“I’m afraid I can’t,” she said. “They were complicated agreements between banks and companies in all four corners of the world. It was generally one of Dr. Harderberg’s secretaries who typed the documents. I was only rarely asked to type anything Mr. Torstensson was going to take to Dr. Harderberg. He typed up quite a lot of things himself.”
“But he didn’t do that for other clients?”
“Never.”
“How would you explain that?”
“I assumed they were so sensitive that not even I was allowed to see them,” she said frankly.
Wallander declined the offer of a coffee refill.
“Can you remember noticing any mention of a company called Avanca in any of the documents you saw?”
He could see she was trying hard to remember.
“No,” she said. “It’s possible I saw it, but I don’t remember it.”
“Just one more question,” he said. “Did you know about the threatening letters the firm received?”
“Gustaf Torstensson showed them to me,” she said. “But he said they were nothing to worry about. That’s why they weren’t put in the archives. I thought he had thrown them away.”
“Did you know that the man who wrote them, Lars Borman, was a friend of Gustaf Torstensson?”
“No, and I am surprised to hear it.”
“They met through an icons club or society.”
“I knew about the club, but I did not know that the man who wrote those letters was a member.”
Wallander put down his coffee cup. “I won’t disturb you any longer,” he said, rising to his feet.
She remained seated, staring at him. “Don’t you have any news at all to tell me?” she said.
“We don’t know yet who committed the murders,” Wallander said. “Nor do we know why they did it. When we know that, we’ll know why somebody planted a mine in your garden.”
She stood up and took hold of his arm. “You have to catch them,” she said.
“Yes,” Wallander said. “But it could take time.”
“I have to know what happened before I die.”
“As soon as there is anything to tell you, I’ll be in touch right away,” he said, knowing that this could not have sounded very satisfactory to her ears.
Wallander drove to the police station and was told that Björk was in Malmö. So he went to Svedberg and asked him to find out why there was no proper protection at Mrs. Dunér’s house.
“Do you really think she’s at risk?” Svedberg said.
“I don’t think anything,” Wallander said. “But more than enough has happened already.”
Svedberg handed him a note. “There was a call from somebody called Lisbeth Norin,” he said. “You can reach her at this number. She’ll be there until five.”
It was a number in Malmö, not Gothenburg. Wallander went to his office and dialed the number. An old man’s voice answered. After a pause Lisbeth Norin came to the phone, and Wallander introduced himself.
“I happen to be in Malmö for a few days,” she said. “I’m visiting my father, he’s broken his femur. I checked my answering machine and heard you’d been trying to reach me.”
“Yes, I’d be grateful for a word with you,” Wallander said. “Preferably not over the phone.”
“What’s it about?”
“I have some questions in connection with a case we’re investigating at the moment,” Wallander said. “I heard about you from a Dr. Strömberg in Lund.”
“I have some free time tomorrow,” she said. “But it will have to be here in Malmö.”
“I’ll drive over,” Wallander said. “Would ten a.m. suit you?”
“That will be fine.”
She gave him the address in central Malmö.
Wallander wondered how an old man with a broken femur could answer the phone. Then he realized he was extremely hungry. It was already late in the afternoon. He decided to work at home. He had a lot of material on Harderberg’s business empire that he had not yet read. He found a plastic shopping bag in a drawer and filled it with files. He told Ebba that he would be working at home for the rest of the day.
He stopped at a grocery store and bought some food, and went into a tobacconist’s to buy five lottery scratch cards. When he got home he cooked himself some blood sausages and had a beer with it. He looked in vain for the jar of lingonberry jam he thought he had. Then he did the dishes and checked his lottery cards. No luck. He decided he had had enough coffee for one day and lay on his unmade bed for a short rest before starting to go through the files.
He was woken up by the telephone ringing. He looked at the clock by his bed. It was 9:10 p.m.
He picked up the phone and recognized Widén’s voice.
“I’m calling from a phone booth,” he said. “I thought you’d like to know that Sofia got the job. She starts tomorrow.”
Wallander was wide awake immediately.
“Good,” he said. “Who gave her the job?”
“A woman called Karlén.”
Wallander recalled his first visit to Farnholm Castle. “Anita Karlén,” he said.
“A couple of cobs,” Widén said. “Very valuable. That’s what she’ll be looking after. Nothing wrong with the wages either. The stables are small, but there’s a one-room apartment attached. I think Sofia has a much higher opinion of you now that she has this opportunity.”
“That’s good,” Wallander said.
“She’s going to phone me in a few days’ time. Just one problem: I can’t remember your name.”
Wallander also had to think hard before remembering. “Roger Lundin,” he said.
“I’ll write it down.”
“I’d better do the same. Incidentally, better if she doesn’t phone from the castle, tell her to use a pay phone the same as you’re doing.”
“There’s a telephone in her apartment. Why shouldn’t she use that?”
“It could be bugged.”
Wallander could hear Widén taking a deep breath at the other end of the line.
“I think you’re out of your mind.”
“I ought to be careful with my own phone, in fact,” Wallander said. “But we keep a regular check on our police lines.”
“Who is this Harderberg? A monster?”
“He’s a friendly, suntanned man who’s always smiling,” Wallander said. “He’s also elegantly dressed. There are lots of ways a monster can look.”
Beeps were sounding at the other end of the line. “I’ll call you,” Widén said, then he was cut off.
Wallander wondered if he should phone Höglund and tell her what had happened, but decided not to. It was getting late. He spent the rest of the evening poring over the contents of the plastic shopping bag. At midnight he took out his old school atlas and looked up some of the exotic places the tentacles of Harderberg’s empire reached. It was clear that it was a huge operation. Wallander also had a nagging worry that he was pointing the investigation and his colleagues in the wrong direction. Perhaps there was another solution to the deaths of the two lawyers after all.
It was 1 a.m. by the time he went to bed. It struck him that it was a long time since Linda had been in touch. On the other hand, he should have phoned her ages ago.
Tuesday, November 23 was a fine, clear autumn day.
He had taken the liberty of staying in that morning. He had phoned the station a little before 8:00 and told them he was going to Malmö. He had made coffee and stayed in bed for another hour. Then he had taken a quick shower and set off. The address Norin had given him was near the Triangle in the center of the city. He left his car in the multistory parking garage behind the Sheraton Hotel, and rang the doorbell at exactly 10:00. A woman of about his own age answered. She was wearing a brightly colored tracksuit, and he wondered if he was at the wrong address. She did not fit the image he had of her after hearing her voice on the telephone, nor did it correspond to the general and no doubt prejudiced idea he had of journalists.