The Man Who Smiled

Chapter 6

Kurt Wallander would remember Wednesday, November 3, as a day that he was never entirely convinced had existed. How could he ever have dreamed that he would one day come across a land mine buried in a garden in the middle of Ystad?

When Martinsson arrived at Mrs. Dunér’s house with Höglund, Wallander still had difficulty in believing it was a mine that had exploded. Martinsson, however, had greater faith in what Wallander had said on the telephone, and on the way out from the police station he had already sent a message to Nyberg, their technical expert. He arrived at the pink house only a few minutes after Martinsson and Höglund had stood transfixed before the crater in the lawn. Since they couldn’t be sure there weren’t any more mines hidden in the grass, they all stayed close to the house wall. On her own initiative Höglund then went to the kitchen with Mrs. Dunér, who was a little calmer by now, to question her.

“What’s going on?” Martinsson said, indignantly.

“Are you asking me?” Wallander replied. “I have no idea.”

No more was said. They continued contemplating the hole in the ground. Shortly afterward the forensic team arrived, led by the skillful but irritable Sven Nyberg. He stopped in his tracks when he caught sight of Wallander.

“What are you doing here?” he said, making Wallander feel that he had committed an indecent act by returning to duty.

“Working,” he said, going on the defensive.

“I thought you were quitting?”

“So did I. But then I realized you couldn’t manage without me.”

Nyberg was about to say something, but Wallander raised a hand to stop him.

“More important is this hole in the lawn,” he said, remembering that Nyberg had served several times with Swedish troops for the UN. “From your years of duty in Cyprus and the Middle East you can verify if this was in fact a mine. But first can you tell us if there are any more of them?”

“I’m not a dog,” Nyberg said, squatting by the house wall. Wallander told him about the spike he had found with his fingers, and then the telephone book that had triggered the explosion.

Nyberg nodded. “There are very few explosive substances or compounds that are detonated on impact—other than mines. That’s the whole point of them. People or vehicles are supposed to be blown up if they put a foot or a wheel on a landmine. For an antipersonnel mine a pressure of just a few kilos can be enough—a kid’s foot or a telephone directory will do. If the target’s a vehicle, two hundred kilos would be the pressure required.” He stood up and looked questioningly at Wallander and Martinsson. “But what the hell kind of person lays a mine in somebody’s garden? They had better be caught immediately.”

“You’re quite certain it was a mine?” Wallander said.

“I’m never certain of anything,” Nyberg said, “but I’ll send for a mine detector from the regiment. Until it gets here nobody should set foot in this garden.”

While they were waiting for the mine detector Martinsson made a few calls. Wallander sat on the sofa, trying to come to terms with what had happened. From the kitchen he could hear Höglund patiently asking Mrs. Dunér questions that Mrs. Dunér answered even more slowly.

Two dead lawyers, Wallander thought. Then somebody lays a mine in their secretary’s garden. Even if everything else is still obscure, we can be sure of one thing: the solution must lie somewhere in the activities of the law firm. It’s hardly credible anymore that the private or social lives of these three individuals is relevant.

Wallander was interrupted in his train of thought by Martinsson finishing his calls.

“Björk asked me if I’d lost my senses,” he said, making a face. “I must admit that I wasn’t quite sure at first how I should answer that. He says it’s inconceivable that it could be a land mine. Even so, he wants one of us to update him as soon as possible.”

“When we’ve got something to say,” Wallander said. “Where’s Nyberg disappeared to?”

“He’s gone to the barracks himself to fetch a mine detector,” Martinsson said.

Wallander looked at the time. 10:15. He thought about his visit to Farnholm Castle, but didn’t really know what conclusion to draw.

Martinsson was standing in the doorway, studying the hole in the lawn. “There was an incident about twenty years ago in Söderhamn,” he said. “In the municipal law courts. Do you remember?”

“Vaguely,” Wallander said.

“There was an old farmer who’d spent countless years bringing just as countless a series of lawsuits against his neighbors, his relatives, anybody and everybody. It ended up by becoming a clinical obsession that nobody diagnosed as such soon enough. He thought he was being persecuted by all his imagined opponents, not least by the judge and his own lawyer. In the end he snapped. He drew a revolver in the middle of a case and shot both the judge and his lawyer. When the police tried to get into his house afterward, it turned out he’d booby-trapped all the doors and windows. It was sheer luck that nobody was injured once the fireworks started.”

Wallander remembered the incident.

“A prosecutor in Stockholm has his house blown up,” Martinsson went on. “Lawyers are threatened and attacked. Not to mention police officers.”

Wallander nodded without replying. Höglund emerged from the kitchen, notebook in hand. Somewhat to his surprise, Wallander noticed that she was an attractive woman. It had not occurred to him before. She sat on a chair opposite him.

“Nothing,” she said. “She hadn’t heard a thing during the night, but she is certain the lawn hadn’t been messed up by nightfall. She’s an early riser and as soon as it was light she saw that somebody had been in her garden. She says she has no idea why anybody would want to kill her. Or at the very least blow her legs off.”

“Is she telling the truth?” Martinsson said.

“It’s not easy to tell if a person in shock is telling the truth,” Höglund said, “but I am positive she thinks the mine was put in her lawn during last night. And that she doesn’t have a clue why.”

“Something about it worries me,” Wallander said. “I’m not sure if I can get a handle on it.”

“Try,” Martinsson said.

“She looks out of the window this morning and sees that somebody has been digging up her lawn. So what does she do?”

“What doesn’t she do?” Höglund said.

“Precisely,” Wallander said. “The natural thing for her to do would have been to open the French windows and go out and investigate. But what does she do instead?”

“She calls the police,” Martinsson said.

“As if she’d suspected there was something dangerous out there,” said Höglund.

“Or known,” Wallander said.

“An antipersonnel mine, for instance,” Martinsson said. “She was quite upset when she phoned the police station.”

“She was upset when I got here,” Wallander said. “In fact, I’ve had the impression that she was nervous every time I’ve spoken to her. Which could be explained by all that’s happened over the last week or two, of course, but I’m not convinced.”

The front doorbell rang and in marched Nyberg ahead of two men in uniform carrying an implement that reminded Wallander of a vacuum cleaner. It took the soldiers a quarter of an hour to go over the little garden with the mine detector. The police officers stood at the window watching intently as the men worked. Then they announced that it was all clear, and prepared to leave. Wallander accompanied them out into the street where their car was waiting for them.

“What can you say about the mine?” he asked them. “Size, explosive power? Can you guess where it might have been made? Anything at all could be of use to us.”

LUNDQVIST, CAPTAIN, it said on the badge attached to the uniform of the older of the two soldiers. He was also the one who replied to Wallander’s question.

“Not a particularly powerful mine,” he said. “A few hundred grams of explosive at most. Enough to kill a man, though. We usually call this kind of mine a Four.”

“Meaning what?” Wallander said.

“Somebody walks on a mine,” Captain Lundqvist said. “You need three men to carry him out of battle. Four people removed from active duty.”

“And the origin?”

“Mines aren’t made the same way as other weapons,” Lundqvist said. “Bofors makes them, as do all the other major arms manufacturers. But nearly every industrialized country has a factory making mines. Either they’re manufactured openly under license, or they’re pirated. Terrorist groups have their own models. Before you can say anything about where the mine comes from, you have to have a fragment of the explosive and preferably also a bit of the material the casing was made from. It could be iron or plastic. Even wood.”

“We’ll see what we can find,” Wallander said. “Then we’ll get back to you.”

“Not a nice weapon,” Captain Lundqvist said. “They say it’s the world’s cheapest and most reliable soldier. You put him somewhere and he never moves from the spot, not for a hundred years if that’s how what you want. He doesn’t require food or drink or wages. He just exists, and waits. Until somebody comes and walks on him. Then he strikes.”

“How long can a mine remain active?” Wallander asked.

“Nobody knows. Land mines that were laid in the First World War still go off now and then.”

Wallander went back into the house. Nyberg was in the garden and had already started his meticulous investigation of the crater.

“The explosive and if possible also a piece of the casing,” Wallander said.

“What else do you suppose we’re looking for?” Nyberg snarled. “Bits of bone?”

Wallander wondered whether he should let Mrs. Dunér calm down for a few more hours before talking to her, but he was getting impatient again. Impatient at never seeming to be able to see any sign of a breakthrough, or finding any clear starting point for this investigation.

“You two had better go and fill Björk in,” he said to Martinsson and Höglund. “This afternoon we’ll go through the whole case in detail, to see where we’ve gotten.”

“Have we gotten anywhere at all?” Martinsson said.

“We’ve always gotten somewhere,” Wallander said, “but we don’t always know exactly where. Has Svedberg been talking to the lawyers going through the Torstensson archives?”

“He’s been there all morning,” Martinsson said. “But I expect he’d rather be doing something else. He’s not really one for reading papers.”

“Go and help him,” Wallander said. “I have an idea that it’s urgent.”

He went back into the house, hung up his jacket, and went to the bathroom in the hall. He gave a start when he saw his face in the mirror. He was unshaven and red-eyed, and his hair was standing on end. He wondered about the impression he must have made at Farnholm Castle. He rinsed his face in cold water, asking himself where he was going to start in order to get Mrs. Dunér to understand that he knew she was holding back information—and he did not know why. I must be friendly, he decided. Otherwise she’ll close herself off completely.

He went to the kitchen where she was still slumped on a chair. The forensic team was busy in the garden. Occasionally Wallander heard Nyberg’s agitated voice. He had the sense of having experienced exactly what he was now seeing, feeling, a moment before, the bewildering sensation of having gone around in a circle and returned to a point far in the distant past. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he sat at the kitchen table and looked at the woman facing him. Just for a moment he thought she reminded him of his long-dead mother. The gray hair, the thin body that seemed to have been compressed inside a tiny frame. He could not conjure up a picture of his mother’s face, though: it had faded from his memory.

“You’re very upset, I know,” he began, “but we have to have a talk.”

She nodded without replying.

“Let’s see, this morning you discovered that somebody had been in your garden during the night,” Wallander said.

“I could see it right away,” she said.

“What did you do then?”

She looked at him in surprise. “I’ve already told you,” she said. “Do I have to go through everything again?”

“Not everything,” Wallander said, patiently. “You only need to answer the questions I ask you.”

“The sun was coming up,” she said. “I’m an early riser. I looked out at the garden. Somebody had been there. I called the police.”

“Why did you call the police?” Wallander said, watching her carefully.

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“You might have gone out to see what damage had been done, for instance.”

“I didn’t dare.”

“Why not? Because you knew there was something out there that could be dangerous?”

She didn’t answer. Wallander waited. Nyberg shouted angrily in the garden.

“I don’t think you’ve been completely honest with me,” Wallander said. “I think there is something that you ought to tell me.”

She put a hand over her eyes, as if the light in the kitchen was affecting her. Wallander waited. The clock on the kitchen wall showed 11 a.m.

“I’ve been frightened for so long,” she said suddenly, peering up at Wallander as if it were his fault. He waited for more, but in vain.

“People aren’t usually frightened unless there is a cause,” Wallander said. “If the police are going to be able to find out what happened to Gustaf and Sten Torstensson, you have got to help us.”

“I can’t help you,” she said.

Wallander could see that she was liable to break down at any moment. But he pressed on nevertheless.

“You can answer my questions,” he said. “Start by telling me why you’re frightened.”

“Do you know what’s the most scary thing there is?” she said. “It’s other people’s fear. I’d worked thirty years for Gustaf Torstensson. I wasn’t close to him, but I couldn’t avoid noticing the change. There came to be a strange smell about him. His fear.”

“When did you first notice it?”

“Three years ago.”

“Had anything specific happened?”

“Everything was exactly as usual.”

“It’s very important that you try to remember.”

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do all this time?”

Wallander tried to think how best to keep Mrs. Dunér going—despite everything she seemed willing to answer his questions now.

“You never spoke to Mr. Torstensson about it?”

“Never.”

“Not to his son either?”

“I don’t think he’d noticed anything.”

She could be right, Wallander thought. She was Gustaf Torstensson’s secretary, after all.

“Do you really have no explanation for what happened today? You realize that you could have been killed if you had gone into the garden. I think you suspected as much and that’s why you called the police. You’ve been expecting something to happen. But you have no explanation?”

“People started coming to the office during the night,” she said. “Both Gustaf and I noticed. A pen lying differently on a desk, a chair somebody had been sitting on and put back almost in its proper place but not quite.”

“You must have asked him about it,” Wallander said.

“I wasn’t allowed to. He forbade me.”

“So he did speak about these nocturnal visits, then?”

“You can see by looking at a person what you’re not allowed to mention.”

The conversation was interrupted by Nyberg tapping on the window.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” Wallander said. Nyberg was standing outside the kitchen door, holding out his hand. Wallander could see something badly burned, hardly half a centimeter across.

“A plastic land mine,” Nyberg said. “I can confirm that even at this stage. We might possibly be able to find out what type it is, even where it was made. But it’ll take time.”

“Can you say anything about whoever it was who laid the mine?”

“I might have been able to if you hadn’t thrown a directory at it,” Nyberg said.

“It was easy to see,” Wallander said.

“A person who knows what he’s doing can plant a mine so that it’s invisible,” Nyberg said. “Both you and that woman in the kitchen could see that somebody had been digging up the lawn. We’re dealing with amateurs.”

Or somebody who wants us to think that, Wallander thought. But he didn’t say so and went back to the kitchen. He only had one more question.

“Yesterday afternoon you had a visit from an Asian woman,” he said. “Who was she?”

She looked at him in astonishment. “How do you know that?”

“Never mind how,” Wallander said. “Just answer the question.”

“She’s a cleaner, she works at the Torstensson offices,” Mrs Dunér said.

So that was it! Wallander was disappointed.

“What’s her name?”

“Kim Sung-Lee.”

“Where does she live?”

“I have her address at the office.”

“What did she want?”

“She was wondering if she could keep her job.”

“I’d be grateful if you could let me have her address,” Wallander said, standing up.

“What will happen now?”

“You don’t need to be afraid anymore,” Wallander said. “I’ll make sure there’s a police officer on hand. For as long as it’s necessary.”

He told Nyberg he was leaving and went back to the police station. On the way there he stopped at Fridolf’s Café and bought some sandwiches. He shut himself in his office and prepared for his meeting with Björk. But when he went to his office, Björk was not there. The conversation would have to wait.

It was 1 p.m. by the time Wallander knocked on the door of Åkeson’s office at the other end of the long, narrow police station. Every time he was there he was surprised by the chaos that seemed to prevail. The desk was piled high with paper, files were strewn around the floor and on the visitors’ chairs. Along one wall was a barbell and a hastily rolled-up mattress.

“Have you started working out?”

“Not only that,” Åkeson replied with a self-satisfied grin, “I’ve also acquired the good habit of taking a nap after lunch. I’ve just woken up.”

“You mean you sleep here on the floor?”

“A thirty-minute nap,” Åkeson confirmed. “Then I get back to work full of energy.”

“Maybe I should try that,” Wallander said doubtfully.

Åkeson made room for him on one of the chairs by dumping a stack of files onto the floor. Then he sat down and put his feet on the desk.

“I’d almost given up on you,” he said with a smile, “but deep down I always knew you’d be back.”

“It’s been a hell of a time,” Wallander said.

Åkeson became serious. “I really can’t imagine what it must be like killing a man. Never mind if it was self-defense. It must be the only human act from which there’s no going back. I don’t have enough imagination to conjure up anything except a vague image of the abyss.”

“You can never get away from it,” Wallander said. “But maybe you can learn to live with it.”

They sat without speaking. Somebody in the corridor was complaining that the coffee machine had broken down.

“We’re the same age, you and me,” Åkeson said. “Six months ago I woke up one morning and thought: Good God! Was that all it was, life? Was there no more to it than that? I felt panic-stricken. But now, looking back, I have to acknowledge that it was useful. It made me do something I ought to have done ages ago.”

He fished a sheet of paper out of one of the piles on his desk and handed it to Wallander. It was an advertisement from various UN organizations for legally qualified people to fill a variety of posts abroad, including refugee camps in Africa and Asia.

“I sent in an application,” Åkeson said. “Then I forgot all about it. But a month ago I was called for an interview in Copenhagen. There’s a chance I might be offered a two-year contract in a big camp for Ugandan refugees who are going to be repatriated.”

“Jump at it if the offer comes,” Wallander said. “What does your wife say?”

“She doesn’t know about it,” Åkeson said. “I don’t honestly know what will happen.”

“I need you to give me some information,” Wallander said.

Åkeson took his feet off the desk and cleared aside some of the papers in front of him. Wallander told him about the explosion in Mrs. Dunér’s back garden. Åkeson shook his head incredulously.

“That’s not possible.”

“Nyberg was positive,” Wallander said. “And he’s usually right, as you know.”

“What do you think about the whole business?” Åkeson said. “I’ve spoken to Björk, and of course I go along with you tearing up the previous investigation into Gustaf Torstensson’s accident. Do we really have nothing to go on?”

Wallander thought before replying. “The one thing we can be completely sure about is that it’s no strange coincidence that two lawyers are dead and a mine is planted in Mrs. Dunér’s garden. It was all planned. We don’t know how it started, and we don’t know how it will end.”

“You don’t think what happened to Mrs. Dunér was just meant to frighten her?”

“Whoever put that mine in her garden intended to kill her,” Wallander said. “I want her protected. Perhaps she needs to move out of the house.”

“I’ll arrange for that,” Åkeson said. “I’ll have a word with Björk.”

“She’s scared,” Wallander said. “But I can see now, after talking to her again, that she doesn’t know what she’s scared of. I thought she was holding something back, but I now realize she knows as little as the rest of us. Anyway, I thought you might be able to help by telling me about Gustaf and Sten Torstensson. You must have run into them a lot over the years.”

“Gustaf was an odd duck,” Åkeson said. “And his son was well on the way to becoming one too.”

“Gustaf Torstensson,” Wallander said. “I think that’s the starting point. But don’t ask me why.”

“I didn’t have that much to do with him,” Åkeson said. “It was before my time when he used to appear in court as a defense lawyer. These last few years he seems to have been busy exclusively with financial consultancy.”

“For Alfred Harderberg,” Wallander said. “Of Farnholm Castle. Which also strikes me as odd. A run-of-the-mill lawyer from Ystad. And a businessman with a global business empire.”

“As I understand it, that’s one of Harderberg’s chief attributes,” Åkeson said. “His knack of finding and surrounding himself with just the right associates. Perhaps he noticed something about Gustaf that nobody else had suspected.”

“Are there any skeletons in Harderberg’s closet?”

“Not as far as I know,” Åkeson said. “Which in itself might seem odd. They say there’s a crime behind every fortune. But Harderberg appears to be a model citizen. And he does his part for Sweden as well.”

“Meaning what?”

“He doesn’t channel all his investments abroad. He’s even set up businesses in other countries and moved the actual manufacturing to Sweden. That’s pretty unusual nowadays.”

“No skeletons roaming the corridors of Farnholm Castle, then,” Wallander said. “Were there any blots on Torstensson’s permanent record?”

“None at all,” Åkeson said. “Honest, pedantic, boring. Old-fashioned sense of honor. Not a genius, not an idiot. Discreet. Not the type ever to wake up one morning and ask himself where his life had disappeared to.”

“Yet he was murdered,” Wallander said. “There must have been one blot somewhere. Maybe not in his record, but in somebody else’s.”

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

“A lawyer must be a little like a doctor,” Wallander said. “He knows a lot of people’s secrets.”

“You’re no doubt right,” Åkeson agreed. “The solution must be somewhere in his relations with his clients. Something that involves everybody working for the firm. Including the secretary, Mrs. Dunér.”

“We’re searching.”

“I don’t have much more to say about Sten Torstensson,” Åkeson said. “A bachelor, a bit old-fashioned as well. I’ve heard the odd rumor to the effect that he was interested in persons of the same sex, but that’s a rumor that circulates about all aging bachelors. Thirty years ago, we could have guessed it might be blackmail.”

“That might be worth bearing in mind,” Wallander said. “Anything else?”

“Not really. Very occasionally he would make a joke, but he wasn’t exactly the type you wanted to invite for dinner. He was said to be a good sailor, though.”

The phone rang. Åkeson answered, then handed the receiver to Wallander.

Wallander recognized Martinsson’s voice, and could tell right away that it was important. Martinsson’s voice was loud and shrill.

“I’m at the lawyers’ offices,” he said. “We’ve found something that might be what we’ve been looking for.”

“What?”

“Threatening letters.”

“Who to?”

“To all three.”

“Mrs. Dunér as well?”

“Her as well.”

“I’m on my way.”

Wallander handed the receiver back to Åkeson and rose to his feet.

“Martinsson’s found some threatening letters,” he said. “It looks as if you might have been right.”

“Call me here or at home the minute you’ve got anything to tell me,” Åkeson said.

Wallander went out to his car without going back to his office for his jacket. He exceeded the speed limit all the way to the lawyers’ offices. Lundin was in the reception area as he hurried through the door.

“Where are they?” he said.

She pointed at the conference room. Wallander went straight in before he remembered that there were people from the Bar Council there as well. Three solemn men, each one in his sixties, who clearly resented his barging in. He thought of the unshaven face he had seen in the mirror earlier—he did not exactly look presentable.

Martinsson and Svedberg were at the table, waiting for him.

“This is Inspector Wallander,” Svedberg said.

“A police officer with a national reputation,” said one of the men, stiffly, shaking hands. Wallander shook hands with the other two as well, and sat down.

“Fill me in,” Wallander said, looking at Martinsson. But the reply came from one of the lawyers from Stockholm.

“Perhaps I should start by informing Inspector Wallander of the procedure undertaken when a law firm is liquidated,” said the man whose name Wallander had gathered was Wrede.

“We can do that later,” Wallander intervened. “Let’s get down to business right away. You’ve found some threatening letters, I understand?”

Wrede looked at him disapprovingly, but said no more. Martinsson pushed a brown envelope across the table to Wallander, and Svedberg handed him a pair of plastic gloves.

“They were at the back of a drawer in a filing cabinet,” Martinsson said. “They weren’t listed in any diary or ledger. They were hidden away.”

Wallander put on the gloves and opened the large brown envelope. Inside were two smaller envelopes. He tried without success to decipher the postmark. On one of the envelopes was a patch of ink, suggesting that some of the text had been crossed out. He took out the two letters, written on white paper, and put them on the desk in front of him. They were handwritten, and the text was short: The injustice is not forgotten, none of you shall be allowed to live unpunished, you shall die, Gustaf Torstensson, your son and also Dunér.

The second letter was even shorter, the handwriting the same: The injustice will soon be punished.

The first letter was dated June 19, 1992, and the second August 26 of the same year. Both letters were signed Lars Borman.

Wallander slid the letters carefully to one side and took off the gloves.

“We’ve searched the ledgers,” Martinsson said, “but neither Gustaf nor Sten Torstensson had a client by the name of Lars Borman.”

“That’s correct,” Wrede confirmed.

“The man writes about an injustice,” Martinsson said. “It must have been something major, or he wouldn’t have had cause to threaten the lives of all three.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Wallander said, his thoughts miles away.

Once again he had the feeling there was something he should understand, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Show me where you found the envelope,” he said, standing up.

Svedberg led him to a big filing cabinet in the office where Mrs. Dunér’s desk was located. Svedberg pointed to one of the lower drawers. Wallander opened it. It was filled with hanging files.

“Get Miss Lundin,” he said.

When Svedberg came back with her, Wallander could see she was very nervous. Even so, without being able to say why, he was convinced that she had nothing to do with the mysterious events at the lawyers’ offices.

“Who had a key to this filing cabinet?” he said.

“Mrs. Dunér,” Lundin replied, almost inaudibly.

“Please speak a bit louder,” Wallander said.

“Mrs. Dunér,” she repeated.

“Only her?”

“The lawyers had their own keys.”

“Was it kept locked?”

“Mrs. Dunér used to open it in the morning and lock it again when she went home.”

Wrede interrupted the conversation. “We have signed for a key from Mrs. Dunér,” he said. “Sten Torstensson’s key. We opened the cabinet today.”

Wallander nodded. There was something else he ought to ask Lundin, he was sure, but he couldn’t think what it was. Instead he turned to Wrede.

“What do you think about these threatening letters?” he said.

“The man must obviously be arrested at once,” Wrede said.

“That’s not what I asked,” Wallander said. “I asked for your opinion.”

“Lawyers are often placed in exposed situations.”

“I take it all lawyers receive this kind of letter sooner or later?”

“The Bar Council might be able to supply the statistics.”

Wallander looked at him for some time before asking his final question.

“Have you ever received a threatening letter?”

“It has happened.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to reveal that. It would break my oath of confidentiality as a lawyer.”

Wallander could see his point. He replaced the letters in the brown envelope.

“We’ll take these with us,” he said to the men from the Bar Council.

“It’s not quite so straightforward as that,” Wrede said. He seemed always to be the one speaking on behalf of the others. Wallander felt like he was in a court facing a judge.

“It’s possible that just at this moment our interests are not identical,” Wallander interrupted him, irritated by his way of speaking. “You’re here to work out what to do with the firm’s property, if that’s what you can call it. We are here to identify one or more murderers. The brown envelope is going with me.”

“We cannot allow any documents to be removed from these premises until we have discussed the matter with the prosecutor in charge of the investigation,” Wrede said.

“Phone Per Åkeson,” Wallander said, “and send him my regards.”

Then he picked up the envelope and marched out of the room. Martinsson and Svedberg hastened after him.

“Now there’ll be trouble,” Martinsson said as they left the building. Wallander could tell that Martinsson was not altogether displeased at the prospect.

Wallander felt cold. The wind was gusting and seemed to be getting stronger.

“What now?” he said. “What’s Höglund up to?”

“Looking after her sick child,” Svedberg said. “Hanson would be pleased to know that. He has always said women police officers are no good when it comes to investigations.”

“Hanson has always said all kinds of things,” Martinsson said. “Police officers who are forever absent on continuing-education courses are not much good at investigations either.”

“The letters are a year old,” Wallander said. “We have a name, Lars Borman. He threatens the lives of Gustaf and Sten Torstensson. And Mrs. Dunér. He writes a letter, and then another one two months later. One was posted in some form of company envelope. Nyberg is good. I think he’ll be able to tell us what it says under the ink on that envelope. And where they were postmarked, of course. In fact, I don’t know what we’re waiting for.”

They returned to the police station. While Martinsson called Nyberg, who was still at Mrs. Dunér’s house, Wallander sat down and tried to puzzle out the postmarks.

Svedberg had gone to look for the name Lars Borman in various police registers. When Nyberg came to Wallander’s office a quarter of an hour later he was blue with cold and had dark grass stains on the knees of his overalls.

“How’s it going?” Wallander said.

“Slowly,” Nyberg said. “What did you expect? A mine exploded into millions of tiny particles.”

Wallander pointed to the two letters and the brown envelope on the desk in front of him.

“These have to be thoroughly examined,” he said. “First of all I’d like to know where the letters were postmarked. And what it says under the ink stain on one of the envelopes. Everything else can wait.”

Nyberg put on his glasses, switched on Wallander’s desk lamp, found a clean pair of plastic gloves, and examined the letters.

“We’ll be able to decipher the postmarks using a microscope,” he said. “Whatever is written on the envelope has been painted over with India ink. I can try a bit of scraping. I think I should be able to figure that out without having to send it to Linköping.”

“It’s urgent.”

Nyberg took off his glasses in irritation. “It’s always urgent,” he said. “I need an hour. Is that too much?”

“Take as long as you need,” Wallander said. “I know you work as fast as you can.”

Nyberg picked up the letters and left. Martinsson and Svedberg appeared almost immediately.

“There is no Borman in any of the registers,” Svedberg said. “I’ve found four Bromans and one Borrman. I thought maybe it could have been misspelled. Evert Borrman wandered around the Östersund area at the end of the 1960s cashing false checks. If he’s still alive he must be about eighty-five by now.”

Wallander shook his head. “We’d better wait for Nyberg,” he said. “At the same time, I think we’d be wise not to expect too much of this. The threat is brutal all right. But vague. I’ll give you a call when Nyberg reports back.”

When Wallander was on his own he took out the leather file he had been given at Farnholm Castle. He spent almost an hour acquainting himself with the extent of Harderberg’s business empire. He had still not finished when there was a knock on the door and Nyberg came in. Wallander noticed to his surprise that he was still in his dirty overalls.

“Here are the answers to your questions,” he said, flopping down on Wallander’s visitor’s chair. “The letters are postmarked in Helsingborg, and on one of the envelopes it says ‘The Linden Hotel.’”

Wallander pulled over a pad and made a note.

“Linden Hotel,” Nyberg said. “Gjutargatan 12. It even gave the phone number.”

“Where?”

“I thought you’d grasped that,” Nyberg said. “The letters were postmarked in Helsingborg. That’s where the Linden Hotel is as well.”

“Well done,” Wallander said.

“I just do as I’m told,” Nyberg said. “But because this went so quickly, I did something else as well. I think you’re going to have problems.”

Wallander looked questioningly at him.

“I called that number in Helsingborg,” Nyberg said. “I got the disconnected tone. It no longer exists. I asked Ebba to look into it. It took her ten minutes to establish that the Linden Hotel went out of business a year ago.”

Nyberg stood up and brushed down the seat of the chair. “Now I’m going to lunch,” he said.

“Do that,” Wallander said. “And thanks for your help.”

When Nyberg had left, Wallander thought over what he had heard. Then he summoned Svedberg and Martinsson. A few minutes later they had collected cups of coffee and were in Wallander’s office.

“There must be some kind of hotel register,” Wallander said. “I mean, a hotel is a business enterprise. It has an owner. It can’t go out of business without it being recorded somewhere.”

“What happens to old hotel ledgers?” Svedberg said. “Are they discarded? Or are they kept?”

“That’s something we’ll have to find out,” Wallander said. “Now, right away. Most important is to get hold of the Linden Hotel’s owner. If we divide the task up between us, it shouldn’t take us more than an hour or so. We’ll meet again when we’re ready.”

Wallander called Ebba and asked her to look for the name Borman in the directories for Skåne and Halland first. He had only just put down the receiver when the phone rang. It was his father.

“Don’t forget you’re coming to see me this evening,” his father said.

“I’ll be there,” Wallander said, thinking that in fact he was too tired to drive out to Löderup. But he knew he could not say no, he could not change the arrangement.

“I’ll be there at about seven,” he said.

“We’ll see,” his father said.

“What do you mean by that?” Wallander asked, and could hear the anger in his voice.

“I just mean we’ll see if that is in fact when you come,” his father said.

Wallander forced himself not to start arguing.

“I’ll be there,” he said, and put down the phone.

His office suddenly seemed stifling. He went out into the hallway, and kept going as far as reception.

“There is nobody called Borman in the directories,” Ebba said. “Do you want me to keep looking?”

“Not yet,” Wallander said.

“I’d like to ask you to come for dinner,” Ebba said. “You must tell me how you are.”

Wallander nodded, but he said nothing.

He went back to his office and opened the window. The wind was getting stronger still, and he felt very cold. He closed the window and sat at his desk. The file from Farnholm Castle was lying open, but he pushed it aside. He thought about Baiba Liepa in Riga.

Twenty minutes later he was still there, thinking, when Svedberg knocked on the door and came in.

“Now I know all there is to know about Swedish hotels,” he said. “Martinsson will be here in a minute.”

When Martinsson had closed the door behind him, Svedberg sat at one corner of the desk and started reading from a pad in which he had made his notes.

“The Linden Hotel was owned and run by a man called Bertil Forsdahl,” he began. “I got that information from the county offices. It was a little family hotel that was no longer viable. And Forsdahl is getting on in years, he’s seventy. I’ve got his number here. He lives in Helsingborg.”

Wallander dialed the number as Svedberg read out the digits. The telephone rang for a considerable time before it was answered. It was a woman.

“I’m trying to reach Bertil Forsdahl,” Wallander said.

“He’s gone out,” the woman said. “He’ll be back late this evening. Who shall I tell him called?”

Wallander thought for a moment before replying.

“My name’s Kurt Wallander,” he said. “I’m calling from the police station in Ystad. I have some questions to ask your husband about the hotel he used to run a year or so ago. No cause for concern, it’s just some routine questions.”

“My husband’s an honest man,” the woman said.

“I have no doubt about that,” Wallander said. “This is just a routine inquiry. When exactly do you expect him back?”

“He’s on a senior citizens’ excursion to Ven,” the woman said. “They’re due to have dinner in Landskrona, but he’s bound to be home by ten. He never goes to bed before midnight. That’s a habit he got into when he ran the hotel.”

“Tell him I’ll get back to him,” Wallander said. “And there’s absolutely nothing to be worried about.”

“I’m not worried,” the woman said. “My husband’s an honest man.”

Wallander hung up. “I’ll drive out and visit him tonight,” Wallander said.

“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?” Martinsson asked.

“I’m sure it can,” Wallander said. “But I have nothing else to do tonight.”

An hour later they met to assess the situation. Björk had left a message to say he could not be there because he had been summoned to an urgent meeting with the district police chief. Höglund suddenly put in an appearance. Her husband had come home and was looking after the sick child.

Everybody agreed they should concentrate on the threatening letters. Wallander could not escape the nagging thought that there was something odd about the dead lawyers, something he should have picked up. He remembered that Höglund had had the same feeling the previous day.

After the meeting they bumped into each other in the corridor.

“If you’re going to Helsingborg tonight, I’ll go with you,” she said. “If I may.”

“It’s not necessary,” he said.

“But I’d like to, even so.”

He nodded. They agreed to meet at the police station at 9:00.

Wallander drove to his father’s house at Löderup shortly before 7 p.m. He stopped on the way to buy some buns to eat with the coffee. When he got there his father was in his studio, painting the same old picture: an autumn landscape, with or without a grouse in the foreground.

My father’s what people call a “kitsch” artist, Wallander thought. I sometimes feel like a kitschy police officer.

His father’s wife, who used to be his home help, was visiting her parents. Wallander expected his father to be annoyed when he heard that his son could only stay an hour, but to his surprise, he simply nodded. They played cards for a little while and Wallander told him in detail why he returned to work. His father did not seem interested in his reasons. It was an evening when, just for once, they did not argue. As Wallander drove back to Ystad, he racked his brains to remember when that had last happened.

At 8:55 they were in Wallander’s car, heading for the Malmö road. It was still windy, and Wallander could feel a draft coming from the ill-fitting rubber strip around the windshield. He could smell the faint aroma of Höglund’s discreet perfume. When they emerged onto the E65 he sped up.

“Do you know your way around Helsingborg?” she said.

“No.”

“We could call our colleagues in Helsingborg and ask.”

“Best to keep them out of it for the time being,” Wallander said.

“Why?”

“When police officers intrude into others’ territory there are always problems,” Wallander said. “No point in making things difficult for ourselves unnecessarily.”

They drove on in silence. Wallander thought reluctantly about the conversation he would have to have with Björk. When they came to the road for Sturup Airport, Wallander turned. A few kilometers further on he turned again, toward Lund.

“Tell me why you became a police officer,” Wallander said.

“Not yet,” she said. “Another time.”

There was not much traffic. The wind seemed to be getting worse all the time. They passed the rotary outside Staffanstorp and saw the lights from Lund. It was 9:25.

“That’s odd,” she said suddenly.

Wallander immediately noticed there was something different about her voice. He glanced at her face, which was lit up by the glow from the dashboard. He could see she was staring intently into the mirror on her side. He looked in his rearview mirror. There were headlights some way behind.

“What’s odd?” he asked.

“I’ve never experienced this before,” she said.

“What?”

“Being chased,” she said. “Or, at least, being followed.”

Wallander could see that she was serious. He looked again at the lights in his mirror.

“How can you be so sure the car is following us?” he said.

“That’s easy. It’s been behind us ever since we started driving.”

Wallander looked at her doubtfully.

“I’m positive,” she said. “That car has been following us ever since we left Ystad.”