“Yes,” he said. “You can interpret it this way: we are opposed to any attempt to organise a citizen militia.”
“Don’t you wonder what the people in Lodinge are going to say about that?”
“I may wonder, but I’m not afraid of the answer,” he said quickly, and adjourned the press conference.
“Do you think he was serious?” Chief Holgersson asked when they were alone in the room.
“Maybe. We should keep an eye on what’s happening in Lodinge. If it’s true that people are starting to demand a citizen militia publicly, then there’s been a change in the situation. And we might have problems.”
It was 7 p.m. Wallander said goodbye to Holgersson and went back to his office. He sat down in his chair. He needed to think. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had so little time for reflection and summarising during a criminal investigation.
The phone rang. He picked it up at once. It was Svedberg.
“How did the press conference go?”
“A little worse than usual. How’s it going with you two?”
“I think you ought to come over here. We found a camera with a roll of film in it. Nyberg’s here. We thought we should develop it.”
“Can we establish that he worked as a private detective?”
“We think so. But there’s something else too.”
Wallander waited tensely for the rest.
“We think the film contains pictures from his last case.”
Last, thought Wallander. Not latest.
“I’m coming,” he said.
Clouds raced across the sky. As he walked towards his car, he wondered if the migrating birds flew in wind this strong. On the way to Harpegatan he stopped and filled his car with petrol. He felt drained. He wondered when he would have time to look for a house. And think about his father. He wondered when Baiba would come to visit. He looked at his watch. Was it time or his life that was passing? He was too tired to decide which. He started the engine. His watch said 7.40 p.m.
A few minutes later he parked on Harpegatan and went down to the basement.
CHAPTER 17
They watched tensely as the picture began to emerge in the developing bath. Wallander wasn’t sure what he was expecting, or hoping for, as he stood with his colleagues in the darkroom. The red light made him feel as though they were waiting for something indecent to happen. Nyberg was developing the film. He was hobbling around with a crutch, and Hoglund had warned that he was in an especially grumpy mood.
They had made progress while Wallander had been busy with the reporters. There was no doubt that Runfeldt had been working as a private detective. In the various client records they had discovered, they could see that he’d been doing it for at least ten years.
“His activities were limited,” Hoglund said. “He had not more than seven or eight cases a year. It seems as though this was something he did in his spare time.”
Svedberg had made a swift survey of the types of assignments Runfeldt had taken on.
“About half the cases have to do with suspected infidelity,” he said. “Strangely enough, his clients were mostly men who suspected their wives.”
“Why is that strange?” Wallander asked.
“I just didn’t think it would be that way around,” was all Svedberg said. “But what do I know?”
Wallander motioned for him to continue.
“There are about two cases per year in which an employer suspects an employee of embezzling,” Svedberg said. “We’ve also come across a number of surveillance assignments that are rather vague in nature. In general, quite a tedious picture. His notes aren’t particularly extensive. But he was well paid.”
“So now we know how he could take those expensive holidays,” Wallander said. “It cost him 30,000 kronor for the trip to Nairobi.”
“He was working on a case when he died,” Hoglund said.
She opened a diary on the desk. Wallander thought about those reading glasses. He didn’t bother to look at it.
“It seems to have been his usual sort of assignment. Someone referred to only as ‘Mrs Svensson’ suspects her husband of being unfaithful.”
“Here in Ystad?” Wallander asked. “Did he work in other areas too?”
“In 1987 he had a case in Markaryd,” Svedberg said. “There’s nothing further north than that. Since then only cases in Skane. In 1991 he went to Denmark twice and once to Kiel. I haven’t had time to look into the details, but it had something to do with an engineer on a ferry who was having an affair with a waitress who worked on the ferry too. His wife, in Skanor, had suspected him correctly.”
“But otherwise he only took cases in the Ystad area?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Svedberg replied. “Southern and eastern Skane is probably closer to the truth.”
“Holger Eriksson?” Wallander asked. “Have you come across his name?”
Hoglund looked at Svedberg, who shook his head.
“Harald Berggren?”
“Not him either.”
“Have you found anything that might indicate a connection between Eriksson and Runfeldt?”
Again the answer was negative. It has to be there, thought Wallander. It doesn’t make sense that there would be two different killers. Just as it doesn’t make sense that there would be two random victims. The connection is there. We just haven’t found it yet.
“I can’t work him out,” Hoglund said. “He had a passion for flowers, but he spent his spare time working as a private detective.”
“People are seldom what you think they are,” Wallander replied, wondering suddenly whether this could be said of him.
“He seems to have made a bundle from this work,” Svedberg said. “But if I’m not mistaken, he didn’t report any of the income when he filed his tax returns. Could the explanation be that simple? He kept it secret so the tax authorities wouldn’t find out what he was up to?”
“Hardly,” Wallander said. “In the eyes of most people, being a private detective is a rather shady occupation.”
“Or childish,” Hoglund said. “A game for men who have never grown up.”
Wallander felt a vague urge to protest. But since he didn’t know what to say, he let it drop.
Images of a man in his 50s, with thin, closely cropped hair appeared in the developing tray. The photographs had been taken out of doors. None of them could identify the background. Nyberg guessed that the pictures had been taken from a great distance, since some of the negatives were blurry, suggesting that Runfeldt had used a telephoto lens sensitive to the slightest movement.
“Mrs Svensson contacted him for the first time on 9 September,” Hoglund said. “Runfeldt noted that he had ‘worked on the case’ on 14 and 17 September.”
“That’s only a few days before he was due to leave for Nairobi,” Wallander said.
They had come out of the darkroom. Nyberg was sitting at the desk, going through a number of files with photographs in them.
“Who is his client?” Wallander asked. “Mrs Svensson?”
“His client records and notes are vague,” Svedberg said. “He seems to have been a detective of few words. There isn’t even an address for Mrs Svensson.”
“How does a private detective find clients?” Hoglund asked. “He must advertise his services somehow.”
“I’ve seen ads in the papers,” Wallander said. “Maybe not in Ystad’s Allehanda, but in national newspapers. It must be possible to track down this Mrs Svensson somehow.”
“I talked to the porter,” Svedberg said. “He thought Runfeldt just had a storeroom here. He didn’t see anyone come to visit.”
“So he must have met his clients somewhere else,” Wallander said. “This was the secret room in his life.”
They mulled this over. Wallander tried to decide what was most important right now, but the press conference was troubling him. The man from the Anmarkaren had upset him. Could it really be true that a national citizen militia was being formed? If it was, then Wallander knew it wouldn’t be long before these people began seeking vengeance. He felt a need to tell Hoglund and Svedberg what had happened, but he stopped himself. It was probably better if they discussed it together at the next team meeting. And Chief Holgersson was really the one who should tell them.