Wallander decided that he might as well not beat about the bush. "You'll have seen in the newspapers that a solicitor in Ystad was murdered a few days ago," he said. "The questions I need to ask are about Borman's connection with that investigation."
Oscarsson stared at him for some time before replying. "Although I'm an old man, tired but perhaps not yet quite finished, I admit to being curious. I'll answer your questions, if I can."
"Borman was an accountant at the County Offices," Wallander said. "What exactly did he do? And how long had he been working there?"
"An accountant is an accountant," Oscarsson said. "The job title tells you what he did. He kept the books, in this case the County Council books. He checked that all the regulations were being observed, that budgets laid down by the appropriate authority were not exceeded. He also checked to make sure people were paid what they should be paid. You have to remember that a county office is like a large business, or rather an industrial empire associated with a small duchy. Its main responsibility is health spending, but it oversees a lot of other things as well. Education, culture, and so on. Borman wasn't our only accountant, of course. He came to the County Offices from the municipal corporation at the beginning of the '80s."
"Was he a good accountant?"
"He was the best accountant I ever came across."
"Why so?"
"He worked quickly but with no loss of accuracy. He was very involved in his work and was always coming up with suggestions as to how we could save money for the council."
"I've heard it said that he was a particularly honest man," Wallander said.
"Of course he was," Oscarsson said. "But that's not exactly earth-shattering - accountants are mostly honest. There are exceptions, of course, but they could never survive in an environment such as you get at county offices."
Wallander thought for a moment before continuing.
"And out of the blue he committed suicide," he said. "Was that unexpected?"
"It certainly was unexpected," Oscarsson said.
Looking back, Wallander was never quite sure what had happened when those words were spoken. There was a slight change of tone in Oscarsson's voice, a faint trace of doubt, perhaps reluctance, that made itself felt in the way he replied. As far as Wallander was concerned, the conversation changed character at that moment, and straightforward question and answer was replaced by alertness.
"You worked closely with Borman," Wallander said. "You must have known him well. What was he like as a man?"
"We were never friends. He lived for his work and for his family. He had an integrity that nobody ever questioned. And if anybody came too close, he would withdraw into his shell."
"Could he have been seriously ill?"
"That I don't know."
"You must have thought a good deal about his death."
"It was a very unpleasant time. It cast a shadow over my final months at work before I retired."
"Can you tell me about his last day at work?"
"He died on a Sunday, so the last time I saw him was on the Friday afternoon. There was a meeting of the financial heads of the County Council. It was quite a lively meeting, unfortunately."
"In what way?"
"There were arguments about how a particular problem ought to be resolved."
"Which problem was that?"
Oscarsson looked hard at Wallander. "I'm not sure I ought to answer that question," he said.
"Why not?"
"In the first place I'm retired now. And also there are laws regarding those aspects of public administration that are confidential."
"We have a right-of-access principle in Sweden," Wallander said.
"But that doesn't apply to specific cases which for various reasons are deemed unsuitable to be made public."
"On the last day Borman was at work, he was at a meeting with the finance heads of the County Council," he said. "Is that right?"
Oscarsson nodded.
"And at that meeting a problem was discussed, sometimes heatedly, which was later designated unsuitable, et cetera. In other words, the minutes of that meeting are locked away somewhere. Correct?"
"No, not correct," Oscarsson said. "There were no minutes."
"In which case it can't have been an official meeting," Wallander said. "If it had been, minutes would have to have been taken and kept, and in due course submitted for approval and signed."
"It was a confidential discussion," Oscarsson said. "But it's all water under the bridge now, and I don't think I'm going to answer any more questions. My memory isn't what it was. I've forgotten what happened."
Wallander thought, Oscarsson has forgotten nothing. What was it they were discussing that Friday?
"I can't oblige you to answer my questions, of course," Wallander said. "But I can resort to a public prosecutor who can. Or I can go to the Executive Committee of the County Council. I can do all sorts of things to find out what the problem was, it's just that it would take time and I don't have that luxury."
"I'm not going to answer any more questions," Oscarsson said, getting to his feet.
Wallander remained seated. "Sit down," he said firmly. "I have a suggestion."
Oscarsson hesitated, but then sat down again.
"Let's do what you did that Friday afternoon," Wallander said. "I'm not going to make any notes. Let's call this a confidential conversation. There are no witnesses to say that it ever took place. I can give you my word that I shall never refer to you, irrespective of what you're going to say."
Oscarsson thought over the proposal. "Rundstedt knows you've come to see me."
"He doesn't know what about," Wallander said.
He waited while Oscarsson struggled with his conscience. But he knew what would happen. Oscarsson was a wise old bird.
"I'll go along with your suggestion," he said eventually, "but I don't guarantee to be able to answer all your questions."
"Be able to or be willing to?"
"That's a matter for me and me alone," Oscarsson said.
Wallander nodded. They had a deal.
"The problem," Wallander said. "What was it?"
"Malmohus County Council had been swindled," Oscarsson said. "We didn't know at the time how much money was involved, but we do now."
"How much?"
"Four million kronor. Of taxpayers' money."
"What had happened?"
"So that it makes sense, I'll start by sketching in how a county council works," Oscarsson said. "Our annual turnover runs to several million, handled by a variety of departments and activities. Financial supervision is centralised and computerised. Safety devices are built in at various levels to protect against embezzlement and other illegal practices. There are even precautions checking what the top executives do, but I don't need to go into detail about them in this case. What it's important to understand, though, is that there is a constant, continuous audit of all payments. Anyone who wants to defraud a county council is going to have to be very familiar with methods of juggling sums of money between accounts. Anyway, that's the background in brief."
"I think I understand," Wallander said.
"What happened made it clear that our precautions were inadequate," Oscarsson said. "They've been radically altered since then. A similar fraud wouldn't be possible now."
"Take your time," Wallander said. "I'd like to have as much detail as possible about what happened."
"There are things we still don't know," Oscarsson said. "But what we do know is this: as you may be aware, the whole of the administration of public services in Sweden has undergone far-reaching change in recent years. In many ways you could say it's undergone an operation without quite enough anaesthetic. Those of us civil servants from the older generation especially have found it hard to cope with the enormous changes. The reforms are still not finished, and it will be some time before we can make a judgment on all the consequences. The bottom line is that public authorities should be managed in the same way as business enterprises, taking market forces and competition into account. Some public authorities have been turned into limited companies, and others have been sent out to tender from the private sector. All of them have had to satisfy increased demands for efficiency. One of the outcomes, as far as we were concerned, was that a company had to be formed in order to handle all the purchases made by the council. Having the County Council as a customer is one of the best things that can happen to a private enterprise, whether it's lawnmowers or washing powder they're manufacturing or selling. In connection with the formation of that company we hired a firm of consultants with a wide-ranging mandate, one item being to evaluate the applications for the newly established top executive posts that had been advertised. And that is where the fraud took place."