It was ten minutes to five. The feeling in the room was tired and heavy. Wallander thought they all looked defeated. No one seemed to know what to do. Martinsson got up.
“I have to have something to eat,” he said. “I’m going down to the fast-food kiosk on Osterleden. They’re open late. Does anyone want anything?”
Wallander shook his head. Martinsson made a note of what the others wanted, then he left. A few seconds later he was back.
“I don’t have any money,” he said. “Can anyone lend me some?”
Wallander had twenty crowns. Strangely enough, no one else had any cash.
“I’ll have to stop at the cash machine,” Martinsson said and left again.
Wallander stared blankly at the wall. His head was starting to hurt.
But somewhere behind the growing headache he had a thought. He didn’t know where it had come from, but suddenly he jumped. The others stared at him.
“What did Martinsson say?”
“He was going to get some food.”
“Not that. Afterward.”
“He said he had to stop by a cash machine.”
Wallander nodded slowly.
“How about that?” he asked. “Something right in front of our eyes. Is it our coffee machine?”
“I don’t think I follow,” Höglund said.
“It’s something we do without thinking twice.”
“Buying some food?”
“Sticking a card into an automatic teller machine. Getting cash and a printed receipt.”
Wallander turned to Alfredsson.
“Was there anything in Modin’s notes about a cash machine?”
Alfredsson bit his lip. He looked up at Wallander.
“You know, I actually think there was.”
Wallander stretched.
“What did he write?”
“I can’t remember exactly. It didn’t strike either me or Martinsson as important.”
Wallander slammed his fist onto the table.
“Where are his notes?”
“Martinsson took them.”
Wallander was already on his feet and on his way out the door. Alfredsson followed him to Martinsson’s office.
Modin’s crumpled notes lay on the desk beside Martinsson’s phone. Alfredsson started leafing through them while Wallander waited impatiently.
“Here it is,” Alfredsson said and handed him a piece of paper.
Wallander put on his glasses and looked it over. The paper was covered with drawings of roosters and cats. At the bottom, among some complicated and to him completely meaningless calculations there was a sentence that Modin had underlined so many times that he had ripped the paper. Suitable trigger. Could it be an ATM?
“Is that the kind of thing you were looking for?” Alfredsson asked.
But he didn’t get an answer. Wallander was already on his way back to the conference room.
Suddenly he was convinced. What better place? People were always using cash machines day in and day out at all times of day. Somewhere, at some point in time on this day, someone would make a transaction at an unknown location and thereby trigger an event that Wallander did not yet understand but had come to fear. He could not even be sure that this hadn’t in fact already taken place.
“How many ATMs are there in Ystad?” he asked the others after explaining his new idea.
No one knew.
“We can find out from the phone book,” Höglund said.
“If not, you’ll have to dig up a bank employee and find out.” Nyberg raised his hand.
“How can we be so sure that what you say is right?”
“You can’t,” Wallander said. “But it beats sitting here twiddling our thumbs.”
Nyberg didn’t back down.
“What can we do about it, anyway?”
“Even if I’m right,” Wallander said, “we don’t know which bank machine is the trigger. There may even be more than one involved. We don’t even know when or how something is going to happen. But what we can make sure of is that nothing happens.”
“So you’re thinking we could have all cash machine transactions suspended?”
“For now, yes.”
“Do you realize what that means?”
“That people will have even more reason to dislike the police. That we’ll be hearing about this for a long time. Yes, of course I do.”
“You can’t even do this without permission from the D.A.’s office. And after consultation with the bank directors.”
Wallander got up and sat down in the chair directly across from Nyberg.
“Right now I don’t give a shit about any of that. Not even if it becomes the last thing I ever do as a police officer in Ystad. Or as a police officer, period.”
Höglund had been looking through the phone book while they talked.
“There are four cash machines in Ystad,” she said. “Three downtown and one up in the department-store area. Where we found Falk.”
Wallander thought about it.
“Martinsson probably went to one of the machines downtown. They’re closer to Osterleden. Call him. You and Alfredsson will have to guard the other two. I’m going up to the one by the department stores.”
He turned to Nyberg.
“I’m going to ask you to call Chief Holgersson. Wake her up. Tell her exactly what’s going on. Then she’ll have to take it from there.”
Nyberg shook his head.
“She’ll put a stop to the whole thing.”
“Call her,” Wallander said. “But if you like you could wait until six.” Nyberg looked at him and smiled.
Wallander had one more thing to say.
“We can’t forget about Robert and this tall, thin, suntanned man. We don’t know what language he speaks. It might be Swedish, it could very well be something else. But we have to assume that he or someone else associated with him is keeping an eye on the cash machine in question. If you have the slightest suspicion or hesitation about someone, you have to call the others immediately.”
“I’ve staked out many things in my day,” Alfredsson said. “I don’t think I’ve ever staked out a cash machine.”
“Sometime has to be the first. Do you have a gun?”
Alfredsson shook his head.
“Get him one,” Wallander said to Höglund. “And now let’s get going.”
It was nine minutes past five when Wallander left the station. He drove up to the department-store area with mixed feelings. Most likely he was completely wrong about this, but they had gotten as far as they could back there in the conference room. Wallander parked outside the Tax Authority building. The area was dark and deserted. Dawn was still some time away. He zipped his jacket and looked around. Then he walked over to the cash machine. There was no reason to remain concealed. The radio he had brought along made a noise. Höglund was broadcasting that they were all in place. Alfredsson had immediately run into problems. Some drunk young people had insisted they be allowed to make a withdrawal. He had called in for a patrol car to help him out.
“Let the car circulate between us,” Wallander said. “It will only get worse in an hour or so when people start waking up.”
“Martinsson took out some cash,” she said. “But nothing happened.”
“We don’t know that,” Wallander said. “Whatever happens, we’re not going to see it.”
The radio fell silent. Wallander looked at a knocked-over shopping cart in the parking lot. Apart from a small pickup truck, the lot was empty. It was twenty-seven minutes past five. Up on the highway, a large truck rattled past on its way to Malmö. Wallander started thinking about Elvira but decided he didn’t have the energy. He would have to come back to it, figuring out how he could have let himself be taken in like that. How he could have been such a fool. Wallander turned his back to the wind and stamped his feet. He heard a car approaching. It was a sedan painted with the logo of a local electrical firm. The man who jumped out was tall and thin. Wallander flinched and grabbed his gun, but then he relaxed. He recognized the man as an electrician who had once done some work for his father out in Löderup. The man nodded.