“Think!”
“I don’t have to think. If I’m sure, I’m sure.”
Wallander pushed the photograph across the desk and pointed. Tyren leaned forwards.
“See if you recognise any of these men. Look closely. Take your time.”
Tyren picked up the photograph in his grubby fingers. He looked at it for a long time. Wallander was beginning to feel vaguely hopeful when Tyren put it back on the table.
“No.”
“You looked at it for a long time. Did you think you recognised one of them?”
“You told me to take my time. Who are they? Where was it taken?”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve never seen them before.”
Instinct told him that Tyren was telling the truth.
“They’re mercenaries,” he said. “It was taken in Africa more than 30 years ago.”
“The Foreign Legion?”
“Not exactly, but almost. Soldiers who fight for whoever pays the most.”
“Got to make a living somehow.”
Wallander gave him a puzzled look, but he didn’t ask Tyren to explain himself.
“Did you ever hear that Eriksson had contact with mercenaries?”
“Holger Eriksson sold cars. I thought you knew that.”
“He also wrote poems and watched birds,” Wallander said, not hiding his irritation. “Did you or did you not ever hear Eriksson talk about mercenaries? Or about a war in Africa?”
Tyren stared at him. “Why do policemen have to be so unpleasant?”
“Because we deal with unpleasant things,” Wallander replied. “And please just answer my questions. That’s all. Don’t make comments that have nothing to do with the case.”
“What happens if I do?”
Wallander was on the verge of losing control. But he didn’t care. There was something about this man across the desk that he just couldn’t stand.
“Then I’ll have to call you in for a talk every single day for the foreseeable future. And I’ll have to request a warrant from the prosecutor to search your home.”
“What do you think you’d find there?”
“That’s beside the point. Do you understand what’s at stake now?”
Wallander knew he was taking a risk, but Tyren backed down.
“Eriksson was a peaceful man, even though he could be tough when it came to business. But he never talked about any mercenaries. Although he certainly could have.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mercenaries fight against revolutionaries and communists, don’t they? And Holger was a conservative, I’d say. To put it mildly.”
“In what way?”
“He thought society was going to hell. He thought we should bring back flogging and we should hang murderers. If it were up to him, his killer would wind up with a rope around his neck.”
“And he spoke to you about this?”
“He stood up for his beliefs.”
“Was he in contact with any right-wing organisation?”
“How should I know?”
“If you know one thing, you might know something else. Answer the question!”
“I don’t know.”
“No neo-Nazis?”
“No idea.”
“Was he one himself?”
“I don’t know anything about them. All I know is that he didn’t see any difference between Social Democrats and communists. The People’s Party was probably the most radical one he would accept.”
Wallander considered the picture of Eriksson that Tyren had created. Poet and ultra-conservative, bird-watcher and advocate of capital punishment.
“Did he tell you that he had any enemies?”
“You’ve asked me that already.”
“I know. I’m asking you again.”
“He never came right out and said so. But he did lock his doors at night.”
“Why?”
“Maybe he had enemies.”
“But you don’t know of any?”
“No.”
“Did he say why he might have enemies?”
“He never said he had any. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
Wallander raised a hand in admonition.
“If I feel like it I can ask you the same question every day for the next five years. No enemies? But he locked his doors at night?”
“Right.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me. How else would I know? I didn’t drive out there and try his door at night! In Sweden today you can’t trust anybody. That’s what he said.”
Wallander decided to end the interview for now. He’d get back to him soon enough. He had a feeling that Tyren knew more than he was telling him, but he wanted to proceed cautiously. He didn’t want to scare Tyren off completely.
“That’ll be all for now,” Wallander said.
“For now? Does that mean I have to come back here again? When am I going to have time to do my job?”
“We’ll be in touch. Thanks for coming,” Wallander said, getting to his feet. He extended his hand.
The courtesy surprised Tyren. He had a powerful handshake, Wallander thought.
“I think you can find your way out.”
After Tyren left, Wallander called Hansson. He answered him immediately.
“Sven Tyren,” he said. “The truck driver. The one you thought had been mixed up in an assault case. Remember?”
“I remember.”
“See what you can find out about him.”
“Is it urgent?”
“No more than anything else, but no less either.”
Hansson said that he’d take care of it.
It was 10 a.m. Wallander got some coffee, and wrote a report of his conversation with Tyren. The next time the investigative team met, they would discuss it in detail. Wallander was convinced it was important.
When he closed his notebook, he discovered the note that he kept forgetting to return to Svedberg. He’d do so now, before he got involved in anything else. He took the sheet of paper and left the office, but once he was out in the hall he heard his telephone ring. He hesitated for a second, then went back and picked it up.
It was Gertrud. She was crying.
“You have to come right away,” she said.
Wallander felt a cold chill.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
“Your father is dead. He’s lying in his studio in the middle of his paintings.”
CHAPTER 12
Kurt Wallander’s father was buried in the churchyard in Ystad on 11 October. It was a day of heavy downpours and blustery wind, with the sun showing through the clouds from time to time. Wallander felt unable to come to terms with what had happened. A sense of denial had been with him from the moment he had hung up the phone. It was unthinkable that his father could die. Not now, just after their trip to Rome. Not when they had recaptured the closeness they had lost so many years before.
Wallander had left the police station without speaking to anyone, convinced that Gertrud was mistaken. He arrived in Loderup and ran to the studio. His father lay prone across the painting he had been working on. He had shut his eyes and held on tight to the paintbrush he had used to add tiny dabs of white to the grouse’s plumage. His father had been finishing the painting he was working on the day before, when they’d walked along the beach at Sandhammaren. Death had come suddenly.
Later, after Gertrud had calmed down enough to talk coherently, she told him that his father had eaten his breakfast as usual. Everything was normal. At 6.30 a.m. he went out to his studio. When he didn’t come back to the kitchen at 10 a.m. for coffee, she’d gone out to remind him. By then he was already dead. It occurred to Wallander that no matter when death comes, it disrupts everything. Death always arrives at the wrong time — something is left undone.
They waited for the ambulance. Gertrud stood and held his arm tight. Wallander felt completely empty inside. He didn’t feel anything at all, other than a vague sense that it was unfair. He couldn’t feel sorry for his father.
Wallander knew the ambulance driver. His name was Prytz and he understood at once that it was Wallander’s father they were collecting.
“He wasn’t sick,” Wallander said. “Yesterday we were out walking on the beach. He complained about feeling bad, that’s all.”