One Step Behind

He had finished putting his rucksack on and was about to cross the path when he heard another person approaching. Again a torch flickered between the trees and he jumped back into the shadows. The officer was large and moved heavily. The man felt a sudden impulse to make his presence known, to dash out like an animal of the night, before being swallowed up again by the darkness.

Suddenly the officer stopped. He let the torch shine on the bushes to the side of the trail. In a moment that lengthened into sheer terror the man thought that he had been caught. He was frozen and couldn't get away. Finally the light disappeared as the officer walked away. But then he stopped a second time, turned off the light, and waited in the dark. After a while he turned the torch back on and continued.

The man lay still for a long time, his heart pounding. What had caused the policeman to stop? He couldn't have heard anything, or seen him. For once his i

Wallander saw the lights from a distance. From time to time he heard Nyberg's tired and irritated voice. One officer was up on the path, smoking. He stopped again and listened. He didn't know where the feeling had come from, the sense that the killer was out there somewhere in the dark. Had he heard something? He stopped and felt a rush of fear. Then he realised that it must be his imagination. He stopped one more time, turned off the light, and listened. But there was only the sound of the sea.

He greeted the officer, who made an attempt to put out his cigarette. Wallander stopped him. He was a young policeman by the name of Bernt Svensson.

"How's it going?" he asked.

"I think I saw a fox," Svensson said.

"A fox?"

"I thought I saw a shadow back there. It was bigger than a cat."

"There are no foxes in Skåne. They all died from the plague."

"I still think it was a fox."

Wallander nodded. "Then we'll say it was a fox. Just a fox."

He continued on down and into the ring of light. Nyberg was examining the place under the tree where the three bodies had lain. Even the blue cloth was gone now.

"What are you doing here?" he asked when he saw Wallander. "You should sleep. You have to have the energy to keep going."

"I know. But sometimes you can't sleep."

"Everyone should sleep," Nyberg said. His voice was cracking with fatigue. Wallander sensed how distraught he was.

"Everyone should sleep," he repeated. "And things like this shouldn't happen."

"I've been in the force for 40 years," Nyberg said. "I'm going to retire in another two."

"What will you do then?"

"Go crazy with boredom maybe," he said. "But you can bet I won't be standing around forests looking at the half-rotten corpses of some young people."

Wallander remembered what Sundelius had said. I used to go to work every day. Now I climb the walls.

"You'll find something," Wallander said encouragingly.

Nyberg muttered something unintelligible. Wallander tried to shake the tiredness out of his body.

"I came out to start pla

"You mean digging around for a possible hiding place?"

"If we're right about this, we should be able to deduce where he hid the bodies."

"He, or they. He may not have been alone," Nyberg answered.

"I think he was. It just doesn't make sense for two people to organise this kind of massacre. We're assuming the killer is a man, but I think that's a safe assumption. Women don't shoot people in the head. Especially young people."

"What about last year?"

Nyberg was referring to a case in which the killer of several people turned out to be a woman. But that did not change Wallander's mind.

"Not this time," he said. "So who are we looking for? An escaped lunatic?"

"Maybe. I'm not sure."

"But this gives us a starting point."

"Exactly. If he's alone, he has three bodies to hide. What does he do?"

"He won't move them very far, for practical reasons. He has to carry them, unless he brought a wheelbarrow, which would have drawn attention. I think he's a cautious person."

"So he buries them near here?"

"If he buried them at all," Wallander said. "Did you have the impression that the bodies had been exposed to animals or birds?"

"No. But I'm not a pathologist."

"Still, that confirms our idea that the bodies were in the ground. But animals can dig. That means the bodies have been protected somehow, by a box or plastic sheeting."

"I'm not an expert on these things," Nyberg said, "but I do know that bodies in sealed containers decompose at a different rate to bodies exposed directly to the earth."

They were closing in on something that could be significant.

"Where does that lead us?" Wallander said.

Nyberg gestured with one arm.

"He wouldn't have gone uphill," he said and pointed back to the path. "Nor would he have crossed a path unless he had to."

They turned their backs to the hillside and looked past the lights, where insects danced in front of the hot lenses.

"To the left of us the ground slopes away steeply, then goes up again almost as sharply. I don't think he'd try there," Nyberg said.

"Straight ahead?"

"It's level, surrounded by thick brush."

"To the right?"

"Also brush, but not as thick. The ground is probably waterlogged from time to time."

"So probably somewhere straight ahead or to the right," Wallander said.

"To the right, I think," Nyberg said. "I forgot to mention something. If you go straight you hit another path."

"So we'll try to the right, once it gets light," Wallander said. "In a spot that looks like it might have been disturbed."

"I hope we're right," Nyberg said.

Wallander was so tired he could no longer speak. He decided to go back to his car and sleep for a few hours. Nyberg followed him up to the main path.

"I had a feeling there was someone sneaking around in the dark when I came up here," Wallander said. "And Svensson said he thought he saw a fox."

"Normal people have nightmares in their sleep," Nyberg answered. "We have our nightmares when we're awake."

"I'm worried he's going to strike again," Wallander said. "Aren't you?"

Nyberg was silent for a moment before answering. "I'm always worried. But I also have the feeling that what happened here won't be repeated."

"I hope you're right," Wallander said. "I'll be back in a couple of hours."

He returned to the car park, without experiencing the feeling that someone was out there in the darkness. He curled up in the back seat of his car and fell asleep immediately.

It was broad daylight and someone was knocking on the window. He saw Höglund's face and hauled himself out of the car. His whole body ached.

"What time is it?"

"It's 7 a.m."

"Damn it, I've slept in. They have to start looking for a place to dig."

"They've already started," she said. "That's why I came to find you. Hansson's on his way."

They hurried up along the path. "I hate this," Wallander grumbled. "Sleeping in the back of a car, getting up unwashed and looking like hell. I'm too old for this. How am I supposed to think without even having a cup of coffee?"

"I think we can fix that," she said. "If the station hasn't supplied us with anything, you can have some of mine. I'll even give you a sandwich."

Wallander picked up his pace, but she still seemed to walk more quickly than he did. It a