“I think so.”
“And a towel?”
“The bathroom is over there. There are towels on the bottom shelf.”
When he came back to the kitchen he had removed all his clothes except his undershirt and briefs. The wet clothes were hanging on the hot pipes in the bathroom. Linda had set the table with all the food she could find in the refrigerator. She knew he wanted to eat in peace. When she was growing up it had been forbidden to talk or make noise around the table at breakfast. His silence had driven Mona up the wall — she always waited to have her breakfast until after he had left for work. But Linda had often sat there sharing the silence with him. Sometimes he lowered the paper, usually the Ystad Allehanda, and winked at her. Silence at breakfast was sacred.
“I should never have brought you along,” he said suddenly, a sandwich halfway to his mouth. “There’s no excuse for it. You should never have had to see what was in that hut.”
“How is it going?”
“We have no clues, no explanations for what happened.”
“But what about the rest of the body?”
“There’s no sign of it. The dogs can’t pick up a scent. We know Birgitta Medberg was mapping trails in that part of the forest, so it seems reasonable to assume she stumbled onto the hut by accident. But who was hiding out there? Why this brutal murder, why mutilate the body and dispose of it in this way?”
Wallander finished the sandwich, made a new one and left it half-eaten.
“So tell me. Anna Westin, this friend of yours, what does she do? She’s a student — but of what exactly?”
“Medicine. You know that.”
“I never rely on my memory. You had arranged to meet her, you said. Was that here?”
“Yes.”
“And she wasn’t home when you came over?”
“No.”
“Is there any possibility of a misunderstanding?”
“No.”
“Tell me the part about her father again. He’s been gone for twenty-four years and has never once communicated with her in any way. And then she’s in a hotel and sees him through a window?”
Linda told him everything in as much detail as she could muster. He was quiet when she finished.
“We have one person who turns up after being missing for years,” he said finally. “And the following day the person who saw that person goes missing herself. One appears, the other disappears.”
He shook his head. Linda told him about the journal and the neck cream, and about her visit to Henrietta. He listened attentively to everything.
“What makes you think she was lying?”
“If Anna thought she saw her father on a regular basis she would have told me long before now.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I know her.”
“People change. You can never know everything about them, even friends.”
“Is that true for me too?”
“For me, for you, your mother, Anna, everyone. Then, of course, there are people who are totally incomprehensible. My father was an outstanding example of the latter.”
“I knew him.”
“You think you did.”
“Just because the two of you didn’t get along doesn’t mean I felt the same way. And we were talking about Anna.”
“I heard you never reported it.”
“I followed your advice.”
“For once.”
“Oh shit, give me a break.”
“Show me the journal.”
Linda went to get it, and opened it to the page where Anna had written about the letter from Birgitta Medberg.
“Did she ever mention her name to you?” Wallander asked.
“Not that I can remember.”
“Did you ask her mother if she had any connection to Medberg?”
“I saw Henrietta before I knew about this.”
Wallander went to the bathroom to get his notepad from his jacket.
“I’ll have someone talk to her again tomorrow.”
“I can do it.”
Wallander sat down.
“No,” he said sternly. “You can’t do it. You’re not a police officer yet. I’ll get Svartman or someone else to do it. You aren’t going to be doing any more investigating on your own.”
“Do you always have to sound so pissed-off?”
“I’m not pissed-off, I’m tired. And worried. I don’t know why what happened in that hut happened, only that it was horrifying. And I don’t know if it marks an end or a beginning.”
He looked at his watch and got up again.
“I have to go back there,” he said.
Then he stopped in the middle of the kitchen, indecisively.
“I have trouble believing it was just a coincidence,” he said. “That Medberg simply had the misfortune to run into the wicked witch who lives in the gingerbread house. I can’t see that you’d get murdered for knocking on the wrong door. There are no monsters in Swedish forests. Not even trolls. She should have stuck with butterflies.”
Wallander walked back to the bathroom and put his clothes back on. Linda tagged along. What was it he had said? The door to the bathroom was slightly ajar.
“What was it you said?”
“No monsters live in Swedish forests.”
“After that.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did. After the monsters and trolls and all that. The last thing?”
“She should have stuck to butterflies and not started mapping ancient trails.”
“What butterflies?”
“Höglund talked to the daughter — someone had to inform the relatives. The daughter said Medberg had had a large butterfly collection. She sold it a few years ago to help Vanya and her kids buy an apartment. Vanya always felt guilty about it because she thought her mother missed the butterflies. People often have these kinds of reactions when someone dies. I was the same way when Dad died. I could start blubbering at the thought of how he used to wear mismatched socks.”
Linda held her breath. He noticed something was up.
“What is it?”
“Come with me.”
They walked out into the living room. Linda turned on a lamp and pointed to the wall.
“I’ve tried to keep an eye out for things that are different, I’ve already told you that. But I forgot to say that something was missing.”
“What?”
“A butterfly case. You know, a butterfly in a frame. It disappeared the day after Anna went missing.”
Wallander frowned.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said. “And the butterfly was blue.”
18
It seemed to Linda that it took a blue butterfly to convince her father to take her seriously. She wasn’t just a kid anymore, not just an officer-in-training with potential, but a full-fledged adult with judgment and keen powers of observation.
She was sure of herself. The butterfly had been removed at the same time or shortly after Anna’s disappearance. That settled it. Wallander called his team in the field and asked Höglund to come to the apartment. He asked how things were going at the crime scene. Linda heard Nyberg’s irritated voice in the background, then Martinsson, who was sneezing violently, and finally Lisa Holgersson, the chief of police. Wallander put the phone down.
“I want Ann-Britt to be here,” he said. “I’m so tired I’m not sure I can trust my own judgment any more. Are you sure you’ve told me all the relevant facts?”
“I think so.”
Wallander shook his head.
“It seems too much of a coincidence.”
“A few days ago you said one always has to be prepared for the unexpected.”
“I say a lot of crap,” he said thoughtfully. “Is there any coffee in the house?”
The water had just boiled when Höglund honked her horn down on the street.
“She drives too fast,” Wallander said. “She has two young children — what is she thinking? Throw her the keys, will you?”