The Man Who Smiled

"I wasn't allowed to. He forbade me."

"So he did speak about these nocturnal visits, then?"

"You can see by looking at a person what you're not allowed to mention."

The conversation was interrupted by Nyberg tapping on the window.

"I'll be back in a moment," Wallander said. Nyberg was standing outside the kitchen door, holding out his hand. Wallander could see something badly burned, hardly half a centimetre across.

"A plastic landmine," Nyberg said. "I can confirm that even at this stage. We might possibly be able to find out what type it is, even where it was made. But it'll take time."

"Can you say anything about whoever it was who laid the mine?"

"I might have been able to if you hadn't thrown a directory at it," Nyberg said.

"It was easy to see," Wallander said.

"A person who knows what he's doing can plant a mine so that it's invisible," Nyberg said. "Both you and that woman in the kitchen could see that somebody had been digging up the lawn. We're dealing with amateurs."

Or somebody who wants us to think that, Wallander thought. But he didn't say so and went back to the kitchen. He only had one more question.

"Yesterday afternoon you had a visit from an Asian woman," he said. "Who was she?"

She looked at him in astonishment. "How do you know that?"

"Never mind how," Wallander said. "Just answer the question."

"She's a cleaner, she works at the Torstensson offices," Mrs Duner said.

So that was it! Wallander was disappointed.

"What's her name?"

"Kim Sung-Lee."

"Where does she live?"

"I have her address at the office."

"What did she want?"

"She was wondering if she'd keep her job."

"I'd be grateful if you could let me have her address," Wallander said, standing up.

"What will happen now?"

"You don't need to be afraid any more," Wallander said. "I'll make sure there's a police officer at hand. For as long as it's necessary."

He told Nyberg he was leaving and went back to the police station. On the way there he stopped at Fridolf's cafe and bought some sandwiches. He shut himself in his office and prepared for his meeting with Bjork. But when he went to his office, Bjork was not there. The conversation would have to wait.

It was 1 p.m. by the time Wallander knocked on the door of Akeson's office at the other end of the long, narrow police station. Every time he was there he was surprised by the chaos that seemed to prevail. The desk was piled high with paper, files were strewn around the floor and on the visitors' chairs. Along one wall was a barbell and a hastily rolled-up mattress.

"Have you started working out?"

"Not only that," Akeson replied with a self-satisfied grin, "I've also acquired the good habit of taking a nap after lunch. I've just woken up."

"You mean you sleep here on the floor?"

"A 30-minute nap," Akeson confirmed. "Then I get back to work full of energy."

"Maybe I should try that," Wallander said doubtfully.

Akeson made room for him on one of the chairs by tipping a heap of files on to the floor. Then he sat down and put his feet on the desk.

"I'd almost given you up for lost," he said with a smile, "but deep down I always knew you'd be back."

"It's been a hell of a time," Wallander said.

Akeson became serious. "I really can't imagine what it must be like killing a man. Never mind if it was self-defence. It must be the only human act from which there's no going back. I haven't enough imagination to conjure up anything except a vague image of the abyss."

"You can never get away from it," Wallander said. "But maybe you can learn to live with it."

They sat without speaking. Somebody in the corridor was complaining that the coffee machine had broken down.

"We're the same age, you and me," Akeson said. "Six months ago I woke up one morning and thought: Good God! Was that all it was, life? Was there no more to it than that? I felt panic-stricken. But now, looking back, I have to acknowledge that it was useful. It made me do something I ought to have done ages ago."

He fished a sheet of paper out of one of the piles on his desk and handed it to Wallander. It was an advertisement from various UN organisations for legally qualified people to fill a variety of posts abroad, including refugee camps in Africa and Asia.

"I sent in an application," Akeson said. "Then I forgot all about it. But a month ago I was called for an interview in Copenhagen. There's a chance I might be offered a two-year contract in a big camp for Ugandan refugees who are going to be repatriated."

"Jump at it if the offer comes," Wallander said. "What does your wife say?"

"She doesn't know about it," Akeson said. "I don't honestly know what will happen."

"I need you to give me some information," Wallander said.

Akeson took his feet off the desk and cleared aside some of the papers from in front of him. Wallander told him about the explosion in Mrs Duner's back garden. Akeson shook his head incredulously.

"That's not possible."

"Nyberg was positive," Wallander said. "And he's usually right, as you know."

"What do you think about the whole business?" Akeson said. "I've spoken to Bjork, and of course I go along with your tearing up the previous investigation into Gustaf Torstensson's accident. Do we really have nothing to go on?"

Wallander thought before replying. "The one thing we can be completely sure about is that it's no strange coincidence that two solicitors are dead and a mine is planted in Mrs Duner's garden. It's all planned. We don't know how it started, and we don't know how it will end."

"You don't think what happened to Mrs Duner was just meant to frighten her?"

"Whoever put that mine in her garden intended to kill her," Wallander said. "I want her protected. Perhaps she ought to move out of the house."

"I'll arrange for that," Akeson said. "I'll have a word with Bjork."

"She's scared," Wallander said. "But I can see now, after talking to her again, that she doesn't know what she's scared of. I thought she was holding something back, but I now realise she knows as little as the rest of us. Anyway, I thought you might be able to help by telling me about Gustaf and Sten Torstensson. You must have had quite a bit to do with them over the years."

"Gustaf was an odd bird," Akeson said. "And his son was well on the way to becoming one."

"Gustaf Torstensson," Wallander said. "I think that's the starting point. But don't ask me why."

"I didn't have that much to do with him," Akeson said. "It was before my time when he used to appear in court as a defence lawyer. These last few years he seems to have been busy exclusively with financial consultancy."

"For Alfred Harderberg," Wallander said. "Of Farnholm Castle. Which also strikes me as odd. A run-of-the-mill lawyer from Ystad. And a businessman with a global business empire."

"As I understand it, that's one of Harderberg's chief attributes," Akeson said. "His knack of finding and surrounding himself with just the right associates. Perhaps he noticed something about Gustaf that nobody else had suspected."

"Are there any skeletons in Harderberg's cupboard?"

"Not as far as I know," Akeson said. "Which in itself might seem odd. They say there's a crime behind every fortune. But Harderberg appears to be a model citizen. And he does his bit for Sweden as well."

"Meaning what?"

"He doesn't channel all his investments abroad. He's even set up businesses in other countries and moved the actual manufacturing to Sweden. That's pretty unusual nowadays."

"No skeletons roaming the corridors at Farnholm Castle, then," Wallander said. "Were there any blots in Torstensson's copybook?"

"None at all," Akeson said. "Honest, pedantic, boring. Old-fashioned sense of honour. Not a genius, not an idiot. Discreet. Not the type ever to wake up one morning and ask himself where his life had disappeared to."

"Yet he was murdered," Wallander said. "There must have been one blot somewhere. Maybe not in his copybook, but in somebody else's."

"I'm not sure I follow you."

"A solicitor must be a bit like a doctor," Wallander said. "He knows a lot of people's secrets."

"You're no doubt right," Akeson agreed. "The solution must be somewhere in his relations with his clients. Something that involves everybody working for the firm. Including the secretary, Mrs Duner."

"We're searching."

"I haven't much more to say about Sten Torstensson," Akeson said. "A bachelor, a bit old-fashioned as well. I've heard the odd rumour to the effect that he was interested in persons of the same sex, but that's a rumour that circulates about all bachelors who are getting on in years. Thirty years ago, we could have guessed it might be blackmail."

"That might be worth bearing in mind," Wallander said. "Anything else?"

"Not really. Very occasionally he would come out with a joke, but he wasn't exactly the type you wanted to invite for dinner. He was said to be a good sailor, though."

The phone rang. Akeson answered, then handed the receiver to Wallander.

Wallander recognised Martinsson's voice, and could hear straight away that it was important. Martinsson's voice was loud and shrill.

"I'm at the solicitors' offices," he said. "We've found something that might be what we've been looking for."

"What?"

"Threatening letters."

"Who to?"

"To all three."

"Mrs Duner as well?"

"Her as well."

"I'm on my way."

Wallander handed the receiver back to Akeson and rose to his feet.

"Martinsson's found some threatening letters," he said. "It looks as if you might have been right."

"Phone me here or at home the moment you've got anything to tell me," Akeson said.

Wallander went out to his car without going back to his office for his jacket. He exceeded the speed limit all the way to the solicitors' offices. Lundin was in reception as he hurried through the door.

"Where are they?" he said.

She pointed at the conference room. Wallander went straight in before he remembered that there were people from the Bar Council there as well. Three solemn men, each one in his sixties, who clearly resented his barging in. He thought of the unshaven face he had seen in the mirror earlier - he did not look exactly presentable.

Martinsson and Svedberg were at the table, waiting for him.

"This is Inspector Wallander," Svedberg said.

"A police officer with a national reputation," said one of the men, stiffly, shaking hands. Wallander shook hands with the other two as well, and sat down.

"Fill me in," Wallander said, looking at Martinsson. But the reply came from one of the lawyers from Stockholm.

"Perhaps I should start by informing Inspector Wallander of the procedure undertaken when a firm of solicitors is liquidated," said the man whose name Wallander had gathered was Wrede.

"We can do that later," Wallander intervened. "Let's get straight down to business. You've found some threatening letters, I understand?"

Wrede looked at him disapprovingly, but said no more. Martinsson pushed a brown envelope across the table to Wallander, and Svedberg handed him a pair of plastic gloves.

"They were at the back of a drawer in a filing cabinet," Martinsson said. "They weren't listed in any diary or ledger. They were hidden away."

Wallander put on the gloves and opened the large brown envelope. Inside were two smaller envelopes. He tried without success to decipher the postmark. On one of the envelopes was a patch of ink, suggesting that some of the text had been crossed out. He took out the two letters, written on white paper, and put them on the desk in front of him. They were handwritten, and the text was short: The injustice is not forgotten, none of you shall be allowed to live unpunished, you shall die, Gustaf Torstensson, your son and also Duner.

The second letter was even shorter, the handwriting the same: The injustice will soon be punished.

The first letter was dated June 19, 1992, and the second August 26 of the same year. Both letters were signed Lars Borman.

Wallander slid the letters carefully to one side and took off the gloves.

"We've searched the ledgers," Martinsson said, "but neither Gustaf nor Sten Torstensson had a client by the name of Lars Borman."

"That's correct," Wrede confirmed.

"The man writes about an injustice," Martinsson said. "It must have been something major, or he wouldn't have had cause to threaten the lives of all three."

"I'm sure you're right," Wallander said, his thoughts miles away.

Once again he had the feeling there was something he ought to understand, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

"Show me where you found the envelope," he said, standing up.

Svedberg led him to a big filing cabinet in the office where Mrs Duner had her desk. Svedberg pointed to one of the lower drawers. Wallander opened it. It was filled with suspension files.

"Fetch Miss Lundin," he said.

When Svedberg came back with her, Wallander could see she was very nervous. Even so, without being able to say why, he was convinced that she had nothing to do with the mysterious events at the solicitors' offices.

"Who had a key to this filing cabinet?" he said.

"Mrs Duner," Lundin replied, almost inaudibly.

"Please speak a bit louder," Wallander said.

"Mrs Duner," she repeated.

"Only her?"

"The solicitors had their own keys."

"Was it kept locked?"

"Mrs Duner used to open it in the morning and lock it again when she went home."

Wrede interrupted the conversation. "We have signed for a key from Mrs Duner," he said. "Sten Torstensson's key. We opened the cabinet today."

Wallander nodded. There was something else he ought to ask Lundin, he was sure, but he couldn't think what it was. Instead he turned to Wrede.

"What do you think about these threatening letters?" he said.

"The man must obviously be arrested at once," Wrede said.

"That's not what I asked," Wallander said. "I asked for your opinion."

"Solicitors are often placed in an exposed situation."

"I take it all solicitors receive this kind of letter sooner or later?"

"The Bar Council might be able to supply the statistics."

Wallander looked at him for some time before asking his final question.

"Have you ever received a threatening letter?"

"It has happened."

"Why?"

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to reveal that. It would break my oath of confidentiality as a lawyer."

Wallander could see his point. He replaced the letters in the brown envelope.

"We'll take these with us," he said to the men from the Bar Council.

"It's not quite so straightforward as that," Wrede said. He seemed always to be the one speaking on behalf of the others. Wallander felt like he was in a court facing a judge.

"It's possible that just at this moment our interests are not identical," Wallander interrupted him, irritated by his way of speaking. "You're here to work out what to do with the firm's property, if that's what you can call it. We are here to identify one or more murderers. The brown envelope is going with me."

"We cannot allow any documents to be removed from these premises until we have discussed the matter with the prosecutor in charge of the investigation," Wrede said.

"Phone Per Akeson," Wallander said, "and send him my regards."

Then he picked up the envelope and marched out of the room. Martinsson and Svedberg hastened after him.

"Now there'll be trouble," Martinsson said as they left the building. Wallander could tell that Martinsson was not altogether displeased at the prospect.

Wallander felt cold. The wind was gusting and seemed to be getting stronger.

"What now?" he said. "What's Hoglund up to?"

"Looking after her sick child," Svedberg said. "Hanson would be pleased to know that. He has always said women police officers are no good when it comes to investigations."

"Hanson has always said all kinds of things," Martinsson said. "Police officers who are forever absent on further-education courses are not much good at investigations either."

"The letters are a year old," Wallander said. "We have a name, Lars Borman. He threatens the lives of Gustaf and Sten Torstensson. And Mrs Duner. He writes a letter, and then another one two months later. One was posted in some form of company envelope. Nyberg is good. I think he'll be able to tell us what it says under the ink on that envelope. And where they were postmarked, of course. In fact, I don't know what we're waiting for."

They returned to the police station. While Martinsson phoned Nyberg, who was still at Mrs Duner's house, Wallander sat down and tried to puzzle out the postmarks.

Svedberg had gone to look for the name Lars Borman in various police registers. When Nyberg came to Wallander's office a quarter of an hour later he was blue with cold and had dark grass stains on the knees of his overalls.

"How's it going?" Wallander said.

"Slowly," Nyberg said. "What did you expect? A mine exploded into millions of tiny particles."

Wallander pointed to the two letters and the brown envelope on the desk in front of him.

"These have to be thoroughly examined," he said. "First of all I'd like to know where the letters were postmarked. And what it says under the ink stain on one of the envelopes. Everything else can wait."

Nyberg put on his glasses, switched on Wallander's desk lamp, found a clean pair of plastic gloves and examined the letters.

"We'll be able to decipher the postmarks using a microscope," he said. "Whatever is written on the envelope has been painted over with Indian ink. I can try a bit of scraping. I think I should be able to sort that out without having to send it to Linkoping."

"It's urgent."

Nyberg took off his glasses in irritation. "It's always urgent," he said. "I need an hour. Is that too much?"

"Take as long as you need," Wallander said. "I know you work as fast as you can."

Nyberg picked up the letters and left. Martinsson and Svedberg appeared almost immediately.

"There is no Borman in any of the registers," Svedberg said. "I've found four Bromans and one Borrman. I thought maybe it could have been misspelled. Evert Borrman wandered around the Ostersund area at the end of the 1960s cashing false cheques. If he's still alive he must be about 85 by now."

Wallander shook his head. "We'd better wait for Nyberg," he said. "At the same time, I think we'd be wise not to expect too much of this. The threat is brutal alright. But vague. I'll give you a shout when Nyberg reports back."

When Wallander was on his own he took out the leather file he had been given at Farnholm Castle. He spent almost an hour acquainting himself with the extent of Harderberg's business empire. He had still not finished when there was a knock on the door and Nyberg came in. Wallander noticed to his surprise that he was still in his dirty overalls.

"Here are the answers to your questions," he said, flopping down on Wallander's visitor's chair. "The letters are postmarked in Helsingborg, and on one of the envelopes it says 'The Linden Hotel'."

Wallander pulled over a pad and made a note.

"Linden Hotel," Nyberg said. "Gjutargatan 12. It even gave the phone number."

"Where?"

"I thought you'd grasped that," Nyberg said. "The letters were postmarked in Helsingborg. That's where the Linden Hotel is as well."

"Well done," Wallander said.

"I just do as I'm told," Nyberg said. "But as this went so quickly, I did something else as well. I think you're going to have problems."

Wallander looked questioningly at him.

"I rang that number in Helsingborg," Nyberg said. "I got the 'number unobtainable' tone. It no longer exists. I asked Ebba to look into it. It took her ten minutes to establish that the Linden Hotel went out of business a year ago."

Nyberg stood up and brushed down the seat of the chair. "Now I'm off for lunch," he said.

"Do that," Wallander said. "And thanks for your help."

When Nyberg had left, Wallander thought over what he had heard. Then he summoned Svedberg and Martinsson. A few minutes later they had collected a cup of coffee and were in Wallander's office.

"There must be some kind of hotel register," Wallander said. "I mean, a hotel is a business enterprise. It has an owner. It can't go out of business without it being recorded somewhere."

"What happens to old hotel ledgers?" Svedberg said. "Are they discarded? Or are they kept?"

"That's something we'll have to find out," Wallander said. "Now, right away. Most important is to get hold of the Linden Hotel's owner. If we divide the task up between us, it shouldn't take us more than an hour or so. We'll meet again when we're ready."

Wallander called Ebba and asked her to look for the name Borman in the directories for Skane and Halland first. He had only just put down the receiver when the phone rang. It was his father.

"Don't forget you're coming to see me this evening," his father said.

"I'll be there," Wallander said, thinking that in fact he was too tired to drive out to Loderup. But he knew he could not say no, he could not change the arrangement.

"I'll be there at about 7.00," he said.

"We'll see," his father said.

"What do you mean by that?" Wallander asked, and could hear the anger in his voice.

"I just mean we'll see if that is in fact when you come," his father said.

Wallander forced himself not to start arguing.

"I'll be there," he said, and put down the phone.

His office suddenly seemed stifling. He went out into the corridor, and kept going as far as reception.

"There is nobody called Borman in the directories," Ebba said. "Do you want me to keep looking?"

"Not yet," Wallander said.

"I'd like to ask you round for dinner," Ebba said. "You must tell me how you are."

Wallander nodded, but he said nothing.

He went back to his office and opened the window. The wind was getting stronger still, and he felt very cold. He closed the window and sat at his desk. The file from Farnholm Castle was lying open, but he pushed it aside. He thought about Baiba Liepa in Riga.

Twenty minutes later he was still there, thinking, when Svedberg knocked on the door and came in.

"Now I know all there is to know about Swedish hotels," he said. "Martinsson will be here in a minute."

When Martinsson had closed the door behind him, Svedberg sat at one corner of the desk and started reading from a pad in which he had made his notes.

"The Linden Hotel was owned and run by a man called Bertil Forsdahl," he began. "I got that information from the County Offices. It was a little family hotel that was no longer viable. And Forsdahl is getting on a bit, he's 70. I've got his number here. He lives in Helsingborg."

Wallander dialled the number as Svedberg read out the digits. The telephone rang for a considerable time before it was answered. It was a woman.

"I'm trying to reach Bertil Forsdahl," Wallander said.

"He's gone out," the woman said. "He'll be back late this evening. Who shall I tell him called?"

Wallander thought for a moment before replying.

"My name's Kurt Wallander," he said. "I'm calling from the police station in Ystad. I have some questions to ask your husband about the hotel he used to run a year or so ago. No cause for concern, it's just some routine questions."

"My husband's an honest man," the woman said.

"I've no doubt about that," Wallander said. "This is just a routine inquiry. When exactly do you expect him back?"

"He's on a senior citizens' excursion to Ven," the woman said. "They're due to have dinner in Landskrona, but he's bound to be home by ten. He never goes to bed before midnight. That's a habit he got into when he ran the hotel."

"Tell him I'll get back to him," Wallander said. "And there's absolutely nothing to be worried about."

"I'm not worried," the woman said. "My husband's an honest man."

Wallander hung up. "I'll drive out and visit him tonight," Wallander said.

"Can't it wait until tomorrow?" Martinsson asked.

"I'm sure it can," Wallander said. "But I've nothing else on tonight."

An hour later they met to assess the situation. Bjork had left a message to say he could not be there as he had been summoned to an urgent meeting with the District Police Chief. Hoglund suddenly put in an appearance. Her husband had come home and was looking after the sick child.

Everybody agreed they should concentrate on the threatening letters. Wallander could not escape the nagging thought that there was something odd about the dead solicitors, something he ought to have cottoned on to. He remembered that Hoglund had had the same feeling the previous day.

After the meeting they bumped into each other in the corridor.

"If you're going to Helsingborg tonight, I'll go with you," she said. "If I may."

"It's not necessary," he said.

"But I'd like to, even so."

He nodded. They agreed to meet at the police station at 9.00.

Wallander drove to his father's house at Loderup shortly before 7 p.m. He stopped on the way to buy some buns to eat with the coffee. When he got there his father was in his studio, painting the same old picture: an autumn landscape, with or without a grouse in the foreground.

My father's what people call a "kitsch" artist, Wallander thought. I sometimes feel like a kitschy police officer.

His father's wife, who used to be his home help, was visiting her parents. Wallander expected his father to be cross when he heard that his son could only stay an hour, but to his surprise, he simply nodded. They played cards for a short while and Wallander told him in detail why he returned to work. His father did not seem interested in his reasons. It was an evening when, just for once, they did not quarrel. As Wallander drove back to Ystad, he racked his brains to remember when that had last happened.

At 8.55 they were in Wallander's car, heading for the Malmo road. It was still windy, and Wallander could feel a draught from the ill-fitting rubber strip round the windscreen. He could smell the faint aroma of Hoglund's discreet perfume. When they emerged on to the E65 he speeded up.

"Do you know your way around Helsingborg?" she said.

"No."

"We could call our colleagues in Helsingborg and ask."

"Best to keep them out of it for the time being," Wallander said.

"Why?"

"When police officers intrude into others' territory there are always problems," Wallander said. "No point in making things difficult for ourselves unnecessarily."

They drove on in silence. Wallander thought reluctantly about the conversation he would have to have with Bjork. When they came to the road for Sturup airport, Wallander turned off. A few kilometres further on he turned off again, towards Lund.

"Tell me why you became a police officer," Wallander said.

"Not yet," she said. "Another time."

There was not much traffic. The wind seemed to be getting worse all the time. They passed the roundabout outside Staffanstorp and saw the lights from Lund. It was 9.25.

"That's odd," she said suddenly.

Wallander noticed straight away there was something different about her voice. He glanced at her face, which was lit up by the glow from the dashboard. He could see she was staring intently into the mirror on her side. He looked in his rear-view mirror. There were headlights some way behind.

"What's odd?" he asked.

"I've never experienced this before," she said.

"What?"

"Being chased," she said. "Or, at least, being followed."

Wallander could see that she was serious. He looked again at the lights in his mirror.

"How can you be so sure the car is following us?" he said.

"That's easy. It's been behind us ever since we set off."

Wallander looked at her doubtfully.

"I'm positive," she said. "That car has been following us ever since we left Ystad."

Chapter 7

Fear was like a beast of prey.

Afterwards, Wallander remembered it as being like a claw clamped round his neck - an image that seemed even to him childish and inadequate, but it was the comparison he eventually used even so. Who would he describe the fear to? His daughter Linda, and perhaps also Baiba, in one of the letters he sent regularly to Riga. But hardly to anyone else. He never discussed with Hoglund what he had felt in that car; she never asked, and he was never sure whether she had noticed he was frightened. Nevertheless, he had been so terrified that he was shaking, and was convinced he would lose control of the car and plunge into the ditch at high speed, perhaps even hurtle to his death. He remembered with crystal clarity that he wished he had been alone in the car. That would have made everything much simpler for him. A large part of his fear, the weight of the giant beast, was the worry that something might happen to her, the woman in the passenger seat. Superficially, he had played the role of the experienced police officer who was unmoved by a minor matter like discovering that he was being followed from Staffanstorp to Lund, but he had been scared out of his wits until they reached the outskirts of the city. Shortly after crossing the boundary, when she had announced that the car was still following them, he had pulled in to one of the big petrol stations that had 24-hour service. They had seen the car drive past, a dark blue Mercedes, but had been unable to catch the registration number or make out how many people were inside. Wallander had stopped by one of the pumps.

"I think you're wrong," he said.

She shook her head. "The car was following us," she said. "I can't swear that it was waiting for us outside the police station, but I noticed it early on. It was there when we passed the roundabout on the E65. It was just a car then, any old car. But when we'd turned off a couple of times and it still hadn't overtaken us, it started to be something else."

Wallander got out and unscrewed the petrol cap. She stood by his side, watching him. He was thinking as hard as he could.

"Who would want to follow us?" he asked as he replaced the pipe.

She remained standing by the car while he went to pay. She couldn't possibly be right, he thought. His fear had started to wear off.

They continued through the town. The streets were deserted, and the traffic lights seemed very reluctant to change. Once they had left Lund behind them and Wallander increased speed along the motorway heading north, they started to check the traffic behind them once again. But the Mercedes had gone, and it didn't reappear. When they took the exit for Helsingborg south, Wallander slowed down. A dirty lorry overtook them, then a dark red Volvo. Wallander pulled up at the side of the road, released his safety belt and got out. He walked round to the back of the car and crouched down, as if he were inspecting one of the back wheels. He knew she would keep an eye on every car that passed. He counted four cars overtaking them, and a bus which had a fault in one of its cylinders, to judge by the sound of its engine. He got back into the car and turned to her.

"No Mercedes?"

"A white Audi," she said. "Two men in front, maybe another in the back."

"Why pick on that one?"

"They were the only ones who didn't look at us. They also picked up speed."

Wallander pointed to the car phone. "Phone Martinsson," he said. "I take it you made a note of the registration number. Not just the Audi, the others as well. Give them to him. Tell him it's urgent."

He gave her Martinsson's home number and drove on, keeping his eye open for a telephone box where he hoped he might find a phone book with a map of the area. He heard her speaking to one of Martinsson's children, probably his little daughter. After a short pause Martinsson came on the line and she gave him the registration numbers. Then she handed the phone to Wallander.

"He wants to speak to you," she said.

Wallander braked and pulled in to the side before taking the phone.

"What's going on?" Martinsson asked. "Can't these cars wait until tomorrow?"

"If Ann-Britt calls you and says it's urgent, then it's urgent," he said.

"What have they done, these cars?"

"It would take too long now. I'll tell you tomorrow. When you've got the information you can phone us here in the car."

He brought the call to an end, so as to give Martinsson no chance to ask any more questions. He saw that Hoglund had been offended.

"Why can't he trust me? Why does he have to check with you?"

Her voice had become shrill. Wallander wondered if she could not control her disappointment, or did not want to.

"It's nothing to worry about," he said. "It takes time to get used to changes. You are the most shattering thing that's happened to the police station in Ystad for years. You're surrounded by a pack of old dogs who haven't the slightest desire to learn new tricks."

"Does that include you?"

"Of course it does," Wallander said.

Wallander failed to find a phone box before they had reached the ferry terminal. There was no sign of the white Audi. Wallander parked outside the railway station, and found a dirty map on the wall inside showing Gjutargatan on the eastern edge of the town. He memorised the route, and returned to the car.

"Who could it be that's following us?" she said as they turned left and passed the white theatre building.

"I don't know," Wallander said. "There's too much about Gustaf and Sten Torstensson that's odd. I get the feeling we're always shooting off in the wrong direction."

"I have the feeling we're standing still," she said.

"Or that we're going round in circles," Wallander said. "And we don't see that we're treading in our own footsteps."

Still no sign of the Audi. They drove into a housing estate. There was no-one about. Wallander parked at number 12, and they got out of the car. The wind threatened to blow the doors off their hinges. The house was a red-brick bungalow with garage incorporated, and a modest garden. Wallander thought he could see the outline of a boat under a tarpaulin.

The door opened before he had chance to ring the bell. An elderly, white-haired man in a tracksuit eyed them up and down with an inquisitive smile.

Wallander produced his ED.

"My name's Wallander," he said. "I'm a detective inspector, and this is Ann-Britt Hoglund, a colleague. We're from the Ystad police."

The man took Wallander's ID and scrutinised it - he was obviously short-sighted. His wife appeared in the hall, and bade them welcome. Wallander had the impression he was standing on the threshold of a contented couple's home. They invited them into their living room, where coffee and cakes were prepared. Wallander was about to sit down when he noticed a picture on one of the walls. He could not believe his eyes at first - it was one of his father's paintings, one without a grouse. He saw that Hoglund had noticed what he was looking at, and she gave him a questioning look. He shook his head, and sat down. This was the second time in his life he had gone into a strange house and discovered one of his father's paintings. Four years ago he had found one in a flat in Kristianstad, but there had been a grouse in the foreground of that one.

"I apologise for calling on you so late," Wallander said, "but I'm afraid we have some questions that simply can't wait."

"I hope you've time for a cup of coffee," said the lady of the house.

They said that of course they had. It occurred to Wallander that Hoglund had been keen to accompany him so that she could find out how he conducted an interview of this nature, and he felt insecure. There's been a lot of water under this bridge, he thought. It's not a case of me teaching her, but of me relearning how to do it, trying to remember all that I had written off as the end of an era in my life, until a couple of days ago.

His mind went back to those limitless beaches at Skagen. His private territory. Just for a moment, he wished he were back there. But that was history. More water under the bridge.

"Until a year ago you ran a hotel, the Linden Hotel," he began.

"For 40 years," Bertil Forsdahl said, and Wallander could hear he was proud of what he had achieved.

"That's a long time," he said.

"I bought it in 1952," Forsdahl said. "It was called the Pelican Hotel in those days, a bit on the scruffy side and with not a good reputation. I bought it off a man called Markusson. He was an alcoholic, and just wasn't bothered. The last year of his tenancy the rooms were used mainly by his drunken cronies. I have to admit I got the hotel cheaply. Markusson died the following year. His wake was a drunken orgy in Elsinore. We renamed the hotel. In those days there was a linden tree outside. It was next to the old theatre - that's been demolished now, of course, like everything else. The actors used to stay with us sometimes. Inga Tidblad was our overnight guest on one occasion. She wanted an early-morning cup of tea."

"I expect you've kept the ledger with her name in it," Wallander said.

"I've kept all of them," Forsdahl said. "I've got 40 years of history tucked away downstairs."

"We sometimes sit down after dinner," Forsdahl's wife said, "and we leaf through them all, remembering the good old days. You see the names and you remember the people."

Wallander exchanged glances with Hoglund. They already had the answer to one of their key questions.

A dog started barking in the street outside.

"Next door's guard dog," Forsdahl explained apologetically. "He keeps an eye on the whole street."

Wallander took a sip of the coffee, and noticed that it said Linden Hotel on the cup.

"I'll explain why we're here," he said. "You have the name of your hotel on the coffee cups, and you had printed letterheads and envelopes. In July and August last year, two letters were posted from here in Helsingborg. One was in one of your printed envelopes. That must have been during the last few weeks you were open."

"We closed on September 15," Forsdahl said. "We made no charge for the final night."

"Might I ask why you closed down?" Hoglund said.

Wallander was irritated by her intervention, but he hoped she would not notice his reaction. As if it were natural for a woman to be answered by another woman, it was Forsdahl's wife who responded.

"What else could we do?" she said. "The building was condemned, and the hotel wasn't making any money. No doubt we could have kept going for another year or two if we'd wanted, and if we'd been allowed. But that wasn't how it turned out."

"We tried to maintain the highest standards for as long as we could," Forsdahl said. "But in the end it was just too expensive for us. Colour TV in every room and such like. It was just too much outlay."

"It was a very sad day, September 15," his wife said. "We still have all the room keys. We had number 17. The site's a car park now. And they've cut the linden tree down. They said it was rotten: I wonder if a tree can die of a broken heart."

The dog was still barking. Wallander thought about the tree that no longer existed.

"Lars Borman," he said eventually. "Does that name mean anything to you?"

The response was a complete surprise. "Poor man," Forsdahl said.

"A very sad story," his wife said. "Why are the police interested in him now?"

"So you know who he is?" Wallander said. He saw that Hoglund had produced a notebook from her handbag.

"Such a nice man," Forsdahl said. "Calm, quiet. Always friendly, always polite. They don't make them like him any more."

"We'd very much like to get in touch with him," Wallander said.

Forsdahl exchanged looks with his wife. Wallander had the impression they were ill at ease.

"Lars Borman's dead," Forsdahl said. "I thought the police knew that."

Wallander thought for a while before answering. "We know next to nothing about Borman," he said. "All we do know is that last year he wrote two letters, and one of them was in one of your hotel's envelopes. We wanted to get in touch with him. Obviously that isn't possible now. But we'd like to know what happened. And who he was."

"A regular customer," Forsdahl said. "He stayed with us about every four months for many years. Usually two or three nights."

"What was his line of work? Where was he from?"

"He worked at the County Offices," Mrs Forsdahl said. "Something to do with finance."

"An accountant," Forsdahl said. "A very conscientious and honest civil servant at the Malmohus County Offices."

"He lived in Klagshamn," his wife added. "He had a wife and children. It was a terrible tragedy."

"What happened?" Wallander said.

"He committed suicide," Forsdahl said. Wallander could see it pained him to revive the memory. "If there was one person we'd never have expected to take his own life it was Lars Borman. Evidently he had some kind of secret we never imagined."

"What happened?" Wallander asked again.

"He'd been in Helsingborg," Forsdahl said. "It was a few days before we closed down. He did whatever he had to do during the day and spent the evenings in his room. He would read a lot. That last morning he paid his bill and checked out. He promised to keep in touch even though the hotel was closing. Then he drove away. A few weeks later we heard that he'd hanged himself in a clearing outside Klagshamn, a few kilometres from his house. There was no explanation, no letter to his wife and children. It came as a shock to us all."

Wallander nodded slowly. He had grown up in Klagshamn, and wondered which clearing it was Borman had hanged himself in. Perhaps it was somewhere he had played as a child?

"How old was he?"

"He'd passed 50, but he can't have been much more," Mrs Forsdahl said.

"So he lived in Klagshamn," Wallander said, "and worked as an accountant at the County Offices. It strikes me as being a bit odd, staying in a hotel. It's not that far between Malmo and Helsingborg."

"He didn't like driving," Forsdahl said. "Besides, I think he enjoyed it here. He could shut himself away in his room in the evening and read his books. We used to leave him in peace, and he appreciated that."

"You have his address in your ledgers, of course," Wallander said.

"We heard his wife had sold the house and moved," Mrs Forsdahl said. "She couldn't cope with staying there after what had happened. And his children are grown up."

"Do you know where she moved to?"

"To Spain. Marbella, I think it's called."

Wallander looked at Hoglund, who was making copious notes.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question now?" Forsdahl said. "Why are the police interested in Borman so long after his death?"

"It's pure routine," Wallander said. "I'm afraid I can't tell you more than that. Except that there's no question of his being suspected of any crime."

"He was an honest man," Forsdahl insisted. "He thought people ought to lead a simple life and always do the right thing. We talked quite a lot over the years. He would always get angry when we touched on the dishonesty that seems to be common nowadays in society."

"Was there really no explanation as to why he had committed suicide?" Wallander asked.

Both Forsdahl and his wife shook their heads.

"OK," Wallander said. "Just one more thing. We'd like to take a look at the record books for the final year, if you don't mind."

"They're in the basement," Forsdahl said, getting to his feet.

"Martinsson might ring," Hoglund said. "I'd better fetch the car phone."

Wallander gave her the keys and Mrs Forsdahl went with her. He heard her slamming the car door without the neighbour's dog starting to bark. When she returned they all went down into the basement. In a room that was surprisingly big for a basement was a long row of ledgers on a shelf running the whole length of one wall. There was also the old hotel sign, and a board with 17 room keys hanging on it. A museum, Wallander thought, how touching. This is where they hide their memories of a long working life. Memories of a little hotel that got to the point where it was viable no more.

Forsdahl took down the last of their ledgers and put it on a table. He looked up August, then the 26th, and pointed to one of the columns. Wallander and Hoglund leaned forward to examine it. Wallander recognised the handwriting. He also thought the letter had been written by the same pen as Borman used when he signed the register. He was born on October 12, 1939, and described himself as a County Offices accountant. Hoglund noted his address in Klagshamn: Mejramsvagen 23. Wallander did not recognise the street name. It was probably one of the housing estates that had sprung up after he had left. He turned back to the records for June, and found Borman's name there again, on the day that the first of the letters had been posted.

"Do you understand any of this?" Hoglund said, quietly.

"Not a lot," Wallander said.

The mobile phone rang, and Wallander nodded to indicate she should answer it. She sat down on a stool and started writing down what Martinsson had to say. Wallander closed the ledger and watched Forsdahl return it to its place. When the call was finished they went back upstairs, and on the way Wallander asked what Martinsson had said.

"It was the Audi," she said. "We can talk about it later."

Wallander and Hoglund prepared to leave.

"I am sorry for it being so late," Wallander said. "Sometimes the police can't wait."

"I hope we've been of some help," Forsdahl said. "Even though it's painful to be reminded of poor old Lars Borman."

"I understand how you feel," Wallander said. "If you should remember anything else, please phone the Ystad police."

"What else is there to remember?" asked Forsdahl, in surprise.

"I don't know what it might be," Wallander said, shaking hands.

They left the house and got into the car. Wallander switched on the inside light. Hoglund had taken out her notebook.

"I was right," she said, looking at Wallander. "It was the white Audi. The number didn't fit the car. The registration plate had been stolen. It should have been on a Nissan that hasn't even been sold yet. It's registered with a showroom in Malmo."

"And the other cars?"

"All in order."

Wallander started the engine. It was 11.30, and there was no sign of the wind dropping. They drove out of town. There was not much traffic on the motorway. And there were no cars behind them.

"Are you tired?" Wallander said.

"No," she replied.

"In that case let's stop for a while," he said. He drove into a 24-hour petrol station with a cafe attached just south of Helsingborg. "We can have a little late-night conference, just you and me, and see if we can work out how far we got this evening. We can also see what other cars stop. The only one we don't need to bother about is a white Audi."

"Why so?"

"If they do come back they'll be using a different car," Wallander said. "Whoever they are, they know what they're doing. They won't appear twice in the same car."

They went into the cafe. Wallander ordered a hamburger, but Hoglund didn't want anything. They found a seat with a view of the parking area. A couple of Danish lorry drivers were drinking coffee, but the other tables were empty.

"So, what do you think?" Wallander said. "About an accountant with the County Offices writing threatening letters to a couple of lawyers, then going out to the forest to hang himself."

"It's hard to know what to say," she said.

"Try," Wallander said.

They sat in silence, lost in thought. A lorry from a rental firm pulled up outside. Wallander's burger was called; he fetched it and returned to the table.

"The accusation in Borman's letter is injustice," she said. "But it doesn't say what the injustice was. Borman wasn't a client. We don't know what their relationship was. In fact, we don't know anything at all."

Wallander put down his fork and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. "I'm sure you've heard about Rydberg," he said. "An old detective inspector who died a couple of years ago. He was a wise bird. He once said that police officers always tend to say they know nothing, whereas in fact we always know a lot more than we think."

"That sounds like one of those pearls of wisdom they were forever feeding us at college," she said. "The kind we used to write down and then forget as quickly as possible."

Wallander was annoyed. He did not like anybody questioning Rydberg's competence. "I couldn't care less what you wrote down or didn't write down at Police Training College," he said. "But at least take notice of what I say. Or what Rydberg said."

"Have I made you angry?" she said, surprised.

"I never get angry," Wallander said, "but I think your summary of what we know about Lars Borman was poor."

"Can you do any better, then?" she said, her voice shrill again.

She's thin-skinned, he thought. No doubt it's a lot harder than I think to be a lone woman among the Ystad detectives.

"I don't really mean your summary was poor," he said. "But I do think you're overlooking a few things."

"I'm listening," she said. "I know I'm good at that."

Wallander slid his plate to one side and went to fetch a cup of coffee. The Danish lorry drivers had left, leaving the two police officers as the only customers. A radio could be heard faintly from the kitchen.

"It's obviously impossible to draw any. reliable conclusions," Wallander said, "but we can make a few assumptions. We can try fitting a few pieces of the puzzle together and see what they look like, see if we can work out a motive perhaps."

"I'm with you so far," she said.

"Borman was an accountant," Wallander said. "We also know that he seemed to be an honest, upright man. That was the most characteristic thing about him, according to the Forsdahls. Apart from the fact that he was quiet and liked reading. In my experience it's quite rare for anybody to start by categorising a man like that. Which suggests he really was a passionately honest man."

"An honest accountant," she said.

"This honest man suddenly writes two threatening letters to the Torstenssons' firm of solicitors in Ystad. He signs them with his own name, but he crosses out the name of the hotel on one of the envelopes. This provides us with several assumptions we can deduce."

"He didn't want to be anonymous," Hoglund said. "But he didn't want to involve the hotel in the business. An honest man upset about injustice. The question is, what injustice?"

"Here we can make my last assumption but one," Wallander said. "There's a missing link. Borman wasn't a client of the Torstenssons', but there might have been somebody else, somebody who was in contact both with Borman and with the firm of solicitors."

"What does an accountant actually do?" Hoglund said. "He checks that money is being used properly. He goes through receipts, he certifies that the proper practices have been adhered to. Is that what you mean?"

"Gustaf Torstensson gave financial advice," Wallander said. "An accountant makes sure the rules and regulations are obeyed. The emphasis is a bit different, but an accountant and a solicitor in fact do very similar things. Or should do."

"And your last assumption?" she said.

"Borman writes two threatening letters. He may have written more, but we don't know that. What we do know is that the letters were simply put away in an envelope."

"But now both the solicitors are dead," Hoglund said, "and someone tried to kill Mrs Duner."

"And Borman committed suicide," Wallander said. "I think that's where we should begin. With his suicide. We have to get in touch with our colleagues in Malmo. There must be a document somewhere that rules out the possibility that the death was murder. There has to have been a doctor's certificate."

"There's a widow living in Spain," she said.

"The children are presumably still in Sweden. We must talk to them as well."

They stood up and left the cafe.

"We should do this more often," Wallander said. "It's fun talking to you."

"Even though I don't understand anything," she said, "and make poor summaries?"

Wallander shrugged. "I talk too much," he said.

They got back into the car. It was almost 1.00. Wallander shuddered at the thought of the empty flat that awaited him in Ystad. It felt as if something in his life had come to an end a long time ago, long before he knelt in the fog in the military training ground near Ystad. But he hadn't worked out what it was. He thought about his father's painting that he had seen in the house in Gjutargatan. In the old days, his father's paintings had always seemed to him something to be ashamed of, to be taking advantage of people's bad taste. It now seemed to him there might be another way of looking at it. Perhaps his father painted pictures that gave people a feeling of balance and normality they were looking everywhere for, but only found in those unchanging landscapes.

"A penny for your thoughts," she said.

"Not sure," he said vaguely. "I think I'm just tired."

Wallander drove on towards Malmo. Even though it was a longer way round, he wanted to stick to the main roads back to Ystad. There was not much traffic, and there was no sign of anybody following them. The gusting wind was buffeting the car.

"I didn't think that kind of thing happened around here," she said suddenly. "Being followed by some stranger in a car, I mean."

"I didn't think so either until a few years ago," Wallander said. "Then things changed. They say Sweden changed slowly and imperceptibly, but I think it was rather open and obvious. If you only knew where to look."

"Tell me," she said, "what it used to be like. And what happened."

"I don't know if I can," he said. "I just see things from the point of view of the man in the street. But in our everyday work, even in an insignificant little town like Ystad, we could see a change. Crime became more frequent and more serious: different, nastier, more complicated. And we started finding criminals among people who'd previously been irreproachable citizens. But what set it all off I have no idea."

"That doesn't explain why we have a record for solving crimes worse than practically everywhere else in the world, either," she said.

"Speak to Bjork about that," Wallander said. "It keeps him awake at night. I sometimes think that his ambition is for the Ystad force to make up for the rest of the country put together."

"But there must be an explanation," she insisted. "It can't just be that the Swedish force is undermanned, and that we don't have the resources which everybody talks about without anybody being able to say what they actually should be."

"It's like two different worlds meeting head on," Wallander said. "Many police officers think as I do, that we got our training and experience at a time when everything was different, when crime was more transparent, morals were clearer and the authority of the police unchallenged. Nowadays, we need a different kind of training and different experiences in order to be as efficient. But we don't have that. And the ones who come after us, such as you, don't as yet have much chance to influence what we do, to decide where our priorities should lie. It often feels as if there's nothing to stop criminals getting even further ahead of us than they are already. And all society does in response is to manipulate the statistics. Instead of giving the police rein to solve every crime committed, a lot of them are just written off. What used to be considered a crime ten years ago is now judged a non-crime. Things change by the day. What people were punished for yesterday can be something nobody thinks twice about today. At best it might spark off a report that then disappears in some invisible shredder. All that's left is something that never happened."

"That can't be good," she said hesitantly.

Wallander glanced at her. "Who said that it was?"

They had passed Landskrona and were approaching Malmo. An ambulance overtook them at high speed, blue light flashing. Wallander was tired. Without really knowing why, just for a moment he felt sorry for the woman sitting beside him. Over the coming years she would constantly have to reassess her work as a police officer. Unless she was an exceptional person, she would experience an unbroken sequence of disappointments, and very little joy.

He had no doubt about that. But he also thought that the reputation that had preceded her seemed to be true. He could remember Martinsson's first year when he'd just left Police Training College to join the Ystad force. He had not been a lot of use then, but now he was one of their best detectives.

"Tomorrow we'll make a thorough assessment of all the material we have," he said in an attempt to cheer her up. "There must be a chance of breaking through somewhere along the line."

"I hope you're right," she said. "But one of these days things could get so bad here that we start to regard certain types of murder as incidents that are best left alone."

"If that happens, the police force will have to mutiny," Wallander said.

"The Police Commissioner would never go along with that."

"We'll rise up when he's out of the country eating posh dinners in the name of PR," Wallander said.

"We'll have plenty of opportunities, then," she said.

The conversation died out. Wallander stayed on the motorway to the east of Malmo, concentrating on the road with only the occasional vague thought about what had happened during the day.

It was when they had left Malmo behind and were heading for Ystad on the E65 that Wallander suddenly had the feeling that something was wrong. Hoglund had closed her eyes and her head had sunk down on one shoulder. There was no sign of headlights in the rear-view mirror.

He was suddenly wide awake. I've been on the wrong track, he thought. Instead of establishing that we weren't being followed, I ought to have been wondering why. If Ann-Britt Hoglund was right, and I've no reason to doubt that somebody has been following us from the moment we left the police station, then the absence of a car behind us could indicate that they no longer considered it necessary.

He thought about the mine in Mrs Duner's garden.

Without a second thought he braked and pulled up on the hard shoulder with his warning lights blinking. Hoglund woke up. She stared at him drowsily.

"Get out of the car," Wallander said.

"Why?"

"Do as I say," he shouted.

She flung aside her safety belt and was out of the car before he was.

"Take cover," he said.

"What's wrong?" she said, as they stood staring at the warning lights. It was cold, and the wind was gusty.

"I don't know," Wallander said. "Maybe nothing. I got worried because nobody was following us."

He did not need to explain further. She understood right away. That convinced Wallander on the spot that she was already a good police officer. She was intelligent, she knew how to react to the unexpected. But he also felt for the first time in ages that he now had somebody with whom he could share his fear. On that stretch of hard shoulder, just before the Svedala exit, he had the feeling that all that endless walking up and down the beach at Skagen had come to an end.

Wallander had been sufficiently alert to take the car phone with him. He started to dial Martinsson's number. "He'll think I've gone out of my mind," he said as he waited for a reply.

"What do you think's going to happen?"

"I don't know. But people who can bury a mine in a garden in Sweden would have no problem doing something to a car."

"If it's the same people," she said.

"Yes," Wallander said. "If it's the same people."

Martinsson answered. Wallander could tell that he was half asleep.

"It's Kurt," he said. "I'm on the E65 just outside Svedala. Ann-Britt's here with me. I'd like you to phone Nyberg and ask him to come out here."

"What's happened?"

"I want him to have a look at my car."

"If your engine's packed up you could phone a breakdown firm," Martinsson said, puzzled.

"I haven't got time to explain," Wallander said, and could feel his irritation coming on. "Do as I say. Tell Nyberg he should bring with him equipment to test whether I've been driving round with a bomb under my feet."

"A car bomb?"

"You heard."

Wallander switched off and shook his head. "He's right, of course," he said. "It sounds ridiculous - we're on the E65 in the middle of the night and think there might be a bomb in the car."

"Is there?"

"I don't know," Wallander said. "I'm not sure."

It took Nyberg an hour to reach them. By then Wallander and Hoglund were frozen to the bone. Wallander expected Nyberg to be annoyed, being woken up by Martinsson for reasons that must have seemed dodgy, to say the least, but to his surprise Nyberg was friendly and prepared to believe that something serious had happened. Despite her protests, Wallander insisted that Hoglund should get into Nyberg's car and warm up.

"There's a thermos in the passenger seat," Nyberg said. "I think the coffee's still hot."

Then he turned to Wallander, who could see that he was still in his pyjamas under his overcoat. "What's wrong with the car?" he asked.

"I was hoping you could tell me that," Wallander said. "There's a real possibility that there's nothing wrong at all."

"What am I supposed to be looking for?"

"I don't know. All I can tell you is an assumption. The car was left unwatched for about half an hour. It was locked."

"Do you have an alarm?" Nyberg said.

"I've got nothing," Wallander said. "It's an old car. Rubbish. I've always assumed nobody would want to steal it."

"Go on," Nyberg said.

"Half an hour," Wallander repeated. "When I started the engine, nothing happened. Everything was normal. From Helsingborg to here is about 100 kilometres. We stopped on the way and had a cup of coffee. I'd filled the tank in Helsingborg. It must be about three hours since the car was left unattended."

"I shouldn't touch it," Nyberg said. "Not if you suspect it might blow up."

"I thought that happened when you started the engine," Wallander said.

"Nowadays you can set explosions to go off whenever you like," Nyberg said. "They could be anything from inbuilt, self-triggering delay mechanisms to radio-controlled ignition devices that can be set off from miles away."

"Maybe it's best just to leave it," Wallander said.

"Could be," Nyberg said. "But I'd like to take a look at it even so. Let's say I'm doing it of my own free will. You're not ordering me to do it."

Nyberg went back to his car and came back with a powerful torch. Wallander accepted a mug of coffee from Hoglund, who had now got out of the car again. They watched Nyberg as he lay down beside the car and shone his torch underneath. Then he started to walk round it, slowly.

"I think I'm dreaming," Hoglund murmured.

Nyberg had stopped by the open door on the driver's side. He peered inside and shone his torch in. An overloaded Volkswagen van with Polish number plates drove past on its way to the ferry in Ystad. Nyberg switched off his torch and came back towards them.

"Did I hear wrongly?" he asked. "Didn't you say you'd filled up with petrol on the way to Helsingborg?"

"I filled up in Lund," Wallander said. "Right to the top."

"Then you drove to Helsingborg? And to here?"

Wallander thought a moment. "It can't have been more than about 150 kilometres," he said.

Nyberg frowned.

"What's the matter?" Wallander asked.

"Have you ever had reason to think there was something wrong with your petrol gauge?"

"Never. It's always been spot on."

"How many litres does the tank hold?"

"Sixty."

"Then explain to me why the indicator suggests you've only got a quarter of a tank left," he said.

It didn't sink in at first. Then Wallander realised the significance of what Nyberg had said. "Somebody must have drained the tank," he said. "The car uses less than one litre per ten kilometres."

"Let's move further back," Nyberg said. "I'm going to move my own car further back as well."

They watched him drive further away. The warning lights were still flashing on Wallander's car. The wind was still gusty. Another overfull car with Polish number plates passed them going east. Nyberg came to join them. They all looked at Wallander's car.

"If somebody drains petrol from a tank, they do it to make room for something else," Nyberg said. "Somebody might have planted explosives with some kind of delayed ignition that is gradually eaten away by the petrol. Eventually it blows up. Does your petrol indicator usually go down when the engine's ticking over?"

"No."

"Then I reckon we should leave the car here till tomorrow," Nyberg said. "In fact, we ought to close off the E65 altogether."

"Bjork would never agree to that," Wallander said. "Besides, we don't know for sure that anybody's put anything in the petrol tank."

"I think we should call people out to cordon the area off, no matter what," Nyberg said. "This is the Malmo police district, isn't it?"

"I'm afraid it is," Wallander said. "But I'll phone them even so."

"My handbag's still in the car," Hoglund said. "Can I fetch it?"

"No," Nyberg said. "It'll have to stay there. And the engine can keep running."

Hoglund got back into Nyberg's car. Wallander called the police in Malmo. Nyberg had wandered off to the side of the road for a pee. Wallander looked up and contemplated the stars while he waited to be connected.

It was 3.04 in the morning.

Malmo answered. Wallander saw Nyberg zipping up his flies.

Then the night exploded in a flash of white. The telephone was ripped from Wallander's hand.

Chapter 8

The painful silence.

Afterwards, Wallander recalled the explosion as a large space with all the oxygen squeezed out, the sudden arrival of a strange vacuum on the E65 in the middle of a November night, a black hole in which even the blustery wind had been silenced. It happened very quickly, but memory has the ability to stretch things out and in the end he remembered the explosion as a series of events, each one rapidly replacing the other but nevertheless distinct.

What surprised him most was that his telephone was lying on the wet asphalt just a few metres away. That was the most incomprehensible bit, not the fact that his car was enveloped by intense flames and seemed to be melting away.

Nyberg had reacted quickest. He grabbed hold of Wallander and dragged him away, possibly afraid there would be another explosion from the blazing car. Hoglund had flung herself out of Nyberg's car and sprinted to the other side of the road. Perhaps she had screamed, but it seemed to Wallander he might have been the one to scream, or Nyberg, or none of them; perhaps he had imagined it.

On the other hand, he thought he ought to have screamed. He ought to have screamed and yelled and cursed the fact that he had gone back to duty, that Sten Torstensson had been to see him in Skagen and dragged him into a murder investigation he should never have been involved in. He should never have gone back, he should have signed the documents Bjork had prepared for him, attended the press conference and allowed himself to be interviewed for a feature in Swedish Police magazine, on the back page no doubt, and been out of it all.

In the confusion following the explosion there had been a moment of painful silence when Wallander had been able to think perfectly clearly as he looked at the telephone lying in the road and his old Peugeot going up in flames on the hard shoulder. His thoughts had been lucid and he had been able to reach a conclusion: the first indication that the double murder of the solicitors, the mine in Mrs Duner's garden and now the attempted murder of himself had a pattern, not itself clear as yet and with many locked doors still to open.

But a conclusion had been possible and unavoidable, amid the chaos, and it had been a terrifying one: somebody thought Wallander knew something they did not want him to know. He was convinced that whoever had put the explosives in the petrol tank had not planned to kill Ann-Britt Hoglund. That merely revealed another aspect of the people who lurked in the shadows: they didn't care about human life.

Wallander recognised, with a mixture of fear and despair, that these people who hid in cars with stolen number plates were wrong. He could have made an honest public statement that it was all based on a mistake and that he knew nothing of what lay behind the murders, or the mine, or even the suicide of the accountant Lars Borman, if indeed it was suicide.

The truth was that he knew nothing. But while his car was still ablaze and Nyberg and Hoglund were directing inquisitive late-night drivers away from the scene and calling the police and fire brigade, he had gone on standing in the middle of the road, thinking things through to their conclusion. There was only one starting point for the awful mistake of thinking he knew something, and that was Sten's visit to Skagen. The postcard from Finland had not been sufficient. They had followed Sten to Jutland, they had been there among the dunes, hidden in the fog. They had been watching the Art Museum where Wallander had drunk coffee with Sten, but they had not been close enough to hear what was said, for if they had been, they would have known that Wallander knew nothing, since Sten knew nothing either; the whole business was no more than suspicions. But they had not been able to take the risk. That's why his old Peugeot was burning away by the side of the road; and that's why the neighbour's dog had been barking while they had been talking to the Forsdahls.

The painful silence, he thought. That's what's enveloping me, and there is one more conclusion to draw, perhaps the most vital one of all. For it means we have made a breakthrough in this awful case, we have found a point around which we can all gather and say: this is our starting point. It might not take us to the Holy Grail, but it might lead to something else that we need to find.

The chronology was right, he thought. It started with that muddy field where Gustaf Torstensson met his end almost a month ago. Everything else, including the execution of his son, must derive from what happened that night, when he was on his way home from Farnholm Castle. We know that now, which means we now know what we should be doing.

He bent to retrieve his telephone. The emergency number for the Malmo police was staring him in the face. He switched the phone off and established that it had not been damaged by the blast or by being dropped on the road.

The fire engine had arrived. He watched as they put out the flames, covering the car with white foam. Nyberg appeared at his side. Wallander could see that he was sweating and afraid.

"That was a close call," he said.

"Yes," Wallander said. "But not close enough."

Nyberg looked at him in surprise.

At that moment a senior officer from the Malmo police came up to Wallander. They had met before but Wallander could not remember the man's name.

"I gather it was your car that got torched," he said. "Rumour had it you'd left the force. But you come back, and your car gets burned out."

Wallander was not sure if the man was being ironic, but he decided he wasn't, that it was a natural reaction. At the same time he wanted to ensure that there were no misunderstandings.

"I was on my way home with a colleague," he said.

"Ann-Britt Hoglund," said the man from Malmo. "I've just spoken to her. She passed me on to you."

Well done, Wallander thought. The fewer people who comment, the easier it is to keep the thing under control. She's learning fast.

"I had the feeling something wasn't as it should be," Wallander said. "We stopped and got out. I phoned my colleague Nyberg here. The car blew up almost as soon as he got here."

The high-up from Malmo eyed him sceptically. "This is the official version, I assume," he said.

"Well, the car will have to be examined," Wallander said. "But nobody's been hurt. For the moment you can report just what I said. I'll ask Bjork to get in touch with you - he's the Chief of Police in Ystad. Forgive me, but I'm afraid I can't remember your name."

"Roslund."

Wallander remembered.

"We'll cordon the scene off," Roslund said. "I'll leave a car here."

Wallander checked his watch. It was 4.15.

"I think it's time for us to go home to bed."

They all got into Nyberg's car. Nobody had anything to say. They dropped Hoglund outside her house, then Nyberg drove Wallander home to Mariagatan.

"We'll have to get to grips with this a few hours from now," Wallander said before getting out. "We can't put it off."

"I'll be at the station by 7.00," Nyberg said.

"Eight will be soon enough. Thanks for your help."

Wallander had a quick shower then stretched himself out between the sheets. He was still awake at 6.00. He got up again shortly before 7.00. He knew it was going to be a long day. He wondered how he would cope.

Thursday, November 4, began with a sensation.

Bjork came to work unshaven. This had never happened before. But when the door of the conference room was closed at 8.05, everybody could see that Bjork had more bristle than anybody could have imagined. Wallander knew that he was still not going to have the opportunity to talk to Bjork about what had happened before his visit to Farnholm Castle. But it could wait: they had more important things to sort out first.

Bjork slapped his hands down on the table and looked round the room.

"What's going on?" he demanded to know. "I get a phone call at 5.30 in the morning from a senior officer in Malmo who wants to know if they should send their own forensic people to examine Inspector Wallander's burned-out car that's standing near Svedala on the E65, or were we going to send Nyberg and his team? There I am in my kitchen, it's 5.30 in the morning, wondering what on earth I should say because I haven't the slightest idea what's going on. What's happened? Has Kurt been injured or even killed in a crash that ended with his car going up in flames? I know nothing at all. But Roslund from Malmo is a sensible man who is able to fill me in. I am grateful to be told roughly what's being going on. But the fact is that I'm a good deal in the dark."

"We have a double murder to solve," Wallander said. "We have an attempted murder on Mrs Duner to keep us occupied. Until yesterday we had next to nothing to go on. The investigation was up against a brick wall, we all agree on that, I think. Then we hear about these threatening letters. We discover a name and a link with a hotel in Helsingborg. Ann-Britt and I go there to investigate. That could have waited until today, I admit. We pay a visit to some people who knew Borman. They are able to supply us with useful information. On the way to Helsingborg, Ann-Britt notices that we're being followed. When we get to Helsingborg we stop, and manage to get one or two relevant registration numbers. Martinsson gets on the trail of those numbers. While Ann-Britt and I are talking to Mr and Mrs Forsdahl, who used to run the Linden Hotel that's closed down now, somebody plants explosives in our petrol tank. Purely by chance, on the way home I get suspicious. I get Martinsson to phone Nyberg. Shortly after he gets there the car blows up. Nobody is hurt. This happens outside Svedala, in the Malmo police district. That's what happened."

Nobody spoke when Wallander finished. It seemed to him he might just as well continue. He could give them the whole picture, everything he had thought about as he stood there in the road while his car was burning before his very eyes.

The moment of painful silence.

Also the moment of clarity.

He reported scrupulously on his thoughts, and noticed straight away that his deductions won the meeting's approval. His colleagues were experienced police officers. They could distinguish between sensible theories, and a fantastic but nevertheless plausible series of events.

"I can see three lines of attack," Wallander said in conclusion. "We can concentrate on Gustaf Torstensson and his clients. We must delve deeply but rapidly into just what he was up to those last five years while he devoted himself more or less exclusively to financial advice and similar matters. But to save time we should start off with the last three years during which time, according to Mrs Duner, he started to change. I would also like somebody to have a word with the Asian woman who cleans the offices. Mrs Duner has her address. She might have seen or heard something."

"Does she speak Swedish?" Svedberg said.

"If not we'll have to arrange for an interpreter," Wallander said.

"I'll talk to her," Hoglund said.

Wallander took a sip of his cold coffee before going on. "The second line of attack is Lars Borman. I have a suspicion that he can still be of help to us, even though he's dead."

"We'll need the support of our colleagues in Malmo," Bjork said. "Klagshamn is in their territory."

"I would rather not," Wallander said. "It would be quicker to deal with it ourselves. As you keep pointing out, there are all kinds of administrative problems when police officers from different districts try to help each other."

While Bjork pondered his response, Wallander took the opportunity to finish what he had to say. "The third line is to find out who's following us. Perhaps I should ask whether anybody else has had a car trailing them?"

Martinsson and Svedberg shook their heads.

"There's every reason for you to keep your eyes peeled," Wallander said. "I could be wrong, it might not just be me they're after."

"Mrs Duner is being guarded," Martinsson said. "And in my view you ought to be as well."

"No," Wallander said. "That's not necessary."

"I can't go along with that," Bjork said firmly. "In the first place you must never go out on duty alone. And furthermore you must be armed."

"Never," Wallander said.

"You'll do as I say," Bjork said.

Wallander didn't bother to argue. He knew what he was going to do anyway.

They divided the work between them. Martinsson and Hoglund would go to the solicitors' offices and begin sifting through the Gustaf Torstensson files. Svedberg would do a thorough search into the cars that had been following them to Helsingborg. Wallander would concentrate on Borman.

"For some days now I have had the feeling that it's all very urgent," he said. "I don't know why. But let's get a move on."

The meeting broke up and they went their different ways. Wallander could sense the resolve in everybody's attitude, and he noted that Hoglund was coping well with her exhaustion.

He fetched another cup of coffee and went back to his office to work out what to do next. Nyberg stuck his head round the door and announced that he was about to set off for the burned-out car at Svedala.

"I take it you want me to see if there's any similarity to the explosion in Mrs Duner's garden," he said.

"Yes," Wallander said.

"I don't expect to be able to establish that," Nyberg said, "but I'll have a go."

Nyberg went on his way and Wallander called reception.

"It's awful, these terrible things happening," Ebba said.

"Nobody was hurt," Wallander said. "That's the main thing." He came straight to the point.

"Can you get hold of a car for me, please? I have to go to Malmo in a few minutes. Then I'd like you to phone Farnholm Castle and get them to send me a copy of their overview of Alfred Harderberg's business empire. I did have a file but it got burned up in the car."

"I'd better not tell them that," Ebba said.

"Maybe not. But I need that file as quickly as they can manage it."

He hung up. Then a thought struck him. He went down the corridor to Svedberg's office, and found him just starting to go through Martinsson's notes about the cars from the previous night.

"Kurt Strom," he said. "Does that name mean anything to you?"

Svedberg thought for a moment. "A police officer in Malmo? Or am I wrong?"

"That's right," Wallander said. "I'd like you to do something for me when you've finished with the cars. Strom left the force many years ago. There was a rumour that he resigned before he was sacked. Try and find out what happened. Be discreet."

Svedberg made a note of the name. "Might I ask why? Has it anything to do with the solicitors? The car that got blown up? The mine in the garden?"

"Everything has to do with that," Wallander said. "Strom is working now as top security guard at Farnholm Castle. Gustaf Torstensson had been there the night he died."

"I'll look into it," Svedberg said.

Wallander went back to his office and sat down at his desk. He was very tired. He didn't even have the strength to think about how close he and Hoglund had been to getting killed. Later, he thought. Not now. Borman dead is more important just now than Wallander alive.

He looked up the Malmohus County Offices in the phone book. He knew from past experience that it was located in Lund. He dialled the number and got a reply immediately. He asked the operator to put him through to one of the bosses in the finance department.

"They're not available today," the operator said.

"There must be somebody available, surely?"

"They're in a budget meeting all day," the girl explained patiently.

"Where?"

"At the conference centre in Hoor," the girl said. "But there's no point in phoning there."

"What's the name of the man in charge of auditing? Is he there as well?"

"His name's Thomas Rundstedt," the girl said. "Yes, he's in Hoor too. Perhaps you could try again tomorrow?"

"Many thanks for your help," Wallander said, and hung up.

He had no intention of waiting until the next day. He fetched yet another cup of coffee and thought through all he knew about Lars Borman. He was interrupted by Ebba who called to say there was a car waiting for him outside the police station.

It was 9.15. A clear autumn day, blue skies, and Wallander noted that the wind had died down. He found himself looking forward to his drive.

It was just turning 10.00 when he drove up to the conference centre near Hoor. He parked the car and went to reception. A notice on a blackboard and easel informed him that the big conference hall was occupied by the County Offices Budget Conference. A red-haired man behind the desk gave Wallander a friendly smile.

"I'm trying to get hold of some people taking part in the budget conference," he said.

"They've just had their coffee break," the receptionist replied. "They'll be in session now right through until lunch at 12.30. I'm afraid it's not possible to disturb them before then."

Wallander produced his police ID. "I'm afraid it's sometimes necessary to disturb people," he said. "I'll write a note for you to take in."

He pulled over a notepad and started writing.

"Has something happened?" the receptionist said, sounding worried.

"Nothing too serious. But it can't wait, I'm afraid." He tore off the page. "It's for a man called Thomas Rundstedt, the chief auditor," he said. "I'll wait here."

The receptionist went out. Wallander yawned. He felt hungry. He could see a dining room through a half-open door. He went to investigate. There was a plate of cheese sandwiches standing on a table. He took one and ate it. Then another. Then he went back to the sofa in reception.

It was another five minutes before the receptionist reappeared. He was accompanied by a man Wallander assumed was the person he was looking for, Mr Rundstedt.

The man was tall and broad-shouldered. It occurred to Wallander that he had always thought accountants were short and thin. The man facing him could have been a boxer. He was also bald, and eyed Wallander up and down suspiciously.

"My name's Kurt Wallander and I'm a detective inspector with the Ystad police," he said, reaching out his hand. "I take it you're Thomas Rundstedt and Auditor-in-Chief at the Malmohus County Offices."

The man nodded abruptly. "What's this all about?" he said. "We specifically asked not to be disturbed. The financial affairs of the County Offices are not to be trifled with. Especially just now."

"I'm sure they're not," Wallander said. "I won't keep you long. Does the name Lars Borman mean anything to you?"

Rundstedt raised his eyebrows in surprise. "That was before my time," he said. "Borman was an accountant at the County Offices, but he's dead. I've only been working there for six months."

Shit, Wallander thought. I've come here for nothing.

"Was there anything else?" Rundstedt said.

"Who did you replace?" Wallander asked.

"Martin Oscarsson," Rundstedt said. "He retired."

"And he was Lars Borman's boss?"

"Yes."

"Where can I get hold of him?"

"He lives in Limhamn. On the Sound. In Mollevagen. I can't remember the number. I assume he'll be in the phone book."

"That's all, thank you very much," Wallander said. "I apologise for disturbing you. Do you know how Borman died, by the way?"

"They say it was suicide," Rundstedt said.

"Good luck with the budget," Wallander said. "Will you be putting the council tax up?"

"Who knows?" Rundstedt said, and went back to his meeting.

Wallander waved a salute to the receptionist and went back to his car. He phoned Directory Enquiries and wrote down Martin Oscarsson's address, Mollevagen 32.

He was there before noon.

The house was stone-built, around the turn of the century - it said 1912 over the big entrance. He went through the gate and rang the bell. The door was opened by an old man in a tracksuit. Wallander explained who he was, showed his ID and was invited in. In contrast to the dreary facade, the house inside was filled with light-coloured furniture, had pretty curtains in pastel shades, and large, uncluttered spaces. Music could be heard from another room. Wallander thought he recognised the voice of Ernst Rolf, the popular variety artist. Oscarsson showed him into the living room and asked if Wallander might like a cup of coffee. He declined.

"I've come to talk to you about Lars Borman," he said. "I was given your name by Thomas Rundstedt. About a year ago, shortly before you retired, Borman died. The official explanation was suicide."

"Why do you want to talk about Lars Borman?" Oscarsson said, and Wallander noted the unfriendly tone in his voice.

"His name has cropped up in a criminal investigation we're dealing with," Wallander said.

"What sort of criminal investigation?"

Wallander decided that he might as well not beat about the bush. "You'll have seen in the newspapers that a solicitor in Ystad was murdered a few days ago," he said. "The questions I need to ask are about Borman's connection with that investigation."

Oscarsson stared at him for some time before replying. "Although I'm an old man, tired but perhaps not yet quite finished, I admit to being curious. I'll answer your questions, if I can."

"Borman was an accountant at the County Offices," Wallander said. "What exactly did he do? And how long had he been working there?"

"An accountant is an accountant," Oscarsson said. "The job title tells you what he did. He kept the books, in this case the County Council books. He checked that all the regulations were being observed, that budgets laid down by the appropriate authority were not exceeded. He also checked to make sure people were paid what they should be paid. You have to remember that a county office is like a large business, or rather an industrial empire associated with a small duchy. Its main responsibility is health spending, but it oversees a lot of other things as well. Education, culture, and so on. Borman wasn't our only accountant, of course. He came to the County Offices from the municipal corporation at the beginning of the '80s."

"Was he a good accountant?"

"He was the best accountant I ever came across."

"Why so?"

"He worked quickly but with no loss of accuracy. He was very involved in his work and was always coming up with suggestions as to how we could save money for the council."

"I've heard it said that he was a particularly honest man," Wallander said.

"Of course he was," Oscarsson said. "But that's not exactly earth-shattering - accountants are mostly honest. There are exceptions, of course, but they could never survive in an environment such as you get at county offices."

Wallander thought for a moment before continuing.

"And out of the blue he committed suicide," he said. "Was that unexpected?"

"It certainly was unexpected," Oscarsson said.

Looking back, Wallander was never quite sure what had happened when those words were spoken. There was a slight change of tone in Oscarsson's voice, a faint trace of doubt, perhaps reluctance, that made itself felt in the way he replied. As far as Wallander was concerned, the conversation changed character at that moment, and straightforward question and answer was replaced by alertness.

"You worked closely with Borman," Wallander said. "You must have known him well. What was he like as a man?"

"We were never friends. He lived for his work and for his family. He had an integrity that nobody ever questioned. And if anybody came too close, he would withdraw into his shell."

"Could he have been seriously ill?"

"That I don't know."

"You must have thought a good deal about his death."

"It was a very unpleasant time. It cast a shadow over my final months at work before I retired."

"Can you tell me about his last day at work?"

"He died on a Sunday, so the last time I saw him was on the Friday afternoon. There was a meeting of the financial heads of the County Council. It was quite a lively meeting, unfortunately."

"In what way?"

"There were arguments about how a particular problem ought to be resolved."

"Which problem was that?"

Oscarsson looked hard at Wallander. "I'm not sure I ought to answer that question," he said.

"Why not?"

"In the first place I'm retired now. And also there are laws regarding those aspects of public administration that are confidential."

"We have a right-of-access principle in Sweden," Wallander said.

"But that doesn't apply to specific cases which for various reasons are deemed unsuitable to be made public."

"On the last day Borman was at work, he was at a meeting with the finance heads of the County Council," he said. "Is that right?"

Oscarsson nodded.

"And at that meeting a problem was discussed, sometimes heatedly, which was later designated unsuitable, et cetera. In other words, the minutes of that meeting are locked away somewhere. Correct?"

"No, not correct," Oscarsson said. "There were no minutes."

"In which case it can't have been an official meeting," Wallander said. "If it had been, minutes would have to have been taken and kept, and in due course submitted for approval and signed."

"It was a confidential discussion," Oscarsson said. "But it's all water under the bridge now, and I don't think I'm going to answer any more questions. My memory isn't what it was. I've forgotten what happened."

Wallander thought, Oscarsson has forgotten nothing. What was it they were discussing that Friday?

"I can't oblige you to answer my questions, of course," Wallander said. "But I can resort to a public prosecutor who can. Or I can go to the Executive Committee of the County Council. I can do all sorts of things to find out what the problem was, it's just that it would take time and I don't have that luxury."

"I'm not going to answer any more questions," Oscarsson said, getting to his feet.

Wallander remained seated. "Sit down," he said firmly. "I have a suggestion."

Oscarsson hesitated, but then sat down again.

"Let's do what you did that Friday afternoon," Wallander said. "I'm not going to make any notes. Let's call this a confidential conversation. There are no witnesses to say that it ever took place. I can give you my word that I shall never refer to you, irrespective of what you're going to say."

Oscarsson thought over the proposal. "Rundstedt knows you've come to see me."

"He doesn't know what about," Wallander said.

He waited while Oscarsson struggled with his conscience. But he knew what would happen. Oscarsson was a wise old bird.

"I'll go along with your suggestion," he said eventually, "but I don't guarantee to be able to answer all your questions."

"Be able to or be willing to?"

"That's a matter for me and me alone," Oscarsson said.

Wallander nodded. They had a deal.

"The problem," Wallander said. "What was it?"

"Malmohus County Council had been swindled," Oscarsson said. "We didn't know at the time how much money was involved, but we do now."

"How much?"

"Four million kronor. Of taxpayers' money."

"What had happened?"

"So that it makes sense, I'll start by sketching in how a county council works," Oscarsson said. "Our annual turnover runs to several million, handled by a variety of departments and activities. Financial supervision is centralised and computerised. Safety devices are built in at various levels to protect against embezzlement and other illegal practices. There are even precautions checking what the top executives do, but I don't need to go into detail about them in this case. What it's important to understand, though, is that there is a constant, continuous audit of all payments. Anyone who wants to defraud a county council is going to have to be very familiar with methods of juggling sums of money between accounts. Anyway, that's the background in brief."

"I think I understand," Wallander said.

"What happened made it clear that our precautions were inadequate," Oscarsson said. "They've been radically altered since then. A similar fraud wouldn't be possible now."

"Take your time," Wallander said. "I'd like to have as much detail as possible about what happened."

"There are things we still don't know," Oscarsson said. "But what we do know is this: as you may be aware, the whole of the administration of public services in Sweden has undergone far-reaching change in recent years. In many ways you could say it's undergone an operation without quite enough anaesthetic. Those of us civil servants from the older generation especially have found it hard to cope with the enormous changes. The reforms are still not finished, and it will be some time before we can make a judgment on all the consequences. The bottom line is that public authorities should be managed in the same way as business enterprises, taking market forces and competition into account. Some public authorities have been turned into limited companies, and others have been sent out to tender from the private sector. All of them have had to satisfy increased demands for efficiency. One of the outcomes, as far as we were concerned, was that a company had to be formed in order to handle all the purchases made by the council. Having the County Council as a customer is one of the best things that can happen to a private enterprise, whether it's lawnmowers or washing powder they're manufacturing or selling. In connection with the formation of that company we hired a firm of consultants with a wide-ranging mandate, one item being to evaluate the applications for the newly established top executive posts that had been advertised. And that is where the fraud took place."

"What is the name of the firm of consultants?"

"They're called STRUFAB. I can't remember what the acronym stands for."

"Who was behind the firm?"

"It belonged to a division of the investment company Smeden, which is a listed company."

"Is there one principal owner?"

"As far as I know, both Volvo and Skanska had large shareholdings in Smeden at that time. It might be different now, though."

"We can come back to that," Wallander said. "Let's get back to the fraud. What happened?"

"We had a series of meetings in late summer and early autumn to put the finishing touches to the formation of the company. The consultants were very efficient and our lawyers gave them full marks, as did the financial supremos at the County Council. We even went so far as to propose that STRUFAB should be given a long-term contract by the council."

"Who were the individual consultants?"

"Egil Holmberg and Stefan Fjallsjo. On a few occasions a third one was there as well, but I'm afraid I've forgotten his name."

"And all of these people turned out to be swindlers?"

Oscarsson's reply surprised him.

"I don't know," he said. "The fraud was carried out in such a way that, in the end, it wasn't possible to put a finger on any one individual. Nobody was guilty. But the money had disappeared."

"That sounds pretty odd," Wallander said. "What actually happened?"

"We have to go back to the afternoon of Friday, August 14, 1992," Oscarsson said. "That's when the scam was set up, and carried out in a very short space of time. As far as we could determine with hindsight, it was all very carefully planned. We met the consultants in a conference room at the Finance Unit. We started at 1 p.m. and thought we'd be finished by 5.00. When the meeting started, Holmberg announced that he had to leave at 4.00, but that need have no effect on the meeting. At 1.55 the Finance Director's secretary came in to announce that there was an important phone call for Fjallsjo. I think it was said to be from the Ministry of Technology. Fjallsjo apologised and went out with the secretary in order to take the call in her office. She explained later that she intended to leave the room so that Fjallsjo could take the call in private and he told her that the call would last for at least ten minutes. What happened next we can't be absolutely sure, but we are clear on the outline. Fjallsjo laid the receiver on his desk - we don't know where the call came from, except that it wasn't from the Ministry of Technology. He then went from the secretary's office through the connecting door to the Finance Director's office, and authorised the transfer of four million kronor to a business account at Handelsbanken in Stockholm. It was described specifically as a consultancy fee. No counter-signature was required, so there was no problem. The authorisation referred to a contract number with the non-existent consultancy firm, which I seem to remember was called Sisyphus. Fjallsjo confirmed the transfer in writing, forging the signature of the Finance Director and using the appropriate form. Then he keyed his authorisation into the computer. He put the hard copy in the internal mail, then went back to the secretary's office, went on talking to whoever it was at the other end of the line, and hung up when the secretary returned. That was the end of the first stage of the fraud. Fjallsjo returned to the conference room. Less than a quarter of an hour had passed."

Wallander was listening intently. Because he was not making notes, he was fearful of forgetting details.

Oscarsson continued: "Just before 4.00 Holmberg made his apologies and left. We realised afterwards that he didn't leave the building, but went down to the next floor where the Chief Clerk had his office. I should perhaps mention that it was empty, because the Chief Clerk was attending our meeting. He didn't usually do so, but on this occasion the consultants had specifically asked for him to be present. In other words, the whole thing was meticulously prepared. Holmberg hacked into his computer, entered the invented contract number, and inserted an authorisation for a payment of four million kronor backdated a week. He phoned the Handelsbanken head office in Stockholm and requested payment. And then he sat back and waited calmly for the response. Ten minutes later Handelsbanken rang back to check. He took the call and confirmed the transaction. There was only one thing left to do: he called the County Council's own bank and authorised the payment, and then left the premises. Early the following Monday morning, somebody collected the money from Handelsbanken in Stockholm. The person was authorised by Sisyphus to sign on behalf of the company, and claimed to be called Rickard Eden. We have reason to believe that it was Fjallsjo who collected the money, using this alias. It was about a week before the fraud was discovered. The police were called in, and it did not take long to work out what must have happened. But there was no proof, naturally. Needless to say, Fjallsjo and Holmberg were vociferous in denying all knowledge. We severed all links with the consultancy firm, but we were unable to get any further. In the end, the Public Prosecutor wrote the whole thing off and we managed to hush it up. Everybody agreed that was what we had to do - apart from one person."

"Borman?"

Oscarsson nodded slowly. "He was most upset. We all were, of course, but Borman took it hardest. He seemed to take it personally because we weren't prepared to force the Public Prosecutor and the police to follow the case up. I suppose he took it so badly because he thought we'd failed in our duty."

"Did he take it badly enough to commit suicide?"

"I believe so."

Some progress, Wallander thought. But where does the firm of solicitors in Ystad fit in? They must be involved, in view of Borman's letters.

"Do you know what Holmberg and Fjallsjo are doing now?"

"Their consultancy firm changed its name. That's all I know. We warned county councils the length and breadth of the country about them, discreetly to be sure."

"You said that the consultancy firm was part of a bigger concern, an investment company. But you didn't know who owned it. Who was chairman of the board of Smeden?"

"From what I've read in the newspapers, Smeden has been transformed during the last year or so. It's been split up, several sectors have been sold off, and new elements have been acquired. It might not be going too far to say that Smeden has quite a poor reputation. Volvo have sold their shares. I forget who bought them. But somebody at the Stock Exchange could tell you."

"You've been a great help," Wallander said.

"You won't forget our agreement?"

"I never forget anything," Wallander said. "But tell me, did it ever occur to you that Borman might have been murdered?"

Oscarsson stared at him in evident unease.

"No," he said. "Never. Why on earth should I have thought that?"

"I was only asking," Wallander said. "Many thanks for your help. I might need to be in touch again."

Oscarsson stood on the steps, watching him leave. Wallander was now so exhausted he wanted nothing more than to lie down in the car and go to sleep, but he forced himself to think ahead. The natural thing would have been to return to Hoor, call Thomas Rundstedt out from his budget conference and ask him some quite different questions.

He set off for Malmo while allowing a decision to mature in his mind, then he stopped on the hard shoulder and called the Malmo police. He asked for Roslund, gave his name, and said he had an urgent matter to discuss. It took the operator less than a minute to find Roslund.

"It's Wallander here, from Ystad," he said. "We met last night."

"I haven't forgotten," Roslund said. "They told me you had something urgent to discuss."

"I'm in Malmo," Wallander said. "I'd like to ask you a favour."

"I'm listening."

"About a year ago, at the beginning of September, the first or second Sunday in the month, a man called Lars Borman hanged himself in a clearing in the woods at Klagshamn. There must be a call-out report, and some notes about death by unnatural causes, and a postmortem report. I'd be very grateful if you could dig them out for me. If at all possible I'd like to get in touch with one of the officers who answered the call and took the body down. Do you think this might be possible?"

"What was the name again?"

Wallander spelled it out.

"I don't know how many suicides we get per year," Roslund said. "I don't recall this one. But I'll look for the documents and see if one of the officers called out is in today."

Wallander gave him his mobile number.

"I'll drive to Klagshamn in the meantime," he said.

It was 2.00. He tried in vain to shake off his exhaustion, but was forced to give in and turned off on to a road that he knew led to an old quarry. He switched off the engine and pulled his jacket tightly around him. A minute later he was asleep.

He woke up with a start. He was freezing cold and didn't know where he was at first. Something had strayed into his consciousness, something he had dreamed, but he couldn't remember what it was. A feeling of depression gripped him when he looked around at the grey landscape on every side. It was 2.35, so he had been asleep for half an hour. He felt as if he had been roused from a long period of unconsciousness.

That is about as close as one can get to the greatest loneliness of all, he thought. Being all alone in the world. The final human being, forgotten about.

He was roused from his thoughts by the phone ringing. It was Roslund.

"You sound half asleep," he said. "Have you been having a snooze in the car?"

"Not at all," Wallander said. "I have a bit of a cold."

"I've found the stuff you asked for," Roslund said. "I have the papers here on my desk. I also have the name of the police officer: Magnus Staffansson. He was in the car that was called out when a jogger found a body hanging from a birch tree. No doubt he can explain how a man can hang himself in a birch, of all trees. Where would you like to meet him?"

Wallander could feel his exhaustion slipping away. "At the slip road for Klagshamn," he said.

"He'll be there in a quarter of an hour," Roslund said. "By the way, I spoke to Sven Nyberg a few minutes ago. He hasn't found anything in your car."

"I'm not surprised," Wallander said.

"You won't have to see the wreck when you drive back home," Roslund said. "We've just arranged for it to be taken away."

"Thanks for your help."

He drove straight to Klagshamn and parked at the meeting place. After a few minutes a police car drove up. Wallander had got out of his car and was walking up and down; Magnus Staffansson was in uniform, and saluted. Wallander responded with an awkward wave. They sat in Wallander's car. Staffansson handed over a plastic file containing photocopies.

"I'll have a glance through this," Wallander said. "Meanwhile, you can try to remember what happened."

"Suicide is something you'd prefer to forget," Staffansson said, in a thick Malmo accent. Wallander smiled to hear how he too used to speak, before his move to Ystad had changed his dialect.

He read swiftly through the terse reports, the postmortem document and the record of the decision to abandon the investigation. There were no suspicious circumstances.

I wonder, Wallander thought. Then he put the file on the shelf on the dashboard and turned to Staffansson.

"I think it would be a good idea to take a look at the place where it happened. Can you remember how to get there?"

"Yes," he said. "It's a few kilometres outside the village. I'll go ahead."

They left Klagshamn and drove south along the coast. A container ship was on its way through the Sound. A bank of cloud hovered over Copenhagen. The housing estates petered out and soon they were surrounded by fields. A tractor made its way slowly over one of them.

They were there almost before he knew it. There was a stretch of deciduous woods to the left of the road. Wallander pulled up behind Staffansson's police car and got out. The path was wet and he thought he ought to put on his Wellingtons, but on his way to the boot to collect them he realised they had been in his car.

Staffansson pointed to a birch tree, bigger than the rest. "That's where he was hanging," he said.

"Tell me about it," Wallander said.

"Most of it's in the report," Staffansson said.

"It's always better from the horse's mouth."

"It was a Sunday morning," Staffansson began. "About 8.00. We'd been called out to calm down an angry passenger on the morning ferry from Dragor who claimed he had got food poisoning from the breakfast during the crossing. That was when we got the emergency call: a man hanging from a tree. We got a location and headed there. A couple of joggers had come across him. They were in shock, of course, but one of them had run to the house on the hill over there and phoned the police. We did what we're trained to do and took him down, as it sometimes happens that they're still alive. Then the ambulance arrived, the CID took over, and eventually it was put down as a suicide. That's all I can remember. Oh, I forgot to say he had got there on a bike. It was lying here among the bushes."

Wallander examined the tree while listening to what Staffansson had to say. "What kind of a rope was it?" he said.

"It looked like a hawser from a boat, about as thick as my thumb."

"Do you remember the knot?"

"It was an ordinary running noose."

"How did he do it?"

Staffansson stared at him, bewildered.

"It's not all that easy to hang yourself," Wallander said. "Did he stand on something? Had he climbed up the tree?"

Staffansson pointed at the trunk. "He probably pushed off from that bulge in the trunk," he said. "That's what we supposed. There was nothing he could have stood on."

Wallander nodded. The post-mortem made it clear Borman had choked to death. His neck was not broken. He had been dead for an hour at most when the police arrived.

"Can you remember anything else?" he asked.

"Such as what?"

"Only you can answer that."

"You do what you have to do," Staffansson said. "You write your report and then you try to forget it as soon as you can."

Wallander knew how it was. There's an atmosphere of depression about a suicide unlike anything else. He thought of all the occasions when he himself had been forced to deal with suicides.

He went over what Staffansson had said. It lay like a sort of filter over what he had already read in the report. But he knew that there was something that did not add up.

He thought of all he had heard about Borman: even if the descriptions were incomplete, even if there had been some murky areas, it seemed clear that Borman had been in every way a well-organised sort of person. And yet when he had decided to take his own life he had cycled out to some woods and chosen a tree that was highly unsuitable for what he planned to do. That already told Wallander there was something fishy about Borman's death. But there was something else. He could not put his finger on it at first, but then he stared down at the ground a few metres from the tree.

The bicycle, he thought. That's telling quite a different story.

Staffansson had lit a cigarette and was pacing up and down to keep warm.

"The bicycle," Wallander said. "There are no details about it in your reports."

"It was a very good one," Staffansson said. "Ten gears, good condition. Dark blue, as I remember."

"Show me exactly where it was."

Staffansson pointed straight at the spot.

"How was it lying?" Wallander asked.

"Well, what can one say? It was just lying on the ground."

"It hadn't fallen over?"

"There was a stand, but it hadn't been opened."

"Are you sure?"

He thought for a moment. "Yes," he said, "I'm certain."

"So he had just let the bike fall down any old how? More or less like a kid does when he's in a hurry?"

"Exactly," Staffansson said. "It had been flung down. As if he was in a hurry to get it all over with."

Wallander nodded thoughtfully. "Just one more thing," he said. "Ask your colleague if he can confirm that the stand hadn't been opened up."

"Is that so important?"

"Yes," Wallander said. "It's much more important than you think. Phone me if your colleague disagrees."

"The stand wasn't opened," Staffansson said. "I'm absolutely certain."

"Call me anyway," Wallander said. "Now let's get out of here. Many thanks for your help."

Wallander started the drive back to Ystad, thinking about Borman. An accountant at the County Council. A man who would never have just tossed his bicycle to the ground, not even in extremis.

One more step forward, Wallander thought. I am on to something without knowing quite what it is. Somewhere between Borman and the solicitors' offices in Ystad there is a link. I need to find it.

He had passed the spot where his car had blown up before he noticed. He turned off at Rydsgard and had a late lunch at the local inn. He was the only person in the dining room. He really must ring Linda that night, no matter how tired he was. Then he would write to Baiba.

He was back at the station in Ystad by 5.00. Ebba informed him that there was not going to be a meeting - everybody was busy and didn't have time to advise their colleagues that they had nothing of significance to advise them about. They would meet the following morning instead, at 8.00.

"You look dreadful," she said.

"Thank you," he said. "I'll get some sleep tonight."

He went to his office and shut the door behind him. There were several notes on his desk, but nothing so important that it could not wait until morning.

He hung up his jacket and spent half an hour writing a summary of what he had done during the day. Then he dropped his pen and leaned back in his chair.

We really must break through now, he thought. We just have to find the missing link.

He had just put on his jacket when there was a knock on the door and Svedberg came in. Wallander could see right away that something had happened. Svedberg seemed worried.

"Have you got a moment?" he said.

"What's happened?"

Svedberg looked uneasy, and Wallander could feel the last of his patience dwindling away.

"I assume there's something you want to say seeing as you've come here," he said. "I was just going home."

"I'm afraid you'll have to go to Simrishamn," Svedberg said.

"Why must I?"

"They phoned."

"Who did?"

"Our colleagues."

"The police in Simrishamn? What did they want?"

Svedberg seemed to make sure both feet were planted firmly on the ground before replying.

"They've had to arrest your father," he said.

"The Simrishamn police have arrested my father? What for?"

"Apparently he's been involved in a violent fight," Svedberg said.

Wallander stared at him for quite a while without speaking. Then he sat down at his desk.

"Tell me again," he said. "Slowly."

"They rang about an hour ago," Svedberg said. "As you were out they spoke to me. A few hours ago they arrested your father. He had started fighting in the off-licence in Simrishamn. It was evidently pretty violent. Then they discovered he was your father. So they phoned here."

Wallander sighed, but said nothing. He got slowly to his feet.

"I'll drive over then," he said.

"Would you like me to come with you?"

"No thanks."

Wallander left the station. He didn't know whether he was coming or going.

An hour later he walked into the police station in Simrishamn.

Chapter 9

On the way to Simrishamn Wallander had thought about the Silk Knights. It was many years since he had needed to remind himself that they had once been real.

The last time his father had been arrested by the police was when Wallander was eleven. He could remember it very clearly. They were still living in Malmo, and his reaction to his father's arrest had been a strange mixture of shame and pride.

That time, however, his father had not been arrested in an off-licence, but in a public park in the centre of town. It was a Saturday in the early summer of 1956, and Wallander had been allowed to accompany his father and some of his friends on a night out.

His father's friends, who came to their house at irregular intervals and always unexpectedly, were great adventurers in his young eyes. They rolled up in shiny American cars, always wore silk suits, and they often had broad-brimmed hats and heavy gold rings on their fingers. They came to call at the little studio that smelled of turps and oil paint, to view and perhaps to buy some of the pictures his father had painted. Sometimes he ventured into the studio himself and hid behind the pile of junk in the darkest corner, old canvases that mice had been nibbling at, and he would shudder as he listened to the bargaining that always ended with a couple of swigs from a bottle of brandy. He had realised that it was thanks to these great adventurers - the Silk Knights, as he used to call them in his secret diaries - that the Wallanders had food on the table. It was one of those supreme moments in life when he witnessed a bargain being struck, and the unknown men peeling banknotes from enormous bundles with their ring-adorned fingers and handing over rather smaller bundles which his father would stuff into his pocket before giving a little bow.

He could still recall the conversations, the terse, almost stuttering repartee, often followed by lame protests from his father and chuckling noises from the visitors.

"Seven landscapes without grouse and two with," one of them would say. His father rummaged among the piles of finished paintings, had them approved, and then the money would land on the table with a gentle thud. Wallander was eleven years old, standing in his dark corner, almost overcome by the turpentine fumes, and thinking that what he was observing was the grownup life that also lay in store for him, once he had crossed the river formed by Class Seven - or was it Class Nine in those days? He was surprised to find that he could not remember. Then he would emerge from the shadows when it was time to carry the canvases out to the shiny cars, where they were to be loaded into the boot or on to the back seat. This was a moment of great significance, because now and then one of the Knights would notice the boy helping with the carrying and covertly slip him a five-kronor note. Then he and his father would stand at the gate and watch the car roll away, and once it was gone his father would go through a metamorphosis: the obsequious manner would be gone in a flash, and he would spit after the man who had just driven off and say with contempt in his voice that yet again he had been swindled.

This was one of the great childhood mysteries. How could his father think he had been swindled when every time he had collected a wad of banknotes in exchange for those boring paintings, all identical, with a landscape illuminated by a sun that was never allowed to set?

Just once he had been present at a visit of these unknown men when the ending turned out otherwise. There were two of them, and he had never seen them before - as he skulked in the shadows behind the remains of an old mangle, he gathered from the conversation that they were new business contacts. It was an important moment, for it was not a foregone conclusion that they would approve of the paintings. He had helped to carry the canvases to the car, a Dodge on this occasion (he had learned how to open the boot of all the different makes of car). Then the two men had suggested they should all go out for something to eat. He remembered that one of them was called Anton and the other something foreign, possibly Polish. He and his father had squeezed in among the canvases on the back seat; the fantastic men even had a gramophone in the car, and they had listened to Johnny Bohde as they drove to the park. His father had gone to one of the restaurants with the two men, and Wallander had been given a handful of one-krona pieces and sent to play on the roundabouts. It was a warm day in early summer, a gentle breeze was blowing in from the Sound, and he worked out in great detail what he would be able to buy for his money. It would have been unfair to save the money, it had been given to him for spending, to help him enjoy that afternoon and evening in the park. He had been on the roundabouts and taken two rides on the big wheel which took you so high you could see as far as Copenhagen. Occasionally he checked to make sure that his father, Anton and the Pole were still there. He could see even from a distance that lots of glasses and bottles were being carried to their table, and plates of food and white napkins that the men tucked into their shirt collars. He remembered thinking how, when he had crossed that river after Class Seven or Nine or whatever, he would be like one of those men who drove in a shiny car and rewarded artists by peeling off banknotes and dropping them on a table in a dirty studio.

The afternoon had turned into evening, and rain threatened. He decided to have one more ride on the big wheel, but he never did. Something had happened. The big wheel and the roundabouts and the rifle range suddenly lost all their attraction, and people started hurrying towards the restaurant. He had gone along with the tide, elbowed his way to the front and seen something he could never forget. It had been a rite of passage, something he had not realised existed, but it taught him that life is made up of a series of rites of passage of whose existence we are unaware until we find ourselves in the midst of them.

When he pushed and shoved his way to the front he found his own father in a violent fight with one of the Silk Knights and several security guards, waiters and other complete strangers. The dining table had been overturned, glasses and bottles were broken, a beefsteak dripping with gravy and dark brown onion rings was dangling from his father's arm, his nose was bleeding and he was throwing punches left, right and centre. It had all happened so quickly. Wallander shouted his father's name, in a mixture of fear and panic - but then it was all over. Burly, red-faced bouncers intervened; police officers appeared from nowhere, and his father was dragged away along with Anton and the Pole. All that was left was a battered broad-brimmed hat. He tried to run after them and grab hold of his father, but he was pulled back. He stumbled to the gate, and burst into tears as he watched his father driven away in a police car.

He walked all the way home, and it started raining before he got there. Everything was in turmoil, his universe had crumbled away and he only wished he could have erased everything that had happened. But you cannot erase reality. He hurried on through the downpour and wondered whether he would ever see his father again. He sat all night in the studio, waiting for him. The smell of turps almost choked him, and every time he heard a car he would run out to the gate. He fell asleep in the end, curled up on the floor.

He woke up to find his father bending over him. He had a piece of cotton wool in one of his nostrils, and his left eye was swollen and discoloured. He stank of drink, a sort of stale oil smell, but the boy sat up and flung his arms round his father.

"They wouldn't listen to me," his father said. "They wouldn't listen. I told them my boy was with us, but they wouldn't listen. How did you get home?"

Wallander told him that he had walked all the way home through the rain.

"I'm sorry it turned out like that," his father said. "But I got so angry. They were saying something that just wasn't true."

His father picked up one of the paintings and studied it with his good eye. It was one with a grouse in the foreground.

"I got so angry," he said again. "Those bastards maintained it was a partridge. They said I had painted the bird so badly, you couldn't tell if it was a grouse or a partridge. What else can you do but get angry? I'm not having them put my honour and competence in doubt."

"Of course it's a grouse," Wallander had said. "Anybody can see it isn't a partridge."

His father regarded him with a smile. Two of his front teeth were missing. His smile's broken, Wallander thought. My father's smile's broken.

Then they had a cup of coffee. It was still raining, and his father had slowly cooled down.

"Fancy not being able to tell the difference between a grouse and a partridge," he kept protesting, half incantation, half prayer. "Claiming I can't paint a bird the way it looks."

All this went through Wallander's mind as he drove to Simrishamn. He also recalled that the two men, the one called Anton and the Pole, had kept coming back every year to buy paintings. The fight, the sudden anger, the excessive tipples of brandy, everything had turned into a hilarious episode they could now remember and laugh about. Anton had even paid the dentist's bills. That's friendship, he thought. Behind the fight there was something more important, friendship between the art dealers and the man who kept on at his never-changing pictures so that they had something to sell.

He thought about the painting in the flat in Helsingborg, and about all the other flats he had not seen but where nevertheless the grouse was portrayed against a landscape over which the sun never set.

For the first time he thought he had gained an insight. Throughout his life his father had prevented the sun from setting. That had been his livelihood, his message. He had painted pictures so that people who bought them to hang on their walls could see it was possible to hold the sun captive.

He came to Simrishamn, parked outside the police station and went in. Torsten LundStrom was at his desk. He was due to retire and Wallander knew him for a kind man, a police officer of the old school who wanted nothing but good for his fellow men. He nodded at Wallander and put down the newspaper he was reading. Wallander sat on a chair in front of his desk and looked at him.

"Can you tell me what happened?" he said. "I know my father got mixed up in a fight at the off-licence, but that's about all I know."

"Well, it was like this," LundStrom said with a friendly smile. "Your father drove up to the off-licence in a taxi at about 4.00 in the afternoon, went inside, took the ticket with his queue number from the machine and sat down to wait. It seems he didn't notice when his number came up. After a while he went up to the counter and demanded to be served even though he had missed his turn. The shop assistant handled the whole thing really badly, apparently insisting that your father get a new number and start at the back of the queue. Your father refused, another customer whose number had come up pushed his way past and told your father to get lost. To everybody's surprise your father was so angry he turned and thumped this man. The assistant intervened, so your father started fighting with him as well. You can imagine what happened next. But at least nobody got hurt. Your father might have some pain in his right hand, though. He seems to be pretty strong, despite his age."

"Where is he?"

LundStrom pointed to a door in the background.

"What'll happen now?" Wallander asked.

"You can take him home. I'm afraid he'll be charged with causing an affray. Unless you can sort it out with the man he punched and the shop assistant. I'll have a word with the prosecutor and do what I can."

He handed Wallander a piece of paper with two names and addresses on it.

"I don't think the fellow in the shop will give you any difficulty," he said. "I know him. The other man, Sten Wickberg, could be a bit of a problem. He owns a firm of haulage contractors. Lives in Kivik. He seems to have made up his mind to come down on your poor father from a great height. You could try calling him. The number's there. And Simrishamn Taxis are owed 230 kronor. In all the confusion, he never got round to paying. The driver's name is Waldemar Kage. I've had a word with him. He knows he'll get his money."

Wallander took the sheet of paper and put it in his pocket. Then he motioned towards the door behind him.

"How is he?"

"I think he's simmered down. But he still insists he had every right to defend himself."

"Defend himself?" Wallander said. "But he was the one who started it all."

"Well, he feels he had a right to defend his place in the queue," LundStrom said.

"For Christ's sake!"

LundStrom stood up. "You can take him home now," he said. "By the way, what's this I hear about your car going up in flames?"

"There could have been something wrong with the electrics," Wallander said. "Anyway, it was an old banger."

"I'll disappear for a few minutes," LundStrom said. "The door locks itself when you close it."

"Thanks for your help," Wallander said.

"What help?" LundStrom said, putting on his cap and going out.

Wallander knocked and opened the door. His father was sitting on a bench in the bare room, cleaning his fingernails with a nail. When he saw who it was, he rose to his feet and was clearly annoyed.

"You took your time," he said. "How long did you intend making me wait here?"

"I came as quickly as I could," Wallander said. "Let's go home now."

"Not until I've paid for the taxi," his father said. "I want to do the right thing."

"We'll sort that out later."

They left the police station and drove home in silence. Wallander could see that his father had already forgotten what had happened. It wasn't until they reached the turning to Glimmingehus that Wallander turned to him.

"What happened to Anton and the Pole?" he asked.

"Do you remember them?" his father asked in surprise.

"There was a fight on that occasion as well," Wallander said with a sigh.

"I thought you would have forgotten about that," his father said. "I don't know what became of the Pole. It's getting on for 20 years since I last heard of him. He had gone over to something he thought would be more profitable. Pornographic magazines. I don't know how he got on. But Anton's dead. Drank himself to death. That must be nearly 25 years ago."

"What were you doing at the off-licence?" Wallander asked.

"What you normally do there," his father said. "I wanted to buy some brandy."

"I thought you didn't like brandy."

"My wife enjoys a glass in the evening."

"Gertrud drinks brandy?"

"Why shouldn't she? Don't start thinking you can tell her what to do and what not to do, like you've been trying to do to me."

Wallander could not believe his ears. "I've never tried to tell you what to do," he said angrily. "If anybody's been trying to tell somebody else what to do, it's been you telling me."

"If you'd listened to me you'd never have joined the police force," his father said. "And in view of what's happened these last few years, that would have been to your advantage, of course."

Wallander realised the best he could do was to change the subject. "It was a good job you weren't injured," he said.

"You have to preserve your dignity," his father said. "And your place in the queue. Otherwise they walk all over you."

"I am afraid you might be charged."

"I shall deny it."

"Deny what? Everybody knows it was you who started the fight. There's no way you can deny it."

"All I did was preserve my dignity," his father said. "Do they put you in prison for that nowadays?"

"You won't go to prison," Wallander said. "You might have to pay damages, though."

"I shall refuse," his father said.

"I'll pay them," Wallander said. "You punched another customer on the nose. That sort of thing gets punished."

"You have to preserve your dignity."

Wallander gave up. Shortly afterwards they turned into his father's drive.

"Don't mention this to Gertrud," his father said as he got out of the car. Wallander was surprised by his insistent tone.

"I won't say a word."

Gertrud and his father had married the year before. She had started to work for him when he had begun to show signs of senility. She introduced a new dimension into his solitary life - she had visited him three days a week - and there had been a big change in his father, who no longer seemed to be senile. She was 30 years his junior, but that apparently did not matter to either of them. Wallander was aghast at the thought of their marrying, but he had discovered that she was good-hearted and determined to go through with it. He did not know much about her, beyond the fact that she was local, had two grown-up children and had been divorced for years. They seemed to have found happiness together, and Wallander had often felt a degree of jealousy. His own life seemed to be so miserable and was getting worse all the time so that what he needed was a home help for himself.

Gertrud was preparing the evening meal when they went in. As always, she was delighted to welcome him. He apologised for not being able to join them for supper, blaming pressure of work. Instead, he went with his father to the studio, where they drank a cup of coffee which they made on the filthy hotplate.

"I saw one of your pictures on a wall in Helsingborg the other night," Wallander said.

"There've been quite a few over the years," his father said.

"How many have you made?"

"I could work it out if I wanted to," his father said. "But I don't."

"It must be thousands."

"I'd rather not think about it. It would be inviting the Reaper into the parlour."

The comment surprised Wallander. He had never heard him refer to his age, never mind his death. It struck him that he had no idea how frightened his father might be of dying. After all these years, I know nothing at all about my father, he thought. And he probably knows equally little about me.

His father was peering at him short-sightedly.

"So, you're fit again, are you?" he said. "You've started work again. The last time you were here, before you went to that guest house at Skagen, you said you were going to pack it in as a police officer. You've changed your mind, have you?"

"Something happened," Wallander said. He would rather not get involved in a discussion about his job. They always ended up quarrelling.

"I gather you're a pretty good police officer," his father said suddenly.

"Who told you that?" Wallander said.

"Gertrud. They've been writing about you in the newspapers. I don't read them, but she claims they say you're a good police officer."

"Newspapers say all kinds of things."

"I'm only repeating what she says."

"What do you say?"

"That I tried to put you off joining, and I still think you should be doing something else."

"I don't suppose I'll ever stop," Wallander said. "I'm coming up to 50. I'll be a police officer as long as I work."

They heard Gertrud shouting that the food was on the table.

"I'd never have thought you'd have remembered Anton and the Pole," said his father as they walked over to the house.

"It's one of the most vivid memories I have of my childhood," Wallander said. "Do you know what I used to call all those strange people who came to buy your paintings?"

"They were art dealers," his father said.

"I know," Wallander said. "But to me they were the Silk Knights."

His father stopped in his tracks and stared at him. He burst out laughing.

"That's an excellent name," he said. "That's exactly what they were. Knights in silk suits."

They said goodbye at the bottom of the steps.

"Are you sure you wouldn't like to stay?" Gertrud asked. "There's plenty of food."

"I've got work to do," Wallander said.

He drove back to Ystad through the dark autumn countryside. He tried to think what it was about his father that reminded him of himself.

But he could not find the answer.

On Friday, November 5, Wallander arrived at the station shortly after 7.00, feeling that he had caught up on his sleep and was raring to go. He made himself coffee, then spent the next hour preparing for the meeting of the investigation team that was due to start at 8.00. He drew up a schematic and chronological presentation of all the facts and tried to work out where they should go from there. He was bearing in mind that one or more of his colleagues might have come up with something the previous day that would throw new light on existing facts.

He had the feeling still that there was no time to spare, that the shadows behind the two dead solicitors were growing and becoming more frightening.

He put down his pen, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He was at once back at Skagen, the beach stretching away in front of him, shrouded in fog. Sten Torstensson was there somewhere. Wallander tried to see past him to catch a glimpse of the people who must have followed him and were watching his meeting with the police officer on sick leave. They must have been close, for all that they were invisible, hidden among the dunes.

He thought of the woman walking her dog. Could it have been her? Or the girl working in the Art Museum cafe? That seemed impossible. There must have been somebody else there in the fog, somebody neither Sten nor he had seen.

He glanced at the clock. Time for the meeting. He gathered up his papers.

The meeting went on for more than four hours, but by the end of it Wallander felt that they had made a breakthrough, that a pattern was now beginning to appear, although there was much that was still obscure and the evidence of the involvement of any particular individuals was as yet inconclusive. Nevertheless, they had agreed that there could hardly be any doubt that what they were dealing with was not a string of unassociated events, but a deliberate chain of acts, even if at this stage they could not be clear about the links. By the time Wallander was able to summarise their conclusions, the atmosphere was stuffy and Svedberg had started to complain of a headache, and they were all exhausted.

"It's possible, even probable, that this investigation will take a long time, but we'll get all the bits of the jigsaw sooner or later. And that will lead to the solution. We must exercise the greatest care: we've already met with one booby trap, a mine. There may be more, metaphorically speaking. But now is the time to start ferreting away."

They had spent the morning going over their material - point by point - discussing it, evaluating it. They had scrutinised every detail from all possible points of view, tested various interpretations, and then agreed on how to proceed. They had reached a crucial moment in the investigation, one of the most critical stages at which it could so easily go wrong if any one of them had a lapse of concentration. All contradictory evidence had to be taken as the starting point of a positive and constructive re-examination, not as grounds for automatic oversimplification or too-swift judgments. It's like being at the exploratory stage of designing a house, Wallander thought. We're constructing many of different models, and we must not dismantle any one of them too hastily. All the models are built on the same foundation.

It was almost a month since Gustaf Torstensson had died in the muddy field near Brosarp Hills. It was ten days since his son had been in Skagen and then murdered in his office. They kept coming back to those starting points.

The first to give their report that morning was Martinsson, supported by Nyberg.

"We've received the forensic analysis on the weapon and ammunition used to kill Sten Torstensson," Martinsson said, holding up the documents. "There's at least one point which we need to pay attention to."

Nyberg took over. "Sten Torstensson was hit by three 9 mm rounds. Standard ammunition. But the most interesting thing is that the experts believe the weapon used was an Italian pistol known as a Bernadelli Practical. I won't go into technical details as to why they think so. It could have been a Smith & Wesson 3914 or 5904, but it's more likely to have been a Bernadelli. That is a rather rare pistol in Sweden. There are no more than 50 or so registered. Of course, nobody knows how many illegal ones there might be floating about, but an informed guess would be about 30."

"Who would want to use that Italian pistol?" Wallander said.

"Somebody who knows a lot about guns," Nyberg said. "Somebody who chose it for specific reasons."

"Are you saying it could be a foreign professional hit man?"

"We shouldn't disregard that possibility," Nyberg said.

"We're going to go through the list of Bernadelli owners," Martinsson said. "From first checks, no registered owner of a Bernadelli pistol has reported it missing."

They moved to the next point.

"The number plate on one of the cars that followed you was stolen," Svedberg said. "From a Nissan in Malmo. Malmo are looking into it. They've found lots of fingerprints, but we shouldn't set our hopes very high."

Wallander agreed. "Anything else?" he said.

"You asked me to dig out some facts about Kurt Strom," Svedberg said.

Wallander gave a brief account of his visit to Farnholm Castle and his meeting with the former policeman at the castle gates.

"Kurt Strom was not a good advertisement for the police force," Svedberg said. "He had dealings with several fences. What they never managed to prove but was almost certainly the case was that he tipped them off about police raids. He was kicked out, but there was no publicity."

Bjork spoke for the first time. "This sort of thing is deplorable. We can't afford to have people like Strom in the force. What's worrying is that they then turn up in one of these security firms, no problem. The checks made on them are obviously nowhere near thorough enough."

Wallander refrained from commenting on Bjork's outburst. He knew from experience the risk of being sidetracked into a discussion that had no direct bearing on the case.

"As to the explosion in your car," Nyberg said, "we can be sure that the device was planted in your petrol tank. I gather that this method of using the petrol to eat its way through a fuse and delay the explosion is common in Asia."

"An Italian pistol," Wallander said, "and an Asian car bomb. Where does that leave us?"

"With a false conclusion, if we're not careful," Bjork said firmly. "It needn't be people from the other end of the world behind all this. Nowadays Sweden is a crossroads and a meeting place for everything you can think of."

"What did you find at the solicitors' offices, Ann-Britt?"

"Nothing as yet that could be considered significant," Hoglund said. "It will take us ages to take stock of all the material. The only thing that's already definite is that Gustaf Torstensson's clients diminished in number drastically over the last years. And that he seemed to spend all his time setting up companies, on financial advice, and drawing up contracts. I wonder whether we might need some help from the national CID, a specialist on financial crime. Even if no crime has been committed it's probably beyond us to make out what may be behind all the various transactions."

"Make use of Akeson," Bjork said. "He knows a lot about financial matters and crime. Then he can decide if he's sufficiently well up, or whether we need to send for reinforcements."

Wallander agreed and returned to his checklist.

"What about the cleaner?" he said.

"I'm going to meet her," Hoglund said. "I've spoken to her on the phone. She speaks Swedish well enough for an interpreter to be unnecessary."

Then it was Wallander's turn. He told the meeting of his visit to Martin Oscarsson and the drive to Klagshamn and the birch woods where Borman was supposed to have hanged himself. As so often before, Wallander felt he had discovered new details when he reported to his colleagues on what had happened. Retelling the story sharpened his concentration.

When he had finished, the atmosphere in the conference room was tense. We're close to making significant progress, Wallander thought. "We have to find the link between Borman and the Torstensson firm of solicitors. What upset Borman so much that he sent threatening letters to the Torstenssons and even involved Mrs Duner? He accused them of what he called a serious injustice. We can't be certain that it had anything to do with the scam inflicted on the County Council, but I think we would do well to assume that, for the time being, this is what it was. In any case, this is the black hole in our investigation, and we must dredge our way into it with as much energy as we can muster."

The discussion was tentative at first. Everybody needed time for what Wallander had described to sink in.

"I'm thinking about those threatening letters," Martinsson said hesitantly. "I can't get away from the feeling that they are so naive. So childish, almost innocent. I can't get a clear sense of Borman's nature."

"We'll have to find out more," Wallander said. "Let's start by tracing his children. We should also telephone his widow in Marbella."

"I'd be happy to do that," Martinsson said. "Borman interests me."

"The whole business of that investment firm Smeden will have to be thoroughly looked into," Bjork said. "I suggest we contact the fraud squad in Stockholm. Or maybe it would be better for Akeson to do that. There are people there who know as much about the business world as the most skilful investment analysts."

"I'll speak to Per," Wallander said.

They went backwards and forwards through the case all morning. Eventually they reached a point where everybody was losing their sharpness, and nobody seemed to have anything else to say. Bjork had already left for one of his countless meetings with the District Chief of Police. Wallander decided it was time to bring the meeting to an end.

"Two solicitors murdered," he said. "Plus Lars Borman's suicide, if that is what it was. We have the mine in Mrs Duner's garden, and we have my car. Let no-one forget that we're dealing with extremely dangerous people, people who are keeping a close watch on everything we do. That means we all have to be tirelessly watchful ourselves."

They gathered their papers and left.

Wallander drove to a restaurant nearby for lunch. He needed to be on his own. He was back at the police station just after 1.00, and spent the rest of the afternoon talking to the national CID and their fraud specialists. At 4.00 he went over to the prosecutor's offices and spoke at length to Akeson. Then he returned to his own office, and did not leave until nearly 10.00.

He felt the need for fresh air. He was missing his long walks at Skagen, so he left his car at the station and walked home to Mariagatan. It was a mild evening, and he occasionally paused to look in shop windows. He was home by 11.00.

Half an hour later he was surprised by the phone ringing. He had just poured himself a glass of whisky and settled to watch a film on the television. He went out to the hall and answered. It was Hoglund.

"Am I disturbing you?" she said.

"Not in the least."

"I'm at the station," she said. "I think I'm on to something."

Wallander did not hesitate. She would not have rung if it hadn't been very important. "I'll be there in ten minutes," he said.

She was in the corridor, waiting for him.

"I need a cup of coffee," she said. "There's nobody in the canteen just now. Peters and Noren left a few minutes ago. There's been an accident at the Bjaresjo crossroads."

They sat down at a table with their mugs of coffee.

"There was a fellow student at college who paid his way through his studies by dealing on the Stock Exchange," she said.

Wallander looked at her in surprise.

"I phoned him," she said, almost apologetically. "It can be quicker to do things through personal contacts, if you've got any. Anyway, I told him about STRUFAB, Sisyphus and Smeden. I gave him the names Fjallsjo and Holmberg. He phoned me at home an hour ago. I came straight here."

Wallander could hardly wait to hear what was coming next.

"I made notes of everything he said. The investment company Smeden has undergone a lot of changes in recent years. Boards of directors have come and gone, and on several occasions their shares have been suspended because of suspicions of insider trading and other infringements of Stock Exchange regulations. Substantial shareholdings have been changing hands with bewildering frequency, and it's difficult to keep track of them. Smeden seems to have been a prime example of the irresponsible goings-on in the financial world. Until a few years ago. Then a number of foreign brokers, including firms in Britain, Belgium and Spain, started buying shares, very discreetly. At first there was nothing to suggest that the same purchaser was acting through these various brokerage firms. It was all done stealthily, and the brokers did nothing to attract attention to themselves. By this time everybody was so fed up with Smeden that nobody was taking the company seriously any more, least of all the mass media. Every time the Secretary-General of the Stockholm Stock Exchange met reporters, he would begin by asking them not to put questions about Smeden because he was so irritated by everything to do with the company. Then one day such substantial holdings were acquired by the same group of brokers that it was no longer possible to avoid wondering who was so interested in this dodgy company with such a bad reputation. It transpired that Smeden had fallen into the hands of a not exactly unknown Englishman called Robert Maxwell."

"The name means nothing to me," Wallander said. "Who is he?"

"Was. He's dead. He fell overboard from his luxury yacht off the Spanish coast a couple of years ago. There were rumours that he had been murdered. Something to do with Mossad, the Israeli secret service, and shadowy but large-scale arms deals. He owned newspapers and publishing houses, all registered in Liechtenstein, but when he died his empire collapsed like a house of cards. It was all built on borrowings, borrowings and embezzled pension funds. The bankruptcy was instantaneous and set off a tremendous crash."

"An Englishman?" Wallander said in astonishment. "What does that tell us?"

"That it didn't end there. The shares were passed on to somebody else."

"Who?"

"There was something going on behind the scenes," Hoglund said. "Maxwell had been acting on behalf of somebody else who preferred to remain invisible. And that person was a Swede. A mysterious circle was finally closed." She stared intently at him. "Can you guess who that person is?"

"No."

"Have a guess."

The penny dropped. "Alfred Harderberg."

She nodded.

"The man at Farnholm Castle," Wallander said slowly.

They sat in silence for a while.

"In other words, he also controlled STRUFAB, via Smeden," she said eventually.

Wallander looked hard at her. "Well done," he said. "Very well done."

"Thank my fellow student," she said. "He's a police officer in Eskilstuna. But there's something else as well. I don't know if it's important, but while I was waiting for you I came to think about something. Torstensson Senior died on the way home from Farnholm Castle. Borman hanged himself. But it might be that both of them, in different ways, had discovered the same thing. What can that have been?"

"You could be right," Wallander said. "But I think we can draw one other conclusion. We might regard it as unproven but definite even so. Borman did not commit suicide. Just as Torstensson was not killed in a car accident."

They sat in silence again for a while.

"Alfred Harderberg," she said at last. "Can he really be the man behind everything that's happened?"

Wallander stared into his coffee mug. He had never asked himself that question, but he had suspected something of the kind. Yes, he could see that now.

He looked at her. "Of course it could be Harderberg," he said.

Chapter 10

Wallander would always think of the following week as a time in which the police surrounded the difficult murder investigation with invisible barricades. It was like making preparation for a complicated military campaign - in a very short time and under great pressure. It was not so outrageous a comparison, since they had designated Harderberg their enemy - a man who was not only a living legend but also a man whose power was not unlike that of a medieval prince, and this before he had even reached the age of 50.

It had all started on the Friday night, when Hoglund had revealed the link with the English contact man, Robert Maxwell, and his crooked share dealings; and also the fact that the owner of the investment company Smeden was the man at Farnholm Castle, who thus took an enormous step out of the shadows of anonymity and into centre stage of the murder investigation. Wallander would afterwards agonise about not having suspected Harderberg much earlier. He would never find a satisfactory answer as to why. Whatever explanation he found, it was no more than an excuse for carelessly and negligently granting Harderberg exemption from suspicion in the early stages of the inquiry, as if Farnholm Castle had been a sovereign territory with some kind of diplomatic immunity.

The next week changed all that. But they had been forced to proceed cautiously, not just because Bjork insisted on it, with some support from Akeson, but mainly because the facts they had to go on were very few. They knew that Gustaf Torstensson had acted as financial adviser to Harderberg, but they could not know exactly what he had done, what precisely his remit had been. And in any case, there was no evidence to suggest that Harderberg's business empire was involved in illegal activities. But now they had discovered another link: Borman and the fraud to which Malmohus County Council had been subjected and which had been hushed up and quietly buried. On the night of Friday, November 5, Wallander and Hoglund had discussed the situation until the small hours, but it had been mostly speculation. Even so, they had begun to evolve a plan for how the investigation should proceed, and it was clear to Wallander from the start that they would have to move discreetly and circumspectly. If Harderberg really was involved, and Wallander kept repeating that if during the next week, it was clear that he was a man with eyes and ears wherever they turned, all round the clock, no matter what they did or where they were. They had to bear in mind that the existence of links between Borman, Harderberg and one of the murdered solicitors did not necessarily amount to a beginning of a solution to the case.

Wallander was also doubtful for quite different reasons. He had spent his life in the loyal and unhesitating belief that Swedish business practices were as above reproach as the emperor's wife. The men and women at the top of the big Swedish concerns were the bedrock of the welfare state. The Swedish export industry was at the heart of the country's prosperity, and as such was simply above suspicion. Especially now, now that the whole edifice of the welfare state was showing signs of crumbling, its floorboards teeming with termites. The bedrock on which it all rested must be protected from irresponsible interference, irrespective of where it came from. But even if he had his doubts, he was still aware that they might be on the track to the solution, no matter how unlikely it might seem at first glance.

"We don't have anything substantial," he said to Hoglund that Friday night at the police station. "What we do have is a link, a connection. We shall investigate it. And we'll do that with all the stops out. But we can't take it for granted that doing so will lead us to the person responsible for our murders."

They were ensconced in Wallander's office. He was surprised she had not wanted to go home as soon as possible: it was late, and unlike him she had a family to get back to. They were not going to solve anything then, it would have been better to get a good night's rest and start fresh the next morning. But she had insisted on continuing their discussions, and he was reminded of what he had been like at her age. So much police work is dull routine, but there could occasionally be moments of inspiration and excitement, an almost childish delight in playing around with feasible alternatives.

"I know it doesn't necessarily mean anything," she said. "But remember that a master criminal like Al Capone was caught out by an accountant."

"That's hardly a fair comparison," Wallander said. "You're talking about a gangster known by one and all to have built his fortune on theft, smuggling, blackmail, bribery and murder. In this case all we know is that a successful Swedish businessman has a majority shareholding in an apparently fraudulent investment company which has many activities, just one of which is that it controls a consultancy employing certain individuals who have swindled a county council. We know no more than that."

"They used to say that concealed behind every fortune was a major crime," she said. "Why just 'used to'? Whenever you open your newspaper nowadays it looks more like the rule than the exception."

"You can find a quotation for every situation," Wallander said. "The Japanese say that business is a form of warfare. But that doesn't justify somebody in Sweden killing people to put a few accounts into the clear. If that's what they were trying to do."

"This country is also awash with sacred cows," Hoglund said. "Such as the idea that we don't need to chase up criminals with names that tell us they come from noble families, and who belong to some ancient line in Skane with a family castle to maintain. We would rather not haul them into the courts when they've been caught with their fingers in the till."

"I've never thought like that," Wallander said, realising at once that he was not telling the truth. And what was it he was trying to defend? Or was it just that he could not allow Hoglund to be right, not when she was so much younger than he was and a woman?

"I think that's how everybody thinks," she insisted. "Police officers are no different. Or prosecutors. Sacred cows must graze in peace."

They had been sailing around hidden rocks without finding a clear channel. It seemed to Wallander that their differing views indicated something he had been thinking for a long time, that the police force was being split by a generation gap. It wasn't so much that Hoglund was a woman, but rather that she brought with her quite different experiences. We are both police officers, but we do not have the same view of the world, Wallander thought. We may live in the same world, but we see it differently.

Another thought occurred to him, and he did not like it one bit. What he had been saying to Hoglund could just as easily have been said by Martinsson. Or Svedberg. Even Hanson, for all his non-stop further-education courses. He sat there on the Friday night talking not just with his own voice, but with that of the others. He was speaking for a whole generation. The thought annoyed him, and he blamed Hoglund, who was all too self-confident, all too definite in her views. He did not enjoy being reminded of his own laziness, his own very vague views about the world and the age he was living in.

It was as if she were describing an unknown land to him. A Sweden that she was not making up, unfortunately, but one which really existed just outside the confines of the police station, filled with real people.

But the discussion petered out in the end, when Wallander had poured enough water on the fire. They went out to fetch more coffee, and were offered a sandwich by a patrolman who seemed to be worn out, or just bored stiff, and was sitting in the canteen staring into space. They went back to Wallander's office, and to avoid further discussion about sacred cows, Wallander asserted himself and proposed a session of constructive thinking.

"I had an elegant leather folder in my car when it went up in flames," he said. "An overview I was given when I went to Farnholm Castle. I had begun reading it. It was a summary of Harderberg's empire and of the man himself, his various honorary doctorates, all his good deeds: Harderberg the patron of the arts, Harderberg the humanist, Harderberg the young people's friend, Harderberg the sports fan, Harderberg the sponsor of our cultural heritage, the enthusiastic restorer of old Oland fishing boats, Harderberg the honorary doctor of archaeology who provides generous funding for digs at what might be Iron Age dwellings in Medelpad, Harderberg the patron of music who sponsors two violinists and a bassoonist in the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. Founder of the Harderberg Prize for the most gifted young opera singer in the country. Generous donor to peace research in Scandinavia. And all the other things I can't remember. It was as if he were being portrayed as a one-man Swedish Academy. Without a drop of blood on his hands.

"I've asked Ebba to get hold of another copy of the file. It must be studied and investigated. As discreetly as possible we must obtain access to reports and balance sheets for all his companies. We have to find out how many companies he in fact owns. Where they are located. What they do. What they sell. What they buy. We have to examine his tax returns and his tax status. In that respect I accept what you say about Al Capone. We have to find out where Gustaf Torstensson was allowed to poke his nose in. We have to ask ourselves: why him of all people? We have to take a look into every secret room we can find. We have to wriggle our way into Harderberg's mind, not just his bank accounts. We have to talk to eleven secretaries without his noticing. Because if he does notice, a tremor will run through the whole enterprise. A tremor that will result in every door closing simultaneously. We must never forget that no matter how many resources we put into this, he will be able to send yet more troops into battle. It's always easier to close a door than it is to open it again. It's always easier to maintain a cleverly constructed lie than it is to find an unclear truth."

She listened to what he had to say with what looked to him to be genuine interest. He had set it all out for her as much to clarify things in his own mind, but he could not deny having made some small effort to squash her. He was still the senior officer around here, and she could consider herself just a snotty-nosed kid, albeit a talented one.

"We have to do all that," he said. "It could be that we end up once more with the magnificent reward of having discovered absolutely nothing. But the most important thing for the moment, and the most difficult thing, is how we are going to do all this without attracting attention. If what we suspect is true, and it's on Harderberg's orders that we're being watched, that efforts are being made to blow us up, and that it was an extension of his hand that planted the mine in Mrs Duner's garden, then we must keep reminding ourselves all the time that he sees things and hears things. He must not notice that we are repositioning our troops. We must camouflage everything we do in thick fog. And in that fog we have to make sure that we follow the right road and that he goes astray. Where's the investigation going? That is the question we have to keep asking ourselves, and then we have to provide a very good answer."

"We have to do the opposite of what we seem to be doing, then," she said.

"Exactly," Wallander said. "We have to send out signals that say: we're not remotely interested in Alfred Harderberg."

"What happens if it's too obvious?" she said.

"It mustn't be," Wallander said. "We have to send out another signal. We have to tell the world that yes, naturally, Dr Harderberg is involved in our routine inquiries. He even attracts our special interest in certain respects."

"How can we be sure that he swallows our bait?"

"We can't. But we can send a third signal. We can say that we have a lead that we believe in. That it points in a certain direction. And that it seems to be reliable. So reliable that Harderberg can be convinced that we really are following a false trail."

"He's bound to take out a few insurance policies even so."

"Yes. We shall have to make sure we find out what they are," he said. "And we mustn't show him that we know. We must not give the impression we are stupid, a bunch of blind and deaf police officers who are leading one another in the wrong direction. We must identify his insurance tactics, but appear to misinterpret them. We must hold up a mirror to our own strategy, and then interpret the mirror image."

She eyed him thoughtfully. "Are we really going to be able to manage this? Will Bjork go along with it? What will Mr Akeson have to say?"

"That will be our first big problem," Wallander said. "Convincing ourselves that we've got the right strategy. Our Chief of Police has an attribute which makes up for a lot of his weaker points: he sees through us if we don't believe in what we say or suggest as the starting point for our investigation. In such circumstances he puts his foot down, and rightly so."

"And when we've convinced ourselves? Where do we start?"

"We have to make sure we do not fail in too much of what we set ourselves to do. We have to lose our way so cleverly in the fog that Harderberg believes it. We have to lose our way and be following the right road at the same time."

She went back to her office to fetch a notepad. Meanwhile, Wallander sat listening to a dog barking somewhere inside the station. When she came back, it struck him again that she was an attractive woman, despite the fact that she was very pale, and had blotchy skin and dark rings under her eyes.

They went through Wallander's pronouncements once again. All the time Hoglund kept coming up with relevant comments, finding flaws in Wallander's reasoning, homing in on contradictions. He noticed, however reluctantly, that he was inspired by her, and that she was very clear-headed. It struck him - at 2 a.m. - that he had not had a conversation like this since Rydberg died. He imagined Rydberg coming back to life and putting his vast experience at the disposal of this pale young woman.

They left the station together. It was cold, the sky was full of stars, the ground was covered in frost.

"We'll have a long meeting tomorrow," Wallander said. "There'll be any number of objections, but I'll talk to Bjork and Akeson ahead of time. I'll ask Per to sit in on the meeting. If we don't get them on our side, we'll lose too much time trying to dig up new facts just in order to convince them."

She seemed surprised. "Surely they must see we're right?"

"We can't be sure of that."

"It sometimes seems to me that the Swedish police force is very slow to catch on to things."

"You don't need to be a recent graduate of Police Training College to reach that conclusion," Wallander said. "Bjork has calculated that given the current increase in administrators and others who don't actually do work in the field, as investigators or on traffic duties, that kind of thing, all normal police work will grind to a halt around 2010. By which time every police officer will just sit around all day passing bits of paper to other police officers."

She laughed. "Maybe we're in the wrong job," she said.

"Not the wrong job," Wallander said, "but maybe we're living at the wrong time."

They said goodnight and drove home in their own cars. Wallander kept an eye on the rear-view mirror, but could not see anybody following him. He was very tired, but at the same time inspired by the fact that a door had opened up into the current investigation. The coming days were going to be very strenuous.

On the morning of Saturday, November 6, Wallander phoned Bjork at 7.00. His wife answered, and asked Wallander to try again a few minutes later as her husband was in the bath. Wallander used the time to phone Akeson, who he knew was an early riser and generally up and about by 5.00. Akeson picked up the phone immediately. Wallander summarised briefly what had happened, and why Harderberg had become relevant to the investigation in quite a new light. Akeson listened without interruption. When Wallander had finished, he made just one comment.

"Are you convinced you can make this stick?"

Wallander replied without a moment's hesitation: "Yes," he said. "I think this can solve the problem for us."

"In that case, of course, I've no objection to our concentrating on digging deeper. But make sure it's all discreet. Say nothing to the media without consulting me first. What we need least of all is a Palme situation here in Ystad."

Wallander could quite see what Akeson meant. The unsolved assassination of the Swedish prime minister, a mystery now getting on for ten years old, had not only stunned the police but had also shocked nearly everyone in Sweden. Too many people, both inside and outside the police force, were aware that in all probability the murder had not been solved because at an early stage the investigation had been dominated and mishandled in scandalous fashion by a district police chief who had put himself in charge in spite of being incompetent to run a criminal investigation. Every local force discussed over and over, sometimes angrily and sometimes contemptuously, how it had been possible for the murder, the murderer and the motive to be brushed under the carpet with such nonchalance. One of the most catastrophic errors in that disastrous investigation had been the insistence of the officers in charge on pursuing certain leads without first establishing priorities. Wallander agreed with Akeson: an investigation had to be more or less concluded before the police had the green light to put all their eggs into one basket.

"I'd like you to be there when we discuss the case this morning," Wallander said. "We have to be absolutely clear about what we're doing. I don't want the investigation team to be split. That would prevent us from being able to react rapidly to any new development."

"I'll be there," Akeson said. "I was supposed to be playing golf today. Mind you, given the weather, I'd rather not."

"It's probably pretty hot in Uganda," Wallander said. "Or was it the Sudan?"

"I haven't even raised the subject with my wife yet," Akeson said in a low voice.

After that call, Wallander drank another cup of coffee and then called Bjork again. This time it was the man himself who answered. Wallander had decided not to say anything about what had happened the first time he visited Farnholm Castle. He would rather not do that on the phone, he needed to be face to face with Bjork. He was brief and to the point.

"We need to meet and discuss what's happened," Wallander said. "Something, that is, which is going to change the whole direction of the case."

"What's happened?" Bjork said.

"I'd sooner not discuss it over the phone," Wallander said.

"You're not suggesting our phones are being tapped, I hope?" Bjork said. "We need to keep things in perspective after all."

"It's not that," Wallander said, although it struck him that he had never considered that possibility. It was too late to do anything about it now - he had already told Akeson how things were going to develop from now on.

"I need to see you briefly before the investigation meeting starts," he said.

"OK, half an hour from now," Bjork said. "But I don't understand why you're being so secretive."

"I'm not being secretive," Wallander said. "But it's sometimes better to discuss crucial things face to face."

"That sounds pretty dramatic to me," Bjork said. "I wonder if we shouldn't contact Per."

"I've done that already," Wallander said. "I'll be in your office in half an hour."

Before meeting Bjork, Wallander sat in his car outside the police station for a few minutes, gathering his thoughts. He considered cancelling the whole thing, perhaps there were more important things to do; but then he acknowledged that he had to make it clear to Bjork that Harderberg must be treated like any other Swedish citizen. Failure to reach that understanding would lead inevitably to a crisis of confidence that would end up with Wallander's resignation. He thought how quickly things had moved. It was only just over a week since he had been pacing up and down the beach at Skagen, preparing to say goodbye for ever to his life as a police officer. Now he was feeling that he had to defend his position and his integrity as a police officer. He must write about all this to Baiba as soon as he could.

Would she be able to understand why everything had changed? Did he really understand it himself?

He went to Bjork's office and sat on his visitors' sofa.

"What on earth's happened?" Bjork said.

"There's something I must say before we go into the meeting," Wallander said, and realised his voice sounded hesitant.

"Don't tell me you've decided to resign again," Bjork said, looking worried.

"No," Wallander said. "I have to know why you phoned Farnholm Castle and warned them that the Ystad police were going to contact them in connection with the murder investigation. I have to know why you didn't tell me or the others that you had phoned."

Wallander could see Bjork was put out and annoyed.

"Alfred Harderberg is an important man in our society," Bjork said. "He's not suspected of any criminal activity. It was purely politeness on my part. Might I ask how you know about the phone call?"

"They were too well prepared when I got there."

"I don't see that as being negative," Bjork said. "Given the circumstances."

"But it was inappropriate even so," Wallander said. "Inappropriate in more ways than one. And besides, such goings-on can create unrest in the investigation team. We have to be absolutely frank with one another."

"I have to say that I find it difficult being lectured by you - of all people - on frankness," Bjork said, no longer hiding the fact that he was furious.

"My shortcomings are no excuse for others acting in that way," Wallander said. "Not my superior in any case."

Bjork rose to his feet. "I will not allow myself to be addressed in that manner," he said, going red in the face. "It was pure politeness, nothing more. In the circumstances, a routine conversation. It couldn't have had any adverse effect."

"Those circumstances no longer apply," Wallander said, realising he was not going to get any further. The important thing now was to apprise Bjork as quickly as possible as to how the whole situation had changed.

Bjork was staring at him, still on his feet. "Express yourself more clearly," he said. "I don't understand what you mean."

"Information has come to light which suggests that Alfred Harderberg could be behind everything that's happened," Wallander said. "That would surely imply that the circumstances have changed quite dramatically."

Bjork sat down again, incredulous. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that we have reason to believe that Harderberg is directly or indirectly mixed up in the murder of the two solicitors. And the attempted murder of Mrs Duner. And the blowing up of my car."

Bjork stared at him in disbelief. "Am I really expected to take that seriously?"

"Yes, you are," Wallander said. "Akeson does."

Wallander gave Bjork a brisk summary of what had happened. When he had finished, Bjork sat looking at his hands before responding.

"It would be very unpleasant, of course, if this were to turn out to be true," he said in the end.

"Murder and explosions are certainly unpleasant things," Wallander said.

"We must be very, very careful," Bjork said, apparently ignoring Wallander's comment. "We can't accept anything short of conclusive proof before we consider making a move."

"We don't normally do that," Wallander said. "Why should this case be any different?"

"I have no doubt at all that this will turn out to be a dead end," Bjork said, getting to his feet to indicate that the conversation was over.

"That is a possibility," Wallander said. "So is the opposite."

It was 8.10 when he left Bjork's office. He fetched a cup of coffee and called in at Hoglund's office, but she had not yet arrived. He went to his office to telephone Waldemar Kage, the taxi driver in Simrishamn. He got through to him on his mobile and explained what it was about. He made a note that he should send Kage a cheque for 230 kronor. He wondered if he should phone the haulage contractor his father had punched and try to persuade him not to take the case to court, but decided against it. The meeting was due to start at 8.30. He needed to concentrate until then.

He stood at the window. It was a grey day, very cold and damp. Late autumn already, winter just round the corner. I'm here, he thought: I wonder where Harderberg is right now. At Farnholm Castle? Or 30,000 feet up, in his Gulfstream, on the way to and from some intricate negotiation? What had Gustaf Torstensson and Borman discovered? What had really happened? What if Hoglund and I are right, if two police officers of different generations, each with their own view of what the world is like, have come to the same conclusion? A conclusion that might even lead us to the truth?

Wallander came into the conference room at 8.30. Bjork was already at the short end of the table, Akeson was standing by the window, looking out, and Martinsson and Svedberg were deep in conversation about what sounded to Wallander like salaries. Hoglund was in her usual place opposite Bjork at the other short end of the table. Neither Martinsson nor Svedberg seemed to be worried by Akeson being there.

Wallander said good morning to Hoglund. "How do you think this is going to go?" he asked softly.

"When I woke up I thought I must have dreamed it all," she said. "Have you spoken yet to Bjork and Akeson?"

"Akeson knows most of what happened," he said. "I only had time to give Bjork the short version."

"What did Akeson say?"

"He'll go along with us."

Bjork tapped on the table with a pencil and those who were still standing sat down.

"All I have to say is that Kurt is going to do the talking," Bjork said. "Unless I am much mistaken, it looks as though there might have been a dramatic development."

Wallander wondered what to say, his mind a sudden blank. Then he found the thread and began. He went through in detail what Hoglund's colleague in Eskilstuna had been able to enlighten them about, and he set out the ideas that had developed in the early hours of the morning, about how they should proceed without waking the sleeping bear. When he had finished - and his account lasted 25 minutes - he asked Hoglund if she had anything to add, but she shook her head: Wallander had said all there was to say.

"So, that's where we've got to," Wallander said. "Because this means that we have no choice but to reassess our priorities for the investigation, we have got Per with us. Another consideration is whether we need to call in outside help at this stage. It's going to be a very tricky and in many ways a laborious process, penetrating Harderberg's world, especially since we can't afford to let him notice how interested in him we are."

Wallander was not sure whether he had succeeded in putting across all the things he had wanted to. Hoglund smiled and nodded at him, but when he studied the other faces around the table he still could not tell.

"This really is something for us to get our teeth into," Akeson said when the silence had lasted long enough. "We must be clear about the fact that Alfred Harderberg has an impeccable reputation in the Swedish business community. We can expect nothing but hostility if we start questioning that reputation. On the other hand, I have to say there are sufficient grounds for us to start taking a special interest in him. Naturally, I find it difficult to believe that Harderberg was personally involved in the murders or the other events, and of course it might be that things happen in his set-up over which he has no control."

"I've always dreamed of putting one of those gentlemen away," Svedberg suddenly said.

"A most regrettable attitude in a police officer," Bjork said, unable to control his displeasure. "It shouldn't be necessary for me to remind you all of our status as neutral civil servants - "

"Let's stick to the point," Akeson interrupted. "And perhaps we should also remind ourselves that in our role as servants of the law we are paid to be suspicious in circumstances in which normally we would not need to be."

"So we have the go-ahead to concentrate on Harderberg, is that right?" Wallander asked.

"On certain conditions," Bjork said. "I agree with Per that we have to be very careful and prudent, but I also want to stress that I shall regard it as dereliction of duty if anything we do is leaked outside these four walls. No statements are to be made to the press without their first having been authorised by me."

"We gathered that," said Martinsson, speaking for the first time. "I'm more concerned to find out how we're going to manage to run a vacuum cleaner over the whole of Harderberg's empire when there are so few of us. How are we going to coordinate our investigation with the fraud squads in Stockholm and Malmo? How are we going to cooperate with the tax authorities? I wonder if we shouldn't approach it quite differently."

"How would we do that?" Wallander said.

"Hand the whole thing over to the national CID," Martinsson said. "Then they can arrange cooperation with whichever squads and authorities they like. I think we have to concede that we're too small to handle this."

"That thought had occurred to me too," Akeson said. "But at this stage, before we've even made an initial investigation, the fraud squads in Stockholm and Malmo would probably turn us down. I don't know if you realise this, but they're probably even more overworked than we are. There are not many of us, but they are so understaffed they're verging on collapse. We'll have to take charge of this ourselves for the time being at least. Do the best we can. Nevertheless, I'll see if I can interest the fraud squads in helping us. You never know."

Looking back, Wallander had no doubt that it was what Akeson had to say about the hopeless situation the national CID were in that established once and for all the basis of the investigation. The murder investigation would be centred on Harderberg and the links between him and Lars Borman and him and the dead solicitors. Wallander and his team would also be on their own. It was true that the Ystad police were always having to deal with fraud cases of various kinds, but this was so much bigger than anything they had come across before, and they did not know of any financial impropriety associated with the deaths of the two solicitors.

In short, they had to start looking for an answer to the question: what were they really looking for?

When Wallander wrote to Baiba in Riga a few nights later and told her about "the secret hunt", as he had started to call the investigation, he realised that as he wrote to her in English, he would have to explain that hunting in Sweden was different from an English fox hunt. "There's a hunter in every police officer," he had written. "There is rarely, if ever, a fanfare of horns when a Swedish police officer is after his prey. But we find the foxes we are after even so. Without us, the Swedish hen house would long since have been empty: all that remained would have been a scattering of bloodstained feathers blowing around in the autumn breeze."

The whole team approached their task with enthusiasm. Bjork removed the lid of the box where generally he kept overtime locked away. He urged everybody on, reminding them again that not a word of their activities must leak out. Akeson had removed his jacket, loosened his tie which was usually so neatly knotted, and become one of the workers, even if he never let slip his authority as ultimate leader of the operation that was now getting under way.

But it was Wallander who called the shots; he could feel that, and it gave him frequent moments of deep satisfaction. Thanks to unexpected circumstances and the goodwill of his colleagues, which he scarcely deserved, he had been given an opportunity to atone for some of the guilt he felt after rejecting the confidence Sten Torstensson had shown in him by coming to Skagen and asking for his help. Leading the search for Sten's murderer and the murderer of his father was enabling Wallander to redeem himself. He had been so preoccupied with his own private woes that he had failed to hear Sten's cry for help, had not allowed it to penetrate the barricades he had built around his all-consuming depression.

He wrote another letter to Baiba that he never posted. In it he tried to explain to her, and hence also to himself, just what it meant, killing a man last year and now, adding to his guilt, rejecting Sten Torstensson's plea for help. The conclusion he seemed to reach, even though he doubted it deep down, was that Sten's death had started to trouble him more than the events of the previous year on the fog-bound training area, surrounded by invisible sheep.

But nothing of this was discernible to those around him. In the canteen his colleagues would comment in confidence that Wallander's return to duty and to health was as much a surprise as it would have been if he had taken up his bed and walked when he had been at his lowest. Martinsson, who was sometimes unable to hold his cynicism in check, said: "What Kurt needed was a challenging murder. Not some nervous, carelessly executed manslaughter committed on the spur of the moment. The dead solicitors, a mine in a garden and some Far Eastern explosive mixture in his petrol tank - that was just what he needed to bring him back to the fold."

The others agreed that there was more than a grain of truth in what Martinsson said.

It took them a week to complete the exhaustive survey of Harderberg's empire that would be the platform for the rest of the investigation. During that week neither Wallander nor any of his colleagues slept for more than five hours at a time. They would later look back at that period and conclude that a mouse really could roar if it had to. Even Akeson, who was rarely impressed by anything, had to doff his non-existent hat to what the team had achieved.

"Not a word of this must get out," he said to Wallander one evening when they had gone outside for a breath of fresh autumn air, trying to drive away their tiredness. Wallander did not at first understand what he meant.

"If this gets out, the Central Police Bureau and the Ministry of Justice will set up an inquiry that will eventually lead to something called the 'Ystad Model' being presented to the Swedish public: how to achieve outstanding results with minimal resources. We'll be used as proof that the Swedish police force is not undermanned at all. We'll be used as evidence to show that in fact there are too many police officers. So many that they keep getting in each other's way and that gives rise to a great waste of money and deteriorating clear-up rates."

"But we haven't achieved any results at all yet," Wallander said.

"I'm talking about the Central Police Bureau," Akeson said. "I'm talking about the mysterious world of politics. A world where masses of words are used to camouflage the fact that they're doing nothing but straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. Where they go to bed every night and pray that the next day they'll be able to turn water into wine. I'm not talking about the fact that we haven't yet discovered who killed the two solicitors. I'm talking about the fact that we now know that Alfred Harderberg is not the model citizen, superior to all others, that we thought he was."

That was absolutely true. During that hectic week they had managed to build a bird's-eye view of Harderberg's empire that naturally was by no means comprehensive, but they could see that the gaps - indeed, the black holes - indicated quite clearly that the man who lived in Farnholm Castle should not be allowed out of their sight for one minute.

When Akeson and Wallander stood outside the police station that night, on November 14 to be exact, they had got far enough to be able to draw certain conclusions. The first phase was over, the beaters had done their work and the hunters could prepare to move in. Nothing had leaked out, and they had begun to discern the shape and nature of the leviathan in which Lars Borman and more especially Gustaf Torstensson must have discovered something it would have been safer for them not to have seen.

The question was: what?

It had been a hectic time, but Wallander had organised his troops well and had not hesitated to take on the most boring work himself - which often proved to produce the most interesting information. They had gone through the story of Harderberg's life, from the day he was born, the son of an alcoholic timber merchant in Vimmerby, when he was known as Hansson, to the present day when he was the driving force of an enterprise with a turnover of billions in Sweden and abroad. At one point during the laborious exercise, wading through company reports and accounts, tax returns and share brochures, Svedberg said: "It's simply not possible for a man who owns as much as this to be honest." In the end it was Sven Nyberg, the surly and irritable forensic specialist, who gave them the information they needed. As so often happens, it was pure coincidence that he stumbled upon the tiny crack in Harderberg's immaculately rendered wall, the barely visible fault they had craved. And if Wallander, despite his exhaustion, had not picked up on a remark Nyberg made as he was on his way out of Wallander's office late one night, the opportunity might have slipped away.

It was nearly midnight on Wednesday and Wallander was poring over a resume Hoglund had drawn up on Harderberg's worldly possessions when Nyberg belted on the door. Nyberg was not a discreet person; he stamped down corridors and he belted on doors, as if he were about to make an arrest, when he visited his fellow officers. That night he had just completed the forensic lab's preliminary report on the mine in Mrs Duner's garden and the blowing up of Wallander's car.

"I thought you would want the results right away," he said after flopping down on one of Wallander's visitors' chairs.

"What have you got?" Wallander said, peering at Nyberg with red-rimmed eyes.

"Nothing," Nyberg said.

"Nothing?"

"You heard." Nyberg was irritated. "That's also a result. It's not possible to say for certain where the mine was manufactured. We think it might be from a factory in Belgium, a company called Poudreris Reunie de Belgique or however you pronounce it. The explosive used suggests that. And we didn't find any splinters, which means that the force of the mine was upwards. That also suggests Belgian in origin. But it could also have been from somewhere else entirely. As for your car, we can't say definitely that there was explosive material in your petrol tank. In other words we can't say anything at all for sure. So the result is nothing."

"I believe you," Wallander said, searching through his pile of papers for a note he had made about what he wanted to ask Nyberg.