For the second time that evening Wallander closed his eyes in the face of the unavoidable. Now he would die. There was no longer anything he could do. Outside the shop several sirens approached and agitated voices shouted questions about what was going on.
I am dying, Wallander thought. That is all.
The shot was deafening. Wallander was thrown back. He fought to get his breath back.
Then he realised he had not been hit. He opened his eyes.
Oliver lay stretched out on the floor in front of him.
He had shot himself in the head. The gun lay next to him.
Hell, Wallander thought. Why did he do that?
At that moment the door was kicked in. Wallander caught sight of Hemberg. Then he looked down at his hands. They shook. His whole body was shaking.
Wallander had been given a cup of coffee and been patched up. He had given Hemberg a brief summary of the events.
'I had no idea about this,' Hemberg said later. 'And I was the one who asked you to stop by on your way home.'
'How were you supposed to know?' Wallander said. 'How could anyone be expected to imagine something like this?'
Hemberg appeared to consider what Wallander had said.
'Something is happening,' he said finally. 'Anxiety is streaming in across our borders.'
'We create it just as much ourselves,' Wallander answered. 'Even if Oliver here was an unhappy and restless young man from South Africa.'
Hemberg flinched, as if Wallander had said something inappropriate.
'Restless?' he said finally. 'I don't like the fact that foreign criminals are pouring in across our borders.'
'What you just said is not true,' Wallander said.
Then there was silence. Neither Hemberg nor Wallander had the energy to continue the conversation. They both knew they would not be able to agree.
Even here there is a crack, Wallander thought. Just now I was caught in one. Now I am standing in another that is growing wider between me and Hemberg.
'Why did he stay in here, anyway?' Hemberg said.
'Where should he have gone?'
Neither of them had anything to add.
'It was your wife who called,' Hemberg said after a while. 'She was wondering why you hadn't shown up. You had apparently called and said you were on your way?'
Wallander thought back to that telephone call. The brief quarrel. But he did not feel anything other than emptiness and fatigue. He chased the thoughts away.
'You should probably call home,' Hemberg said gently.
Wallander looked at him.
'What should I say?'
'That you've been delayed. But if I were you I wouldn't tell her everything in detail. I would wait to do that until I got home.'
'Aren't you unmarried?'
Hemberg smiled.
'I can still imagine what it's like to have someone waiting for you at home.'
Wallander nodded. Then he got up heavily from the chair. His body ached. The nausea came and went in waves.
He made his way past Sjunnesson and the other forensic technicians at work.
When he came out of the building he sat completely still and pulled the chilly air into his lungs. Then he kept going to one of the patrol cars. He got into the front seat and looked at the radio dispatcher and then at his watch. Ten minutes past eight.
Christmas Eve, 1975.
Through the wet windscreen he discovered a telephone booth next to the gas station. He stepped out of the car and walked over. It was most likely out of order. But he still wanted to try it.
A man with a dog on a leash was standing in the rain, looking at the patrol cars and the lit-up shop.
'What has happened?' he asked.
He regarded Wallander's scraped-up face with a furrowed brow.
'Nothing,' Wallander said. 'An accident.'
The man with the dog realised that what Wallander said wasn't true.
But he asked no further questions.
'Merry Christmas' was all he said.
'And to you too,' Wallander answered.
Then he called Mona.
It was raining more heavily.
The wind had picked up.
A gusty wind from the north.
THE MAN ON THE BEACH
On the afternoon of Sunday, 26 April 1987, Detective Chief Inspector Kurt Wallander sat in his office in the Ystad police station, absentmindedly clipping some hair from one of his nostrils. It was shortly after five o'clock. He had just put down a file containing documentation of a gang smuggling stolen luxury cars over to Poland. The investigation had already celebrated its tenth birthday, admittedly with various breaks as the years passed by. It had begun not long after Wallander had first started work in Ystad. He had often wondered if it would still be under way on that far distant day when he started to draw his pension.
Just for once, his desk was neat and tidy. It had been a chaotic mess for a long time, and he had used the bad weather as an excuse to do some work because he was on his own. A few days earlier Mona and Linda had left for a couple of weeks in the Canaries. It had come as a complete surprise to Wallander. He had no idea how Mona had managed to scrape together the money, and Linda hadn't breathed a word either. Despite the opposition of her parents, she had recently insisted on leaving grammar school. Now she seemed to be constantly irritated, tired and confused. He had driven them to Sturup airport early in the morning, and on the way back home to Ystad he had decided that, in fact, he quite liked the idea of a couple of weeks on his own. His and Mona's marriage was heading for the rocks. Neither of them knew what was wrong. On the other hand, it had been obvious over this last year that Linda was the one holding their relationship together. What would happen now that she had left school and was starting to make her own way in life?
He stood up and walked over to the window. The wind was pulling and tugging at the trees on the other side of the street. It was drizzling. Four degrees Celsius, the thermometer said. No sign of spring yet.
He put on his jacket and left the room. He nodded to the weekend receptionist, who was talking on the phone. He went to his car and drove down towards the centre of town. He inserted a Maria Callas cassette into the player on the dashboard as he wondered what to buy for the evening meal.
Should he buy anything at all, in fact? Was he even hungry? He was annoyed by his indecision. But he had no desire to fall into his old bad habit of eating at some hamburger bar. Mona kept telling him that he was getting fat. And she was right. One morning only a few months ago, he had examined his face in the bathroom mirror and realised that his youth was definitely a thing of the past. He would soon be forty, but he looked older. In the old days he had always looked younger than he really was.
Irritated by the thought, he turned into the Malmö road and stopped at one of the supermarkets. He had just locked his car door when his mobile phone rang from inside. At first he thought he would ignore it. Whatever it was, somebody else could look after it. He had enough problems of his own just now. But he changed his mind, opened the door and reached for the phone.
'Is that Wallander?' It was his colleague Hansson.
'Yes.'
'Where are you?'
'I was just going to buy some groceries.'
'Leave that for now. Come here instead. I'm at the hospital. I'll meet you at the entrance.'
'What's happened?'
'It's hard to explain over the phone. It'll be better if you come here.'
End of call. Wallander knew that Hansson wouldn't have phoned if it hadn't been serious. It only took him a few minutes to drive to the hospital. Hansson came to meet him outside the main entrance. He was obviously feeling the cold. Wallander tried to work out from his expression what had happened.