One Step Behind (12 page)

"No, she wasn't allowed to."

"What do you mean by that?"

"She had to sleep in the gazebo."

"Why wasn't she allowed in the main house?"

"There had been trouble in the past. Some parties where things had either been broken or stolen."

"How do you know this?"

The answer came as a surprise.

"They don't treat her very well," Lundberg said. "Last winter when it was ten degrees below zero, they went away and locked up the house. But there's no heating in the gazebo. She came down to our place completely frozen and told us about it. Not me directly, that is, but my wife."

"Then we'll go back to your place," Wallander said. "I'd like to hear what she told your wife."

He asked Lundberg to go ahead of him. Wallander wanted to check the gazebo before he left. He found no trace of sleeping pills or letter, and nothing else of consequence. He looked around one more time then headed back to the car. His phone rang.

"She's just been admitted," Höglund said.

"What are the doctors saying?"

"Not very much for now."

She promised to call as soon as she heard anything. Wallander relieved himself next to the car before he went down to Lundberg's farm. A wary dog met him on the front porch. Lundberg came out and chased it away, and invited Wallander into a cosy kitchen. Lundberg's wife was making coffee. Her name was Barbro and she spoke in a Gothenburg dialect.

"How is she?"

"My colleague will let me know as soon as she hears anything."

"Did she try to kill herself?"

"It's too soon to know," Wallander said. "But I wasn't able to wake her up."

He sat down at the table and put the phone beside him.

"I take it she's attempted suicide before, since you immediately assumed that was the case," he said.

"It's a suicidal family," Lundberg said with distaste.

Then he stopped talking, as if he regretted his remark.

Barbro Lundberg put the coffee pot on the table. "Isa's brother passed away two years ago," she said. "He was only 19 years old. Isa and Jörgen were only one year apart."

"How did he do it?"

"In the bathtub," Lundberg said. "He wrote a note to his parents telling them to go to hell. Then he plugged a toaster into the wall and dropped it in the water."

Wallander felt sick to his stomach. He had a vague recollection of the incident. It came to him that Svedberg had been the one in charge of the investigation. A newspaper lay on an old sofa under the window. Wallander caught sight of a photo of Svedberg on the front page. He reached out for it and showed them the photograph.

"You may have heard about the policeman who was killed," he said. He got his answer before he even asked the question.

"He was here about a month ago."

"Did he come to see you or the Edengrens?"

"First to see them. Then he came here, just like you did."

"Were her parents gone that time as well?"

"No."

"So he met Isa's parents?"

"We don't know exactly who he spoke to," Lundberg said. "But her parents weren't gone then."

"Why did he come down here? What did he ask you about?"

Barbro Lundberg sat down at the table.

"He asked us about the parties they had when Isa's parents were gone, before they started locking her out," she said.

"That was the only thing that interested him," Lundberg said.

Wallander grew more attentive. He realised that this might give him an insight into the way Svedberg had spent his summer.

"I want both of you to try to remember exactly what he said."

"A month is a long time," she said.

"But you sat here at the kitchen table?"

"Yes."

"And you had coffee?"

Barbro Lundberg smiled. "He liked my bundt cake."

Wallander proceeded carefully. "It must have been right after Midsummer."

The couple exchanged looks. Wallander saw that they were trying to help each other remember.

"It must have been right at the beginning of July. I'm sure of it," she said.

"So he came here at the end of June. First to see the Edengrens and then to see you."

"Isa came with him. But she was sick with some kind of stomach bug."

"Did Isa stay here the whole time?"

"No, she only came down with him to show him the way. Then she left."

"And he asked you about the parties?"

"Yes."

"What exactly did he ask?"

"If we knew the people who used to come. But of course we didn't."

"Why do you say 'of course'?"

"They were just young people who came in cars and then left the same way."

"What else did he ask?"

"If any of these parties were masquerades," Lundberg said.

"Did he use that word?"

"Yes."

His wife shook her head. "No, he didn't. He just asked if the people who attended the parties used to dress up."

"Did they?"

They both looked at Wallander with surprise.

"How on earth would we know?" Lundberg asked. "We weren't there, and we don't go around peeking through the curtains."

"But didn't you see something?"

"The parties were sometimes in the autumn, and it was usually dark. We couldn't see how people were dressed."

Wallander sat quietly and thought for a moment. "Did he ask anything else?"

"No. He sat for a while scratching his forehead with his pen. He was only here for about half an hour. Then he left."

Wallander's mobile phone rang. It was Höglund.

"They're pumping her stomach."

"So it was a suicide attempt?"

"I don't think people can ingest this many sleeping pills by accident."

"Are the doctors saying anything at this stage?"

"The fact that she's unconscious suggests she may already be poisoned."

"Will she make it?"

"I haven't heard anything to the contrary."

"Then why don't you go on to Trelleborg?"

"That's what I was thinking. I'll see you later back at the station."

They hung up, and the couple looked at Wallander with anxious eyes.

"She'll make it," he said. "But I will need to contact her parents."

"We have a couple of phone numbers," Lundberg said, and got up.

"They wanted us to call if anything happened to the house," his wife explained. "They didn't say anything about this kind of situation."

"You mean what to do if anything happened to Isa?"

She nodded. Lundberg gave Wallander a piece of paper with the phone numbers.

"Can we visit her in the hospital?" Barbro Lundberg asked.

"I'm sure you can," Wallander answered. "But I think it would be best if you waited until tomorrow."

Erik Lundberg saw him out.

"Do you have any keys to the house?" Wallander asked.

"They would never entrust them to us," the man said.

Wallander said goodbye, returned to the Edengren house, and walked over to the gazebo. He searched it again thoroughly for about half an hour, unsure as to what exactly he was looking for. He ended up sitting on Isa's bed.

Something's repeating itself, he thought. Svedberg came to talk to the girl who didn't make it to the Midsummer celebration and did not go missing. Svedberg asked about parties, and about young people dressing up in costumes. Now Isa Edengren has tried to kill herself and Svedberg has been murdered.

Wallander got up and left the gazebo. He was worried. He wasn't finding anything reliable to point him in the right direction. There seemed to be clues pointing in many directions, but none of them seemed to lead anywhere. He got into his car and headed back to Ystad.

His next aim was to have another talk with Sture Björklund. It was almost 4 p.m. when he pulled into Björklund's yard. He knocked on the door and waited, but no one answered. Björklund had probably gone to Copenhagen, or else he was in Hollywood discussing his latest ideas for a monster. Wallander banged hard on the door but didn't wait for anyone to open it. Instead he walked around to the back. The garden was neglected. Some half-rotting pieces of furniture were scattered in the long grass. Wallander peered in through one of the windows of the house, then continued down to a little shed. Wallander felt the door. It was unlocked. He opened it wide and pushed a piece of wood underneath it to keep it in place. It was a mess inside. He was about to leave when his attention was caught by a tarpaulin folded over something in the corner. There seemed to be some kind of equipment under it. He carefully pulled off part of the cover. It was a machine all right; or more precisely, an instrument. Wallander had never seen one like it before, but he still knew immediately what it was. A telescope.

When Wallander walked back outside he noticed the wind had picked up. He turned his back to it and tried to collect his thoughts. How many people owned telescopes? Not many. The telescope had to be Svedberg's. He couldn't think of any other possible explanation. That brought up other questions: why hadn't Sture Björklund said anything?

Did he have something to hide, or didn't he know that the telescope was on his property? Could Sture Björklund have killed his own cousin? He doubted it.

He returned to his car and made some calls, but neither Martinsson nor Hansson was in his office. He asked the officer on duty to send a car out to Hedeskoga.

"What's happened?" he asked.

"I need some people to keep this place under surveillance," Wallander said. "For now you can simply say that it has to do with Svedberg's case."

"Do we know who shot him?"

"No. This is a routine matter."

Wallander asked for an unmarked car and described the intersection where he would meet it. When Wallander reached the intersection the car was already waiting for him. He explained to the patrol officers where they should wait, and that they should call him as soon as Sture Björklund turned up, then he started back to Ystad. He was very hungry and his mouth was dry. He stopped at a takeaway restaurant on Malmövägen and ordered a hamburger. While he was waiting for his food, he drank some soda water. After eating much too quickly he bought himself a litre of mineral water. He needed time to think, but knew he would inevitably be disturbed if he returned to the station, so he drove out of town and parked outside the Saltsjöbaden hotel. The wind was quite strong now but he walked on until he found a sheltered spot. For some reason there was an old toboggan there and he sat down on it and shut his eyes.

There has to be a point of entry into this mess, he thought. A point of connection that I am overlooking. He went through everything that had happened so far as carefully and clearly as he could, but despite his efforts, the facts remained as muddled and obscure as before.

What would Rydberg have done? When Rydberg had been alive, Wallander had always been able to ask him for advice. They would take a walk on the beach or sit in the station late into the night discussing the facts of a case until they arrived at something important. But Rydberg was gone now. Wallander strained to hear his voice in his head, but there was nothing there.

Sometimes he thought Ann-Britt Höglund was on her way to becoming his new partner. She listened as well as Rydberg and didn't hesitate to change track if she felt it could help them break through a new wall.

In time it may work out, he thought. Ann-Britt is a good police officer. But it takes time.

He got up heavily and started walking back to the car. There's only one thing that really sets this investigation apart, he thought. People dressed up in costume. Svedberg wanted to know about parties where people dressed up in costume. We have a photograph of people at a party dressed up in costume. There are people in costume at every turn.

Wallander knew it would be a long night. As soon as everyone had returned from their assignments, they would hunker down in the conference room. He went into his office, hung up his coat, and called the hospital. After being transferred a couple of times he finally reached a doctor who told him that Isa Edengren was in a stable condition and was expected to make a full recovery. He knew this doctor, having met him at least a couple of times before.

"Tell me something I know you aren't allowed to say," Wallander said. "Was it a cry for help or was she really trying to end it all?"

"I'm told you were the one who found her, is that right?" the doctor said.

"That's right."

"Then let me put it this way," he said. "It was lucky you found her when you did."

Wallander understood. He was about to hang up when another question came to him.

"Has anyone been to see her?"

"She's not allowed visitors yet."

"I understand. But has anyone asked to see her?"

"I'll find out for you."

While Wallander waited, he hunted out the piece of paper with Isa's parents' telephone numbers that Lundberg had given him. The doctor returned.

"No one has been here and no one has called," he said. "Who is going to get in touch with her parents?"

"We'll take care of that."

Wallander hung up and tried dialling the first number without knowing whether he was calling France or Spain. He counted 15 rings, then hung up and tried the other number. This time a woman answered almost immediately. Wallander introduced himself and she said she was Berit Edengren. Wallander told her what had happened. She listened without interrupting. Wallander thought about her son Jörgen, Isa's brother. He tried to keep his details to a minimum, but it was a suicide attempt and he couldn't cover that up.

She sounded calm when she replied. "I'll tell my husband," she said. "We'll have to talk about whether we should return home immediately."

She loves her daughter, Wallander reminded himself, but he couldn't help feeling angry at her response. "I hope you understand that it could have ended badly."

"Thankfully it didn't."

Wallander gave her the number of the hospital and the name of the doctor. He decided against asking any questions about Svedberg yet. What he did ask was for information about the Midsummer's Eve celebration that Isa was to have attended.

"Isa doesn't tell us very much," she answered. "I didn't know anything about a Midsummer's Eve party."

"Would she have told her father?"

"I doubt it."

"Martin Boge, Lena Norman, and Astrid Hillström," Wallander recited. "Do you recognise these names?"

"They're friends of Isa's," she said.

"But Isa hadn't told you about any special plans for Midsummer?"

"No."

"This is a very important question and I need you to think carefully. Could she have mentioned a place where they were to meet?"

"There's nothing wrong with my memory. I know she didn't say anything to us."

"Do you know if she had any fancy dress costumes at home?"

"Is this really important?"

"Yes. Please answer the question."

"I don't go through her cupboards."

"Is there a spare key to the house?"

"We keep a spare hidden key in a drainpipe on the right wing. Isa doesn't know about it."

"And she won't find out about it in the next couple of days."

Wallander had only one more question for her. "Did Isa say anything about going on a trip after Midsummer?"

"No."

"Would she have told you if she was thinking about it?"

"Only if she had needed the money, which she always did."

Wallander had trouble controlling his temper.

"You'll hear from us again," he said.

He slammed down the phone, realising as he did so that he still didn't know whether they were in France or Spain.

He went out to the canteen and got a cup of coffee. On his way back to his office he remembered that he had one more call to make. He found the phone number and dialled it. This time someone answered.

"Bror Sundelius?"

"Speaking."

Wallander introduced himself and was about to explain why he was calling when Sundelius interrupted him.

"I've been waiting for the police to give me a call. It seems to me you've taken a long time."

He was an elderly man with a direct way of speaking.

"I've already called a couple of times and got no answer. Why did you think we would be in touch?"

Sundelius answered without hesitation. "Karl Evert did not have many close friends. I was one of the few. That's why I assumed that you would contact me."

"What do you think we wanted to talk to you about?"

"You should know that better than I do."

True, Wallander thought. At least he isn't going senile.

"I'd like to meet with you," Wallander said. "Here or at your place, preferably tomorrow morning."

"I used to go to work every day. Now I climb the walls," Sundelius said. "I have an endless amount of time that simply goes to waste. You can come tomorrow any time after 4.30 a.m. I live on Vädergränd. My legs aren't so good. How old are you, Inspector?"

"I'll be 50 soon."

"Then your legs are better than mine. At your age it's important to keep moving. Otherwise you'll develop heart problems or diabetes."

Wallander listened to him with surprise.

"Are you still there, Inspector?"

"Yes," said Wallander. "I'm here. How about 9 a.m.?"

They crowded into the conference room at 7.30 p.m. Lisa Holgersson had arrived early with the chief prosecutor filling in for Per Åkeson, who was in Uganda. Åkeson had taken a leave of absence and was working for the International Refugee Commission. He had been gone almost eight months and sent Wallander letters every now and then, describing his daily life, and the dramatic ways in which the new environment and work were changing him. Wallander missed him, even though they had never been close. He also sometimes felt a stab of envy when he thought about the decision Åkeson had made. Would he ever be anything other than a policeman? He would soon turn 50. The chances of starting something new were shrinking rapidly.

The acting chief prosecutor, Thurnberg, had come down from Örebro. Wallander had not had a lot to do with him up until now, as Thurnberg had only started in Ystad in the middle of May. He was a couple of years younger than Wallander, fit and quick-witted. Wallander had not yet decided what he thought about him. On a previous encounter, he had appeared rather arrogant.

Wallander knocked on the table with his pencil and looked around the room. Svedberg's chair was still empty. He wondered when someone was going to start using it. Wallander began by telling them about his find at Björklund's house, since he was expecting him to be back from Copenhagen later that evening.

"Before this meeting we were talking about something else that strikes us as odd," Martinsson said. "There are no diaries. I've asked the others, but none of the three seem to have kept a diary or a pocket calendar."

"There are no letters either," Hansson said.

"These people seem to have erased all traces of themselves," Höglund said.

"Is that the case with the others, too? The ones who were in Svedberg's photograph?"

"Yes," Martinsson said. "But we should probably probe further."

Martinsson flipped through his notes and was about to add something when there was a knock on the door. An officer came in and nodded in Wallander's direction.

"Björklund has just got home."

Wallander got up. "I'll go out there alone. It won't be an arrest, after all. We'll continue when I get back."

Nyberg got up as well. "I should probably have a look at the telescope right away," he said.

They drove out to Hedeskoga in Nyberg's car. The unmarked police car was still parked at the intersection. Wallander got out and spoke to the officer behind the wheel.

"He arrived about 20 minutes ago in a Mazda."

"Then you can go back," Wallander said.

"You don't want us to stay?"

"It won't be necessary."

Wallander got back in the car and they pulled up outside the house.

"He's home," he said to Nyberg. "No doubt about that."

Music was coming from an open window. It had a Latin beat. Wallander rang the bell and the music was turned down. Björklund opened the door wearing only a pair of shorts.

"I have a couple of questions that couldn't wait," Wallander said.

Björklund seemed to think for a moment, then smiled. "Now I understand," he said.

"What do you understand?"

"Why that car was parked up by the turn-off."

Wallander nodded. "I was looking for you earlier today. My questions can't wait."

Björklund let them in and Wallander introduced Nyberg.

"Once upon a time I also thought about becoming a forensic technician," Björklund said. "The idea of dedicating my life to interpreting evidence was appealing to me."

"It's not as exciting as you'd think," Nyberg replied.

Björklund looked mildly astonished.

"I wasn't talking about adventure," he said. "I was talking about being a person who follows traces."

They stopped in the entrance to the big room. Wallander noted Nyberg's amazement at Björklund's menage.

"I'm going to get right to the point," he said. "You have a small shed to the east of the house. There's an instrument in there hidden under a piece of tarpaulin. I think it's a telescope, and I want to determine whether or not it came from Svedberg's flat."

Björklund balked. "A telescope? In my shed?"

"Yes."

Björklund instinctively took a step back. "Who's been snooping around out here?"

"I told you that I came looking for you earlier today. The door to your shed was open and I went in. I found the telescope."

"Is that legal? Are the police allowed to enter other people's homes at will?"

"If you have an opinion to the contrary, feel free to make a report to the ombudsman."

Björklund looked at him with animosity. "I think I will," he said.

"For God's sake," Nyberg interrupted angrily. "Let's just get this cleared up."

"So you claim to have no knowledge of a telescope on your property."

"That's right."

"Do you realise that doesn't sound very believable?"

"I don't care what it sounds like. As far as I'm concerned, there's no telescope anywhere on my property."

"We'll soon determine whether that's the case," Wallander said. "If you refuse to cooperate I'll leave Nyberg here and get a search warrant from the chief prosecutor. You should have no doubts about that."

Björklund was still hostile. "Am I accused of a crime?"

"For now I simply want an answer to my question."

"I've already given you one."

"So you deny knowledge of the telescope? Could Svedberg have put it there without your knowledge?"

"Why would he have done that?"

"I'm simply asking if it's possible, that's all."

"Of course he could have done it while I was away over the summer. I never check what's in the shed."