“Of course,” Wallander said. “I’m not even sure there will be any more times.”
When the meeting was over Wallander took Nyberg and Höglund into his office.
“I could tell that you had read my thoughts,” he said when he had shut the door. “You didn’t say anything, so I take it you agree with me that we should go a bit further than I led Åkeson to believe.”
“The plastic container,” Nyberg said. “If Ström could find a similar one at the castle, I’d be more than grateful.”
“Exactly,” Wallander said. “That plastic container is the most important thing we’ve got. Or the only thing, depending on how you look at it.”
“But how is he going to be able to get away with it if he does find one?” Höglund said.
Wallander and Nyberg exchanged looks.
“If what we think is true, the container we found in Gustaf Torstensson’s car was a substitute,” Wallander said. “I thought we could give it back and replace it with the right one.”
“I should have thought of that,” she said. “Not thinking fast enough.”
“I sometimes believe it’s Wallander who thinks too fast,” Nyberg said quietly.
“I need it in a couple of hours,” Wallander said. “I shall be seeing Ström again at three.”
Nyberg left, but Höglund stayed behind. “What did he want?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” Wallander said. “He said he wanted a certificate to say that he wasn’t a bad police officer, but I think there’s more to it than that.”
“What?”
“I don’t know yet, but I have my suspicions.”
“And you don’t want to say what your suspicions are?”
“I’d rather not just yet. Not until I know.”
Nyberg came to Wallander’s office with the plastic container just after 2:00. He had put it inside two black trash bags.
“Don’t forget the fingerprints,” Nyberg said. “Anything at all . . . glasses, cups, newspapers.”
Half an hour later Wallander put the container on the backseat of his car and set off for Sandskogen. The rain was coming in off the sea in squalls. When he got out of his car Ström was in the doorway, already in uniform. Wallander carried the black trash bags into the red house.
“What uniform is that?” he said.
“Farnholm’s own uniform. I have no idea who designed it.”
Wallander took the container out of the plastic bags. “Have you seen this before?” he said.
Ström shook his head.
“There’s an identical one somewhere at the castle,” Wallander said. “There could be more than one. I want you to exchange this for one of them. Can you get into the main building itself?”
“I do my rounds every night.”
“You’re sure you’ve never seen this before?”
“Never. I wouldn’t even know where to start looking.”
Wallander thought for a moment. “Is there a cold-storage room anywhere?”
“In the cellar.”
“Look there. And don’t forget the Bernadelli.”
“That’ll be more difficult. They always have their weapons with them; probably they take them to bed too.”
“We need Tolpin’s and Obadia’s fingerprints. That’s all. Then you can have your certificate. If that’s what you really want.”
“What else would I want?”
“I believe what you really want is to show that you’re not as bad a police officer as a lot of people think.”
“You’re wrong,” Ström said. “I have to think about my future.”
“It was just a thought.”
“Same time tomorrow,” Ström said. “Here.”
“One more thing,” Wallander said. “If anything goes wrong I’ll deny all knowledge of what you’re doing.”
“I know the rules,” Ström said. “If that’s all, you might as well get out of here.”
Wallander ran through the rain to his car. He stopped at Fridolf’s Café for coffee and some sandwiches. It worried him that he had not told the whole truth at the morning meeting, but he knew he would be ready to concoct a certificate for Ström if that should prove necessary. His mind went back to Sten Torstensson, coming to ask for his help. He had turned him down. The least he could do now was to bring his murderers to light.
He sat in his car without starting the engine, watching the people hurrying through the rain. He thought of the occasion a few years back when he had driven home from Malmö while very drunk and been stopped by some of his colleagues. They had protected him, and it had never been revealed. That night he had not been an ordinary citizen: he had been a police officer, taken care of by the police force, instead of being punished, suspended, or perhaps thrown out of the force. Peters and Norén, the officers who had seen him swerving all over the road and stopped him, had earned his loyalty. What if one day one of them tried to cash in on the favor they had done him?
In his heart of hearts Ström wanted to be back in the police force, Wallander was sure of it. The antagonism and hatred he displayed was only a superficial front. No doubt he dreamed of one day being a police officer again.
Wallander drove back to the station. He went to Martinsson’s office and found him on the phone. When he finished the call he asked Wallander how it had gone.
“Ström is going to look for an Italian pistol and he’s going to collect some fingerprints,” Wallander said.
“I find it hard to believe he’s doing that for nothing,” Martinsson said.
“Me too,” Wallander said. “But I suppose even somebody like Kurt Ström has a good side.”
“He made the mistake of getting caught,” Martinsson said. “And then he made another mistake by making everything seem so big and significant. Did you know he has a severely handicapped daughter, by the way?”
Wallander shook his head.
“His wife left him when the girl was very small. He looked after her for years. She has some form of muscle illness. But then it got so bad that she couldn’t stay at home any longer, and she had to go into a special home. He still visits her whenever he can.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I called Roslund in Malmö and asked him. I said I’d happened to bump into Ström. I don’t think Roslund knew he works at Farnholm Castle, and I didn’t mention it, of course.”
Wallander stood staring out of the window.
“There’s not much else we can do but wait,” Martinsson said.
Wallander did not respond. It eventually dawned on him that Martinsson had said something. “I didn’t hear what you said.”
“All we can do is wait.”
“Yes,” Wallander said. “And right now there’s nothing I find harder to do.”
Wallander went back to his office, sat at his desk, and contemplated the enlarged overview of Alfred Harderberg’s worldwide empire they had received from the fraud squad in Stockholm. He had pinned it to the wall.
What I’m looking at is really an atlas of the world, he thought. National boundaries have been replaced by ever-changing demarcation lines between different companies whose turnover and influence are greater than the budgets of many whole countries. He searched through the papers on his desk until he found the summary of the ten largest companies in the world that had been sent to him as an appendix by the fraud squad—they must have had a hyperactivity fit. Six of the biggest companies were Japanese and three American. The other was Royal Dutch/Shell, which was shared by Britain and Holland. Of those ten largest companies, four were banks, two telephone companies, one a car manufacturer, and one an oil company. The other two were General Electric and Exxon. He tried to imagine the power wielded by these companies, but it was impossible for him to grasp what this concentration really meant. How could he when he did not feel he could get a grip on Harderberg’s empire, even though that was like a mouse in the shadow of an elephant’s foot compared with the Big Ten?