'Request granted as long as you have a word with your Lund colleagues and ask them to leave me alone.'
'I'll see what I can do.'
She followed him out into the hall.
'I don't think I ever asked you for your first name,' he said.
'Linda.'
'That's my daughter's name. Therefore it's a very beautiful name.'
Wallander was overcome by a sneeze. She drew back a few steps.
'I won't shake your hand,' he said. 'But you gave me the answer I had been hoping for.'
'You realise, of course, that I'm curious?'
'You'll get your answer,' he said, 'in time.'
She was just about to close the door when Wallander realised he had yet another question.
'Do you know anything about Rolf Nyman's private life?'
'No, nothing.'
'So, you don't know about his girlfriend who has a drug addiction?'
Linda Boman looked at him for a long time before she answered.
'I don't know if he has a girlfriend who takes drugs,' she said finally. 'But I do know that Rolf has serious problems with heroin. How long he'll manage to control it, I have no idea.'
Wallander went back down onto the street. The time was already ten o'clock and the night was cold.
We are through, he thought.
Rolf Nyman. Surely he's the one.
CHAPTER 12
Wallander was almost back in Ystad when he decided not to go straight home. At the second roundabout on the edge of town he turned north instead. It was ten minutes to eleven. His nose continued to run, but his curiosity drove him on. He thought that what he was doing again – how many times now, he had no idea – was at odds with the most fundamental rules governing police work. Above all, the rule that forbade placing yourself in dangerous situations alone.
If it was true, as he was now convinced, that it was Rolf Nyman who had shot Holm and the Eberhardsson sisters, Nyman definitely counted as potentially dangerous. In addition, he had tricked Wallander. And he had done so effortlessly and with great skill. On his car ride from Malmö, Wallander had been wondering what could be driving him. What was the crack that had appeared in the pattern? The answers he came up with pointed in at least two different directions. It could be a power struggle or about influence over the drug trade.
The point in the whole situation that worried him most was what Linda Boman had said about Nyman's own drug habit. That he was a heroin addict. Wallander had almost never come across drug dealers above the absolute bottom level who were also addicts. The question went around in Wallander's head. There was something that did not make sense, a piece that was missing.
Wallander turned by the road that led to the house where Nyman lived. He turned off the engine and the headlights. He took out a torch from the glove compartment. Then he carefully opened the door after first turning off the interior lights. Listened out into the darkness and then closed the car door as quietly as he could. It was about a hundred metres to the yard entrance. He shielded the torch with one hand and directed the beam in front of him. The wind was cold, he felt. Time for a warmer sweater. But his nose had almost dried up. When he reached the edge of the woods, he turned out the torch. One window in the house was lit up. Someone must be home. Now comes the dog, he thought. He walked back the way he had come, about fifty metres. Then he went into the woods and turned the torch back on. He was going to approach the house from the back. As far as he could recall, the room with the lighted window had windows both to the front and back of the house.
He moved slowly, trying to avoid stepping on twigs. He was sweating by the time he had reached the back of the house. He had also started to question himself more and more as to what he thought he was up to. In the worst-case scenario the dog would bark and give Rolf Nyman the first warning that someone was watching him. He stood still and listened. All he could hear was the sighing of the trees. In the distance a plane was coming in for landing at Sturup. Wallander waited until his breathing was back to normal before he carefully walked up to the house. He crouched down and held the torch only a few centimetres from the ground. Just before he entered the area lit up by the window, he turned off the torch and drew back into the shadows next to the house. The dog was still quiet. He listened with his ear pressed against the cold wall. No music, no voices, nothing. Then he stretched up and carefully peered in through the window.
Rolf Nyman was sitting at a table in the middle of the room. He was leaning over something that Wallander could not immediately see. Then he realised that Rolf Nyman was playing a game of patience. Slowly, he turned over card after card. Wallander asked himself what he had been expecting. A man who was measuring out tiny bags of white powder on some scales? Or someone with a rubber tube around his upper arm, injecting himself?
I'm wrong, he thought. This is a mistake from beginning to end.
But he was still convinced. The man sitting at the table playing a game of patience had recently killed three people. Brutally executed them.
Wallander was just about to pull away from the house wall when the dog at the front of the house started to bark. Rolf Nyman jumped. He looked straight at Wallander. For one second, Wallander thought he had been discovered. Then Nyman quickly stood up and walked to the front door, at which point Wallander was already on his way back into the woods. If he lets the dog loose I'm in trouble, he thought. He directed the torch at the ground that he was stumbling over. He slipped and felt a branch cut his cheek. In the background he could still hear the dog barking.
When he reached the car he dropped the torch but did not stop to pick it up. He turned the key and wondered what would have happened if he had had his old car. Now he was able to put the car in reverse without a problem and drive away. Just as Wallander got into the car he heard a tractor approach on the main road. If he could get the sound of his own engine to coincide with the sound of the other vehicle then he would be able to get away without Rolf Nyman hearing him. He stopped and quietly turned and sneaked slowly into third gear. When he got out onto the main road he saw the tail lights of the tractor. Since he was going downhill he turned off the engine and let the car coast. There was no one in his rear-view mirror. No one had come in pursuit. Wallander stroked his cheek and felt blood and then felt around for the toilet paper. In a brief moment of inattentiveness he almost drove into a ditch. At the last moment he was able to straighten the car.
It was already past midnight when he reached Mariagatan. The branch had made a deep cut in his cheek. Wallander briefly considered going to the hospital, but he settled for cleaning the wound himself and applying a large Band-Aid. Then he put on a pot of strong coffee and sat down at the kitchen table with one of his many half-full notepads in front of him.
He reviewed his triangle-shaped pyramid once more and replaced the question mark in the middle with Rolf Nyman. He knew from the start that the material was very thin. The only thing that he could produce against Nyman was the suspicion that he had stolen the lights that were later used to mark the area for the plane drop.
But what else did he have? Nothing. What relationship had Holm and Nyman shared? Where did the plane and the Eberhardsson sisters fit in? Wallander pushed the notepad away. They would need a more thoroughgoing investigation in order to move forward. He was also wondering how he could convince his colleagues that despite how it looked, he really had found the lead that they should concentrate on. How far could he go by simply citing his intuition again? Rydberg would understand, perhaps even Martinsson. But both Svedberg and Hansson would dismiss it.
It was two o'clock before he turned out the light and went to bed. His cheek ached.
In the morning, the third of January, it was cold and clear in Skåne. Wallander got up early, changed the bandage on his cheek, and arrived at the station shortly before seven. Today he was in before even Martinsson. In reception he was told about a serious traffic accident that had happened an hour earlier, just outside Ystad, involving several deaths, in
cluding a young child, which always evoked a particularly sombre mood among his colleagues. Wallander went to his office and was grateful for the fact that he no longer found himself called out to the scene of traffic accidents. He poured himself some coffee and then sat down and thought back to the events of the evening before.
But his doubts from the day before remained. Rolf Nyman could turn out to be a red herring. But there were still grounds for investigating him thoroughly. Wallander also decided that they should put his house under discreet surveillance, not least in order to find out when Nyman would be out. Technically this fell to the Sjöbo police, but Wallander had already decided simply to keep them informed. The Ystad police would insist on undertaking this work themselves.
They needed to get into the house. But there was an additional complication. Rolf Nyman was not alone. There was also a woman, whom no one had seen, and who had been sleeping when Wallander stopped by.
Wallander suddenly wondered if the woman even existed. Much of what Nyman had told him had turned out not to be true. He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes past seven. It was probably very early for a woman who ran a disco. But he still searched around for Linda Boman's telephone number in Lund. She picked up almost immediately. Wallander could hear that she was groggy.
'I'm sorry if I woke you up,' he said.
'I'm awake.'
She is like me, Wallander thought. Doesn't like to admit that she has been woken up. Even if this is a perfectly decent hour to still be sleeping.
'I have some more questions,' Wallander said. 'And unfortunately they can't wait.'
'Call me in five minutes,' she said and hung up.
Wallander waited for seven minutes. Then he dialled the number again. Her voice was less hoarse now.
'This is in regard to Rolf Nyman, of course,' he said.
'Are you still not planning to tell me why you're interested in him?'
'I can't do that right now. But I promise you'll be the first to know.'
'I feel honoured.'
'You said that he had a serious heroin addiction.'
'I remember.'
'My question is very simple: how do you know this?'
'He told me. It took me by surprise. He didn't try to hide it, and that made an impression on me.'
'He told you?'
'Yes.'
'Does this mean that you never noticed that he had a problem?'
'He always did his job.'
'He never appeared high?'
'Not that I could tell.'
'And he never appeared nervous or anxious?'
'No more so than anyone else. I can also be nervous and anxious. Especially when the police in Lund bother me and the disco.'
Wallander sat quietly for a moment and wondered if he should ask his Lund colleagues about Linda Boman. She waited.
'Let me go through this one more time,' he said. 'You never saw him when he was under the influence. He only told you that he was a heroin addict.'
'I have a hard time believing that a person would lie about something like that.'
'I agree,' Wallander said. 'But I want to assure myself that I've understood this correctly.'
'Is that why you're calling at six o'clock in the morning?'
'It's half past seven.'
'Same difference.'
'I have one more question,' Wallander continued. 'You said that you never heard about a girlfriend.'
'No, I didn't.'
'You never saw him with one?'
'No, never.'
'So if we assume that he said he had a girlfriend you couldn't verify if this were true or not?'
'Your questions are getting stranger and stranger. Why wouldn't he have a girlfriend? He isn't worse-looking than other guys.'
'Then I have no more questions for the moment,' Wallander concluded. 'And what I said yesterday is still very much in effect.'
'I won't say anything. I'm going to sleep.'
'It's possible that I'll be in touch again,' Wallander said. 'Do you know, by the way, if Rolf has any close friends?'
'No.'
The conversation came to a close.
Wallander went to Martinsson's office. Martinsson was combing his hair and looking into a small hand-held mirror.
'Eight thirty,' Wallander said. 'Can you get everyone together?'
'It sounds like something's happened.'
'Maybe,' Wallander replied.
Then they exchanged a few words about the traffic accident. Apparently a car had crossed over onto the wrong side of the road and driven head-on into a Polish tractor.
At half past eight Wallander informed his colleagues about the latest developments. About his conversation with Linda Boman and the missing lighting equipment. He did not, however, mention his nighttime visit to the remote house outside Sjöbo. As he had predicted, Rydberg found the discovery important while Hansson and Svedberg had a number of objections. Martinsson said nothing.
'I know it's thin,' Wallander said after listening to the discussion. 'But I'm still of the opinion that we should concentrate on Nyman right now, though not discontinue the investigations we're already pursuing.'
'What does the public prosecutor have to say about this?' Martinsson asked. 'Who is the public prosecutor right now, anyway?'
'Her name is Anette Brolin and she's in Stockholm,' Wallander said. 'She'll be coming down next week. But I had been planning to talk to Åkeson. Even if he no longer has formal responsibility in charge of the pre-investigation.'
They went on. Wallander argued that they needed to get into the house outside Sjöbo but without Nyman's knowledge, which was immediately greeted with new protests.
'We can't do that,' Svedberg said. 'That's illegal.'
'We have a triple homicide on our hands,' Wallander said. 'If I'm correct, Rolf Nyman is very cunning. If we're going to find something, we have to observe him without his knowledge. When does he leave the house? What does he do? How long is he gone? But above all we have to find out if there really is a girlfriend.'
'Maybe I'll dress up as a chimney sweep,' Martinsson suggested.
'He'll see through it,' Wallander said, ignoring his ironic tone of voice. 'I had been thinking we would proceed more indirectly. With the help of the country postman. Find out who handles Nyman's post. There is not one rural postman in this country who doesn't know what goes on in the houses in their district. Even if they never set foot in a house, they know who lives there.'
Svedberg was stubborn.
'Maybe that girl never receives any post?'
'It's not only about that,' Wallander replied. 'Postmen just know. That's how it is.'
Rydberg nodded in agreement. Wallander felt his support. It spurred him on. Hansson promised to contact the post office. Martinsson grudgingly agreed to organise surveillance of the house. Wallander said he would speak to Åkeson.
'Find out everything you can about Nyman,' Wallander said in closing. 'But be discreet. If he is the bear I think he is, we don't want to wake him.'
Wallander signalled to Rydberg that he wanted to speak to him in his office.
'Are you convinced?' Rydberg asked. 'That it's Nyman?'
'Yes,' Wallander said. 'But I'm aware that I could be wrong. That I could be steering this investigation in the wrong direction.'