He undressed and put on his old worn dressing gown. Realised again that he had forgotten to buy toilet paper and found an old telephone book that he put in the bathroom. Then he put the grocery items he had bought in Herrestad into the fridge. The phone rang. It was a quarter past eleven. He hoped that nothing serious had occurred that would make him have to get dressed again. It was Linda. It always made him happy to hear her voice.
'Where have you been?' she asked. 'I've been calling all evening.'
'You could have guessed,' he replied. 'And you could have called your grandfather. That's where I was.'
'I didn't think of that,' she said. 'You never go to see him.'
'I don't?'
'That's what he says.'
'He says a lot of things. By the way, he's going to fly to Egypt in few days to see the pyramids.'
'Sounds fun. I wouldn't mind going along.'
Wallander said nothing. He listened to her lengthy narrative about how she had spent the past couple of days. He was pleased that she had now clearly recommitted herself to a career in upholstering furniture. He assumed that Mona was not home since she would normally get irritated when Linda talked so much and for so long on the phone. But he also felt a pang of jealousy. Even though they were now divorced, he could not reconcile himself to the thought of her seeing other men.
The conversation ended with Linda promising to meet him in Malmö and see her grandfather off for his trip to Egypt.
It was past midnight. Since Wallander was hungry he went back to the kitchen. The only thing he could be bothered to make was a bowl of porridge. At a half past twelve he crawled into bed and fell asleep almost immediately.
On the morning of the twelfth of December, the temperature had sunk to four degrees below zero. Wallander was sitting in the kitchen, just before seven o'clock, when the telephone rang. It was Blomell.
'I hope I didn't wake you,' he said.
'I was up,' Wallander said, coffee cup in hand.
'Something occurred to me after you left,' Blomell went on. 'I'm not a policeman, of course, but I still thought I should call you.'
'Tell me.'
'I was simply thinking that for someone to hear the engines outside Mossby the plane must have been at a very low altitude. That should mean that even others heard it. In that way you should be able to find out where it went. And perhaps you might even find someone who heard it turn round in the air and head back. If someone, for example, heard it with a break of only several minutes, you may be able to figure out what the turning radius was.'
Blomell was right. Wallander should have thought of it himself. But he did not say this.
'We're already on it,' he said instead.
'That was all,' Blomell said. 'How was your father?'
'He told me he's taking a trip to Egypt.'
'That sounds like a wonderful idea.'
Wallander didn't answer.
'It's getting colder,' Blomell concluded. 'Winter is on its way.'
'Soon we'll have snowstorms upon us,' Wallander said.
He went back to the kitchen, thinking about what Blomell had said. Martinsson or someone else could get in touch with colleagues in Tomelilla and Sjöbo. Maybe also Simrishamn to be safe. It might be possible to pinpoint the plane's route and destination by looking for people who were early risers and who had noticed an engine noise overhead, twice in a row if they were lucky. Surely there were still some dairy farmers around who were up at that time of day? But the question remained. What had the two men been doing on their flight? And why had the plane lacked all signs of identification?
Wallander quickly leafed through the paper. The Labrador puppies were still for sale. But there was no house that caught his eye.
Wallander walked in through the doors of the station a little before eight o'clock. He was wearing the sweater he reserved for days of up to five degrees below zero. He asked Ebba to arrange travel insurance for his father.
'That has always been my dream,' she said. 'To go to Egypt and see the pyramids.'
Everyone seems to be envious of my father, Wallander thought as he poured himself a cup of coffee and went to his office. No one even seems surprised. I'm the only one who's worried that something will happen. That he'll get lost in the desert, for example.
Martinsson had placed a report on his desk about the accident. Wallander eyed it quickly and thought that Martinsson was still far too verbose. Half as much would have been enough. Once Rydberg had told him that that which could not be expressed in a telegram format was either poorly conceived or completely wrong. Wallander had always tried to make his reports as clear and brief as possible. He called Martinsson and told him about his conversation with Björk the day before. Martinsson seemed pleased. Then Wallander suggested a meeting. What Blomell had said was worth following up. Martinsson managed to locate Hansson and Svedberg at half past eight. But Rydberg had still not arrived. They filed into one of the conference rooms.
'Has anyone seen Nyberg?' Wallander asked.
Nyberg walked in at that moment. As usual, he appeared to have been up all night. His hair was standing on end. He sat in his usual seat, somewhat apart from the others.
'Rydberg seems ill,' Svedberg said, scratching his bald spot with a pencil.
'He is ill,' Hansson said. 'He has sciatica.'
'Rheumatism,' Wallander corrected. 'There's a big difference.'
Then he turned to Nyberg.
'We've examined the wings,' the latter said. 'And washed away the fire-retardant foam and tried to puzzle the pieces of the fuselage back together. The numbers and letters had not only been painted over, they had also been scraped away beforehand. But that had only been partly successful, hence the need for paint. The people on board definitely did not want to be traced.'
'I imagine there is a number on the engine,' Wallander said. 'And of course not as many planes are manufactured as cars.'
'We're getting in touch with the Piper factory in the United States,' Martinsson said.
'There are some other questions that need to be answered,' Wallander went on. 'How far can a plane like this fly on one tank of fuel? How common are additional fuel tanks? What is the limit to the amount of petrol a plane of this type can carry?'
Martinsson wrote this down.
'I'll get the answers,' he said.
The door opened and Rydberg came in.
'I've been to the hospital,' he said curtly, 'and things always take a long time there.'
Wallander could see that he was in pain but said nothing.
Instead, he presented the idea of trying to find others who might have heard the engine noise. He felt a little guilty that he did not give Blomell credit for this insight.
'This will be like in wartime,' Rydberg commented. 'When everyone in Skåne walked around and listened for planes.'
'It's possible it won't yield anything,' Wallander said. 'But there's no harm in checking with our colleagues in nearby districts. Personally I have trouble believing it could have been anything other than a drug transport. An arranged drop somewhere.'
'We should talk to Malmö,' Rydberg said. 'If they've noticed that the supply seems to have increased dramatically, there could be a connection. I'll call them.'
No one had any objections. Wallander brought the meeting to a close shortly after nine o'clock.