'Why would a Cherokee crash?' Wallander asked.
Blomell shook his head.
'The engine may have stalled. Poor maintenance. You'll have to wait and see what the accident commission comes up with.'
'The plane's identifying marks had been painted over, both on the fuselage and the wings,' Wallander said. 'What does that mean?'
'That it was someone who didn't want to be known,' Blomell said. 'There is a black market for aeroplanes just as for anything else.'
'I thought Swedish airspace was secure,' Wallander said. 'But you mean that planes can sneak in?'
'There is nothing in this world that is absolutely secure,' Blomell answered. 'Nor will there ever be. Those who have enough money and enough motivation can always find their way across a border, and back again, without interception.'
Blomell offered him a cup of coffee, but Wallander declined.
'I have to look in on my father in Löderup,' he said. 'If I'm late I'll never hear the end of it.'
'Loneliness is the curse of old age,' Blomell said. 'I miss my air control tower with a physical ache. All night I dream of ushering planes through the air corridors. And when I wake up it's snowing and all I can do is repair a gutter.'
They took leave of each other outside. Wallander stopped at a grocery shop in Herrestad. When he drove away again, he cursed. Even though it had been on his list he had forgotten to buy toilet paper.
He arrived at his father's house at three minutes to seven. The snow had stopped, but the clouds hung heavy over the countryside. Wallander saw the lights on in the little side building that his father used as a studio. He breathed in the fresh air as he walked across the yard. The door was ajar; his father had heard his car. He was sitting at his easel, an old hat on his head and his near-sighted eyes close to the painting he had just started. The smell of paint thinner always gave Wallander the same feeling of home. This is what is left of my childhood. The smell of paint thinner.
'You're on time,' his father observed without looking at him.
'I'm always on time,' Wallander said as he moved a couple of newspapers and sat down.
His father was working on a painting that featured a wood grouse. Just as Wallander had stepped into the studio he had placed a stencil onto the canvas and was painting a subdued sky at dusk. Wallander looked at him with a sudden feeling of tenderness. He is the last one in the generation before me, he thought. When he dies, I'll be the next to go.
His father put away his brushes and the stencil and stood up.
They went into the main house. His father put on some coffee and brought some shot glasses to the table. Wallander hesitated, then nodded. He could take one glass.
'Poker,' Wallander said. 'You owe me fourteen kronor from last time.'
His father looked closely at him.
'I think you cheat,' he said. 'But I still don't know how you do it.'
Wallander was taken aback.
'You think I'd cheat my own father?'
For once his father backed down.
'No,' he said. 'Not really. But you did win an unusual amount last time.'
The conversation died. They drank coffee. His father slurped as usual. This irritated Wallander as much as it always did.
'I'm going to go away,' his father said suddenly. 'Far away.'
Wallander waited for more, but none came.
'Where to?' he asked finally.
'To Egypt.'
'Egypt? What are you going to do there? I thought it was Italy you wanted to see.'
'Egypt and Italy. You never listen to what I say.'
'What are you going to do in Egypt?'
'I'm going to see the Sphinx and the pyramids. Time is running out. No one knows how long I will live. But I want to see the pyramids and Rome before I die.'
Wallander shook his head.
'Who are you going with?'
'I'm flying with Egypt Air, in a few days. Straight to Cairo. I'm going to stay in a very nice hotel called Mena House.'
'But you're going alone? Is it a charter trip? You can't be serious,' Wallander said in disbelief.
His father reached for some tickets on the windowsill. Wallander looked through them and realised that what his father said was true. He had a regular-fare ticket from Copenhagen to Cairo for the fourteenth of December.
Wallander put the tickets down on the table.
For once he was completely speechless.
CHAPTER 3
Wallander left Löderup at a quarter past ten. The clouds had started to break up. As he walked to the car he noticed that it had turned colder. This in turn would mean that the Peugeot would be harder to start than usual. But it wasn't the car that occupied his thoughts, it was the fact that he had not managed to talk his father out of taking the trip to Egypt. Or at least wait until a time when he or his sister could accompany him.
'You're almost eighty years old,' Wallander had insisted. 'At your age, you can't do this kind of thing.'
But his arguments had been hollow. There was nothing visibly wrong with his father's health. And even if he dressed unconventionally at times, he had a rare ability to adapt to new situations and the new people he met. When Wallander realised that the ticket included a shuttle bus from the airport to the hotel that was situated close to the pyramids, his concerns had slowly dissipated. He did not understand what drove his father to go to Egypt, to the Sphinx and the pyramids. But he couldn't deny that – many years ago now, when Wallander was still young – his father had actually told him many times about the marvellous structures on the Giza plateau, just outside Cairo.
Then they had played poker. Since his father ended in the black, he was in a great mood when Wallander said his goodbyes.
Wallander paused with his hand on the car-door handle and drew in a breath of night air.
I have a strange father, he thought. That's something I'll never escape.
Wallander had promised to drive him into Malmö on the morning of the fourteenth. He had made a note of the telephone number for Mena House, where his father would be staying. Since his father never spent money unnecessarily, he had of course not taken any travel insurance and so Wallander was going to ask Ebba to take care of it tomorrow.
The car started reluctantly and he turned towards Ystad. The last thing he saw was the light in the kitchen window. His father had a habit of sitting up for a long time in the kitchen before going to bed. If he didn't return to the studio and add yet another few brushstrokes to one of his paintings. Wallander thought about what Blomell had said earlier that evening, that loneliness was a curse of the aged. But Wallander's father lived no differently since he had grown old. He continued to paint his pictures as if nothing had changed, neither anything around him nor himself.
Wallander was back at Mariagatan shortly after eleven o'clock. When he unlocked the front door he saw that someone had slipped a letter through the letter box. He opened the envelope and already knew whom it was from. Emma Lundin, a nurse at the Ystad hospital. Wallander had promised to call her yesterday. She walked past his building on her way home to Dragongatan. Now she was wondering if something was wrong. Why had he not called her? Wallander felt guilty. He had met her a month before. They had fallen into conversation at the post office on Hamngatan. Then they had bumped into each other a few days later at the grocery shop and after only a couple of days they had started a relationship that was not particularly passionate on either side. Emma was a year younger than Wallander, divorced with three children. Wallander had soon realised that the relationship meant more to her than to him. Without really daring to, he had started trying to extricate himself. As he stood in the hall now he knew very well why he hadn't called. He simply had no desire to see her. He put the letter down on the kitchen table and decided he had to end the relationship. It had no future, no potential. They did not have enough to talk about, and too little time for each other. And Wallander knew that he was looking for something completely different, someone completely different. Someone who would actually be able to replace Mona. If that woman even existed. But above all it was Mona's return that he dreamed of.