The Man Who Smiled

Chapter 14

He was gasping for breath before he had gotten as far as Blekegatan. Once more Wallander thought he was about to die. He had taken Oskarsgatan from Mariagatan, it was not very far, and he had not been running at full speed. Even so, the raw autumn air was tearing at his lungs and his pulse was racing. He forced himself to slow down, fearful that his heart would stop. The feeling of lacking the strength to do anything worried him more than the discovery that someone had been in his apartment and was now sitting in a car in the street, keeping watch over him. He struggled to suppress the thought, but what was upsetting him was really his fear, the fear he recognized so clearly from the previous year, and he did not want it back. It had taken him almost twelve months to shake it off, and he thought he had succeeded in burying it once and for all on the beaches at Skagen—but here it was, back to haunt him.

He started running again. It wasn’t far to the block of apartments on Lilla Norregatan where Svedberg lived. He had the hospital on his right, then he turned downhill toward the town center. A torn poster outside the kiosk on Stora Norregatan caught his eye, then he turned right and almost immediately left and could see that the lights were on in the top-floor apartment where Svedberg lived.

Wallander knew the lights were often on all night. Svedberg was afraid of the dark; indeed, that might have been why he chose to become a police officer, to try to cure his fear. But he still left the lights on in his apartment at night, so his career had not been any help.

Everyone is frightened of something, Wallander thought, police officers or not. He stumbled through the front door and ran up the stairs, then paused when he reached the top floor to get his breath back. He rang Svedberg’s bell. The door was opened almost immediately. Svedberg had a pair of reading glasses pushed on top of his head and was holding a newspaper. Wallander knew he would be surprised to see him. During all the years they had known each other, Wallander had only been in Svedberg’s apartment two or three times, and then only after making an arrangement to meet there.

“I need your help,” Wallander said when the astonished Svedberg had let him in and closed the door.

“You look shattered,” Svedberg said. “What’s happened?”

“I’ve been running. I want you to come with me. It won’t take long. Where’s your car?”

“It’s right outside the front door.”

“Drive me back to my place on Mariagatan,” Wallander said. “Let me get out shortly before we get there. You know the car I’m using at the moment, a police Volvo?”

“The dark blue one or the red one?”

“The dark blue one. Turn onto Mariagatan. There’s another car parked behind my Volvo, you can’t miss it. I want you to drive past and see whether there’s anybody in the car besides the driver. Then come back to where you’ve dropped me off. That’s all. Then you can go home to your paper.”

“You don’t want to arrest somebody?”

“That’s exactly the last thing I want to do. I just want to know how many people are in the car.”

Svedberg had taken off his glasses and put down the newspaper.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“I think somebody’s watching my apartment,” Wallander said. “I only want to know how many of them there are. That’s all. But I want whoever it is in the car to think I’m still in my apartment. I came out by the back door.”

“I’m not sure I understand all this. Wouldn’t it be best to make an arrest? We can ask for help.”

“You know what we’ve decided,” Wallander said. “If it has anything to do with Harderberg we should pretend we’re not very alert.”

Svedberg shook his head. “I don’t like this,” he said.

“All you need to do is to drive to Mariagatan and make an observation,” Wallander said. “Then I’ll go back to my apartment. I’ll phone you if I need help.”

“I suppose you know best,” Svedberg said, sitting on a stool in order to tie his shoelaces.

They went down to the street and got into Svedberg’s Audi, then drove past Stortorget, down Hamngatan, and left onto Österleden. When they got to Borgmästaregatan they turned left again. Wallander asked Svedberg to stop when they came to Tobaksgatan.

“I’ll wait here,” he said. “The car’s ten meters behind.”

Minutes later Svedberg was back. Wallander got into the car again.

“There was only the driver.”

“Thanks for your help. You can go home now. I’ll walk from here.”

Svedberg gave him a worried look. “Why is it so important to know how many there are in the car?” he asked.

Wallander had forgotten to prepare for that question. He was so focused on what he had decided to do that he had not taken Svedberg’s natural curiosity into account.

“I’ve seen that car before,” he lied. “There were two men in it then. If there’s only the driver in it now, it could mean the other man isn’t far away.”

This explanation was pretty feeble, but Svedberg raised no objections.

“FHC 803,” he said. “But I expect you’ve written that down already.”

“Yes,” Wallander said. “I’ll look it up in the register. You don’t need to worry about that. Just go home now. I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks for your help.”

He got out of the car and waited until Svedberg had disappeared down Österleden, then he started walking toward Mariagatan. Now that he was on his own again he could feel himself getting agitated, the nagging worry that his fear was making him weak.

He went in by the back door and left the stair lights off when he returned to his apartment. If he stood on tiptoe on the toilet seat and looked through the little bathroom window, he could see the street below. The car was still there. Wallander went to the kitchen. If they wanted to blow me up, they would have done that already, he thought. They must be waiting for me to go to bed, and for the lights to go out.

He waited until nearly midnight, then went back to the bathroom and checked to be sure the car was still there. Then he turned off the kitchen light and turned on the light in the bathroom. After ten minutes he turned off the bathroom light and switched on the light in the bedroom. He waited for ten more minutes, and turned off that light as well. Then he went rapidly down the stairs and left the building through the back door, crouched behind the drainpipe at the corner of the parking lot, and waited. He wished he had put on a warmer sweater. A cold wind was starting up. He cautiously moved his feet around in an attempt to keep warm. By 1 a.m. the only incident of note was that Wallander needed to urinate against the wall. Apart from the occasional car driving past, all was peaceful.

At about 1:40 he heard a noise from the street. He peered out from behind the drainpipe. The driver’s door had opened, although the interior light had not come on. After a few seconds’ pause the driver emerged and closed the door quietly behind him. He was staring up at Wallander’s windows all the time. He was wearing dark clothes, and Wallander was too far away to make out his features. Even so, he was sure he had seen the man before. He tried to remember where. The man hurried across the street and vanished through the front entrance.

Then it came to Wallander where he had seen him. He was one of the men lurking in the shadows at the foot of the stairs at Farnholm Castle on both occasions Wallander had been there. He was one of Harderberg’s shadows. And now he was on his way up the stairs to Wallander’s apartment, perhaps with the objective of killing him. Wallander felt almost as if he were lying in bed, in spite of being where he was, outside in the street, in the cold.

I am witnessing my own death, he thought.

He pressed himself tightly against the drainpipe and waited. At 2:03 the door opened without a sound and the man emerged again in the street. He looked around, and Wallander drew back behind the corner. Then he heard the car take off in a racing start.

He’s going to report to Harderberg, Wallander thought. But he’s not going to tell him the truth because he would not be able to explain how I could be in the apartment one minute, turn off the light and go to bed, and have disappeared the next.

Wallander could not exclude the possibility that the man had left some device in the apartment, so he got into his car and drove to the police station. The officers on duty greeted him in surprise when he appeared in reception. He picked up a mattress he knew was stored in the basement, then lay on the floor of his office. It was past 3:00, and he was worn out. He had to get some sleep if he was going to be able to think clearly, but the man in the dark clothes followed him into his dreams.

Wallander woke up covered in sweat after a series of chaotic nightmares. It was shortly after 5 a.m. He spent a while thinking about what Norin had told him, then he got up and went to fetch some coffee. It tasted bitter after sitting in the pot all night. He did not want to go back to his apartment yet. He took a shower in the changing room downstairs. By 7:00 he was back at his desk. It was Wednesday, November 24.

He recalled what Höglund had said a few days earlier: “We seem to have all the data, but we can’t see how it hangs together.” That’s what we must start doing now, Wallander thought. Make everything fit together. He phoned Nyberg at home. “We have to meet,” Wallander said.

“I tried to find you yesterday,” Nyberg said. “Nobody knew where you were. We have some news.”

“We? Who’s we?”

“Ann-Britt Höglund and I.”

“About Avanca?”

“I got her to help me. I’m a technician, not a detective.”

“I’ll see you in my office as soon as you can get here. I’ll phone Höglund.”

Half an hour later Nyberg and Höglund were sitting in Wallander’s office. Svedberg put his head in the door. “Do you need me?” he said.

“FHC 803. I haven’t gotten around to looking it up. Could you do that for me, please?”

Svedberg nodded and closed the door.

“Avanca,” Wallander said.

“Don’t expect too much,” Höglund said. “We’ve only had a day in which to look into the company and who owns it, but we’ve already established that it’s no longer a family business run by the Romans. The family let the company use their name—and their reputation—and they still have some shares, possibly quite big holdings. But for several years now Avanca has been part of a consortium comprising several different firms associated in some way or another with pharmaceuticals, health care, and hospital equipment. It’s incredibly complicated, and the firms all seem to be intertwined. The umbrella for the consortium is a holding company in Liechtenstein called Medicom. It in turn is divided up among several owning groups. They include a Brazilian company concerned mainly with producing and exporting coffee. But what’s much more interesting is that Medicom has direct financial links with Bayerische Hypotheken-und-Wechsel-Bank.”

“Why is that interesting?” Wallander said. He had already lost track of Avanca.

“Because Harderberg owns a plastics factory in Genoa,” she said. “They make speedboats.”

“I’m lost,” Wallander said.

“Here comes the punchline,” Höglund said. “The factory in Genoa is called CFP, whatever that stands for, and helps its customers to arrange funding by way of a sort of leasing contract.”

“Avanca, please,” Wallander said. “I couldn’t care less about Italian plastic boats just now.”

“Perhaps you should,” Höglund said. “CFP’s leasing contracts are drawn up in cooperation with Bayerische Hypotheken-und-Wechsel-Bank. In other words, there is a link with the Harderberg empire. The first one we’ve found since the investigation began.”

“I can’t make heads or tails of it,” Wallander said.

“There could be even closer links,” she said. “We’ll have to ask the fraud squad to help us with this. I hardly know what I’m doing myself.”

“This is impressive.” Nyberg had not said a word until now. “Maybe we should find out if that plastics factory in Genoa makes other things besides speedboats.”

“Such as coolers for transplant organs?” Wallander said.

“For instance.”

“If this turns out to be true,” Wallander said, “it means that Harderberg is in some degree involved in the manufacturing and importing of these plastic containers. He might even have control, even if at first glance it looks to be a maze of different but interconnected companies. Can it really be possible that a Brazilian coffee producer has links with a tiny firm in Södertälje?”

“That would be no more odd than the fact that American car manufacturers also make wheelchairs,” Höglund said. “Cars cause car accidents, which in turn creates a demand for wheelchairs.”

Wallander clapped his hands and stood up. “OK, let’s turn up the pressure on this investigation,” he said. “Ann-Britt, can you get the financial experts to draw up some kind of large-scale wall map showing what Harderberg’s holdings really look like? I want everything on it—speedboats in Genoa, cobs at Farnholm Castle, everything we’ve found out so far. And Nyberg, can you devote yourself to this plastic container? Where it comes from, how it got into Gustaf Torstensson’s car.”

“That would mean that we blow the plan we’ve been working with so far,” Höglund objected. “Harderberg’s bound to find out that we’re digging into his companies.”

“Not at all,” Wallander said. “It’s all a matter of routine questions. Nothing dramatic. Besides, I’ll talk to Björk and Åkeson and suggest it’s high time we had a press conference. It will be the first time in my life I’ve ever taken that initiative, but I think it would be a good thing if we could give the autumn a helping hand in spreading around a little more mist and fog.”

“I heard that Åkeson is still in bed with the flu,” Höglund said.

“I’ll call him,” Wallander said. “We’re turning up the pressure, so he’ll have to come whether he’s got a cold or not. Tell Martinsson and Svedberg we’re meeting at two today.”

Wallander had decided to wait until everybody was there before he said anything about what had happened the previous night.

“OK, let’s get going,” he said.

Nyberg went out, but Wallander asked Höglund to stay behind. He told her that he and Widén had managed to place a stable girl at Farnholm Castle.

“Your idea was an excellent one,” he said. “We’ll see if it produces the goods.”

“Let’s hope she comes to no harm.”

“She’ll just be looking after some horses,” Wallander said. “And keeping her eyes open. Let’s not get hysterical. Harderberg can’t suspect everybody on his staff to be police officers in disguise.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said.

“How’s it going with the flight log?”

“I’m working on it,” she said, “but Avanca took all my time yesterday.”

“You’ve done well,” Wallander said.

She was pleased to be told that, he noticed. We’re far too reluctant to praise our colleagues, Wallander thought. Especially when there’s no end to the amount of criticism and backbiting we toss around.

“That’s all,” he said.

She left, and Wallander went to stand at the window and ask himself what Rydberg would have done in this situation. But for once he felt that he had no time to wait for his old friend’s answer. He just had to believe that the way he was running the investigation was right.

He used up a huge amount of energy during the rest of the morning. He convinced Björk of the importance of holding a press conference the next day, and he promised him that he would take care of the journalists himself once he had agreed with Åkeson what they were going to say.

“It’s not like you to call in the mass media on your own initiative,” Björk said.

“Maybe I’m becoming a better person,” Wallander said. “They say it’s never too late.”

After meeting with Björk he called Åkeson at home. It was his wife who answered, and she was reluctant to let Wallander talk to her husband, who was in bed.

“Has he got a temperature?” Wallander asked.

“When you’re sick, you’re sick. Full stop,” Mrs. Åkeson said.

“I’m sorry,” Wallander insisted, “but I’ve got to speak to him.”

After a considerable pause Åkeson came to the phone. He sounded worn out. “I’m sick,” he said. “Influenza. I’ve been on the toilet all night.”

“I wouldn’t disturb you if it weren’t important,” Wallander said. “I’m afraid I need you for a few minutes this afternoon. We can send a car to collect you.”

“I’ll be there,” Åkeson said. “But I can take a taxi.”

“Do you want me to explain why it’s important?”

“Do you know who killed them?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to approve a warrant for the arrest of Alfred Harderberg?”

“No.”

“Then you can explain when I get in this afternoon.”

Wallander called Farnholm Castle next. He did not recognize the voice of the woman who answered. Wallander introduced himself and asked if he could speak to Kurt Ström.

“He doesn’t come on duty until this evening,” the woman said. “No doubt you’ll get him at home.”

“I don’t suppose you’re prepared to give me his phone number,” Wallander said.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I thought it might be against your rules, security and so on.”

“No, not at all,” she said, and gave him the number.

“Please pass on my greetings to Dr. Harderberg, and thank him for his hospitality the other evening,” Wallander said.

“He’s in New York.”

“Well, please tell him when he comes back. Will he be away for long?”

“We expect him back the day after tomorrow.”

Something had changed. He wondered if Harderberg had issued instructions to respond positively to queries from the Ystad police.

Wallander dialed Ström’s home number. He let it ring for a considerable amount of time, but got no reply. He called reception and asked Ebba to find out where Ström lived. While he was waiting he went to get a cup of coffee. He remembered that he still had not been in touch with Linda, as he had promised himself he would be. But he decided to wait until evening.

Wallander left the station at around 9:30 and set off toward Österlen. Ström apparently lived in a little farmhouse not far from Glimmingehus. Ebba knew the area better than most, so she had drawn him a rough map. Ström had not answered the phone, but Wallander had a hunch he would find him there. As he drove through Sandskogen he tried to remember what Svedberg had told him about the circumstances in which Ström had been kicked out of the police force. He tried to anticipate what his reception would be. Wallander had occasionally come across police officers who had been involved in a crime, and he recalled such occasions with distaste. But he could not avoid the conversation in store for him.

He had no difficulty following Ebba’s map, and he drove straight to a small white-painted house typical of the area, to the east of Glimmingehus. It was set in a garden that was no doubt very pretty in the spring and summer. When he got out of the car two Alsatians in a steel cage started barking. There was a car in the garage, and Wallander assumed he had guessed right: Ström was at home. He did not need to wait long. Ström appeared from behind the house, wearing overalls and holding a trowel in his hand. He stopped dead upon seeing who his visitor was.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” Wallander said. “I did call, but I got no answer.”

“I’m busy filling in some cracks in the foundations,” Ström said. “What do you want?”

Wallander could see Ström was on his guard.

“I’ve got something to ask you about,” he said. “Maybe you can shut the dogs up.”

Ström shouted at the dogs and at once they fell silent.

“Let’s go inside,” he said.

“No need,” Wallander said. “We can stay here. It’ll only take a minute.” He looked around the little garden. “A nice place you’ve got here. A bit different from an apartment in the middle of Malmö.”

“It was OK there as well, but this is closer to work.”

“It looks as though you live by yourself here. I thought you were married?”

Ström glared at him with eyes of steel. “What does my private life have to do with you?”

Wallander opened wide his arms in apology. “Nothing,” he said. “But you know how it is with former colleagues. You ask after the family.”

“I’m not your colleague,” Ström said.

“But you used to be, didn’t you?”

Wallander had changed his tone. He was looking for a confrontation. He knew that toughness was the only thing Ström had any respect for.

“I don’t suppose you’ve come here to discuss my family.”

Wallander smiled at him. “That’s right,” he said. “I haven’t. I only reminded you that we used to be colleagues out of politeness.”

Ström had turned ashen. For a brief moment Wallander thought he had gone too far, and that Ström would take a swing at him.

“Forget it,” Wallander said. “Let’s talk about something else. October 11. A Monday evening. Six weeks ago. You know the evening I mean?”

Ström nodded, but said nothing.

“I really only have one question,” Wallander said. “But let’s get an important thing out of the way first. I’m not going to let you get away with not answering on the grounds that you’d be breaking the security rules of Farnholm Castle. If you try that, I’ll make life so hellish for you, you’ll wonder what hit you.”

“You can’t do anything to me,” Ström said.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Wallander said. “I could arrest you and take you to Ystad with me, or I could phone the castle ten times a day and ask to speak to Kurt Ström. They would soon get the feeling that the police were far too interested in their head of security. I wonder if they know about your past? That could be embarrassing for them. I doubt if Dr. Harderberg would be pleased if the peace and quiet of Farnholm Castle were to be disturbed.”

“Go to hell!” Ström said. “Get on the other side of that gate before I throw you out.”

“I only want the answer to one question, about the night of October 11,” Wallander said, unconcerned. “And I can assure you it won’t go any further. Is it really worth risking the new life you lead? As I recall, when we met at the castle gates you said you were very happy with it.”

Wallander could see that Ström was wavering. His eyes were still full of hatred, but Wallander knew he would get an answer.

“One question,” he said. “One answer. But a truthful one. Then I’ll be gone. You can finish with your repairs and forget I was ever here. And you can continue guarding the gates of Farnholm Castle till the day you die. Just one question and one answer.”

An airplane flew past high above their heads. Wallander wondered if it was Alfred Harderberg’s Gulfstream on its way back from New York already.

“What do you want to know?”

“That evening of October 11,” Wallander said. “Gustaf Torstensson left the castle at 8:14 p.m. according to the printout of the gate checks I’ve seen. That could be forged, of course, but let’s assume it’s correct. We do know he did leave Farnholm Castle, after all. My question to you, Kurt Ström, is very simple. Did a car leave Farnholm Castle after Mr. Torstensson arrived but before he left?”

Ström said nothing, but then he nodded slowly.

“That was the first part of the question,” Wallander said. “Now comes the second part of the same question. Who was it who left the castle?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you saw a car?”

“I’ve already answered more than one question.”

“Quit the bullshit, Ström. It’s the same question. What make of car was it? And who was in it?”

“It was one of the cars that belong to the castle. A BMW.”

“Who was in it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your life will turn extremely unpleasant if you don’t answer!”

Wallander discovered that he did not need to pretend to be furious. He was already furious.

“I honestly don’t know who was in the car.”

Wallander could see that Ström was telling the truth. He should have realized.

“Because the windows were tinted,” Wallander said. “So you can’t see who’s inside. Is that right?”

Ström nodded. “You’ve got your answer,” he said. “Now get the hell out of here.”

“Always a pleasure to bump into former colleagues,” Wallander said. “And you’re absolutely right, it is time I left. Nice talking to you.”

The dogs started barking as soon as he turned his back. As he drove off Ström was still standing in the doorway, watching him go. Wallander could feel the sweat inside his shirt. He remembered that Ström could be violent.

But he had gotten a plausible answer to a question that had been troubling him. The starting point for what happened that October night when Gustaf Torstensson died, alone in his car. He had a good idea now how it had occurred. While Torstensson sat back in one of the sumptuous leather armchairs chatting to Harderberg and the Italian bankers, a car had left Farnholm Castle to lie in wait for the old man as he drove home. Somehow, by a display of force or cunning or convincing friendliness, they had gotten him to stop his car on that remote, carefully chosen stretch of road. Wallander had no idea if the decision to prevent Torstensson from reaching home had been made that same night or earlier, but at least he could now see the makings of an explanation.

He thought about the men lurking in the shadows in the entrance hall. Then he shuddered as he thought about what had happened the previous night.

Without realizing it, he pressed harder on the accelerator. By the time he came to Sandskogen he was going so fast that if he had been stopped he would have had his license suspended on the spot. He slowed down. When he reached Ystad he stopped at Fridolf’s Café and had a cup of coffee. He knew what advice Rydberg would have given him.

Patience, he would have said. When stones start rolling down a slope, it’s important not to start running after them right away. Stay where you are and watch them rolling, see where they come to a stop. That’s what he would have said.

And he would have been right, Wallander thought. That’s how we’re going to proceed.

In the days to come Wallander had evidence once more of how he was surrounded by colleagues who did not stint on effort when it was really needed. They had already been working intensively, but nobody protested when Wallander announced that they were going to have to work even harder. It had started that Wednesday afternoon when Wallander called the team to the conference room; Åkeson attended despite his diarrhea and high temperature. They all agreed that Harderberg’s business empire should be unraveled and mapped out with the greatest possible speed. While the meeting was in progress Åkeson contacted the fraud squads in Malmö and Stockholm. The others present listened in admiration as he described how the need for them to work harder and give the job the highest priority was more or less essential if the country were to survive. When he hung up, the meeting burst into spontaneous applause.

On Åkeson’s advice they had decided that they would continue to concentrate on Avanca themselves without worrying about running into conflict with the work being done by the fraud squads. Wallander also established that Höglund was the best qualified officer for this task. Nobody objected, and from that moment on she was no longer a raw recruit but a fully fledged member of the investigative team. Svedberg took over some of the work she had been doing before, including the efforts to obtain the flight plans of Harderberg’s aircraft. There was some discussion between Wallander and Åkeson about whether this was a sufficiently valuable source of information to warrant the effort. Wallander argued that sooner or later they would have to establish Harderberg’s movements, not least on the day Sten Torstensson died. Åkeson maintained that if it really did now seem likely that Harderberg was behind what had happened, he would have access to state-of-the-art resources and could be in contact with Farnholm Castle even if he were crossing the Atlantic in his Gulfstream, or in the Australian outback, where the financial experts claimed he had substantial mining interests. Wallander could see Åkeson’s point and was just about to cave in when Åkeson threw up his hands and said he had only been adding a personal point of view and did not want any obstacles in the way of work that was ongoing.

When it came to the recruitment of the stable girl Sofia, Wallander made a presentation that Höglund went out of her way to congratulate him on in private afterward. Wallander knew that not only might Björk and Åkeson protest, but that Martinsson and Svedberg might object to involving a complete outsider in the investigation. Without actually lying, although perhaps he was economical with the truth, Wallander explained that by chance they had acquired a source of information at Farnholm Castle, somebody Wallander happened to know, who was looking after the horses there. He provided this information more or less in passing, just as a tray of sandwiches had been delivered and nobody was listening with more than half an ear to what he was saying. He exchanged glances with Höglund, and could tell that she had seen through his tactic.

Afterward, when they had finished the sandwiches and aired the room, Wallander described how his apartment had been watched the previous night. He did not mention, however, that the man in the car had actually been inside his place. He was afraid that information would lead Björk to apply the brakes and put restrictions on what they could or could not do for security reasons. Svedberg was able to supply the astonishing news that the car was registered to a person who lived in Östersund and was the manager of a holiday camp in the Jämtland mountains. Wallander insisted that the man be investigated, the holiday camp as well. If Harderberg had interests in Australian mines there was no reason why he should not also be involved in a winter sports establishment in the north of Sweden. The meeting ended with Wallander telling them about his meeting with Ström. On hearing his account the room fell silent.

“That was the detail we needed,” Wallander said afterward to Höglund. “Police officers are practical people. The little fact that a car left Farnholm Castle before old man Torstensson began his final journey means that all the vague and obscure aspects of the sequence of events now have a little detail to rest on at last. If that is what happened, and it could very well have been, we’ve also got confirmation of the fact that Torstensson was murdered in a cold-blooded and well-planned operation. That means we know we’re looking for a solution to something where nothing is coincidental. We can forget accidents and dramatic passions. We know now where we don’t need to look.”

The meeting had ended in a mood Wallander interpreted as resolute determination. That was what he had been hoping for. Before Åkeson went home to bed he had joined in a discussion with Björk and Wallander. They talked about the press conference the following day. Wallander had urged that, without actually telling lies, they could maintain that they had a lead to follow, but that they could not yet give any details for reasons associated with the investigation.

“But,” Åkeson wondered, “how are you going to describe the lead without Harderberg realizing that it points to Farnholm Castle?”

“A tragedy arising from somebody’s private life,” Wallander said.

“That doesn’t sound particularly credible,” Åkeson objected. “It’s also a suspiciously thin basis on which to call a press conference. Make sure you’re fully prepared. You need to have detailed and definite answers to every likely question.”

Wallander drove home after the meeting.

He examined his telephone to see if there was any sign of a bug. He found nothing, but nevertheless decided that from now on he would not discuss anything to do with Harderberg on the phone from home.

Then he took a shower and changed his clothes.

He had dinner at the pizzeria on Hamngatan. Then he spent the rest of the evening preparing for the press conference. Now and then he went to the kitchen window and looked down into the street, but there was only his own car parked outside.

The press conference went more smoothly than Wallander had expected. The murder of the two lawyers was apparently not considered by the media to be of great public interest, and so there were not many newspapers represented, no television, and the local radio station only ran a short item.

“That should keep Harderberg calm,” Wallander said to Björk when the reporters had left the police station.

“Unless he can read our minds,” Björk said.

“He can speculate, of course,” Wallander said, “but he can’t be completely sure.”

When he got back to his office he found a message on his desk to phone Mr. S. Widén. He dialed the number and after it had been ringing for a very long time, Widén answered.

“You called,” Wallander said.

“Hi there, Roger,” Widén said. “Our friend called me a few minutes ago. She was in Simrishamn. She had something to say that I think might be of interest to you.”

“What’s that?”

“That her job is evidently going to be short-lived.”

“What does she mean by that?”

“It looks as if her employer is preparing to leave his castle.”

Wallander was struck dumb.

“Are you still there?” Widén said, eventually.

“Yes,” Wallander said. “I’m still here.”

“That was all,” Widén said.