Once Höglund had left, Wallander sat in his chair staring into space for a long time. His head was empty. Finally he got up to get a cup of coffee.
In the doorway to the lunchroom he bumped into Martinsson. During the past few weeks Wallander had felt a strange and, for him, an unfamiliar ambivalence. Normally he did not shy away from conflicts, but what had happened between him and Martinsson was more difficult and went deeper. There were elements of lost friendship, betrayal, camaraderie. But now he knew the moment had come. He couldn’t put it off any longer.
“We should talk,” he said. “Do you have a minute?”
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
They went back to the conference room, where they had spent the whole morning. Wallander got straight to the point.
“I know you’ve been going behind my back. I know you’ve been spreading lies about me. You questioned my ability to lead this investigation. Why you’ve done all this in secret instead of coming to me directly, only you can say. The only way I can explain your behavior is that you’re laying the groundwork for your future career, and that you’re willing to do anything to get where you want to go.”
Martinsson was calm when he spoke. Wallander noticed that his words seemed well rehearsed.
“I can only tell you how it is. You’ve lost your grip. I think the only thing I’m guilty of is that I didn’t say this earlier.”
“Why didn’t you tell me directly?”
“I tried to, but you don’t listen.”
“I do listen.”
“You think you do, but that’s not the same thing as really listening.”
“Why did you tell Lisa that I had ordered you not to follow me into the field that time?”
“She must have misunderstood what I said.”
Wallander looked at Martinsson. The urge to hit him in the face was still there, but he knew he wouldn’t do anything like that. He didn’t have the energy for it. He wasn’t going to be able to shake Martinsson. He seemed to believe his own lies. At the very least, he would not be able to get him to change his official line.
“Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?”
“No,” Wallander said. “I don’t have anything else to say.”
Martinsson got up and left.
Wallander felt as if the walls had come tumbling down around him. Martinsson had made his choice and their friendship was gone, broken off. Wallander wondered with growing despondence if it had ever really been there in the first place. Or had Martinsson always been waiting for his opportunity to strike?
Waves of grief washed over him. And then there came a wave of rage.
He was not going to give up. For the next few years at least, he would remain in charge of the most complicated investigations in Ystad.
But the feeling of having lost something was stronger than this rage. He asked himself again how he would have the energy to carry on.
Wallander left the station directly after his conversation with Martinsson. He left his cell phone in his office and didn’t tell Irene any thing about where he was going or when he would be back. He got in his car and took the highway to Malmö. When he approached the exit for Stjarnsund, he decided to take it. He didn’t know why. Perhaps the thought of two broken friendships was too much to bear.
Wallander’s thoughts often returned to Elvira. She had entered his life under false pretenses, and in the final analysis he suspected she would even have been prepared to kill him. But he could not stop himself from thinking about her the way he had actually experienced her. A woman who sat across from him at the dinner table and listened to what he had to say. A woman with beautiful legs who had dispelled his loneliness for a short time.
When he turned into Sten Widén’s ranch, he saw that it looked deserted. Widen had posted a FOR SALE sign some time ago, but now there was an additional sign announcing that the ranch was sold. The house was empty. Wallander walked over to the stables. The horses were all gone. A lone cat sat in a pile of hay and looked at him suspiciously.
Wallander found it upsetting. Sten Widen had already left, and he hadn’t even bothered to say good-bye.
Wallander left the stables and drove away as fast as he could.
The following day he did not go into the office at all. He drove around on the small roads outside Ystad all afternoon. A couple of times he stepped out of his car and stared out over the barren fields. When it started getting dark, he headed back. He stopped at the grocer’s on the way and paid his bill. That evening, he listened to the entire score of Verdi’s La Traviata twice in a row. He also spoke to Gertrud over the phone, and they arranged that he would stop by in the morning.
The phone rang shortly before midnight. Wallander fumed. Oh, God, not again, he thought. Don’t let anything have happened. Not now, not yet. None of us can handle it.
It was Baiba calling from Riga. It had been about a year since they had spoken last.
“I just wanted to know how you were doing,” she said.
“Fine. How about you?”
“Fine.”
The silence bounced from Ystad to Riga and back again.
“Do you ever think about me?” he asked.
“Of course. Why would I have called otherwise?”
“I was just wondering.”
“And you?”
“I always think about you.”
Wallander knew she would see through him. He was lying, or at least exaggerating. He didn’t know exactly why. Baiba was something that was over, that was fading. But he still could not completely let go of the thought of her, or of the memories of their time together.
They exchanged some casual remarks on other topics, and then the conversation ended. Wallander put the phone down slowly.
Did he miss her? He didn’t know. It was as if firewalls were not a phenomenon relegated to the world of computers. He had a firewall inside himself, and he didn’t always know how to get past it.
The next day, Wednesday, the twelfth of November, the gusty winds had died down. Wallander woke up early even though he had the day off. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had a day off in the middle of the week. He had decided to use some of his comp time, since Linda was coming to visit. He was going to meet her plane at one o’clock at Sturup Airport. He would use the morning to trade in his car and visit Gertrud.
At eight o’clock he got out of bed. He drank his coffee and read the paper. He cleaned the apartment, changed the sheets in Linda’s old room, and put the vacuum cleaner away. The sun was shining, and that cheered him up. He drove out to the car dealership, which was located on Industrigatan. He chose another Peugeot, this time a 306 from 1996. It had few miles on it, and the car dealer, Tyrén, gave him a good price on his old car. Wallander was done at ten-thirty. It always gave him a good feeling to get a new car, as if he had scrubbed himself clean.
He continued on to the house in Svarte where Gertrud lived with her sister. He had a cup of coffee and listened somewhat absentmindedly to their chatter.
He left their house at a quarter to twelve. When he got to Sturup there was still a half-hour left.
As usual he felt nervous about seeing Linda again. He wondered if it was always the case that parents eventually became afraid of their own children. He sat down in the airport café and had another cup of coffee. Suddenly he noticed Höglund’s ex-husband sitting a few tables away. Wallander assumed he was leaving on another business trip. A woman that Wallander didn’t recognize was with him. Wallander felt hurt on Höglund’s behalf. He moved to another table and sat with his back to the man so he wouldn’t be recognized. He wondered why he was reacting so strongly but found no answer.