“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Wallander said. “I suppose you don’t know if he had any enemies?”
“Enemies? How could he have had enemies?”
Wallander paused a moment, then asked one last question. “What do you yourself think happened?”
“There was a time when you could understand things, even things that seemed incomprehensible,” she said. “Not now, though. It’s just not possible in this country nowadays.”
Wallander put on his jacket, which was still wet and heavy. He paused when he went out into the street. He thought about a slogan going around at the time he graduated from the police academy, sentiments he had adopted as his own. “There’s a time for life, and a time for death.”
He also thought about what Mrs. Dunér had said as he was leaving. He felt that she had said something significant about Sweden, something he should come back to. But for now he banished her words to the back of his mind.
I must try to understand the minds of the dead, he thought. A postcard from Finland, postmarked the day when Torstensson was drinking coffee with me in Skagen, makes it clear that he wasn’t telling the truth. Not the whole truth, at least. A person can’t lie without being aware of it.
He got into his car and tried to make up his mind what to do. For himself, what he wanted most of all was to go back to his apartment on Mariagatan, and lie down on the bed with the curtains drawn. As a police officer, however, he must think otherwise.
He checked his watch: 1:45 p.m. He would have to be back at the station by 4:00 at the latest for the meeting of the investigation team. He thought for a moment before deciding. He started the engine, turned onto Hamngatan, and bore left to emerge onto the Österleden highway again. He continued along the Malmö road until he came to the turnoff to Bjäresjö. The rain had become drizzle, but the wind was gusting. A few kilometers further on he left the main road and stopped outside a fenced-in yard with a rusty sign announcing that this was Niklasson’s Scrapyard. The gates were open so he drove in among the skeletons of cars piled on top of each other. He wondered how many times he had been to the scrapyard in his life. Over and over again Niklasson had been suspected of smuggling, and been prosecuted for the offense on many occasions. He was legendary in the Ystad police force: he had never once been convicted, in spite of overwhelming evidence of his guilt. But at the very last minute there had always been one little spanner that would get stuck in the works, and Niklasson had invariably been set free to return to the two trailers welded together that constituted both his home and his office.
Wallander switched off the engine and got out of the car. A dirty-looking cat studied him from the hood of an ancient, rusty Peugeot. Niklasson emerged from behind a pile of tires. He was wearing a dark-colored overcoat and a filthy hat pulled down over his long hair. Wallander had never seen him in any other attire.
“Kurt Wallander!” Niklasson said with a grin. “Long time no see. Here to arrest me?”
“Should I be?” Wallander said.
Niklasson laughed. “Only you can say,” he said.
“You have a car I’d like to take a look at,” Wallander said. “A dark blue Opel that used to be owned by Gustaf Torstensson, the lawyer.”
“Oh, that one. It’s over here,” he said, heading in the direction he was pointing. “What do you want to see that for?”
“Because a person in it died when the accident took place.”
“People drive like idiots,” Niklasson said. “The only thing that surprises me is that more of them aren’t killed. Here it is. I haven’t started cutting it up yet. It’s exactly the same as it was when they brought it here.”
Wallander nodded. “I can manage on my own now,” he said.
“I have no doubt you can,” Niklasson said. “Incidentally, I’ve always wondered what it feels like, killing somebody.”
Wallander was annoyed. “It feels goddamned awful,” he said. “What did you think it would feel like?”
Niklasson shrugged. “I just wondered.”
When he was by himself, Wallander walked around the car twice. He was surprised to see that there was hardly any superficial damage. After all, it had gone through a stone wall and then flipped over at least twice. He squinted into the driving seat. The car keys were lying on the floor next to the accelerator. With some difficulty he managed to open the door, pick up the keys, and fit them into the ignition. Sten had been right. Neither the keys nor the ignition were damaged. Thinking hard, he walked around the car once more. Then he climbed inside and tried to figure out where Gustaf Torstensson had hit his head. He searched thoroughly, without finding a solution. Although there were stains here and there that he supposed must be dried blood, he could not see anywhere where the dead man could have hit the back of his head.
He crawled out of the car again, the keys still in his hand. Without really knowing why, he opened the trunk. There were a few old newspapers and the remains of a broken kitchen chair. He remembered the chair leg he had found in the field. He took out one of the newspapers and checked the date. More than six months old. He closed the trunk.
Then it dawned on him what he had seen without it registering. He remembered clearly what it said in Martinsson’s report. It had been quite clear on one matter. All the doors apart from the driver’s door had been locked, including the trunk.
He stood stock-still.
There’s a broken chair locked in the trunk. A leg from that chair is lying half buried in the mud. A man is dead in the car.
His first reaction was to get angry about the slipshod examination and the unimaginative conclusions reached. Then he remembered that Sten had not found the chair leg either, and hence had not noticed anything odd about the trunk.
He walked slowly back to his car.
So Sten had been right. His father had not lost his life in a car accident. Even though he couldn’t envisage what, he was certain that something had happened that night in the fog, on that deserted stretch of road. There must have been at least one other person there. But who?
Niklasson emerged from his trailer.
“Can I get you a coffee?” he said.
Wallander shook his head. “Don’t touch that car,” he said. “We’ll need to take another look at it.”
“You’d better be careful,” Niklasson said.
Wallander frowned. “Why?”
“What’s his name? The son? Sten Torstensson? He was here and took a look at the car. Now he’s dead as well. That’s all. I’ll say no more.”
A thought struck Wallander. “Has anybody else been here and examined the car?” he said.
Niklasson shook his head. “Not a soul.”
Wallander drove back to Ystad. He felt tired. He could not figure out the significance of what he had discovered. But the bottom line was not in doubt: Sten had been right. The accident was a cover-up for something entirely different.
It was 4:07 p.m. when Björk closed the meeting-room door. Wallander immediately felt that the mood was halfhearted, uninterested. He could sense that none of his colleagues was going to have anything to report which would have a decisive, not to mention dramatic, effect on the investigation. This is one of those moments in the everyday life of a police officer that inevitably ends up on the cutting-room floor. Nevertheless, it’s times like this when nothing’s happening, when everybody’s tired, maybe even hostile toward one another, that are the foundation on which the course of the investigation is built. We have to tell one another that we do not know anything in order to inspire us to move on.
At that point he made up his mind. Whether it was an attempt to find himself an excuse for returning to duty and asking for his job back he could never afterward be sure. But that halfhearted atmosphere gave him the inspiration to perform again; it was a background against which he could show that he was still a police officer, despite everything, not a burned-out wreck who should have had the wits to fade away in silence.