“Your summary will be important,” Wallander said. “I think we should also talk to Mats Ekholm about this.”
“Who?”
“The forensic psychologist who was here last summer.”
She shook her head.
“I must be very tired,” she said. “I’d forgotten his name.”
Wallander stood up. It was 1 a.m.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. “Could you call me a taxi?”
“You can take my car,” she said. “I’m going to need a long walk in the morning to clear my head.” She gave him the keys. “My husband is coming home soon. Things will be easier.”
“I think this is the first time I fully realised how hard things are for you,” he said. “When Linda was little, Mona was always there. I don’t think I ever once had to stay home from work while she was growing up.”
She followed him outside. The night was clear. It was below freezing.
“I have no regrets,” she said suddenly.
“Regrets about what?”
“About joining the force.”
“You’re a good police officer,” said Wallander. “A very good one. In case you didn’t know.”
He saw that she was pleased. He nodded, got into her car, and drove off.
The next day, Monday, 17 October, Wallander woke up with a slight headache. He lay in bed and wondered if he was coming down with a cold, but he didn’t have any other symptoms. He got up and made coffee, and looked for some aspirin. Through the kitchen window he saw that the wind had picked up. Clouds had moved in over Skane during the night. The temperature had risen. The thermometer read 4 °C.
By 7.15 a.m. he was at the station. He got some coffee and sat down in his office. On his desk was a message from the officer in Goteborg he’d been working with on the investigation into car smuggling. He sat holding the message in his hand for a moment. Then he put it in his drawer. He pulled over a notebook and started looking for a pen. In one of the drawers he came across Svedberg’s note. He wondered how many times he had forgotten to give it back.
Annoyed, he stood up and went out to the hall. The door to Svedberg’s office was open. He went in and put the paper on the desk, then went back to his own office, closed the door, and spent the next 30 mimutes listing all the questions he wanted answered. He had decided to go over what he and Hoglund had discussed when the investigative team met later that morning.
At 7.45 a.m. there was a knock on the door. It was Hamren from Stockholm, who’d just arrived. They shook hands. Wallander liked him; they’d worked well together during the summer.
“Here already?” he said. “I thought you weren’t coming until later in the day.”
“I drove down yesterday,” Hamren replied. “I couldn’t wait.”
“How are things in Stockholm?”
“The same as here. Only bigger.”
“I don’t know where they plan to put you,” Wallander said.
“In with Hansson. It’s already been arranged.”
“We’re going to meet in about half an hour.”
“I’ve got a lot of reading to do before then.”
Hamren left the room. Wallander absentmindedly put his hand on the phone, meaning to call his father. He gave a start. Grief hit him. He no longer had a father he could call. Not today, not tomorrow. Never.
He sat motionless in his chair. Then he leaned forward again and dialled the number. Gertrud answered almost at once. She sounded tired and burst into tears when he asked her how she was. He had a lump in his throat too.
“I’m taking one day at a time,” she said, after she had calmed down.
“I’ll try to come out for a while this afternoon,” Wallander said. “I won’t be able to stay long, but I’ll try to come.”
“There’s so much I’ve been thinking about,” she said. “About you and your father. I know so little.”
“That goes for me too, but let’s see if we can help each other fill in the gaps.”
He hung up, knowing that it was unlikely he would make it out to Loderup that day. Why had he said that he would try? Now she would be sitting there waiting.
I spend my life disappointing people, he thought hopelessly. Angrily he broke the pen he was holding and tossed the pieces into the waste-paper basket. One piece missed and he kicked it away with his foot. He suddenly had the urge to escape. When had he last talked to Baiba? She hadn’t called him either. Was their relationship dying a natural death? When would he have time to look for a house? Or find a dog? There were moments when he detested his job and this was one of them.
He stood at the window. Wind and autumn clouds, birds on their way south. He thought about Per Akeson, who had finally decided that there was more to life.
Once, towards the end of summer, as he and Baiba walked along the beach at Skagen, she had said that it seemed as though all the people of the West shared a dream of an enormous yacht that could take the whole continent to the Caribbean. The collapse of the Eastern bloc had opened her eyes. In the impoverished Latvia there were islands of wealth, simple joys. She had discovered great poverty even in the rich countries that she could now visit. There was a sea of dissatisfaction and emptiness everywhere. And that was why people dreamed of escape.
He made a note to call Baiba that evening. He saw that it was 8.15 a.m., and went to the conference room. In addition to Hamren, there were also two detectives from Malmo, Augustsson and Hartman whom Wallander hadn’t met before. They shook hands. Lisa Holgersson arrived and sat down. She welcomed the new arrivals. There wasn’t time for anything else. She looked at Wallander and nodded.
He began as he’d decided to do earlier, with the conversation he’d had with Hoglund. He noticed at once that the reaction of the others in the room was marked by doubt. That’s what he had expected. He shared their doubts.
“I’m not presenting this as anything but one of several possibilities. Since we know nothing, we can ignore nothing.”
He nodded to Hoglund.
“I’ve asked for a summary of the investigation from a female perspective,” he said. “We’ve never done anything like this before. But in this case we have to try everything.”
The discussion that followed was intense. Wallander had expected that too. Hansson, who seemed to be feeling better this morning, started things off. About halfway through the meeting Nyberg came in. He was walking without the crutch. Wallander met his glance. He had a feeling that Nyberg had something he wanted to say. He gave him an inquiring look, but Nyberg shook his head.
Wallander listened to the discussion without taking an active part in it. Hansson expressed himself clearly and presented good arguments.
Around 9 a.m. they took a short break. Svedberg showed Wallander a picture in the paper of members of the newly created Protective Militia in Lodinge. Several other towns in Skane were apparently following suit. Chief Holgersson had seen a report about it on the evening news.
“We’re going to end up with vigilante groups all over the country,” she said. “Imagine a situation where pseudopolicemen outnumber us.”
“It might be unavoidable,” Hamren said. “Maybe it’s always been true that crime pays. The difference is that today we can prove it. If we brought in ten per cent of all the money that disappears today in financial crimes, we could comfortably afford 3,000 new officers.”
This number seemed absurd to Wallander, but Hamren stood his ground.
“The question is whether we want that kind of society,” he continued. “House doctors are one thing. But house police? Police everywhere? A society that’s divided up into various alarm zones? Keys and codes even to visit your elderly parents?”
“We probably don’t need that many new officers,” Wallander said. “We just need a different kind of policeman.”
“Maybe what we need is a different kind of society,” said Martinsson. “With a greater sense of community.”
Martinsson’s words had taken on the sound of a political campaign speech, but Wallander understood him. He knew that Martinsson worried constantly about his children. That they’d be exposed to drugs. That something would happen to them.