The Pyramid

The telephone rang at that moment. He lifted the receiver. It was Martinsson. Wallander was not surprised. The two of them were the homicide division's earliest risers.

'I think we have to drive out to Mossby,' Martinsson said.

'What's happened?'

'A plane has crashed.'

Wallander felt a pang in his chest. His first thought was that it must be a commercial airliner coming in for landing or taking off from Sturup. Then it meant a catastrophe, perhaps with many fatalities.

'A small sport plane,' Martinsson went on.

Wallander exhaled, while cursing Martinsson for not being able to provide him with a clear sense of the situation from the start.

'The call came in a while ago,' Martinsson said. 'The fire brigade is already on the scene. Apparently the plane was in flames.'

Wallander nodded into the receiver.

'I'm on my way,' he said. 'Who else do we have in the field?'

'No one, as far as I know. But the patrol units are there, of course.'

'Then you and I will go first.'

They met in the reception area. Just as they were about to leave, Rydberg walked in. He had rheumatism and looked pale. Wallander quickly told him what had happened.

'You two go on ahead,' Rydberg replied. 'I have to go to the toilet before I do anything else.'

Martinsson and Wallander left the station and walked over to Martinsson's car.

'He looked ill,' Martinsson said.

'He is ill,' Wallander said. 'Rheumatism. And then there's something else. Something with his urinary system, I think.'

They took the coastal road going west.

'Give me the details,' Wallander said while he stared out at the sea. Ragged clouds were still drifting across the water.

'There are no details,' Martinsson said. 'The plane crashed some time around half past five. It was a farmer who called. Apparently the crash site is just north of Mossby, out in a field.'

'Do we know how many were in the plane?'

'No.'

'Sturup must have issued a dispatch about a missing plane. If the plane crashed in Mossby, the pilot must have had radio contact with the control tower in Sturup.'

'That was my thought too,' Martinsson said. 'That's why I contacted the control tower just before I called you.'

'What did they say?'

'They aren't missing any planes.'

Wallander looked at Martinsson.

'What does that mean?'

'I don't know,' Martinsson said. 'It should be an impossibility, to fly in Swedish airspace without an assigned flight path and continuous radio contact with various towers.'

'Sturup received no emergency transmission? The pilot must have radioed if he ran into problems. Doesn't it usually take at least a couple of seconds before a plane hits the ground?'

'I don't know,' Martinsson answered. 'I don't know more than what I've told you.'

Wallander shook his head. Then he wondered what lay in store for him. He had seen a plane accident before, also a small plane. The pilot had been alone. The plane had crashed north of Ystad and the pilot had literally been torn to pieces, but the plane had not burned.

Wallander was filled with dread at the prospect of what awaited him. The day's morning prayer had been in vain.

When they got to Mossby Beach, Martinsson turned to the right and pointed. Wallander had already seen the pillar of smoke that rose to the sky.

They arrived a few minutes later. The plane had come down in the middle of a muddy field, about one hundred metres from a farmhouse. Wallander assumed that it was from there that the call had been made. The firefighters were still spraying foam on the wreck. Martinsson took a pair of wellingtons from the boot. Wallander looked unhappily down at his own shoes, a pair of winter boots, almost brand new. Then they started to make their way through the slippery mud. The man in charge of the fire crew was Peter Edler. Wallander had met him on numerous occasions. He liked him. It was easy for them to work together. Apart from the two fire engines and the ambulance, there was also a patrol car. Wallander nodded at Peters, a patrol officer. Then he turned to Peter Edler.

'What do we have?' he asked.

'Two dead,' Edler replied. 'I have to warn you that it is not a pretty sight. That's what happens when people burn in petrol.'

'You don't have to warn me,' Wallander said. 'I know what that looks like.'

Martinsson came up next to Wallander.

'Find out who made the call,' Wallander said. 'Probably someone in that farm over there. Find out what the time was. And then someone has to have a serious talk with the control tower at Sturup.'

Martinsson nodded and set off towards the farm. Wallander approached the plane. It was lying on its left side, embedded in the mud. The left wing had been torn off completely and had broken into several parts that were strewn out across the field. The right wing was still intact near the fuselage but had been broken off at the tip. Wallander observed that it was a single-engine plane. The propeller was bent and driven deep into the ground. He slowly circled the plane. It was black with soot and covered in foam. He waved Edler over.

'Is it possible to remove the foam?' he asked. 'Don't aeroplanes tend to have some kind of markings on the fuselage and under the wings?'

'I think we should let the foam stay on a while longer,' Edler said. 'You never know with petrol. There may still be some left in the fuel tanks.'

Wallander knew he had no choice but to obey Edler's directives. He walked closer and peered into the plane. Edler had been right. It was impossible to discern any facial features. He circled the plane one more time. Then he lumbered out into the muddy field where the largest piece of wing lay. He crouched down. He could not make out any numbers or letter combinations. It was still very dark. He called out to Peters and asked for a torch. Then he studied the wing intently. Scraped the outside with his fingertips. It appeared to have been painted over. Could that mean that someone had wanted to conceal the identity of the plane?

He stood up. He was jumping to conclusions again. It was Nyberg and his team's job to sort this out. He looked over absently at Martinsson, who was making his way to the farm with deliberate strides. Several cars with curious onlookers had pulled over by a dirt road. Peters and his partner were trying to convince them to keep going. Yet another police car had arrived, with Hansson, Rydberg and Nyberg. Wallander walked over and said hello. Explained the situation in brief and asked Hansson to cordon off the area.

'You have two bodies inside the plane,' Wallander repeated to Nyberg, who would be responsible for the preliminary forensic investigation.

Eventually, an accident commission would be appointed to investigate the cause of the crash. But at that point Wallander would no longer have to be involved.

'I think it looks as if the wing that was torn off had been repainted,' he said. 'As if someone wanted to eliminate all possibility of identifying the plane.'

Nyberg nodded mutely. He never wasted his words.

Rydberg appeared behind Wallander.

'One shouldn't have to tramp around in the mud at my age,' he said. 'And this damned rheumatism.'

Wallander threw a quick glance at him.

'You didn't have to come out here,' he said. 'We can handle it. Then the accident commission can take over.'

'I'm not dead yet,' Rydberg said with irritation. 'But who the hell knows…' He didn't finish the sentence. Instead he made his way over to the plane, bent down and looked in.

'This one will have to be dental,' he said. 'I don't think there will be any other way of getting a positive ID.'

Wallander ran through the main points for Rydberg's benefit. They worked well together and never had to give each other lengthy explan ations. Rydberg was also the one who had taught Wallander what he now knew about being a criminal investigator. That is, after the foundation had been laid in Malmö with Hemberg, who sadly had died in a traffic accident last year. Wallander had departed from his usual habit of never attending funerals and attended the ceremony in Malmö. But after Hemberg, Rydberg had been his role model. They had worked together for many years now. Wallander had often thought that Rydberg must be one of the most skilful criminal investigators in Sweden. Nothing escaped him, no hypothesis was so outlandish that Rydberg did not test it. His ability to read a crime scene always surprised Wallander, who greedily absorbed it all.