The Pyramid

They stood at the sink together and cleaned their plates. Wallander had left half of his pizza uneaten. The divorce was still having an effect on his appetite.

'Holm is a criminal,' Wallander said. 'We'll get him sooner or later.'

'I'm not so sure of that,' Åkeson said. 'But of course I hope you're right.'

Wallander was back in his office a little after one o'clock. He considered calling Mona in Malmö. Linda lived with her right now. She was the one Wallander wanted to talk to. It had been almost a week since they talked last. She was nineteen and a little lost. Lately, she was back to thinking she wanted to work upholstering furniture. Wallander suspected she would change her mind many more times.

Instead Wallander called Martinsson and asked him to come by. Together they went over the events of the morning. It was Martinsson who was going to write the report.

'People have called both from Sturup and the Department of Defence,' he said. 'There is something not right about that plane. It doesn't seem to have existed. And it seems you were right in thinking the wings and fuselage had been painted over.'

'We'll see what Nyberg comes up with,' Wallander said.

'The bodies are in Lund,' Martinsson went on. 'The only way we have of identifying them is through dental records. The bodies were so badly burned they fell to pieces when they were moved onto stretchers.'

'We'll have to wait and see, in other words,' Wallander said. 'I was going to suggest to Björk that you act as our representative in the accident commission. Do you have anything against that?'

'I'll always learn something new,' Martinsson said.

When Wallander was alone again he ended up thinking about the difference between Martinsson and himself. Wallander's ambition had always been to become a good criminal investigator. And he had succeeded in this. But Martinsson had other ambitions. What tempted him was the post of chief of police in a not-too-distant future. To perform well in the field was for him only a step in his career.

Wallander dropped his thoughts about Martinsson, yawned, and listlessly pulled over the folder that was at the top of the pile on his desk. It still irritated him that he hadn't asked Holm about the plane. At least to get to see his reaction. But Holm was probably lying in his whirlpool by now. Or enjoying a delicious lunch at the Continental with his lawyer.

The folder remained unopened in front of Wallander. He decided he might as well talk to Björk about Martinsson and the accident commission. Then that could be checked off the list. He walked to the end of the corridor where Björk had his office. The door was open. Björk was on his way out.

'Do you have time?' Wallander asked.

'A few minutes. I'm on my way to a church to give a speech.'

Wallander knew that Björk was constantly giving lectures in the most unexpected settings. Apparently he loved performing in public, something that Wallander disliked intensely. Press conferences were a constant scourge. Wallander started to tell him about the morning's events, but apparently Björk had already been briefed. He had no objection to Martinsson's being appointed as police representative to the accident commission.

'I take it the plane was not shot down,' Björk said.

'Nothing so far indicates that it was anything other than an accident,' Wallander answered. 'But there is definitely something fishy about that flight.'

'We'll do what we can,' Björk said, indicating that the conversation was over. 'But we won't exert more of an effort than we have to. We have enough to do as it is.'

Björk left in a cloud of aftershave. Wallander shuffled back to his office. On the way he looked into Rydberg's and Hansson's offices. Neither one was around. He got himself a cup of coffee and then spent several hours reviewing the assault case that had occurred the week before in Skurup. New information had turned up that seemed to ensure that the man who had beaten up his sister-in-law could actually be charged with battery. Wallander organised the material and decided he would hand it over to Åkeson tomorrow.

It was a quarter to five. The police station seemed unusually deserted this day. Wallander decided he would go home and get his car and then go shopping. He would still have time to make it to his father's by seven. If he wasn't there on the dot, his father would burst out in a long tirade of accusations about how badly his son treated him.

Wallander took his coat and walked home. The snow-slush had increased. He pulled up his hood. When he sat down in his car he checked that he still had the grocery list in his pocket. The car was hard to start and he would soon have to get a new one. But where would he get the money? He managed to get the engine going and was about to put it in gear when he was struck by a thought. Even though he realised that what he wanted to do was meaningless, his curiosity proved too strong. He decided to put his shopping trip on hold. Instead he turned out onto Österleden and drove in the direction of Löderup.

The thought that had struck him was very simple. In a house just past the Strandskogen Forest, there lived a retired air traffic controller Wallander had got to know a few years earlier. Linda had been friends with his youngest daughter. It occurred to Wallander that he might be able to answer a question that Wallander had been thinking about ever since he had stood next to the wrecked plane and listened to Martinsson's summary of his conversation with Haverberg.

Wallander turned into the driveway of the house where Herbert Blomell lived. As Wallander got out of his car, he saw Blomell standing on a ladder, in the process of repairing a gutter. He nodded pleasantly when he saw who it was and carefully climbed down onto the ground.

'A broken hip can be devastating at my age,' he said. 'How are things with Linda?'

'Fine,' Wallander said. 'She's with Mona in Malmö.'

They went in and sat in the kitchen.

'A plane crashed outside Mossby this morning,' Wallander said.

Blomell nodded and pointed to a radio on the windowsill.

'It was a Piper Cherokee,' Wallander continued. 'A single-engine plane. I know that you weren't just an air traffic controller in your day. You also had a pilot's licence.'

'I've actually flown a Piper Cherokee a few times,' Blomell answered. 'A good plane.'

'If I put my finger on a map,' Wallander said, 'and then gave you a compass direction, and ten minutes, how far would you be able to fly the plane?'

'A matter of straightforward computation,' Blomell said. 'Do you have a map?'

Wallander shook his head. Blomell stood up and left. Several minutes later he returned with a rolled-up map. They spread it out on the kitchen table. Wallander located the field that must have been the crash site.

'Imagine that the plane came straight in off the coast. The engine noise is heard here at one point. Then, at most twenty minutes later, it returns. Of course, we ca

'The Cherokee normally flies at around 250 kilometres an hour,' Blomell said. 'If the load is of a normal weight.'

'We don't know about that.'

'Then let's assume maximum load and an average headwind.'

Blomell computed silently, then pointed to a spot north of Mossby. Wallander saw that it was close to Sjöbo.

'About this far,' Blomell said. 'But keep in mind that there are many unknowns included in this estimation.'

'Still, I know a lot more now than just a moment ago.'

Wallander tapped his fingers on the table reflectively.

'Why does a plane crash?' he asked after a while.

Blomell looked quizzically at him.

'No two accidents are alike,' he said. 'I read some American magazines that refer to various accident investigations. There may be recurring causes. Errors in the plane's electrical wiring, or something else. But in the end there is nonetheless almost always some exceptional reason at the root of any given accident. And it almost always involves some degree of pilot error.'