“How’s it going?” he asked. “I just heard about it and rushed right over.”
“She’s sitting on her bed crying. She won’t speak to anyone but her father.”
Wallander went inside and took off his jacket and shoes. One of his socks had a hole in it. Maria asked if he wanted some coffee. He gratefully accepted. At the same moment Martinsson came down the stairs. Usually he was a cheerful man. Now Wallander saw a grey mask of bitterness. And fear too.
“I heard what happened,” Wallander said. “I came at once.”
They sat down in the living room.
“How is she?” Wallander asked.
Martinsson just shook his head. Wallander thought he was going to burst into tears. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“I’m quitting,” Martinsson said. “I’m going to talk to the chief today.”
Wallander didn’t know what to say. Martinsson had good reason to be upset. He could easily imagine reacting the same way if it had been Linda who was attacked. Even so, he would have to play the devil’s advocate. The last thing he wanted was for Martinsson to quit. He also realised that Martinsson would have to make up his own mind. But it was still too soon. He could see how shocked Martinsson was.
Maria came in with coffee. Martinsson shook his head. He didn’t want any.
“It’s not worth it,” he said, “when it starts to affect your family.”
“No,” Wallander said, “it’s not worth it.”
Martinsson didn’t say any more. Nor did Wallander. Martinsson got up and went back upstairs. Wallander knew there was nothing he could do just then.
Martinsson’s wife followed him to the door.
“Say hello to her from me,” Wallander said.
“Are they going to come after us again?”
“No. I know that what I’m going to tell you may sound odd. As if I were trying to make light of this situation. But that’s not my intention at all. It’s just that we can’t lose our sense of proportion and start drawing the wrong conclusions. These boys were probably only a couple of years older than Terese. They’re not bad children. They probably didn’t know what they were doing. This has happened because men like Eskil Bengtsson and those others out in Lodinge are starting to organise citizen militias and incite people against the police.”
“I know,” she said. “I’ve heard that people are talking about it in this area too.”
“I know it’s hard to think clearly when your own child is the target of something like this, but we have to try and hold on to our common sense.”
“All this violence,” she said. “Where does it come from?”
“There aren’t many people who are truly evil,” Wallander replied. “At least I think they’re few and far between. On the other hand, there are evil circumstances, which trigger all this violence. It’s those circumstances that we have to tackle.”
“Won’t it just get worse and worse?”
“Maybe,” Wallander said hesitantly. “If that happens then it’s because the circumstances are changing. Not because there are more evil people.”
“This country has turned so cold-hearted.”
“You’re right,” he said.
He shook hands with her and walked towards the waiting police car.
“How’s Terese doing?” asked the officer who had driven him.
“She’s upset. And her parents are, too.”
“Doesn’t it make you furious?”
“Yes,” Wallander said. “It does.”
Wallander returned to the police station. Hansson and Hoglund were still at the school where Terese had been attacked. Wallander discovered that Chief Holgersson was in Stockholm. For a moment it made him angry. But she had been informed about what happened, and she was coming back to Ystad that afternoon. Wallander got hold of Svedberg and Hamren. Nyberg was out at Eriksson’s farm searching for fingerprints. The detectives from Malmo had gone off in different directions. Wallander sat down with Svedberg and Hamren in the conference room. They were all upset about what had happened to Martinsson’s daughter. They had a brief conversation, and then went back to work. They had divided up all the assignments the night before. Wallander called Nyberg on his mobile phone.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“It’s tough,” Nyberg said. “But we think we may have found an indistinct print on the bottom of the railing of Eriksson’s tower that might not be his. We’ll keep looking.”
Wallander thought for a moment.
“You mean the killer might have been up in the tower?”
“Why not?”
“You may be right. In that case, there might be cigarette butts too.”
“If there were any, we would have found them on our first pass. Now it’s definitely too late.”
Wallander changed the subject and told him about his visit to see Ylva Brink at the hospital.
“The name tag is in a plastic bag,” Nyberg said. “If she has a good nose maybe she will recognise the scent.”
“I want that tried out as soon as possible. You can call her yourself. Svedberg has her number.”
Nyberg said that he’d arrange for it. Wallander found a letter from the Registry Office on his desk. It reported that no-one had officially changed his name to or from Harald Berggren. Wallander put it aside. It was 10 a.m. and still raining. He thought about the meeting the night before. Again he felt uneasy. Were they really on the right track? Or were they going down a path that would lead them straight into a vacuum? He went to stand by the window. His eyes fell on the water tower. Katarina Taxell is our main lead. She has met the woman. Why else would someone be in a maternity ward in the middle of the night?
He went back to his desk and called Birch in Lund. It took almost ten minutes before they managed to locate him.
“Everything’s quiet outside her building,” Birch said. “No visits except a woman we can positively identify — her mother. Katarina went out shopping for groceries once. That was when her mother was there watching her baby. There’s a supermarket nearby. The only thing of interest was that she bought a lot of newspapers.”
“She probably wanted to read about the murder. Do you think she knows we’re in the vicinity?”
“I don’t think so. She seems tense. But she never looks around. I don’t think she suspects we’ve got her under surveillance.”
“It’s important that she doesn’t discover it.”
“We keep changing officers.”
Wallander leaned over his desk and opened his notebook.
“How is the profile of her coming along? Who is she?”
“She’s 33 years old,” Birch said. “That makes an age difference of 18 years to Blomberg.”
“It’s her first child,” Wallander said. “She started late. Women in a hurry might not be so particular about age differences.”
“According to her, Blomberg isn’t the child’s father anyway.”
“That’s a lie,” Wallander said, wondering how he really dared to be so certain. “What else have you got?”
“Katarina Taxell was born in Arlov,” Birch continued. “Her father was an engineer at the sugar refinery. He died when she was little. His car was hit by a train, outside Landskrona. She has no siblings. She and her mother moved to Lund after the father died. The mother worked part-time at the city library. Katarina Taxell got good grades in school and went on to study geography and foreign languages at the university. A somewhat unusual combination. Then she went to teacher training college, and she’s been a teacher ever since. At the same time she has built up a small business selling hair products. She’s said to be quite industrious. Of course she’s not in any of our records.”
“Well, that was certainly fast work,” Wallander said, impressed.
“I did what you said,” Birch replied. “I put a lot of people on the case.”
“Obviously she doesn’t know about it yet. She’d be looking over her shoulder if she knew we were profiling her.”
“We’ll have to see how long that lasts. The question is whether we shouldn’t lean on her a little.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Wallander said.