The Man Who Smiled

Chapter 5

The meeting of the investigation team started at 4 p.m. and finished exactly seven minutes later. Wallander was the last to arrive and flopped down on his chair. He was out of breath, and sweating. His colleagues around the table observed him in surprise, but no one made any comment.

It took Björk a few minutes to establish that no one had any significant progress to report or matters to discuss. They had reached a point in the investigation where they had become “tunnel diggers,” as they used to say. They were all trying to break through the surface layer to find what might be concealed underneath. It was a familiar phase in criminal investigations, and no discussion was needed. The only one who came up with a question at the end of the meeting was Wallander.

“Who is Alfred Harderberg?” he asked, after consulting a scrap of paper on which he’d written down the name.

“I thought everybody knew that,” Björk said. “He’s one of Sweden’s most successful businessmen just now. Lives here in Skåne. When he’s not flying all over the world in his private jet, that is.”

“He owns Farnholm Castle,” Svedberg said. “It’s said that he has an aquarium with genuine gold dust at the bottom instead of sand.”

“He was a client of Gustaf Torstensson’s,” Wallander said. “His principal client, in fact. And his last. Torstensson had been to see him the night he met his death in the field.”

“He organizes charity for the needy in parts of the Balkans ravaged by war,” Martinsson said. “But maybe that’s not so extraordinary when you have the limitless amounts of money he does.”

“Alfred Harderberg is a man worthy of our respect,” Björk said.

Wallander could see he was getting annoyed. “Who isn’t?” he wondered aloud. “I intend to pay him a visit even so.”

“Phone first,” Björk said, getting to his feet.

The meeting was at an end. Wallander fetched a cup of coffee and repaired to his office. He needed time on his own to think over the significance of Mrs. Dunér being visited by a young Asian woman. Maybe there was nothing to it at all, but Wallander’s instinct told him otherwise. He put his feet on his desk and leaned back in his chair, balancing his coffee cup between his knees.

The telephone rang. Wallander stretched to answer it, lost his grip on the cup, and coffee spilled all over his pant leg as the cup fell to the floor.

“Shit!” he shouted, the receiver halfway to his ear.

“No need to be rude,” said his father. “I only wanted to ask why you never get in touch.”

Wallander was instantly assailed by his bad conscience, and that in turn made him angry. He wondered if there would ever be a time when dealings with his father could be conducted on a less tense footing.

“I spilled a cup of coffee,” he said, “and scalded my leg.”

His father seemed not to have heard what he said. “Why are you in your office?” he asked. “You’re supposed to be on sick leave.”

“Not anymore. I’ve started work again.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

Wallander could tell that this conversation was going to be a very long one if he did not manage to cut it short. “I owe you an explanation, I know,” he said, “but I just don’t have time right now. I’ll come and see you tomorrow evening, and tell you what’s happened.”

“I haven’t seen you for ages,” his father said, and hung up.

Wallander sat for a moment with the receiver in his hand. His father would be seventy-five next year, and invariably managed to arouse in him contradictory emotions. Their relationship had been complicated for as long as he could remember. Not least on the day he told his father he intended to join the police. More than twenty-five years had passed since then and the old man never missed an opportunity for criticizing that decision. Nevertheless, Wallander had a guilty conscience about the time he devoted to him. The previous year, when he had heard the astonishing news that his father was going to marry a woman thirty years younger than himself, a home help who came to his house three times a week, he had figured his father would not lack for company anymore. Now, sitting there with the receiver in his hand, he realized that nothing had really changed.

He replaced the receiver, picked up the cup, and wiped his pant leg with a sheet torn from his notepad. Then he remembered he was supposed to get in touch with Åkeson, the prosecutor. Åkeson’s secretary put him through right away. Wallander explained that he had been held up and Åkeson suggested a time for the next morning instead.

Wallander went to fetch another cup of coffee. In the hallway he bumped into Höglund carrying a pile of files.

“How’s it going?” Wallander said.

“Slowly,” she said. “And I can’t shake off the feeling that there’s something fishy about those two dead lawyers.”

“That’s exactly how I feel,” Wallander said. “What makes you think so?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” Wallander said. “Experience tells me you should never underestimate the significance of what you can’t put into words, can’t put your finger on.”

He went back to his office, unhooked the phone, and pulled his notepad toward him. He went back in his mind to the freezing cold beach at Skagen, Sten Torstensson walking toward him out of the fog. That’s where this case started for me, he thought. It started while Sten was still alive.

He went over everything he knew about the two lawyers. He was like a soldier cautiously retreating, keeping a close watch to his left and his right. It took him an hour to work his way through every one of the facts he and his colleagues had so far assembled.

What is it I can see and yet do not see? He asked himself this over and over as he sifted through the case notes. But when he tossed aside his pen all he had managed to achieve was a highly decorative and embellished question mark.

Two lawyers dead, he thought. One killed in a strange accident that was in all probability not an accident. Whoever killed Gustaf Torstensson was a cold, calculating murderer. That lone chair leg left in the mud was an uncharacteristic mistake. There’s a why and a who, but there may well be something else.

It came to him that there was something he could and should do. He found Mrs. Dunér’s telephone number in his notes.

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” he said. “Inspector Wallander here. I have a question I’d be grateful for an answer to right away.”

“I’d be pleased to help if I can,” she said.

Two questions in fact, Wallander thought, but I’ll save the one about the Asian woman for another time.

“The night Gustaf Torstensson died he had been to Farnholm Castle,” he said. “How many people knew he was going to visit his client that evening?”

There was a pause before she replied. Wallander wondered whether that was in order to remember, or to give herself time to think of a suitable answer.

“I knew, of course,” she said. “It’s possible I might have mentioned it to Miss Lundin, but nobody else knew.”

“Sten Torstensson didn’t know, then?”

“I don’t think so. They kept separate engagement diaries.”

“So most probably you were the only one who knew,” Wallander said.

“Yes.”

“Thank you. I apologize for disturbing you,” Wallander said, and hung up.

He returned to his notes. Gustaf Torstensson drives out to see a client, and is attacked on the way home, murder disguised as a road accident.

He thought about Mrs. Dunér’s reply. I’m sure she was telling the truth, he thought, but what interests me is what lies behind that truth. What she said means that apart from herself the only other person who knew what Gustaf Torstensson was going to do that evening was the man at Farnholm Castle.

He continued his walk through the case. The landscape of the investigation constantly shifted. The cheerless house with its sophisticated security systems. The collection of icons hidden in the basement. When he thought he’d walked as far as he could go he switched to Sten Torstensson. The landscape shifted yet again and became almost impenetrable. Sten’s unexpected appearance in Wallander’s windswept haven, against a background of melancholy foghorns, and then the deserted café at the art museum—they seemed to Wallander like the ingredients of an unconvincing operetta. But there were moments in the plot when life was taken seriously. Sten had found his father restless and depressed. And the postcard from Finland, sent by an unknown hand but arranged by Sten: clearly there was a threat and a false trail was required. Always assuming that the false trail wasn’t in fact the right trail.

Nothing takes us on to a next stage, Wallander thought, but these are facts that one can categorize. It’s harder to know what to do with the mystery ingredients—the Asian woman, for example, who doesn’t want anybody to see her visiting Berta Dunér’s pink house. And Mrs. Dunér herself, who’s a good liar, but not good enough to deceive a detective inspector from the Ystad police—or, at least, for him not to notice that something isn’t quite right.

Wallander stood up, stretched his back and stood at the window. It was 6 p.m., and it had grown dark. Noises could be heard from the corridor, footsteps approaching and then fading away. He remembered something Rydberg had said during the last year of his life: “A police station is essentially like a prison. Police officers and criminals live their lives as mirror images of each other. It’s not really possible to decide who’s incarcerated and who isn’t.”

Wallander suddenly felt listless and lonely. He resorted to his only consolation: an imagined conversation with Baiba Liepa in Riga, as though she were standing there in front of him, and as if his office were a room in a gray building with dilapidated facades in Riga, in that apartment with the dimmed lighting and the thick curtains permanently drawn. But the image became blurred, faded like the weaker of two wrestlers. Instead, Wallander pictured himself crawling on his muddy hands and knees through the Scanian fog with a shotgun in one hand and a pistol in the other, like a pathetic copy of some unlikely film idol, and then suddenly the illusion was ripped to shreds and reality imposed itself through the slits, and death and killing were not rabbits plucked out of a magician’s hat. He watches himself witnessing a man being shot by a bullet through the head, and then he also shoots, and the only thing he can be sure of is that his only hope is for the man he’s aiming at to die.

I’m a man who doesn’t laugh enough, he thought. Without my noticing, middle age has marooned me on a coast with too many dangerous submerged rocks.

He left all his papers on his desk. At the reception desk, Ebba was busy on the telephone. When she signaled to him to wait, he shook his head and waved to indicate he was in a hurry.

He drove home and cooked a meal he would have been incapable of describing afterward. He watered the five plants he had on his window ledges, filled the washing machine with clothes that had been strewn around the apartment, discovered he had no laundry detergent, then sat on the sofa and cut his toenails. Occasionally he looked around the room, as if he expected to find that he wasn’t alone after all. Shortly after 10:00 he went to bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

Outside the rain had eased off and become a light drizzle.

When Wallander woke up the next morning it was still dark. The alarm clock with the luminous hands indicated that it was barely 5:00. He turned over and tried to go back to sleep, but found it impossible. His long stay out in the cold was still making itself felt. Whatever has changed, whatever is still the same, I will spend the rest of my life in two timescales, “before” and “after.” Kurt Wallander exists and doesn’t exist.

He got up at 5:30, made coffee, waited for the newspaper to arrive and saw from the outside thermometer that it was 4° Celsius outside. Driven by a feeling of unrest he did not have the strength to analyze or fight, he left the apartment at 6 a.m. He got into his car and started the engine, thinking he might just as well pay a visit to Farnholm Castle. He could stop somewhere on the way, have a cup of coffee, and telephone to warn them he was coming. He drove east out of Ystad, averting his gaze as he passed the military training ground on his right where two years earlier he had fought the old Wallander’s last battle. Out there in the fog he had discovered that there are people who would not shrink from any form of violence, who would not hesitate to commit murders in cold blood. Out there, on his knees in the mud, he had fought desperately for his own life and somehow, thanks to an incredibly accurate shot, he had killed a man. It was a point of no return, a birth and a burial at the same time.

He drove along the road to Kristianstad and slowed down as he passed the place where Gustaf Torstensson had died. When he came to Skåne-Tranås he stopped at the café and went in. It was getting windy: he should have put on a thicker jacket. In fact, he should have given more thought to his clothes in general: the worn Dacron pants and dirty windbreaker he had on were perhaps not ideal for visiting a lord of the manor. As he entered the café he wondered what Björk would have worn for a visit to a castle, supposing it had been on business.

He was the only customer. He ordered coffee and a sandwich. It was 6:45, and he leafed through a well-thumbed magazine on a shelf. He soon tired of that, and tried to think instead about what he was going to say to Alfred Harderberg, or whoever might be able to tell him about Gustaf Torstensson’s last visit to his client. He waited until 7:30, then asked to use the telephone on the counter next to the old-fashioned cash register, and first called the police station in Ystad. The only one of his colleagues there that early was Martinsson. He explained where he was, and said that he expected the visit to take an hour or two.

“Do you know the first thing that entered my head when I woke up this morning?” Martinsson said.

“No.”

“That it was Sten Torstensson who killed his father.”

“How do you explain what then happened to the son?” Wallander said.

“I don’t,” Martinsson said. “But what seems to me to be clearer and clearer is that the explanation has to do with their professional rather than their private lives.”

“Or a combination of the two.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just something I dreamed last night,” Wallander said, ducking the question. “Anyway, I’ll be back at the station in due course.”

He hung up, lifted the receiver again, and dialed the number of Farnholm Castle. It was answered on the very first ring. “Farnholm Castle,” said a woman’s voice. She had a slight foreign accent.

“This is Detective Chief Inspector Wallander of the Ystad police. I’d like to speak to Mr. Harderberg.”

“He’s in Geneva,” the voice said.

Wallander should have foreseen the possibility that an international businessman might be abroad.

“When will he be back?”

“He hasn’t said.”

“Do you expect him tomorrow or next week?”

“I can’t give you that information over the telephone. His schedule is strictly confidential.”

“Maybe so, but I am a police officer,” Wallander said, his anger rising.

“How can I know that?” the woman said. “You could be anybody.”

“I’ll be at Farnholm Castle in half an hour,” Wallander said. “Who shall I ask for?”

“That’s for the guards at the main gate to decide,” the woman said. “I hope you have some acceptable form of identification with you.”

“What do you mean by ‘acceptable’?” Wallander shouted, but she had hung up.

Wallander slammed down the receiver. The powerfully built waitress was putting buns out on a plate, and looked up at him with displeasure. He put some coins on the counter and left without a word.

Fifteen kilometers further north he turned to the west and was soon swallowed up by the dense forest to the south of Linderöd Ridge. He braked when he came to the turnoff for Farnholm Castle, and a granite plaque with gold lettering told him he was on the right path. Wallander thought the plaque looked like an expensive gravestone.

The castle road was asphalted and in good condition. Tucked discreetly into the trees was a high fence. He stopped and rolled down his window to get a better view. It was a double fence with about a meter-wide gap. He drove on. Another kilometer or so and the road swung sharply to the right. Just beyond the turnoff were the gates. Next to them was a gray building with a flat roof looking more like a pillbox than anything else. He drove forward and waited. Nothing happened. He sounded his horn. Still no reaction. He got out of the car; he was getting annoyed. He had a vague feeling of being humiliated by all these fences and closed gates. Just then a man emerged through one of the steel doors in the pillbox. He was wearing a dark red uniform Wallander had never seen before. He still had not familiarized himself with these new security companies that were popping up all over the country.

The man in the uniform came up to him. He was about the same age as Wallander.

Then he recognized him.

“Kurt Wallander,” said the guard. “Long time no see.”

“Indeed,” Wallander said. “How long ago was it when we last met? Fifteen years?”

“Twenty,” the guard said. “Maybe more.”

Wallander had dug out the man’s name from his memory. Kurt Ström. They had been colleagues on the Malmö police force. Wallander was young then and inexperienced, and Ström was a year or so older. They had never had more than professional contact with each other, but Wallander had moved to Ystad and many years later he had heard that Ström had left the force. He had a vague memory that Ström had been fired, something had been hushed up, possibly excessive force used on a prisoner, or stolen goods vanishing from a police storeroom. He didn’t know for sure.

“I was warned you were on your way,” Ström said.

“Lucky for me,” Wallander said. “I was told I’d have to produce an ‘acceptable form of identification.’ What do you find acceptable?”

“We have a high level of security at Farnholm Castle,” Ström said. “We’re pretty careful about who we let in.”

“What kind of treasure do you have hidden away here?”

“No treasure, but there’s a man with very big business interests.”

“Harderberg?”

“That’s the one. He has something a lot of people would like to get their hands on.”

“What’s that?”

“Knowledge, know-how. Worth more than owning your own mint.”

Wallander had no patience with the servile manner Ström was displaying as he spoke of the great man.

“Once upon a time you were a police officer,” Wallander said. “I still am. Perhaps you understand why I’m here?”

“I read the papers,” Ström said. “I suppose it has something to do with that lawyer.”

“Two lawyers have died, not just one,” Wallander said. “But if I understand it right, only the elder one worked with Harderberg.”

“He came here a lot,” Ström said. “A nice man. Very discreet.”

“He was last here on October 11, in the evening,” Wallander said. “Were you on duty then?”

Ström nodded.

“I take it you take notes on all the cars and people that come in and out?”

Ström laughed out loud. “We stopped that a long time ago,” he said. “It’s all done by computer nowadays.”

“I’d like to see a printout for the evening of October 11,” Wallander said.

“You’ll have to ask them up at the castle,” Ström said. “I’m not allowed to do things like that.”

“But I daresay you’re allowed to remember,” Wallander said.

“I know he was here that evening,” Ström said. “But I can’t remember when he arrived and when he left.”

“Was he by himself in the car?”

“I can’t say.”

“Because you’re not allowed to say?”

Ström nodded again.

“I’ve sometimes thought about applying for a job with a security company,” Wallander said, “but I think I’d find it hard to get used to not being allowed to answer questions.”

“Everything has its price,” Ström said.

Wallander thought he could say “hear, hear” to that. He watched Ström for a few moments. “Harderberg,” he said eventually. “What’s he like as a person?”

The reply surprised him.

“I don’t know,” Ström said.

“You must have some sort of an opinion, surely? Or aren’t you allowed to comment on that either?”

“I’ve never met him,” Ström said.

“And you have been working for him how long?”

“Nearly five years.”

“You’ve never once seen him?”

“Never.”

“He’s never passed through these gates?”

“His car has one-way glass in the windows.”

“I take it that’s part of the security system?” Wallander thought for a moment. “In other words, you are never completely sure whether he’s here or not. You don’t know if he’s in the car when it passes in or out through the gates?”

“No. It’s all part of the security,” Ström said.

Wallander went back to his car. Ström disappeared through the steel door, and shortly afterward the gates opened without a sound. It’s like entering a different world, Wallander thought.

After about a kilometer the forest opened up. The castle stood on a hill, surrounded by extensive and well-tended grounds. The large main building, like the freestanding outbuildings surrounding it, was in dark red brick. The castle had towers and steeples, balustrades and balconies. The only thing to break the mood of another world, another age, was a helicopter on a concrete pad. Wallander had the impression of a large insect with its wings half-folded, a wild beast at rest but liable to come back to life with a jerk.

He drove slowly up to the main entrance. Peacocks strolled leisurely around on the road in front of the car. He parked behind a black BMW and got out. It was very quiet all around. The tranquillity reminded him of the previous day when he’d walked up the gravel drive to Gustaf Torstensson’s house. Perhaps tranquillity is what distinguishes the environment in which wealthy people live, he thought. It’s not the orchestral fanfares, but the tranquillity.

Just then one of the double doors at the main entrance to the castle opened. A woman in her thirties, dressed in well-fitting and, Wallander guessed, expensive clothes emerged on to the steps.

“Please come in,” she said with a ready smile, a smile that seemed to Wallander just as cold and unwelcoming as it was correct.

“I don’t know if I have any identification papers you would regard as acceptable,” he said, “but the guard who goes by the name of Ström recognized me.”

“I know,” said the woman.

It was not the woman who’d answered the phone when he rang from the café. He went up the steps, held out his hand, and introduced himself. She ignored his hand but simply reproduced the same distant smile. He followed her inside through the doors. They walked across a large entrance hall. Modernistic sculptures on stone pedestals were dotted around, illuminated by invisible spotlights. In the background, by the wide staircase leading to the upper floor, he detected two men lurking in the shadows. Wallander could sense their presence, but could not make out their faces. Tranquillity and shadows, he thought. The world of Harderberg, as I know it so far. He followed her through a door on the left, leading into a large oval room that was also decorated with sculptures. But as a reminder of the fact that they were in a castle with a history going back deep into the Middle Ages, there were also some suits of armor keeping watch over him. In the center of the highly polished oak parquet floor was a desk and a single visitor’s chair. There was no paper on the desk, only a computer and an advanced telephone exchange that was hardly any bigger than an ordinary telephone. The woman invited him to sit down, then keyed a command into the computer. She handed him a sheet from a printer invisible somewhere under the desk.

“I gather you wanted a printout of the gate-control data for the evening of October 11,” the woman said. “You can see from this when Mr. Torstensson arrived, and when he left Farnholm.”

Wallander took the printout and put it on the floor beside him.

“That’s not the only reason why I’ve come,” he said. “I have several other questions.”

“Fire away.”

The woman was sitting behind the desk. She pressed various buttons on the telephone exchange. Wallander assumed she was switching all incoming calls to another exchange somewhere in the huge building.

“The information I’ve received informs me that Gustaf Torstensson had Alfred Harderberg as a client,” Wallander said. “If I understand correctly, he’s out of the country at the moment.”

“He’s in Dubai,” the woman said.

Wallander frowned. “An hour ago he was in Geneva,” he said.

“That’s right,” the woman said without batting an eyelid. “But he’s now left for Dubai.”

Wallander took a notebook and pencil from his jacket pocket.

“May I ask your name and what you do here?”

“I’m one of Alfred Harderberg’s secretaries,” she said. “My name’s Anita Karlén.”

“Does Mr. Harderberg have many secretaries?” Wallander wondered.

“That depends on how you look at it,” Anita Karlén replied. “Is that really relevant?”

Once again Wallander started to get annoyed at the way in which he was being treated. He decided he would have to change his approach if the whole visit to Farnholm were not to be a waste of time.

“I shall decide if the question is relevant or not,” he said. “Farnholm Castle is a private property and you have a legal right to surround it with as many fences as you like, as high as you like. Provided you have planning permits and are not contravening any laws or regulations. You also have the right to deny entry to whomever you like. With one exception: the police. Is that understood?”

“We haven’t denied you entry, Mr. Wallander,” she said, still without batting an eyelid.

“Let me express myself more clearly,” Wallander said, noting that the woman’s indifference was making him feel insecure. Perhaps he was also distracted by the fact that she was strikingly beautiful.

Just as he opened his mouth to continue, a door opened and a woman came in with a tray. To his surprise Wallander saw that she was black. Without saying a word she put the tray down on the desk, then disappeared again just as noiselessly as she’d appeared.

“Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr. Wallander?”

He said he would. She poured and then handed him the cup and saucer. He examined the china.

“Let me ask you a question that’s relevant,” he said. “What will happen if I drop this cup on the floor? How much will I owe you?”

For the first time her smile seemed genuine.

“Everything’s insured, of course,” she said. “But that’s a classic Rörstrand special edition.”

Wallander put the cup and saucer gingerly down by the side of the printout on the oak parquet floor, and started again.

“I’ll express myself very precisely,” he said. “That same evening, October 11, barely an hour after Mr. Torstensson had been here, he died in a car accident.”

“We sent flowers to the funeral,” she said. “One of my colleagues attended the service.”

“But not Alfred Harderberg, of course?”

“My employer avoids appearing in public whenever possible.”

“I’ve gathered that,” Wallander said. “But the fact is that we have reason to believe this wasn’t in fact a car accident. Many things suggest Mr. Torstensson was murdered. And to make matters worse, his son was shot dead in his office a few weeks later. Perhaps you sent flowers to his funeral as well?”

She stared at him uncomprehendingly.

“We only dealt with Gustaf Torstensson,” she said.

Wallander nodded, and went on: “Now you know why I’ve come. And you still haven’t told me how many secretaries work here.”

“And you haven’t understood that it depends on how you look at it, Inspector Wallander,” she said.

“I’m all ears.”

“Here at Farnholm Castle there are three secretaries,” she said. “Then there are two more who accompany him on his travels. In addition Dr. Harderberg has secretaries stationed in various places around the world. The number can vary, but it’s rarely fewer than six.”

“I count eleven,” Wallander said.

She agreed.

“You referred to your employer as Dr. Harderberg,” Wallander said.

“He has several honorary doctorates,” she said. “You can have a list if you’d like one.”

“Yes, I would,” Wallander said. “I also want an overview of Dr. Harderberg’s business empire. But you can let me have that later. What I want now is to know what happened that evening when Gustaf Torstensson was here for the last time. Which one of all those secretaries can tell me that?”

“I was on duty that evening.”

Wallander thought for a moment. “That’s why you’re here,” he said. “That’s why you are receiving me. But what would have happened if this had been your day off? You couldn’t know the police were going to come this day of all days.”

“Of course not.”

Even as he spoke Wallander realized he was wrong. And he also realized how it would be possible for people at Farnholm Castle to know. The thought worried him. He had to force himself to concentrate before continuing.

“What happened that evening?” he asked.

“Mr. Torstensson arrived shortly after 7 p.m. He had a private conversation with Dr. Harderberg and some of his closest colleagues, lasting an hour. Then he had a cup of tea. He left Farnholm at exactly 8:14.”

“What did they talk about that evening?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“But you said a moment ago that you were on duty.”

“It was a conversation with no secretary present. No notes were taken.”

“Who were the colleagues?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You said Mr. Torstensson had a private conversation with Dr. Harderberg and some of his closest colleagues.”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Because you’re not allowed to?”

“Because I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“Who those colleagues were. I’d never seen them before. They had arrived that day and they left the following day.”

Wallander didn’t know what to ask next. It seemed as if all the answers he was getting were peripheral. He decided to approach matters from a different angle.

“You said a moment ago that Dr. Harderberg has eleven secretaries. May I ask how many lawyers he has?”

“Presumably at least as many.”

“But you’re not allowed to say exactly how many?”

“I don’t know.”

Wallander nodded. He could see he was entering another cul-de-sac.

“How long had Mr. Torstensson been working for Dr. Harderberg?”

“Ever since he bought Farnholm Castle and made it his headquarters. About five years ago.”

“Mr. Torstensson worked as a lawyer in Ystad all his life,” said Wallander. “All of a sudden he’s considered to be qualified to advise on international business matters. Doesn’t that seem a little remarkable?”

“That’s something you’ll have to ask Dr. Harderberg.”

Wallander closed his notebook. “Absolutely right,” he said. “I’d like you to send him a message, whether he’s in Geneva or Dubai or wherever, and inform him that Inspector Wallander wants to talk to him as soon as possible. The day he gets back here, in other words.”

He stood up and gingerly placed the cup and saucer on the desk.

“The Ystad police don’t have eleven secretaries,” he said, “but our receptionists are pretty efficient. You can leave a message with them saying when he can see me.”

He followed her out into the hall. Next to the front door, lying on a marble table, was a thick leather-bound file.

“Here’s the overview of Dr. Harderberg’s business affairs you asked for,” Anita Karlén said.

Somebody’s been listening in, Wallander thought. Somebody’s overheard the whole of our conversation. Presumably a transcript is already on its way to Harderberg, wherever he is. In case he’s interested. Which I doubt.

“Don’t forget to stress that it’s urgent,” Wallander said. This time Anita Karlén did shake hands with him.

Wallander glanced at the big unlit staircase, but the shadows had gone.

The sky had cleared. He got into his car. Anita Karlén was standing on the steps, her hair fluttering in the wind. As he drove off he could see her in his rearview mirror, still on the steps, watching him. This time he didn’t need to stop at the gates, which started opening as he approached. There was no sign of Kurt Ström. The gates closed automatically behind him, and he drove slowly back to Ystad. It was only three days since he’d suddenly made up his mind to return to work, but even so, it seemed like a long time. As if he were on his way somewhere while his memories raced away at an enormous pace in an entirely different direction.

Just after the turnoff onto the main highway there was a dead hare lying on the road. He drove around it, and thought how he was still no nearer to finding out what had happened to Gustaf Torstensson or his son. It seemed to him highly unlikely that he would find any connection between the dead lawyers and the people in the castle behind that double fence. Nevertheless, he would go through that leather file before the day was over, and try to get some idea of Alfred Harderberg’s business empire.

His car phone started ringing. He picked it up and heard Svedberg’s voice.

“Svedberg here,” he shouted. “Where are you?”

“Forty minutes from Ystad.”

“Martinsson said you were going to Farnholm Castle.”

“I’ve been there. Drew a blank.”

The conversation was cut off by interference for a few seconds. Then Svedberg’s voice returned.

“Berta Dunér phoned and asked for you,” he said. “She was anxious for you to get in touch with her right away.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t say.”

“If you give me her number I’ll give her a call.”

“It would be better if you just drove there. She seemed very insistent.”

Wallander glanced at the clock. It was 8:45 already.

“What happened at the meeting this morning?”

“Nothing special.”

“I’ll drive straight to her place when I get back to Ystad,” Wallander said.

“Do that,” Svedberg said.

Wallander wondered what Mrs. Dunér wanted that was so urgent. He could feel himself growing tense, and increased his speed.

At 9:25 he parked haphazardly across the street from the pink house. He hurried across the street and rang her bell. The moment she opened the door he could see something was amiss. She looked to be in shock.

“You’ve been asking for me,” he said.

She nodded and ushered him in. He was about to take off his shoes when she grasped his arm and dragged him into the living room that overlooked her little garden. She pointed.

“Somebody’s been there during the night,” she said.

She looked really frightened. Something of her anxiety rubbed off on Wallander. He stood at the French windows and examined the lawn: the flower beds, dug over in preparation for winter, the climbers on the whitewashed wall between Mrs. Dunér’s garden and her neighbor’s.

“I can’t see anything,” he said.

She had been hovering in the background, as if she didn’t dare go up to the window. Wallander began to wonder if she was suffering from some temporary mental aberration as a result of the violent events that had shaken her life to its foundations.

She came to his side, and pointed. “There,” she said. “There. Somebody’s been there during the night, digging.”

“Did you see anybody?”

“No.”

“Did you hear anything?”

“No. But I know somebody’s been there during the night.”

Wallander tried to follow where she was pointing. He had the vague impression he could see that a tiny piece of lawn had been disturbed.

“It could be a cat,” he said. “Or a mole. Even a mouse.”

She shook her head. “No, somebody’s been there during the night,” she said.

Wallander opened the French windows and stepped out into the garden. He walked onto the lawn. From close up it looked as if a square of turf had been lifted and then put back. He squatted down and ran his hand over the grass. His fingers touched something hard, something plastic or iron, a little spike sticking up out of the turf. Very carefully, he bent back the blades of grass. A grayish-brown object was buried just under the surface.

Wallander stiffened. He pulled his hand back and rose gingerly to his feet. For a moment he thought he had gone insane—it could not possibly be what he thought it was. That was too unlikely, too far-fetched even to be considered.

He walked backward to the French windows, placing his feet exactly where they had been before. When he got to the house he turned around. He still could not believe it was true.

“What is it?” she said.

“Please go and fetch the telephone directory,” Wallander said, and he could hear his voice was tense.

“What do you want the directory for?”

“Do as I say,” he said.

She went out into the hall and returned with the directory for Ystad and District. Wallander took it and weighed it in his hand.

“Please go into the kitchen and stay there,” he said.

She did as she was told.

Wallander tried to tell himself that this was all in his imagination. If there had been the slightest possibility that the improbability was in fact true, he should have reacted quite differently. He went in through the French windows and positioned himself as far back in the room as he could. Then he aimed the phone book and threw it at the spike sticking up out of the grass.

The explosion deafened him.

Afterward, he was amazed to find the windows hadn’t shattered.

He eyed the crater that had formed in the lawn. Then he hurried into the kitchen where he’d heard Mrs. Dunér scream. She was standing as if petrified in the middle of the floor, her hands over her ears. He took hold of her and sat her down on one of the kitchen chairs.

“There’s no danger,” he said. “I’ll be back in a second. I must just make a phone call.”

He dialed the number to the police station. To his relief it was Ebba who answered.

“Kurt here,” he said. “I have to speak to Martinsson or Svedberg. Failing that, anybody will do.”

Ebba recognized his voice, he could tell. That’s why she asked no questions, just did as he had asked. She had grasped how serious he was.

Martinsson answered.

“It’s Kurt,” Wallander said. “Any minute now the police are going to get an emergency call about a violent explosion behind the Continental Hotel. Make sure no emergency services are called. I don’t want fire engines and ambulances rushing here. Get here quick and bring somebody with you. I’m with Mrs. Dunér, Torstensson’s secretary. The address is Stickgatan 26. A pink house.”

“What’s happened?” Martinsson said.

“You’ll see when you get here,” Wallander said. “You wouldn’t believe me if I tried to explain.”

“Try me,” Martinsson said.

“If I told you that somebody had planted a land mine in Mrs. Dunér’s back garden, would you believe me?”

“No,” Martinsson said.

“I didn’t think so.”

Wallander hung up and went back to the French windows.

The crater was still there.