An Event in Autumn: A Kurt Wallander Mystery

by Henning Mankell

  When he woke up he found he had been asleep for several hours. It was pitch-black outside. Linda still hadn’t come home. He went into the kitchen and drank some water. As he placed the glass on the draining board, the telephone rang.

  “Wallander.”

  “It’s Nyberg here. We’re waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “For you. What do you think?”

  “Why are you waiting for me?”

  Nyberg sighed profoundly. Wallander could hear that he was tired and irritated.

  “Hasn’t the switchboard rung you?”

  “Nobody has rung here.”

  “How the hell can it be possible to carry out police work when you can’t even rely on various messages being passed on?”

  “Never mind that now. What’s happened?”

  “We’ve found a body.”

  “A body or a skeleton?”

  “What do you think? A skeleton, of course.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Wallander replaced the receiver, selected a sweater from the wardrobe and scribbled a note, which he placed on the kitchen table. Gone to work. He hurried to the police station and collected his car. When he got there and felt in his pocket for the key, he remembered that he had put it on the kitchen table.

  For a brief moment he felt like crying. Or just walking away from it all, without turning back. Walking away never to return.

  He felt like an idiot. An idiot he felt sorry for, just for a moment. Then he went over to one of the patrol cars and asked them to drive him out to the house. His self-pity had faded away and been replaced by anger. Somebody had failed to inform him that he had needed to drive out to Löderup.

  He leaned back in the car seat, listening to the various messages coming through over the police radio. The image of his father suddenly appeared in his thoughts.

  Once upon a time he’d had a father. But one day he passed away, and the urn with his ashes had been buried in the cemetery. And now, in a flash, the time that had passed since then had been erased. It was as if it had happened the previous day. Or had merely been a dream.

  The garden was illuminated by strong spotlights. Every time Wallander went to a crime scene at night, when work was in progress, he had the feeling that he was on a film set.

  Nyberg came toward him. The forensic officer was covered in soil and clay from top to toe—Nyberg’s filthy overalls were so well known that they had once been featured in an article in the local newspaper.

  “I don’t know why you weren’t informed,” he said.

  Wallander made a dismissive gesture.

  “It doesn’t matter. What have you found?”

  “I’ve already told you.”

  “A skeleton?”

  “Exactly.”

  Wallander accompanied Nyberg to a spot close to where he had stumbled in the first instance. There was now a hole, just over a meter deep. In it were the remains of a person. In addition to the skeleton, which seemed to be more or less intact, there were a few scraps of clothing.

  Wallander walked around the corpse. Nyberg coughed and blew his nose. Martinson came out of the house, yawned—and looked at Wallander, who said nothing until he had completed his inspection of the skeleton.

  “Where’s Hurlén?”

  “She had just gone home,” said Nyberg ironically. “But I phoned her when we started to find several bones. She’ll be back here soon.”

  Wallander and Martinson crouched down.

  “Man or woman?”

  It was Martinson who asked the question. Wallander had learned over the years that the easiest way of distinguishing between the skeleton of a man and a woman was by examining the pelvis. But what exactly was it he should be looking for? He found that he could no longer remember.

  “A man,” he said. “At least, I hope it’s a man.”

  Martinson looked at him in surprise.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose I don’t like the thought of thinking about buying a house with a dead woman lying in the garden.”

  Wallander’s knees creaked as he stood up.

  “One wonders about that hand,” he said. “Why did it suddenly start poking up out of the ground?”

  “Perhaps it wanted to wave to us and tell us there was something hidden away under the ground that shouldn’t be there.”

  Martinson was well aware that his comment sounded idiotic. But Wallander said nothing.

  Stina Hurlén suddenly appeared under the spotlights. There was a squelching sound as her rubber boots tramped their way over the downtrodden soil. She did the same as Wallander had done, and walked around the hole before crouching.

  “Man or woman?” asked Wallander.

  “Woman,” said Hurlén. “Definitely a woman. No doubt about it. But don’t ask me about her age, or anything else come to that. I’m too tired to start guessing.”

  “Just one more thing,” said Martinson. “You thought before that the hand had been lying here for a long time. Does the discovery of the skeleton change that opinion? Or do you still think she’s been lying here for ages?”

  “I don’t think. My guess is she’s been here for a long time.”

  “Can you see anything that might indicate the cause of her death?” asked Martinson.

  “That was question number two,” said Hurlén. “One question too many. You’re not going to get an answer.”

  “That hand,” said Wallander. “Why is it sticking up?”

  “That’s not unusual,” answered Nyberg when Hurlén remained silent. “Things lying in the ground move around. It can be due to differences in groundwater levels. And besides, this is Scanian clay soil—subsidence takes place. Personally I think the hand came up to the surface as a result of all the rain we’ve had this autumn. But of course it could also have been field mice.”

  Nyberg’s cell phone rang. He did not conclude his analysis of why the hand had stuck up through the earth.

  “What do you think he meant?” wondered Martinson. “That reference to field mice?”

  “I’ve always thought that Nyberg is a brilliant forensic officer. But I’ve also always been convinced that he’s hopeless when it comes to explaining what he means.”

  “I’m going home to get some sleep,” said Martinson. “I think you ought to do that as well. There’s not much we can do here in any case.”

  Martinson drove Wallander home. As usual, he drove very jerkily; but Wallander said nothing. He had given up many years ago. Martinson drove in a way that would never change.

  CHAPTER 7

  Linda was still up and about when Wallander came in through the door. She was in her dressing gown, and eyed his muddy shoes. They sat down in the kitchen and he told her what had happened.

  “That sounds very strange,” she said when he had finished. “A house Martinson tipped you off about? And there’s a dead body buried in the garden?”

  “It may sound strange, but it’s true.”

  “Who is it?”

  “How the hell can we be expected to know that?”

  “Why do you sound so angry?”

  “I’m tired. And maybe disappointed as well. I liked that house. And I could have managed the price.”

  She reached out her hand and tapped him on the arm.

  “There are other houses,” she said. “And you do have a home already, of course.”

  “I suppose I was disappointed,” said Wallander again. “I could have done with a bit of good news, today of all days. Not a bit of a skeleton sticking out of the ground.”

  “Can’t you try to see it as something exciting? Instead of a boring old garden, you get something that nobody knows about.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  Linda looked at him in amusement.

  “You wouldn’t need to risk being burgled,” she said. “I think thieves are just as scared of ghosts as everybody else is.”

  Wallander put the kettle on. Linda shook her head
when he asked her if she’d like some tea.

  He sat down with a pink teacup.

  “You got that from me,” said Linda. “Do you remember?”

  “You gave me it as a Christmas present when you were eight years old,” he said. “And I’ve always drunk tea out of this cup ever since.”

  “It cost one krona at a rummage sale.”

  Wallander sipped the tea. Linda yawned.

  “I was looking forward to living in that house,” he said. “Or at least I’d begun to believe that I could move out of town at long last.”

  “There are other houses,” said Linda.

  “It’s not as easy as that.”

  “What’s so difficult about it?”

  “I think I demand too much.”

  “Demand a bit less then!”

  Wallander could feel that he was beginning to get angry again. Ever since she had been in her teens, Linda had accused him of making his life more complicated than it needed to be. He knew that what irritated him most of all was that, on occasions like this, Linda reminded him of her mother. And her voice was almost identical to Mona’s. If Wallander closed his eyes he felt uncertain about who was actually sitting opposite him at the kitchen table.

  “Enough of that now,” said Wallander, rinsing out his cup.

  “I’m going to bed,” said Linda.

  Wallander sat up for a while, watching the television with the sound turned down. One of the channels was showing a program about penguins.

  He woke up with a start. It was four o’clock in the morning. The television was blank but buzzing. He switched it off and hurried to bed before he had time to wake up properly.

  CHAPTER 8

  It was two minutes past eight on Monday, October 28, when Wallander closed the door of one of the police station’s conference rooms behind him. He had slept badly after waking up on the sofa. And to make things worse, his electric razor had broken. He was unshaven and felt dirty. Sitting around the table were the people he was used to working alongside. He had been working with some of them for over fifteen years. It occurred to him that these were people who made up the content of a large proportion of his life. He was now the one who had been working longer than anybody else in the Ystad CID. Once upon a time he’d been the newcomer.

  Those present at the meeting, apart from Wallander himself, were Nyberg, Martinson and the chief of police, Lisa Holgersson. She was the first female boss Wallander had worked for. When she first came to Ystad some time in the 1990s, he had been as skeptical as all the other—mainly male—officers. But he had soon realized that Lisa Holgersson was very competent. It became clear to him that she might well be the best boss he had ever had. Over the years that ensued he had found no reason to reconsider that judgment, even if they had occasionally had fierce disagreements.

  Wallander took a deep breath and turned first to Nyberg, then to Martinson, who had spoken to Stina Hurlén before the meeting.

  Nyberg was tired and looked at Wallander with bloodshot eyes. He ought to have retired by now, but he had changed his mind and stayed on. Wallander was not surprised. Despite all the unpleasant aspects of his work, without it Nyberg would find life pointless.

  “A dead body,” said Nyberg. “A few decayed scraps of clothing. It’s not my job to look for the cause of death among all the old bones, but nothing seemed to be broken or crushed. I haven’t found anything else. The question is, of course, whether we should dig up the whole garden.”

  “How did that new machine perform?” asked Holgersson.

  “Exactly as I thought it would,” growled Nyberg. “It’s a bundle of crap that some idiot has tricked the Swedish police into buying. Why can’t we have a dog trained to sniff out corpses?”

  Wallander found it hard not to burst out laughing. Even if Nyberg could be surly and difficult to work with, he had a unique sense of humor. He also had views that Wallander shared.

  “Stina Hurlén needs a bit of time,” said Martinson, leafing through his notebook. “The bones have to be examined. But she thought she would be able to give us some kind of report later today.”

  Wallander nodded. “So, that’s all we have to go on so far,” he said. “It’s not a lot—but of course we have to face up to the possibility that this might become a murder inquiry. For the moment, we have to wait for what Stina Hurlén has to say. What we can start doing right away is to see if we can dig out something about the history of the house and the people who have lived there. Has there been a missing person linked with the house? That’s a question we can ask ourselves. As Martinson has a relative who owns the house, perhaps he ought to be the one to look after that aspect.”

  Wallander placed his hands down on the table to indicate that the meeting was closed. Lisa Holgersson held him back as the others left the room.

  “The media want to talk to you,” she said.

  “We’ve found a skeleton. There’s nothing more to say.”

  “You know that journalists love stories about missing persons. Isn’t there anything else you can tell them?”

  “No. We police officers have to wait until we get more facts. The journalists can jolly well do the same.”

  Wallander spent the rest of the day on an inquiry concerning a Pole who had beaten and killed an Ystad resident at some drunken orgy or other. A lot of people had been there at the time, but they all remembered it differently—or had no recollection of it at all. The Polish man who was accused of killing his drinking partner kept changing his story. Wallander had spent hours on fruitless conversations with those involved, and had asked the prosecutor if it was really worth continuing. But the prosecutor was young and new and assiduous, and had insisted. A man, drunk or not, who had killed another man, even if he was just as drunk, must be duly punished. Wallander couldn’t argue with that, of course. But his experience told him that they would never be able to throw light on the situation, no matter how long he or one of his colleagues persisted with the inquiry.

  Martinson called in occasionally to report that Stina Hurlén had still not been in touch. Shortly after two, Linda appeared in the doorway and asked if he was going out for lunch. He shook his head and asked her to buy him a sandwich instead. When she had left, he found himself thinking that he still hadn’t managed to get used to the fact that his own daughter was now a fully grown adult, and a police officer to boot, working at the same police station as he was.

  Linda duly delivered the sandwich in a small carrier bag. Wallander slid aside the voluminous file containing all the material relevant to the drunken orgy. He ate the sandwich, closed the door, then leaned back on his chair for a snooze. As usual he held his bunch of keys in one hand. If he dropped it, he would know he had fallen asleep and that it was time to wake up again.

  He soon dozed off. The keys fell to the floor, and as they did so Martinson opened the door.

  Wallander gathered that Stina Hurlén had sent in her report at last.

  CHAPTER 9

  The preliminary, but by no means final, forensic report had come from Lund by courier. It was lying on Martinson’s desk.

  “I think you’d better read it yourself,” said Martinson.

  “I take it that means the discovery of the skeleton is what we suspected it would be—the beginning of a criminal investigation.”

  “It seems so, yes.”

  Martinson went to get some coffee while Wallander read the report. Stina Hurlén wrote simply and clearly. Over the years Wallander had often wondered why police officers and pathologists, prosecutors and defense lawyers sometimes wrote such hopelessly unreadable texts. They turned out masses of words instead of writing simple, meaningful sentences.

  It took him just over ten minutes to read the report. Whenever he had an important document in his hands, he forced himself to read slowly, at a speed all his thoughts could keep up with.

  Stina Hurlén confirmed that the body was definitely that of a woman. She judged that the woman would have been about fifty when she died. Further a
nalyses would be needed to be precise about her age, but Hurlén could already give the probable cause of death. The dead woman had been hanged. There was an injury on the nape of her neck which indicated this. Needless to say, Hurlén could not be certain that the injury hadn’t been caused after her death, but she thought that was unlikely. As yet she was unable to say how long the woman had been dead, but there were indications that the corpse had been lying in the grave for many years.

  Wallander put the report down on the desk and picked up the cup of coffee Martinson had brought him.

  “What do we know then?” said Wallander. “If we sum up.”

  “Unusually little. A dead woman in a shallow grave in a garden in Löderup. Who was about fifty when she died. But we don’t know when she died. If I understand Hurlén rightly, that woman could have been lying under the ground for a hundred years. Or more.”

  “Or less,” said Wallander. “What’s the name of the owner of the house? Your relative?”

  “Karl Eriksson. My wife’s cousin.”

  “I suppose the best we can do is to have a chat with him.”

  “No,” said Martinson. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s ill. He’s old.”

  “Being old doesn’t mean being ill. What are you implying?”

  Martinson walked over to the window and looked out.

  “All I’m saying is that my wife’s cousin Karl Eriksson is ninety-two years old. He was clear in the head until a few months ago, but then something happened. One day he went out into the street naked, and when people tried to help him he didn’t know who he was or where he lived. He’d managed on his own at home until then. Dementia normally comes creeping up on you—but in his case it hit him with a bang.”

  Wallander looked at Martinson in surprise.

  “But if he became senile so suddenly, how could he ask you to look after the sale of his house?”