One Step Behind

by Henning Mankell

  "Isn't it just the wealthy who buy racehorses? I didn't think they had to worry about unemployment."

  "They're still around," Widen agreed. "But there don't seem to be as many of them as before."

  They walked down towards the stables. A girl wearing riding gear appeared around the corner with a horse.

  "That's Sofia. She's the only one left. I had to get rid of everyone else," Widen said.

  Wallander remembered hearing something a couple of years ago about Widen sleeping with one of the girls working on the ranch. What had her name been? Jenny?

  Widen exchanged some words with the girl and Wallander caught the name of the horse, Black Triangle. The outlandish names still surprised him.

  They went into the stables.

  "This is Dreamgirl Express," Widen said, showing him another horse. "Right now she supports me almost all by herself. Owners complain about the upkeep being expensive, and my accountant keeps calling earlier and earlier in the morning. I really don't know how much longer I can get by."

  Wallander stroked the horse's muzzle carefully.

  "You've always managed before," he said.

  Widen shook his head.

  "Right now it doesn't look good," he said. "But I can probably get a good price for the place and then I'll take off."

  "Where will you go?"

  "I'm just going to pack my bags, get a good night's sleep, and decide in the morning."

  They left the stables and walked up to the main house. Wallander remembered it being a huge mess, but surprisingly everything was very neatly arranged this time.

  "A couple of months ago I realised that cleaning could be therapeutic," Widen said in answer to Wallander's obvious surprise.

  "That doesn't work for me. God knows I've tried."

  Widen gestured for him to sit at the table, where he had set out glasses and a couple of bottles. Wallander hesitated, then nodded and sat down. His doctor wouldn't like it but right now he didn't have the energy to abstain.

  "Do you remember that time we went to Germany to hear Wagner?" Widen said, much later in the evening. "It's 25 years ago now. I found some photos the other day. Do you want to see them?"

  "Sure."

  "I treat them like valuables," Widén said. "I've put them in my secret compartment."

  Wallander watched as Widen removed part of the wooden panelling next to the window and took out a metal box that had been jammed into the space underneath. The pictures were in the box. Widen held them out to Wallander, who took them, marvelling at what he saw.

  One of the pictures was taken at a roadside rest area outside Lübeck. Wallander had a bottle of beer in his hand and was bellowing at the photographer.

  "We had a great time," Widen said. "Maybe more fun than we've ever had since."

  Wallander poured some more whisky into his glass. Widen was right. They had never had as much fun after that.

  Close to 1 a.m., they called a company in Skurup and ordered a taxi. Widen agreed to drive his car in the next day. Wallander already had a headache and felt sick to his stomach. He was very, very tired.

  "We should go back to Germany sometime," Widen said as they were waiting for the cab.

  "No, we shouldn't go back," Wallander said. "We should take a new trip. Not that I have any property I can sell."

  The car came and Wallander got into the back seat, leaned back, and fell asleep immediately.

  Just as they passed the turn-off to Rydsgård something pulled him up to the surface again. At first he didn't know what it was. Something had flickered through his mind in the dream he'd been having. But then he remembered what it was: Widen had removed a piece of the wood panelling.

  Wallander's mind became crystal clear at once. Svedberg had kept the woman in his life a secret for years. But when Wallander had searched his desk he hadn't found anything except some old letters from his parents. Svedberg must have a secret compartment, Wallander thought. Just like Sten Widen.

  He leaned forward to the driver and changed the destination from Mariagatan to the town square. A little after 1.30 a.m. he got out of the cab. He still had the keys to Svedberg's flat in his pocket. He remembered seeing some aspirin in Svedberg's medicine cabinet. He unlocked the front door of the flat, held his breath, and listened. Then he poured himself a glass of water and took the aspirin.

  Some drunken teenagers walked by on the street below, and then the silence returned. He put the glass down and started looking for Svedberg's secret compartment. By 2.45 a.m. he had found it. A corner of the plastic flooring under the chest of drawers in the bedroom could be peeled away from the concrete base. Wallander repositioned the bedside lamp so that light fell on the exposed area. There was a brown envelope stuffed in the space under the mat. It wasn't sealed. He took it out into the kitchen and opened it.

  Like Widén, Svedberg treated his photographs as valuables. There were two pictures inside the envelope. One was a studio portrait of a woman's face. The other photograph was a snapshot of a group of young people who sat in the shadow of a tree and raised their wineglasses towards an unknown photographer.

  The scene was idyllic. There was only one thing that struck Wallander as odd. The young people were dressed in elaborate, old-fashioned costumes, as if the party had taken place in a bygone era.

  Wallander put on his glasses. His stomach started to ache. He recalled having seen a magnifying glass in one of Svedberg's drawers, and he got it out and studied the photograph more closely. There was something familiar about these young people, especially the girl who sat on the extreme right. Then he suddenly knew who it was. He had seen another picture of her recently, one in which she was not dressed up. The girl on the far right was Astrid Hillström.

  Wallander slowly lowered the photograph. Somewhere a clock struck 3 a.m.

  CHAPTER NINE

  By 6 a.m. on Saturday, 10 August, Wallander couldn't stand it any longer. He had spent most of the remaining night pacing back and forth in his flat, too anxious to sleep. The two pictures he had found at Svedberg's place lay on the kitchen table. They had been burning a hole in his pocket ever since he'd made his way home through the deserted town. It wasn't until he took off his coat that he realised it must have been raining slightly outside.

  The photographs in Svedberg's secret compartment were a crucial find. What convinced him of this he couldn't say, but the free-floating anxiety he had felt since the beginning of this case had now escalated into full-blown fear. A case that hadn't even been a case, three young people who were travelling around Europe somewhere, now appeared in the middle of one of the most serious murder investigations the Ystad police had ever undertaken – the killing of one of their own. During the hours after Wallander's discovery, his thoughts were muddled and contradictory. But he knew that this was a crucial breakthrough.

  What was it the photographs told him? The picture of Louise was in black-and-white, the snapshot in colour. There was no date printed on the back of either. Did that mean they weren't developed in commercial laboratories? Or were there local businesses that didn't use automatic dating systems? The sizes of the photographs were standard. He tried to decide if the pictures were taken by an amateur or not, since he knew that pictures developed in private darkrooms often did not dry to a uniform finish. But he lacked the expertise to answer his questions.

  Next he asked himself what feelings the two photographs evoked. What did they say about the photographer? He was not yet willing to assume that they were taken by the same person. Had Svedberg taken the picture of Louise? Her gaze was impenetrable. The picture of the young people was also hard to pin down. He did not see a conscious sense of composition. The dominating principle appeared to be the inclusion of everyone in the frame. Someone had picked up a camera, told everyone to look over, and pushed the button. Maybe there was a whole series of pictures from this festive occasion. But where were they?

  The sheer implausibility of the connection worried him. They already knew that Svedberg had started inv
estigating the disappearance of the young people only a few days before he had gone on holiday.

  Why would he have done that? And why would he have done it in secret? Where did the photograph of the young revellers come from? Where was it taken? And then this picture of the woman. It couldn't be anyone but Louise. Wallander studied it for a long time as he sat at the kitchen table. The woman was in her 40s, perhaps a couple of years younger than Svedberg. If they had met 10 years earlier, she might have been 30 and he 35. That seemed pretty reasonable. The woman had straight, dark hair in a style Wallander knew was called a page boy cut. Because it was a black-and-white photograph, he couldn't tell what colour her eyes were. She had a thin nose and face, and her lips were pressed together in the hint of a smile. It was a Mona Lisa smile, but the woman had no glimmer of a smile in her eyes. Wallander thought the picture had been retouched, or else she was heavily made up. There was something veiled about the photograph, something he couldn't place. The woman's face was evasive. It had been captured by the camera but was still not there somehow.

  These photographs have been kept in a vacuum, Wallander thought. They lack fingerprints, like two unread books.

  He managed to hold out until 6 a.m. and then he called Martinsson, who was an early riser. He answered almost at once.

  "I hope I didn't wake you."

  "If you call me at 10 p.m. you'd be in danger of doing that. But not at 6 a.m. I was about to go out and work in the garden."

  Wallander came right to the point. He told him about the photographs. Martinsson listened without asking any questions.

  "I want to meet with everyone as soon as possible," Wallander said when he finished. "Not at 9 a.m. At 7 a.m."

  "Have you talked to anyone else?"

  "No, you're the first."

  "Who do you want?"

  "Everyone, including Nyberg."

  "Then you'll have to call him yourself – he's so moody in the mornings. I can't deal with angry people until after I've had my morning coffee."

  Martinsson volunteered to call Hansson and Höglund, leaving the others to Wallander. He started with Nyberg, who was as sleepy and ill-tempered as expected.

  "We're meeting at 7 a.m., not 9 a.m.," Wallander said.

  "Has anything happened, or are you just doing this for the hell of it?"

  "If you ever find you've been called to an investigative meeting just for the hell of it, you should contact your union representative."

  He regretted that last comment to Nyberg. He went out to the kitchen and put on some water for a cup of coffee. Then he called Lisa Holgersson, who promised to be there. Wallander took the coffee with him out onto the balcony, where the thermometer indicated that it would be another warm day. There was the sudden clatter from something being pushed through the post slot in the front door.

  It was his car keys. And after a night like that, he thought. Sten is amazing. He was weighed down with fatigue. With self-disgust, he suddenly imagined little white icebergs of sugar floating around in his veins.

  He left the flat just after 6.30 a.m., and bumped into the person who delivered the newspapers, an older man named Stefansson who had bicycle clips around his trouser legs.

  "Sorry I'm late today," he apologised. "There was something wrong with the presses this morning."

  "Do you deliver papers at Lilla Norregatan as well?" Wallander asked.

  Stefansson understood him at once. "You mean to the policeman who was killed?"

  "Yes."

  "A lady by the name of Selma works there. She's the oldest delivery person around. I think she started in 1947. What's that, nearly 50 years?"

  "What's her last name?"

  "Nylander."

  Stefansson handed Wallander the paper.

  "There's something about you in there," he said.

  "Put it in my slot," Wallander said. "I won't have time to read it."

  Wallander knew he could make it on time if he walked, but he took the car anyway. The start of his new life would have to be pushed back another day.

  He ran into Höglund in the car park. "The person who delivers papers to Svedberg's building is called Selma Nylander," he told her. "Have you talked to her?"

  "No, it turns out she doesn't have a phone."

  Wallander thought about Sture Björklund's decision to throw out his telephone. Was it becoming a general trend? They went into the conference room. Wallander made himself a cup of coffee, and stood out in the corridor for a while trying to think how to organise the meeting. He was normally very well prepared, but this time couldn't think of anything except putting the photographs on the table and seeing what people had to say.

  He closed the door behind him and sat in his usual spot. Svedberg's chair was still empty. Wallander took the pictures out of his coat pocket and told them briefly how he had found them. He omitted the fact that the thought had come to him while he lay in a drunken stupor in the back of a taxi. Since being stopped for driving under the influence by some of his colleagues six years ago, he never mentioned drinking alcohol.

  The photographs lay in front of him. Hansson set up the projector.

  "I'd like to point out that the girl to the far right in this picture is Astrid Hillström, one of the young people who has been missing since Midsummer."

  He put both pictures into the projector. There was silence around the table. Wallander took the opportunity to study the pictures more closely himself as he waited, but couldn't pick out any additional details. He had used the magnifying glass carefully during those early hours.

  Martinsson finally broke the silence. "You have to hand it to Svedberg," he said. "She's beautiful. Does anyone recognise her? Ystad isn't a big city."

  No one had seen her before, nor any of the young people. It was, however, clear to everyone in the room that the girl to the far right was Astrid Hillström. The picture of her on file resembled this one closely, except for the clothes.

  "Is it a masquerade?" Chief Holgersson asked. "What period is it meant to be?"

  "The 17th century," Hansson said confidently.

  Wallander looked at him with surprise. "How do you know that?"

  "Maybe it's more like the 18th century," he said, changing his mind.

  "I think it's the 16th century," Höglund said. "King Gustav I Vasa's time. They dressed in the same billowing sleeves and leggings."

  "Are you sure?" Wallander asked.

  "Of course I'm not sure. I'm just telling you what I think."

  "Let's steer clear of educated guesses for a moment. The most important thing here is not how they're dressed up. It will eventually be important to figure out why they were dressed up, but even that can wait."

  He looked around at everyone before continuing. "We have a picture of a woman in her 40s and a picture of a group of young people dressed up in some kind of costume. One of these young people is Astrid Hillström, who has been missing since Midsummer, although she's most probably travelling around Europe with two of her friends. This is what we know. I found these pictures hidden in the flat of our colleague Svedberg, who has been murdered. The way we need to begin our investigation is by determining what happened on Midsummer's Eve. That's where we start."

  It took them three hours to go through the available material. Most of the time was spent formulating new questions and deciding who would do what. After two hours they took a short break and everyone except Chief Holgersson had coffee. Then they kept going. The team was starting to come together. At 10.15 a.m. Wallander felt they couldn't get any further.

  Holgersson had been quiet for a long time, as she often was during their investigative work. Wallander knew she had great respect for their abilities. But now she raised her hand slightly.

  "What do you really think has happened to them?" she asked. "If there's been any kind of an accident you would think it would have been discovered by now."

  "I don't know," Wallander said. "The very supposition that something has happened to them leads us to conclude that their si
gnatures on the postcards were forged. Why?"

  "To cover up a crime," Nyberg suggested.

  The room became quiet. Wallander looked at Nyberg and nodded slowly.

  "And not just any crime," he said. "People who go missing either stay that way or turn up. There's only one possible explanation for these postcards having been forged, and that is that someone is trying to hide the fact that these three people – Boge, Norman and Hillström – are dead."

  "That tells us another thing," Höglund said. "The person who sent these postcards knows what happened to them."

  "Not just that," Wallander said. "It's the person who killed them, a person who can forge their signatures and handwriting, and who knows where they live."

  It was as if Wallander needed time to get to his final conclusion. "If our supposition is correct," he said, "then we have to assume that these three were the victims of a calculating and well-organised murderer."

  His words were followed by a long silence. Wallander already knew what he wanted to say next but wondered if anyone would jump in. Outside in the hall someone laughed loudly. Nyberg blew his nose. Hansson was staring off into space and Martinsson drummed his fingers on the table. Höglund and Holgersson were looking at Wallander.

  My two allies, he thought.

  "We are forced into the realm of speculation at this point," he said. "One line of reasoning will be particularly unpleasant and unimaginable, but we cannot overlook the part that Svedberg may have played in these events. We know he kept a photograph of Astrid Hillström and her friends hidden in his flat. We know that he conducted his investigations into their disappearance in secret. We don't know what drove him to do these things, but the three of them are still missing and he has been killed. It may have been a burglary of some kind, it may have been the case that someone was looking for something, perhaps for this very picture. But we cannot definitively rule out the possibility that Svedberg himself may have been involved in some way."

  Hansson dropped his pen on the table. "You can't mean that!" he said, visibly upset. "One of our colleagues is brutally murdered, we're trying to find his killer, and you're suggesting that he was involved in an even greater crime."