One Step Behind

"How is she?"

"My colleague will let me know as soon as she hears anything."

"Did she try to kill herself?"

"It's too soon to know," Wallander said. "But I wasn't able to wake her up."

He sat down at the table and put the phone beside him.

"I take it she's attempted suicide before, since you immediately assumed that was the case," he said.

"It's a suicidal family," Lundberg said with distaste.

Then he stopped talking, as if he regretted his remark.

Barbro Lundberg put the coffee pot on the table. "Isa's brother passed away two years ago," she said. "He was only 19 years old. Isa and Jörgen were only one year apart."

"How did he do it?"

"In the bathtub," Lundberg said. "He wrote a note to his parents telling them to go to hell. Then he plugged a toaster into the wall and dropped it in the water."

Wallander felt sick to his stomach. He had a vague recollection of the incident. It came to him that Svedberg had been the one in charge of the investigation. A newspaper lay on an old sofa under the window. Wallander caught sight of a photo of Svedberg on the front page. He reached out for it and showed them the photograph.

"You may have heard about the policeman who was killed," he said. He got his answer before he even asked the question.

"He was here about a month ago."

"Did he come to see you or the Edengrens?"

"First to see them. Then he came here, just like you did."

"Were her parents gone that time as well?"

"No."

"So he met Isa's parents?"

"We don't know exactly who he spoke to," Lundberg said. "But her parents weren't gone then."

"Why did he come down here? What did he ask you about?"

Barbro Lundberg sat down at the table.

"He asked us about the parties they had when Isa's parents were gone, before they started locking her out," she said.

"That was the only thing that interested him," Lundberg said.

Wallander grew more attentive. He realised that this might give him an insight into the way Svedberg had spent his summer.

"I want both of you to try to remember exactly what he said."

"A month is a long time," she said.

"But you sat here at the kitchen table?"

"Yes."

"And you had coffee?"

Barbro Lundberg smiled. "He liked my bundt cake."

Wallander proceeded carefully. "It must have been right after Midsummer."

The couple exchanged looks. Wallander saw that they were trying to help each other remember.

"It must have been right at the begi

"So he came here at the end of June. First to see the Edengrens and then to see you."

"Isa came with him. But she was sick with some kind of stomach bug."

"Did Isa stay here the whole time?"

"No, she only came down with him to show him the way. Then she left."

"And he asked you about the parties?"

"Yes."

"What exactly did he ask?"

"If we knew the people who used to come. But of course we didn't."

"Why do you say 'of course'?"

"They were just young people who came in cars and then left the same way."

"What else did he ask?"

"If any of these parties were masquerades," Lundberg said.

"Did he use that word?"

"Yes."

His wife shook her head. "No, he didn't. He just asked if the people who attended the parties used to dress up."

"Did they?"

They both looked at Wallander with surprise.

"How on earth would we know?" Lundberg asked. "We weren't there, and we don't go around peeking through the curtains."

"But didn't you see something?"

"The parties were sometimes in the autumn, and it was usually dark. We couldn't see how people were dressed."

Wallander sat quietly and thought for a moment. "Did he ask anything else?"

"No. He sat for a while scratching his forehead with his pen. He was only here for about half an hour. Then he left."

Wallander's mobile phone rang. It was Höglund.

"They're pumping her stomach."

"So it was a suicide attempt?"

"I don't think people can ingest this many sleeping pills by accident."

"Are the doctors saying anything at this stage?"

"The fact that she's unconscious suggests she may already be poisoned."

"Will she make it?"

"I haven't heard anything to the contrary."

"Then why don't you go on to Trelleborg?"

"That's what I was thinking. I'll see you later back at the station."

They hung up, and the couple looked at Wallander with anxious eyes.

"She'll make it," he said. "But I will need to contact her parents."

"We have a couple of phone numbers," Lundberg said, and got up.

"They wanted us to call if anything happened to the house," his wife explained. "They didn't say anything about this kind of situation."

"You mean what to do if anything happened to Isa?"

She nodded. Lundberg gave Wallander a piece of paper with the phone numbers.

"Can we visit her in the hospital?" Barbro Lundberg asked.

"I'm sure you can," Wallander answered. "But I think it would be best if you waited until tomorrow."

Erik Lundberg saw him out.

"Do you have any keys to the house?" Wallander asked.

"They would never entrust them to us," the man said.

Wallander said goodbye, returned to the Edengren house, and walked over to the gazebo. He searched it again thoroughly for about half an hour, unsure as to what exactly he was looking for. He ended up sitting on Isa's bed.

Something's repeating itself, he thought. Svedberg came to talk to the girl who didn't make it to the Midsummer celebration and did not go missing. Svedberg asked about parties, and about young people dressing up in costumes. Now Isa Edengren has tried to kill herself and Svedberg has been murdered.

Wallander got up and left the gazebo. He was worried. He wasn't finding anything reliable to point him in the right direction. There seemed to be clues pointing in many directions, but none of them seemed to lead anywhere. He got into his car and headed back to Ystad.

His next aim was to have another talk with Sture Björklund. It was almost 4 p.m. when he pulled into Björklund's yard. He knocked on the door and waited, but no one answered. Björklund had probably gone to Copenhagen, or else he was in Hollywood discussing his latest ideas for a monster. Wallander banged hard on the door but didn't wait for anyone to open it. Instead he walked around to the back. The garden was neglected. Some half-rotting pieces of furniture were scattered in the long grass. Wallander peered in through one of the windows of the house, then continued down to a little shed. Wallander felt the door. It was unlocked. He opened it wide and pushed a piece of wood underneath it to keep it in place. It was a mess inside. He was about to leave when his attention was caught by a tarpaulin folded over something in the corner. There seemed to be some kind of equipment under it. He carefully pulled off part of the cover. It was a machine all right; or more precisely, an instrument. Wallander had never seen one like it before, but he still knew immediately what it was. A telescope.