“Yes, but there’s something more,” Wallander said. “And I can’t put my finger on it.”
Björk indicated it was time to conclude the meeting.
“Since I’ve already started delving into what happened to Gustaf Torstensson, I might as well go on,” Wallander said. “If nobody has any objections.”
“The rest of us can devote ourselves to Sten Torstensson, then,” Martinsson said. “Can I assume that you’ll want to work on your own to start with, as usual?”
“Not necessarily. But if I understand it rightly, the Sten case is much more complicated. His father didn’t have so many clients. His life seems to be more transparent.”
“Let’s do that then,” Björk said, shutting his diary with a thud. “We’ll meet every day at 4:00, as usual, to see how far we’ve gotten. Oh, and I need help with a press conference later today.”
“Not me,” Wallander said. “I haven’t got the strength.”
“I thought Ann-Britt might do it,” Björk said. “It won’t do any harm for people to know she’s here with us now.”
“That’s fine by me,” she said, to the others’ surprise. “I need to learn about such things.”
After the meeting Wallander asked Martinsson to stay behind. When the others had left, he closed the door.
“We need to have a few words,” Wallander said. “I feel as though I’m barging in and taking over, when what I was really supposed to be doing was confirming my resignation.”
“We’re all a bit surprised, certainly,” Martinsson said. “You must accept that. You’re not the only one who’s a bit unsure of what’s going on.”
“I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes.”
Martinsson burst out laughing. Then blew his nose. “The Swedish police force is full of officers suffering from sore toes and heels,” he said. “The more bureaucratic the force becomes, the more people get obsessed about their careers. All the regulations and the paperwork—it gets worse every day—result in misunderstandings and a lack of clarity, so it’s no wonder people step on each other’s toes and kick their heels. Sometimes I think I understand why Björk is worried about the way things are going. What’s happening to ordinary straightforward police work?”
“The police force has always reflected society at large,” Wallander said. “But I know what you mean. Rydberg used to say the same thing. What’s Höglund going to say?”
“She’s good,” Martinsson said. “Hanson and Svedberg are both frightened of her precisely because she’s so good. Hanson especially is worried that he might get left behind. That’s why he spends most of his time taking courses nowadays, picking up extra qualifications.”
“The new-age police officer,” Wallander said, getting to his feet. “That’s what she is.” He paused in the doorway. “You said something yesterday that rang a bell. Something about Sten Torstensson. I’m not sure what, but I have the feeling it was more important than it sounded.”
“I was reading aloud from my notes,” Martinsson said. “You can have a copy.”
“I daresay I’m imagining things,” Wallander said.
When he got back to his office and had closed the door, he knew that he had experienced something he had almost forgotten existed. It was as if he had rediscovered his drive. Not everything, it seemed, had been lost during the time he had been away.
He sat at his desk, feeling that he could now examine himself at arm’s length: the man staggering around in the West Indies, the miserable trip to Thailand, all those days and nights when everything seemed to have ground to a halt apart from his automatic bodily functions. He was looking at himself, but he realized that that person was somebody he no longer knew. He had been somebody else.
He shuddered to contemplate the catastrophic consequences that some of his actions could have had. He thought hard about his daughter Linda. It was only when Martinsson knocked on the door and delivered a photocopy of his notes from the previous day that Wallander succeeded in banishing all the memories. Everybody had within himself a secret room, it seemed to him, where memories and recollections were all jumbled up together. Now he had bolted the door, and attached a strong padlock. Then he went to the bathroom and flushed away the antidepressants he had been carrying around in a tube in his pocket.
He returned to his office and started work. It was 10 a.m. He read carefully through Martinsson’s notes without identifying what it was that had caught his attention. It’s too soon, he thought. Rydberg would have advised patience. Now I have to remember to advise myself.
He wondered briefly where to begin. Then he looked up Gustaf Torstensson’s home address in the file for the car accident. Timmermansgatan 12. That was in one of Ystad’s oldest and most affluent residential districts, beyond the army barracks, near Sandskogen. He telephoned the law firm and spoke to Sonia Lundin, who told him that the house keys were in the office. He left the station and noted that the rain clouds had dispersed, the sky was clear. He had the feeling he was breathing in the first of the cold winter air that was slowly advancing. As he drew up outside the office building, Lundin came out and handed him the keys.
He took two wrong turns before he reached the correct address. The big, brown-painted wooden house was a long way back in the middle of a large garden. He swung open the creaking gate and started down the gravel drive. It was quiet, and the town seemed a long way away. A world inside a world, he thought. The Torstensson law firm must have been a very profitable business. He doubted if there were many houses in Ystad more expensive than this one. The garden was well-tended but strangely lifeless. A few deciduous trees, some neatly clipped bushes, some dull flower beds. Perhaps an elderly lawyer needed to surround himself with straight lines, a traditional garden with no surprises or improvisations. Someone had told him that as a lawyer Torstensson had a reputation for dragging out court proceedings to an unprecedented level of boredom. One spiteful opponent claimed that Torstensson could get a client off by driving the prosecutor to distraction with his plodding, colorless presentation of the case for the defense. He should ask Per Åkeson what he thought of Gustaf Torstensson. They must have dealt with each other many times over the years.
He went up the steps to the front door and found the right key. It was an advanced Chubb lock of a type he had not come across before. He let himself into a large hall with a broad staircase at the back leading to the upper floor. Heavy curtains were drawn across the windows. He opened one set and saw that the window was barred. An elderly man living alone, experiencing the fear that inevitably goes along with age. Was there something here he needed to protect, apart from himself? Or was his fear something that originated beyond these walls? He made his way through the house, starting on the ground floor with its library lined with somber portraits of family ancestors, and the large open-plan living room and dining room. Everything, from the furniture to the wallpaper, was dark, giving him a feeling of melancholy and silence. Not even a small patch of light color anywhere, no trace of a light touch that could raise a smile.
He went upstairs. Guest rooms with neatly made beds, deserted like a hotel closed for the winter. The door to Torstensson’s own bedroom had a barred inner door. He went back downstairs, oppressed by the gloom. He sat at the kitchen table and rested his chin on his hands. All he could hear was a clock ticking.
Torstensson was sixty-nine when he died. He had been living alone for the last fifteen years, since his wife died. Sten was their only child. Judging by one of the portraits in the library, the family was descended from Field Marshal Lennart Torstensson. Wallander’s vague memory from his schooldays was that during the Thirty Years’ War the man had a reputation for exceptional brutality toward the peasants wherever his army had set foot.