“How’s it going?” he asked, trying to sound encouraging.
Nyberg muttered something unintelligible. Wallander decided to save his questions. Nyberg was irascible and moody and thought nothing of starting a quarrel with anyone. The general opinion at the station was that Nyberg wouldn’t hesitate to yell at the national police commissioner at the slightest provocation.
The police had built a makeshift bridge across the ditch. Wallander walked up the hill on the other side, gusts of wind tearing at his jacket. He studied the tower, which stood about three metres high. It was built of the same wood that Eriksson had used for his bridge. A stepladder was leaning against the tower, and Wallander climbed up. The platform was no bigger than one square metre. The wind whipped at his face. From only three metres up, the appearance of the landscape was quite changed. He could see Nyberg in the ditch. In the distance he saw Eriksson’s farmhouse. He squatted down and began studying the platform. Suddenly he regretted setting foot in the tower before Nyberg had finished his examinations. He climbed down again and tried to find a place out of the wind in the lee of the tower. He felt very tired, but something else was troubling him even more. He tried to pin down the feeling. Depression? His happiness had been so shortlived — the holiday, the decision to buy a house, and even get a dog. And Baiba’s visit to look forward to.
But then an old man was discovered impaled in a ditch, and once again his world had started crumbling away beneath his feet. He wondered how long he could keep this up.
He forced himself to fend off these thoughts. They had to find whoever had set this macabre death trap for Eriksson as soon as possible. Wallander trudged back down the hill. In the distance he could see Martinsson coming along the path, in a hurry as usual. Wallander went to meet him. He still felt tentative and uncertain. How was he going to approach the investigation? He was searching for a way in.
Then he saw from Martinsson’s face that something had happened.
“What is it?” he asked.
“You’re to call someone named Vanja Andersson.”
Wallander had to search his memory before he remembered. The florist’s shop on Vastra Vallgatan.
“Damn it, we don’t have time for that now.”
“I’m not so sure,” Martinsson said.
“Why?”
“It seems that the owner, Gosta Runfeldt, never left for Nairobi.”
Wallander didn’t understand what Martinsson was saying.
“His assistant called the travel agency to find out the exact arrival time of his flight. That’s when she found out.”
“Found out what?”
“That Runfeldt never flew to Africa, even though he had picked up his ticket.”
Wallander stared him.
“So another person seems to have disappeared,” said Martinsson.
Wallander didn’t answer.
CHAPTER 7
On the way in to Ystad, after he had decided to visit Vanja Andersson himself, Wallander remembered something someone had said earlier, that there was another similarity between the two cases. Eriksson had reported a break-in a year before, and nothing had been stolen. There had been a break-in at Gosta Runfeldt’s shop in which nothing seemed to have been taken. Wallander drove with a growing sense of dread.
Eriksson’s murder was enough for them to deal with. They didn’t need another disappearance, especially not one that might have a connection to Eriksson’s. They didn’t need any more ditches with sharpened stakes in them. Wallander was driving much too fast, as if trying to leave behind him the realisation that once again he was plunging into a nightmare. Now and then he stamped hard on the brake, as if to give the car and not himself an order to take it easy and start thinking rationally. What evidence was there that Runfeldt was missing? There might be some reasonable explanation. What had happened to Eriksson was extraordinary, after all, and it certainly wouldn’t happen twice. At least not in Skane and definitely not in Ystad. There had to be an explanation, and Vanja Andersson would provide it.
Wallander never succeeded in convincing himself. Before he drove to Vastra Vallgatan he stopped at the police station. He found Hoglund in the hall and pulled her into the canteen, where some traffic officers were sitting half-asleep over their lunches. They got some coffee and sat down. Wallander told her Martinsson’s news, and her reaction matched his own. It had to be coincidence. But Wallander asked Hoglund to find a copy of the burglary report Eriksson had filed the year before. He also wanted her to check if there was any connection between Eriksson and Runfeldt. He knew she had plenty to do, but it was important that this be taken care of immediately. It was a matter of cleaning up before the guests arrived, he said, instantly regretting having used such a clumsy metaphor.
“We must hurry,” he went on. “The less energy we have to spend on searching for a connection, the better.”
He was about to get up from the table, but she stopped him with a question.
“Who could have done it?” she asked.
Wallander sank back into his chair. He could picture the bloody stakes, an unbearable sight.
“I can’t imagine,” he said. “It’s so sadistic and macabre that I can’t accept a normal motive — if there is such a thing for taking someone’s life.”
“There is,” she replied firmly. “Both you and I have felt enough rage to imagine someone dead. For some people, the usual barriers don’t exist, so they kill.”
“What scares me is that it was so well planned. Whoever did this took his time. He also knew Eriksson’s habits in detail. He probably stalked him.”
“Maybe that gives us an opening right there,” she said. “Eriksson didn’t seem to have any close friends, but the person who killed him must have had some proximity to him. He sawed through the planks. In any case, he must have come there and he must have left. Somebody might have seen him, or maybe a car that didn’t belong out there. People keep an eye on what happens around them. People in villages are like deer in the forest. They watch us, but we don’t notice them.”
Wallander nodded distractedly. He wasn’t listening with as much concentration as usual.
“We’ll have to talk more about this later,” he said. “I’m going to the florist’s shop now.”
As Wallander left the station, Ebba called out to him that his father had rung.
“Later,” Wallander said, “not now.”
“It’s terrible what happened,” Ebba said. Wallander thought she sounded as if she felt personally sorry for some sorrow he had suffered.
“I bought a car from him once,” she said. “A second-hand Volvo.”
It took Wallander a moment before he realised that she was talking about Holger Eriksson.
“Do you drive?” he asked, surprised. “I didn’t even know you had a licence.”
“I’ve had a flawless record for 39 years,” Ebba replied. “And I still have that Volvo.”
Wallander recalled occasionally seeing a well-kept black Volvo in the police car park over the years, without ever wondering whose it was.
“I hope you got a good deal,” he said.
“Eriksson got a good deal,” she replied firmly. “I paid far too much for that car, but I’ve taken care of it for all this time, and I’m the one who’s come out ahead. It’s a collector’s item now.”
“I’ve got to go,” Wallander said. “But sometime you’ll have to take me for a ride in it.”
“Don’t forget to call your father.”
Wallander stopped in his tracks and thought a moment. Then he decided.
“You call him, would you? Do me a favour. Call him and explain what I’m involved with. Tell him I’ll call as soon as I can. I presume it wasn’t anything urgent, right?”
“He wanted to talk about Italy,” she said.
“We’ll talk about Italy, but right now I can’t. Tell him that.”