Wallander looked around the table.
'Since there is no immediately apparent motive, we have to begin by finding out what we can about these sisters. Is it true, as I believe, that they didn't have any relatives? Both were single. Had they ever been married? How old were they? I thought of them as old ladies already when I moved here.'
Svedberg answered that he was sure that Anna and Emilia had never been married, and that they had no children. But he would find out more in greater detail.
'Bank accounts,' said Rydberg, who had not said anything until then. 'Did they have money? Either stuffed under the mattress at home or at the bank. There are rumours about such things. Can that have been the reason for the murder?'
'That doesn't explain the execution-style method,' Wallander said. 'But we need to find out about this. We need to know.'
They divvied up the usual tasks among themselves. They were the same methodical and time-consuming tasks that had to be performed at the beginning of every investigation. When it was a quarter past two, Wallander had only one more thing to say.
'We need to speak to the media,' he said. 'This will interest them. Björk should be present, of course. But I would be happy to get out of it.'
To everyone's surprise, Rydberg offered to speak to the reporters. Normally he was as reticent as Wallander on such occasions.
They broke up. Nyberg returned to the fire scene. Wallander and Rydberg stayed behind for a moment.
'I think we have to place some hope in the public,' Rydberg said. 'More than usual. It's clear that there must have been a motive for killing these sisters. And I have trouble thinking it could have been anything other than money.'
'We've encountered this before,' Wallander said. 'People who don't own a penny but who get attacked because there are rumours of wealth.'
'I have some contacts,' Rydberg said. 'I'll do a little investigating on the side.'
They left the room.
'Why did you take on the press conference?' Wallander asked.
'So that you wouldn't have to do it for once,' Rydberg said and went to his office.
Wallander managed to reach Björk, who was at home with a migraine.
'We're planning a press conference at five o'clock today,' Wallander said. 'We're all hoping you can be there.'
'I'll be there,' Björk said. 'Migraine or not.'
The investigative machine had been set in motion, slow but thorough. Wallander went back to the scene of the fire once more and talked to Nyberg, who was up to his knees in rubble. Then he returned to the station. But when the press conference started, he stayed away. He arrived home around six o'clock. This time his father answered when Wallander called.
'I've already packed,' his father said.
'I should hope so,' Wallander said. 'I'll be there at half past six. Don't forget your passport and tickets.'
Wallander spent the rest of the evening consolidating what they knew of the previous evening's events. He called Nyberg at home and asked him how the work was going.
Slowly, Nyberg said. They would continue in the morning as soon as it was light. Wallander also called the station and asked the officer on duty if any information had come in. But there was nothing that he considered noteworthy.
Wallander went to bed at midnight. In order to be sure of waking on time in the morning, he ordered a telephone wake-up call.
He had trouble falling asleep even though he was very tired.
The thought of the two sisters who had been executed worried him.
Before he fell asleep at last, he had managed to convince himself that it would be a long and difficult investigation. If they did not have the good fortune of tripping over the answer at the very beginning.
The following day he got up at five. At exactly half past six he turned into the driveway in Löderup.
His father was sitting outside on his suitcase, waiting.
CHAPTER 5
They drove to Malmö in darkness. The daily commute from the Skåne region into Malmö had not yet begun in earnest. His father was wearing a suit and a strange-looking pith helmet. Wallander had never seen it before and imagined that his father must have picked it up at a flea market or a second-hand shop. But he said nothing. He didn't even ask if his father had remembered to bring his tickets or his passport.
'You're really going' was all he said.
'Yes,' his father replied. 'This is the day.'
Wallander could sense that his father did not want to talk. It gave him the opportunity to focus on his driving and lose himself in his own thoughts. He was worried about the recent developments in Ystad. Wallander tried to get a handle on it. Why someone would cold-bloodedly shoot two old ladies in the back of the head. But he drew a blank. There was no context, no explanation. Only these brutal and incomprehensible executions.
As they turned into the small car park by the ferry terminal, they saw Linda already waiting outside. Wallander noticed that he didn't like how she greeted her grandfather first, then her father. She commented on her grandfather's pith helmet, saying she thought it suited him.
'I wish I had as nice a hat to show off,' Wallander said as he hugged his daughter. To his relief she was wearing a remarkably ordinary outfit. The opposite was often the case, which always bothered him. Now it struck him that this habit was something that she may have inherited from her grandfather. Or he'd been an influence, at least.
They accompanied him into the terminal. Wallander paid for his ferry ticket. Once he had climbed aboard, they stood out in the darkness and watched the vessel chug out through the harbour.
'I hope I'll be like him when I'm old,' Linda said.
Wallander did not reply. To become like his father was something he feared more than anything.
They had breakfast together at the Central Station restaurant. As usual, Wallander had very little appetite so early in the morning. But in order to stave off a lecture from Linda about how he wasn't taking proper care of himself, he filled his plate with various sandwich toppings and several pieces of toast.
He watched his daughter, who talked almost continuously. She was not really beautiful in the traditional and banal sense of the word. But there was something confident and independent about her manner. She did not belong among the scores of young women who did their utmost to please all the men they met. From whom she had inherited her loquaciousness he could not say. Both he and Mona were rather quiet. But he liked listening to her. It always raised his spirits. She continued to talk about going into the business of restoring furniture. Informed him of the possibilities in the field, what the challenges were, cursed the fact that the apprenticeship system had almost died out, and astonished him at the end by imagining a future where she set up her own shop in Ystad.
'It's too bad that neither you nor Mum have any money,' she said. 'Then I could have gone to France to learn.'
Wallander realised she was not in fact chastising him for not being wealthy. Nonetheless, he took it this way.
'I could take out a loan,' he said. 'I think a simple policeman can manage that.'
'Loans have to be paid back,' she said. 'And anyway, you are actually a criminal inspector.'
Then they talked about Mona. Wallander listened, not without some satisfaction, to her complaints about Mona, who controlled her daughter in everything she did.
'And to top it off I don't like Johan,' she finished.
Wallander looked searchingly at her.
'Who's that?'
'Her new guy.'
'I thought she was seeing someone called Sören?'
'They broke up. Now his name is Johan and he owns two diggers.'
'And you don't like him?'
She shrugged.
'He's so loud. And I don't think he's ever read a book in his life. On Saturdays he comes over and he's bought some comic book. A grown man. Can you imagine?'
Wallander felt a momentary relief at the fact that he had never bought a comic book. He knew that Svedberg sometimes pic
ked up an issue of Super-Man. Once or twice he had flipped through it to try to recapture the feeling from childhood, but it was never there.
'That doesn't sound so good,' he said. 'I mean, that you and Johan don't get along.'
'It's not so much a question of us,' she said. 'It's more that I don't understand what Mum sees in him.'
'Come and live with me,' Wallander said impulsively. 'Your room is still there, you know that.'
'I've actually thought about it,' she said. 'But I don't think that would be a good idea.'
'Why not?'
'Ystad is too small. It would drive me crazy to live there. Maybe later, when I'm older. There are towns where you simply can't live when you're young.'
Wallander knew what she was talking about. Even for divorced men in their forties, a town like Ystad could start to feel cramped.
'What about you?' she asked.
'What do you mean?'
'What do you think? Women, of course.'
Wallander made a face. He didn't want to bring up Emma Lundin.
'You could put an ad in the paper,' she suggested. '"A man in his best years looking for a woman." You would get a lot of responses.'
'Sure,' Wallander said, 'and then it would take five minutes before we'd simply end up sitting there staring vacantly at each other, realising we have nothing to say.'
She surprised him again.
'You need to have someone to sleep with,' she said. 'It's not good for you to walk around with so much pent-up longing.'
Wallander winced. She had never said anything like that to him before.
'I have all I need,' he said evasively.
'Can't you tell me more?'
'There's not much to say. A nurse. A decent person. The problem is just that she likes me more than I like her.'
Linda did not ask any more questions. Wallander immediately started to wonder about her sex life. But the very thought filled him with so many ambivalent feelings that he didn't want to get into it.
They stayed in the restaurant until it was past ten o'clock. Then he offered to drive her home, but she had errands to run. They parted in the car park. Wallander gave her three hundred kronor.
'You don't need to do this,' she said.
'I know. But take it anyway.'
Then he watched her walk off into the city. Thought that this was his family. A daughter who was finding her way. And a father who was right now sitting on a plane taking him to scorching-hot Egypt. He had a complicated relationship with both of them. It was not only his father who could be difficult, but also Linda.
He was back in Ystad at half past ten. During the trip back he had an easier time thinking about what now awaited him. The meeting with Linda had given him new energy. The broadest possible approach, he said to himself. That's the way we have to proceed. He stopped on the outskirts of Ystad and ate a hamburger, promising himself it would be the last one of the year. When he walked into the reception area, Ebba called out to him. She looked a little tense.
'Björk wants to talk to you,' she said.
Wallander hung his coat up in his office, then walked to Björk's room. He was let in at once. Björk stood up behind his desk.
'I have to express my great dismay,' he said.
'With what?'
'That you go to Malmö on personal business when we are in the midst of a difficult murder case, one that you moreover are in charge of.'
Wallander could not believe his ears. Björk was actually reprimanding him. That had never happened before, even if Björk had often had ample reason to do so on previous occasions. Wallander thought about all the times that he had acted too independently during an investigation, without informing the others.
'This is extremely unfortunate,' Björk concluded. 'There will be no formal reprimand. But it was, as I said, a show of poor judgement.'
Wallander stared at Björk. Then he made an about-face and left without saying a word. But when he was halfway back to his office, he turned and walked back, pulling open the door to Björk's office and saying, through clenched teeth:
'I'm not going to take any shit from you. Just so you know. Give me a formal reprimand if you want. But don't stand there talking nonsense. I won't take it.'
Then he left. He noticed that he was sweating. But he didn't regret it. The outburst had been necessary. And he was not at all worried about the consequences. His position at the station was strong.
He got a cup of coffee in the break room and then sat down at his desk. He knew that Björk had gone to Stockholm to take a leadership course of some kind. He had probably learned he should scold his colleagues from time to time in order to improve the climate of the workplace, Wallander thought. But if so, he had chosen the wrong person to start with.
Then he wondered who had passed on the fact that Wallander had spent the morning driving his father to Malmö.
There were several possibilities. Wallander could not recall to whom he had mentioned his father's impending trip to Egypt.
The only thing he was sure of was that it was not Rydberg. The latter regarded Björk as a necessary administrative evil. Hardly anything more. And he was always loyal to those he worked with. His loyalty would never be corrupted, though of course he would not spare his colleagues if they acted irresponsibly. Then Rydberg would be the first to react.
Wallander was interrupted in this train of thought by Martinsson, who looked in.
'Is this a good time?'
Wallander nodded at his visitor's chair.
They began by talking about the fire and the murder of the Eberhardsson sisters. But Wallander soon realised that Martinsson had come in about something different.
'It's about the plane,' he said. 'Our Sjöbo colleagues have worked quickly. They've located an area just south-west of the village where lights were allegedly observed that night. From what I gather, it's a nonresidential area. That could also corroborate the idea of an air drop.'
'You mean that the lights would have been guiding lights?'
'That is one possibility. There's also a myriad of small roads through that area. Easy to get to, easy to leave.'
'That strengthens our theory,' Wallander said.
'I have more,' Martinsson went on. 'The Sjöbo team has been diligent. They've checked to see who actually lives in that area. Most of them are farmers, of course, but they found one exception.'
Wallander sharpened his attention.
'A farm called Långelunda,' Martinsson said. 'For a couple of years it's been a haven for a variety of people who have caused problems for the Sjöbo police from time to time. People have moved in and out, the ownership has been unclear and there have been drug seizures. Not great quantities, but still.'
Martinsson scratched his forehead.
'The colleague I spoke with, Göran Brunberg, gave me a few names. I wasn't paying that much attention, but when I hung up I started thinking. There was one name I thought I recognised. From a case we had recently.'