Wallander knew at once. It was while she was out with the second horse that something had happened. Her answer came much too quickly, as if she had been steeling herself to get past a frightening obstacle. The only thing to do, he decided, was to come straight to the point.
"I'm sure that everything you're telling me is true," he said, sounding as friendly as possible.
"I've nothing else to say. I have to be going now. If I'm late I'll get the sack."
"You can leave in a couple of minutes. Just a few more questions. Let's go back to the stables and that man who came to see you. I don't think you told me quite everything he said. Is that right? Didn't he also say that there were certain places you weren't to go anywhere near?"
"It was Miss Karlen who said that."
"Maybe she did too. But the man in the stables said it in such a way that you were frightened? Am I right?"
She looked away and nodded slowly.
"But when you were out with Juno you took a wrong turning. Or maybe out of curiosity you took another path? It hasn't escaped my notice that you like to do whatever you want. Is that what happened?"
"I took a wrong turning." She was now speaking so softly that Wallander had to lean over the table to hear what she was saying.
"I believe you," he said. "Tell me what happened on that path."
"Juno suddenly reared up and threw me off. It was only when I was lying there that I saw what had scared him. It looked as if somebody had fallen on the path. I thought it was a dead body. But when I went to look I saw it was a human-sized doll."
Wallander could see she was still fearful. He recalled what Gustaf Torstensson had said to Mrs Duner, about Harderberg having a macabre sense of humour.
"I'd have been frightened to death as well," he said. "But nothing's going to happen to you. Not if you keep in touch with me."
"I like the horses," Sofia said. "But not the rest of it."
"Stick to the horses," Wallander said. "And remember which paths you're not supposed to ride on."
He could see she felt relieved, now that she had told him what had happened.
"Go back now," he said, gathering up the papers on the table. "I'll stay here for a while. You're right, you mustn't be late."
She stood up and left. Half a minute later Wallander followed her into the street. He supposed she would have gone down to the harbour to get a taxi from there, but he was just in time to see her get into a taxi next to the newspaper stall. The car drove away, and he waited to make sure it was not followed. Then he went to his own car and drove back to Ystad, thinking about what she had said. He certainly could not, on her evidence, be sure about Harderberg's plans.
The pilots, he thought. And the flight plans. We have to be one step ahead of him if he really is going to move abroad.
It was time for another visit to Farnholm Castle. He wanted to talk to Harderberg himself again.
Wallander was at the police station by 7.45. He bumped into Hoglund in the corridor. She nodded at him, curtly, and disappeared into her office. Wallander stopped in mid-stride, bewildered. Why had she been so abrupt? He turned back and knocked on her office door. When she responded he opened the door but did not go in.
"It's customary to say 'hello' in this police station," he said.
She went on poring over a file.
"What's the matter?"
She looked up at him. "I wouldn't have thought you needed to ask me that," she said.
Wallander stepped inside her office. "I don't understand," he said. "What have I done?"
"I thought you were different," she said, "but now I see that you're the same as all the rest of them."
"I still don't get it," Wallander said. "Would you mind explaining?"
"I've nothing else to say. I'd prefer you to leave."
"Not until I've had an explanation."
Wallander was not sure if she was about to throw a fit of rage, or burst into tears.
"I thought we were well on the way to becoming friends," he said, "not just colleagues."
"So did I," she said. "But no longer."
"Explain!"
"I'll be honest with you," she said, "even though that's the very opposite of what you've been with me. I thought you were someone I could trust, but you're not. It may take me some time to get used to that."
Wallander flung his arms out wide. "Do please explain."
"Hanson came back today," she said. "You must know that because he came to my office and told me about a conversation he had just had with you."
"What did he say?"
"That you were glad he was back."
"So I am. We need every officer we can get."
"The more so since you're disappointed in me."
Wallander stared at her in bewilderment. "He said that? That I was disappointed in you? He said I'd told him that?"
"I only wish you'd said it to me first."
"But it's not true. I said exactly the opposite. I told him you'd already proved yourself to be a good police officer."
"He sounded very convincing."
Wallander was furious. "That bloody Hanson!" he almost shouted. "If you like I'll phone him and tell him to get himself in here this minute. Surely you accept that not a word of what he said is true?"
"Why did he say it then?"
"Because he's nervous."
"Of me?"
"Why do you think he's away on courses all the time? Because he's afraid you'll overtake him. He hates to think that you are going to prove to be a better police officer than he is."
He could tell that she was beginning to believe him. "It's true," he said. "Tomorrow you and I are going to have a little talk with Mr Hanson. And it's not going to be a pleasant little talk as far as he's concerned, I can promise you that."
She looked up at him. "In that case, I apologise," she said.
"He's the one who needs to apologise," Wallander said. "Not you."
But the following day, Friday, November 26, the frost white on the trees outside the police station, Hoglund asked Wallander not to say anything to Hanson. After sleeping on it, she had decided that she would prefer to speak to him herself, at some stage in the future, when she had had a chance to distance herself from it. Wallander was persuaded that she believed him now, so he raised no objection. Which did not mean that he would forget what Hanson had done. Later in the morning, with everybody seeming to be frozen stiff and out of sorts, apart from Akeson who was fighting fit again, Wallander called a meeting. He told the team about his meeting with Sofia in Simrishamn, but it did not seem to improve the mood of his colleagues. On the other hand, Svedberg produced a map of the Farnholm Castle estate. It was very big. Svedberg told them that the extensive grounds had been acquired in the late nineteenth century when the castle belonged to a family with the strikingly unnoble name of Martensson. The head of the household had made a fortune building houses in Stockholm and then he had built what some would call a folly. Apparently, he was not only obsessed with grandeur, but may even have been close to actual lunacy. When Svedberg had exhausted all he had discovered about the castle, they continued to cross off their list aspects of the investigation that either had proved to be insignificant, or at the least could be put to one side for the present, being of little importance. Hoglund had finally managed to have a detailed conversation with Kim Sung-Lee, the cleaner at the Torstensson offices. As anticipated, she had nothing of significance to say, and her papers had proved to be in order and her presence in Sweden totally legal. Hoglund had also on her own initiative talked to the clerk, Sonia Lundin. Wallander could not help being pleased to note that Hanson was unable to conceal his disapproval of the way she had acted on her own initiative. Unfortunately, Sonia Lundin had nothing helpful to say either. One more possible lead could be crossed off. Eventually, when everybody appeared to be still more out of sorts and inert, and a grey fog seemed to have settled over the conference table, Wallander tried to bring them back to life by urging them to concentrate on the flight plans of Harderberg's Gulfstream. He also suggested that Hanson should make discreet enquiries about the two pilots. But he failed to blow away the fog, the inertia that had started to worry him, and it now seemed to him that their only hope was that the financial experts with all their computer expertise might be able to breathe new life into the investigation. They had undertaken a thorough investigation into the Harderberg empire, but they had been forced to ask for an extension of the deadline, and the meeting had been postponed until the following Monday, November 29.