Faceless Killers

Chapter four

Wallander and Rydberg were alone in the lunchroom. In the distance they could hear the ruckus a drunk was making, protesting loudly about being taken into custody. Otherwise it was quiet. Only the faint whine from the radiator could be heard.

Wallander sat down across from Rydberg.

“Take off your overcoat,” said Rydberg. “Or else you’ll freeze when you go back out in the wind again.”

“First I want to hear what you have to say. Then I’ll decide whether to take off my coat or not.”

Rydberg shrugged. “She died,” he said.

“So I understand.”

“But she woke up for a while right before she died.”

“And then she spoke?”

“That may be putting it too strongly. She whispered. Or wheezed.”

“Did you get it on tape?”

Rydberg shook his head. “It wouldn’t have worked anyway,” he said. “It was almost impossible to hear what she was saying. Most of it was just raving. But I wrote down what I’m sure I understood.”

Rydberg took a beat-up notebook out of his pocket. It was held together by a wide rubber band, and a pencil was stuck in between the pages.

“She said her husband’s name,” Rydberg began. “I think she was trying to find out how he was. Then she mumbled something I couldn’t understand. That’s when I tried to ask her, ‘Who was it that came in the night? Did you know them? What did they look like?’ Those were my questions. I repeated them for as long as she was conscious. And I actually think she understood what I was saying.”

“So what did she answer?”

“I only managed to catch one word. ‛Foreign.”’

“‘Foreign’?”

“That’s right. ‘Foreign.’”

“Did she mean that whoever attacked both her and her husband were foreigners?”

Rydberg nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“Do I usually say I’m sure if I’m not?”

“No.”

“Well then. So now we know that her last message to the world was the word ‘foreign.’ As a reply to who committed this insane crime.”

Wallander took off his coat and got a cup of coffee.

“What the hell could she have meant?” he muttered.

“I’ve been sitting here thinking about that while I waited for you,” replied Rydberg. “Maybe they looked un-Swedish. Maybe they spoke a foreign language. Maybe they spoke broken Swedish. There are lots of possibilities.”

“What does an un-Swedish person look like?” asked Wallander.

“You know what I mean,” said Rydberg. “Or rather, you can guess what she thought and what she meant.”

“So it could have been her imagination?”

Rydberg nodded. “That’s quite possible.”

“But not particularly likely?”

“Why should she use the last minutes of her life to say something that wasn’t true? Old people don’t usually lie.”

Wallander took a sip of his lukewarm coffee.

“This means we have to start looking for one or more foreigners,” he said. “I wish she’d said something different.”

“It’s damn unpleasant, all right.”

They sat in silence for a moment, each lost in his own thoughts. They could no longer hear the drunk out in the hall.

It was nineteen minutes to nine.

“You can just picture it,” Wallander said after a while. “The only clue the police have to the double murder in Lenarp is that the perpetrators are probably foreigners.”

“I can think of something much worse,” replied Rydberg.

Wallander knew what he meant.

Twenty kilometers from Lenarp there was a big refugee camp that on several occasions had been the object of attacks against foreigners. Crosses had been burned at night in the courtyard, rocks had been thrown through windows, buildings had been spray-painted with slogans. The refugee camp in the old castle of Hageholm had been established despite vigorous protests from the surrounding communities. And the protests had continued.

Hostility to refugees was flaring up.

But Wallander and Rydberg knew something else that the general public did not know.

Some of the asylum seekers being housed at Hageholm had been caught red-handed breaking into a business that rented out farm machinery. Fortunately the owner was not among the fiercest opponents of taking in refugees, so it was possible to hush up the whole affair. The two men who had committed the break-in were no longer in Sweden either, since they had been denied asylum.

But Wallander and Rydberg had on several occasions discussed what might have happened if the incident had been made public.

“I have a hard time believing that any refugees seeking asylum could commit murder,” said Wallander.

Rydberg gave Wallander a circumspect look. “You remember what I told you about the noose?”

“Something about the knot?”

“I didn’t recognize it. And I know quite a bit about knots, since I spent my summers sailing when I was young.”

Wallander looked at Rydberg attentively. “What are you getting at?” he mused.

“What I’m getting at is that this knot wasn’t tied by anyone who was a member of the Swedish Boy Scouts.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“The knot was made by a foreigner.”

Before Wallander could reply, Ebba came into the lunchroom to get some coffee.

“Go home and get some rest if you can,” she said. “By the way, reporters keep calling and want you to make a statement.”

“About what?” asked Wallander. “About the weather?”

“They seem to have found out that the woman died.”

Wallander looked at Rydberg, who shook his head.

“We’re not making a statement tonight,” he said. “We’re waiting till tomorrow.”

Wallander got up and went over to the window. The wind had picked up, but the sky was still cloudless. It was going to be another cold night.

“We can hardly avoid mentioning what happened,” he said. “The fact that she managed to say something before she died. And if we say that much, then we’ll have to tell them what she said. And then all hell will break loose.”

“We could try to keep it internal,” said Rydberg, getting up and putting on his hat. “For investigative reasons.”

Wallander looked at him in surprise.

“And risk having it come out later that we withheld important information from the press? That we were shielding foreign criminals?”

“It’s going to affect so many innocent people,” said Rydberg. “What do you think will happen at the refugee camp when it gets out that the police are looking for some foreigners?”

Wallander knew that Rydberg was right.

Suddenly he was full of doubt.

“Let’s sleep on it till tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll have a meeting, just you and me, tomorrow morning at eight. Then we’ll decide.”

Rydberg nodded and limped toward the door. There he stopped and turned to Wallander again.

“There is one possibility we shouldn’t overlook,” he said. “That it really was refugees seeking asylum who did it.”

Wallander rinsed out his coffee cup and put it in the dish rack.

Actually I hope it was, he thought. I really hope that the killers are at that refugee camp. Then maybe it’ll put an end to this arbitrary, sloppy attitude that anyone at all, for any reason at all, can come across the Swedish border.

But of course he couldn’t say that to Rydberg. It was an opinion he intended to keep to himself.

He fought his way through the heavy wind out to his car.

Even though he was tired, he had no desire to drive home.

Every evening the loneliness would set in.

He turned on the ignition and changed the cassette. The overture to Fidelio filled the darkness inside the car.

His wife’s sudden departure had come as a complete surprise. But deep inside he realized, even though he still had a hard time accepting it, that he should have sensed the danger long before it happened. That he was living in a marriage that was slowly breaking apart because of its own dreariness. They had married when they were very young, and far too late they realized that they were growing apart. Of the three of them, maybe it was Linda who had reacted most openly to the emptiness surrounding them.

On that night in October when Mona had said that she wanted a divorce, he thought that he had actually been waiting for this to happen. But since the thought involved a threat, he had pushed it aside and blamed it on the fact that he was working so hard. Too late he realized that she had prepared her departure down to the smallest detail. One Friday evening she had talked about wanting a divorce, and by Sunday she had left him and moved into the apartment in Malmö, which she had rented in advance. The feeling of being abandoned had filled him with both shame and anger. In an impotent rage, all his feelings numbed, he had slapped her in the face.

Afterwards there was only silence. She had picked up some of her things during the daytime when he wasn’t home. But she left most of her belongings behind, and he had been deeply hurt that she seemed prepared to trade in her entire past for a life that did not include him, even as a memory.

He had telephoned her. Late in the evenings their voices had met. Devastated by jealousy, he had tried to find out whether she had left him for another man.

“Another life,” she had replied. “Another life, before it’s too late.”

He had appealed to her. He had tried to give the impression that he was indifferent. He had begged her forgiveness for all the attention he had denied her. But nothing he said was able to alter her decision.

Two days before Christmas Eve the divorce papers had arrived in the mail.

When he opened the envelope and realized that it was all over, something had burst inside him. As if in an attempt to flee, he had called in sick over the Christmas holidays and had taken off on an aimless trip that had led him to Denmark. In northern Sjælland a sudden storm had left him snowbound, and he had spent Christmas in Gilleleje, in a freezing room at a pension near the beach. There he had written long letters to her, which he later tore to bits and strewed out over the sea in a symbolic gesture, signifying that in spite of everything he had begun to accept what had happened.

Two days before New Year’s he had returned to Ystad and gone back to work. He spent New Year’s Eve working on a serious case involving spousal abuse in Svarte, and he had a frightening revelation that he might just as well have been abusing Mona physically himself.

The music from Fidelio broke off with a screech.

The machine had eaten the tape.

The radio came on automatically, and he heard the play-byplay of a hockey game.

He pulled out of the parking lot and decided to head home to Mariagatan.

But he drove in the opposite direction instead, out along the coast road heading west to Trelleborg and Skanör. When he passed by the old prison he stepped on the gas. Driving had always distracted his thoughts...

Suddenly he realized that he had driven almost all the way to Trelleborg. A big ferry was just entering the harbor, and on a sudden impulse he decided to stay for a while.

He knew that some former police officers from Ystad had become immigration police at the ferry dock in Trelleborg. He thought some of them might be on duty tonight.

He walked across the harbor area, which was bathed in pale yellow light. A big truck came roaring toward him like a ghostly prehistoric beast.

But when he walked through the door with the sign “Authorized Personnel Only,” he didn’t know either of the officers.

Kurt Wallander nodded and introduced himself. The older of the two had a gray beard and a scar across his forehead.

“That’s a nasty business you’ve got in Ystad,” he said. “Did you catch them?”

“Not yet,” replied Wallander.

The conversation was interrupted, since the passengers from the ferry were approaching passport control. The majority of them were Swedes returning from celebrating the New Year’s holiday in Berlin. But there were also some East Germans trying out their newly won freedom by taking a trip to Sweden.

After twenty minutes there were only nine passengers left. All of them were trying in various ways to make it clear that they were seeking asylum in Sweden.

“It’s pretty quiet tonight,” said the younger of the two officers. “Sometimes up to a hundred asylum seekers arrive on one ferry. You can imagine.”

Five of the asylum seekers belonged to the same Ethiopian family. Only one of them had a passport, and Wallander wondered how they had managed to make this long journey and cross all those borders with a single passport. Besides the Ethiopian family, two Lebanese and two Iranians were waiting at passport control.

Wallander had a hard time deciding whether the nine refugees looked expectant or whether they were just scared.

“What happens now?” he asked.

“Malmö will come and pick them up,” replied the older officer. “It’s their turn tonight. We get word over the radio when there are a lot of people without passports on the ferries. Sometimes we have to call for extra manpower.”

“What happens in Malmö?” asked Wallander.

“They’re put on one of the ships anchored out in the Oil Harbor. They have to stay there until they’re shuttled on. If they’re allowed to stay in Sweden, that is.”

“What do you think about these people here?”

The policeman shrugged.

“They’ll probably get in,” he answered. “Do you want some coffee? It’ll be a while before the next ferry.”

Wallander shook his head.

“Some other time. I have to get going.”

“Hope you catch them.”

“Right,” said Wallander. “So do I.”

On the way back to Ystad he ran over a hare. When he saw the animal in the beam of his headlights he hit the brakes, but the hare struck the left front wheel with a soft thud. He didn’t stop the car to get out and check whether the hare was still alive.

What’s wrong with me? he thought.

That night Wallander slept uneasily. Just after five he awoke with a start. His mouth was dry, and he had dreamed that somebody was trying to strangle him. When he realized that he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, he got up and made some coffee.

The thermometer outside the kitchen window showed -6 °Celsius. The streetlight was swaying in the wind. He sat down at the kitchen table and thought about his conversation with Rydberg the night before. What he had feared had happened. The dead woman had revealed nothing that could give them a lead. Her words about something foreign were just too vague. He realized that they didn’t have a single clue to go on.

At six thirty he got dressed and searched for a long time before finding the heavy sweater he was looking for.

He went outside, felt the wind tearing and biting at him, and then drove out Osterleden and turned onto the main road toward Malmö. Before he met Rydberg at eight, he had to pay a return visit to the neighbors of the old couple that was killed. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something didn’t quite add up. Attacks on lonely old people were not often random. They were usually preceded by rumors of money stashed away. And even though the attacks could be brutal, they were hardly characterized by the methodical malice that he had witnessed at this murder scene.

People in the country get up early in the morning, he thought as he swung onto the narrow road that led to the Nyströms’ house. Maybe they’ve had time to mull things over.

He stopped in front of the house and turned off the engine. At the same instant the light in the kitchen window went off.

They’re scared, he thought. They probably think it’s the killers coming back.

He left the lights on as he got out of the car and walked across the gravel to the steps.

He sensed rather than saw the muzzle flash coming from a bush beside the house. The ear-splitting noise made him dive for the ground. A pebble slashed his cheek, and for an instant he thought he had been hit.

“Police!” he yelled. “Don’t shoot! Damn it, don’t shoot!”

A flashlight shone on his face. The hand holding the flashlight was shaking, and the beam wobbled back and forth. Nyström was standing in front of him, an old shotgun in his hand.

“Is it you?” he said.

Wallander got up and brushed off the gravel.

“What were you aiming at?” he asked.

“I shot straight up in the air,” said Nyström.

“Do you have a permit for that weapon?” Wallander queried. “Otherwise there could be trouble.”

“I’ve been up all night, keeping watch,” said Nyström. Wallander could hear how upset the man was.

“I have to turn off my lights,” said Wallander. “Then we’ll talk, you and I.”

Two boxes of shotgun shells lay on the kitchen table. On the sofa lay a crowbar and a big sledgehammer. The black cat was in the window, staring menacingly at Wallander as he came in. The old woman stood at the stove stirring a pan of coffee.

“I had no idea it was the police coming,” said Nyström, sounding apologetic. “And so early.”

Wallander moved the sledgehammer and sat down.

“Mrs. Lövgren died last night,” he said. “I thought I’d come out and tell you myself.”

Every time Wallander was forced to notify someone of a death, he had the same feeling of unreality. To tell strangers that a child or a relative had suddenly died, and to do it with dignity, was impossible. The deaths that the police announced were always unexpected, and often violent and gruesome. Somebody drives off to buy something at the store and dies. A child on a bicycle is run over on the way home from the playground. Someone is abused or robbed, commits suicide or drowns. When the police are standing in the doorway, people refuse to accept the news.

The two old people in the kitchen were silent. The woman stirred the coffee with a spoon. The man fidgeted with his shotgun, and Wallander discreetly moved out of the line of fire.

“So, Maria is gone,” the man said slowly.

“The doctors did everything they could.”

“Maybe it was just as well,” said the woman at the stove, unexpectedly forceful. “What did she have left to live for after he was dead?”

The man put the shotgun down on the kitchen table and stood up. Wallander noticed that he favored one knee.

“I’ll go out and give the horse some hay,” he said, putting on an old cap.

“Do you mind if I come with you?” asked Wallander.

“Why would I mind?” said the man, opening the door.

From her stall the mare whinnied as they entered the stable, which smelled like warm manure. With a practiced hand Nyström flung an armload of hay into the stall.

“I’ll muck out later,” he said, stroking the horse’s mane.

“Why did they keep a horse?” Wallander wondered.

“To an old dairy farmer an empty stable is like a morgue,” replied Nyström. “The horse was company.”

Wallander thought that he might just as well start asking his questions here in the stable.

“You stayed up to keep watch last night,” he said. “You’re scared, and I can understand that. You must have thought to yourself: Why were they the ones who were attacked? You must have thought: Why them? Why not us?”

“They didn’t have any money,” said Nyström. “And nothing else that was especially valuable. Anyway, nothing was stolen. I told that to one of the policemen who were here yesterday. The only thing that might have been stolen was an old wall clock.”

“Might have been?”

“One of their daughters might have taken it. I can’t remember everything.”

“No money,” said Wallander. “And no enemies.”

A thought suddenly occurred to him.

“Do you keep any money in the house?” he asked. “Could it be that whoever did this got the wrong house?”

“Everything we have is in the bank,” replied Nyström. “And we don’t have any enemies either.”

They went back to the house and drank coffee. Wallander saw that the woman was red-eyed, as if she had been careful to cry while they were out in the stable.

“Have you noticed anything unusual recently?” he asked. “Anyone visiting the Lövgrens that you didn’t recognize?”

The old folks looked at each other and then shook their heads.

“When was the last time you talked to them?”

“We were over there for coffee the day before yesterday,” said Hanna. “Just like always. We drank coffee together every day. For over forty years.”

“Did they seem afraid of anything?” asked Wallander. “Worried?”

“Johannes had a cold,” said Hanna. “But otherwise everything was normal.”

It seemed hopeless. Wallander didn’t know what to ask them about. Each reply he got was like a new door slamming shut.

“Did they have any acquaintances who were foreigners?” he asked.

The man raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Foreigners?”

“Anyone who wasn’t Swedish,” Wallander ventured.

“A few years ago there were some Danes camping on their field one midsummer.”

Wallander looked at the clock. Almost seven thirty. At eight he was supposed to meet Rydberg, and he didn’t want to be late.

“Try and think,” he said. “Anything you can come up with might be of some help.”

Nyström walked out to the car with him.

“I have a permit for the shotgun,” he said. “And I didn’t aim at you. I just wanted to scare you.”

“You did a good job of it,” replied Wallander. “But I think you ought to get some sleep tonight. Whoever did this isn’t coming back.”

“Would you be able to sleep?” asked Nyström. “Would you be able to sleep if your neighbors had been slaughtered like dumb animals?”

Since Wallander couldn’t think of a good answer, he said nothing.

“Thanks for the coffee,” he said, got in his car, and drove off.

This is all going to hell, he thought. Not a clue, nothing. Only Rydberg’s strange knot, and the word “foreign.” Two old people with no money under the bed, no antique furniture, are murdered in such a way that there seems to be something more than robbery behind it. A murder of hate or revenge.

There must be something, he thought. Something out of the ordinary about these two people.

If only the horse could talk!

There was something about that horse that made him uneasy. Something that was just a vague hunch. But he was too experienced a policeman to ignore his uneasiness. There was something about that horse.

At four minutes to eight he braked to a stop outside the police station in Ystad. The wind had died down to light gusts. Still, it felt a few degrees warmer today.

Just so we don’t get snow, he thought. He nodded to Ebba at the switchboard. “Did Rydberg show up yet?”

“He’s in his office,” replied Ebba. “They’ve all started calling already. TV, radio, and the papers. And the county police commissioner.”

“Stall them a while,” said Wallander. “I have to talk with Rydberg first.”

He hung up his jacket in his office before he went in to see Rydberg, whose office was a few doors down the hall. He knocked and heard a grunt in reply.

Rydberg was standing looking out the window when Wallander came in. It was obvious that he hadn’t had enough sleep.

“Hi,” said Wallander. “Shall I bring in some coffee?”

“Sure. But no sugar. I’ve cut it out.”

Wallander left to get two plastic mugs of coffee and then went back to Rydberg’s office.

Outside the door he suddenly stopped.

What’s my plan, anyway? he thought. Should we keep her last words from the press for so-called investigative reasons? Or should we release them? What exactly is my plan?

I don’t have any plan, he thought, annoyed, and pushed open the door with his foot.

Rydberg was sitting behind his desk combing his sparse hair. Wallander sank into a visitor’s easy chair with worn-out springs.

“You ought to get a new chair,” he said.

“There’s no money for it,” said Rydberg, putting away his comb in a desk drawer.

Wallander set his coffee cup on the floor beside his chair.

“I woke up so damned early this morning,” he said. “I drove out and talked with the Nyströms again. The old man was waiting in a bush and took a shot at me with a shotgun.”

Rydberg pointed at his cheek.

“Not from buckshot,” said Wallander. “I hit the deck. He claimed he had a permit for the gun. Who the hell knows?”

“Did they have anything new to say?”

“Not a thing. Nothing unusual. No money, nothing. Provided they’re not lying, of course.”

“Why would they be lying?”

“No, why would they?”

Rydberg took a slurp of coffee and made a face.

“Did you know that cops are unusually susceptible to stomach cancer?” he asked.

“I didn’t know that.”

“If it’s true, it’s because of all the bad coffee we drink.”

“But we solve our cases over our coffee mugs.”

“Like now?”

Wallander shook his head. “What do we really have to go on? Nothing.”

“You’re too impatient, Kurt.” Rydberg looked at him while he stroked his nose.

“You’ll have to excuse me if I seem like an old schoolteacher,” he went on. “But in this case I think we have to trust in patience.”

They went over the progress of the investigation again. The police technicians had taken fingerprints and were checking them against the national centralized records. Hanson was busy investigating the location of all known criminals with records of assault on old people, to find out whether they were in prison or had alibis. Questioning of the residents of Lenarp would continue, and maybe the questionnaire they sent out would produce something. Both Rydberg and Wallander knew that the police in Ystad carried out their work precisely and methodically. Sooner or later something would turn up. A trace, a clue. It was just a matter of waiting. Of working methodically and waiting.

“The motive,” Wallander persisted. “If the motive isn’t money. Or the rumor of money hidden away. Then what is it? The noose? You must have thought the same thing I did. This double murder has revenge or hate in it. Or both.”

“Let’s imagine a couple of suitably desperate robbers,” said Rydberg. “Let’s assume that they were convinced that Lövgren had money squirreled away. Let’s assume that they were sufficiently desperate and indifferent to human life. Then torture isn’t out of the question.”

“Who would be that desperate?”

“You know as well as I do that there are plenty of drugs that create such a dependency that people are ready to do anything at all.”

Wallander knew that. He had seen the accelerating violence at first hand, and narcotics trafficking and drug dependency almost always lurked in the background. Even though Ystad’s police district was seldom hit by visible manifestations of this increasing violence, he harbored no illusions that it was not steadily creeping closer and closer.

There were no protected zones anymore. A little insignificant town like Lenarp was confirmation of that fact.

He sat up straight in the uncomfortable chair.

“What are we going to do?” he said.

“You’re the boss,” replied Rydberg.

“I want to hear what you think.”

Rydberg got up and went over to the window. With one finger he felt the dirt in a flowerpot. It was dry.

“If you want to know what I think, I’ll tell you. But you should know that I’m by no means positive that I’m on the right track. I think that no matter what we decide to do, there’s going to be a big fuss. But maybe it would be a good idea to keep at it for a few days anyway. There are plenty of things to investigate.”

“Like what?”

“Did the Lövgrens have any foreign acquaintances?”

“I asked about that this morning. They may have known some Danes.”

“There, you see.”

“It couldn’t be Danes camped out in tents, could it?”

“Why not? No matter what, we’ll have to check it out. And there are more people than just the neighbors to question. If I understood you correctly yesterday, you said that the Lövgrens had a big family.”

Wallander realized that Rydberg was right. There were investigative reasons to keep quiet about the fact that the police were searching for a person or persons with foreign connections.

“What do we actually know about foreigners who have committed crimes in Sweden?” he asked. “Do the National Police have special files on that?”

“There are files on everything,” Rydberg replied. “Put someone in front of a computer and hook into the central criminal database, and then maybe we’ll find something.”

Wallander stood up.

Rydberg gave him a quizzical look. “Aren’t you going to ask about the noose?”

“I forgot.”

“There’s supposed to be an old sailmaker in Limhamn who knows all about knots. I read about him in a newspaper sometime last year. I thought I’d spend some time trying to track him down. Not because I’m sure anything will come of it. But just in case.”

“I want you to come to the meeting first,” said Wallander. “Then you can drive over to Limhamn.”

At ten o’clock they were all gathered in Wallander’s office.

The run-through was very brief. Wallander told them what the woman had said before she died. For the time being, this piece of information was not to be disclosed. No one seemed to have any objections.

Martinson was put on the computer to search for foreign criminals. The officers who were going to continue with the questioning in Lenarp went on their way. Wallander assigned Svedberg to concentrate on the Polish family, who were presumably in the country illegally. He wanted to know why they were living in Lenarp. At quarter to eleven Rydberg left for Limhamn to look up the sailmaker.

When Wallander was alone in his office, he stood for a while looking at the map hanging on the wall. Where had the killers come from? Which way did they go afterwards?

Then he sat down at his desk and asked Ebba to start putting through calls. For over an hour he spoke with various reporters. But there was no word from the girl from the local radio station.

At quarter past twelve Norén knocked on the door.

“I thought you were going to Lenarp,” Wallander said, surprised.

“I was,” said Norén. “But I just thought of something.”

Norén sat on the edge of a chair, since he was wet. It had started to rain. The temperature had now risen to +1 °Celsius.

“This might not mean anything,” said Norén. “It was just something that crossed my mind.”

“Most things mean something,” said Wallander.

“You remember that horse?” asked Norén.

“Sure, I remember the horse.”

“You told me to give it some hay.”

“And water.”

“Hay and water. But I never did.”

Wallander wrinkled his brow. “Why not?”

“It wasn’t necessary. The horse already had hay. Water too.”

Wallander sat in silence for a moment, looking at Norén.

“Go on,” he said. “You’re getting at something.”

Norén shrugged his shoulders.

“We had a horse when I was growing up,” he said. “When the horse was in its stall and was given hay, it would eat all of it. I just mean that someone must have given the horse some hay. Maybe just an hour or so before we got there.”

Wallander reached for the phone.

“If you’re thinking of calling Nyström, don’t bother,” said Norén.

Wallander let his hand drop.

“I talked to him before I came here. And he hadn’t given the horse any hay.”

“Dead men don’t feed their horses,” said Wallander. “Who did?”

Norén stood up. “It seems weird,” he said. “First they kill a man. Then they put a noose on somebody else. And then they go out to the stable and give the horse some hay. Who the hell would do anything that weird?”

“You’re right,” said Wallander. “Who would do that?”

“It might not mean anything,” said Norén.

“Or maybe it does,” replied Wallander. “It was good of you to tell me.”

Norén said goodbye and left.

Wallander sat and thought about what he had just heard.

The hunch he had been carrying around with him had proved to be right. There was something about that horse.

His thoughts were interrupted by the telephone.

Another reporter who wanted to talk with him.

At quarter to one he left the police station. He had to visit an old friend he hadn’t seen in many, many years.