One Step Behind

"The national chief of police will officiate at the funeral tomorrow," she said, "together with the minister of justice. They're landing at Sturup tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. I'll be there to greet them and escort them back here. They have both requested a briefing on the state of our investigation, so I've scheduled that for 11.30 a.m., in the large conference room. It'll be you, me, and Thurnberg."

"Could you handle it on your own, or with Martinsson? He can speak more eloquently than I can."

"You're the one in charge of the investigation," she said. "It'll only take half an hour, then we'll break for lunch. They fly back to Stockholm straight after the funeral."

"I'm dreading this funeral," Wallander said. "It's different when the dead person has been brutally murdered."

"You're thinking about your old friend Rydberg?"

"Yes."

The phone rang and she picked it up, listened for a moment, and then asked the caller to get back to her later.

"Have you chosen the music?" Wallander asked.

"We let the cantor choose it for us. I'm sure it'll be appropriate. What is it usually? Bach and Buxtehude? And then the old standard hymns, of course."

Wallander got up to leave. "I hope you'll make the most of this opportunity," he said. "What with the national chief of police and the minister of justice here."

"What opportunity?"

"To tell them they can't let things go on like this. The cuts in staff and funding are starting to look like a conspiracy to make us unable to do our jobs, not like a matter of fiscal responsibility. The criminal element is taking over. Tell them it will be the end of all of us if they don't do something to stop it. We're not quite there yet, but we will be soon."

Holgersson shook her head in amazement. "I don't think we see eye to eye on this."

"I know you've noticed it too."

"Why don't you tell them yourself?"

"I probably will. But I have a killer to track down in the meantime."

"Not you," she corrected him. "We."

Wallander went to Martinsson's office. Höglund was with him and they were studying a picture on the computer screen: Louise's face. Martinsson had erased her hair.

"I'm using a programme developed by the FBI," Martinsson told him. "We can add details such as hairstyles, beards and moustaches. You can even add pimples."

"I don't think he had any of those," Wallander said. "The only thing I'm interested in is what was under his wig."

"I called a wigmaker in Stockholm about that," Höglund said. "I asked him how much hair you could hide under a wig, but it was hard to get a clear answer from him."

"So he could have bushy hair for all we know," Wallander said.

"The programme can do other things, too," Martinsson said "We can fold out the ears and flatten the nose."

"We don't have to fold out or flatten anything," Wallander said. "The photograph is already so similar to his face."

"What about the eye colour?" Martinsson asked.

Wallander thought for a moment. "Blue," he answered.

"Did you see her teeth?"

"Not her teeth. His teeth."

"Did you see them?"

"Not very closely. But I think they were white and well kept."

"Psychopaths are often fanatics about oral hygiene," Martinsson said.

"We don't know if he's a psychopath," Wallander said.

Martinsson entered the information about eyes and teeth into the computer.

"How old was she?" Höglund asked.

"You mean he," Wallander said.

"But the person you saw was a woman. You only realised later that she had to be a man."

She was right. He had seen a woman, not a man, and that was the image he had to return to in order to judge the person's age.

"It's always hard to tell with women who wear a lot of make-up," he said. "But the photograph we have must be fairly recent. I would say around 40 years old."

"How tall was she?" Martinsson asked.

Wallander tried hard to remember. "I'm not sure," he answered. "But I think she was quite tall, between 170 and 175 centimetres."

Martinsson entered in the numbers. "What about her body?" he said. "Was she wearing falsies?"

Wallander realised he hadn't noticed very much about her at all.

"I don't know," he said.

Höglund looked at him with a hint of a smile. "The latest studies indicate that the first thing a man notices about a woman is her breasts," she said. "He registers whether they are small or large, then usually proceeds to her legs, and finally her behind."

Martinsson chuckled from his place at the computer. Wallander saw the absurdity of the situation. He was supposed to describe a woman who was actually a man, but who should still be regarded as a woman, at least until Martinsson had finished entering the data into the computer.

"She was wearing a jacket," he said. "Maybe I'm an unusual male, but I really didn't notice her breasts. And the bar hid most of her body. I didn't see much of her when she stood up and went to the ladies' room, because she was swallowed up by the crowd. It was a full house."

"We have quite a lot already," Martinsson said reassuringly. "We just have to work out what kind of hairstyle he had under the wig."

"There must be a hundred different styles," Wallander said. "Let's try circulating the face without any hair. Someone may recognise his features."

"According to the FBI, that's almost impossible."

"Let's do it anyway."

Something else occurred to Wallander. "Who questioned the nurse who received the call from the man pretending to be Erik Lundberg?"

"I did," Höglund said.

"What did she remember about his voice?"

"Not very much. He had a Scanian accent."

"Did it sound real?"

She looked at him with surprise. "Actually, no. She said there was something fu

"So it could have been fake?"

"Yes."

"Was it a low or high voice?"

"Low."

Wallander thought back to his time in the Amigo. Louise had smiled at him, then excused herself, and her voice had been deep, although she had tried to make it sound feminine.

"I think we can assume it was him," Wallander said. "Even though we have no proof."

He told them about his visit to the postal depot. "I've only been able to find one common denominator so far," he said. "Isa Edengren and Sture Björklund had the same postman. The other people in this investigation bring the number of postmen involved to three, in addition to someone who works outside of Ystad altogether. It therefore seems reasonable to ditch this theory, since it's absurd to think there's a conspiracy between postal workers."

He sat back in his chair and looked at the other two. "I see no pattern yet," he said. "We have costumes and secrets, but nothing more."

"What happens if we ignore the costumes?" Höglund said. "What do we have then?"

"Young people," Wallander said. "Happy people, having a party or getting married."

"You don't think Haag is a target?"

"No. He falls outside the parameters."

"What about Isa Edengren?"

"She was supposed to have been there."

"That changes our picture," Höglund said. "A new motive emerges. She's not allowed to escape, but escape what? Is it revenge, or hatred? There also doesn't seem to be any point of co

"I think I can answer the last question," Wallander said. "At least for now. Svedberg knew this man who dresses as a woman. Something made him suspicious. Over the course of the summer, his investigation confirmed his suspicion. That's why he was killed – he knew too much. But he didn't have time to tell us what he knew."

"But what does it all add up to?" Martinsson said. "Svedberg told his cousin he was involved with a woman called Louise. Now it turns out she's a man. Svedberg must have known that after all these years, so where does that lead us? Was Svedberg a transvestite? Was he homosexual after all?"