It was Svedberg.
“Where are you? What the hell is going on?”
“We’re at Eriksson’s farm. I can’t go into it right now. It would be good if you could come out here with someone. Hamren, perhaps. I can’t talk right now.”
“I called because I have a message,” Svedberg said. “Hansson called from Hassleholm. Both he and Martinsson are feeling better. Martinsson is conscious again, anyway. But Hansson wondered if you had picked up his revolver.”
Wallander froze.
“His revolver?”
“He said it was lost.”
“I don’t have it.”
“It couldn’t still be lying on the platform, could it?”
At that instant Wallander could see the events played out clearly before him. Ander grabs hold of Hansson’s jacket and knees him hard in the groin. Then she quickly bends over him, and that’s when she takes the revolver.
“Shit!” Wallander yelled.
Before Svedberg could answer he had hung up and stuffed the phone back in his pocket. He had put Hoglund in mortal danger. The woman in the tower was armed.
Wallander ran. His heart pounded like a hammer in his chest. He saw by his watch that she must already be on her way down the path. He stopped and dialled her phone number. No connection. He started running again. His only chance was to get there first. Hoglund didn’t know that Ander was armed. His terror made him run faster. He had reached the back of the hill. She must be almost to the ditch now. Walk slowly, he tried to tell her in his mind. Trip and fall, slip, anything. Don’t hurry. Walk slowly. He had pulled out his gun and was stumbling up the slope behind the bird tower. When he reached the top he saw Hoglund at the ditch. She had her revolver in her hand. The woman in the tower hadn’t seen her. He shouted.
“Ann-Britt, she’s got a gun! Get out of there!”
He aimed his revolver at the woman standing with her back to him up there in the tower. In the same instant a shot rang out. He saw Hoglund jerk and fall backwards into the mud. Wallander felt as if someone had thrust a sword right through him. He stared at the motionless body in the mud and sensed that the woman in the tower had turned around. Then he dived to the side and fired towards the top of the tower. The third shot hit home. Ander lurched and dropped Hansson’s gun.
Wallander rushed down into the mud. He stumbled into the ditch and scrambled up the other side. When he saw Hoglund on her back in the mud he thought she was dead. She had been killed by Hansson’s revolver and it was all his fault.
For a split second he saw no way out but to shoot himself. Right where he stood, a few metres from her. Then he saw her moving feebly. He fell to his knees by her side. The whole front of her jacket was bloody. She was deathly pale and stared at him with fear in her eyes.
“It’ll be all right,” he said. “It will be all right.”
“She was armed,” she mumbled. “Why didn’t we know that?”
Wallander could feel the tears running down his face. He called for an ambulance. Later he would remember that while he waited, he had steadily murmured a confused prayer to a god he didn’t really believe in. In a haze he was aware that Svedberg and Hamren had arrived. Ann-Britt was carried away on a stretcher. Wallander was sitting in the mud. They couldn’t get him to stand up. A photographer who had raced after the ambulance when it drove off from Ystad took a picture of Wallander as he sat there. Dirty, forlorn, hopeless. The photographer managed to take that one picture before Svedberg, in a rage, chased him off. Under pressure from Chief Holgersson the photograph was never published.
Meanwhile, Svedberg and Hamren brought Ander down from the tower. Wallander had hit her high on the thigh. She was bleeding profusely, but her life was not in danger. She too was taken away in an ambulance. Svedberg and Hamren finally managed to get Wallander up from the mud and helped him up to the farmhouse. The first report came in from the Ystad hospital. Ann-Britt Hoglund had been shot in the abdomen. The wound was severe, and her condition was critical.
Wallander rode with Svedberg to get his car. Svedberg was unsure about letting Wallander drive alone to Ystad, but Wallander assured him that he would be OK. He drove straight to the hospital and then sat in the hall waiting for news of Ann-Britt’s condition. He still hadn’t had time to get cleaned up. He didn’t leave the hospital until many hours later, when the doctors assured him that her condition had stabilised.
All of a sudden he was gone. No-one had noticed him leave. Svedberg began to worry, but he thought he knew Wallander well enough: he just wanted to be alone.
Wallander left the hospital right before midnight. The wind was still blowing hard, and it would freeze overnight. He got into his car and drove to the cemetery where his father lay buried. He found his way to the grave and stood there, completely empty inside, still caked with mud.
Around 1 a.m. he got home and called Baiba. They talked for a long time. Then he finally undressed and took a hot bath. Afterwards he dressed and returned to the hospital. Just after 3 a.m. he went into the room where Yvonne Ander lay, under guard. She was asleep when he entered the room cautiously. He stood for a long time looking at her face. Then he left without saying a word.
After an hour he was back. At dawn Lisa Holgersson came to the hospital and said they had reached Hoglund’s husband, in Dubai. He would arrive at Kastrup Airport later that day.
No-one knew if Wallander was listening to anything anyone said to him. He sat motionless on a chair, or stood at a window staring into the gale. When a nurse wanted to give him a cup of coffee he burst into tears and locked himself in the bathroom. But most of the time he sat unmoving on his chair and looked at his hands.
At about the same time Hoglund’s husband landed at Kastrup, a doctor gave them the news they had all been waiting for. She was going to make it, and probably wouldn’t have any permanent injury. She was lucky. All the same, her recovery would take time and the convalescence would be long. Wallander stood as he listened to the doctor, as if he were receiving a sentence in court. Afterwards he walked out of the hospital and disappeared somewhere in the wind.
On Monday, 24 October, Yvonne Ander was indicted for murder. She was still in hospital. So far she hadn’t spoken a single word, not even to the lawyer appointed to act for her. Wallander had tried to question her that afternoon. She just stared at him. As he was about to leave, he turned in the door and told her that Ann-Britt Hoglund was going to recover. He thought he saw a reaction from her; that she looked relieved, maybe glad.
Martinsson was still off work with his concussion. Hansson went back on duty, even though he had a hard time walking and sitting for several weeks.
Their primary focus during this period was to complete the laborious task of establishing exactly what had happened. One thing they hadn’t managed to find conclusive evidence for was whether it was the remains of Krista Haberman that they had dug up in Eriksson’s field. There was nothing to disprove it, but no hard evidence either. And yet they were certain. A crack in the skull told them how Eriksson had killed her more than 25 years earlier. Everything else began to be cleared up, although slowly. There was another question mark. Had Runfeldt killed his wife? The only one who might give them the answer was Ander, and she still wasn’t talking. They explored Ander’s life in detail and uncovered a story that only partially told them who she was and why she might have acted as she did.
One afternoon, as they were sitting in a long meeting, Wallander abruptly concluded it by saying something he had been thinking for a long time.