Wallander turned his mind to the torn-off scalp. What was it that Martinsson had said? Lindgren had told him on the phone that the man had been “scalped”. Wallander tried to imagine what other reasons there might be for the wound to the head. They didn’t know how Wetterstedt had died. It wasn’t natural to think that someone would intentionally have torn off his hair. Wallander felt uneasy. The torn-off skin disturbed him.
Just then the police cars started to arrive. Martinsson had been smart enough to tell them not to turn on their sirens and lights. Wallander walked about ten metres away from the boat so that the others wouldn’t trample the sand around it.
“There’s a dead man underneath the boat,” said Wallander when the police had gathered. “Apparently it’s Gustaf Wetterstedt, who was once our top boss. Anyone as old as I am, at least, will remember the days when he was minister of justice. He was living here in retirement. And now he’s dead. We have to assume that he was murdered. So we’ll start by cordoning off the area.”
“It’s a good thing the game isn’t on tonight,” said Martinsson.
“No doubt the person who did this is a football fan too,” said Wallander. He was getting annoyed at the constant references to the World Cup, but he hid his irritation from Martinsson.
“Nyberg is on his way,” said Martinsson.
“We’ll have to work on this all night,” said Wallander. “We might as well get started.”
Svedberg and Ann-Britt Hoglund were in one of the first cars. Hansson showed up right after they did. Lindgren reappeared in a yellow raincoat. He explained again how he had found the dead man while Svedberg took notes. It was raining hard now, and they gathered under a tree at the top of one of the dunes. When Lindgren had finished, Wallander asked him to wait. Since he still didn’t want to turn the boat over, the doctor had to dig out some sand to get far enough in under the boat to confirm that Wetterstedt was indeed dead.
“Apparently he was divorced,” said Wallander. “But we’ll have to get confirmation on that. Some of you will have to stay here. Ann-Britt and I will go up to his house.”
“Keys,” said Svedberg.
Martinsson went down to the boat, lay on his stomach, and reached in. After a minute or so he managed to find a key ring in Wetterstedt’s jacket pocket. Covered in wet sand, Martinsson handed Wallander the keys.
“We’ve got to put up a canopy,” Wallander said testily. “Where is Nyberg? Why the delay?”
“He’s coming,” said Svedberg. “Today is his sauna day.”
Wallander and Hoglund made their way up to Wetterstedt’s villa.
“I remember him from the police academy,” she said. “Somebody put up a photo of him on the wall and used it as a dartboard.”
“He was never popular with the police,” Wallander said. “It was during his administration that we noticed something new was coming, a change that snuck up on us. I remember it felt like someone had pulled a hood over our eyes. It was almost shameful to be a policeman then. People seemed to worry more about how the prisoners were doing than the fact that crime was steadily on the rise.”
“There’s a lot I can’t recall,” said Hoglund. “But wasn’t he mixed up in some sort of scandal?”
“There were a lot of rumours,” said Wallander. “About one thing and another. But nothing was ever proven. A number of police officers in Stockholm were said to be quite upset.”
“Maybe time caught up with him,” she said.
Wallander looked at her in surprise. But he said nothing.
They had reached the gate.
“I’ve been here before, you know,” she said suddenly. “He used to call the police and complain about young people sitting on the beach and singing on summer nights. One of those young people wrote a letter to the editor of Ystad Recorder to complain. Bjork asked me to look into it.”
“Look into what?”
“I’m not really sure,” she answered. “But Bjork was very sensitive to criticism.”
“That was one of his best traits,” said Wallander. “He always defended us and that isn’t always the case.”
They found the key and opened the gate. Wallander noticed that the light was burned out. The garden they stepped into was well tended. There were no fallen leaves on the lawn. There was a little fountain with two nude plaster children squirting water at each other from their mouths. A swing hung in the arbour. On a flagstone patio stood a marble-topped table and chairs.
“Well cared for and expensive,” said Hoglund. “What do you think a marble table like that costs?”
Wallander didn’t answer, since he had no idea. They continued up towards the villa. He guessed that it had been built around the turn of the century. They followed the flagstone path around to the front of the house. Wallander rang the bell. He waited for over a minute before he rang again. Then he looked for the key and unlocked the door. They stepped into a lit hall. Wallander called out into the silence, but there was no-one there.
“Wetterstedt wasn’t killed under the boat,” said Wallander. “Of course he could have been attacked on the beach. But I think it happened here.”
“Why’s that?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Just a hunch.”
They went through the house slowly, from the basement to the attic, without touching anything but the light switches. It was a cursory examination. Yet for Wallander it was important. The man who now lay dead on the beach had lived in this house. They had to seek clues as to how his death had come about.
But they didn’t find the slightest sign of disorder. Wallander looked in vain for the place where the crime might have taken place. At the front door he had looked for signs of a break-in. As they had stood in the hall listening to the silence, Wallander had told Hoglund to take off her shoes. Now they padded soundlessly through the huge villa, which seemed to grow with each step they took. Wallander could feel his colleague looking as much at him as at the objects in the rooms they passed through. He remembered how he had done the same thing with Rydberg, when he was still a young, inexperienced detective. Instead of considering it flattering, it depressed him. The changing of the guard was under way already. She was the one on the way in, he was on the way out.
He remembered when they had first met, almost two years ago. She was a pale, plain young woman who had graduated from the police academy with top marks. But the first thing that she said to him was that he’d teach her everything that the academy couldn’t about the unpredictability of the real world. But maybe it was the other way round, he thought, as he looked at a rather blurry lithograph. Imperceptibly, the transition had taken place.
They stopped by a window on the upper floor where they had a view of the beach. The floodlights were in place; Nyberg was gesticulating angrily as he supervised the arrangement of a plastic canopy over the rowing boat. The cordon was guarded by policemen in raincoats. Only a few people stood outside the cordon in the driving rain.
“I’m beginning to think I was wrong,” Wallander said as he watched the canopy finally settle into place. “There are no signs that Wetterstedt was killed in here.”
“The killer might have cleaned up,” Hoglund suggested.
“We’ll find that out after Nyberg goes through the house with a fine-tooth comb,” said Wallander. “But I’m sure it happened outside.”
They went back downstairs in silence.
“There was no mail on the floor inside the front door,” she said. “The property is walled off. There must be a letter box somewhere.”
“We’ll take that up later,” said Wallander.
He walked into the living-room and stood in the middle. She watched from the doorway, as though expecting him to make an impromptu speech.
“I make a habit of asking myself what I’m missing,” Wallander said. “But everything here seems in place. A man living alone in a house where everything is orderly, no bills are unpaid, and where loneliness lingers like old cigar smoke. The only thing that doesn’t fit is that the man in question is now lying dead underneath a rowing boat down on the beach.”