‘I need a tenner,’ he said.
Wallander had at first intended to say no. Ten kronor was a lot of money. Then he changed his mind.
‘I’m looking for a friend of mine,’ he said. ‘A guy with a sagging eyelid.’
Wallander had not expected a hit. But to his amazement, he received an unexpected reply.
‘Rune’s not here. The devil only knows where he’s got to.’
‘That’s the one,’ Wallander said. ‘Rune.’
‘Who the hell are you?’ the swaying man said.
‘My name is Kurt,’ Wallander said. ‘I’m an old friend.’
‘I’ve never seen you before.’
Wallander gave him a ten.
‘Tell him if you see him,’ Wallander said. ‘Tell him Kurt was here. Do you happen to know Rune’s last name, by the way?’
‘I don’t even know if he has a last name. Rune is Rune.’
‘Where does he live, then?’
The man stopped swaying for a moment.
‘I thought you said you were friends? Then you should know where he lives.’
‘He moves around a lot.’
The man turned to the others who were sitting on the bench.
‘Do any of you know where Rune lives?’
The conversation that followed was extremely confused. At first it took a long time to establish which Rune they were talking about. Then many suggestions were offered to where this Rune might live. If he even had a home. Wallander waited. The German shepherd next to the bench barked the whole time.
The man with the muscles returned.
‘We don’t know where Rune lives,’ he said. ‘But we’ll tell him that Kurt was here.’
Wallander nodded and swiftly walked away. Of course, he might be wrong. There was more than one person with a sagging eyelid. But still, he was sure he was on the right track. It occurred to him that he should immediately contact Hemberg and suggest that the park be put under surveillance. Maybe the police already had a man with a sagging eyelid on their records?
But then Wallander felt doubtful. He was proceeding too fast again. First he should have a thorough conversation with Hemberg. He should tell him about the name change and what Jespersen had said. Then it would be up to Hemberg to decide if this was a lead or not.
Wallander would wait to talk to Hemberg the following day.
Wallander left the park and took the bus home.
He was still tired from the stomach flu and fell asleep before midnight.
The following day Wallander woke up refreshed at seven o’clock. After noting that his stomach was completely restored to normal he had a cup of coffee. Then he dialled the number he had been given by the girl in reception.
His father answered after many rings.
‘Is that you?’ his father said brusquely. ‘I couldn’t find the telephone in all this mess.’
‘Why did you call the police station and introduce yourself as a distant relative? Can’t you damn well say that you’re my father?’
‘I don’t want anything to do with the police,’ his father answered. ‘Why don’t you come to see me?’
‘I don’t even know where you live. Kristina only explained it vaguely.’
‘You’re too lazy to figure it out. That’s your whole problem.’
Wallander realised the conversation had already taken a wrong turn. The best thing he could do now would be to end it as soon as possible.
‘I’ll be out in a few days,’ he said. ‘I’ll call first and get directions. How are you liking it?’
‘Fine.’
‘Is that it? “Fine”?’
‘Things are in a bit of disarray. But once I get that sorted out it will be excellent. I have a wonderful studio in an old barn.’
‘I’ll be there,’ Wallander said.
‘I won’t believe it until you stand here,’ his father said. ‘You can’t really trust the police.’
Wallander finished and hung up. He could live for twenty more years, he thought desperately. And I’m going to have him over me the whole time. I’ll never escape him. I may as well face that now. And if he’s bad-tempered now it will only get worse as he gets older.
Wallander ate some sandwiches with a newly regained appetite and then took the bus in to the station. He knocked on Hemberg’s half-open door shortly after eight. He heard a grunt in reply and walked in. For once Hemberg did not have his feet on the table. He was standing at the window, flipping through a morning paper. As Wallander walked in, Hemberg scrutinised him with an amused expression.
‘Mussels,’ he said. ‘You should watch out for them. They suck up everything that’s in the water.’
‘It could have been something else,’ Wallander said evasively.
Hemberg set the newspaper down and took his seat.
‘I need to talk to you,’ Wallander said. ‘And it will take longer than five minutes.’
Hemberg nodded at his visitor’s chair.
Wallander told him of his discovery, that Hålén had changed his name a few years earlier. He noticed that Hemberg immediately became more attentive. Wallander went on and told him about his conversation with Jespersen, last night’s visit, and the walk in Pildamms Park.
‘A man named Rune,’ he concluded. ‘Who doesn’t have a last name. And has a droopy eyelid.’
Hemberg considered everything he had said in silence.
‘No person lacks a last name,’ he said thereafter. ‘And there can’t be that many people with droopy eyelids in a city like Malmö.’
Then he frowned.
‘I’ve already told you once not to act on your own. And you should have contacted me or someone else last night. We would have picked up the people you met in the park. With some thorough questioning and some time to sober up, people tend to remember more. Did you, for example, write down any of these men’s names?’
‘I didn’t say I was from the police. I said I was a friend of Rune’s.’
Hemberg shook his head.
‘You can’t do that kind of stuff,’ he said. ‘We act openly unless there are compelling reasons to the contrary.’
‘He wanted money,’ Wallander said, defending himself. ‘Otherwise I would simply have walked on by.’
Hemberg looked narrowly at him.
‘What were you doing in Pildamms Park?’
‘Taking a walk.’
‘You were not undertaking your own investigation?’
‘I needed some exercise after my illness.’
Hemberg’s face expressed strong disbelief.
‘It was, in other words, pure coincidence that made you choose Pildamms Park?’
Wallander did not reply. Hemberg got up out of his chair.
‘I’ll put some men on this development. Right now we need to proceed on the widest possible front. I think I had fixed on it being Hålén who killed Batista, but you get it wrong sometimes. Then all you can do is strike it and start over.’
Wallander left Hemberg’s room and walked down to the lower floor. He was hoping to be able to avoid Lohman but it was as if his boss had been waiting for him. Lohman walked out of a conference room, a cup of coffee in his hand.
‘I had just started to wonder where you were,’ he said.
‘I’ve been ill,’ Wallander said.
‘And yet people reported seeing you in the building.’
‘I’m fine again now,’ Wallander said. ‘It was the stomach flu. Mussels.’
‘You’ve been assigned to foot patrol,’ Lohman said. ‘Talk to Håkansson.’
Wallander walked to the room where the patrol squad received their assignments. Håkansson, who was large and fat and always sweating, was sitting at a table and leafing through a magazine. He looked up when Wallander walked in.
‘Central city,’ he said. ‘Wittberg is leaving at nine. End at three. Go with him.’
Wallander nodded and walked to the changing room. He took his uniform out of his locker and changed. Just as he finished, Wittberg
walked in. He was thirty years old and always talked about his dreams of one day driving a racing car.
They left the station at a quarter past nine.
‘Things are always calmer when it’s warm,’ Wittberg said. ‘No unnecessary intervention on our part, then perhaps the day will turn out calm.’
And the day did indeed turn out to be calm. By the time Wallander hung up his uniform, shortly after three, they had not made a single intervention, except for stopping a cyclist who was riding on the wrong side of the street.
Wallander got home at four o’clock. He had stopped at the shop on the way home, just in case Mona changed her mind and was hungry when she came by after all.
By half past four he had showered and changed his clothes. There were still four and a half hours until Mona would come. Nothing prevents me from taking another walk in Pildamms Park, Wallander thought. Especially if I’m out with my invisible dog.
He hesitated. Hemberg had given him express orders.
But he went anyway. At half past five he walked down the same path as before. The young people who had been playing guitar and drinking wine were gone. The bench where the drunk men had been sitting was also empty. Wallander decided to keep going for another quarter of an hour. Then he would go home. He walked down a hill and paused, watching some ducks swimming around in the large pond. He heard birds singing nearby. The trees gave off a strong scent of early summer. An older couple walked past. Wallander heard them talking about someone’s ‘poor sister’. Whose sister it was and why she was the object of pity, he never found out.
He was just about to walk back the same way he had come when he discovered two people sitting in the shade of a tree. If they were drunk, he couldn’t tell. One of the men stood up. His walk was unsteady. His friend still sitting under the tree had nodded off. His chin rested against his chest. Wallander walked closer but did not recognise him from the night before. The man was poorly dressed and there was an empty vodka bottle between his feet.
Wallander crouched down to try to see his face. At the same time he heard the crunch of steps on the gravel path behind him. When he turned round there were two girls standing there. He recognised one of them without being able to say from where.
‘It’s one of those damn cops,’ the girl said. ‘Who hit me at the demonstration.’
Then Wallander realised who it was: the girl who had verbally assaulted him at the cafe the week before.
Wallander rose to his feet. At that same moment he saw from the other girl’s face that something was happening behind his back. He quickly turned round. The man who had been leaning against the tree had not been asleep. Now he was standing. And he had a knife in his hand.
After that everything happened very quickly. Later Wallander would only remember that the girls had screamed and run away. Wallander had lifted his arms to shield himself, but it was too late. He had not managed to block the thrust. The knife struck him in the middle of his chest. A warm darkness washed over him.
Even before he sank down onto the gravel path his memory had stopped registering what was happening.
After that everything had been a fog. Or perhaps a thickly flowing sea in which everything was white and still.
Wallander lay sunken in deep unconsciousness for four days. He underwent two complicated operations. The knife had grazed his heart. But he survived. And slowly he returned from the fog. When at last, on the morning of the fifth day, he opened his eyes, he did not know what had happened or where he was.
But next to his bed there was a face he recognised.
A face that meant everything. Mona’s face.
And she was smiling.
EPILOGUE
One day at the start of September, when Wallander received the go-ahead from his doctor that he could start work a week later, he called up Hemberg. Later that afternoon Hemberg came out to his apartment in Rosengård. They bumped into each other in the stairwell. Wallander had just taken out the rubbish.
‘It was here where it all started,’ Hemberg said, nodding at Hålén’s door.
‘No one else has moved in yet,’ Wallander said. ‘The furniture is still there. The fire damage hasn’t been repaired. Every time I walk in or out I still think it smells like smoke.’
They sat in Wallander’s kitchen drinking coffee. The September day was unusually brisk. Hemberg was wearing a thick sweater under his coat.
‘Autumn came early this year,’ he said.
‘I went out to visit my father yesterday,’ Wallander said. ‘He’s moved from the city to Löderup. It’s beautiful out there in the middle of the plains.’
‘How one can voluntarily make one’s home out there in the middle of all that mud exceeds my powers of comprehension,’ Hemberg said dismissively. ‘Then comes winter. And one is trapped by the snow.’
‘He seems to like it,’ Wallander said. ‘And I don’t think he cares very much about the weather. He just works on his paintings from morning till night.’
‘I didn’t know your father was an artist.’
‘He paints the same motif again and again,’ Wallander said. ‘A landscape. With or without a grouse.’
He stood up. Hemberg followed him to the main room, where the painting hung.
‘One of my neighbours has one of those,’ Hemberg said. ‘They appear to be popular.’
They returned to the kitchen.
‘You made all the mistakes you can make,’ Hemberg said. ‘But I’ve already told you that. You don’t undertake investigative work alone, you don’t intervene without backup. You were only a centimetre or so from death. I hope you’ve learned something. At least how not to act.’
Wallander did not answer. Hemberg was right, of course.
‘But you were stubborn,’ Hemberg continued. ‘It was you who discovered that Hålén had changed his name. We would of course also have discovered this eventually. We would also have found Rune Blom. But you thought logically, and you thought correctly.’
‘I called you out of curiosity,’ Wallander said. ‘There’s still a lot I don’t know.’
Hemberg told him. Rune Blom had confessed, and he could also be tied to the murder of Alexandra Batista through the forensic evidence.
‘The whole thing started in 1954,’ Hemberg said. ‘Blom has been very detailed. He and Hålén, or Hansson as he was called back then, had been on the same crew on a ship bound for Brazil. In São Luis they had come into possession of the precious stones. He claims that they bought them for a negligible price from a drunk Brazilian who didn’t know their true worth. They probably didn’t either. If they stole them or actually purchased them, we’ll probably never know. They had decided to split their bounty. But then it so happened that Blom ended up in a Brazilian prison, for manslaughter. And then Hålén took advantage of the situation, since he had the stones. He changed his name and quit sailing after a few years and hid out here in Malmö. Met Batista and counted on the fact that Blom would spend the rest of his life in a Brazilian prison. But Blom was later released and started to look for Hålén. Somehow Hålén found out that Blom had turned up in Malmö. He got scared and put an extra lock on the door. But continued seeing Batista. Blom was spying on him. Blom claims that Hålén committed suicide on the day that Blom found out where he lived. Apparently this was enough to frighten him so much that he went home and shot himself. You may wonder about that. Why didn’t he give the stones to Blom? Why swallow them and then shoot himself? What’s the point of being so greedy that you prefer dying instead of giving away something that has a little monetary value?’
Hemberg sipped his coffee and looked thoughtfully out the window. It was raining.
‘You know the rest,’ he continued. ‘Blom did not find any stones. He suspected that Batista must have them. Since he introduced himself as a friend of Hålén, she let him in without suspecting anything. And Blom took her life. He had a violent nature. He had shown that before. From time to time when he was drinking he proved himself capable of extreme brutal
ity. There are a number of cases of assault in his past. On top of the manslaughter charge in Brazil. This time Batista bore the brunt.’
‘Why did he take the trouble to go back and set the apartment on fire? Wasn’t he taking a risk?’
‘He hasn’t given any explanation other than the fact that he became enraged that the stones were missing. I think it’s true. Blom is an unpleasant person. But perhaps he was afraid that his name was somewhere in the apartment on some piece of paper. He probably hadn’t had time to check around exhaustively before you surprised him. But of course he was taking a risk. He could have been discovered.’
Wallander nodded. Now he had the whole picture.
‘It’s really just a case of a horrible little murder, and a greedy man who shoots himself,’ Hemberg said. ‘When you become a criminal investigator you’ll come across this many times. Never in the same way. But with more or less the same basic motive.’
‘That was what I was going to ask you about,’ Wallander said. ‘I realise that I have made many mistakes.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Hemberg said curtly. ‘You’ll start with us the first of October, but not before.’
Wallander had heard correctly. He exulted inside. But he didn’t show it, only nodded.
Hemberg stayed a little while longer. Then he left and went off in the rain. Wallander stood at the window and watched him drive away in his car. He absently fingered the scar on his chest.
Suddenly he thought of something he had read. In what context, he did not know.
There is a time to live, and a time to die.
I made it, he thought. I was lucky.
Then he decided never to forget these words.
There is a time to live, and a time to die.
These words would become his personal incantation from now on.
The rain spattered against the windowpane.
Mona arrived shortly after eight.
That evening they talked for a long time about finally making the planned trip to Skagen next summer.
SOME CASES AREN’T AS COLD AS YOU’D THINK