He set off. His farmhouse was old, with three wings. The fourth had burned down early in the century. He spent a lot of money renovating the building, although the work was still not completed. He would leave it all to the Cultural Association in Lund. He had never been married, never had any children. He sold cars and got rich. He had dogs. And then birds.
I have no regrets, he thought, as he followed the path down to the tower he had built himself. I regret nothing, since it is meaningless to regret.
It was a beautiful September night. Still, something was making him uneasy. He stopped on the path and listened, but all he could hear was the soft sighing of the wind. He kept walking. Could it be the pain that was worrying him, those sudden sharp pains in his back? The worry was prompted by something inside him.
He stopped again and turned around. Nothing there. He was alone. The path sloped downwards, leading to a slight rise. Just before the rise there was a broad ditch over which he had placed a bridge. At the top of the rise stood his tower. He wondered how many times he had walked this path. He knew every bend, every hollow. And yet he walked slowly and cautiously. He didn’t want to risk falling and breaking his leg. Old people’s bones grew brittle, he knew that. If he wound up in the hospital with a broken hip he would die, unable to endure lying idle in a hospital bed. He would start worrying about his life. And then nothing could save him.
An owl hooted. Somewhere close by, a twig snapped. The sound had come from the grove just past the hillock on which his tower stood. He stood motionless, all his senses alert. The owl hooted again. Then all was silent once more. He grumbled under his breath, and continued.
Old and scared, he muttered. Afraid of ghosts and afraid of the dark. Now he could see the tower. A black silhouette against the night sky. In 20 metres he would be at the bridge crossing the deep ditch. He kept walking. The owl was gone. A tawny owl, he thought. No doubt about it, it was a tawny owl.
Suddenly he came to a halt. He had reached the bridge that led over the ditch.
There was something about the tower on the hill. Something was different. He squinted, trying to see the details in the dark. He couldn’t make out what it was. But something had changed.
I’m imagining things, he thought. Everything’s the same as always. The tower I built ten years ago hasn’t changed. It’s just my eyesight getting blurry, that’s all. He took another step, out onto the bridge, and felt the planks beneath his feet. He kept staring at the tower.
There’s something wrong, he thought. I’d swear it was a metre higher than it was last night. Or else it’s all a dream, and I’m looking at myself standing up there in the tower.
The moment the thought occurred to him, he knew it was true. There was someone up in the tower. A silhouette, motionless. A twinge of fear passed through him, like a lone gust of wind. Then anger. Somebody was trespassing on his property, climbing his tower without asking him for permission. It was probably a poacher hunting the deer that grazed around the grove on the other side of the hill. It couldn’t be another bird-watcher.
He called out to the figure in the tower. No reply, no movement. Again he grew uncertain. His eyes must be deceiving him; they were so blurry.
He called again. No answer. He started to walk across the bridge.
When the planks gave way he fell headlong. He pitched forwards and didn’t even have time to stretch out his arms to break his fall. The ditch was more than two metres deep.
He felt a hideous pain. It came out of nowhere and cut right through him, like red-hot spears piercing his body. The pain was so intense he couldn’t even scream. Just before he died he realised that he had never reached the bottom of the ditch. He remained suspended in his own pain.
His last thought was of the migrating birds, somewhere far above him. The sky moving towards the south.
One last time he tried to tear himself away from the pain. Then it was all over.
It was 11.20 p.m. on 21 September 1994. That night, huge flocks of thrushes and redwings were flying south.
They came from the north and set a southwest course over Falsterbo Point, heading for the warmth that awaited them, far away.
When all was quiet, she made her way carefully down the tower steps. She shone her torch into the ditch. Holger Eriksson was dead. She switched off the torch and stood still in the darkness. Then she walked quickly away.
CHAPTER 2
Just after 5 a.m. on Monday, 26 September, Kurt Wallander woke in his flat on Mariagatan in central Ystad.
The first thing he did when he opened his eyes was look at his hands. They were tanned. He leaned back on his pillow again and listened to the autumn rain drumming on the window. A feeling of satisfaction came over him at the memory of the trip that had ended two days earlier at Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen. He had spent an entire week with his father in Rome. It had been hot there. In the afternoons, when the heat was most intense, they had sought out a bench in the gardens of the Villa Borghese where his father could sit in the shade, while Kurt took off his shirt and turned his face to the sun. That had been the only area of conflict during their holiday. His father couldn’t understand how he could be vain enough to waste time trying to get a tan.
That happy holiday, thought Wallander as he lay in bed. We took a trip to Rome, my father and I, and it went well. It went better than I could ever have hoped.
He looked at the clock. He had to go back on duty today. But he was in no hurry. He could stay in bed for a while yet. He reached for the stack of newspapers he had glanced through the night before, and started reading about the results of the parliamentary election. Because he had been in Rome on election day, he had sent in an absentee ballot. The Social Democrats had taken a good 45 per cent of the vote. But what did that mean? Would there be any changes?
He put the paper back on the floor, and thought again of Rome. They had stayed at an inexpensive hotel near the Campo dei Fiori. From the roof terrace directly above their two rooms they’d had a beautiful view over the city. There they drank their morning coffee and planned what they were going to do each day. Wallander’s father knew what he wanted to see. Wallander had worried that his father wanted to do too much, that he wouldn’t have the strength. He watched for signs that his father was confused or forgetful. Alzheimer’s disease, the illness with the strange name, was lurking there and they both knew it. But for that entire, happy week, his father had been in terrific form. Wallander felt a lump in his throat at the realisation that the whole trip belonged to the past, could only be a memory. They would never return to Rome together.
There had been moments of great closeness, for the first time in nearly 40 years. Wallander pondered the discovery he had made, that they were alike, more so than he had been willing to admit. They were both definitely morning people. When Wallander told his father that the hotel didn’t serve breakfast before 7 a.m., he had complained at once. He dragged Wallander down to the front desk and in a mixture of Skane dialect, a few English words, and some German phrases, as well as a smattering of Italian words, he managed to explain that he wanted to have breakfast presto. Not tardi. Absolutely not tardi. For some reason he also said passaggio a livello several times as he was urging the hotel to start its breakfast service at least an hour earlier, or they would consider looking for another hotel. Passaggio a livello, said his father and the desk clerk had looked at him in shock but also with respect.