The bicycle, he thought. That's telling quite a different story.
Staffansson had lit a cigarette and was pacing up and down to keep warm.
"The bicycle," Wallander said. "There are no details about it in your reports."
"It was a very good one," Staffansson said. "Ten gears, good condition. Dark blue, as I remember."
"Show me exactly where it was."
Staffansson pointed straight at the spot.
"How was it lying?" Wallander asked.
"Well, what can one say? It was just lying on the ground."
"It hadn't fallen over?"
"There was a stand, but it hadn't been opened."
"Are you sure?"
He thought for a moment. "Yes," he said, "I'm certain."
"So he had just let the bike fall down any old how? More or less like a kid does when he's in a hurry?"
"Exactly," Staffansson said. "It had been flung down. As if he was in a hurry to get it all over with."
Wallander nodded thoughtfully. "Just one more thing," he said. "Ask your colleague if he can confirm that the stand hadn't been opened up."
"Is that so important?"
"Yes," Wallander said. "It's much more important than you think. Phone me if your colleague disagrees."
"The stand wasn't opened," Staffansson said. "I'm absolutely certain."
"Call me anyway," Wallander said. "Now let's get out of here. Many thanks for your help."
Wallander started the drive back to Ystad, thinking about Borman. An accountant at the County Council. A man who would never have just tossed his bicycle to the ground, not even in extremis.
One more step forward, Wallander thought. I am on to something without knowing quite what it is. Somewhere between Borman and the solicitors' offices in Ystad there is a link. I need to find it.
He had passed the spot where his car had blown up before he noticed. He turned off at Rydsgard and had a late lunch at the local inn. He was the only person in the dining room. He really must ring Linda that night, no matter how tired he was. Then he would write to Baiba.
He was back at the station in Ystad by 5.00. Ebba informed him that there was not going to be a meeting - everybody was busy and didn't have time to advise their colleagues that they had nothing of significance to advise them about. They would meet the following morning instead, at 8.00.
"You look dreadful," she said.
"Thank you," he said. "I'll get some sleep tonight."
He went to his office and shut the door behind him. There were several notes on his desk, but nothing so important that it could not wait until morning.
He hung up his jacket and spent half an hour writing a summary of what he had done during the day. Then he dropped his pen and leaned back in his chair.
We really must break through now, he thought. We just have to find the missing link.
He had just put on his jacket when there was a knock on the door and Svedberg came in. Wallander could see right away that something had happened. Svedberg seemed worried.
"Have you got a moment?" he said.
"What's happened?"
Svedberg looked uneasy, and Wallander could feel the last of his patience dwindling away.
"I assume there's something you want to say seeing as you've come here," he said. "I was just going home."
"I'm afraid you'll have to go to Simrishamn," Svedberg said.
"Why must I?"
"They phoned."
"Who did?"
"Our colleagues."
"The police in Simrishamn? What did they want?"
Svedberg seemed to make sure both feet were planted firmly on the ground before replying.
"They've had to arrest your father," he said.
"The Simrishamn police have arrested my father? What for?"
"Apparently he's been involved in a violent fight," Svedberg said.
Wallander stared at him for quite a while without speaking. Then he sat down at his desk.
"Tell me again," he said. "Slowly."
"They rang about an hour ago," Svedberg said. "As you were out they spoke to me. A few hours ago they arrested your father. He had started fighting in the off-licence in Simrishamn. It was evidently pretty violent. Then they discovered he was your father. So they phoned here."
Wallander sighed, but said nothing. He got slowly to his feet.
"I'll drive over then," he said.
"Would you like me to come with you?"
"No thanks."
Wallander left the station. He didn't know whether he was coming or going.
An hour later he walked into the police station in Simrishamn.
Chapter 9
On the way to Simrishamn Wallander had thought about the Silk Knights. It was many years since he had needed to remind himself that they had once been real.
The last time his father had been arrested by the police was when Wallander was eleven. He could remember it very clearly. They were still living in Malmo, and his reaction to his father's arrest had been a strange mixture of shame and pride.
That time, however, his father had not been arrested in an off-licence, but in a public park in the centre of town. It was a Saturday in the early summer of 1956, and Wallander had been allowed to accompany his father and some of his friends on a night out.
His father's friends, who came to their house at irregular intervals and always unexpectedly, were great adventurers in his young eyes. They rolled up in shiny American cars, always wore silk suits, and they often had broad-brimmed hats and heavy gold rings on their fingers. They came to call at the little studio that smelled of turps and oil paint, to view and perhaps to buy some of the pictures his father had painted. Sometimes he ventured into the studio himself and hid behind the pile of junk in the darkest corner, old canvases that mice had been nibbling at, and he would shudder as he listened to the bargaining that always ended with a couple of swigs from a bottle of brandy. He had realised that it was thanks to these great adventurers - the Silk Knights, as he used to call them in his secret diaries - that the Wallanders had food on the table. It was one of those supreme moments in life when he witnessed a bargain being struck, and the unknown men peeling banknotes from enormous bundles with their ring-adorned fingers and handing over rather smaller bundles which his father would stuff into his pocket before giving a little bow.
He could still recall the conversations, the terse, almost stuttering repartee, often followed by lame protests from his father and chuckling noises from the visitors.
"Seven landscapes without grouse and two with," one of them would say. His father rummaged among the piles of finished paintings, had them approved, and then the money would land on the table with a gentle thud. Wallander was eleven years old, standing in his dark corner, almost overcome by the turpentine fumes, and thinking that what he was observing was the grownup life that also lay in store for him, once he had crossed the river formed by Class Seven - or was it Class Nine in those days? He was surprised to find that he could not remember. Then he would emerge from the shadows when it was time to carry the canvases out to the shiny cars, where they were to be loaded into the boot or on to the back seat. This was a moment of great significance, because now and then one of the Knights would notice the boy helping with the carrying and covertly slip him a five-kronor note. Then he and his father would stand at the gate and watch the car roll away, and once it was gone his father would go through a metamorphosis: the obsequious manner would be gone in a flash, and he would spit after the man who had just driven off and say with contempt in his voice that yet again he had been swindled.