One Step Behind

by Henning Mankell

"I have more than 20 cups a day," he said. "To keep my energy up. Actually, maybe just to keep going."

  "Police work wouldn't be possible without coffee," Wallander said.

  "No work would be possible without coffee."

  They pondered the importance of coffee in silence. Some people at a nearby table got up and left.

  "I don't think I've ever been involved in anything quite as strange as these murders," Nyberg said suddenly.

  "Neither have I. It's senseless brutality. I can't imagine a motive."

  "It could simply be for the love of killing," Nyberg said. "A killer with a lust for blood who carefully plans and arranges his crimes."

  "You may be right," Wallander said. "But how did Svedberg get onto him so fast? That's what I can't understand."

  "There's only one rational explanation, which is that Svedberg knew whoever it was. Or had a definite suspicion. Then the question of why he didn't want to tell anyone about this becomes crucial, perhaps the most important question of all."

  "Could it be that it was someone we know?"

  "Not necessarily. There's another possibility. Not that Svedberg knew who it was, or that he had definite suspicions, but that he feared it was someone he knew."

  Wallander saw the logic of Nyberg's statement. To suspect someone and to fear something were not necessarily the same thing.

  "That would explain the need for secrecy," Nyberg continued. "He's afraid the killer is someone he knows, but he's not sure. He wants to be convinced before he tells us about it, and he wants to be able to bury the whole thing in silence if his fears turn out to be mistaken."

  Wallander watched Nyberg attentively. He was seeing a connection that had not been apparent to him earlier.

  "Let's assume that Svedberg hears about the disappearance of the young people," he said. "Let's assume that he is driven by fear that is grounded in a reasonable suspicion. Let's even assume that he knows he's right and that he knows who is responsible for their disappearance. He doesn't even have to know they're dead."

  "It isn't very likely that he knew," Nyberg said. "Since he would then have felt compelled to come clean. I can't imagine that Svedberg would have been able to carry a burden like that."

  Wallander nodded. Nyberg was right.

  "So he doesn't know they're dead," he said. "But he has strong fears and enough conviction to confront this particular person. Then what?"

  "He's killed."

  "The scene of the crime is hastily rearranged, so that our first thought was that there had been a burglary. And something's missing: the telescope. Which is then hidden in Sture Björklund's shed."

  "The door," Nyberg said. "I'm convinced that the killer was let into Svedberg's flat. Or maybe even had his own set of keys."

  "It must be someone he knows, someone who's been there before."

  "Someone who knows he has a cousin. The killer tries to push the blame onto him, by planting the telescope at Björklund's place."

  The waitress came over with the bill, but Wallander was reluctant to end their conversation.

  "What's the common denominator? We really have only two people in the picture: Bror Sundelius and an unknown woman by the name of Louise."

  Nyberg shook his head. "A woman didn't commit these murders," he said. "Although we said the same thing a couple of years ago and were proved wrong."

  "It can hardly have been Bror Sundelius either," Wallander said. "His legs are bad. There's nothing wrong with his mind, but his health isn't the best."

  "Then it's someone we still don't know about," Nyberg said. "Svedberg must have had other people he was close to."

  "I'm going to go back a little," Wallander said. "Tomorrow I'm going to start searching Svedberg's life."

  "That's probably the right way to do it," Nyberg agreed. "I'll check on the results of our forensic tests, especially the fingerprinting. Hopefully that'll tell us more."

  "The weapons," Wallander said. "They're important."

  "Wester in Ludvika is very pleasant," Nyberg said. "I'm getting full cooperation."

  Wallander pulled the bill towards him. Nyberg wanted to split it with him.

  "We could try to put it on the expense account," Wallander said.

  "You'll never get this through," Nyberg said.

  Wallander felt around for his wallet. It wasn't there. Suddenly he saw it in his mind's eye, lying on the kitchen table.

  "I still want to treat you, but it seems I've left my wallet at home."

  Nyberg took out his wallet and counted out 200 kronor. But the bill was almost twice that.

  "There's a cashpoint around the corner," Wallander said.

  "I don't use cards like that," Nyberg said firmly.

  The waitress, who had turned the lights on and off several times, approached them. They were the only people left. Nyberg showed her his ID, which she regarded sceptically.

  "We don't let guests have tabs here," she said.

  "We're police officers," Wallander said angrily. "I just happen to have left my wallet at home."

  "We don't give credit," she said. "If you can't pay I'll have to report you."

  "Report us to who?"

  "The police."

  Wallander almost lost his temper, but Nyberg restrained him. "This could get interesting."

  "Are you paying or not?" the waitress asked.

  "I think you should call the police," Wallander said pleasantly.

  The waitress walked off and made the call, making sure to lock the front door first.

  "They're on their way," she said. "You'll have to stay until then."

  They waited five minutes, then a police car pulled up outside and two officers got out. One of them was Edmundsson. He stared at Wallander and Nyberg.

  "We seem to have a little problem," Wallander said. "I've left my wallet at home and Nyberg doesn't have enough cash to cover the bill. This lady doesn't give credit, nor was she impressed by Nyberg's ID."

  Edmundsson took this in, then burst into laughter. "What's the bill?" he asked.

  "It's 400 kronor."

  He took out his wallet and paid.

  "It's not my fault," the waitress said. "My boss says we should never give credit."

  "Who owns this place?" Nyberg asked.

  "His name's Fredriksson. Alf Fredriksson."

  "Is he a big man?" Nyberg asked. "Does he live in Svarte?"

  The waitress nodded.

  "Then I know him," Nyberg said. "Nice man. Say hello to him from Nyberg and Wallander."

  The squad car was already gone when they walked out onto the street.

  "This is the strangest August I've ever known," Nyberg said. "It's already the 15th and it's still warm."

  They parted ways when they got to Hamngatan.

  "We just don't know if he's going to strike again," Wallander said. "That's the worst thing."

  "That's why we have to get him," Nyberg said. "As fast as we can."

  Wallander walked home slowly. He was inspired by his talk with Nyberg but felt no real peace of mind. He didn't want to admit it, but Thurnberg's reaction and his conversation with Holgersson had depressed him. Was he being unfair to Thurnberg? Was he right? Should someone else be in charge of this investigation?

  When Wallander got home he put on a pot of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. The thermometer outside the window read 19°C. Wallander got out a pad of paper and a pencil, then looked for his glasses, and found a pair under the sofa.

  Coffee cup in hand, he found himself walking around the kitchen table a couple of times as if to coax himself into the right frame of mind for the task ahead. He had never written a speech in memory of a murdered colleague before. Now he regretted having agreed to do it. How did you describe the feeling of finding your colleague with his face blown off in his flat only one week earlier?

  Finally he sat down and got started. He could still remember when he first met Svedberg, 20 years earlier, when Svedberg had already begun to bald. He was halfway through when he tore
everything up and started again. It was after 1 a.m. when he'd finished. This time it was good enough.

  He walked out onto the balcony. The town was quiet, and it was still quite warm. He recalled his conversation with Nyberg and let his mind wander. Suddenly the image of Isa Edengren was there, curled up in the cave that had protected her as a child but no longer could. Wallander went back in, leaving the door to the balcony open. There was a thought that wouldn't go away. That the man out there in the darkness was preparing to strike again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  It had been a long day. There were many packages, certified letters, and international money orders. He wasn't done with the bookkeeping until it was almost 2 p.m.

  His old self would have been irritated by the fact that the work took longer than expected. Now it didn't affect him any more. The enormous change he'd undergone had made him impervious to time. He realised there was no such thing as past or future. There was no time that could be lost or won. The only thing that counted was action.

  He put away his postbag and cashbox, then showered and changed his clothes. He hadn't eaten since early that morning, before he'd driven to the depot to start sorting his post. But he wasn't hungry. This was a feeling that he remembered from his childhood. When something exciting lay in store for him, he lost his appetite. He went into the soundproofed room and turned on all the lights. He'd made the bed before leaving that morning, and now he spread the letters out over the dark-blue bedspread. He sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed. He had read these letters before. That was the first step, to pick out letters that caught his eye. He opened them carefully, without doing any damage to the envelope. He copied them and then he read them. He didn't know exactly how many letters he had opened, copied and read this past year. It must have been close to 200. Most of them were nothing special. They were vacuous, boring. It wasn't until he had opened the letter from Lena Norman to Martin Boge . . .

  He interrupted the thought. That was over and done with. He didn't need to think about them any more. The last phase had been so difficult and tiring. First there was the trip to Östergötland, then he had hunted around for a suitable boat in the darkness, one that was big enough to take him to the little island at the far edge of the archipelago.

  It had been a bothersome undertaking, and he hadn't liked having to put in the extra effort. It meant overcoming his own resistance, something he tried to avoid. He looked at the letters spread around him on the bed. Choosing a couple that were planning to get married had not occurred to him until sometime in May. The idea came to him by chance, like so much else in life. During his years as an engineer, chance had not been allowed in his orderly existence. Now everything had changed. The interplay of luck and coincidence meant a person's life was a steady stream of unexpected opportunities. He could pick and choose what he wanted.

  The little raised flag on the letter box told him nothing. But when he knocked on the door and entered the kitchen, he found more than a hundred invitations lying on the table. The bride-to-be let him in. He could no longer remember her name, but he remembered her joy, and it enraged him. He took her letters and posted them, and if he hadn't been so embroiled in complicated plans for participating in the upcoming Midsummer celebration he would perhaps have become involved in her wedding.

  New opportunities kept presenting themselves. All six envelopes in front of him were wedding invitations. He had read their letters, got to know each couple. He knew where they lived, what they looked like, and where they were to be married. The invitations in front of him were merely printed cards, there to remind him of the different couples.

  Now he faced his most important task, deciding which of the couples was the happiest. He went through the envelopes one by one, reminding himself of other letters that they had written, to each other or their friends. He savoured the moment, suffused with contentment. He was in charge. In this soundproofed room he could not be touched by the things that had made him suffer in his earlier life – the feeling of being an outsider and being misunderstood. In here he could bear to think about the great catastrophe, when he was shut out and declared superfluous.

  Nothing was hard any more. Or almost nothing. He still couldn't bear to think about how he had subjected himself to humiliation for more than two years. He had answered ads in the paper, sent in his CV, gone to countless interviews.

  That was before he cut himself off from his former existence and left everything behind. Becoming another.

  He knew he was one of the lucky ones. Today he would never have got a job as a substitute postman. There were blocks to most professions. People were laid off. He noticed this as he went along his post route. People sat in their houses waiting for letters. More and more of them ended up on the outside and had not yet learned how to break free.

  He finally picked the couple getting married on Saturday, 17 August, at their home just outside Köpingebro. They had invited a lot of people. He couldn't even remember how many invitations they had given him. But both of them had been standing there when he came in through the door, and their happiness seemed limitless. He could have killed them on the spot. But as usual he controlled himself. He congratulated them, and no one could have guessed what he was really thinking.

  It was the most important art a person could learn: self-control.

  On Friday morning, Wallander began the task of mapping out Svedberg's life in earnest. He arrived at the station shortly after 7 a.m. and went about his task with some reluctance. He didn't know exactly what he was looking for, but somewhere in Svedberg's life there had to be a point leading to the reason for his murder. It was like trying to find a trace of life in a person who had already died.

  What interested him most this morning was a man called Jan Söderblom, who Ylva Brink said knew Svedberg when he was young, during his days of compulsory military service and police training. The connection was severed when Söderblom married and moved away, she thought to Malmö or Landskrona. What interested Wallander was that Söderblom had become a police officer just like Svedberg. He was about to call the station in Malmö when Nyberg appeared at the door. Wallander could tell from his expression that something was up.

  "Things are happening," Nyberg said and waved some faxes at him. "We can start with the murder weapons, if you like. Turns out the revolver stolen in Ludvika along with the shotgun could have been the same as the one in the nature reserve."

  "Could have been?"

  "In my language that means it's the one."

  "Good," Wallander said. "We needed that."

  "Then there are the fingerprints," Nyberg continued. "We found a good right thumbprint on the shotgun. We found another good thumbprint on a wineglass out in the reserve."

  "Same thumb?"

  "Yes."

  "Previous record?"

  "Not in our files. But we're going to send that thumbprint all around the world if we have to."

  "So it is the same man," Wallander said slowly. "At least we know that much."

  "There were no fingerprints on the telescope, however, other than Svedberg's own."

  "Does that mean he hid it at Björklund's place himself?"

  "Not necessarily. The person could have been wearing gloves."

  "We have this thumbprint on the shotgun," Wallander said. "But what about in Svedberg's flat in general? We have to know who created that chaos, if it was Svedberg or someone else. Or both."

  "We'll have to wait on that, but they're working on it."

  Wallander got up and leaned against the wall. He felt that there was more to this.

  "We found none of Svedberg's prints on the shotgun," Nyberg said. "That may or may not mean anything."

  "We've come a long way," Wallander said. "We have a single killer."

  "Maybe we should notify the chief prosecutor," Nyberg said, smiling. "That might cheer him up."

  "Or not. We're not living up to our bad reputation. But we'll make sure he gets his report."

  Nyberg left the
room and Wallander grabbed the phone, called Malmö and asked to speak to Officer Jan Söderblom. Sure enough there was a detective by that name who worked mainly on theft cases, but he was on holiday on a Greek island until the following Wednesday. Wallander left a message that he wanted to speak to him as soon as possible. He also made a note of Söderblom's home phone number. He had just hung up when Höglund knocked on the half-open door. She held his speech about Svedberg in her hands.

  "I've read it," she said. "And I think it's honest and moving. I suppose those two things always go together. No one's touched simply by empty talk of eternity and light conquering the darkness."

  "It's not too long?" Wallander asked anxiously.

  "I read it aloud to myself and it took less than five minutes. I don't usually speak at funerals, but I think it's just the right length."

  She was about to slip out again when Wallander told her Nyberg's news.

  "That's a huge step forward," she said when he had finished. "If we could only find the person or people who stole the guns."

  "It'll be hard, but of course we'll try. I was wondering if it wouldn't be worth it to put pictures of the guns in the papers. Both the revolver and the shotgun."

  "There's a press conference at 11 a.m.," she said. "Lisa has been overrun by the press lately. Maybe we should tell them about the weapons. What do we really have to lose by telling them there's a connection between the two cases? It'll be murder on a scale this country hasn't seen for a long time."

  "You're right," Wallander said. "I'll be there."

  She lingered in the doorway. "Then there's the elusive Louise," she said. "Whom no one seems to have seen. There have been a lot of calls but nothing reliable."

  "That's strange," Wallander said. "But someone somewhere knows her. We talked about trying Denmark."

  "Why not all of Europe?"

  "Yes," he agreed. "Why not? But let's start with Denmark and let's do it now, as soon as possible."

  "I'm on my way to Lund to go through Lena Norman's flat," she said. "But I'll ask Hansson to do it."

  "Not Hansson," Wallander said. "He's still working on finding the cars. There has to be someone else who can do it."