The Man Who Smiled

Chapter 13

At around noon on Monday, November 22, Kurt Wallander got into the police car that was still doing service as a temporary replacement for his own burned-out wreck and set off west from Ystad. He was heading for the stables next to the ruins of Stjärnsund Castle where Sten Widén ran his business. When he reached the top of the hill outside Ystad he turned off onto the side of the road, cut the engine, and stared out to the sea. On the far horizon he could just dimly see the outline of a cargo vessel sailing out into the Baltic. All of a sudden he was overcome by a fit of dizziness. He was terrified that it was his heart, but then he realized it was something else, that he seemed to be about to faint. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and tried not to think. After a minute or so he opened his eyes. The sea was still there and the cargo vessel was still sailing out to the east.

I’m tired, he thought. Despite having rested all weekend. The feeling of exhaustion goes deep, deep down, I’m only half aware of the causes, and there is probably nothing I can do about it. Not now that I’ve made up my mind to return to work. The beach on Jutland no longer exists as far as I’m concerned. I renounced it of my own free will.

He did not know how long he sat there, but when he began to feel cold he started the engine and drove on. He would have preferred to go home and disappear into the security of his apartment, but he forced himself to continue. He turned off toward Stjärnsund. After about a kilometer the road deteriorated badly. As always when he visited Widén, he wondered how big horseboxes could negotiate such a poorly maintained track.

The path sloped steeply toward the extensive farm with row upon row of stable blocks. He drove down into the yard and switched off the engine. A flock of crows were screeching in a nearby tree.

He got out of the car and headed toward the red-brick building Widén used as a combined home and office. The door was ajar, and he could hear Widén talking on the phone. He knocked and went in. As usual it was untidy and smelled strongly of horses. Two cats were lying asleep on the unmade bed. Wallander wondered how his friend could put up with living like this year after year.

The man who nodded to him as he came in without interrupting his telephone call was thin, with tousled hair and an angry red patch of eczema on his chin. He looked just as he had fifteen years ago. In those days they had seen a lot of each other. Widén had dreamed then of becoming an opera singer. He had a fine tenor voice, and they had planned a future with Wallander acting as his impresario. But the dream had collapsed or, rather, faded away; Wallander had become a police officer and Widén had inherited his father’s business, training race-horses. They had drifted apart, without either of them really knowing why, and it was not until the early 1990s, in connection with a lengthy and complicated murder case, that they had come into contact again.

There was a time when he was my best friend, Wallander thought. I haven’t had another one since then. Perhaps he will always be the only best friend I ever had.

Widén finished his call and slammed the receiver down.

“What a bastard!” he snarled.

“A horse owner?” Wallander said.

“A crook,” Widén said. “I bought a horse from him a month ago. He has some stables over at Höör. I was going to collect it, but he’s changed his mind. The bastard.”

“If you’ve paid for the horse, there’s not much he can do about it,” Wallander said.

“Only a deposit,” Widén said. “But I’m going to get that horse no matter what he says.”

Widén disappeared into the kitchen. When he came back Wallander could smell alcohol on his breath.

“You always come when I’m not expecting you,” Widén said. “Would you like some coffee?”

Wallander accepted the offer and they went out to the kitchen. Widén shifted piles of old racing programs to one side, exposing a small patch of plastic tablecloth.

“How about a drop of something stronger?” he asked, as he started making the coffee.

“I’m driving,” Wallander said. “How’s it going with the horses?”

“It hasn’t been a good year. And next year’s not going to be any better. There isn’t enough money in circulation. Fewer horses. I keep having to raise my training fees to make ends meet. What I’d really like to do is close down and sell everything, but property prices are too low. In other words, I’m stuck in the Scanian mud.”

He poured the coffee and sat down. Wallander noticed Widén’s hand shaking as he reached for the cup. He’s well on his way to drinking himself to death, he thought. I’ve never seen his hand shake like that in the middle of the day.

“What about you?” Widén asked. “What are you doing nowadays? Are you still on sick leave?”

“No, I’m back at work. A police officer again.”

Widén looked bemused. “I didn’t think so,” he said.

“Didn’t think what?”

“That you’d go back.”

“What else could I do?”

“You were talking about getting a job with a security company. Or becoming head of security for some firm.”

“I’ll never be anything but a police officer.”

“No,” Widén agreed, “and I don’t suppose I’ll ever get away from these stables. That horse I’ve bought in Höör is a good one, by the way. Out of Queen Blue. Nothing wrong with its pedigree.”

A girl rode past the window on horseback.

“How many staff have you got?”

“Three. But I can’t afford more than two. I really need four.”

“That’s why I’m here, actually,” Wallander said.

“Don’t tell me you want a job as a stable boy,” Widén said. “I don’t think you’ve got the necessary qualifications.”

“I’m sure I don’t,” Wallander said. “Let me explain.”

Wallander could see no reason why he shouldn’t explain about Alfred Harderberg; he knew Widén would never breathe a word to anybody else.

“It’s not my idea,” Wallander said. “We’ve recently acquired a new woman police officer in Ystad. She’s good. She was the one who saw the ad and told me about it.”

“You mean I should send one of my girls to Farnholm Castle, is that it?” Widén said. “As a sort of spy? You must be out of your mind.”

“Murder is murder,” Wallander said. “The castle is impenetrable. This ad gives us an opportunity to get in. You say you have one girl too many.”

“I said I had one too few.”

“She can’t be stupid,” Wallander said. “She has to be wide awake and notice things.”

“I have a girl who would fit the bill,” Widén said. “She’s sharp, and nothing scares her. But there is a problem.”

“What’s that?”

“She doesn’t like the police.”

“Why is that?”

“You know that I often employ girls who’ve gone off the rails a little bit. Over the years I’ve found them to be pretty good. I cooperate with a youth employment agency in Malmö. I have a girl from there at the moment, nineteen years old. Name’s Sofia. She was the one riding past the window just now.”

“We don’t need to mention the police,” Wallander said. “We can think up some reason why you need to keep an eye on what’s cooking at the castle. Then you can pass on to me what she tells you.”

“Only if I must,” Widén said. “I’d rather not get involved. All right, we don’t need to tell her you’re a police officer. You’re just somebody who wants to know what’s going on there. If I say you’re OK, she’ll take my word for it.”

“We can try,” Wallander said.

“She hasn’t got the job yet,” Widén said. “I expect there will be lots of horsey girls interested in a job at the castle.”

“Go and get her,” Wallander said. “Don’t tell her my name.”

“What the hell shall I call you, then?”

Wallander thought for a moment. “Roger Lundin,” he said.

“Who’s he?”

“From now on it’s me.”

Widén shook his head. “I hope you’re right about this,” he said. “I’ll go and get her.”

Sofia proved to be thin and leggy with a mop of unkempt hair. She came into the kitchen, nodded casually in Wallander’s direction, then sat down and drank what remained of the coffee in Widén’s cup. Wallander wondered if she was one of the girls who shared his bed. He knew from the past that Widén often had affairs with the girls who worked for him.

“You know I have to cut back here,” Widén said. “But we’ve heard about a job that might suit you at a castle over at Österlen. If you take the job, or rather get it, things might pick up here later, and I promise to take you back if they do.”

“What sort of horses are they?” she asked.

Widén looked at Wallander, who could only shrug his shoulders.

“I don’t suppose they’ll be Ardennes,” Widén said. “What the hell does it matter? It’s only going to be temporary. Besides, you’d be helping Roger here, who’s a friend of mine. He’d like you to keep your eyes peeled and see what goes on there at the castle. Nothing special, just keeping your eyes open.”

“What’s the money like?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” Wallander said.

“It’s a castle, for God’s sake,” Widén said. “Stop being awkward.”

He disappeared into the living room and came back with the paper. Wallander found the ad.

“Interview,” he said. “Applicants should phone first.”

“We can fix that,” Widén said. “I’ll drive you there tonight.”

She suddenly looked up from the plastic tablecloth and stared Wallander in the eye.

“What sort of horses are they?” she asked.

“I really have no idea,” Wallander said.

She cocked her head to one side. “I think you’re the police,” she said.

“What on earth makes you think that?” Wallander said, astonished.

“I can feel it.”

Widén interrupted her. “His name’s Roger. That’s all you need to know. Don’t ask so many goddamn stupid questions. Try to look relatively respectable when we go there tonight. Wash your hair, for instance. And don’t forget that Winter’s Moon needs a bandage on her left hind leg.”

She left the kitchen without another word.

“You can see for yourself,” Widén said. “She’s nobody’s fool.”

“Thanks for your help,” Wallander said. “Let’s hope she pulls it off.”

“I’ll drive her over. That’s the best I can do.”

“Call me at home,” Wallander said. “I need to know right away if she gets the job.”

They went out to Wallander’s car.

“I sometimes feel so goddamned tired of this whole business,” Widén said.

“It would be nice if we could have our time over again,” Wallander said.

“I sometimes say to myself, is that all it was? Life, that is. A few arias, tons of third-rate horses, constant money problems.”

“Come on, it’s not all that bad, is it?”

“Convince me.”

“We have a reason to meet more often now. We can talk about it.”

“She hasn’t got the job yet.”

“I know,” Wallander said. “Call me tonight.”

He got into his car, nodded to Widén, and drove off. It was still early in the day. He made up his mind to pay another visit.

Half an hour later he parked in a no-parking area in the narrow street behind the Continental Hotel and walked to Mrs. Dunér’s little pink house. He was surprised to see no sign of a police car in the vicinity. What had happened to the protection Mrs. Dunér was supposed to be receiving? He grew annoyed and worried at the same time. He rang the doorbell. He would get after Björk immediately.

The door opened a fraction, but when Mrs. Dunér saw who it was, she seemed genuinely pleased.

“I apologize for not having phoned in advance,” he said.

“It’s always a pleasure to welcome Inspector Wallander,” she said.

He accepted her offer of a cup of coffee, even though he knew he had drunk too much coffee already. While she was busy in the kitchen Wallander took another look at her back garden. The lawn had been repaired. He wondered if she was expecting the police to provide her with another phone directory.

In this investigation everything seems to have happened a long time ago, he thought, and yet it’s only been a few days since I threw the directory at the lawn and watched the garden explode.

She brought in the coffee, and he sat on the flower-patterned sofa.

“I didn’t see a police car outside when I arrived,” he said.

“Sometimes they’re here, sometimes they’re not,” Mrs. Dunér said.

“I’ll look into it,” Wallander promised.

“Is it really necessary?” she said. “Do you really think somebody is trying to harm me?”

“You know what happened to your employers. I don’t believe anything else is going to happen, but we have to take all the precautions we can.”

“I wish I could make sense of it all,” she said.

“That’s why I’m here,” Wallander said. “You’ve had time to do some thinking. Often one needs to let a little time pass before things become clear, to let your memory warm up.”

“I have tried. Day and night.”

“Let’s go back a few years,” Wallander said. “To when Gustaf Torstensson was first offered the opportunity to work for Alfred Harderberg. Did you ever meet him?”

“No, never.”

“You spoke to him on the phone?”

“Not even that. It was always one of the secretaries who called.”

“It must have been a big deal for the firm to get a client like that.”

“Oh yes, of course. We began to earn much more money than we ever had before. We were able to renovate the whole building.”

“Even if you never met or spoke to Harderberg, you must have formed some idea of what he was like. I know you have a good memory.”

She thought before answering. Wallander watched a magpie hopping around the garden while he waited.

“Everything was always urgent,” she said. “Whenever he called Mr. Torstensson, everything else had to be put to aside.”

“Mr. Torstensson must have discussed his client now and then,” he said. “Told you about his visits to the castle.”

“I think he was very impressed. And also fearful of making a mistake. That was very important. I remember him saying several times that mistakes were forbidden.”

“What do you think he meant by that?”

“That if that happened Harderberg would go to another law firm.”

“Weren’t you curious about Harderberg, and about the castle?”

“I wondered what it was like, of course. But he never said much. He was impressed, but reticent. I remember he once said that Sweden should be grateful for all the things D.r Harderberg was doing.”

“He never said anything negative about him?”

“Yes, he did, actually. I remember because it only happened once.”

“What did he say?”

“I can tell you word for word. He said: ‘Dr. Harderberg has a macabre sense of humor.’”

“What do you suppose he meant by that?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask, and he didn’t explain.”

“When was this?”

“About a year ago.”

“In what context did he say it?”

“He had just come back from Farnholm Castle. One of the regular meetings. I don’t remember it being anything out of the ordinary.”

Wallander could see he wasn’t going to get any further on that tack.

“Let’s talk about something completely different,” he said. “When a lawyer’s working, there’s always a lot of paper around. But we hear from the representatives of the Bar Council that there’s very little in the files concerning the work Mr. Torstensson did for Harderberg.”

“I was expecting that question,” she said. “There were very special routines as far as work for Dr. Harderberg was concerned. The only documents kept were the ones a lawyer regards as essential. We had strict instructions not to copy or save anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Mr. Torstensson took all the documents he worked on back to Farnholm Castle. That’s why there’s so little in the archives.”

“That must have seemed very odd to you.”

“The reason given was that Dr. Harderberg’s affairs were extremely sensitive. I had no reason not to accept that, so long as no rules were broken.”

“I understand that Mr. Torstensson gave financial advice,” Wallander said. “Can you remember any details?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” she said. “They were complicated agreements between banks and companies in all four corners of the world. It was generally one of Dr. Harderberg’s secretaries who typed the documents. I was only rarely asked to type anything Mr. Torstensson was going to take to Dr. Harderberg. He typed up quite a lot of things himself.”

“But he didn’t do that for other clients?”

“Never.”

“How would you explain that?”

“I assumed they were so sensitive that not even I was allowed to see them,” she said frankly.

Wallander declined the offer of a coffee refill.

“Can you remember noticing any mention of a company called Avanca in any of the documents you saw?”

He could see she was trying hard to remember.

“No,” she said. “It’s possible I saw it, but I don’t remember it.”

“Just one more question,” he said. “Did you know about the threatening letters the firm received?”

“Gustaf Torstensson showed them to me,” she said. “But he said they were nothing to worry about. That’s why they weren’t put in the archives. I thought he had thrown them away.”

“Did you know that the man who wrote them, Lars Borman, was a friend of Gustaf Torstensson?”

“No, and I am surprised to hear it.”

“They met through an icons club or society.”

“I knew about the club, but I did not know that the man who wrote those letters was a member.”

Wallander put down his coffee cup. “I won’t disturb you any longer,” he said, rising to his feet.

She remained seated, staring at him. “Don’t you have any news at all to tell me?” she said.

“We don’t know yet who committed the murders,” Wallander said. “Nor do we know why they did it. When we know that, we’ll know why somebody planted a mine in your garden.”

She stood up and took hold of his arm. “You have to catch them,” she said.

“Yes,” Wallander said. “But it could take time.”

“I have to know what happened before I die.”

“As soon as there is anything to tell you, I’ll be in touch right away,” he said, knowing that this could not have sounded very satisfactory to her ears.

Wallander drove to the police station and was told that Björk was in Malmö. So he went to Svedberg and asked him to find out why there was no proper protection at Mrs. Dunér’s house.

“Do you really think she’s at risk?” Svedberg said.

“I don’t think anything,” Wallander said. “But more than enough has happened already.”

Svedberg handed him a note. “There was a call from somebody called Lisbeth Norin,” he said. “You can reach her at this number. She’ll be there until five.”

It was a number in Malmö, not Gothenburg. Wallander went to his office and dialed the number. An old man’s voice answered. After a pause Lisbeth Norin came to the phone, and Wallander introduced himself.

“I happen to be in Malmö for a few days,” she said. “I’m visiting my father, he’s broken his femur. I checked my answering machine and heard you’d been trying to reach me.”

“Yes, I’d be grateful for a word with you,” Wallander said. “Preferably not over the phone.”

“What’s it about?”

“I have some questions in connection with a case we’re investigating at the moment,” Wallander said. “I heard about you from a Dr. Strömberg in Lund.”

“I have some free time tomorrow,” she said. “But it will have to be here in Malmö.”

“I’ll drive over,” Wallander said. “Would ten a.m. suit you?”

“That will be fine.”

She gave him the address in central Malmö.

Wallander wondered how an old man with a broken femur could answer the phone. Then he realized he was extremely hungry. It was already late in the afternoon. He decided to work at home. He had a lot of material on Harderberg’s business empire that he had not yet read. He found a plastic shopping bag in a drawer and filled it with files. He told Ebba that he would be working at home for the rest of the day.

He stopped at a grocery store and bought some food, and went into a tobacconist’s to buy five lottery scratch cards. When he got home he cooked himself some blood sausages and had a beer with it. He looked in vain for the jar of lingonberry jam he thought he had. Then he did the dishes and checked his lottery cards. No luck. He decided he had had enough coffee for one day and lay on his unmade bed for a short rest before starting to go through the files.

He was woken up by the telephone ringing. He looked at the clock by his bed. It was 9:10 p.m.

He picked up the phone and recognized Widén’s voice.

“I’m calling from a phone booth,” he said. “I thought you’d like to know that Sofia got the job. She starts tomorrow.”

Wallander was wide awake immediately.

“Good,” he said. “Who gave her the job?”

“A woman called Karlén.”

Wallander recalled his first visit to Farnholm Castle. “Anita Karlén,” he said.

“A couple of cobs,” Widén said. “Very valuable. That’s what she’ll be looking after. Nothing wrong with the wages either. The stables are small, but there’s a one-room apartment attached. I think Sofia has a much higher opinion of you now that she has this opportunity.”

“That’s good,” Wallander said.

“She’s going to phone me in a few days’ time. Just one problem: I can’t remember your name.”

Wallander also had to think hard before remembering. “Roger Lundin,” he said.

“I’ll write it down.”

“I’d better do the same. Incidentally, better if she doesn’t phone from the castle, tell her to use a pay phone the same as you’re doing.”

“There’s a telephone in her apartment. Why shouldn’t she use that?”

“It could be bugged.”

Wallander could hear Widén taking a deep breath at the other end of the line.

“I think you’re out of your mind.”

“I ought to be careful with my own phone, in fact,” Wallander said. “But we keep a regular check on our police lines.”

“Who is this Harderberg? A monster?”

“He’s a friendly, suntanned man who’s always smiling,” Wallander said. “He’s also elegantly dressed. There are lots of ways a monster can look.”

Beeps were sounding at the other end of the line. “I’ll call you,” Widén said, then he was cut off.

Wallander wondered if he should phone Höglund and tell her what had happened, but decided not to. It was getting late. He spent the rest of the evening poring over the contents of the plastic shopping bag. At midnight he took out his old school atlas and looked up some of the exotic places the tentacles of Harderberg’s empire reached. It was clear that it was a huge operation. Wallander also had a nagging worry that he was pointing the investigation and his colleagues in the wrong direction. Perhaps there was another solution to the deaths of the two lawyers after all.

It was 1 a.m. by the time he went to bed. It struck him that it was a long time since Linda had been in touch. On the other hand, he should have phoned her ages ago.

Tuesday, November 23 was a fine, clear autumn day.

He had taken the liberty of staying in that morning. He had phoned the station a little before 8:00 and told them he was going to Malmö. He had made coffee and stayed in bed for another hour. Then he had taken a quick shower and set off. The address Norin had given him was near the Triangle in the center of the city. He left his car in the multistory parking garage behind the Sheraton Hotel, and rang the doorbell at exactly 10:00. A woman of about his own age answered. She was wearing a brightly colored tracksuit, and he wondered if he was at the wrong address. She did not fit the image he had of her after hearing her voice on the telephone, nor did it correspond to the general and no doubt prejudiced idea he had of journalists.

“So you’re the police officer,” she said cheerfully. “I’d expected a man in uniform.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Wallander said.

She invited him in. It was an old apartment with high ceilings. She introduced him to her father, who was sitting in a chair with his leg in a cast. Wallander noticed the cordless telephone on his knee.

“I recognize you,” the man said. “There was a lot about you in the newspapers a year or so ago. Or am I mixing you up with somebody else?”

“No, that was probably me,” Wallander said.

“And something to do with a burning car on Öland Bridge,” the man said. “I remember it because I used to be a sailor before the bridge was built, getting in the way of the ships.”

“Newspapers exaggerate things,” Wallander said.

“I remember you were described as an exceptionally successful police officer.”

“That’s right,” the daughter said. “Now you mention it, I recognize Inspector Wallander from the photos in the papers. Weren’t you on some television talk show too?”

“You must be mixing me up with somebody else.”

“Let’s go and sit in the kitchen,” she said.

The autumn sun was shining through the high window. A cat was curled up asleep among the plant pots. He accepted the offer of a cup of coffee, and sat down.

“My questions are not going to be very precise,” Wallander said. “Your answers are likely to be far more interesting. Let me just say that the Ystad police are currently investigating a murder, possibly two murders, and there are certain indications to suggest that the transportation and illegal selling of body organs might be involved. I can’t say for certain if that is the case, and I’m afraid I can’t go into any more detail for technical reasons associated with the case.”

Why can’t I express myself more simply? he wondered, crossly. I speak like a parody of a police officer. I sound like a machine.

“I see why Lasse Strömberg gave you my name,” she said, and Wallander could tell that her interest had been aroused.

“If I understand correctly you’re doing work on this horrific traffic,” he said. “It would be a big help to me if you could give me an overview.”

“It would take all day to do that,” she said. “Possibly all night as well. Besides, you’d soon find there was an invisible question mark behind every word I said. It’s a gruesome activity that practically nobody has dared to look into, apart from a handful of American journalists. I’m probably the only journalist in Scandinavia who’s started digging into it.”

“I take it that’s a pretty risky business.”

“Maybe not here, and maybe not for me,” she said. “But I know personally one of the American journalists involved, Gary Becker from Minneapolis. He went to Brazil to look into rumors about a gang said to be operating in São Paulo. He wasn’t just threatened—one night when his taxi stopped outside his hotel someone fired a whole magazine at it. He booked the next flight and got the hell out of there.”

“Have you come across any suggestion that Swedes could be involved in the trafficking?”

“No. Should I have?”

“I was only asking,” Wallander said.

She studied him without speaking, then leaned across the table toward him. “If you and I are going to have a conversation, you have to be honest with me,” she said. “Don’t forget that I’m a journalist. You don’t have to pay for this visit because you’re a police officer, but the least I can ask is that you tell me the truth.”

“You’re right,” Wallander said. “There is a slight possibility that there might be a connection. That’s the nearest I can get to telling you the truth.”

“OK,” she said. “Now we understand each other. But I want just one more thing from you. If in fact there does turn out to be a connection, I want to be the first journalist who knows about it.”

“I can’t promise you that,” Wallander said. “It’s against our regulations.”

“No doubt it is. But killing people to take their body parts goes against something much more important than regulations.”

Wallander considered what she had said. He was citing regulations that he had long since ceased to observe uncritically himself. In recent years his experiences as a police officer had taken place in a no-man’s-land where any good he might have been able to do had always involved his having to decide which regulations to abide by, and which not. Why should he change now?

“You’ll be the first to know,” he said. “But you’d better not quote me. I’ll have to remain anonymous.”

“That’s good,” she said again. “Now we understand each other even better.”

When Wallander looked back over all the hours he spent in that hushed kitchen, with the cat asleep among the potted plants and the rays of the sun moving slowly over the plastic tablecloth before disappearing altogether, he was surprised at how quickly the time had passed. They had started talking at 10 a.m. and it was evening by the time they finished. They had taken a few breaks, she had prepared lunch for him, and her father had entertained Wallander with stories about his life as captain of various ships plying the Baltic coast, with occasional voyages to Poland and the Baltic States. Otherwise they had been alone in the kitchen, and she had talked about her research. Wallander envied her. They both worked on investigations, they both spent their time constantly running up against crime and human suffering. The difference was that she was trying to expose crime to prevent it happening, while Wallander was always occupied in clearing up crimes that had already been committed.

What he remembered most from his time in that kitchen was a journey into an unimagined world where human beings and body parts had been reduced to market commodities, with no sign of any moral consideration. If she was correct in her assumptions, the trade in body parts was so vast that it was almost beyond comprehension. What shook him most, however, was her claim that she could understand the people who killed healthy human beings in order to sell parts of their bodies.

“It’s a reflection of the world,” she said. “This is how things are, whether we like it or not. When a person is sufficiently poor, he’s ready to do anything at all to keep body and soul together, no matter how squalid his life might be. How can we presume to make moral judgments about what they do? When their circumstances are so far beyond our understanding? In the slums on the edge of cities like Rio or Lagos or Calcutta or Madras, you can hold up thirty dollars and announce that you want to meet somebody who’s prepared to kill another human being. Within a minute you have a line of willing assassins. And they don’t ask who they’re going to be required to kill, nor do they wonder why. And they’re prepared to do it for twenty dollars. Maybe even ten. I’m aware of a sort of abyss in the middle of what I’m working on. I get shocked, I feel desperate, but as long as the world continues as it is, I recognize that everything I do could be regarded as meaningless.”

Wallander had sat in silence for most of the time. From time to time he asked a question to better understand what she was saying. But he could see that she really was trying to pass on everything she knew—or suspected, because there was so little anybody could be 100 percent certain about.

And then, hours later, they had come to a stop.

“I don’t know any more,” she said. “But if what I’ve said is of help to you, I’m glad of it.”

“I don’t even know if I’m on the right track,” Wallander said. “But if I am, I know we’ve identified a Swedish link to this abominable trade. And if we can put a stop to it, that surely has to be a good thing.”

“Of course it does,” she said. “One less plundered corpse in a South American ditch—that makes it all worthwhile.”

It was almost 7 p.m. by the time Wallander left Malmö. He knew he should have phoned Ystad and told them what he was doing, but he had been too taken up by his conversation with Norin.

She had accompanied him to the car park, where they had said their good-byes.

“You’ve given me an awful lot to think about,” Wallander said. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“Who knows,” she said, “perhaps I’ll get payment in kind one of these days.”

“You’ll be hearing from me.”

“I’m counting on that. You’ll normally find me in Gothenburg. Unless I’m traveling.”

Wallander stopped at a bar and grill near Jägersro for something to eat. He was thinking all the time about what she had told him, and how he could fit Harderberg into that picture. But he couldn’t.

He wondered if they would ever find an answer to the question of why the two lawyers had been killed. In all his years as a police officer, he had so far been spared the experience of being involved in an unsolved murder case. Was he now standing outside a door that would never open?

He drove home to Ystad that evening feeling the weariness seep through his body. The only thing he had to look forward to was calling Linda when he got in.

But the moment Wallander stepped into his apartment he knew that something was not as it had been when he left that morning. He paused in the hall, listening intently. Maybe it was his imagination. Yet the feeling would not go away. He switched on the light in the living room, sat down on a chair, and looked around him. Nothing was missing, nothing seemed to have been moved. He went into the bedroom. The unmade bed was exactly as he had left it. The half-empty coffee cup was still on his bedside table next to the alarm clock. He went into the kitchen.

Only when he opened the refrigerator to get out the margarine and a piece of cheese was he sure that he was right. He looked hard at the open package of blood sausages. He had an almost photographic memory and he knew he had put it on the third of the four shelves. It was on the second shelf now.

The package of blood sausages had been at the very edge and could easily have fallen out onto the floor—it had happened to him before. Then somebody had put it back on the wrong shelf.

He had no doubt at all that he remembered it correctly. Somebody had been in his apartment during the day. And whoever had been there had opened his refrigerator, either to look for something or to hide something.

His first reaction was to laugh. Then he closed the fridge door and walked quickly out of the apartment. He was scared. He had to force himself to think clearly. They’re not far away, he thought. I’ll let them think I’m still in the apartment.

He went downstairs to the basement. There was a door at the back leading to the garbage. He unlocked and opened it. He looked out at the parking places lined up along the back of the building. There was no one around. He closed the door behind him and edged his way through the shadows along the wall. When he came to where it opened out onto Mariagatan, he kneeled down and peered at waist height from behind the drainpipe.

The car was parked about ten meters behind his own. The engine was not running and the lights were off. He could make out a man behind the wheel, but could not be sure if there was anybody else in the car.

He pulled back his head and stood up. From somewhere he could hear the sound of a TV set. He wondered feverishly what to do next. Then he made up his mind.

He started running across the empty car park, turned left at the first corner and was gone.