One Step Behind

Wallander was listening with rapt attention. Höglund had called him down here with good reason.

"Does the organisation have a name?"

"I don't know what it would be in Swedish. In English they call themselves the Divine Movers."

Wallander flipped through the folder she had given him. There were geometric figures everywhere, but also pictures of old gods and the mutilated bodies of tortured people. He put the material down with disgust.

"Do you think what happened in the nature reserve was a result of vengeance? That they had divulged the secret and had to be killed?"

"In this day and age I hardly think that can be ruled out."

Wallander knew she was right. Only a short time ago a number of members of a sect in Switzerland and France had committed mass suicide. In May, Martinsson had taken part in a conference in Stockholm devoted to the role of the police in stemming this increased activity. It was getting harder, since modern sects no longer circled around a single crazed individual. Now they were well-organised corporations that had their own lawyers and accountants. Members took out loans to pay fees they couldn't really afford. It wasn't even clear these days if the emotional blackmail that took place could be classified as criminal activity. Martinsson had told Wallander after he returned from the conference that new laws would have to be enacted if they were to have any hope in prosecuting these soul-sucking vampires who were profiting from the increased sense of helplessness in society.

"This is an important discovery," he said to Höglund. "We're going to need help with this. The national police have a special division devoted to working on new sects. We'll also need help from the United States on the Divine Movers. Above all, we have to get the other young people involved in this to talk, get them to divulge their carefully guarded secrets."

"They take their vows and then eat horse liver. Raw," she said, leafing through the folder.

"Who officiates at these ceremonies?"

"It must be Lena Norman."

Wallander shook his head, baffled. "And she's dead now. Do you think she would have broken her vows? Was there someone waiting to replace her?"

"I don't know. Maybe we'll find a name among these papers when we've had a chance to go through them properly."

Wallander stood up and looked out the window. The woman was still down on the lawn. He thought of the woman he had met at the roadside restaurant outside Västervik. He searched for her name for a while before it came to him: Erika. He had a sudden longing to see her again.

"We probably shouldn't get too distracted by all this," he said in an absentminded way. "We shouldn't rule out our other theories."

"Which are?"

He didn't need to spell it out for her. The only possible theory was a deranged killer acting alone. The theory you always worked with when you had no leads.

"I have difficulty seeing Svedberg getting tangled up in all this," he said. "Even though he's surprised us."

"Maybe he wasn't directly involved," Höglund said. "He may simply have known someone who was."

He thought again of Westin, the seafaring postman. Wallander was still desperately trying to catch hold of something he had said during that boat trip. But it remained out of reach.

"There's really only one thing we need to know," Wallander said, "as in all complicated cases. One thing, that would set everything else in motion."

"The identity of Svedberg's killer?"

He nodded. "Exactly. Then we would have an answer to everything, except perhaps the question of the motive. But we could piece that together as well."

Wallander returned to the chair and sat down. "Did you have time to talk to the Danes about Louise?"

"The photograph will be published tomorrow."

Wallander got up again. "We have to go through this flat thoroughly," he said. "From top to bottom. But I think I'll be of more use in Ystad. If we have time, we'll contact Interpol today and get the Americans involved. Martinsson will love taking charge of that."

"I think he dreams about being a federal agent in the United States," Höglund agreed. "Not just a policeman in Ystad."

"We all have our dreams," Wallander said, in an awkward and completely u

"I keep having this feeling that I'm overlooking something," Wallander said. "I think it has something to do with Westin."

"Westin?"

"He was the one who took me out to Bärnsö Island. He's the postman in the archipelago. He said something when we were standing in the wheelhouse. I just can't remember what it was."

"Why don't you call him? The two of you might be able to reconstruct the conversation. Maybe simply hearing his voice will bring whatever it was back to you."

"You may be right," Wallander said doubtfully. "I'll call."

Then he remembered another voice. "What happened with Lundberg? I mean the person who wasn't him, but who pretended to be. The one who called the hospital and asked about Isa."

"I passed that on to Martinsson. We exchanged a couple of tasks; I can't remember now what they were. I took on something he hadn't had time to do. He promised to talk to the nurse."

Wallander sensed a note of criticism in her voice. They all had so much to do. The tasks were piling up.

Wallander drove back to Ystad, thinking over the latest events. How did the revelations in Lena Norman's flat alter the picture? Were these parties much more sinister than he had thought? He recalled the time a few years earlier, when Linda had undergone what might be described as a religious crisis. It was right after the divorce. Linda was as lost as he was, and one night he had heard a soft mumbling from inside her bedroom that he thought must be prayer. When he found books in her room about Scientology, he'd become seriously concerned. He tried to reason with her without much success. Finally Mona sorted things out. He didn't know exactly what happened, but one day the soft mumbles behind her door stopped and she went back to her old interests.

He shivered at the thought of sects. Were the answers to this case lying somewhere in these plastic bags? He accelerated. He was in a hurry.

The first thing he did back at the station was to find Edmundsson and pay him the money he owed. Then he went to the conference room where Martinsson was briefing the three police officers from Malmö who were joining the investigation. Wallander had met one of them before, a detective in his 60s by the name of Rytter. He didn't recognise either of the other two, who were younger. Wallander said hello, but didn't stay. He asked Martinsson to try to catch him sometime later that evening. Then he went to his office and started going through the papers from Lena Norman's flat. He was about half finished when Martinsson appeared. It was a little after 11 p.m. Martinsson was pale and bleary-eyed. Wallander wondered how he looked himself.

"How's it going?" he asked.

"They're good," Martinsson said. "Especially the old guy, Rytter."

"They're going to make a real difference," Wallander said enthusiastically. "It will give us the break we need."

Martinsson pulled off his tie and unbuttoned his collar.

"I have a project for you," Wallander said. He told him in some detail about the materials that had turned up in Lena Norman's flat. Martinsson became more and more interested. The thought that he would be contacting colleagues in the U.S. was clearly invigorating.

"The most important thing is to get a clear picture of these people," Wallander said.

Martinsson looked at his watch. "I guess this isn't the best time of day to get in touch with the U.S., but I'll give it a shot."