One Step Behind

Something seemed to occur to him. Wallander waited.

"Is it possible that someone else put it there?" Björklund asked.

"If so, it would probably have been someone who knew you two were related."

Wallander saw that something was troubling Björklund.

"What are you thinking about?"

"I don't know if this means anything," he said doubtfully. "But I had the feeling once that someone had been here."

"How did you get this feeling?"

"I don't know. It was just a feeling."

"Something must have set it off."

"That's what I'm trying to remember."

Wallander kept waiting. Björklund seemed lost in thought.

"It was a couple of weeks ago," he said. "I had been in Copenhagen and returned in the afternoon. It had been raining. As I walked across the yard something made me stop. At first I didn't know what it was, but then I saw that someone had moved one of the sculptures."

"One of the monsters?"

"They're copies of the medieval gargoyles from the cathedral in Rouen."

"I thought you had a poor memory for objects."

"That doesn't apply to my sculptures. Not when someone has changed their position. I was certain that someone had been in the yard while I was gone."

"And it wasn't Svedberg."

"No. He never came out here unless we had arranged it."

"You can't be sure of that, though."

"No, but I feel sure. I knew him, and he knew me."

Wallander nodded, encouraging him to continue.

"A stranger had been here."

"You didn't have anyone looking after the place when you were gone on short trips?"

"No one comes here except the postman."

Björklund sounded convinced and Wallander had no reason to doubt him.

"A stranger, then," he repeated. "And you think this person is the one who might have put the telescope in your shed?"

"I know it sounds unreasonable."

"Can you tell me the exact date when this happened?"

Björklund went and got a little pocket calendar and leafed through to a particular day.

"I was away on 14 and 15 July."

Wallander made a note of it. Nyberg came in, his mobile phone in hand.

"I've called for some equipment," he said. "I'd like to finish working on the telescope tonight. Why don't you take my car back and I'll have a squad car pick me up when I'm finished?"

Nyberg disappeared again. Wallander got up, and Björklund followed him to the door.

"You must have had time to think about what's happened," Wallander said to him.

"I don't understand why anyone would want to kill my cousin. I can't imagine a more meaningless act."

"No," Wallander agreed. "But these are the questions we have to answer: who would have wanted to kill him, and why?"

They parted in the yard. The gargoyles looked somewhat plaintive in the weak light from the house. Wallander returned to Ystad in Nyberg's car. Nothing had been resolved.

The meeting back at the station lasted almost until midnight. Everyone was tired, but Wallander didn't want to let them go.

"There's really just one thing we can do," he said. "We have to declare Boge, Norman and Hillström officially missing. We need to get them back home as soon as possible."

Everyone in the room agreed with him. Holgersson and Martinsson would see that it was done the next morning.

"It seems that all of these young people have been up to something," he said. "But we haven't been able to get them to tell us what it is. You've all said that you feel there's something they're not saying, that they have a secret. Is that right?"

"Yes," said Höglund, "There's something they're not letting us in on."

"But they don't seem particularly concerned, either," Martinsson said. "They're convinced that Boge, Norman and Hillström are travelling."

"I hope they're right," Hansson said. "I'm starting to feel worried."

"So am I," Wallander said. He threw his pen down. "What the hell was Svedberg up to? That's what we have to figure out. And who in God's name is Louise?"

"We've checked all of our photographic records," Martinsson said.

"That's not enough," Wallander said. "We'll have to publish the picture in the papers. We have a murder to solve. Not that she's a suspect. At least not yet."

"Women don't tend to shoot their victims in the face with a shotgun," Höglund said.

No one had anything further to say. They agreed to continue the following day. Wallander would start by visiting Sundelius. He walked out of the station with Martinsson.

"We have to get them home," he said again. "We'll talk to Isa Edengren, and we'll bring in the ones that you've already visited once. We'll get them to tell us what they know."

They walked to their cars. Wallander was extremely tired. The last thing he thought about before falling asleep was that Nyberg was still out in Björklund's shed.

A steady rain fell over Ystad at dawn. Then the clouds blew away. Sunday was going to be a warm and su

CHAPTER TWELVE

Rosmarie Leman and her husband Mats often drove out to parks and nature reserves to take their Sunday walk, depending on the weather and season. This morning, Sunday, 11 August, they had talked about driving up to Fyledalen but settled on the Hagestad nature reserve instead. The deciding factor was that they hadn't been there for a long time, not since the middle of June.

They were early risers and left Ystad a little after 7 a.m. As usual they were pla

They parked at the reserve shortly before 8 a.m., had a cup of coffee, then put on their rucksacks and started walking. At 8.15 a.m. they looked around for a nice place to have breakfast. They heard some dogs barking at a distance but had not yet seen any other people. It was warm and there was no breeze. When they found a good spot they spread out a blanket and sat down to eat. On Sundays they discussed the things they didn't have time for during the week. Today it was buying a new car. The one they had was getting old, but could they really afford a new one? After talking for a while, they decided they would wait another month or so. When they had finished eating, Rosmarie Leman stretched out on the blanket and fell asleep. Mats Leman intended to do the same, but first he had to relieve himself. He took some toilet paper with him and walked to the other side of the path and headed down the slope towards an area surrounded by thick bushes. Before squatting down, he looked around carefully but saw no one.

This is the best part of Sunday, he thought when he had finished. To lie down next to Rosmarie and doze for half an hour. As he had this thought, he noticed something in the bushes. He didn't know what it was, but there was some colour that contrasted with the green foliage. Normally he was not particularly curious, but he couldn't help walking closer and parting the branches for a better look. What he saw he would never forget as long as he lived.

Rosmarie was woken by his screams. At first she didn't know what it was, then she realised to her horror that it was her husband's voice calling for help. She had just managed to stand up when he came ru

Then he fainted.

The police station in Ystad took the call at 9.05 a.m. The caller was so hysterical that he was difficult to understand. Finally, however, the policeman taking the call pieced together that the caller's name was Mats Leman and he claimed to have found some dead bodies in Hagestad's nature reserve. Although his account was disjointed, the policeman on duty realised that it was serious. He took down the caller's mobile-phone number and told him to stay where he was. Then he went into Martinsson's office, since he had seen him come in just a few minutes before. The policeman stood in the doorway and told him about the call. There was one detail in particular that made Martinsson's stomach knot up.