One Step Behind

"There's something else I've been thinking about," Wallander said slowly. "If he kept her a secret, what else might he have hidden from us?"

He could see she was following his train of thought.

"You don't think it's a burglary."

"I doubt it. A telescope is missing, and Ylva Brink may be able to tell us if anything else is gone, but it doesn't add up. There's no coherence to the scene of the crime."

"We've checked his bank accounts," Höglund said. "At least the ones we've managed to find. There's nothing of note, no outlandish deposits or debts. He has a loan of 25,000 kronor for his car. The bank said that Svedberg always managed his affairs conscientiously."

"One shouldn't speak ill of the dead," Wallander said, "but to tell the truth I thought he was downright miserly."

"How do you mean?"

"We'd always share the tab when we went out, but I'd always leave the tip."

Höglund slowly shook her head. "It's fu

Wallander told her about the cement mixer. He had just finished when they both heard a key turning in the lock. They were both struck by the same fleeting sense of dread until they heard Nyberg clearing his throat.

"Those damn newspapers," he said. "I don't know how I could have overlooked them."

He put them into a plastic bag and sealed it.

"When can we find out about prints?" Wallander asked.

"Monday at the earliest."

"What about the autopsy report?"

"Hansson's in charge," Höglund said. "But it should be done pretty quickly."

Wallander asked Nyberg to sit down, then recounted the story of Louise one more time.

"That sounds completely implausible," Nyberg said. "Was there a more confirmed bachelor than Svedberg? What about his lone sauna stints on Friday evenings?"

"It's even more implausible that a professor at Copenhagen University is lying to us," Wallander said. "We have to assume he's telling the truth."

"What if Svedberg simply invented her? If I understood you correctly, no one actually saw her."

Wallander thought about this. Could Louise be a figment of Svedberg's imagination?

"What about the hairs in Björklund's bathtub? They're clearly not an invention."

"Why would anyone invent a story like that about himself?" Nyberg asked.

"Because he's lonely," Höglund answered. "People can go to great lengths to invent the companionship missing from their lives."

"Have you found any hairs in the bathroom?" Wallander asked.

"No," Nyberg answered. "But I'll go and have another look."

Wallander got up. "Come with me for a minute," he said.

They went into the living room and Wallander walked them through the various thoughts that had come to him.

"I'm trying to come up with a provisional starting point for this case," he said. "If this is a burglary, there are many issues that need clearing up. How did the killer enter? Why was he carrying a shotgun? At what point did Svedberg appear? What besides the telescope has been stolen? And why was Svedberg shot? There's no sign of a struggle. There's a mess in almost every room, but I doubt they chased each other around the flat. I can't get the various pieces to fit together, and so I ask myself, what happens if we push the burglary hypothesis aside for a moment? What do we see then? Is it a matter of revenge? Insanity? Since there's a woman in the picture, we can entertain the idea of jealousy. But would a woman shoot Svedberg in the face? I doubt it. What other possibilities are there?"

No one spoke. This silence confirmed Wallander's impression that there was no obvious logic to this case, no simple way to categorise it as a burglary, crime of passion, or something else. There was no apparent reason for Svedberg's murder.

"Can I leave now?" Nyberg said finally. "I still have some reports to finish tonight."

"We're going to have another meeting tomorrow morning."

"What time?"

"We'll aim for 9 a.m."

Nyberg left the other two in the living room.

"I've tried to see an unfolding drama," Wallander said. "What do you see?"

He knew that Höglund could be sharp-sighted, and there was nothing wrong with her analytical skills.

"What if we start with the state of the flat?"

"Yes, what then?"

"There are three possible explanations for the mess. A nervous or hurried burglar, a person looking for something, which of course could also apply to a burglar although he wouldn't know what he was looking for. The third possibility is a person bent on destruction for its own sake. Vandalism."

Wallander followed her train of thought closely.

"There's a fourth possibility," he said. "A person who acts out of uncontrollable rage."

They looked at each other, and each knew what the other was thinking. Occasionally Svedberg would become so angry that he lost all self-control. His rage seemed to come out of the blue. Once he had almost destroyed his office.

"Svedberg could have done this himself," Wallander said. "It's not totally out of the realm of possibility. We know it's happened before. It leads us to a very important question."

"Why?"

"Exactly. Why?"

"I was there when Svedberg trashed his office, but I never understood why he did it," Höglund said.

"It was when Björk was chief of police. He accused Svedberg of stealing confiscated material."

"What kind of material?"

"Some valuable Lithuanian icons, among other things," Wallander answered. "It was loot from a big racketeering case."

"So Svedberg was accused of stealing?"

"No – incompetence and sloppy police work. But, of course, the suspicion was implicit."

"What came of it?"

"Svedberg felt humiliated and smashed everything in his office."

"Did the icons ever turn up?" she asked.

"No, but no one was ever able to prove anything. The racketeers were prosecuted successfully anyway."

"But Svedberg felt humiliated?"

"Yes."

"Unfortunately it doesn't help us. Svedberg trashes his own flat, but then what?"

"We don't know," Wallander said.

They left the living room.

"Did you ever hear of Svedberg receiving threats?" Wallander asked her when they had reached the hall.

"No."

"Has anyone else received any?"

"You know how it is – strange letters and calls are par for the course," she said. "But naturally there would be a record of it."

"Why don't you go through everything that's come in lately," Wallander said. "I'd also like you to talk to whoever delivers the newspapers."

Höglund wrote his requests in her notebook. Wallander opened the front door.

"At least it wasn't Svedberg's gun," she said. "He had no registered weapons."

"That's good to know."

She started walking down the stairs and Wallander returned to the kitchen. He drank a glass of water and thought that he should eat something soon. He was tired. He sat down with his head against the wall and fell asleep.

He was surrounded by snowy mountains that sparkled in the strong sun. His skis looked like the ones he had seen down in Svedberg's basement. He was going faster and faster and he was heading straight down towards a thick layer of fog. Suddenly a ravine opened up in front of him.

He woke up with a start. He looked at the kitchen clock and saw that he had been asleep for eleven minutes.

He sat still and listened to the silence. Then the phone rang. It was Martinsson.

"I thought that's where you were."

"Has anything happened?"

"Eva Hillström has been to see me again."

"What did she want?"

"She said she was going to go to the papers if we don't do something."

Wallander thought for a moment before answering. "I think I may have been misguided this morning," he said. "I'd been meaning to talk about it tomorrow morning anyway."