"We need to have a few words," Wallander said. "I feel as though I'm barging in and taking over, when what I was really supposed to be doing was confirming my resignation."
"We're all a bit surprised, certainly," Martinsson said. "You must accept that. You're not the only one who's a bit unsure of what's going on."
"I don't want to stand on anybody's toes."
Martinsson burst out laughing. Then blew his nose. "The Swedish police force is full of officers suffering from sore toes and heels," he said. "The more bureaucratic the force becomes, the more people get obsessed about their careers. All the regulations and the paperwork - it gets worse every day - result in misunderstandings and a lack of clarity, so it's no wonder people stand on each other's toes and kick their heels. Sometimes I think I understand why Bjork is worried about the way things are going. What's happening to ordinary straightforward police work?"
"The police force has always reflected society at large," Wallander said. "But I know what you mean. Rydberg used to say the same thing. What's Hoglund going to say?"
"She's good," Martinsson said. "Hanson and Svedberg are both frightened of her precisely because she's so good. Hanson especially is worried that he might get left behind. That's why he spends most of his time on courses nowadays, picking up extra qualifications."
"The new-age police officer," Wallander said, getting to his feet. "That's what she is." He paused in the doorway. "You said something yesterday that rang a bell. Something about Sten Torstensson. I'm not sure what, but I have the feeling it was more important than it sounded."
"I was reading aloud from my notes," Martinsson said. "You can have a copy."
"I dare say I'm imagining things," Wallander said.
When he got back to his office and had closed the door, he knew that he had experienced something he had almost forgotten existed. It was as if he had rediscovered his drive. Not everything, it seemed, had been lost during the time he had been away.
He sat at his desk, feeling that he could now examine himself at arm's length: the man staggering around in the West Indies, the miserable trip to Thailand, all those days and nights when everything seemed to have ground to a halt apart from his automatic bodily functions. He was looking at himself, but he realised that that person was somebody he no longer knew. He had been somebody else.
He shuddered to contemplate the catastrophic consequences that some of his actions could have had. He thought hard about his daughter Linda. It was only when Martinsson knocked on the door and delivered a photocopy of his notes from the previous day that Wallander succeeded in banishing all the memories. Everybody had within himself a secret room, it seemed to him, where memories and recollections were all jumbled up together. Now he had bolted the door, and attached a strong padlock. Then he went to the toilet and flushed away the antidepressants he had been carrying around in a tube in his pocket.
He returned to his office and started work. It was 10 a.m. He read carefully through Martinsson's notes without identifying what it was that had caught his attention. It's too soon, he thought. Rydberg would have advised patience. Now I have to remember to advise myself.
He wondered briefly where to begin. Then he looked up Gustaf Torstensson's home address in the file for the car accident. Timmermansgatan 12. That was in one of Ystad's oldest and most affluent residential districts, beyond the army barracks, near Sandskogen. He telephoned the solicitors' and spoke to Sonia Lundin, who told him that the house keys were in the office. He left the station and noted that the rain clouds had dispersed, the sky was clear. He had the feeling he was breathing in the first of the cold winter air that was slowly advancing. As he drew up outside the solicitors' offices, Lundin came out and handed him the keys.
He took two wrong turnings before he reached the correct address. The big, brown-painted wooden house was a long way back in a large garden. He swung open the creaking gate and started along the gravel drive. It was quiet, and the town seemed a long way away. A world inside a world, he thought. The Torstensson firm of solicitors must have been a very profitable business. He doubted if there were many more expensive houses in Ystad than this one. The garden was well tended but strangely lifeless. A few deciduous trees, some neatly clipped bushes, some dull flower beds. Perhaps an elderly lawyer needed to surround himself with straight lines, a traditional garden with no surprises or improvisations. Someone had told him that as a solicitor Torstensson had the reputation of dragging out court proceedings to an unprecedented level of boredom. One spiteful opponent claimed that Torstensson could get a client off by driving the prosecutor to distraction with his plodding, colourless presentation of the case for the defence. He should ask Per Akeson what he thought of Gustaf Torstensson. They must have dealt with each other many times over the years.
He went up the steps to the front door and found the right key. It was an advanced Chubb lock of a type he had not come across before. He let himself into a large hall with a broad staircase at the back leading to the upper floor. Heavy curtains were drawn across the windows. He opened one set and saw that the window was barred. An elderly man living alone, experiencing the fear that inevitably goes with age. Was there something here he needed to protect, apart from himself? Or was his fear something that originated beyond these walls? He made his way round the house, starting on the ground floor with its library lined with sombre portraits of family ancestors, and the large open-plan living room and dining room. Everything, from furniture to wallpaper, was dark, giving him a feeling of melancholy and silence. Nowhere even a small patch of light colour, no trace of a light touch that could raise a smile.
He went upstairs. Guest rooms with neatly made beds, deserted like a hotel closed for the winter. The door to Torstensson's own bedroom had a barred inner door. He went back downstairs, oppressed by the gloom. He sat at the kitchen table and rested his chin on his hands. All he could hear was a clock ticking.
Torstensson was 69 when he died. He had been living alone for the last 15 years, since his wife died. Sten was their only child. Judging by one of the portraits in the library, the family was descended from Field Marshal Lennart Torstensson. Wallander's vague memory from his schooldays was that during the Thirty Years' War the man had a reputation for exceptional brutality towards the peasants wherever his army had set foot.
Wallander stood up and went down the stairs to the basement. Here, too, everything was pedantically neat. Right at the back, behind the boiler room, Wallander discovered a steel door that was locked. He tried the various keys until he found the right one. Wallander had to feel his way until he located the light switch.
The room was surprisingly big. The walls were lined with shelves laden with icons from Eastern Europe. Without touching them, Wallander scrutinised them from close up. He was no expert, nor had he ever been particularly interested in antiques, but he reckoned that this collection was extremely valuable. That would explain the barred windows and the lock, if not the wrought-iron safety door to the bedroom. Wallander's uneasiness grew. He felt he was intruding on the privacy of a rich old man whom happiness had abandoned, who had barricaded his house, and who was watched over by greed in the shape of all these Madonna figures.
He pricked up his ears. There were footsteps upstairs, then a dog barking. He hurried out of the room, up the steps and into the kitchen.
He was astonished to be confronted by Peters, his colleague, who had drawn his pistol and was pointing it at him. Behind him was a security guard with a growling dog tugging at a lead. Peters lowered his gun. Wallander could feel his heart racing. The sight of the gun had momentarily revived the memories he had spent so long trying to banish.