One Step Behind

"I find your tone insulting."

"Three of Isa's friends have been murdered," Wallander said. "Isa was supposed to have been with them when it happened. I'm talking about murder here, and you're going to cooperate with me or I'm going to go to the Spanish authorities. Am I making myself clear?"

The man seemed to hesitate. "What is it that's happened?"

"As far as I know, they sell Swedish papers in Spain. Can you read?"

"What the hell do you mean by that?"

"Exactly what I just said. You have a summer house on Bärnsö Island. Does Isa have the keys to it, or do you lock her out of that house, too?"

"She has the keys."

"Is there a phone on the island?"

"We use our mobile phones."

"Does Isa have one?"

"Doesn't everybody?"

"What's her number?"

"I don't know. I'm really not sure whether she has one."

"So which is it? Does she have a phone or not?"

"She has never asked me for money to buy one, and she couldn't afford one. She doesn't work, she doesn't do anything to try to get a grip on her life."

"Do you think it's possible that Isa has gone to Bärnsö? Does she often go there?"

"I thought she was still in the hospital."

"She's run away."

"Why?"

"We don't know. Is it possible that she would have gone to Bärnsö?"

"It's possible."

"How do you get there?"

"You take a boat from Fyrudden."

"Does she have access to a boat?"

"The one we have is currently being serviced in Stockholm."

"Are there any neighbours on the island I could get in touch with?"

"No, we're the only house on the island."

Wallander had been taking notes as they talked. For the moment he couldn't think of anything else to ask.

"You'll have to stay close to the phone so I can get hold of you," he said. "Is there any other place you can think of where Isa may have gone?"

"No."

"If you think of anything, you know where to reach me."

Wallander gave him the phone numbers to the station and his mobile phone, then hung up. His hands were damp with sweat. It was already past lunchtime, and Wallander ached from hunger and a headache. He ordered a pizza that arrived after 30 minutes, and ate it at his desk. Nyberg hadn't called back, and he wondered briefly if he should drive out to the nature reserve, but then decided against it. He wouldn't be able to speed anything up. Nyberg knew what he was doing. He wiped his mouth, threw out the pizza box, and went out to the men's room to wash his hands. Then he left the station, crossed the road, and started walking up towards the water tower. There he sat down in the shade and concentrated on a thought that kept returning to him.

His worst fear, that Svedberg was the one who killed the three young people, had started to fade. Svedberg was on the side of the pursuers in this case, still a little ahead of Wallander. It would be a while until they caught him up.

Svedberg could not be the murderer because he had been killed, too. Wallander's worst fear was starting to leave him, only to be replaced by another. Someone was observing their investigation, someone who kept himself very well informed. Wallander knew that he was right about this, even though he couldn't yet see how it all hung together.

The person who had killed Svedberg and killed the three young people had some means of access to the information he required. The Midsummer's Eve party was pla

Svedberg must simply have got too close, Wallander thought, without realising that he had wandered into forbidden territory. That was why he was murdered. There is no other reasonable explanation.

He could make sense of events up to this point, but beyond it the questions piled up one on top of the other. Why was the telescope at Björklund's house? Why had someone sent postcards from all over Europe?

I have to find Isa, he thought. I have to get her to tell me what she doesn't even know she knows. And I have to follow in Svedberg's footsteps. What had he discovered that we still haven't seen? Or did he have access to some information from the very begi

Wallander thought briefly about Louise, the woman in Svedberg's life, whom he had kept secret. There was still something about her picture that disturbed him, although he couldn't put his finger on it. The feeling was strong enough that he knew he mustn't give up on it, that he must bide his time. It occurred to him that there was a similarity between the young people in the reserve and Svedberg. They had all had secrets. Was this also significant?

Wallander got up and walked back to the police station. His body still ached from the hours he had spent sleeping curled up on the back seat of his car. His biggest anxiety still lay at the back of his mind – the fear that the killer would strike again.

When he got to the station he realised what he had to do. He had to drive up to Bärnsö and see if Isa Edengren was there. He had to choose between all the important tasks that lay before him. The most important was to find her.

Time was ru

"Has anything happened?" Martinsson asked.

"Not nearly enough. Why haven't we heard anything from the pathologist? We're helpless until we have a time of death. Why aren't we getting any good leads? Where are the missing cars? We have to talk. Get here as soon as you can."

While they were waiting for Höglund, Wallander and Martinsson called the young people in Svedberg's photograph. It turned out that they had all visited Isa on Bärnsö at one time or another. Martinsson spoke to the pathologist in Lund and was told that no results were available yet, either for the Svedberg case or the three young people. Wallander worked through a list of the leads that had come in from the general public. Nothing looked significant. The strangest thing was that no one had called to say they recognised the woman they were calling Louise. It was the first thing Wallander brought up with his colleagues in one of the smaller conference rooms. He put the photograph of her on the projector again.

"Someone must recognise her," he said. "Or at least think they do. But no one has called in."

"The picture has only been out there a few hours," Martinsson said.

Wallander dismissed this explanation. "It's one thing to ask people to recall an event," he said. "That can take time. But this is a face."

"Perhaps she's foreign?" Höglund suggested. "Even if she only lives in Denmark. Who bothers to read the Skåne papers over there? The photo won't be published in the national papers until tomorrow."

"You might be right," Wallander said, thinking of Sture Björklund, who commuted between Hedeskoga and Copenhagen. "We'll get in touch with the Danish police."

They looked at the picture of Louise for a long time.

"I can't escape the feeling that there's something unusual about her," Wallander said. "I just don't know what it is."

No one could say what it was. Wallander turned off the projector.

"I'm going up to Östergötland tomorrow," he said. "It's possible that Isa might have gone there. We have to find her and we have to get her to talk."

"What exactly do you think she can tell us? She wasn't there when it happened."

Wallander knew that Martinsson's objection was reasonable. He wasn't sure that he could give him a good answer. There were so many gaps, so many thoughts that were closer to vague assumption than firm opinion.

"She is a witness, in a way," he said. "We're convinced that this is not a crime of opportunity. Svedberg's murder may still turn out to be just that, although I doubt it, but the deaths of these young people were well pla