Wallander had just decided to declare the meeting closed when Åkeson put his hand up. “We must talk about the state of play in the investigation,” he said. “I have allowed you to concentrate on Alfred Harderberg for another month, but at the same time I can’t ignore the fact that we have only extremely thin evidence to justify it. It’s as if we’re drifting further away from something crucial with every day that passes. I think we’d all benefit from making one more clear and simple summary of how far we’ve gotten, based exclusively on the facts. Nothing else.”
Everybody looked at Wallander. Åkeson’s comments came as no surprise, even if Wallander would have rather not been confronted by them.
“You’re right,” he said. “We need to see where we are. Even without any results from the fraud squads’ analyses.”
“Unraveling a financial empire doesn’t necessarily identify a murderer, let alone several,” Åkeson said.
“I know that,” Wallander said, “but nevertheless, the picture is not complete without their information.”
“There is no complete picture,” Martinsson said glumly. “There’s no picture at all.”
Wallander could see he would need to get a grip on the situation before it slid out of control. To give himself time to gather his thoughts he suggested they should take a short break and clear the room. When they reassembled, he was firm and decisive.
“I can see a possible pattern,” he began, “just as you all can. But let’s approach it from a different angle and begin by taking a look at what this case isn’t. There’s nothing to convince us that we’re dealing with a madman. It’s true, of course, that a clever psychopath could have planned a murder disguised as a car accident, but there are no apparent motives, and what happened to Sten Torstensson doesn’t seem to hang together with what happened to his father, from a psychopathic point of view. Nor do the attempts to blow up Mrs. Dunér and me. I say me rather than Höglund because I think that’s the way it was. Which brings me to the pattern that revolves around Farnholm Castle and Alfred Harderberg. Let’s go back in time. Let’s start with the day about five years ago when Gustaf Torstensson was first approached by Alfred Harderberg.”
At that moment Björk came into the conference room and sat at the table. Wallander suspected that Åkeson had spoken to him during the short pause and asked him to be there for the rest of the meeting.
“Gustaf Torstensson starts working for Harderberg,” Wallander began again. “It’s an unusual arrangement—one wonders how on earth a provincial lawyer can be of use to an international industrial magnate. One might suspect that Harderberg intended to use Torstensson’s shortcomings to his own advantage, expecting that he would be able to manipulate him if necessary. We don’t know that, it’s guesswork on my part. But somewhere along the way something unexpected happens. Torstensson starts to appear uneasy, or maybe I should say he appears to be depressed. His son notices, and so does his secretary. She even talks about him seeming to be afraid. Something else happens at about the same time. Torstensson and Lars Borman have gotten to know each other through a society devoted to the study of icons. Their relationship suddenly becomes strained, and we may assume that this has a connection with Harderberg because he’s somehow in the background of the fraud executed on the Malmöhus County Council. But the key question is: why did old man Torstensson start behaving in unexpected ways?
“I suspect that he discovered something that upset him in the work he was doing for Harderberg. Perhaps it was the same thing that upset Borman. We don’t know what it was. Then Torstensson is killed in a stage-managed accident. Thanks to what Kurt Ström has told us, we can picture roughly what happened. Sten Torstensson comes to see me at Skagen. A few days later, he too is dead. He, no doubt, felt that he was in danger because he tries to set a false trail in Finland when in fact he went to Denmark. I’m convinced that somebody followed him to Denmark. Somebody watched our meeting on the beach. The people who killed Gustaf Torstensson were snapping at the heels of Sten Torstensson. They could not have known whether the father had discussed his discoveries with his son. Nor could they know what Sten said to me. Or what Mrs. Dunér knew. That’s why Sten dies, that’s why they try to kill Mrs. Dunér and why my car is torched. It’s also the reason why I am being watched and not the rest of you. But everything leads us back to the question of what old man Torstensson had discovered. We are trying to establish whether it has anything to do with the plastic container we found on the backseat of his car. It could also be something else that the financial analysts will be able to tell us. Come what may, there is a pattern here that starts with the cold-blooded killing of Gustaf Torstensson. Sten Torstensson sealed his fate when he came to see me in Skagen. In the background of the pattern all we have is Alfred Harderberg and his empire. Nothing else—not that we can see, at least.”
When Wallander had finished, no one had a question.
“You paint a very plausible picture,” Åkeson said when the silence began to feel oppressive. “You could conceivably be totally right. The only problem is that we don’t have a shred of proof, no forensic evidence at all.”