One Step Behind

by Henning Mankell

  Lundström sat down next to Wallander on the steps.

  "That was a thoughtless thing of them to do," he said. "Asking for your ID like that."

  He stretched out his hand and introduced himself. Wallander immediately felt that he could trust him.

  "Should I speak to you?"

  Lundström nodded.

  "Then let's go inside," Wallander said.

  They sat in the living room. After he'd called Martinsson on Lundström's phone, and arranged for Isa's parents to be notified of her death, he took more than an hour to explain who the dead girl was, and the circumstances surrounding her murder. Lundström listened without taking notes. Now and again they were interrupted by officers with questions. Lundström provided simple and clear instructions. When Wallander had finished talking, Lundström asked about a few details. Wallander thought that they were exactly the questions he would have asked himself.

  It was already 7 a.m. and through the windows they could see the coast guard's boat scraping against the dock.

  "I'd better get back up there," Lundström said. "You can stay here, of course. You've seen more than enough."

  The wind was very strong now, and Wallander shivered.

  "It's an autumn wind," Lundström said. "The weather has started to turn."

  "I've never been in this archipelago before," Wallander said. "It's very beautiful."

  "I played handball when I was young," Lundström said. "I had a picture of the Ystad team on my bedroom wall, but I've almost never been to your parts."

  As they walked along the path, they could hear dogs barking in the distance.

  "I thought it would be best to comb the island," Lundström said, "in case the killer is still here somewhere."

  "He arrived by boat," Wallander said. "He anchored on the west side."

  "If we had more time, we'd arrange to put some of the nearby harbours under surveillance," Lundström said. "But it's too late now."

  "Maybe someone saw something," Wallander said.

  "We're on to it," Lundström said. "I've considered the possibility. Someone may have seen a boat anchoring here late last night."

  Wallander remained at a distance while Lundström walked up to the crevice and had a brief discussion with his colleagues. He felt sick to his stomach. What he wanted most of all was to get off the island as soon as possible. His feeling of being somehow responsible for the crime was very strong. They should have left the island last night. He should have realised the danger of staying. The murderer seemed always to be in a position of knowing what they were doing. It had also been a mistake to let her sleep downstairs. He was aware that blaming himself was unreasonable, but he couldn't help it.

  Lundström reappeared, and at the same time an officer with a dog came from the opposite direction. Lundström stopped him.

  "Find anything?"

  "There's no one on the island," the officer said. "She traced him to a bay on the west side, but the scent ended there."

  Lundström looked at Wallander. "You were right," he said. "He came and left by boat."

  They walked down to the main house again. Wallander thought about what Lundström had just said.

  "The boat is important," he said. "Where did he get hold of it?"

  "I was just thinking the same thing," Lundström said. "If we assume that the killer is not from around here, which I think we have to, then we have to find out where he got the boat from."

  "He stole it," Wallander said.

  Lundström stopped. "But how did he find his way here in the middle of the night?"

  "He may have been out here before, and there are maps."

  "Do you really think he's been out here before?"

  "We can't rule that out."

  Lundström started walking again.

  "A stolen or borrowed boat," he said. "It must have happened near here. Either in Fyrudden, Snäckvarp or Gryt. If he didn't steal it from a private dock, that is."

  "He can't have had a lot of time," Wallander said. "Isa ran away from the hospital yesterday morning."

  "Criminals in a hurry are always the easiest to trace," Lundström said.

  They reached the landing and Lundström talked to a police officer who was adjusting one of the ropes. They took shelter from the wind by the boathouse.

  "There's no reason to keep you here," Lundström said. "I assume that you want to go home."

  Wallander felt a need to describe his feelings. "It shouldn't have happened," he said "I feel responsible. We should have left here yesterday. And now she's dead."

  "I would have done the same thing that you did," Lundström said. "This was where she ran to. This was where you could start to get her talking. You couldn't have known what was going to happen."

  Wallander shook his head. "I should have realised how much danger she was in."

  They walked up to the house, and Lundström said he would do his best to ensure cooperation between the Norrköping and Ystad police.

  "I'm sure there'll be the odd complaint about our not being informed that you were up here, but I'll see that they keep quiet."

  Wallander got his bag and they returned to the landing. The coast guard would drop him back on the mainland. Lundström remained on the landing and saw them off. Wallander lifted his hand in a gesture of gratitude.

  He threw his bag in the car and went to pay his parking ticket. As he was walking back he saw Westin on his way into the harbour. Wallander walked out to meet him, noting Westin's sombre expression as he stepped ashore.

  "I take it you've heard the news," Wallander said.

  "Isa is dead."

  "It happened last night. I woke up when she screamed, but I was too late."

  Westin looked at him grimly. "So it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't come out here last night?"

  There it is, Wallander thought. The accusation. The one I can't defend myself against.

  He took out his wallet. "How much do I owe you for yesterday's trip?"

  "Nothing," Westin said.

  Westin began to walk away. Wallander remembered that he had one more question to ask him.

  "There's one more thing," he said.

  Westin turned.

  "Sometime between 19 and 22 July, you took someone to Bärnsö."

  "In July I had a lot of passengers every day."

  "This was another detective," Wallander said. "His name was Karl Evert Svedberg. He spoke with an even stronger Skåne accent than I do. Do you remember him?"

  "Was he wearing his uniform?"

  "I doubt it."

  "Can you describe him?"

  "He was almost completely bald, about as tall as me, solid but not overweight."

  Westin thought it over.

  "Between 19 and 22 July?"

  "He would probably have crossed in the afternoon or early evening on the 19th. I don't know when he came back, but it would have been the 22nd at the latest."

  "I'll check my records," Westin said. "But I don't remember off hand."

  Wallander followed him out to the boat. Westin got out a notebook that lay under his chart, and came out of the wheelhouse.

  "There's nothing here," he said. "But I do have a vague recollection of him. There were a lot of people on board, though. I might be confusing him with someone else."

  "Do you have access to a fax machine?" Wallander asked. "We can send you a picture of him."

  "I can get faxes at the post office."

  Another possibility occurred to Wallander.

  "You might already have seen a picture of him," he said. "Maybe on TV. He's the police officer who was murdered in Ystad a couple of days ago."

  Westin frowned. "I heard about that," he said. "But I can't remember seeing a picture."

  "You'll get one over the fax," Wallander said. "Give me the number."

  Westin wrote it down for him in his notebook and tore out the page.

  "Do you know if Isa was out here between 19 and 22 July?"

  "No, but she was here a lot this
summer."

  "So it's a possibility?"

  "Yes."

  Wallander left Fyrudden. He stopped at a petrol station in Valdermarsvik, then took the coast road. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. He rolled down the window. When he reached Västervik he realised that he didn't have the energy to continue. He had to eat something, and sleep. He found a roadside café and ordered an omelette, some mineral water and a cup of coffee. The woman who took his order smiled at him.

  "At your age you shouldn't stay up all night," she said.

  Wallander looked at her with surprise. "Is it so obvious?"

  She bent down and got her bag from behind the counter, then fished out a make-up mirror and handed it over to him. She was right. He was pale and had dark circles under his eyes. His hair was a mess.

  "You're right," he said. "I'll have my omelette, then I'll catch up on a bit of sleep in my car."

  He went outside and sat down in the shade. She brought the food out on a tray.

  "There's a small room off the kitchen with a bed in it," she said. "You could use it for a while if you'd like."

  She walked away without waiting for an answer. Wallander watched her departing figure with surprise. After he'd finished eating he walked over to the door of the kitchen. It was open.

  "Is the offer still open?" he asked.

  "I don't go back on my word."

  She showed him the room and the bed, which was a simple folding cot with a blanket.

  "It's better than the back seat of your car," she said. "Of course, policemen are used to sleeping anywhere."

  "How do you know I'm a policeman?"

  "I saw your police ID in your wallet when you paid. I was married to a policeman, so I recognised it."

  "My name is Kurt. Kurt Wallander."

  "I'm Erika. Sleep well."

  Wallander lay down on the bed. His whole body ached and his head felt completely empty. He knew he should call the station and let them know that he was on his way, but he couldn't be bothered. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  When he woke he had no idea where he was. He looked down at his watch. It was 7 p.m. He sat up with a jerk. He had slept for more than five hours. Cursing, he got the phone and called the station. Martinsson didn't answer, and so he tried Hansson.

  "Where the hell have you been? We've been trying to reach you all day. Why wasn't your phone on?"

  "There must have been something wrong with it. Has anything happened?"

  "Nothing more than us wondering where you were."

  "I'll be there as soon as I can. By 11 p.m. at the latest."

  Wallander hung up. Erika appeared in the doorway.

  "I think you needed that," she said.

  "An hour would have been plenty. I should have asked you to wake me."

  "There's coffee, but no hot food. I've closed for the day."

  "You've been waiting for me?"

  "There are always things that need doing around here."

  They went out into the empty restaurant, and she brought him a cup of coffee and some sandwiches, and sat down across from him.

  "I just heard on the radio about the girl who was killed in the archipelago, and the police officer who found her," she said. "I take it that was you."

  "Yes, but I'd rather not talk about it. So, you were married to a policeman once?"

  "When I lived in Kalmar. I moved here after the divorce, when I had the money to buy this place."

  She told him about the first few years, when the restaurant didn't make enough money. But it was doing better now. Wallander listened, but all the while he was looking at her. He wanted to reach out and touch her, to hold on to something normal and real. He sat with her for half an hour, then paid and walked to his car. She followed him out.

  "I don't really know how to thank you," he said.

  "Why do people always need to thank each other?" she said. "Drive carefully."

  Wallander reached the station at 11 p.m. and met with everyone in the large conference room. Nyberg and Holgersson were there. During the drive back, he had thought through everything that had happened, beginning on the night that he had woken thinking that something was wrong with Svedberg. He still felt guilty about Isa, but now he also felt anger at her death. His rage caused him to speed up without noticing it, and at one point he found himself doing more than 150 kilometres per hour.

  His rage stemmed not only from her senseless murder, but also from his feeling of failure at their inability to see which way to turn. And now Isa Edengren had been shot out on Bärnsö Island, practically before his eyes.

  Wallander told everyone about the events on the island. After answering their questions and listening to a report on developments in Ystad, he summed up the situation in a few sentences. It was well past midnight.

  "Tomorrow we have to start from the beginning," he said. "We have to start from the beginning and work from there. We'll find the killer sooner or later. We have to. But I think that the best thing to do now is to go home and get some sleep. It's been hard up till now, and I think that it's just going to get harder."

  Wallander finished. Martinsson looked as though he was about to speak, but then changed his mind. Wallander was the first to leave. He closed his office door, making it clear that he didn't want to be disturbed. He sat down and thought about what he hadn't brought up at the meeting, what they would have to discuss the following day.

  Isa Edengren was dead. Did that mean that the killer had completed his task, or was he now preparing for something else?

  No one knew the answer.

  Part Two

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  On the morning of Thursday, 15 August, Wallander finally went back to Dr Göransson's office. He didn't have an appointment but was seen immediately. He hadn't slept well and was extremely tired, but he left the car at home. He knew that each new day would carry with it fresh excuses for not exercising. This day was just as inconvenient as any other, so he might as well start getting used to it.

  The weather was still beautiful and calm. As he walked through the town he tried to recall when they had last had an August this warm. But his mind kept turning back to the investigation, and not just during his waking hours. It haunted him in his sleep as well.

  Last night he had dreamed of Bärnsö. He kept hearing her scream. When he woke up he was halfway out of bed, drenched in sweat, his heart pounding. It had taken him a long time to fall back to sleep.

  He sat at the kitchen table for a while after he woke. It was still dark outside. He couldn't think of a time when he'd felt as helpless as he did at that moment. It wasn't just the fatigue caused by the little icebergs of sugar floating around in his blood. It also came from a feeling of having been overtaken by age. Was he really too old? He wasn't even 50.

  He wondered if he was simply starting to crumble under the weight of all the responsibility and was now on a downward trajectory to a point where only fear remained. He was very close to making a new decision: to give up. To ask Holgersson to put someone else in charge.

  The question was who to appoint in his place. Martinsson and Hansson both came to mind, but Wallander knew neither one of them was up to it. They would have to bring someone in from outside, which was not ideal. That would be like labelling themselves inadequate.

  He didn't come to any conclusion. When he decided to go to the doctor it was in the hope that he'd hear the words that would free him, give him the chance to be forced to take leave on medical grounds.

  But it turned out that Dr Göransson had no such plans for him. After telling Wallander that his blood sugar was still too high, that he was leaking sugar into his urine and had worryingly high blood pressure, he simply gave him a prescription for some medication and ordered him to make a radical change in his diet.

  "We have to attack your symptoms from all sides," he said. "They're connected and have to be treated as such. But it's not going to be possible unless you take charge of your health."

  He gave him the phone n
umber of a dietician. Wallander left the office with the prescription in hand. It was a little after 8 a.m. and he knew he should go directly to the station, but he didn't feel ready. He went up to the cafe by the main square and had a cup of coffee, but this time he passed on the pastry.

  What do I do now, he thought. I'm in charge of solving one of the most brutal serial killings in Sweden in years. Every police officer's eye is on me, since one of the victims was in the force. The press are hounding me. I'll probably be criticised by the victims' parents. Everyone expects me to find the killer in a few days and to have collected the kind of evidence against him that would make even the most hardened prosecutor weep. The only problem is that in reality I have nothing. Soon I'll gather my colleagues together and we'll start again. We aren't even close to anything like a breakthrough. What we're in is a vacuum.

  He finished his coffee. A man was reading the paper at the next table. Wallander saw the big black headlines, and left the cafe in a hurry. Since he had time to spare, he decided to squeeze in an errand before returning to the station. He went to Vädergränd and rang the doorbell at Bror Sundelius's house. There was a chance that Sundelius didn't welcome surprise visits, but Wallander knew it would not be because he wasn't up yet.

  The door opened. Even though it was only 8.30 a.m., Sundelius was dressed in a suit. The knot of his tie was an exercise in perfection. He opened the door wide without hesitation, invited Wallander in, and disappeared into the kitchen for coffee.

  "I always keep the water hot," he said, "in case I have unexpected visitors. The last time that happened was about a year ago, of course, but you never know."

  Wallander sat down on the sofa and pulled the cup towards him. Sundelius sat down across from him.

  "Last time we spoke we were interrupted," Wallander said.

  "The reason for that has become exceedingly clear," Sundelius replied dryly. "What kind of people do we let into this country anyway?"

  His comment puzzled Wallander.

  "There's no evidence that this was the work of an immigrant," he said. "Why would you think that?"