One Step Behind

"We don't give credit," she said. "If you can't pay I'll have to report you."

"Report us to who?"

"The police."

Wallander almost lost his temper, but Nyberg restrained him. "This could get interesting."

"Are you paying or not?" the waitress asked.

"I think you should call the police," Wallander said pleasantly.

The waitress walked off and made the call, making sure to lock the front door first.

"They're on their way," she said. "You'll have to stay until then."

They waited five minutes, then a police car pulled up outside and two officers got out. One of them was Edmundsson. He stared at Wallander and Nyberg.

"We seem to have a little problem," Wallander said. "I've left my wallet at home and Nyberg doesn't have enough cash to cover the bill. This lady doesn't give credit, nor was she impressed by Nyberg's ID."

Edmundsson took this in, then burst into laughter. "What's the bill?" he asked.

"It's 400 kronor."

He took out his wallet and paid.

"It's not my fault," the waitress said. "My boss says we should never give credit."

"Who owns this place?" Nyberg asked.

"His name's Fredriksson. Alf Fredriksson."

"Is he a big man?" Nyberg asked. "Does he live in Svarte?"

The waitress nodded.

"Then I know him," Nyberg said. "Nice man. Say hello to him from Nyberg and Wallander."

The squad car was already gone when they walked out onto the street.

"This is the strangest August I've ever known," Nyberg said. "It's already the 15th and it's still warm."

They parted ways when they got to Hamngatan.

"We just don't know if he's going to strike again," Wallander said. "That's the worst thing."

"That's why we have to get him," Nyberg said. "As fast as we can."

Wallander walked home slowly. He was inspired by his talk with Nyberg but felt no real peace of mind. He didn't want to admit it, but Thurnberg's reaction and his conversation with Holgersson had depressed him. Was he being unfair to Thurnberg? Was he right? Should someone else be in charge of this investigation?

When Wallander got home he put on a pot of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. The thermometer outside the window read 19°C. Wallander got out a pad of paper and a pencil, then looked for his glasses, and found a pair under the sofa.

Coffee cup in hand, he found himself walking around the kitchen table a couple of times as if to coax himself into the right frame of mind for the task ahead. He had never written a speech in memory of a murdered colleague before. Now he regretted having agreed to do it. How did you describe the feeling of finding your colleague with his face blown off in his flat only one week earlier?

Finally he sat down and got started. He could still remember when he first met Svedberg, 20 years earlier, when Svedberg had already begun to bald. He was halfway through when he tore everything up and started again. It was after 1 a.m. when he'd finished. This time it was good enough.

He walked out onto the balcony. The town was quiet, and it was still quite warm. He recalled his conversation with Nyberg and let his mind wander. Suddenly the image of Isa Edengren was there, curled up in the cave that had protected her as a child but no longer could. Wallander went back in, leaving the door to the balcony open. There was a thought that wouldn't go away. That the man out there in the darkness was preparing to strike again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It had been a long day. There were many packages, certified letters, and international money orders. He wasn't done with the bookkeeping until it was almost 2 p.m.

His old self would have been irritated by the fact that the work took longer than expected. Now it didn't affect him any more. The enormous change he'd undergone had made him impervious to time. He realised there was no such thing as past or future. There was no time that could be lost or won. The only thing that counted was action.

He put away his postbag and cashbox, then showered and changed his clothes. He hadn't eaten since early that morning, before he'd driven to the depot to start sorting his post. But he wasn't hungry. This was a feeling that he remembered from his childhood. When something exciting lay in store for him, he lost his appetite. He went into the soundproofed room and turned on all the lights. He'd made the bed before leaving that morning, and now he spread the letters out over the dark-blue bedspread. He sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed. He had read these letters before. That was the first step, to pick out letters that caught his eye. He opened them carefully, without doing any damage to the envelope. He copied them and then he read them. He didn't know exactly how many letters he had opened, copied and read this past year. It must have been close to 200. Most of them were nothing special. They were vacuous, boring. It wasn't until he had opened the letter from Lena Norman to Martin Boge…

He interrupted the thought. That was over and done with. He didn't need to think about them any more. The last phase had been so difficult and tiring. First there was the trip to Östergötland, then he had hunted around for a suitable boat in the darkness, one that was big enough to take him to the little island at the far edge of the archipelago.

It had been a bothersome undertaking, and he hadn't liked having to put in the extra effort. It meant overcoming his own resistance, something he tried to avoid. He looked at the letters spread around him on the bed. Choosing a couple that were pla

The little raised flag on the letter box told him nothing. But when he knocked on the door and entered the kitchen, he found more than a hundred invitations lying on the table. The bride-to-be let him in. He could no longer remember her name, but he remembered her joy, and it enraged him. He took her letters and posted them, and if he hadn't been so embroiled in complicated plans for participating in the upcoming Midsummer celebration he would perhaps have become involved in her wedding.

New opportunities kept presenting themselves. All six envelopes in front of him were wedding invitations. He had read their letters, got to know each couple. He knew where they lived, what they looked like, and where they were to be married. The invitations in front of him were merely printed cards, there to remind him of the different couples.

Now he faced his most important task, deciding which of the couples was the happiest. He went through the envelopes one by one, reminding himself of other letters that they had written, to each other or their friends. He savoured the moment, suffused with contentment. He was in charge. In this soundproofed room he could not be touched by the things that had made him suffer in his earlier life – the feeling of being an outsider and being misunderstood. In here he could bear to think about the great catastrophe, when he was shut out and declared superfluous.

Nothing was hard any more. Or almost nothing. He still couldn't bear to think about how he had subjected himself to humiliation for more than two years. He had answered ads in the paper, sent in his CV, gone to countless interviews.

That was before he cut himself off from his former existence and left everything behind. Becoming another.

He knew he was one of the lucky ones. Today he would never have got a job as a substitute postman. There were blocks to most professions. People were laid off. He noticed this as he went along his post route. People sat in their houses waiting for letters. More and more of them ended up on the outside and had not yet learned how to break free.