“There was a man here this evening, asking for Mr. Wallander,” she said, handing him back the key.
He looked blankly at her.
“Nobody asks for me,” he said. “Nobody even knows I’m here.”
“This man did,” she said. “He was anxious to find you.”
“Did he give you his name?”
“No, but he was Swedish.”
Wallander shook his head and tried to put it out of his mind. He did not want to see anybody, and nobody wanted to see him either, he was sure of that.
The next day he was full of regrets and went back to the beach, never giving a thought to what the landlady had told him. The fog was thick, and he felt very tired. For the first time he asked himself what he thought he was doing on the beach. After only a kilometer or so he wondered if he had the strength to go on, and sat down on the upturned hulk of a large rowboat half-buried in the sand.
It was then that he noticed a man approaching through the fog. It was as if somebody had intruded on the privacy of his office out there on the boundless sands.
His first impression was of a blurred stranger, wearing a windbreaker and a cap that seemed too small for his head. Then he seemed vaguely familiar, but it was not until he had come closer and Wallander had stood up that he realized who it was. They shook hands, and Wallander wondered how on earth his refuge had been discovered. He tried to remember when he had last seen Sten Torstensson, and thought that it must have been in connection with some court proceedings that last fateful spring.
“I came to see you last night at the guesthouse,” Torstensson said. “I don’t want to disturb you, of course, but I must talk to you.”
Once upon a time I was a police officer and he was a lawyer, Wallander thought, that’s all there was to it. We used to sit on either side of criminals, and occasionally but not very often we might argue about whether or not an arrest was justified. We got to know each other a bit better during the difficult period of my divorce from Mona, when he took care of my interests. One day we realized something had clicked, something that might be the beginnings of a friendship. Friendship often develops out of a meeting at which nobody had expected any such miracle to happen. But friendship is a miracle, that’s something life has taught me. He invited me out sailing one weekend. It was blowing a gale, and I vowed I would never set foot on a sail-boat again. Then we started meeting, not all that often, not regularly. And now he’s tracked me down and wants to talk.
“I heard that somebody had been asking for me,” Wallander said. “How the hell did you find me here?”
He knew he was making it clear he resented being disturbed in his refuge among the dunes.
“You know me,” Torstensson said, “I’m not the sort to make a nuisance of myself. My secretary claims I’m sometimes frightened of being a nuisance to myself, whatever she means by that. But I phoned your sister in Stockholm. Or rather, I got in touch with your father and he gave me her number. She knew the name of the guesthouse, and where it was. And so here I am. I stayed the night at the hotel next to the art museum.”
They had started walking along the beach, the wind behind them. The woman who was always out with her dog had stopped and was staring at them, and Wallander was sure she would be surprised to see he had a visitor. They walked in silence, and Wallander waited for Torstensson to speak, feeling how odd it was to have someone by his side.
“I need your help,” Torstensson said, eventually. “As a friend and as a police officer.”
“As a friend,” Wallander said. “If I can. Which I doubt. But not as a police officer.”
“I know you’re still on a break from work,” Torstensson said.
“Not only that. You can be the first to know that I’m quitting altogether.”
Torstensson stopped in his tracks.
“That’s how it is,” Wallander said. “But tell me why you’re here.”
“My father’s dead.”
Wallander had known him. He, too, was a lawyer, although he only occasionally appeared in court. As far as Wallander could remember, the older Torstensson spent most of his time advising on financial matters. He tried to work out how old he must have been. Nearing seventy, he supposed, an age by which quite a lot of people are dead already.
“He died in a road accident some weeks ago,” Torstensson said. “Just south of Brösarp Hills.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Wallander said. “What happened?”
“That’s a good question. That’s why I’m here.”
Wallander looked at him blankly.
“It’s cold,” Torstensson said. “They serve coffee at the art museum. I have the car with me.”
Wallander nodded. His bicycle stuck out of the trunk as they drove through the dunes. There were not many customers in the museum café at that time of the morning. The girl behind the counter was humming a tune Wallander was surprised to recognize from one of his new cassettes.
“It was late in the evening,” Torstensson began. “October 11, to be precise. Dad had been to see one of our most important clients. According to the police he’d been driving too fast, lost control, the car had overturned and he was killed.”
“It can happen in a flash,” Wallander said. “Lose concentration for just a second, and the result can be catastrophic.”
“It was foggy that evening,” Torstensson said. “Dad never drove fast. Why would he have done so when it was foggy? He was obsessed by the fear of running over a hare.”
Wallander studied him. “What’s on your mind?”
“Martinsson was in charge of the case.”
“He’s good,” Wallander said. “If Martinsson says that’s what happened, there’s no reason to think otherwise.”
Torstensson looked gravely at him. “I have no doubt Martinsson is a good police officer,” he said. “Nor do I doubt they found my father dead in his car, which was upside down and badly damaged in a field beside the road. But there’s too much that doesn’t add up. Something more must have happened.”
“What?”
“Something else.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know.”
Wallander went to the counter to refill his cup.
Why don’t I tell him the truth? he wondered. That Martinsson is both imaginative and energetic, but can on occasions be careless.
“I’ve read the police report,” Torstensson said, when Wallander had sat down again. “I’ve taken it with me and read it at the spot where my father died. I’ve read the postmortem notes, I’ve spoken to Martinsson, I’ve done some thinking, and I’ve asked again. Now I’m here.”
“What can I do?” Wallander said. “You’re a lawyer, you know that in every case there are a few loose ends that we can never manage to tie up. I take it your father was alone in the car when it happened. If I understand you rightly, there were no witnesses. Which means the only person who could tell us exactly what happened was your father.”
“Something happened,” Torstensson said. “Something’s not right and I want to know what it is.”
“I can’t help you, although I’d like to.”
Torstensson seemed not to hear him. “The keys,” he said. “Just to give you one example. They weren’t in the ignition. They were on the floor.”