The Man Who Smiled

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 fifty.

It had all started on the Friday night, when Höglund 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 center stage of the murder investigation. Wallander would afterward agonize about not having suspected Harderberg much earlier. He would never find a satisfactory answer 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 Björk insisted on it, with some support from Åkeson, 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 Malmöhus County Council had been subjected and which had been hushed up and quietly buried. On the night of Friday, November 5, Wallander and Höglund 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, around 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 lawyers 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, regardless 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 Höglund that Friday night at the police station. “What we do have is a link, a connection. We shall investigate it. And we’ll put out all the stops to do that. 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 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 share-holding in an apparently fraudulent investment company that 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 in the clear. If that’s what they were trying to do.”

“This country is also awash with sacred cows,” Höglund said. “Such as the idea that we don’t need to chase criminals with names that tell us they come from noble families, and who belong to some ancient line in Skåne with a family castle to maintain. We would rather not haul them into the courts when they’ve been caught red-handed.”

“I’ve never thought like that,” Wallander said, realizing 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 Höglund 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 Höglund 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 worldview, 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 Höglund could just as easily have been said by Martinsson. Or Svedberg. Even Hanson, for all his nonstop continuing 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 Höglund, who was too self-confident, 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, Harderberg the enthusiastic restorer of old Öland 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 snot-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. Dunér’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 takes the 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 Björk go along with it? What will Mr. Åkeson 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 possesses an attribute that 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 grab 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 circles under her eyes.

They went through Wallander’s pronouncements once again. All the time Höglund 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 will be any number of objections, but I’ll talk to Björk and Åkeson 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 the police academy to reach that conclusion,” Wallander said. “Björk 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 pieces 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 good night and drove home in their own cars. Wallander kept an eye on the rearview 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 Björk at 7:00. His wife answered, and asked Wallander to try again a few minutes later because her husband was taking a bath. Wallander used the time to phone Åkeson, who he knew was an early riser and generally up and about by 5:00. Åkeson picked up the phone immediately. Wallander briefly summarized what had happened, and why Harderberg had become relevant to the investigation in quite a new light. Åkeson 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 have 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 see what Åkeson meant. The unsolved assassination of the Swedish prime minister, a mystery now almost 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 a scandalous fashion by a district police chief who had put himself in charge despite 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 swept under the rug 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 Åkeson: an investigation had to be more or less concluded before the police had the green light to put all their eggs in 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,” Åkeson said. “I was supposed to be playing golf today. Of course, 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,” Åkeson said in a low voice.

After that call, Wallander drank another cup of coffee and then called Björk 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 Björk. 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 happened?” Björk said.

“I’d just as soon not discuss it over the phone,” Wallander said.

“You’re not suggesting our phones are being tapped, I hope?” Björk 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 Åkeson 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,” Björk 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,” Björk 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 Björk, Wallander sat in his car outside the police station for a few minutes, gathering his thoughts. He considered canceling the whole thing; perhaps there were more important things to do; but then he acknowledged that he had to make it clear to Björk 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 good-bye forever 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 Björk’s office and sat on his visitors’ sofa.

“What on earth has happened?” Björk said.

“There’s something I must say before we go into the meeting,” Wallander said, and realized his voice sounded hesitant.

“Don’t tell me you’ve decided to resign again,” Björk said, looking worried.

“No,” Wallander said. “I have to know why you called 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 called.”

Wallander could see Björk was offended and annoyed.

“Alfred Harderberg is an important man in our society,” Björk said. “He’s not suspected of any criminal activity. It was purely politeness on my part. May 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,” Björk said. “Given the circumstances.”

“But it was inappropriate even so,” Wallander said. “Inappropriate in more ways than one. And besides, this kind of thing 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,” Björk 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.”

Björk rose to his feet. “I will not allow myself to be addressed in that manner,” he said, getting 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, realizing he was not going to get any further. The important thing now was to explain to Björk as quickly as possible how the whole situation had changed.

Björk 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 suggesting that Alfred Harderberg could be behind everything that’s happened,” Wallander said. “That would of course imply that the circumstances have changed quite dramatically.”

Björk 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 lawyers. And the attempted murder of Mrs. Dunér. And the destruction of my car.”

Björk stared at him in disbelief. “Am I really expected to take that seriously?”

“Yes, you are,” Wallander said. “Åkeson does.”

Wallander gave Björk a brisk summary of what had happened. When he had finished, Björk 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,” Björk 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,” Björk 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 Björk’s office. He fetched a cup of coffee and dropped by Höglund’s office, but she had not yet arrived. He went to his office to telephone Waldemar Kåge, the taxi driver in Simrishamn. He got through to him on his cell phone and explained what it was about. He made a note that he should send Kåge a check 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 gray day, very cold and damp. Late autumn already, winter just around 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 Höglund 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. Björk was already at the short end of the table, Åkeson was standing by the window, looking out, and Martinsson and Svedberg were deep in conversation about what sounded to Wallander like salaries. Höglund was in her usual place opposite Björk at the other short end of the table. Neither Martinsson nor Svedberg seemed to be worried by Åkeson being there.

Wallander said good morning to Höglund. “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 Björk and Åkeson?”

“Åkeson knows most of what happened,” he said. “I only had time to give Björk the short version.”

“What did Åkeson say?”

“He’ll go along with us.”

Björk 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,” Björk said. “Unless I am very 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 Höglund’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 twenty-five minutes—he asked Höglund if she had anything to add, but she shook her head: Wallander had said all there was to say.

“So, that’s as far as we’ve gotten,” Wallander said. “Because this means that we have no choice but to reassess our priorities for the investigation, we have Per here 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 getting across all the things he had wanted to. Höglund 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,” Åkeson 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 setup over which he has no control.”

“I’ve always dreamed of putting one of those gentlemen away,” Svedberg suddenly said.

“A totally regrettable attitude in a police officer,” Björk 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,” Åkeson 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 correct?” Wallander asked.

“On certain conditions,” Björk said. “I agree with Per that we have to be very careful and prudent, but I also want to stress that I will 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 authorized by me.”

“We gathered that,” said Martinsson, speaking for the first time. “I’m more concerned about figuring 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 Malmö? How are we going to cooperate with the tax authorities? I wonder if we should 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,” Åkeson said. “But at this stage, before we’ve even made an initial investigation, the fraud squads in Stockholm and Malmö would probably turn us down. I don’t know if you realize 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 Åkeson 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 centered on Harderberg and the links between him and Lars Borman and him and the dead lawyers. Wallander and his team would also be on their own. It was true that the Ystad police were always having to deal with various kinds of fraud cases, 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 realized that as he wrote to her in English, he would have to explain that hunting in Sweden was different from an English foxhunt. “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 henhouse would have been emptied long ago: 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. Björk removed the lid of the box where he generally kept overtime locked away. He urged everybody on, reminding them again that not a word of their activities must leak out. Åkeson 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 barely 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 mailed. 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 picked 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 lawyers, a mine in a garden, and some Far Eastern explosive mixture in his gas tank—that was just what he needed to bring him back into 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 Åkeson, who was rarely impressed by anything, had to tip his nonexistent 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 National Police Board 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 leads to a great waste of money and deteriorating clearance rates.”

“But we haven’t achieved any results at all yet,” Wallander said.

“I’m talking about the National Police Board,” Åkeson 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 lawyers. 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 Åkeson and Wallander stood outside the police station that night, on November 14 to be exact, they had gotten 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 organized 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 line 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 résumé Höglund had drawn up on Harderberg’s worldly possessions when Nyberg pounded on the door. Nyberg was not a discreet person; he stomped down hallways and he pounded 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. Dunér’s garden and the explosion of Wallander’s car.

“I thought you would want the results right away,” he said after flopping down in 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 Réunie 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 upward. 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 gas 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.

“And that Italian pistol, the Bernadelli, we don’t know any more about that either,” Nyberg said while Wallander made notes. “There’s no report of one having been stolen. All the people registered in Sweden as owning one have been able to produce it. Now it’s up to you and Per Åkeson to decide whether we should call them all in and give them a test firing.”

“Do you think that would be worth it?”

“Yes and no,” Nyberg said. “Personally, I think we ought to run a check on stolen Smith & Wessons first. That’ll take a few more days.”

“We’ll do as you suggest, then,” Wallander said, making a note. Then they continued going through Nyberg’s points.

“We didn’t find any fingerprints in the lawyers’ offices,” Nyberg said. “Whoever shot Sten Torstensson didn’t press his thumb helpfully on the windowpane. An inspection of the threatening letters from Lars Borman produced negative results as well. But we did establish that it was his handwriting. Svedberg has samples from both of his children.”

“What did they say about the language?” Wallander asked. “I forgot to ask Svedberg.”

“What do you mean, the language?”

“The letters were very oddly phrased.”

“I have a vague memory from one of our meetings that Svedberg said that Borman was aphasic.”

“Aphasic?” Wallander frowned. “I don’t remember hearing that.”

“Maybe you’d left the room to get more coffee?”

“Could be. I’ll talk to Svedberg. Do you have anything else?”

“I went to give Gustaf Torstensson’s car the once-over,” Nyberg said. “No fingerprints there either. I examined the ignition and the trunk, and I’ve spoken to the pathologist in Malmö. We’re almost certain that he didn’t get the fatal blow to the back of his head by hitting it against the car roof. There’s nothing anywhere in the bodywork that matches the wound. So it’s more probable that somebody hit him. He must have been outside the car when it happened. Unless there was somebody in the backseat.”

“I thought about that,” Wallander said. “The likelihood is that he stopped on the road and got out of the car. Somebody came up behind him and hit him. Then the accident was faked. But why did he stop in the fog? Why did he get out?”

“I couldn’t say,” Nyberg said.

Wallander put down his pen and leaned back in his chair. His back ached, and he needed to go home and get some sleep.

“The only thing of note we found in the car was a plastic container made in France,” Nyberg said.

“What was in it?”

“Nothing.”

“Why is it interesting, then?”

Nyberg shrugged and got up to leave. “I’ve seen a similar one before. Four years ago. When I was visiting the hospital in Lund.”

“The hospital?”

“I have a good memory. It was identical.”

“What was it used for?”

Nyberg was already at the door. “How should I know?” he said. “But the container we found in Torstensson’s car was chemically clean. Only a container that’s never contained anything could be as clean as that one.”

Nyberg left. Wallander could hear him stomping down the hallway.

Then he pushed the heap of paper to one side and stood up to go home. He put on his jacket, then paused. There was something Nyberg had said. Just before he left the room. Something about the plastic container.

Then it came to him, and he sat down again.

There’s something funny there, he thought. Why would there be a plastic container that has never been used in Torstensson’s car? An empty container, but evidently a very special one? There was only one possible answer.

When Torstensson left Farnholm Castle, the container had not been empty. There had been something in it. Which meant that this was not the same container. It had been exchanged for the other one. On the road in the fog. When Torstensson stopped and got out of his car. And was killed.

Wallander checked his watch. After midnight. He waited for a quarter of an hour, then he phoned Nyberg at home.

“What the hell do you want now?” Nyberg said as soon as he recognized Wallander’s voice.

“Get yourself over here,” Wallander said. “Now, right away.”

He expected Nyberg to explode in fury, but he said nothing, just put down the receiver.

At 12:40 a.m., Nyberg was back in Wallander’s office once again.