The Pyramid

THE MAN ON THE BEACH

On the afternoon of Sunday, 26 April 1987, Detective Chief Inspector Kurt Wallander sat in his office in the Ystad police station, absentmindedly clipping some hair from one of his nostrils. It was shortly after five o'clock. He had just put down a file containing documentation of a gang smuggling stolen luxury cars over to Poland. The investigation had already celebrated its tenth birthday, admittedly with various breaks as the years passed by. It had begun not long after Wallander had first started work in Ystad. He had often wondered if it would still be under way on that far distant day when he started to draw his pension.

Just for once, his desk was neat and tidy. It had been a chaotic mess for a long time, and he had used the bad weather as an excuse to do some work because he was on his own. A few days earlier Mona and Linda had left for a couple of weeks in the Canaries. It had come as a complete surprise to Wallander. He had no idea how Mona had managed to scrape together the money, and Linda hadn't breathed a word either. Despite the opposition of her parents, she had recently insisted on leaving grammar school. Now she seemed to be constantly irritated, tired and confused. He had driven them to Sturup airport early in the morning, and on the way back home to Ystad he had decided that, in fact, he quite liked the idea of a couple of weeks on his own. His and Mona's marriage was heading for the rocks. Neither of them knew what was wrong. On the other hand, it had been obvious over this last year that Linda was the one holding their relationship together. What would happen now that she had left school and was starting to make her own way in life?

He stood up and walked over to the window. The wind was pulling and tugging at the trees on the other side of the street. It was drizzling. Four degrees Celsius, the thermometer said. No sign of spring yet.

He put on his jacket and left the room. He nodded to the weekend receptionist, who was talking on the phone. He went to his car and drove down towards the centre of town. He inserted a Maria Callas cassette into the player on the dashboard as he wondered what to buy for the evening meal.

Should he buy anything at all, in fact? Was he even hungry? He was annoyed by his indecision. But he had no desire to fall into his old bad habit of eating at some hamburger bar. Mona kept telling him that he was getting fat. And she was right. One morning only a few months ago, he had examined his face in the bathroom mirror and realised that his youth was definitely a thing of the past. He would soon be forty, but he looked older. In the old days he had always looked younger than he really was.

Irritated by the thought, he turned into the Malmö road and stopped at one of the supermarkets. He had just locked his car door when his mobile phone rang from inside. At first he thought he would ignore it. Whatever it was, somebody else could look after it. He had enough problems of his own just now. But he changed his mind, opened the door and reached for the phone.

'Is that Wallander?' It was his colleague Hansson.

'Yes.'

'Where are you?'

'I was just going to buy some groceries.'

'Leave that for now. Come here instead. I'm at the hospital. I'll meet you at the entrance.'

'What's happened?'

'It's hard to explain over the phone. It'll be better if you come here.'

End of call. Wallander knew that Hansson wouldn't have phoned if it hadn't been serious. It only took him a few minutes to drive to the hospital. Hansson came to meet him outside the main entrance. He was obviously feeling the cold. Wallander tried to work out from his expression what had happened.

'What's going on?' Wallander asked.

'There's a taxi driver by the name of Stenberg in there,' said Hansson. 'He's drinking coffee. He's very upset.'

Wallander followed Hansson through the glass doors, still wondering what had happened.

The hospital cafeteria was to the right. They walked past an old man in a wheelchair who was slowly chewing on an apple. Wallander recognised Stenberg, who was alone at a table. He had met the man before, but couldn't put his finger on when or where. Stenberg was in his fifties, on the portly side and almost completely bald. His nose was bent, suggesting he had been a boxer in his younger days.

'Maybe you recognise Inspector Wallander?' Hansson said.

Stenberg nodded and started to get up to shake hands.

'No, don't stand up,' said Wallander. 'Tell me what's happened instead.'

Stenberg's eyes were constantly on the move. Wallander could see that the man was very upset, or even scared. He couldn't yet tell which.

'I got a call to take some guy from Svarte back to Ystad,' Stenberg said. 'The fare was supposed to wait by the main road. Alexandersson, his name was. Sure enough, there he was when I drove up. He got into the back seat and asked me to take him back to town. As far as the square. I could see in the rear-view mirror that he had his eyes closed. I thought he was having a snooze. We came to Ystad and I drove to the square and told him we were there. He didn't react at all. I got out of the car, opened the back door and tapped him on the shoulder. No reaction. I thought he must be ill, so I drove him to the emergency room. They said he was dead.'

Wallander frowned.

'Dead?'

'They tried to revive him,' Hansson said. 'But it was too late. He was dead.'

Wallander thought.

'It takes about fifteen minutes to drive from Svarte to Ystad,' he said to Stenberg. 'Did he look ill when you picked him up?'

'If he'd been ill I'd have noticed,' said Stenberg. 'Besides, he'd have asked to be taken to the hospital, surely?'

'You didn't notice any injury?'

'Not a thing. He was wearing a suit and a light blue overcoat.'

'Was he carrying anything? A suitcase or something?'

'No, nothing. I thought I'd better call the police. Although I expect the hospital will have to do that in any case.'

Stenberg's answers were immediate, without hesitation. Wallander turned to Hansson.

'Do we know who he is?'

Hansson took out his notebook.

'Göran Alexandersson,' Hansson said. 'Forty-nine years of age. Runs his own business, electronics. Lives in Stockholm. He had quite a lot of money in his wallet. And several credit cards.'

'Odd,' Wallander said. 'I assume it must have been a heart attack. What do the doctors say?'

'That only an autopsy will give the definite cause of death.'

Wallander nodded and stood up.

'You can contact whoever's in charge of his estate and claim your fare,' he said to Stenberg. 'We'll be in touch if we have any more questions.'

'It was a nasty experience,' said Stenberg firmly. 'But I certainly wouldn't ask his next of kin to pay me for driving a corpse to the hospital.'

Stenberg left.

'I'd like to take a look at him,' said Wallander. 'You don't need to come if you don't want to.'

'I'd rather not,' said Hansson. 'I'll try to get in touch with his next of kin.'

'What was he doing in Ystad?' wondered Wallander. 'That's something we should find out.'

Wallander only stayed with the body for a short time, in a room in the emergency unit. The dead man's expression gave nothing away. Wallander searched his clothes. Like his shoes, they were of high quality. If it transpired that a crime had been committed, the forensic team would need to take a closer look at the clothes. He found nothing in the man's wallet that Hansson hadn't already mentioned. Then he went to talk to one of the doctors.

'It appears to be death from natural causes,' said the doctor. 'No sign of any violence, no injuries.'

'Who on earth could have killed him while he was in the back seat of a taxicab?' asked Wallander. 'But let me have the post-mortem results as soon as you can, please.'

'We'll transfer him to the medico-legal unit in Lund now,' the doctor said. 'Unless the police have anything against that?'

'No,' said Wallander. 'Why should we?'

He drove back to the police station and went to see Hansson, who was just winding up a telephone call. As he waited for him to finish, Wallander miserably felt his stomach, which was hanging out over his belt.

'I've just spoken to Alexandersson's office in Stockholm,' Hansson said as he put down the phone. 'To his secretary and his number two.

They were shocked, of course. But they were able to tell us that Alexandersson had been divorced for the last ten years.'

'Did he have any children?'

'One son.'

'We'd better find him, then.'

'That won't be possible,' Hansson said.

'Why not?'

'Because he's dead.'

Wallander could sometimes get very annoyed by Hansson's roundabout way of coming to the point. This was one of those occasions.

'Dead? What do you mean, dead? Do I have to drag every detail out of you?'

Hansson checked his notes.

'His only child, a son, died nearly seven years ago. Apparently it was some sort of accident. I couldn't quite grasp what they meant.'

'Did the son have a name?'

'Bengt.'

'Did you ask what Göran Alexandersson was doing in Ystad? Or Svarte?'

'He'd told them he was going on holiday for a week. He'd be staying at the King Charles Hotel. He arrived four days ago.'

'Right, let's go there,' Wallander said.

They spent over an hour going through Alexandersson's room but found nothing of interest. Only an empty suitcase, some clothes neatly hung in the cupboard and a spare pair of shoes.

'Not a single sheet of paper,' said Wallander thoughtfully. 'No book, nothing.'

Then he called the front desk and asked if Alexandersson had received or made any telephone calls or had had any visitors. The receptionist's reply was crystal clear: nobody had called room 211, nobody had been to visit.

'He's staying here in Ystad,' Wallander said, 'but he calls a taxi from Svarte. Question: How did he get there in the first place?'

'I'll call the taxi companies,' said Hansson.

They drove back to the police station. Wallander stood at his office window, absent-mindedly contemplating the water tower on the other side of the street. He found himself thinking about Mona and Linda. They were probably in some restaurant or other, having dinner. But what were they talking about? No doubt what Linda was going to do next. He tried to imagine their conversation, but all he could hear was the humming from the radiators. He sat down to write a preliminary report while Hansson was calling the Ystad taxi companies. Before starting, he went to the break room and helped himself to some biscuits that somebody had abandoned. It was nearly eight by the time Hansson knocked on his door and came in.

'He took a cab out to Svarte three times in the four days he'd been here in Ystad,' Hansson said. 'He was dropped off on the edge of the village each time. He went out early in the morning, and he ordered a taxi to take him back in the afternoon.'

Wallander was miles away but nodded in acknowledgement.

'That's not against the law,' he said. 'Perhaps he had a mistress there?'

Wallander stood up and walked over to the window. The wind was building up.

'Let's search for him in the computer records,' he said after a few moments' thought. 'I get the impression we'll draw a blank. But let's do it anyway. Then we'll have a good look at the post-mortem report.'

'I bet it was a heart attack,' said Hansson, rising to leave.

'No doubt you're right,' said Wallander.

Wallander drove home and opened a can of sausages. Göran Alexandersson was already fading out of his consciousness. After eating his simple meal, he fell asleep in front of the television.

The following day, Wallander's colleague Martinsson searched through all available criminal registers for the name Göran Alexandersson. There was nothing. Martinsson was the youngest member of the investigation team, and the one most willing to embrace new technology.

Wallander devoted the day to the stolen luxury cars being driven around Poland. In the evening he went to see his father in Löderup and played cards for a few hours. They ended up arguing over who owed whom and how much. As Wallander drove home, he wondered if he would grow to be like his father as he got older. Or had he already started ageing that way? Argumentative, complaining and miserable? He should ask somebody. Perhaps somebody other than Mona.

On the morning of 28 April, Wallander's phone rang. It was the medicolegal department in Lund.

'I'm calling in connection with a person by the name of Göran Alexandersson,' said the doctor at the other end of the line. He was called Jörne and Wallander knew him from his time in Malmö.

'What was it?' Wallander asked. 'Cerebral haemorrhage or a heart attack?'

'Neither,' said the doctor. 'Either he committed suicide or he was murdered.'

Wallander pricked up his ears.

'Murdered? What do you mean by that?'

'Exactly what I say,' said Jörne.

'But that's impossible. He can't have been murdered in the back seat of a taxi. Stenberg, the driver of the cab, isn't the type who goes around killing people. But surely he can't have committed suicide either?'

'I can't tell you how it happened,' said Jörne dismissively. 'But what I can tell you with absolute certainty is that he died from a poison that got into his system somehow, either something he'd eaten or something he'd drunk. That seems to me to suggest murder. But of course, it's your business to establish that.'

Wallander made no comment.

'I'll fax the papers over to you,' said Jörne. 'Are you still there?'

'Yes,' Wallander said. 'I'm still here.'

He thanked Jörne, replaced the receiver and thought about what he'd just been told. Then he asked Hansson over the intercom to come to his office right away. Wallander took one of his notepads and wrote two words.

Göran Alexandersson. Outside the police station, the wind was getting stronger. Some gusts were already gale strength.

The squally wind continued blowing all over Skåne. Wallander sat in his office and contemplated the fact that he had no idea what had happened to the man who had died in the back seat of a taxi some days earlier. At 9.30 he went to one of the conference rooms and closed the door behind him. Hansson and Rydberg were already sitting at the table. Wallander was surprised to see Rydberg. He'd been off sick with back pains and given no indication that he was returning to work.

'How are you?' Wallander asked.

'I'm here,' said Rydberg evasively. 'What's all this nonsense about a man being murdered in the back seat of a taxi?'

'Let's start at the beginning,' Wallander said.

He looked around. Somebody was missing.

'Where's Martinsson?'

'He called in to say he had tonsillitis,' said Rydberg. 'Maybe Svedberg can stand in for him?'

'We'll see if we need him,' said Wallander, picking up his papers. The fax had arrived from Lund.

Then he looked at his colleagues.

'What started off looking like a straightforward case could turn out to be much more problematic than I'd thought. A man died in the back seat of a taxi. The medico-legal people in Lund have established that he was poisoned. What we don't know yet is how long before his death the poison got into his system. Lund promises to let us know that in a few days.'

'Murder or suicide?' Rydberg wondered.

'Murder,' said Wallander without hesitation. 'I find it hard to imagine a suicide taking poison and then calling for a taxi.'

'Could he have taken the poison by mistake?' Hansson asked.

'Hardly likely,' said Wallander. 'According to the doctors it's a very unusual mixture of poisons.'

'What do they mean by that?' Hansson asked.

'It's something that can only be made by a specialist – a doctor, a chemist or a biologist, for instance.'

Silence.

'So, we need to regard this as a murder case,' Wallander said. 'What do we know about this man, Göran Alexandersson?'

Hansson leafed through his notebook.

'He was a businessman,' he said. 'He owned two electronics shops in Stockholm. One in Västberga, the other in Nortull. He lived alone in an apartment in Åsögatan. He doesn't seem to have had any family. His divorced wife lives in France. His son died seven years ago. The employees I've spoken to all describe him in exactly the same way.'

'How?' asked Wallander.

'They say he was nice.'

'Nice?'

'That was the word they all used. Nice.'

Wallander nodded.

'Anything else?'

'He appears to have led a pretty humdrum existence. His secretary guessed that he probably collected stamps. Catalogues kept arriving at the office. He doesn't seem to have had any close friends. At least, none that his colleagues knew about.'

Nobody said anything.

'We'd better ask Stockholm to help us with his apartment,' Wallander said when the silence had started to feel oppressive. 'And we must get in touch with his ex-wife. I'll concentrate on trying to find out what he was doing down here in Skåne, in Ystad and Svarte. Who did he meet? We can get together again this afternoon and see how far we've got.'

'One thing puzzles me,' said Rydberg. 'Can a person be murdered without knowing anything about it?'

Wallander nodded.

'That's an interesting idea,' he said. 'Somebody gives Göran Alexandersson some poison that doesn't have any effect until an hour later. I'll ask Jörne to answer that one.'

'If he can,' muttered Rydberg. 'I wouldn't count on it.'

The meeting was over. They went their different ways after dividing up the various tasks. Wallander stood at the window of his office, coffee cup in hand, and tried to make up his mind where to start.

Half an hour later he was in his car, on the way to Svarte. The wind was slowly dropping. The sun shone through the parting clouds. For the first time that year Wallander had the feeling that perhaps spring really was on the way at last. He stopped when he came to the edge of Svarte and got out of the car. Göran Alexandersson came here, he thought. He came in the morning and returned to Ystad in the afternoon. On the fourth occasion, he was poisoned and died in the back seat of a taxi.

Wallander started walking towards the village. Many of the houses on the beach side of the road were summer cottages and were boarded up for the winter.

He walked through the whole village and only saw two people. The desolation made him feel depressed. He turned round and walked quickly back to his car.

He had already started the engine when he noticed an elderly lady working on a flower bed in a garden next to where the car was parked. He switched off the ignition and got out. When he closed the door, the woman turned to look at him. Wallander walked over to her fence, raising his hand in greeting.

'I hope I'm not disturbing you,' he said.

'Nobody disturbs anybody here,' said the woman, giving him an inquisitive look.

'My name's Kurt Wallander and I'm a police officer from Ystad,' he said.

'I recognise you,' she said. 'Have I seen you on TV? Some current affairs debate, maybe?'

'I don't think so,' Wallander said. 'But my picture has been in the papers now and again, I'm afraid.'

'My name's Agnes Ehn,' said the woman, reaching out her hand.

'Do you live here year-round?' Wallander asked.

'No, just the summer half of the year. I usually move out here at the beginning of April and stay till October. I spend the winter in Halmstad. I'm a retired schoolteacher. My husband died a few years ago.'

'It's pretty here,' said Wallander. 'Pretty, and quiet. Everybody knows everybody else.'

'I don't know about that,' she said. 'Sometimes you don't even know your next-door neighbour.'

'Did you happen to see a man by himself who came here to Svarte by taxi several times this last week? And was then picked up by a taxi again in the afternoon?'

Her reply surprised him.

'He used the telephone in my house to call for the taxi,' she said. 'Three days in a row, in fact. Assuming it's the same man.'

'Did he say his name?'

'He was very polite.'

'Did he introduce himself?'

'You can be polite without saying what your name is.'

'And he asked to use your phone?'

'Yes.'

'Did he say anything else?'

'Has something happened to him?'

Wallander thought he might as well tell her the truth.

'He's dead.'

'That's awful. What happened?'

'We don't know. All we know at the moment is that he's dead. Do you know what he did here in Svarte? Did he say who he'd come to see? Where did he go? Was there anybody with him? Anything at all you can remember is important.'

She surprised him again with her precise reply.

'He walked down to the beach,' she said. 'There's a path leading to the beach on the other side of the house. He took that. Then he walked along the sands in a westerly direction. He didn't come back until the afternoon.'

'He walked along the beach? Was he alone?'

'I can't tell you that. The beach curves away. He might have met somebody further away, where I can't see.'

'Did he have anything with him? A briefcase or a package, for instance?'

She shook her head.

'Did he seem worried at all?'

'Not as far as I could tell.'

'But he borrowed your telephone?'

'Yes.'

'Did you notice anything worth mentioning?'

'He seemed to be a very nice, friendly man. He insisted on paying for all the telephone calls.'

Wallander nodded.

'You've been a big help,' he said, giving her his business card. 'If you remember anything else, please call me at the number on the card.'

'It's a tragedy,' she said. 'Such a pleasant man.'

Wallander went round to the other side of the house and walked down the path to the beach. He went as far as the water's edge. The beach was deserted. When he turned back he saw that Agnes Ehn was watching him.

He must have met somebody, Wallander thought. There's no other plausible explanation. The only question is, who?

He drove back to the police station. Rydberg stopped him in the corridor and told him he had managed to track Alexandersson's exwife to a house on the Riviera.

'But nobody answered the telephone,' he said. 'I'll try again later.'

'Good,' said Wallander. 'Let me know when you get hold of her.'

'Martinsson came in,' said Rydberg. 'It was almost impossible to understand a word he said. I told him to go home again.'

'You did the right thing,' Wallander said.

He went to his office, closed the door behind him and pulled over the notepad on which he had written Göran Alexandersson's name. Who? he wondered. Who did you meet on the beach? I must find out.

By one o'clock Wallander felt hungry. He put on his jacket and was about to leave when Hansson knocked on his door. It was obvious he had something important to say.

'I've got something that might be important,' Hansson said.

'What?'

'As you'll recall, Alexandersson had a son who died seven years ago. It looks very much like he was murdered. But as far as I can see, nobody's ever been charged with it.'

Wallander looked long and hard at Hansson.

'Good,' he said eventually. 'Now we've got something to go on. Even if I can't put my finger on what it is.'

The hunger he'd been feeling just moments ago had disappeared.

Shortly after two in the afternoon on 28 April, Rydberg knocked on Wallander's half-open door.

'I've made contact with Alexandersson's ex-wife,' he said as he came into the room. He made a face as he sat down on the visitor's chair.

'How's your back?' Wallander asked.

'I don't know,' said Rydberg. 'There's something funny going on.'

'Perhaps you came back to work too soon?'

'Lying at home staring at the ceiling wouldn't do it any good.'

That put an end to any discussion about Rydberg's back. Wallander knew it was a waste of time trying to persuade him to go home and rest.

'What did she have to say?' he asked instead.

'She was shocked, naturally enough. It must have been a minute before she was able to say anything at all.'

'That will be an expensive call for the Swedish state,' said Wallander.

'But then what? After that minute had passed.'

'She asked what had happened, of course. I gave her the facts. She had trouble understanding what I was talking about.'

'That's hardly surprising,' said Wallander.

'Anyway, I found out that they weren't in touch with each other. According to the wife, they divorced because their married life was so boring.'

Wallander frowned.

'What exactly did she mean?'

'I suspect that's a more common reason for divorce than people realise,' said Rydberg. 'I think it would be awful, having to live with a boring person.'

Wallander thought that over. He wondered if Mona had the same view of him. What did he think himself?

'I asked her if she could think of anybody who might want to murder him, but she couldn't. Then I asked her if she could explain what he was doing in Skåne, but she didn't know that either. That was all.'

'Didn't you ask her about that son of hers who died? The one Hansson says was murdered?'

'Of course I did. But she didn't want to talk about it.'

'Isn't that a bit odd?'

'That's exactly what I thought.'

'I think you'll have to talk to her again,' Wallander said.

Rydberg nodded and left the room. Wallander thought he would have to find an opportunity to talk to Mona and ask her if boredom was the biggest problem in their marriage. His train of thought was interrupted by the phone ringing. It was Ebba in reception, telling him that the Stockholm police wanted to talk to him. He pulled over his notepad and listened. An officer by the name of Rendel was put through to him. Wallander had never had any contact with him before.

'We went to take a look at that apartment in Åsögatan,' Rendel said.

'Did you find anything?'

'How could we find anything when we'd no idea what we were looking for?'

Wallander could hear that Rendel was under pressure.

'What was the apartment like?' Wallander asked, as nicely as he could.

'Clean and neat,' said Rendel. 'Everything in its place. A bit fussy. I had the impression of a bachelor pad.'

'That's what it was, in fact,' Wallander said.

'We checked his mail,' said Rendel. 'He seems to have been away for a week at most.'

'That's correct,' said Wallander.

'He had an answering machine, but there was nothing on it. Nobody had tried to call him.'

'What was the message he'd recorded?' Wallander asked.

'Just the usual.'

'Well, at least we know that,' said Wallander. 'Thanks for your help. We'll come back to you if we need anything else.'

He hung up and saw from the clock that it was time for the investigative team's afternoon meeting. When he got to the conference room, Hansson and Rydberg were already there.

'I've just been speaking to Stockholm,' Wallander said as he sat down. 'They found nothing of interest in the apartment in Åsögatan.'

'I called the wife again,' said Rydberg. 'She was still unwilling to talk about her son, but when I told her we could make her come back home to assist us with our inquiries, she thawed a little. The boy was evidently beaten up in a street in the centre of Stockholm. It must have been a totally pointless attack. He wasn't even robbed.'

'I've dug up some documentation about that attack,' said Hansson. 'It hasn't yet been written off, but nobody's done anything about it for at least the last five years.'

'Are there any suspects?' Wallander wondered.

Hansson shook his head.

'None at all. There's absolutely nothing. No witnesses, nothing.'

Wallander pushed his notepad to one side.

'Just as little as we've got to go on here at the moment,' he said.

Nobody spoke. Wallander realised he would have to say something.

'You'll have to speak to the people working in his shops,' he said. 'Call Rendel from the Stockholm police and ask him for some assistance. We'll meet again tomorrow.'

They divided up the tasks that had to be done, and Wallander went back to his office. He thought he should call his father out in Löderup and apologise for the previous night. But he didn't. He couldn't get what had happened to Göran Alexandersson out of his mind. The whole situation was so preposterous that it should be explicable on those grounds alone. He knew from experience that all murders, and most other crimes as well, had something logical about them, somewhere. It was just a matter of turning over the right stones in the correct order and following up possible connections between them.

Wallander left the police station shortly before five and took the coastal road to Svarte. This time he parked further into the village. He took a pair of wellingtons out of the boot, put them on, then walked down to the beach. In the distance he could see a cargo ship steaming westward.

He started walking along the beach, examining the houses on his right side. There seemed to be somebody living in every third house. He kept on walking until he had left Svarte behind. Then he returned. He suddenly realised that he was hoping Mona would appear from nowhere, walking towards him. He thought back to the time they had gone to Skagen. That had been the best part of their life together. They had so much to talk about, things they never had time to do.

He shook off these unpleasant thoughts and forced himself to concentrate on Göran Alexandersson. As he walked along the sand he tried to make a summary of the case so far.

What did they know? That Alexandersson lived by himself, that he owned two electronics shops, that he was forty-nine years old, and that he had travelled to Ystad and stayed at the King Charles Hotel. He had told his staff he was going on holiday. While at the hotel he had received no telephone calls or visitors. Nor had he used the phone in his room himself.

Every morning he had taken a taxi out to Svarte, where he had spent the day walking up and down the beach. In the afternoon, he had returned to Ystad after borrowing Agnes Ehn's telephone. On the fourth day, he had entered the back seat of a taxi and died.

Wallander stopped and looked around. The beach was still deserted. Alexandersson is visible nearly all the time, he thought, but somewhere along the sand he disappears. Then he comes back again, and a few minutes later, he's dead.

He must have met somebody here, Wallander thought. Or rather, he must have arranged to meet somebody. You don't bump into a poisoner by accident.

Wallander started walking again. He eyed the houses along the beach. The following day they would start knocking on doors here. Somebody must have seen Alexandersson walking on the beach, somebody might have seen him meeting somebody else.

Wallander saw that he was no longer alone on the beach. An elderly man was coming towards him. He had a black Labrador trotting decorously along by his side. Wallander paused and looked at the dog. Lately he had been wondering if he should suggest to Mona that they buy a dog. But he hadn't done so because he so often found himself working unsociable hours. In all probability a dog would mean more guilt rather than more company.

The man raised his cap as he approached Wallander.

'Are we going to have any spring this year, do you think?' the man asked.

Wallander noticed that he didn't speak with a local accent.

'I expect it will show up eventually, as usual,' Wallander replied.

The man was about to continue on his way when Wallander spoke again.

'I take it you go walking along the beach every day?' he asked.

The man pointed at one of the houses.

'I've been living here ever since I retired,' he said.

'My name's Wallander and I'm a police officer in Ystad. Did you happen to see a man of about fifty walking along the sand here by himself in recent days?'

The man's eyes were blue and bright. His white hair stuck out from under his cap.

'No,' he said, with a smile. 'Who would want to come walking here? I'm the only person who walks along this beach. Now, in May, when it gets a bit warmer, it will be a different story.'

'Are you absolutely sure?' Wallander asked.

'I walk the dog three times every day,' said the man. 'And I haven't seen any man wandering around here by himself. Until you appeared, that is.'

Wallander smiled.

'Don't let me disturb you any longer,' he said.

Wallander resumed walking. When he stopped and turned round, the man with the dog had disappeared.

Where the thought – or rather, the feeling – came from, he never managed to figure out. Nevertheless, from that moment on, he was quite certain. There had been something about the man's expression, a faint, almost imperceptible movement of his eyes, when Wallander asked him if he had seen a solitary man walking along the beach. He knows something, Wallander thought. But what?

Wallander looked around once more. The beach was deserted.

He stood there motionless for several minutes.

Then he went back to his car and drove home.

Wednesday, 29 April, was the first day of spring in Skåne that year. Wallander woke up early, as usual. He was sweaty and knew he had had a nightmare but couldn't remember what it was about. Perhaps he had dreamed yet again about being chased by bulls? Or that Mona had left him? He took a shower, had a cup of coffee and leafed absentmindedly through the Ystad Chronicle.

He was in his office by six thirty. The sun was shining from a clear blue sky. Wallander hoped that Martinsson had recovered and could take over the register searches from Hansson. That usually produced better and faster results. If Martinsson was well again, Wallander could take Hansson with him to Svarte and start knocking on doors. But perhaps the most important thing just now was to try to create as accurate a picture as possible of Göran Alexandersson. Martinsson was much more thorough than Hansson when it came to contact with people who might be able to provide information. Wallander also made up his mind that they should make a serious effort to find out what had really happened when Alexandersson's son had been beaten to death.

When the clock struck seven, Wallander tried to get hold of Jörne, who had done the autopsy on Alexandersson, but in vain. He realised he was being impatient. The case of the dead man in the back seat of Stenberg's taxi was making him uneasy.

It was 7.58 when they assembled in the conference room. Rydberg reported that Martinsson still had a fever and a very sore throat. Wallander thought how typical it was that Martinsson should succumb to something like this when he was so obsessed by germs in general.

'OK, in that case it'll be you and me knocking on doors in Svarte today,' he said. 'You, Hansson, stay here and keep digging away. I'd like to know more about Alexandersson's son, Bengt, and how he died. Ask Rendel for help.'

'Do we know any more about that poison yet?' asked Rydberg.

'I tried to find out this morning,' Wallander said, 'but I haven't heard anything yet and I can't get a response from anybody.'

The meeting was very short. Wallander asked for an enlargement of the photograph on Alexandersson's driver's licence, plus several copies. Then he went to see Björk, the chief of police. On the whole, he thought Björk was good at his job and let everybody get on with their own work. Occasionally, however, the chief would suddenly become proactive and ask for a rundown on the latest situation in an investigation.

'How's it going with that gang exporting the luxury cars?' Björk asked, dropping his hands onto his desk as a sign that he wanted a concise answer.

'Badly,' said Wallander, truthfully.

'Are any arrests imminent?'

'No, none,' Wallander told him. 'If I were to go to one of the prosecutors with the evidence I have available, they'd throw me out immediately.'

'We mustn't give up, though,' said Björk.

'Of course not,' said Wallander. 'I'll keep working away. As soon as we've solved this case of the man who died in the back seat of a taxi.'

'Hansson told me about that,' said Björk. 'It all sounds very strange.'

'It is strange,' said Wallander.

'Can that man really have been murdered?'

'The doctors tell us he was,' Wallander said. 'We'll be knocking on doors today out at Svarte. Somebody must have seen him.'

'Keep me informed,' said Björk, standing up as a signal that the conversation was at an end.

They drove to Svarte in Wallander's car.

'Skåne is beautiful,' said Rydberg, apropos of nothing.

'On a day like this, at least,' said Wallander. 'But let's face it, it can be pretty awful in the autumn. When the mud's higher than your doorstep. Or when it seeps in under your skin.'

'Who's thinking about autumn now?' said Rydberg. 'Why worry about the bad weather in advance? It'll come eventually, like it or not.'

Wallander didn't respond. He was too busy passing a tractor.

'Let's start with the houses along the beach to the west of the village,' he said. 'We can go in different directions and work our way towards the middle. Try to find out who lives in the empty houses as well.'

'What are you hoping to find?' Rydberg asked.

'The solution,' he replied, without beating around the bush.

'Somebody must have seen him out there on the beach. Somebody must have seen him meeting some other person.'

Wallander parked the car. He let Rydberg start with the house where Agnes Ehn lived. Meanwhile Wallander tried to contact Jörne from his mobile phone. No luck this time either. He drove a bit further west, then parked the car and started working his way east. The first house was an old, well-cared-for traditional Skåne cottage. He opened the gate, went down the path and rang the doorbell. When there was no reply, he rang again, and was just about to leave when the door was opened by a woman in her thirties, dressed in stained overalls.

'I don't like being interrupted,' she said, glaring at Wallander.

'Sometimes it's necessary, I'm afraid,' he said, showing her his ID.

'What do you want?' she asked.

'You may find my question a little strange,' Wallander said, 'but I want to know if you've seen a man aged about fifty wearing a light blue overcoat walking along the beach in the last few days.'

She raised her eyebrows and looked at Wallander with a smile.

'I paint with the curtains drawn,' she said. 'I haven't seen anything at all.'

'You're an artist,' said Wallander. 'I thought you needed light.'

'I don't. But that's not a jailable offence, is it?'

'So you haven't seen anything at all?'

'No, nothing – that's what I just said, isn't it?'

'Is there anybody else here in the house who might have seen something?'

'I have a cat who likes to lie on a windowsill behind the curtains. You can ask him if you like.'

Wallander could feel himself getting annoyed.

'It's sometimes necessary for police officers to ask questions, you know. Don't think I'm doing this for fun. I won't disturb you any longer.'

The woman shut the door. He heard her turning several locks. He moved on to the next property. It was a relatively recently built two-storey house. There was a little fountain in the garden. When he rang the bell a dog started barking. He waited.

The dog stopped barking and the door opened. He was facing the old man he had met on the beach the previous day. Wallander had the immediate impression that the man was not surprised to see him. He had been expecting him, and was on his guard.

'You again,' said the man.

'Yes,' Wallander said. 'I'm knocking on the doors of people who live in houses along the beach.'

'I told you yesterday that I hadn't seen anything.'

Wallander nodded.

'People sometimes remember things afterwards,' he said.

The man stepped aside and let Wallander into the house. The Labrador sniffed him inquisitively.

'Do you live here year-round?' asked Wallander.

'Yes,' said the man. 'I was a doctor in Nynäshamn for twenty years. When I retired we moved here, my wife and I.'

'Maybe she saw something?' Wallander said. 'Assuming she's here?'

'She's ill,' said the man. 'She hasn't seen anything.'

Wallander produced a notebook from his pocket.

'Can I have your name?' he asked.

'I'm Martin Stenholm,' the man said. 'My wife's name is Kajsa.'

Wallander noted down the names and put the book back in his pocket.

'I won't disturb you any more,' he said.

'No problem,' said Stenholm.

'I might come back in a few days' time and speak to your wife,' he said. 'Sometimes it's better for people to say for themselves what they've seen or haven't seen.'

'I don't think there would be much point,' said Stenholm. 'My wife is very ill. She has cancer and is dying.'

'I understand,' Wallander said. 'In that case I won't come back and intrude.'

Stenholm opened the door for him.

'Is your wife also a doctor?' Wallander asked.

'No,' said the man. 'She was a lawyer.'

Wallander walked down the path to the road, then on to three more houses, none of which produced any information. He caught sight of Rydberg and could tell he had almost finished his quota of doors. Wallander went to get his car and waited for Rydberg outside Agnes Ehn's house. When Rydberg arrived, he had no positive information. Nobody had seen Göran Alexandersson on the beach

'I always thought people were curious,' Rydberg said. 'Especially in the country, and especially where strangers are concerned.'

They drove back to Ystad. Wallander didn't say a word. When they got back to the police station he asked Rydberg to find Hansson and bring him to Wallander's office. He then phoned the medico-legal unit in Lund and this time managed to get hold of Jörne. Hansson and Rydberg had arrived by the time he had finished the call. Wallander looked questioningly at Hansson.

'Any news?' he asked.

'Nothing that changes the picture we already have of Alexandersson,' Hansson said.

'I've just spoken to Jörne,' said Wallander. 'The poison that killed Alexandersson could very well have been administered without him noticing it. It's not possible to say precisely how fast it works. Jörne guessed it would be at least half an hour. When death does come, it happens very quickly.'

'So we're right in our suppositions so far,' said Hansson. 'Does this poison have a name?'

Wallander read out the complicated chemical description he had written down on his notepad.

Then he told them about the conversation he'd had with Martin Stenholm in Svarte.

'I don't know why,' he said, 'but I can't help feeling we'll find the solution to our problem in that doctor's house.'

'A doctor knows about poisons,' Rydberg said. 'That's always a start.'

'You're right, of course,' said Wallander. 'But there's something else too. I can't put my finger on it, though.'

'Why don't I run a search through the registers?' asked Hansson. 'It's too bad Martinsson is sick. He's the best at that sort of thing.'

Wallander nodded. Then an idea struck him.

'Do one for his wife as well. Kajsa Stenholm.'

The investigation was put on hold for the Valpurgis Night holiday and the weekend. Wallander spent a large part of his free time at his father's house. He spent one afternoon repainting the kitchen. He also called Rydberg, for no other reason than the fact that Rydberg was as solitary as he was. But when Wallander called, Rydberg turned out to be drunk, and the conversation was a very short one.

On Monday, 4 May, he was back at the police station early. While he waited to hear if Hansson had found anything of interest in the registers, he resumed his work on the gang smuggling stolen cars into Poland. It wasn't until eleven the next morning that Hansson eventually showed up.

'I can't find a thing about Martin Stenholm,' he said. 'It looks as if he's never done a dishonest thing in his whole life.'

Wallander wasn't in the least surprised. He had been aware from the start that they could be heading into a cul-de-sac.

'What about his wife?'

Hansson shook his head.

'Even less,' said Hansson. 'She was a prosecutor in Nynäshamn for many years.'

Hansson put a file full of papers on Wallander's desk.

'I'll go and talk to the taxi drivers again,' he said. 'Perhaps they saw something without realising it.'

When Hansson had left, Wallander opened the file. It took him an hour to work his way carefully through all the documents. For once Hansson hadn't overlooked anything. Even so, Wallander was convinced that Alexandersson's death had something to do with the old doctor. He knew without knowing, as so many times before. He didn't trust his intuition, it was true, but he couldn't deny that it had served him well many times in the past. He called Rydberg, who came to his office immediately. Wallander handed him the file.

'I'd like you to read through this,' he said. 'Neither Hansson nor I can see anything of interest, but I'm sure we're missing something.'

'We can forget Hansson,' Rydberg said, making no attempt to disguise the fact that his respect for his colleague was limited.

Late that afternoon Rydberg returned the file, shaking his head. He hadn't found anything either.

'We'll have to start again from the beginning,' said Wallander. 'Let's meet here in my office tomorrow morning and decide where we go from here.'

An hour later Wallander left the police station and drove to Svarte. Once again he took a long walk along the beach. He didn't see another soul. Then he sat in his car and read one more time through the material Hansson had given him. What is it that I'm missing? he asked himself. There is a link between this doctor and Göran Alexandersson. It's just me who can't see what it is.

He drove back to Ystad and took the file home with him to Mariagatan. They had lived in the same three-room apartment ever since they moved to Ystad twelve years earlier.

He tried to relax, but the file gave him no peace. As midnight approached, he sat down at the kitchen table and went through it one more time. Although he was very tired, he did in fact find one detail that caught his attention. He knew it might well have no significance. Nevertheless, he decided to look into it early the following morning.

He slept badly that night.

He was back at the police station by 7 a.m. Ystad was enveloped in drizzle. Wallander knew the man he was looking for was just as much of an early bird as he was. He went to the part of the building that housed the prosecutors and knocked on Per Åkeson's door. As usual, the room was in chaos. Åkeson and Wallander had worked together for many years and had great faith in each other's judgement. Åkeson pushed his glasses up on top of his head and looked at Wallander.

'Are you here already?' he said. 'So early? That must mean you have something important to tell me.'

'I don't know if it's important,' Wallander said, 'but I need your help.'

Wallander moved several bundles of paper from the visitor's chair to the floor and sat down. Then he summarised briefly the circumstances of Göran Alexandersson's death.

'It sounds very strange,' said Åkeson when Wallander had finished.

'Strange things do happen now and then,' Wallander said. 'You know that as well as I do.'

'I don't think you've come here at seven in the morning just to tell me this. I hope you're not going to suggest we should arrest that doctor?'

'I need your help with his wife,' Wallander said. 'Kajsa Stenholm. A former colleague of yours. She worked in Nynäshamn for many years. But she had several temporary assignments too. Seven years ago she was filling in for somebody in Stockholm. It happened to be at the same time as Alexandersson's son's murder. I need your help to find out if there is a connection between those two events.'

Wallander leafed through his papers before continuing.

'The son was called Bengt,' he said eventually. 'Bengt Alexandersson. He was eighteen when he was killed.'

Åkeson leaned his chair back and looked at Wallander with a furrowed brow.

'What do you think might have happened?' he asked.

'I don't know,' said Wallander, 'but I want to find out if there could be some sort of link. If Kajsa Stenholm was somehow involved in the investigation into the death of Bengt Alexandersson.'

'I take it you want to know as soon as possible?'

Wallander nodded.

'You should know by now that my patience is more or less nonexistent,' he said, rising to his feet.

'I'll see what I can do,' said Åkeson. 'But don't expect heaven and earth to be moved.'

When Wallander passed through reception on his way back to his office, he asked Ebba to send Rydberg and Hansson in to see him as soon as they came in.

'How are you nowadays?' Ebba asked. 'Are you getting a good night's sleep?'

'I sometimes feel I'm sleeping too much,' said Wallander evasively. Ebba was reception's stalwart and kept a maternal watch on everybody's state of health. Wallander sometimes had to fend off her concern in as friendly a way as possible.

Hansson came to Wallander's office at about a quarter past eight, and Rydberg followed soon afterwards. Wallander summarised briefly what he had found in what were already being called 'Hansson's papers'.

'We'll have to wait and see what Åkeson comes up with,' said Wallander. 'Maybe it's just a meaningless guess on my part. But on the other hand, if it does turn out that Kajsa Stenholm was assigned to Stockholm when Bengt Alexandersson was murdered and that she was involved in the investigation, we've found the link we've been looking for.'

'Didn't you say she was on her deathbed?' wondered Rydberg.

'That's what her husband claimed,' Wallander said. 'I haven't actually met her.'

'With all due respect for your ability to find your way through complicated criminal investigations, this seems pretty vague to me,' said Hansson. 'Let's suppose that you're right. That Kajsa Stenholm was in fact involved in the investigation into the killing of young Alexandersson. So what? Are you suggesting that a woman dying of cancer murdered a man who showed up out of her past?'

'It is very vague,' Wallander admitted. 'Let's wait and see what Åkeson comes up with.'

When Wallander was alone in his office again, he sat around for some time in a state of indecision. He wondered what Mona and Linda were doing at the moment. And what they were talking about. At about nine thirty he went to get a cup of coffee, and another one an hour or so later. He had just returned to his office when the telephone rang. It was Åkeson.

'It went quicker than I'd expected,' he said. 'Do you have a pen handy?'

'I'm all set,' Wallander said.

'Between 10 March and 9 October 1980, Kajsa Stenholm was working as a prosecutor in the city of Stockholm,' Åkeson said. 'With some help from an efficient registry clerk at the county court, I found the answer to your second question, about whether Kajsa Stenholm was involved in the Bengt Alexandersson case.'

He fell silent. Wallander could feel the tension rising.

'It seems you were right,' said Åkeson. 'She was in charge of the preliminary investigation, and she was also the one who eventually put it aside. When the killer wasn't found.'

'Thank you for your help,' said Wallander. 'I'll look into this. I'll be in touch in due course.'

He hung up and walked over to the window. The glass was misted over. It was raining more heavily now. There's only one thing to do, he thought. I must get inside the house and find out what actually happened. He decided to take only Rydberg with him. He called him and Hansson on the intercom, and when they were in his office he told them what Åkeson had found out.

'Well, I'll be damned!' said Hansson.

'I thought you and I should take a drive out there,' Wallander said to Rydberg. 'Three would be one too many.'

Hansson nodded; he understood.

They drove to Svarte in Wallander's car. Neither spoke. Wallander parked about a hundred metres short of Stenholm's property.

'What do you want me to do?' asked Rydberg as they walked through the rain.

'Be there,' Wallander said. 'That's all.'

It suddenly struck Wallander that this was the first time Rydberg had ever assisted him, rather than the other way round. Rydberg had never formally lorded it over his colleague; it didn't suit his temperament to be a boss, and they had always worked in tandem. But during the years Wallander had been in Ystad, it was Rydberg who had been his teacher. Everything he knew today about the work of a police officer was mainly due to Rydberg.

They went through the gate and up to the front door. Wallander rang the bell. As if they had been expected, the door was opened almost immediately by the elderly doctor. Wallander thought in passing that it was odd the Labrador hadn't appeared.

'I hope we're not disturbing you,' Wallander said, 'but we have a few more questions that can't wait, unfortunately.'

'What about?'

Wallander noticed that all the friendliness the man had shown before was gone. He seemed scared and irritated.

'About that man on the beach,' Wallander said.

'I've already told you I've never seen him.'

'We'd also like to talk to your wife.'

'I've told you she's fatally ill. What could she have seen? She's in bed. I don't understand why you can't leave us in peace!'

'Then we won't disturb you any more,' said Wallander. 'Not just now, at least. But I have no doubt we'll be back. And then you'll have to let us in.'

He took Rydberg's arm and steered him towards the gate. The door closed behind them.

'Why did you give in so easily?' Rydberg asked.

'Something you taught me,' Wallander said. 'That it does no harm to let people stew for a while. Besides, I need a warrant from Åkeson to search the house.'

'Is he really the one who killed Alexandersson?' asked Rydberg.

'Yes,' said Wallander. 'I'm certain of it. He's the one. But I still don't understand how it all fits together.'

That afternoon Wallander received the authorisation he needed. He decided to wait until the next morning. But just in case, he persuaded Björk to have a guard placed on the house until then.

When Wallander woke up as dawn was breaking the next morning, 7 May, and opened the curtains, Ystad was covered in fog. Before taking a shower he did something he had forgotten to do the previous night: he looked up Stenholm in the telephone directory. There was no mention of a Martin or Kajsa Stenholm. He phoned directory assistance and ascertained that the number was unlisted. He nodded to himself, as if that was exactly what he had expected.

As he drank his morning cup of coffee, he asked himself if he should take Rydberg with him or drive out to Svarte on his own. It wasn't until he was behind the wheel that he decided to go himself. The fog was thick along the coast road.

Wallander drove very slowly. It was nearly eight when he pulled up outside the Stenholm house. He walked through the gate and rang the doorbell. It wasn't until the third ring that the door opened. When Stenholm saw that it was Wallander, he tried to slam it shut again, but Wallander managed to put his foot in the way.

'What right do you have to break in here?' the old man shouted in a shrill voice.

'I'm not breaking in,' Wallander said. 'I have a search warrant. You might as well accept that. Can we sit down somewhere?'

Stenholm suddenly seemed resigned. Wallander followed him into a room full of books. Wallander sat down in a leather armchair, and Stenholm sat opposite him.

'Do you really have nothing to say to me?' Wallander asked.

'I haven't seen anybody wandering up and down the beach. Nor has my wife, who's seriously ill. She's in bed upstairs.'

Wallander decided to come right to the point. There was no reason to beat around the bush any longer.

'Your wife was a public prosecutor,' he said. 'For most of 1980 she was assigned to Stockholm. Among a lot of other things, she was in charge of a preliminary investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of an eighteen-year-old named Bengt Alexandersson. She was also responsible for putting the case aside some months later. Do you recall those events?'

'Of course not,' said Stenholm. 'It has always been our habit not to talk shop at home. She said nothing about the people she was prosecuting, I said nothing about my patients.'

'The man who was walking on the beach here was the father of Bengt Alexandersson,' said Wallander. 'He was poisoned and died in the back seat of a taxi. Does that seem like a mere coincidence?'

Stenholm made no reply. And then the penny suddenly dropped for Wallander.

'When you retired you moved down from Nynäshamn to Skåne,' he said slowly. 'To a place in the middle of nowhere like Svarte. You're not even in the telephone book because your number's unlisted. Needless to say, that could be because you want to be left in peace and quiet, to live out your old age in anonymity. But there could be another explan ation. You might have moved out here as discreetly as possible in order to escape from something or somebody. Perhaps to get away from a man who can't understand why a prosecutor didn't put more effort into solving the pointless murder of his only child. You moved, but he tracked you down. I don't suppose we'll ever know how he managed that. But one day, there he is on the beach. You meet him while you're out walking your dog. Naturally, it's a big shock. He repeats his accusations, maybe he even makes threats. Your wife is seriously ill upstairs. I have no doubt that's the case. The man on the beach keeps on coming back, day after day. He won't let you shake him off. You see no way of getting rid of him. No way out at all. Then you invite him into your house. Presumably you promise him that he can talk to your wife. You give him some poison, possibly in a cup of coffee. Then you suddenly change your mind and tell him to come back the next day. Your wife is in great pain, or perhaps she's asleep. But you know he'll never come back. The problem is solved. Göran Alexandersson will die of something that looks like a heart attack. Nobody has ever seen you together, nobody knows about the link between you. Is that what happened?'

Stenholm sat motionless in his chair.

Wallander waited. He could see through the window that the fog was still very thick. Then the man raised his head.

'My wife never did anything wrong,' he said. 'But times changed, crimes multiplied and became more serious. Overworked police officers and courts couldn't cope with it. You should know that, you're a policeman yourself. That's why it was so unjust for Alexandersson to blame my wife when the murder of his son was never solved. He persecuted us and threatened us and terrorised us for seven years. And he did it in such a way that we could never actually pin anything on him.'

Stenholm fell silent. Then he stood up.

'Let's go up to my wife. She can tell you about it herself.'

'That's not necessary any more,' Wallander said.

'For me it's necessary,' said Stenholm.

They went upstairs. Kajsa Stenholm was lying in a sickbed in a large, bright, airy room. The Labrador was lying on the floor beside the bed.

'She's not asleep,' said Stenholm. 'Go up to her and ask her whatever you want.'

Wallander approached the bed. Her face was so thin, her skin was stretched tight over her cranium. Wallander realised she was dead. He turned round quickly. The old man was standing in the doorway. He was holding a pistol, aimed at Wallander.

'I knew you'd come back,' he said. 'That's why it's just as well she died.'

'Put the gun down,' Wallander said.

Stenholm shook his head. Wallander could feel himself stiffening with fear.

Then everything happened very fast. Suddenly Stenholm pointed the gun at his own head and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed through the room. The man was thrown halfway through the door. Blood had spurted all over the walls. Wallander felt as if he were about to faint. Then he staggered out of the door and down the stairs. He called the police station. Ebba answered.

'Hansson or Rydberg,' he said. 'As fast as possible.'

It was Rydberg who came to the phone.

'It's all over,' said Wallander. 'I want an emergency team sent to the house in Svarte. I've got two dead bodies here.'

'Did you kill them? What's happened?' Rydberg asked. 'Are you hurt? Why the hell did you go there on your own?'

'I don't know,' Wallander said. 'Get a move on. I'm not hurt.'

Wallander went outside to wait. The beach was covered in fog. He thought about what the old doctor had said. About crimes becoming more frequent and more serious. Wallander had often thought that as well. He sometimes thought he was a police officer from another age. Even though he was only forty. Maybe a new kind of police officer was needed nowadays.

He waited in the fog for them to arrive from Ystad. He was deeply upset. Yet again, against his will, he had found himself involved in a tragedy. He wondered how long he would be able to keep going.

When the emergency services arrived and Rydberg got out of his car, it seemed to him that Wallander was a black shadow in the white fog.

'What happened?' Rydberg asked.

'We've solved the case of the man who died in the back seat of Stenberg's taxi,' Wallander said.

He could see that Rydberg was waiting for something more, but there would be nothing more.

'That's all,' he said. 'That's all we've done, in fact.'

Then Wallander turned on his heel and walked down to the beach. Soon he had disappeared into the fog.