The Pyramid (35 page)

'We have to get the people who did this,' Wallander said.

'That would be a good thing,' Nyberg said. 'One gets the feeling that this is the work of a madman.'

'Or the opposite,' Wallander said. 'Someone who really knew what he was after.'

'In a sewing shop? Run by two old unmarried sisters?'

Nyberg shook his head disbelievingly and returned to the ruins.
Wallander walked down to the harbour. He needed some air. It was a couple of degrees below freezing and there was almost no breeze. He stopped outside the theatre building and saw that there was going to be a performance by the National Theatre.
A Dream Play
by Strindberg.
If only it had been an opera, he thought. Then I would have gone. But he hesitated to attend a regular play.

He walked out onto the pier in the yacht harbour. A ferry to Poland was just leaving the large terminal that lay adjacent to it. Absentmindedly he wondered how many cars were being smuggled out of
Sweden this time.

He returned to the station at half past three. He wondered if his father had reached the hotel and settled in. And if he would receive a new reprimand from Björk for an unexplained absence. At four o'clock he gathered with his colleagues in the conference room. They reviewed the findings of the day. Their collected material was still thin.

'Unusually thin,' Rydberg said. 'A building burns down in Ystad. And no one has noticed anything out of the ordinary.'

Svedberg and Hansson reported what they had found. Neither of the sisters had been married. There were a number of distant relatives, cousins and second cousins. But no one who lived in Ystad. The sewing shop yielded an unremarkable declared income. Nor had they uncovered any bank accounts with large savings. Hansson had located a safedeposit box at Handels Bank. But since they lacked keys, Per Åkeson would have to submit a request that the box be opened. Hansson calculated that it could be done by the following day.

Afterwards a heavy silence descended on the room.

'There has to be a motive,' Wallander said. 'Sooner or later we'll find it. If we only have patience.'

'Who knew these sisters?' Rydberg asked. 'They must have had friends and a bit of spare time now and again when they weren't working in the shop. Did they belong to any kind of organisation? Did they have a summer cabin? Did they take holidays? I still feel that we haven't scratched below the surface.'

Wallander thought Rydberg sounded irritable. He's probably in a lot of pain, Wallander thought. I wonder what is really wrong with him. If it isn't only rheumatism.

No one had anything to add to what Rydberg had said. They would go forward and delve deeper.

Wallander remained in his office until close to eight o'clock. He made his own list of all the facts they had about the Eberhardsson sisters.
As he read through what he had written he realised in earnest how thin it was. They had absolutely no leads to pursue.

Before leaving the office he called Martinsson at home. Martinsson told him that Holm had still not turned up.

Wallander went to his car. It took a long time for the engine to sputter into life. He angrily decided to take out a loan and get a new car as soon as he had the time.

When he came home he booked a time for the laundry room and then opened a can of luncheon meat. Just as he was about to sit down in front of the TV with his plate perched on his lap the phone rang.
It was Emma. She asked if she could come by.

'Not tonight,' Wallander said. 'You've probably read about the fire and the two sisters. We're working round the clock right now.'

She understood. After Wallander hung up he wondered why he couldn't tell her the truth. That he didn't want to be with her any more.
But of course it was inexcusable cowardice to say this over the phone.
Therefore he had to steel himself to go over to her place some evening.
He promised himself he would as soon as he had time.

He started to eat his food, which had already grown cold. It was nine o'clock.

The telephone rang again. Annoyed, Wallander put the plate down and answered.

It was Nyberg, who was still at the scene of the fire, calling from a patrol car.

'Now I think we've found something,' he said. 'A safe, the expensive kind that can withstand extreme heat.'

'Why didn't you find it earlier?'

'Good question,' Nyberg answered, without taking offence. 'The safe had been lowered into the foundation. We found a heat-insulated trapdoor under all the rubble. When we managed to force it open we found a space underneath. And there was the safe.'

'Have you opened it?'

'With what? There are no keys. This is a safe that will be difficult to force open.'

Wallander checked his watch. Ten minutes past nine.

'I'm on my way,' he said. 'I wonder if you might have uncovered the lead we were looking for.'

When Wallander got down to the street he couldn't get the car to start. He gave up and walked to Hamngatan.

At twenty minutes to ten he stood at Nyberg's side and studied the safe, illuminated by a lone spotlight.

At about the same time the temperature began to fall, and a gusty wind was moving in from the east.

Shortly after midnight on the fifteenth of December, Nyberg and his men had managed to lift up the safe with the help of a crane. It was loaded onto the back of a truck and immediately taken to the station.

But before Nyberg and Wallander left the scene, Nyberg examined the space under the foundation.

'This was put in after the house was built,' he said. 'I have to assume it was constructed expressly to hold this safe.'

Wallander nodded without a reply. He was thinking about the
Eberhardsson sisters. The police had searched for a motive. Now they may have found it, even if they didn't yet know what was in the safe.

But someone else may have known, Wallander thought. Both that the safe existed. And what was inside.

Nyberg and Wallander left the scene of the fire and walked out to the street.

'Is it possible to cut into the safe?' Wallander asked.

'Yes, of course,' Nyberg answered. 'But it requires special welding equipment. This is not the kind of safe that a regular locksmith would dream of trying to crack open.'

'We have to open it as soon as possible.'

Nyberg pulled off his protective suit. He looked sceptically at
Wallander.

'Do you mean that the safe should be opened tonight?'

'That would be best,' Wallander said. 'This is a double homicide.'

'Impossible,' Nyberg said. 'I can only get hold of people with the requisite welding equipment tomorrow at the earliest.'

'Are they here in Ystad?'

Nyberg reflected.

'There is a company that's a subcontractor for the armed forces,' he said. 'They probably have the equipment that would do the trick. I think their name is Fabricius. They're on Industrigatan.'

Nyberg looked exhausted. It would be insane to drive him onward right now, Wallander thought. He himself shouldn't press on either.

'Seven o'clock tomorrow,' Wallander said.

Nyberg nodded.

Wallander looked around for his car. Then he remembered that it hadn't started. Nyberg could drop him off, but he preferred to walk.
The wind was cold. He passed a thermometer outside a shop window on Stora Östergatan. Minus six degrees Celsius. Winter is creeping in,
Wallander thought. Soon it will be here.

One minute to seven on the morning of the fifteenth of December,
Nyberg entered Wallander's office. Wallander had the telephone directory open on his desk. He had already inspected the safe, which was being stored in a temporarily empty room next to reception. One of the officers just going off the night shift told him that they had needed a forklift to get the safe inside. Wallander nodded. He had noticed the marks outside the glass doors and seen that one of the hinges was bent.
That won't make Björk happy, he thought. But he'll have to live with it. Wallander had tried to move the safe, without success. He had wondered again what it contained. Or if it was empty.

Nyberg called the company on Industrigatan. Wallander went to get some coffee. Rydberg arrived at the same time. Wallander told him about the safe.

'It was as I suspected,' Rydberg said. 'We know very little about these sisters.'

'We're in the process of trying to find a welder who can take on this kind of safe,' Wallander said.

'I hope you'll tell me before you open it,' Rydberg said. 'It will be interesting to be there.'

Wallander returned to his office. He thought it seemed as if Rydberg was in less pain today.

Nyberg was just getting off the phone when Wallander walked in with two cups of coffee.

'I've just spoken to Ruben Fabricius,' Nyberg said. 'He thought they would be able to do the job. They'll be here in half an hour.'

'Tell me when they arrive,' Wallander said.

Nyberg left. Wallander thought about his father in Cairo. Hoped that his experiences were living up to his expectations. He studied the note with the telephone number of the hotel, Mena House. Wondered if he should call. But suddenly he was unsure of what the time difference was, or if there even was one. He dropped the thought and instead called Ebba to see who had come in.

'Martinsson called in to say that he was on his way to Sjöbo,' she answered. 'Svedberg hasn't arrived yet. Hansson is showering. He's apparently had a water leak at home.'

'We're going to open the safe soon,' Wallander said. 'That may get noisy.'

'I went in to take a look at it,' Ebba said. 'I thought it would be bigger.'

'One that size can hold a lot as well.'

'Of course,' she said. 'Ugh.'

Wallander wondered later what she had meant by her last comment.
Did she expect that they would find a child's corpse in the safe? Or a decapitated head?

Hansson appeared in the doorway. His hair was still wet.

'I've just talked to Björk,' he said cheerily. 'He pointed out that the doors of the station were damaged last night.'

Hansson had not yet heard about the safe. Wallander explained.

'That may provide us with a motive,' Hansson said.

'In the best-case scenario,' Wallander said. 'In the worst case, the safe is empty. And then we understand even less.'

'It could have been emptied by the people who shot the sisters,'
Hansson objected. 'Perhaps he shot one of them and forced the other to open the safe?'

This had also occurred to Wallander. But something told him it was not what had actually happened. Without being able to say why he had that feeling.

At eight o'clock, under Ruben Fabricius's direction, two welders started the work of cutting open the safe. It was, as Nyberg had predicted, a difficult task.

'A special kind of steel,' Fabricius said. 'A normal locksmith would have to devote his whole life trying to open this kind of safe.'

'Can you blow it up?' Wallander asked.

'The risk would be that you'd take the whole building with you,'
Fabricius answered. 'In that case I would first move the safe to an open field. But sometimes so much explosive is needed that the safe itself is blown to pieces. And the contents either burn or are pulverised.'

Fabricius was a large, heavyset man who punctuated each sentence with a short laugh.

'This kind of safe probably costs a hundred thousand kronor,' he said and laughed.

Wallander looked astonished.

'That much?'

'Easily.'

One thing at least is certain, Wallander thought as he recalled yesterday's discussion about the dead women's financial situation. The
Eberhardsson sisters had much more money than they had reported to the authorities. They must have had undeclared income. But what can you sell of value in a sewing shop? Gold thread? Diamond-studded buttons?

The welding equipment was turned off at a quarter past nine.
Fabricius nodded to Wallander and chuckled.

'All set,' he said.

Rydberg, Hansson and Svedberg had arrived. Nyberg had been following the work from the beginning. Using a crowbar, he now forced out the back piece that had been freed with a welding torch. Everyone who was crowded around leaned forward. Wallander saw a number of plastic-wrapped bundles. Nyberg picked up one that lay on top. The plastic was white and sealed with tape. Nyberg placed the bundle on a chair and cut open the tape. Inside there was a thick wad of notes.
American hundred-dollar bills. There were ten wads, each a stack of ten thousand dollars.

'A lot of money,' Wallander said.

He carefully pulled out a bill and held it up to the light. It appeared genuine.

Nyberg took out the other bundles, one after another, and opened them. Fabricius stood in the background and laughed each time a new package of money was revealed.

'Let's take the rest to a conference room,' Wallander said.

Then he thanked Fabricius and the two men who had cut open the safe.

'You'll have to send us a bill,' Wallander said. 'Without you, we would never have been able to get this open.'

'I think this one's on us,' Fabricius said. 'It was an experience for a tradesman. And a wonderful opportunity for professional training.'

'There is also no need to mention what was inside,' Wallander said and tried to sound serious.

Fabricius let out a short laugh and saluted him. Wallander understood that it was not intended to be ironic.

When all of the bundles had been opened and the wads of notes counted, Wallander made a swift calculation. Most of it had been in
US dollars. But there had also been British pounds and Swiss francs.

'I estimate it to be around five million kronor,' he said. 'No insignificant sum.'

'There would also not have been room for more in this safe,' Rydberg said. 'And this means, in other words, that if this cash was the motive then he or they who shot the sisters did not get what they had come for.'

'We nonetheless have some kind of motive,' Wallander said. 'This safe had been concealed. According to Nyberg, it appeared to have been there for a number of years. At some point the sisters must therefore have found it necessary to buy it because they needed to store and hide large sums of money. These were almost entirely new and unused dollar bills. Therefore it must be possible to trace them. Did they arrive in
Sweden legally or not? We also need to find answers as quickly as possible to the other questions we're working on. Who did these sisters socialise with? What kind of habits did they have?'

'And weaknesses,' Rydberg added. 'Let us not forget about that.'

Björk entered the room at the end of the meeting. He gave a start when he saw all the money on the table.

'This has to be carefully recorded,' he said when Wallander explained in a somewhat strained manner what had happened. 'Nothing can be lost. Also, what has happened to the front doors?'

'A work-related accident,' Wallander said. 'When the forklift was lifting the safe.'

He said this so forcefully that Björk did not make any objections.

They broke up the meeting. Wallander hurried out of the room in order not to be left alone with Björk. It had fallen to Wallander to contact an animal protection association where at least one of the sisters,
Emilia, had been an active member, according to one of the neighbours.
Wallander had been given a name by Svedberg, Tyra Olofsson. Wallander burst out laughing when he saw the address: Käringgatan – 'käring' meant old woman or shrew – number 11. He wondered if there was any other town in Sweden that had as many unusual street names.

Before Wallander left the station he called Arne Hurtig, the car salesman he usually did business with. He explained the situation with his Peugeot. Hurtig gave him a few suggestions, all of which Wallander found too expensive. But when Hurtig promised a good trade-in price on his old car, Wallander decided to get another Peugeot. He hung up and called his bank. He had to wait several minutes until he could speak to the person who normally helped him. Wallander asked for a loan of twenty thousand kronor. He was informed that this would not be a problem. He would be able to come in the following day, sign the loan documents and pick up the money.

The thought of a new car put him in a good mood. Why he always drove a Peugeot, he couldn't say. I'm probably more stuck in my ways than I like to think, he thought as he left the station. He stopped and inspected the damaged hinge on the front doors of the station. Since no one was around, he took the opportunity to give the door frame a kick. The damage became more noticeable. He walked away quickly, hunched over against the gusty wind. Of course he should have called to make sure that Tyra Olofsson was in. But since she was retired, he took the chance.

When he rang the doorbell, it opened almost at once. Tyra Olofsson was short and wore glasses that testified to her myopia. Wallander explained who he was and held up his ID card, which she held several centimetres from her glasses and studied carefully.

'The police,' she said. 'Then it must have to do with poor Emilia.'

'That's right,' Wallander said. 'I hope I'm not disturbing you.'

She invited him in. There was a strong smell of dogs in the hall. She led him out into the kitchen. Wallander counted fourteen food bowls on the floor. Worse than Haverberg, he thought.

'I keep them outside,' Tyra Olofsson said, having followed his gaze.

Wallander wondered briefly if it was legal to keep so many dogs in the city. She asked if he wanted coffee. Wallander thanked her but declined. He was hungry and planning to eat as soon as his conversation with Tyra Olofsson was over. He sat down at the table and looked in vain for something to write with. For once he had remembered to put a notepad in his pocket. But now he didn't have a pen. There was a small stump of a pencil lying on the windowsill, which he picked up.

'You're right, Mrs Olofsson,' he began. 'This is about Emilia
Eberhardsson, who has died so tragically. We heard through one of the neighbours that she had been active in an animal protection association.
And that you, Mrs Olofsson, knew her well.'

'Call me Tyra,' she said. 'And I can't say I knew Emilia well. I don't think anyone did.'

'Was her sister Anna ever involved in this work?'

'No.'

'Isn't that strange? I mean, two sisters, both unmarried who live together. I imagine they would develop similar interests.'

'That is a stereotype,' Tyra Olofsson said firmly. 'I imagine that Emilia and Anna were very different people. I worked as a teacher my whole life. Then you learn to see the differences in people. It's already apparent in young children.'

'How would you describe Emilia?'

Her answer surprised him.

'Snooty. The kind who always knows best. She could be very unpleasant. But since she donated money for our work, we couldn't get rid of her. Even if we wanted to.'

Tyra Olofsson told him about the local animal protection association that she and a few other like-minded individuals had started in the 1960s. They had always worked locally and the impetus for the association was the increasing problem of abandoned summer cats.
The association had always been small, with few members. One day in the early seventies, Emilia Eberhardsson had read about their work in the
Ystad Allehanda
and got in touch. She had given them money every month and participated in meetings and other events.