When Wallander was on his own he took out the leather file he had been given at Farnholm Castle. He spent almost an hour acquainting himself with the extent of Harderberg’s business empire. He had still not finished when there was a knock on the door and Nyberg came in. Wallander noticed to his surprise that he was still in his dirty overalls.
“Here are the answers to your questions,” he said, flopping down on Wallander’s visitor’s chair. “The letters are postmarked in Helsingborg, and on one of the envelopes it says ‘The Linden Hotel.’”
Wallander pulled over a pad and made a note.
“Linden Hotel,” Nyberg said. “Gjutargatan 12. It even gave the phone number.”
“Where?”
“I thought you’d grasped that,” Nyberg said. “The letters were postmarked in Helsingborg. That’s where the Linden Hotel is as well.”
“Well done,” Wallander said.
“I just do as I’m told,” Nyberg said. “But because this went so quickly, I did something else as well. I think you’re going to have problems.”
Wallander looked questioningly at him.
“I called that number in Helsingborg,” Nyberg said. “I got the disconnected tone. It no longer exists. I asked Ebba to look into it. It took her ten minutes to establish that the Linden Hotel went out of business a year ago.”
Nyberg stood up and brushed down the seat of the chair. “Now I’m going to lunch,” he said.
“Do that,” Wallander said. “And thanks for your help.”
When Nyberg had left, Wallander thought over what he had heard. Then he summoned Svedberg and Martinsson. A few minutes later they had collected cups of coffee and were in Wallander’s office.
“There must be some kind of hotel register,” Wallander said. “I mean, a hotel is a business enterprise. It has an owner. It can’t go out of business without it being recorded somewhere.”
“What happens to old hotel ledgers?” Svedberg said. “Are they discarded? Or are they kept?”
“That’s something we’ll have to find out,” Wallander said. “Now, right away. Most important is to get hold of the Linden Hotel’s owner. If we divide the task up between us, it shouldn’t take us more than an hour or so. We’ll meet again when we’re ready.”
Wallander called Ebba and asked her to look for the name Borman in the directories for Skåne and Halland first. He had only just put down the receiver when the phone rang. It was his father.
“Don’t forget you’re coming to see me this evening,” his father said.
“I’ll be there,” Wallander said, thinking that in fact he was too tired to drive out to Löderup. But he knew he could not say no, he could not change the arrangement.
“I’ll be there at about seven,” he said.
“We’ll see,” his father said.
“What do you mean by that?” Wallander asked, and could hear the anger in his voice.
“I just mean we’ll see if that is in fact when you come,” his father said.
Wallander forced himself not to start arguing.
“I’ll be there,” he said, and put down the phone.
His office suddenly seemed stifling. He went out into the hallway, and kept going as far as reception.
“There is nobody called Borman in the directories,” Ebba said. “Do you want me to keep looking?”
“Not yet,” Wallander said.
“I’d like to ask you to come for dinner,” Ebba said. “You must tell me how you are.”
Wallander nodded, but he said nothing.
He went back to his office and opened the window. The wind was getting stronger still, and he felt very cold. He closed the window and sat at his desk. The file from Farnholm Castle was lying open, but he pushed it aside. He thought about Baiba Liepa in Riga.
Twenty minutes later he was still there, thinking, when Svedberg knocked on the door and came in.
“Now I know all there is to know about Swedish hotels,” he said. “Martinsson will be here in a minute.”
When Martinsson had closed the door behind him, Svedberg sat at one corner of the desk and started reading from a pad in which he had made his notes.
“The Linden Hotel was owned and run by a man called Bertil Forsdahl,” he began. “I got that information from the county offices. It was a little family hotel that was no longer viable. And Forsdahl is getting on in years, he’s seventy. I’ve got his number here. He lives in Helsingborg.”
Wallander dialed the number as Svedberg read out the digits. The telephone rang for a considerable time before it was answered. It was a woman.
“I’m trying to reach Bertil Forsdahl,” Wallander said.
“He’s gone out,” the woman said. “He’ll be back late this evening. Who shall I tell him called?”
Wallander thought for a moment before replying.
“My name’s Kurt Wallander,” he said. “I’m calling from the police station in Ystad. I have some questions to ask your husband about the hotel he used to run a year or so ago. No cause for concern, it’s just some routine questions.”
“My husband’s an honest man,” the woman said.
“I have no doubt about that,” Wallander said. “This is just a routine inquiry. When exactly do you expect him back?”
“He’s on a senior citizens’ excursion to Ven,” the woman said. “They’re due to have dinner in Landskrona, but he’s bound to be home by ten. He never goes to bed before midnight. That’s a habit he got into when he ran the hotel.”
“Tell him I’ll get back to him,” Wallander said. “And there’s absolutely nothing to be worried about.”
“I’m not worried,” the woman said. “My husband’s an honest man.”
Wallander hung up. “I’ll drive out and visit him tonight,” Wallander said.
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?” Martinsson asked.
“I’m sure it can,” Wallander said. “But I have nothing else to do tonight.”
An hour later they met to assess the situation. Björk had left a message to say he could not be there because he had been summoned to an urgent meeting with the district police chief. Höglund suddenly put in an appearance. Her husband had come home and was looking after the sick child.
Everybody agreed they should concentrate on the threatening letters. Wallander could not escape the nagging thought that there was something odd about the dead lawyers, something he should have picked up. He remembered that Höglund had had the same feeling the previous day.
After the meeting they bumped into each other in the corridor.
“If you’re going to Helsingborg tonight, I’ll go with you,” she said. “If I may.”
“It’s not necessary,” he said.
“But I’d like to, even so.”
He nodded. They agreed to meet at the police station at 9:00.
Wallander drove to his father’s house at Löderup shortly before 7 p.m. He stopped on the way to buy some buns to eat with the coffee. When he got there his father was in his studio, painting the same old picture: an autumn landscape, with or without a grouse in the foreground.
My father’s what people call a “kitsch” artist, Wallander thought. I sometimes feel like a kitschy police officer.
His father’s wife, who used to be his home help, was visiting her parents. Wallander expected his father to be annoyed when he heard that his son could only stay an hour, but to his surprise, he simply nodded. They played cards for a little while and Wallander told him in detail why he returned to work. His father did not seem interested in his reasons. It was an evening when, just for once, they did not argue. As Wallander drove back to Ystad, he racked his brains to remember when that had last happened.
At 8:55 they were in Wallander’s car, heading for the Malmö road. It was still windy, and Wallander could feel a draft coming from the ill-fitting rubber strip around the windshield. He could smell the faint aroma of Höglund’s discreet perfume. When they emerged onto the E65 he sped up.