“The pilots interest me,” Wallander said. “People who travel that often with each other and spend so much time together must have a special relationship. They know a lot about each other. Don’t they have to have some kind of stewardess with them? For safety reasons?”
“Apparently not,” she said.
“We’ll have to try to make contact with the pilots,” Wallander said. “Hit on some way of finding out about the flight documentation.”
“I’d be happy to continue with that,” she said. “I promise to be discreet.”
“Go ahead,” Wallander said. “But get a move on. Time’s at a premium.”
That same afternoon Wallander called a meeting of his investigative team, without Björk being there. They crammed into Wallander’s office because the conference room was occupied by a meeting of police chiefs from all over the district, chaired by Björk. After they had heard what Höglund had to report about her meeting with the Bormans, Wallander informed them about his meeting with Harderberg at Farnholm Castle. Everybody listened intently, trying to find a lead, something he might himself have overlooked.
“My feeling that these murders and all the other incidents are linked to Harderberg is stronger now than it was before,” Wallander said in conclusion. “If you agree with me, we’ll go on following this line. But we can’t rely on my feelings, we must acknowledge that we haven’t solved anything yet. We could be wrong.”
“What else do we have to go on?” Svedberg said.
“We can always go looking for a madman,” Martinsson said. “A madman who doesn’t exist.”
“It’s too cold-blooded for that,” Höglund said. “It all seems to be so well planned. There’s nothing to suggest a madman at work.”
“We must continue to take every precaution,” Wallander said. “Somebody is keeping an eye on us, whether it’s Harderberg or somebody else.”
“It’s a pity we can’t count on Kurt Ström,” Svedberg said. “What we need is a contact inside the castle. Somebody who can move around among all those secretaries without drawing attention to himself.”
“I agree,” Wallander said. “It would be even better if we could find somebody who worked for Harderberg until recently. Especially somebody with a grudge.”
“The fraud squad people maintain that there are only a handful of people who are close to Harderberg,” Martinsson said. “And they’ve all been with him for many years. The secretaries are not very important. I don’t think they know much about what goes on.”
“Even so, we should have somebody there,” Svedberg insisted. “Somebody who could tell us about daily routines.”
The meeting was drifting toward stalemate.
“I have a proposal,” Wallander said. “Let’s shut ourselves away somewhere different tomorrow. We need peace and quiet to work our way through all the material. We have to define where we stand one more time. We need to use our time efficiently.”
“At this time of year the Continental Hotel is practically empty,” Martinsson said. “I’d have thought they would have a conference room we could rent for next to nothing.”
“I like it,” Wallander said. “The symbolism is attractive. That’s where Gustaf Torstensson met Harderberg for the first time.”
They met on the first floor of the Continental Hotel. Discussions continued through lunch and every coffee break. By that evening, they agreed to continue the next day as well. Somebody phoned Björk, who gave his blessing. They shut out the outside world and worked their way through all the material yet again. They were well aware that time was running out. It was Friday, November 19.
It was late afternoon when they finally broke up. Wallander thought that Höglund had summed up the state of the investigation best.
“I get the feeling everything is here,” she said, “but we can’t see how it hangs together. If it is Harderberg pulling the strings, he’s doing it very skillfully. Whichever way we turn he moves the goalposts and we have to start all over.”
They were all exhausted when they left the hotel. But this was no vanquished army beating a retreat. Wallander knew something important had happened. Everybody had shared all they knew with everybody else. Nobody needed to be unsure about what ideas or doubts their colleagues had.
“Let’s take a break this weekend,” Wallander said. “We need some rest. We need to be raring to go again by Monday.”
Wallander spent Saturday with his father in Löderup. He managed to repair the roof, then sat for hours with his father in the kitchen, playing cards. Over dinner Wallander could see quite clearly that Gertrud was genuinely enjoying life with his father. Before he left, Wallander asked her if she was familiar with Farnholm Castle.
“They used to say it was haunted,” she said. “But perhaps they say that about all castles?”
It was midnight when Wallander set off for home. The temperature was below freezing, and he was not looking forward to winter.
He slept in on Sunday morning. Then he went for a walk, and inspected the boats in the harbor. He spent the afternoon cleaning his apartment. Yet another Sunday wasted on unproductive matters.
When Wallander woke up on the morning of Monday, November 22, he had a headache. He was surprised, since he hadn’t had a drop to drink the previous night. Then he realized he hadn’t slept well. He had had one horrific nightmare after the other. His father had died suddenly, but when he went to see him in his dream coffin, he hadn’t dared to look because he knew it was really Linda lying there.
He got up reluctantly and dissolved two painkillers in half a glass of water. It was still below freezing. As he waited for the coffee water to boil, he thought that his nightmares were a prologue to the meeting he and Björk were due to have with Åkeson that morning. Wallander knew it was going to be tricky. Although he had no doubt Åkeson would give them the green light to continue concentrating on Harderberg, he knew that their results had been unsatisfactory so far. They had not been able to get their material to point in any one particular direction. The investigation was drifting. Åkeson would, with good reason, want to know how much longer the investigators could go on just standing on one leg, as it were.
He scrutinized his wall calendar, coffee mug in hand. Just over a month to go before Christmas. He would say they needed as long as that. If they were no nearer to cracking the case by then, he would have to accept that they would need to start investigating other leads in the new year.
A month, he thought. Something needs to happen pretty fast.
He was interrupted by the phone ringing.
“I hope I didn’t wake you up,” Höglund said.
“I’m drinking coffee.”
“Do you get the Ystad Allehanda?” she said.
“Of course.”
“Have you read it today?” she said.
“I haven’t even picked it up from the hallway.”
“Go get it,” she said. “Turn to the job listings.”
Wondering what was going on, he went out into the hall and fetched his paper. Telephone in hand, he started turning to the ads.
“What am I supposed to be looking for?” he asked.
“You’ll see,” she said. “See you later.”
She hung up. He saw it at once. An advertisement for a stable girl at Farnholm Castle. To start immediately. That’s why she had worded her call the way she did. She had not wanted to mention Farnholm Castle on the telephone.
This could be their chance. As soon as he finished the meeting with Åkeson he would phone his friend Sten Widén.