'I've already packed,' his father said.
'I should hope so,' Wallander said. 'I'll be there at half past six. Don't forget your passport and tickets.'
Wallander spent the rest of the evening consolidating what they knew of the previous evening's events. He called Nyberg at home and asked him how the work was going.
Slowly, Nyberg said. They would continue in the morning as soon as it was light. Wallander also called the station and asked the officer on duty if any information had come in. But there was nothing that he considered noteworthy.
Wallander went to bed at midnight. In order to be sure of waking on time in the morning, he ordered a telephone wake-up call.
He had trouble falling asleep even though he was very tired.
The thought of the two sisters who had been executed worried him.
Before he fell asleep at last, he had managed to convince himself that it would be a long and difficult investigation. If they did not have the good fortune of tripping over the answer at the very beginning.
The following day he got up at five. At exactly half past six he turned into the driveway in Löderup.
His father was sitting outside on his suitcase, waiting.
CHAPTER 5
They drove to Malmö in darkness. The daily commute from the Skåne region into Malmö had not yet begun in earnest. His father was wearing a suit and a strange-looking pith helmet. Wallander had never seen it before and imagined that his father must have picked it up at a flea market or a second-hand shop. But he said nothing. He didn't even ask if his father had remembered to bring his tickets or his passport.
'You're really going' was all he said.
'Yes,' his father replied. 'This is the day.'
Wallander could sense that his father did not want to talk. It gave him the opportunity to focus on his driving and lose himself in his own thoughts. He was worried about the recent developments in Ystad. Wallander tried to get a handle on it. Why someone would cold-bloodedly shoot two old ladies in the back of the head. But he drew a blank. There was no context, no explanation. Only these brutal and incomprehensible executions.
As they turned into the small car park by the ferry terminal, they saw Linda already waiting outside. Wallander noticed that he didn't like how she greeted her grandfather first, then her father. She commented on her grandfather's pith helmet, saying she thought it suited him.
'I wish I had as nice a hat to show off,' Wallander said as he hugged his daughter. To his relief she was wearing a remarkably ordinary outfit. The opposite was often the case, which always bothered him. Now it struck him that this habit was something that she may have inherited from her grandfather. Or he'd been an influence, at least.
They accompanied him into the terminal. Wallander paid for his ferry ticket. Once he had climbed aboard, they stood out in the darkness and watched the vessel chug out through the harbour.
'I hope I'll be like him when I'm old,' Linda said.
Wallander did not reply. To become like his father was something he feared more than anything.
They had breakfast together at the Central Station restaurant. As usual, Wallander had very little appetite so early in the morning. But in order to stave off a lecture from Linda about how he wasn't taking proper care of himself, he filled his plate with various sandwich toppings and several pieces of toast.
He watched his daughter, who talked almost continuously. She was not really beautiful in the traditional and banal sense of the word. But there was something confident and independent about her manner. She did not belong among the scores of young women who did their utmost to please all the men they met. From whom she had inherited her loquaciousness he could not say. Both he and Mona were rather quiet. But he liked listening to her. It always raised his spirits. She continued to talk about going into the business of restoring furniture. Informed him of the possibilities in the field, what the challenges were, cursed the fact that the apprenticeship system had almost died out, and astonished him at the end by imagining a future where she set up her own shop in Ystad.
'It's too bad that neither you nor Mum have any money,' she said. 'Then I could have gone to France to learn.'
Wallander realised she was not in fact chastising him for not being wealthy. Nonetheless, he took it this way.
'I could take out a loan,' he said. 'I think a simple policeman can manage that.'
'Loans have to be paid back,' she said. 'And anyway, you are actually a criminal inspector.'
Then they talked about Mona. Wallander listened, not without some satisfaction, to her complaints about Mona, who controlled her daughter in everything she did.
'And to top it off I don't like Johan,' she finished.
Wallander looked searchingly at her.
'Who's that?'
'Her new guy.'
'I thought she was seeing someone called Sören?'
'They broke up. Now his name is Johan and he owns two diggers.'
'And you don't like him?'
She shrugged.
'He's so loud. And I don't think he's ever read a book in his life. On Saturdays he comes over and he's bought some comic book. A grown man. Can you imagine?'
Wallander felt a momentary relief at the fact that he had never bought a comic book. He knew that Svedberg sometimes picked up an issue of Super-Man. Once or twice he had flipped through it to try to recapture the feeling from childhood, but it was never there.
'That doesn't sound so good,' he said. 'I mean, that you and Johan don't get along.'
'It's not so much a question of us,' she said. 'It's more that I don't understand what Mum sees in him.'
'Come and live with me,' Wallander said impulsively. 'Your room is still there, you know that.'
'I've actually thought about it,' she said. 'But I don't think that would be a good idea.'
'Why not?'
'Ystad is too small. It would drive me crazy to live there. Maybe later, when I'm older. There are towns where you simply can't live when you're young.'
Wallander knew what she was talking about. Even for divorced men in their forties, a town like Ystad could start to feel cramped.
'What about you?' she asked.
'What do you mean?'
'What do you think? Women, of course.'
Wallander made a face. He didn't want to bring up Emma Lundin.
'You could put an ad in the paper,' she suggested. '"A man in his best years looking for a woman." You would get a lot of responses.'
'Sure,' Wallander said, 'and then it would take five minutes before we'd simply end up sitting there staring vacantly at each other, realising we have nothing to say.'
She surprised him again.
'You need to have someone to sleep with,' she said. 'It's not good for you to walk around with so much pent-up longing.'
Wallander winced. She had never said anything like that to him before.
'I have all I need,' he said evasively.
'Can't you tell me more?'
'There's not much to say. A nurse. A decent person. The problem is just that she likes me more than I like her.'
Linda did not ask any more questions. Wallander immediately started to wonder about her sex life. But the very thought filled him with so many ambivalent feelings that he didn't want to get into it.
They stayed in the restaurant until it was past ten o'clock. Then he offered to drive her home, but she had errands to run. They parted in the car park. Wallander gave her three hundred kronor.
'You don't need to do this,' she said.
'I know. But take it anyway.'
Then he watched her walk off into the city. Thought that this was his family. A daughter who was finding her way. And a father who was right now sitting on a plane taking him to scorching-hot Egypt. He had a complicated relationship with both of them. It was not only his father who could be difficult, but also Linda.