One Step Behind

When Wallander left the hospital he drew a deep breath. Birds were chirping. It was barely 4 a.m. There was only a faint trace of wind and it was still warm. He started walking slowly back to Lilla Norregatan. One question seemed more important than the others. Why had Svedberg felt overworked when he had just been on holiday? Could it have something to do with his murder?

Wallander stopped in his tracks on the narrow footpath. In his mind he went back to the moment when he had stood in the doorway of the living room and first witnessed the devastation. Martinsson had been right behind him. He had seen a dead man and a shotgun. But almost at once he was struck by the feeling that something wasn't quite right. Could he make out what it was? He tried again without success.

Patience, he thought. I'm tired. It's been a long night and it's not over yet.

He started walking again, wondering when he would have time to sleep and think about his diet. Then he stopped again. A question suddenly came to him.

What if I die as suddenly as Svedberg? Who will miss me? What will people say? That I was a good policeman? But who will miss me as a person? A

A pigeon flew by close to his head. We don't know anything about each other, he thought. What did I really think of Svedberg? Do I actually miss him? Can you miss a person you didn't know?

He started walking again, but he knew these questions would follow him.

Going into Svedberg's flat again was like walking back into a nightmare. Gone was all feeling of summer, sun, and birdsong. Inside, beneath the harsh beams of the spotlights, there was only death.

Lisa Holgersson had returned to the police station. Wallander beckoned Höglund and Martinsson to follow him into the kitchen. He stopped himself at the last moment from asking them if they had seen Svedberg. They sat down around the kitchen table, grey-faced. Wallander wondered what his own face looked like.

"How is it going?" he asked.

"Can it be anything other than a burglary?" Höglund asked.

"It could be a lot of other things," Wallander answered. "Revenge, a lunatic, two lunatics, three lunatics. We don't know, and as long as we don't know we have to work with what we can see."

"And one other thing," Martinsson said slowly.

Wallander nodded, sensing what Martinsson was about to say.

"The fact that Svedberg was a policeman," Martinsson said.

"Have you found any clues?" Wallander asked. "How is Nyberg's work going? What's in the medical report?"

They both rifled through the notes they had made. Höglund finished first.

"Both barrels of the shotgun were fired," she read. "The pathologist and Nyberg are sure that the shots came in quick succession. The shots were fired directly at Svedberg's head at close range."

Her voice shook. She took a deep breath and continued. "It isn't possible to determine whether or not Svedberg was sitting in the chair when the shots were fired, nor what the exact distance was. From the arrangement of the furniture and the size of the room it ca

Martinsson got up and mumbled something, then disappeared into the bathroom. They waited. He returned after a few minutes.

"I should have quit two years ago," he said.

"We're needed now more than ever," Wallander said sharply, but he understood Martinsson only too well.

"Svedberg was fully dressed," Höglund continued. "That means he wasn't forced out of bed, but we still have no time frame."

Wallander looked at Martinsson.

"I've been over this point again and again," he said. "But none of the neighbours heard anything."

"What about noise from the street?" Wallander asked.

"I don't think it would cover the sound of a shotgun going off. Twice."

"So we have no way of pinpointing the time of the crime. We know that Svedberg was dressed, which may allow us to eliminate the very late hours of the night. I've always been under the impression that Svedberg went to bed early."

Martinsson agreed.

"How did the killer enter the flat? Do we know that?"

"The door shows no signs of a forced entry."

"But remember how easy it was for us to get in," Wallander said.

"Why did he leave his weapon behind? Was it panic?"

They had no answers to Martinsson's question. Wallander looked at his colleagues, who were tired and depressed.

"I'll tell you what I think," he said. "For what it's worth. As soon as I came into the flat I had the feeling that something was odd. What it was I don't know. There's been a murder that suggests a burglary. But if it isn't a burglary, then what? Revenge? Or is it possible to imagine that someone came here not to steal anything but rather to find something?"

He got up, picked up a glass from the kitchen counter, and poured himself some more water.

"I've talked to Ylva Brink at the hospital," he said. "Svedberg had almost no family. He had two cousins, one of whom is Ylva. They seem to have been in close contact. She mentioned one thing that I found odd. When she talked with Svedberg last Sunday he complained of being overworked. But he had just returned from holiday. It doesn't make any sense."

Höglund and Martinsson waited for him to continue.

"I don't know if it means anything," Wallander said. "But we need to know why."

"Was it something to do with Svedberg's investigation?" Höglund asked.

"The young people who went missing?" Martinsson said.

"There must have been something else as well," Wallander said, "since that wasn't a formal investigation. Anyway, he went on holiday just a few days after the parents first notified us."

No one could come up with an answer.

"One of you will have to find out what he was working on," Wallander said.

"Do you think he had a secret of some kind?" Martinsson asked carefully.

"Doesn't everybody have one?"

"So is that what we're looking for? Svedberg's secret?"

"We're looking for the person who killed him. That's all."

They decided to meet again at the station at 8 a.m. Martinsson immediately returned to the flat next door to continue his interviews with the neighbours. Höglund lingered. Wallander looked at her tired and ravaged face.

"Were you awake when I called?"

He regretted the question as soon as it came out. He had no business asking whether or not she had been up. But she didn't seem to mind.

"Yes," she said. "I was wide awake."

"You came down here so quickly that I assume your husband must be at home with the children."

"When you called, we were in the middle of an argument. Just a stupid little argument, the kind you have when you don't have the energy for the big ones any more."

They sat quietly. Now and then they heard Nyberg's voice.

"I just don't understand it," she said. "Who would want to hurt Svedberg?"

"Who was closest to him?" Wallander said.

She looked surprised. "I thought it was you."

"No, I didn't know him that well."

"But he looked up to you."

"I have trouble imagining that."

"You didn't see it, but I did. Maybe the others noticed it as well. He always took your side, even when you were wrong."

"That still doesn't answer our question," Wallander said, and asked it again. "Who was closest to him?"

"No one was close to him."

"Well, we have to get close to him now. Now that he's dead."

Nyberg came into the kitchen, a cup of coffee in his hand. Wallander knew that he always had a thermos ready in case he was called out in the middle of the night.

"How's it going?" Wallander asked.

"It looks like a burglary," Nyberg said. "What we don't know is why the killer left his gun."

"We don't have a time of death," Wallander said.

"That's up to the pathologist."