Around midday Wallander went home for lunch. He was back by 1:30. He had just settled down to look through his files when Höglund knocked and came in.
“Back so soon?” Wallander said in surprise. “I thought you were supposed to be in Ängelholm?”
“It didn’t take long to talk to Borman’s family,” she said. “Unfortunately.”
Wallander could hear she was unhappy with the trip, and her mood immediately rubbed off on him. It’s useless, he thought gloomily. Nothing here to help us break down the walls of Farnholm Castle.
She had sat down on his visitor’s chair and was leafing through her notebook.
“How’s the sick child?” Wallander said.
“Children don’t stay sick for long nowadays,” she said. “I’ve found out quite a lot about Harderberg’s jet, by the way. I’m glad Svedberg phoned and gave me that to keep me occupied. Women always have a guilty conscience when they can’t work.”
“The Bormans first,” Wallander said. “Let’s start with them.”
“There really isn’t much to say,” she said. “There’s no doubt they think he committed suicide. I don’t think the widow has gotten over it, nor the son or daughter. I think it’s the first time I’ve realized what it must mean to a family when somebody takes his own life, and for no reason.”
“He really hadn’t left anything? No letter?”
“Not a thing.”
“That doesn’t fit with the picture we have of Borman. He wouldn’t just drop his bike on the ground, and he wouldn’t have taken his life without leaving some kind of explanation, or an apology.”
“I went over everything I thought was important. He wasn’t in debt, he didn’t gamble, and he hadn’t been involved in any kind of scam.”
“You mean you asked about that?” Wallander said, astonished.
“Indirect questions can produce direct answers,” she said.
Wallander thought he understood what she meant. “People who know the police are coming make preparations,” he said. “Is that it?”
“All three of them had decided to defend his reputation,” she said. “They listed all his good qualities without my needing to ask if he had any weaknesses.”
“The only question is whether what they said is true.”
“They weren’t lying. I don’t know what he might have done in private, but he does not seem to have been the kind of man who leads a double life.”
“Go on,” Wallander said.
“It came as a total shock to them,” she said. “And they haven’t come to terms with it yet. I think they spend every day and night worrying about why he would have taken his own life. Without being able to find an answer.”
“Did you give any indication that it might not have been suicide?”
“No.”
“Good. Go on.”
“The only thing of any interest to us is that Borman was in touch with Gustaf Torstensson. They were able to confirm that. They could also tell me why. Torstensson and Borman were members of a society for the study of icons. Gustaf Torstensson occasionally used to visit the Bormans. And Borman visited Torstensson in Ystad now and then.”
“You mean they were friends?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I don’t think they were that close. And that’s what’s interesting, it seems to me.”
“I don’t follow you,” Wallander said.
“What I mean is this,” she said. “Torstensson and Borman were both loners. One was married, the other a widower, but they were loners even so. They didn’t meet very often, and when they did, it was to talk about icons. But don’t you think that these two solitary men, caught up in a difficult situation, might confide in each other? They didn’t have any real friends, but they did have each other.”
“It’s conceivable,” Wallander said. “But it doesn’t explain Borman’s threatening letters to the whole law firm.”
“The filing clerk, Lundin, wasn’t threatened,” she objected. “That might be more significant than we think.”
Wallander leaned back in his chair and looked intently at her. “You think you’re onto something.”
“It’s only speculation,” she said. “Probably far-fetched.”
“We have nothing to lose by thinking,” Wallander said. “I’m all ears.”
“Let’s suppose that Borman told Torstensson what had happened at the county council. Fraud. I mean, they can’t have talked about nothing but icons all the time. We know that Borman was disappointed and offended because there was no proper police investigation into what happened. Let’s suppose, too, that Torstensson knew there was a link between Harderberg and that swindling company STRUFAB. He might have mentioned that he worked for Harderberg. Let’s go a step further and suppose that Borman saw in Torstensson a lawyer with the same feelings about justice as he had himself, a sort of guardian angel. He asked for help. But Torstensson did nothing. You can interpret threatening letters in different ways.”
“Can you?” Wallander said. “Threatening letters are threatening letters.”
“Some are more serious than others,” she said. “Perhaps we should not have overlooked that Torstensson did not in fact take them seriously. He did not record them, he did not turn to the police or to the Bar Council. He just hid them away. The most dramatic discovery can sometimes be finding that an incident wasn’t really very dramatic. The fact that Lundin wasn’t mentioned might be because Borman did not know she existed.”
“Good thinking,” Wallander said. “Your speculations are no worse than any others. On the contrary. But there’s just one thing you don’t explain. The most important detail of all. Borman’s murder. A carbon copy of Gustaf Torstensson’s death. Executions disguised as something else.”
“I think you might have given the answer yourself,” she said. “Their deaths were similar.”
Wallander thought for a moment. “You could be right,” he said. “If we suppose that Gustaf Torstensson was already suspect in Alfred Harderberg’s eyes. If he was being watched. Then what happened to Lars Borman could be a copy of what nearly happened to Mrs. Dunér.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” she said.
Wallander stood up. “We can’t prove any of this,” he said.
“Not yet,” she said.
“We don’t have much time,” Wallander said. “I suspect Per Åkeson will demand that we broaden the investigation if nothing happens. Let’s say we have a month in which to concentrate on our so-called prime suspect, Alfred Harderberg.”
“That might be long enough,” she said.
“I’m having a bad day today,” Wallander said. “I think the whole investigation’s going off the rails. That’s why it’s good to hear what you have to say. Detectives whose resolve starts to falter have no business being in the force.”
They went to get some coffee, but paused in the corridor.
“The private jet,” Wallander said. “What do we know about that?”
“Not very much,” she said. “It’s a Grumman Gulfstream dating from 1974. Its Swedish base is at Sturup. It gets serviced in Germany, in Bremen. Harderberg employs two pilots. One’s from Austria and is called Karl Heider. He’s been with Harderberg for many years and lives in Svedala. The other pilot has only had the job for a couple of years. His name is Luiz Manshino, originally from Mauritius. He has an apartment in Malmö.”
“Where did you get all that information from?”
“I pretended to be from a newspaper running a feature on the private jets of Swedish business executives. I spoke to somebody in charge of PR at the airport. I don’t think Harderberg will be suspicious, even if he does hear about it. Obviously, though, I couldn’t start asking if there were logbooks that recorded his travels.”