He was certain he had never seen her before.
That didn't mean she had not recognised him. Over the years as a police officer he had often come up against refugees and asylum seekers in various contexts.
He drove back to the police station. The wind was still squally, and clouds were building up from the east. He had just turned into Kristianstadsvagen when he slammed his foot on the brake. A lorry behind him sounded its horn.
I'm reacting far too slowly, he thought. I'm not seeing the wood for the trees.
He made an illegal U-turn, parked outside the post office in Hamngatan and made his way swiftly into the side street that led into Stickgatan from the north. He positioned himself so that he could see the pink building where Mrs Duner lived.
It was getting chilly, and he started walking up and down while keeping an eye on the building. After an hour he wondered whether he ought to give up. But he was sure he was right. He kept on watching the building. By now Akeson was waiting for him, but he would wait in vain.
At 3.43 p.m. the door to the pink building suddenly opened. Wallander hid behind a wall. He was right. He watched that woman with the vaguely Asiatic appearance leave Berta Duner's house. Then she turned the corner and was gone.
It had started raining.
Chapter 5
The meeting of the investigation team started at 4 p.m. and finished exactly seven minutes later. Wallander was the last to arrive and flopped down on his chair. He was out of breath, and sweating. His colleagues around the table observed him in surprise, but no-one made any comment.
It took Bjork a few minutes to establish that no-one had any significant progress to report or matters to discuss. They had reached a point in the investigation where they had become "tunnel diggers", as they used to say. They were all trying to break through the surface layer to find what might be concealed underneath. It was a familiar phase in criminal investigations, and no discussion was needed. The only one who came up with a question at the end of the meeting was Wallander.
"Who is Alfred Harderberg?" he asked, after consulting a scrap of paper on which he'd written down the name.
"I thought everybody knew that," Bjork said. "He's one of Sweden's most successful businessmen just now. Lives here in Skane. When he's not flying all over the world in his private jet, that is."
"He owns Farnholm Castle," Svedberg said. "It's said that he has an aquarium with genuine gold dust at the bottom instead of sand."
"He was a client of Gustaf Torstensson's," Wallander said. "His principal client, in fact. And his last. Torstensson had been to see him the night he met his death in the field."
"He organises collections for the needy in parts of the Balkans ravaged by war," Martinsson said. "But maybe that's not so extraordinary when you have the limitless amounts of money he does."
"Alfred Harderberg is a man worthy of our respect," Bjork said.
Wallander could see he was getting annoyed. "Who isn't?" he wondered aloud. "I intend to pay him a visit even so."
"Phone first," Bjork said, getting to his feet.
The meeting was at an end. Wallander fetched a cup of coffee and repaired to his office. He needed time on his own to think over the significance of Mrs Duner being visited by a young Asian woman. Maybe there was nothing to it at all, but Wallander's instinct told him otherwise. He put his feet on his desk and leaned back in his chair, balancing his coffee cup between his knees.
The telephone rang. Wallander stretched to answer it, lost his grip on the cup, and coffee spilled all over his trouser leg as the cup fell to the floor.
"Shit!" he shouted, the receiver halfway to his ear.
"No need to be rude," said his father. "I only wanted to ask why you never get in touch."
Wallander was instantly assailed by his bad conscience, and that in turn made him angry. He wondered if there would ever be a time when dealings with his father could be conducted on a less tense footing.
"I spilled a cup of coffee," he said, "and scalded my leg."
His father seemed not to have heard what he said. "Why are you in your office?" he asked. "You're supposed to be on sick leave."
"Not any more. I've started work again."
"When?"
"Yesterday."
"Yesterday?"
Wallander could tell that this conversation was going to be a very long one if he did not manage to cut it short. "I owe you an explanation, I know," he said, "but I just haven't time at the moment. I'll come and see you tomorrow evening, and tell you what's happened."
"I haven't seen you for ages," his father said, and hung up.
Wallander sat for a moment with the receiver in his hand. His father would be 75 next year, and invariably managed to arouse in him contradictory emotions. Their relationship had been complicated for as long as he could remember. Not least on the day he told his father he intended to join the police. More than 25 years had passed since then and the old man never missed an opportunity of criticising that decision. Nevertheless, Wallander had a guilty conscience about the time he devoted to him. The previous year, when he had heard the astonishing news that his father was going to marry a woman 30 years younger than himself, a home help who came to his house three times a week, he had reckoned his father would not lack for company any more. Now, sitting there with the receiver in his hand, he realised that nothing had really changed.
He replaced the receiver, picked up the cup and wiped his trouser leg with a sheet torn from his notepad. Then he remembered he was supposed to get in touch with Akeson, the prosecutor. Akeson's secretary put him straight through. Wallander explained that he had been held up and Akeson suggested a time for the next morning instead.
Wallander went to fetch another cup of coffee. In the corridor he bumped into Hoglund carrying a pile of files.
"How's it going?" Wallander said.
"Slowly," she said. "And I can't shake off the feeling that there's something fishy about those two dead lawyers."
"That's exactly how I feel," Wallander said. "What makes you think so?"
"I don't know."
"Let's talk about it tomorrow," Wallander said. "Experience tells me you should never underestimate the significance of what you can't put into words, can't put your finger on."
He went back to his office, unhooked the phone and pulled over his notepad. He went back in his mind to the freezing cold beach at Skagen, Sten Torstensson walking towards him out of the fog. That's where this case started for me, he thought. It started while Sten was still alive.
He went over everything he knew about the two solicitors. He was like a soldier cautiously retreating, keeping a close watch to his left and his right. It took him an hour to work his way through every one of the facts he and his colleagues had so far assembled.
What is it I can see and yet do not see? He asked himself this over and over as he sifted through the case notes. But when he tossed aside his pen all he had managed to achieve was a highly decorative and embellished question mark.
Two lawyers dead, he thought. One killed in a strange accident that was in all probability not an accident. Whoever killed Gustaf Torstensson was a cold, calculating murderer. That lone chair leg left in the mud was an uncharacteristic mistake. There's a why and a who, but there may well be something else.
It came to him that there was something he could and should do. He found Mrs Duner's telephone number in his notes.
"I'm sorry to trouble you," he said. "Inspector Wallander here. I have a question I'd be grateful for an answer to right away."