The Man Who Smiled

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 Malmö, 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 a liquor store, but in a public park in the center 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 visit the little studio that smelled of turpentine 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, 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 realized 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 money 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 chuck-ling 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 grown-up 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 trunk or onto the backseat. 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 once 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 money 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 laundry 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 trunk on all different kinds of cars). 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 backseat; the fantastic men even had a record player 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 merry-go-rounds. It was a warm day in early summer, a gentle breeze was blowing in from the Sound, and he planned 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 merry-go-rounds 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 bills 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 merry-go-rounds and the rifle range suddenly lost all their attraction, and people started hurrying toward 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 realized 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 were dangling from his father’s arm, his nose was bleeding, and he was throwing punches left, right, and center. 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 being 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 turpentine 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 discolored. He stank of drink, a sort of stale oil smell, but the boy sat up and flung his arms around 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 won’t have them put my honor 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 slowly calmed down.

“Imagine 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, 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 making his never-changing pictures so that they had something to sell.

He thought about the painting in the apartment in Helsingborg, and about all the other apartments 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 Lundström was at his desk. He was due to retire and Wallander knew him to be 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 liquor store, but that’s about all I know.”

“Well, it was like this,” Lundström said with a friendly smile. “Your father drove up to the liquor store in a taxi at about four in the afternoon, went inside, took the ticket with his 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 clerk handled the whole thing really badly, apparently insisting that your father get a new number and start at the end of the line. 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 clerk 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?”

Lundström 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 assault. Unless you can work it out with the man he punched and the clerk. 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 from the store 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 hard on your poor father. You could try calling him. The number’s there. And Simrishamn Taxis are owed 230 kronor. In all the confusion, he never got around to paying. The driver’s name is Waldemar Kåge. I’ve talked to him. He knows he’ll get his money.”

Wallander took the sheet of paper and put it in his pocket. Then he motioned toward 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 line,” Lundström said.

“For Christ’s sake!”

Lundström 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 wiring,” Wallander said. “Anyway, it was an old piece of junk.”

“I’ll disappear for a few minutes,” Lundström said. “The door locks itself when you close it.”

“Thanks for your help,” Wallander said.

“What help?” Lundström 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 to make 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 take care of that 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 turnoff 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 almost twenty 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 did. But Anton’s dead. Drank himself to death. That must be nearly twenty-five years ago.”

“What were you doing at the liquor store?” 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 looking at what’s happened these last few years, that would have been to your advantage, of course.”

Wallander realized the best he could do was to change the subject. “It was a good thing you weren’t injured,” he said.

“You have to preserve your dignity,” his father said. “And your place in line. 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 afterward 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 thirty 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 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 apologized for not being able to join them for supper, blaming work. Instead, he went with his father to the studio, where they drank a cup of coffee that they made on the filthy hot plate.

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

“There have been quite a few over the years,” his father said.

“How many have you made?”

“I could add it up 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 parlor.”

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 well again, are you?” he said. “You’ve started work again. The last time you were here, before you went to that guesthouse at Skagen, you said you were going to quit being 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 arguing.

“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 talk you out of joining, and I still think you should be doing something else.”

“I don’t suppose I’ll ever stop,” Wallander said. “I’m nearing fifty. 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 good-bye 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 plan where they should go from there. He was keeping 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 still had the feeling that there was no time to spare, that the shadows behind the two dead lawyers 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 café? 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 summarize 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 scrutinized 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 reexamination, 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 ago that Gustaf Torstensson had died in the muddy field near Brösarp 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 nine millimeter 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 pistol is rather rare in Sweden. There are no more than fifty or so registered. Of course, nobody knows how many illegal ones there might be floating about, but an informed guess would be about thirty.”

“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 license plate on one of the cars that followed you was stolen,” Svedberg said. “From a Nissan in Malmö. Malmö 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 Ström,” 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 Ström 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.”

Björk spoke for the first time. “This sort of thing is deplorable. We can’t afford to have people like Ström in the force. What’s troubling 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 Björk’s outburst. He knew from experience the risk of being sidetracked into a discussion that had no direct bearing on the case.

“As for the explosion in your car,” Nyberg said, “we can be sure that the device was planted in your gas tank. I gather that this method of using the gas 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,” Björk 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 lawyers’ offices, Ann-Britt?”

“Nothing yet that could be considered significant,” Höglund said. “It will take us a long time 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 Åkeson,” Björk said. “He knows a lot about financial matters and crime. Then he can decide if he’s sufficiently on top of it 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,” Höglund 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 law firm. What upset Borman so much that he sent threatening letters to the Torstenssons and even involved Mrs. Dunér? 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 investigated,” Björk said. “I suggest we contact the fraud squad in Stockholm. Or maybe it would be better for Åkeson to do that. There are people there who know as much about the business world as the most skillful investment analysts.”

“I’ll speak to Per,” Wallander said.

They went backward and forward 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. Björk 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 lawyers murdered,” he said. “Plus Lars Borman’s suicide, if that is what it was. We have the mine in Mrs. Dunér’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 by himself. 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 Åkeson. 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 store 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 whiskey and settled in to watch a film on television. He went out to the hall and answered. It was Höglund.

“Am I disturbing you?” she said.

“Not in the least.”

“I’m at the station,” she said. “I think I’m onto something.”

Wallander did not hesitate. She would not have called if it hadn’t been very important. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said.

She was in the hallway, waiting for him.

“I need a cup of coffee,” she said. “There’s nobody in the canteen just now. Peters and Norén left a few minutes ago. There’s been an accident at the Bjäresjö 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 have them. Anyway, I told him about STRUFAB, Sisyphus, and Smeden. I gave him the names Fjällsjö and Holmberg. He called 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 anymore, 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 ask questions about Smeden because he was so irritated by everything about 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 shady 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 rumors 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,” Höglund 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.”

“Try guessing.”

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.