The Man Who Smiled

Chapter 4

In the late afternoon of November 1, Olof Jönsson, a Scanian farmer, had a strange experience. He was walking his fields, planning ahead for the spring sowing, when he caught sight of a group of people standing in a semicircle up to their ankles in mud, as if looking down at a grave. He always carried binoculars with him when he was inspecting his land—he sometimes saw deer along the edge of one of the copses that here and there separated the fields—so he was able to get a good view of them. One of them he thought he recognized—something familiar about the face—but he could not place him. Then he realized that the four men and one woman were in the place where the old man had died in his car the previous week. He did not want to intrude, so he lowered his binoculars. Presumably they were relatives who had come to pay their respects by visiting the scene of his death. He turned and walked away.

When they came to the scene of the accident Wallander started to wonder, just for a moment, if he had imagined it all. Perhaps it wasn’t a chair leg he had found in the mud and thrown away. As he strode into the field the others stayed on the road, waiting. He could hear their voices, but not what they said.

They think I’ve lost my grip, he thought, as he searched for the leg. They wonder if I am fit to be back in my old job after all.

But there was the chair leg, at his feet. He examined it quickly, and now he was certain. He turned and beckoned to his colleagues. Moments later they were grouped around the chair leg lying in the mud.

“You could be right,” Martinsson said, hesitantly. “I remember there was a broken chair in the trunk. This could be a piece of it.”

“I think it’s very odd, even so,” Björk said. “Can you repeat your line of reasoning, Kurt?”

“It’s simple,” Wallander said. “I read Martinsson’s report. It said that the trunk had been locked. There’s no way that the trunk could have sprung open and then re-closed and locked itself. In that case the back of the car would have been scored or dented when it hit the ground, but it isn’t.”

“Did you go to look at the car?” Martinsson said, surprised.

“I’m simply trying to catch up with the rest of you,” Wallander said, and felt as if he were making excuses, as if his visit to Niklasson’s had implied that he didn’t trust Martinsson to conduct a simple accident investigation. Which was true, in fact, but irrelevant. “It just seems to me that a man alone in a car that rolls over and over and lands up in a field doesn’t then get out, open the trunk, take out a leg of a broken chair, shut the trunk again, get back into the car, fasten his seat belt, and then die as a result of a blow to the back of the head.”

Nobody spoke. Wallander had seen this before, many times. A veil is peeled away to reveal something nobody expected to see.

Svedberg took a plastic bag from his overcoat pocket and carefully slotted the chair leg into it.

“I found it about five meters from here,” Wallander said, pointing. “I picked it up, and then tossed it away.”

“A bizarre way to treat a piece of evidence,” Björk said.

“I didn’t know at the time that it had anything to do with the death of Gustaf Torstensson,” Wallander said. “And I still don’t know what the chair leg is telling us exactly.”

“If I understand you rightly,” Björk said, ignoring Wallander’s comment, “this must mean that somebody else was there when Torstensson’s accident took place. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he was murdered. Somebody might have stumbled upon the crashed car and looked to see if there was anything in the trunk worth stealing. In that case it wouldn’t be so odd if the person concerned didn’t get in touch with the police, or if he threw away a leg from the broken chair. People who rob dead bodies very rarely publicize their activities.”

“That’s true,” Wallander said.

“But you said you could prove he was murdered,” Björk said.

“I was overstating the case,” Wallander said. “All I meant was that this goes some way toward changing the situation.”

They made their way back to the road.

“We’d better have another look at the car,” Martinsson said. “The forensic guys will be a bit surprised when we send them a broken kitchen chair, but that can’t be helped.”

Björk made it plain that he would like to put an end to this roadside discussion. It was raining again, and the wind was getting stronger.

“Let’s decide tomorrow where we go from here,” he said. “We’ll investigate the various leads we’ve got, and unfortunately we don’t have very many. I don’t think we’re going to get any further at the moment.”

As they returned to their cars, Höglund hung back. “Do you mind if I go in your car?” she said. “I live in Ystad itself, Martinsson has car seats everywhere, and Björk’s car is littered with fishing rods.”

Wallander nodded. They were the last to leave. They drove in silence for several kilometers. It felt odd to Wallander to have somebody sitting beside him. He realized he had not really spoken to anybody apart from his daughter since the day two years ago when he had lapsed into his long silence.

She was the one who finally started talking. “I think you’re right,” she said. “There must be a connection between the two deaths.”

“It’s a possibility we’ll have to look into in any case,” Wallander said.

They could see a patch of sea to the left. There were white horses riding on the waves.

“Why does anybody become a police officer?” Wallander wondered aloud.

“I can’t answer for others,” she said, “but I know why I became one. I remember from the police academy that hardly anybody had the same dreams as the other students.”

“Do police officers have dreams?” Wallander said, in surprise.

She turned to him. “Everybody has dreams,” she said. “Even police officers. Don’t you?”

Wallander didn’t know what to say, but her question was a good one, of course. Where have my dreams gone to? he thought. When you’re young, you have dreams that either fade away or develop into a driving force that spurs you on. What do I have left of all my ambitions?

“I became a police officer because I decided not to become a vicar,” she said. “I believed in God for a long time. My parents are Pentecostalists. But one day I woke up and found it had all gone away. I agonized for a long time over what to do, but then something happened that made my mind up for me, and I resolved to become a police officer.”

“Tell me,” he said. “I need to know why people still want to become police officers.”

“Some other time,” she said. “Not now.”

They were approaching Ystad. She told him how to get to where she lived, to the west of the town, in one of the newly built brick houses with a view over the sea.

“I don’t even know if you have a family,” Wallander said, as they turned into a road that was still only half finished.

“I have two children,” she said. “My husband’s a service mechanic. He installs and repairs pumps all over the world, and is hardly ever at home. But he’s earned enough for us to buy the house.”

“Sounds like an exciting job.”

“I’ll invite you over one evening when he’s at home. He can tell you himself what it’s like.”

He drew up outside her house.

“I think everybody’s pleased you’ve come back,” she said as a parting shot.

Wallander felt immediately that it wasn’t true, that it was more of an attempt to cheer him up, but he muttered his appreciation.

Then he drove directly home to Mariagatan, flung his wet jacket over the back of a chair, and lay on the bed, still in his dirty shoes. He dozed off and dreamed that he was asleep among the sand dunes at Skagen.

When he woke up an hour later, he did not know where he was at first. Then he took off his shoes and went to the kitchen to make coffee. He could see through the window how the streetlight beyond was swaying in the gusting wind.

Winter is almost upon us, he thought. Snow and storms and chaos. And I am a police officer again. Life tosses us all hither and thither. Is there anything we can truly decide for ourselves?

He sat for a long time staring into his coffee cup. It was cold by the time he got up to fetch a notepad and pencil from a kitchen drawer.

Now I really must become a police officer again, he told himself. I get paid for thinking constructive thoughts, investigating, and figuring out cases, not for worrying about my own petty problems.

It was past midnight by the time he put down his pen and stretched his back. Then he pored over the summary he had written in his notepad. All about his feet the floor was littered with crumpled-up sheets of paper.

I can’t see any pattern, he admitted. There are no obvious connections between the accident that wasn’t an accident and the fact that a few weeks later Sten Torstensson was shot dead in his office. It doesn’t even necessarily follow that Sten’s death was a direct result of what happened to his father. It could be the other way around.

He remembered something Rydberg had said in the last year of his life, when he was stuck in the middle of an apparently insoluble investigation into a string of arson cases. “Sometimes the effect can come before the cause,” he had said. “As a police officer you always have to be prepared to think back to front.”

He lay on the living-room sofa.

An old man is found dead in his car in a field on a morning in October, he thought. He was on his way home from a meeting with a client. After a routine investigation, the case is written off as a car accident. But the dead man’s son starts to question the accident theory. For two crucial reasons: first, that his father would never have been driving fast in the fog; second, that for some time he had been worried or upset, but had kept whatever it was to himself.

Wallander sat bolt upright. His instinct told him he had hit upon a pattern, or rather, a non-pattern, a pattern falsified so that the true facts would not come to light.

He continued his train of thought. Sten had not been able to prove that his father’s death had not been a straightforward accident. He had not seen the chair leg in the field, nor had he thought about the broken chair itself in the trunk of his father’s car. Precisely because he had not been able to find any proof, he had turned to Wallander. He had gone to the trouble of tracking him down, of coming to see him.

At the same time he had laid a false trail. A postcard from Finland. Five days later he was shot. No one could doubt that it was murder.

Wallander had lost the thread. What he thought he had sensed—a pattern created to cover up another one—had drifted off into no-man’s-land.

He was tired. He wasn’t going to get any further tonight. He knew, too, from experience that if his suspicions had any basis they would come back.

He went to the kitchen, washed the dishes, and cleared up the crumpled papers lying all over the floor. I have to start all over again, he told himself. But where is the start? Sten or Gustaf Torstensson?

He went to bed, but could not sleep despite being so tired. He wondered vaguely about what had happened to make Ann-Britt Höglund decide to become a police officer.

The last time he looked at the clock it was 2:30 a.m.

He woke up shortly after 6:00, still feeling tired; but he got up, with a sense that he had slept in. It was almost 7:30 by the time he walked through the police-station door and was pleased to see that Ebba was in her usual chair in the lobby. When she saw him she came to greet him. He could see that she was moved, and a lump came into his throat.

“I couldn’t believe it!” she said. “Are you really back?”

“Afraid so,” Wallander said.

“I think I’m going to cry,” she said.

“Don’t do that,” Wallander said. “We can have a chat later.”

He got away as quickly as he could and hurried down the corridor. When he got to his office he noticed that it had been thoroughly cleaned. There was also a note on his desk asking him to phone his father. Judging by the obscure handwriting, it was Svedberg who had taken the message the previous evening. He reached for the telephone, then changed his mind. He took out the summary he had prepared and read through it. The feeling he had had of being able to detect an obscure but nevertheless definite pattern linking the various incidents would not resurrect itself. He pushed the papers to one side. It’s too soon, he decided. I come back after eighteen months in the cold, and I’ve got less patience than ever. Annoyed, he reached for his notepad and found an empty page.

It was clear that he would have to start again from the beginning. Apparently nobody could say with any certainty where the beginning was, so they would have to approach the investigation with no preconceived ideas. He spent half an hour sketching out what needed to be done, but all the time he was nagged by the idea that it was really Martinsson who ought to be leading the investigation. He himself had returned to duty, but he did not want to take on the whole responsibility right away.

The telephone rang. He hesitated before answering.

“I hear we’ve had some great news.” It was Per Åkeson. “I have to say I’m delighted.” Åkeson was the public prosecutor with whom Wallander had, over the years, established the best working relationship. They had often had heated discussions about the best way of interpreting case data, and Wallander had many times been angry because Åkeson had refused to accept one of his submissions as sufficient grounds for an arrest. But they had more or less always seen eye to eye. And they shared a particular impatience at cases being carelessly handled.

“I have to admit it all seems a bit strange,” Wallander said.

“Rumor had it that you were about to retire for health reasons,” Åkeson said. “Somebody should tell Björk to put a stop to all these rumors that keep flying around.”

“It wasn’t just a rumor,” Wallander said. “I had made my mind up to throw in the towel.”

“Might one ask why you changed your mind?”

“Something happened,” Wallander said evasively. He could tell that Åkeson was waiting for him to continue, but he did not oblige.

“Anyway, I’m pleased you’ve come back,” Åkeson said, after an appropriately long silence. “I’m also certain that I’m expressing the sentiments of my colleagues in saying that.”

Wallander began to feel uncomfortable about all the goodwill that was flowing in his direction but which he found hard to believe. We go through life with one foot in a rose garden and the other in quick-sand, he thought.

“I assume you’ll be taking over the Torstensson case,” Åkeson said. “Maybe we should get together later today and work out where we stand.”

“I don’t know about ‘taking over,’” Wallander said. “I’ll be involved, I asked to be. But I suppose that one of the others will be leading the investigation.”

“Hmm, none of my business,” Åkeson said. “I’m just pleased you’re back. Have you had time to get into the details of the case?”

“Not really.”

“Judging by what I’ve heard so far, there doesn’t seem to have been any significant development.”

“Björk thinks it’s going to be a long haul.”

“What do you think?”

Wallander hesitated before replying. “Nothing at all yet.”

“Insecurity seems to be on the increase,” Åkeson said. “Threats, often in the form of anonymous letters, are more common. Public buildings which used to be open to the public are now barricading themselves like fortresses. No question, you’ll have to go through his clients with a fine-tooth comb. You might find a clue there. Someone among them might have a grudge.”

“We’ve already started on that,” Wallander said.

They agreed to meet in Åkeson’s office that afternoon.

Wallander forced himself to return to the investigation plan he had started to sketch out, but his concentration wandered. He put his pen down in irritation and went to fetch a cup of coffee. He hurried back to his office, not wanting to meet anybody. It was 8:15 by now. He drank his coffee and wondered how long it would be before he lost his fear of being with people. At 8:30 he gathered his papers together and went to the conference room. On the way there it struck him that unusually little had been achieved during the five or six days that had passed since Sten Torstensson had been found murdered. All murder investigations are different, but there always used to be a mood of intense urgency among the officers involved. Something had changed while he had been away. What?

They were all present by 8:40, and Björk tapped the table as a sign that work was about to commence. He turned at once to Wallander.

“Kurt,” he said, “you’ve just come into this case and can view it with fresh eyes. What do you think we should do now?”

“I hardly think I’m the one to decide that,” Wallander said. “I haven’t had time to get into it fully.”

“On the other hand, you’re the only one who’s so far come up with anything useful,” Martinsson said. “If I know you, you stayed up last night and sketched out an investigation plan. Am I right?”

Wallander nodded. He realized that in fact he had no objection to taking over the case.

“I have tried to write a summary,” he began. “But first let me tell you about something that happened just over a week ago, when I was in Denmark. I should have mentioned it yesterday, but it was all a bit hectic for me, to say the least.”

Wallander told his astonished colleagues about Sten Torstensson’s trip to Skagen. He tried hard to leave out no detail. When he finished, there was silence. Björk eventually spoke, making no attempt to conceal the fact that he was annoyed.

“Very odd,” he said. “I don’t know why it is that you always seem to find yourself in situations that are out of normal procedures.”

“I did refer him to you,” Wallander objected, and could feel his anger rising.

“It’s nothing for us to get excited about now,” Björk said impassively. “But it is a bit strange, you must agree. What is of course clear is that we have to reopen the investigation into Gustaf Torstensson’s accident.”

“It seems to me both natural and necessary that we advance on two fronts,” Wallander said. “The assumption being that two people have been murdered, not one. It’s a father and a son, moreover. We have to think two thoughts at the same time. There may be a solution to be found in their private lives, but it might also be something to do with their work, two lawyers working for the same law firm. The fact that Sten came to see me to talk about his father being on edge might suggest that the key concerns Gustaf Torstensson. But that is not a foregone conclusion—for one thing, there’s the postcard Sten sent to Mrs. Dunér from Finland when at the time he was in Denmark.”

“That tells us something else as well,” Höglund said.

Wallander nodded. “That Sten also thought that he was in danger. Is that what you mean?”

“Yes,” Höglund said. “Why else would he have laid a false trail?”

Martinsson raised his hand, indicating he wanted to say something. “It would be simplest if we split into two groups,” he said. “One to concentrate on the father, and the other on the son. Then let’s see if we come up with anything that points in the same direction.”

“I agree with that,” Wallander said. “At the same time I can’t help thinking there’s something odd about all this. Something we should have discovered already.”

“All murder cases are odd, surely,” Svedberg said.

“Yes, but there’s something more,” Wallander said. “And I can’t put my finger on it.”

Björk indicated it was time to conclude the meeting.

“Since I’ve already started delving into what happened to Gustaf Torstensson, I might as well go on,” Wallander said. “If nobody has any objections.”

“The rest of us can devote ourselves to Sten Torstensson, then,” Martinsson said. “Can I assume that you’ll want to work on your own to start with, as usual?”

“Not necessarily. But if I understand it rightly, the Sten case is much more complicated. His father didn’t have so many clients. His life seems to be more transparent.”

“Let’s do that then,” Björk said, shutting his diary with a thud. “We’ll meet every day at 4:00, as usual, to see how far we’ve gotten. Oh, and I need help with a press conference later today.”

“Not me,” Wallander said. “I haven’t got the strength.”

“I thought Ann-Britt might do it,” Björk said. “It won’t do any harm for people to know she’s here with us now.”

“That’s fine by me,” she said, to the others’ surprise. “I need to learn about such things.”

After the meeting Wallander asked Martinsson to stay behind. When the others had left, he closed the door.

“We need to have a few words,” Wallander said. “I feel as though I’m barging in and taking over, when what I was really supposed to be doing was confirming my resignation.”

“We’re all a bit surprised, certainly,” Martinsson said. “You must accept that. You’re not the only one who’s a bit unsure of what’s going on.”

“I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes.”

Martinsson burst out laughing. Then blew his nose. “The Swedish police force is full of officers suffering from sore toes and heels,” he said. “The more bureaucratic the force becomes, the more people get obsessed about their careers. All the regulations and the paperwork—it gets worse every day—result in misunderstandings and a lack of clarity, so it’s no wonder people step on each other’s toes and kick their heels. Sometimes I think I understand why Björk is worried about the way things are going. What’s happening to ordinary straightforward police work?”

“The police force has always reflected society at large,” Wallander said. “But I know what you mean. Rydberg used to say the same thing. What’s Höglund going to say?”

“She’s good,” Martinsson said. “Hanson and Svedberg are both frightened of her precisely because she’s so good. Hanson especially is worried that he might get left behind. That’s why he spends most of his time taking courses nowadays, picking up extra qualifications.”

“The new-age police officer,” Wallander said, getting to his feet. “That’s what she is.” He paused in the doorway. “You said something yesterday that rang a bell. Something about Sten Torstensson. I’m not sure what, but I have the feeling it was more important than it sounded.”

“I was reading aloud from my notes,” Martinsson said. “You can have a copy.”

“I daresay I’m imagining things,” Wallander said.

When he got back to his office and had closed the door, he knew that he had experienced something he had almost forgotten existed. It was as if he had rediscovered his drive. Not everything, it seemed, had been lost during the time he had been away.

He sat at his desk, feeling that he could now examine himself at arm’s length: the man staggering around in the West Indies, the miserable trip to Thailand, all those days and nights when everything seemed to have ground to a halt apart from his automatic bodily functions. He was looking at himself, but he realized that that person was somebody he no longer knew. He had been somebody else.

He shuddered to contemplate the catastrophic consequences that some of his actions could have had. He thought hard about his daughter Linda. It was only when Martinsson knocked on the door and delivered a photocopy of his notes from the previous day that Wallander succeeded in banishing all the memories. Everybody had within himself a secret room, it seemed to him, where memories and recollections were all jumbled up together. Now he had bolted the door, and attached a strong padlock. Then he went to the bathroom and flushed away the antidepressants he had been carrying around in a tube in his pocket.

He returned to his office and started work. It was 10 a.m. He read carefully through Martinsson’s notes without identifying what it was that had caught his attention. It’s too soon, he thought. Rydberg would have advised patience. Now I have to remember to advise myself.

He wondered briefly where to begin. Then he looked up Gustaf Torstensson’s home address in the file for the car accident. Timmermansgatan 12. That was in one of Ystad’s oldest and most affluent residential districts, beyond the army barracks, near Sandskogen. He telephoned the law firm and spoke to Sonia Lundin, who told him that the house keys were in the office. He left the station and noted that the rain clouds had dispersed, the sky was clear. He had the feeling he was breathing in the first of the cold winter air that was slowly advancing. As he drew up outside the office building, Lundin came out and handed him the keys.

He took two wrong turns before he reached the correct address. The big, brown-painted wooden house was a long way back in the middle of a large garden. He swung open the creaking gate and started down the gravel drive. It was quiet, and the town seemed a long way away. A world inside a world, he thought. The Torstensson law firm must have been a very profitable business. He doubted if there were many houses in Ystad more expensive than this one. The garden was well-tended but strangely lifeless. A few deciduous trees, some neatly clipped bushes, some dull flower beds. Perhaps an elderly lawyer needed to surround himself with straight lines, a traditional garden with no surprises or improvisations. Someone had told him that as a lawyer Torstensson had a reputation for dragging out court proceedings to an unprecedented level of boredom. One spiteful opponent claimed that Torstensson could get a client off by driving the prosecutor to distraction with his plodding, colorless presentation of the case for the defense. He should ask Per Åkeson what he thought of Gustaf Torstensson. They must have dealt with each other many times over the years.

He went up the steps to the front door and found the right key. It was an advanced Chubb lock of a type he had not come across before. He let himself into a large hall with a broad staircase at the back leading to the upper floor. Heavy curtains were drawn across the windows. He opened one set and saw that the window was barred. An elderly man living alone, experiencing the fear that inevitably goes along with age. Was there something here he needed to protect, apart from himself? Or was his fear something that originated beyond these walls? He made his way through the house, starting on the ground floor with its library lined with somber portraits of family ancestors, and the large open-plan living room and dining room. Everything, from the furniture to the wallpaper, was dark, giving him a feeling of melancholy and silence. Not even a small patch of light color anywhere, no trace of a light touch that could raise a smile.

He went upstairs. Guest rooms with neatly made beds, deserted like a hotel closed for the winter. The door to Torstensson’s own bedroom had a barred inner door. He went back downstairs, oppressed by the gloom. He sat at the kitchen table and rested his chin on his hands. All he could hear was a clock ticking.

Torstensson was sixty-nine when he died. He had been living alone for the last fifteen years, since his wife died. Sten was their only child. Judging by one of the portraits in the library, the family was descended from Field Marshal Lennart Torstensson. Wallander’s vague memory from his schooldays was that during the Thirty Years’ War the man had a reputation for exceptional brutality toward the peasants wherever his army had set foot.

Wallander stood up and went down the stairs to the basement. Here, too, everything was pedantically neat. Right at the back, behind the boiler room, Wallander discovered a steel door that was locked. He tried the various keys until he found the right one. Wallander had to feel his way until he located the light switch.

The room was surprisingly big. The walls were lined with shelves laden with icons from Eastern Europe. Without touching them, Wallander scrutinized them from close up. He was no expert, nor had he ever been particularly interested in antiques, but he guessed that this collection was extremely valuable. That would explain the barred windows and the lock, if not the wrought-iron safety door to the bedroom. Wallander’s uneasiness grew. He felt he was intruding on the privacy of a rich old man whom happiness had abandoned, who had barricaded his house, and who was watched over by greed in the shape of all these Madonna figures.

He pricked up his ears. There were footsteps upstairs, then a dog barking. He hurried out of the room, up the steps, and into the kitchen. He was astonished to be confronted by Peters, his colleague, who had drawn his pistol and was pointing it at him. Behind him was a security guard with a growling dog tugging at a lead. Peters lowered his gun. Wallander could feel his heart racing. The sight of the gun had momentarily revived the memories he had spent so long trying to banish.

Then he was furious. “What the hell’s going on here?” he snarled.

“The alarm went off at the security company, and they called the police,” Peters said, clearly worried. “So we came rushing here in a hurry. I had no idea it was you.”

Peters’ partner Norén entered on cue, also wielding a pistol.

“There’s a police investigation going on here,” Wallander said, noting that his anger had subsided as quickly as it had broken out. “Torstensson, the lawyer who died in the car accident, lived here.”

“If the alarm goes off, we show up,” the man from the security company said, bluntly.

“Turn it off,” Wallander said. “You can turn it on again in a few hours’ time. But let’s all work our way through the house first.”

“This is Chief Inspector Wallander,” Peters explained. “I expect you recognize him.”

The security man was very young. He nodded, but Wallander could tell that he had not recognized him.

“We don’t need you anymore. And get that dog out of here,” Wallander said.

The guard withdrew, taking the reluctant Alsatian with him. Wallander shook Peters and Norén by the hand.

“I’d heard you were back,” Norén said. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Thank you.”

“Things haven’t been the same since you were on sick leave,” Peters said.

“Well, I’m back in the saddle now,” Wallander said, hoping to steer the conversation back to the investigation.

“The information we get isn’t exactly reliable,” Norén said. “We’d been told you were going to retire. After that we didn’t expect to find you in a house when the alarm went off.”

“Life is full of surprises,” Wallander said.

“Anyway, welcome back,” Peters said.

Wallander had the feeling for the first time that the friendliness was genuine. There was nothing artificial about Peters: his words were straightforward and clear.

“It’s been a difficult time,” Wallander said. “But it’s over now. I think so, at least.”

He walked down to the car with them and waved as they drove off. He wandered around the garden, trying to sort out his thoughts. His personal feelings were intertwined with thoughts about what had happened to the two lawyers. In the end he decided to go and talk to Mrs. Dunér again. Now he had a few questions to ask her that needed answering.

It was almost noon when he rang her doorbell and was let in. This time he accepted her offer of a cup of tea.

“I’m sorry to disturb you again so soon,” he began, “but I do need help in building up a picture of both of them, father and son. Who were they? You worked with the older man for thirty years.”

“And nineteen years with Sten Torstensson,” she said.

“That’s a long time,” Wallander said. “You get to know people as time goes by. Let’s start with the father. Tell me what he was like.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“And why not?”

“I didn’t know him.”

Her reply astonished him, but it sounded genuine. Wallander decided to feel his way forward, to take all the time his impatience told him he did not have.

“You will not mind my saying that your response is a bit odd,” Wallander said. “I mean, you worked with him for a very long time.”

“Not with him,” she said. “For him. There’s a big difference.”

Wallander nodded. “Even if you didn’t know the man, you must know a lot about him. Please, tell me what you can. If you don’t I’m afraid we may never be able to solve the murder of his son.”

“You’re not being honest with me, Inspector Wallander,” she said. “You haven’t told me what really happened when he died in that car crash.”

She was evidently going to keep surprising him. He made his mind up on the spot to be straight with her.

“We don’t know yet,” he said. “But we suspect it was more than just an accident. Something might have caused it, or happened afterward.”

“He’d driven along that road lots of times,” she said. “He knew it inside out. And he never drove fast.”

“If I understand it correctly, he’d been to see one of his clients,” Wallander said.

“The man at Farnholm,” was all she said.

“The man at Farnholm?”

“Alfred Harderberg. The man at Farnholm Castle.”

Wallander knew that Farnholm Castle was in a remote area to the south of the Linderöd Ridge. He had often driven past the turnoff, but had never been there.

“He was our biggest client,” Mrs. Dunér went on. “For the last few years he’d been in effect Gustaf Torstensson’s only client.”

Wallander wrote the name on a scrap of paper he found in his pocket.

“I’ve never heard of him,” he said. “Is he a farmer?”

“He’s the man who owns the castle,” Mrs Dunér said. “But he’s a businessman. Big business, international.”

“I’ll be in touch with him, obviously,” Wallander said. “He must be one of the last people to see Mr. Torstensson alive.”

A bundle of mail suddenly dropped through the mail slot. Wallander noticed that Mrs. Dunér gave a start.

Three scared people, he thought. Scared of what?

“Gustaf Torstensson,” he started again. “Let’s try again. Tell me what he was like.”

“He was the most private person I have ever met,” she said, and Wallander detected a hint of aggression. “He never allowed anybody to get close to him. He was a pedant, never varied his routine. He was one of those people folks say you could set your watch by. That was absolutely true in Gustaf Torstensson’s case. He was a sort of bloodless, cutout silhouette, neither nice nor nasty. Just boring.”

“According to Sten Torstensson, he was also cheerful,” Wallander said.

“You could have fooled me,” Mrs. Dunér said.

“How well did the two of them get along?”

She did not hesitate, she answered directly to the point. “Gustaf Torstensson was annoyed that his son was trying to modernize the business,” she said. “And naturally enough, Sten Torstensson thought his father was a millstone around his neck. But neither of them revealed their true feelings to the other. They were both afraid of fighting.”

“Before Sten Torstensson died he said something had been upsetting and worrying his father for several months,” Wallander said. “Can you comment on that?”

This time she paused before answering.

“Maybe,” she said. “Now that you mention it, there was something distant about him in the last months of his life.”

“Have you any explanation for that?”

“No.”

“Nothing unusual that happened?”

“No, nothing.”

“Please think carefully. This could be very important.”

She poured another cup of tea while she was thinking. Wallander waited. Then she looked up at him.

“I can’t say,” she said. “I can’t explain it.”

Wallander knew she was not telling the truth, but he decided not to press her. Everything was still too vague and uncertain. The time wasn’t ripe.

He pushed his cup to one side and rose to his feet. “I won’t disturb you any longer,” he said. “But I’ll be back, I’m afraid.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Dunér said.

“If you think of anything you’d like to say, just give me a ring,” Wallander said as he left. “Don’t hesitate. The slightest detail could be significant.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” she said as she closed the door behind him.

Wallander sat in his car without starting the engine. He felt very uneasy. Without being able to say exactly why, he had the feeling there was something very serious and disturbing behind the deaths of the two lawyers. They were still only scratching the surface.

Something is pointing us in the wrong direction, he thought. The postcard from Finland might not be a red herring, might be the thing we really should be looking into. But why?

He was about to start the engine and drive off when he noticed that somebody was standing on the sidewalk across the street, watching him.

It was a young woman, hardly more than twenty, of some Asian origin. When she saw that Wallander had noticed her, she hurried away. Wallander could see in his rearview mirror that she had turned right onto Hamngatan without looking back.

He was certain he had never seen her before.

That didn’t mean she had not recognized him. Over the years as a police officer he had often come up against refugees and asylum seekers in various contexts.

He drove back to the police station. The wind was still gusty, and clouds were building up from the east. He had just turned onto Kristianstadvägen when he slammed his foot on the brake. A truck behind him sounded its horn.

I’m reacting far too slowly, he thought. I’m not seeing the forest for the trees.

He made an illegal U-turn, parked outside the post office on Hamngatan, and made his way swiftly onto the side street that led into Stickgatan from the north. He positioned himself so that he could see the pink building where Mrs. Dunér lived.

It was getting chilly, and he started walking up and down while keeping an eye on the building. After an hour he wondered whether he should give up. But he was sure he was right. He kept on watching the building. By now Åkeson was waiting for him, but he would wait in vain.

At 3:43 p.m. the door to the pink building suddenly opened. Wallander hid behind a wall. He was right. He watched that woman with the vaguely Asian appearance leave Berta Dunér’s house. Then she turned the corner and was gone.

It had started raining.