. So everything must be quiet at the police 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 forward and five steps back.

The next time he looked at his watch, it was only ten minutes to one. 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 one thirty the light on the ground floor went out. Wallander thought he could hear a radio on the second floor.

Rune Bergman keeps late hours, he thought.

Maybe that’s what happens if you take early retirement.

At five minutes to two a car drove past. Immediately followed by another one. Then it was quiet again.

The light was on upstairs. Wallander was freezing.

At five minutes to three the light was turned off. Wallander listened for the radio. But everything was quiet. He flapped his arms to keep warm.

In his head he was humming 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 stopped flapping his arms at once and listened.

Then he noticed the shadow.

The man must have been moving very quietly. Even so, Wallander caught a glimpse of Rune Bergman as he silently disappeared through the backyard of the yellow house. Wallander waited a few seconds. Then he cautiously climbed over the fence. It was hard to get his bearings in the dark, but he could vaguely make out a narrow passageway between a shed and the yard opposite Bergman’s house. He moved quickly. Much too quickly, considering he could hardly see a thing.

Then he emerged onto the street running parallel to Rosenallé.

If he had arrived one second later, he would not have seen Rune Bergman vanish down a cross street on the right.

For a moment Wallander hesitated. His car was parked only fifty meters away. If he didn’t get it now, and Bergman had a car parked somewhere in the vicinity, he would have no chance of following him.

He ran like a madman for his car. His frozen joints cracked and he was out of breath after only a few meters. He yanked open the door, fumbled with his keys, and swiftly decided to try to intercept Rune Bergman.

He turned down the street that he thought was the right one. Too late he realized that it was a dead end. He swore and backed up. Bergman probably had a lot 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 headed toward the big parking lot, which lay between the Jägersrö trotting track and some large department stores. He was just about to give up when he caught sight of Bergman. He was in a phone booth by a newly built hotel near the entrance to the track stables.

Wallander slammed on the brakes and turned off his engine and headlights.

The man in the phone booth hadn’t noticed him.

Several minutes later a cab pulled up near the hotel. Rune Bergman got into the back seat, and Wallander turned on his engine.

The cab took the freeway heading toward Göteborg. Wallander had to let a semi go by before he took up the chase.

He glanced at the gas gauge. He wasn’t going to be able to follow the cab farther than Halmstad.

Suddenly he noticed that the cab was blinking to turn right. He was going to take the exit for Lund. Wallander followed.

The cab stopped at the train station. As Wallander drove past, he saw Rune Bergman paying his fare. He turned onto a side street and carelessly parked in the middle of a crosswalk.

Bergman was walking fast. Wallander followed him in the shadows.

Rydberg had been right. The man was on his guard.

Suddenly he stopped short and looked around.

Wallander threw himself headlong into an entryway. He struck his forehead on the protruding 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 to ten, and continued 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 the door shut. Soon afterward the lights went on in a room on the third floor.

He ran across the street and pushed his way behind the sacking. Without hesitating, he climbed up onto the scaffold’s first platform.

It creaked and groaned under his feet. He had to keep wiping away the blood trickling into his eye. Then he heaved himself up onto the second platform. The illuminated windows were now only a little more than a meter above his head. He took out his handkerchief and wrapped it around his head as an improvised bandage.

Then he cautiously hauled himself up onto the next platform. The effort left him so exhausted that he had to lie on the scaffolding for over a minute before he could go on. Carefully he crept forward along the cold planks, which were covered with scraped-off stucco. He didn’t dare think about how far above the ground he was. He would just get dizzy instantly.

Cautiously he peeked over the window ledge outside the first lighted room. Through the thin curtains he could see a woman sleeping in a double bed. The covers next to her had been thrown back, as if someone had gotten out of bed in a hurry.

He crawled farther.

When he peeked over the next window ledge, he saw Rune Bergman talking to a man wearing a dark-brown bathrobe.

Wallander felt as if he had actually seen this man before. That’s how well the young Romanian woman had described the man who was standing in a field eating an apple.

He felt his heart pounding.

So he had been right after all. It had to be the same man.

The two men were talking in low voices. Wallander couldn’t hear what they were saying. Suddenly the man in the bathrobe disappeared through a door. At the same moment Rune Bergman looked straight at Wallander.

Caught, he thought, as he pulled back his head.

Those bastards won’t hesitate to shoot me.

He was paralyzed with fear.

I’m going to die, he thought desperately. They’re going to shoot my head off.

But no one came to shoot him in the head. Finally he got up the nerve to peek inside again.

The man in the bathrobe was standing there, eating an apple.

Bergman was holding two shotguns. He put one of them down on a table. The other one he stuffed under his coat. Wallander realized that he had seen more than enough. He turned around and crept back the same 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.

Then he fell.

It all happened so fast that he had barely enough time to think that he was going to die.

Right above the ground one of his legs got caught in a gap between two planks. The pain was horrendous when he jerked to a stop. But he was hanging upside down with his head barely a meter above the pavement.

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 door open.

Rune Bergman had left the apartment.

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.

Then he realized that Bergman had lit a cigarette.

The footsteps moved away.

Wallander was about to black out from the pressure of the blood in his head. The image of Linda flickered past.

With enormous effort he managed to grab hold of one of the uprights on the scaffolding. With one hand he pulled himself up far enough to get a grip on the planks where his foot was wedged tight. He gathered all his strength for one final attempt. Then he yanked hard. His foot came loose, and he landed on his back in a mound of gravel. He lay absolutely still, trying to feel if anything was broken.

Then he stood up, and he had to hold onto the wall so he wouldn’t fall over from dizziness.

It took him almost twenty minutes to make his way back to the car. He saw the hands of the train station clock pointing to four thirty.

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 have to do what has to be done.

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

It was almost six by the time he crawled between the sheets. He set the alarm clock for quarter to seven. 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 toward him.

Somewhere a horse neighed.

It was Sunday, January fourteenth. The day arrived with increasing wind from the northeast.

Kurt Wallander slept.