'You know what I think,' Wallander said. 'And if you come back, we'll put you away.'
Peter Linder shook his head. He smiled. This irritated Wallander, but he didn't show it.
'I actually came here to talk to you about the photographer who was killed.'
'I only ever go to a royal photographer who is here in Malmö. He took pictures of Sofiero Castle during the old king's time. An excellent photographer.'
'You only need to answer my questions,' Wallander broke in.
'Is this an interrogation?'
'No. But I'm dumb enough to think you might be able to help me. And even dumber to think that you'd be prepared to do it.'
Peter Linder spread his arms out in a gesture of invitation.
'Simon Lamberg,' Wallander went on, 'the photographer. There were rumours about him, that he was a gambler who bet large. Moreover, in an illegal setting. Both here and in Copenhagen. Also, unregulated loans. A man deeply entrenched in debt. All according to the rumours.'
'In order for a rumour to be interesting, at least fifty per cent of it must be true,' Peter Linder said philosophically. 'Is it?'
'I was hoping you would be able to answer that. Have you heard of him?'
Peter Linder considered the question.
'No,' he said after a moment. 'And even if only half of those rumours were true, I would have known who he was.'
'Is it possible that you might have missed him for some reason?'
'No,' Peter Linder said. 'That's inconceivable.'
'You are all-knowing, in other words.'
'When it comes to the illegal gambling world in southern Sweden, I know everything. I also know something about classical philosophy and Moorish architecture. Beyond this, I know almost nothing.'
Wallander did not protest. He knew that Peter Linder had achieved an astonishingly rapid rise in the academic world. Then one day, without warning, he had wandered out of the academy and in a short time established himself as a gambling-club owner.
Wallander finished his coffee.
'If you hear anything, I would be grateful for one of your anonymous letters,' he said.
'I'll put out some feelers in Copenhagen,' Peter Linder replied, 'but I doubt I'll find anything to offer you.'
Wallander nodded. He quickly rose to his feet. He could not bring himself to go so far as to shake Peter Linder's hand.
Wallander was back at the station by ten o'clock. A couple of officers were outside, drinking coffee in the spring warmth. Wallander checked Svedberg's office. He was not there. Same with Hansson. Only Martinsson was still diligently working in front of his computer screen.
'How did it go in Malmö?' he asked.
'Unfortunately, the rumours aren't true,' Wallander answered.
'Unfortunately?'
'It would have given us a motive. Gambling debts, hired guns. Everything we need.'
'Svedberg managed to find out through the business register that the company Markresor no longer exists. They merged with another company five years ago. And that company went under last year. He thought it would be impossible to get any old lists of passengers. But he thought it might be possible to trace the bus driver. If he's still alive.'
'Where is he?'
'I don't know.'
'Where are Hansson and Svedberg?'
'Svedberg is rooting around in Lamberg's finances. Hansson is talking to the neighbours. Nyberg is scolding a technician who misplaced a footprint.'
'Is it really possible to misplace a footprint?'
'It's possible to lose a hymn book in a garden.'
Martinsson is right, Wallander thought. Anything can be lost.
'Have we received any information from the public?' he asked.
'Nothing, apart from the Simovic family and the hymn book. As well as a few things that can be written off immediately. But there could be more. People normally take their time.'
'And Backman the bank director?'
'Reliable. But he hasn't seen more than we already know.'
'And the cleaning lady? Hilda Waldén?'
'Nothing more there either.'
Wallander leaned against the door frame.
'Who the hell killed him? What kind of a motive could there have been?'
'Who changes a radio station?' Martinsson said. 'And who runs around town at night with a hymn book in his pocket?'
The questions remained unanswered for the moment. Wallander went to his office. He felt restless and anxious. The meeting with Peter Linder had ruled out finding an answer to the murder in the illegal gambling world. What was left? Wallander sat down at his desk and tried to write out a new overview of the case. It took him over an hour. He read through what he had written. More and more he was leaning towards the possibility that the man had been let into the shop. It was most likely someone Lamberg knew and trusted. Someone who his widow in all likelihood did not know. He was interrupted in his thoughts by Svedberg knocking on the door.
'Guess where I've been,' he said.
Wallander shook his head. He was not in the mood for guessing.
'Matilda Lamberg is cared for at a facility right outside Rydsgård,' he said. 'Since it was so close I thought I might as well go out there.'
'So you've met Matilda?'
Svedberg immediately became sombre.
'It was terrible,' he said. 'She is incapable of doing anything.'
'You don't have to tell me more,' Wallander said. 'I think I get the picture.'
'Something strange happened,' Svedberg continued. 'I spoke to the director. A kind-hearted woman who is one of these quiet heroes of the world. I asked her how often Simon Lamberg came to visit.'
'What did she say?'
'He had never been there. Not once in all these years.'
Wallander said nothing, feeling disturbed.
'Elisabeth Lamberg comes once a week, usually on a Saturday. But that wasn't what was strange.'
'Then what was it?'
'The director said that there's another woman who comes to visit. On an irregular basis, but she does turn up on occasion. No one knows her name, no one knows who she is.'
Wallander frowned.
An unknown woman.
Suddenly he had a strong feeling. He didn't know where it had come from, but he was convinced. They had finally turned up a clue.
'Good,' he said. 'Very good. Try to round people up for a meeting.'
Wallander had the investigative team assembled at half past eleven. They came in from all over and everyone appeared brimming with the new energy that the fine weather had brought. Just before the meeting, Wallander had received a preliminary report from the medical examiner. It could be presumed that Simon Lamberg had died sometime before midnight. The blow to the back of his head had been delivered with tremendous force and had killed him immediately. In the wound they had recovered tiny slivers of metal that were easily recognisable as brass veneer, so it was now possible to make some assumptions about the murder weapon. A brass statuette or some such thing. Wallander had immediately called Hilda Waldén and asked if there had been any brass objects in the studio. She said no, which was the answer Wallander had wanted. The man who had come to kill Simon Lamberg had brought the murder weapon. This in turn meant that the murder had been planned. It was not something that had arisen from a heated argument or some other sudden impulse.
This was received as an important statement by the investigative squad. They now knew they were looking for a perpetrator who had acted with deliberation. They did not, however, know why he had returned to the scene of the crime. He had most likely left something behind. But Wallander could not let go of the feeling that there may have been another reason, one that they had not yet discovered.
'What would that be?' Hansson asked. 'If he hadn't forgotten something? Did he come there to plant something?'
'Which in turn may indicate a degree of forgetfulness,' Martinsson said.
They proceeded through the facts slowly and methodically. Most of t
he case was still very unclear. They were waiting for many answers or had not yet managed to put the information they did have in order. But Wallander wanted everything on the table even now. He knew from experience that detectives on an investigative squad needed to get access to information at the same time. One of his own worst policing sins was that he often kept information to himself. As the years went by he had managed to get a little better in this regard.
'We have a fair number of fingers and shoes,' Nyberg said when Wallander as usual turned to him first. 'We also have a good thumb on the hymn book. I don't know yet if it matches any of the prints we recovered in the studio.'
'Is there anything to say about the hymn book?' Wallander asked.
'It gives the impression of frequent use. But there is no name in it. Nor is there a stamp of any kind to indicate that it belongs to a particular parish or church.'
Wallander nodded and looked at Hansson.
'We aren't quite done with the neighbours yet,' he began. 'But no one that we've talked to has reported hearing or seeing anything unusual. No nightly tumult inside the studio. Nothing out on the street. No one could remember seeing anyone behaving in an unusual manner outside the studio either that night or on any earlier occasion. Everyone has assured us that Simon Lamberg was a pleasant person, although reserved.'
'Have any calls come in?'
'Calls are constantly coming in. But there's nothing of any im mediate interest.'
Wallander asked about the letters that Lamberg had written in which he complained about police performance.
'They're archived in some central location in Stockholm and are being retrieved. There was only one that marginally touched on our district.'
'I have trouble evaluating that album,' Wallander said. 'If it's of any significance or not. It may of course be because I'm included in it. At first I found it disturbing. Now I just don't know any more.'
'Other people sit at the kitchen table and write scathing missives to various political leaders,' Martinsson said. 'Simon Lamberg was a photographer. He didn't write. Symbolically, the darkroom was his kitchen table.'
'You may be right. Hopefully, we'll come back to this when we know more.'
'Lamberg was a complicated person,' Svedberg said. 'Pleasant and reserved. But also something else. We just can't articulate what this something else might be.'
'No, not yet,' Wallander said. 'But a picture of him will eventually take shape. It always does.'
For his part, Wallander told them about his trip to Malmö and the conversation with Peter Linder.
'I think we can discard the rumours about Lamberg as a gambler,' he concluded. 'It doesn't seem to have been anything other than just that: rumours.'
'I don't see how you can put stock in anything that man says,' Martinsson objected.
'He's smart enough to know when he should tell the truth,' Wallander said. 'He's smart enough not to lie when he doesn't need to.'
Then it was Svedberg's turn. He talked about the Stockholm travel agency that was no longer in existence, but he declared firmly that they would be able to locate the driver who had worked on the trip to Austria in March 1981.
'Markresor used a bus company in Alvesta,' he said. 'And that company is still there. I've checked that.'
'Can it really be of any importance?' Hansson asked.
'Maybe,' Wallander said. 'Or maybe not. But Elisabeth Lamberg was adamant. Her husband was a changed man when he returned.'
'Maybe he fell in love,' Hansson suggested. 'Isn't that what happens on charter trips?'
'For example, something like that,' Wallander said and suddenly wondered if that had happened to Mona in the Canary Islands last year.
He turned back to Svedberg.
'Find out about the driver. That may give us something.'
Svedberg then told them about his visit to Matilda Lamberg. The mood turned melancholy when they learned that Simon Lamberg had never visited his daughter. The fact that an unknown woman had turned up from time to time was met with less interest. Wallander, however, was convinced that this could be a lead. He had no thoughts about how she fitted into the picture. But he was not planning to drop her until he knew who she was.
Finally they discussed the public image of Simon Lamberg. With every step, the impression of a man living a well-ordered life was reinforced. There were no blemishes either on his finances or elsewhere in his exemplary existence. Wallander reminded the group that someone needed to pay a visit soon to the association of amateur astronomers in Lund that Lamberg had been a member of. Hansson took on this task.
Martinsson was busy with his computer searches. He could only confirm his earlier observations that Simon Lamberg had never had anything to do with the police.
It was past one o'clock. Wallander brought the meeting to a close.
'This is where we are right now,' he said. 'We still have no motive or any clear indication of who the perpetrator can be. The most important thing, however, is that we are now sure that the killing was planned. The perpetrator had his weapon with him. That means that we can disregard all earlier speculations that it was a burglary gone wrong.'
Everyone got up and went his own way. Wallander had decided to go out to the care facility where Matilda Lamberg lived. He was already dreading what would confront him. Sickness, suffering and lifelong handicaps were things he had never dealt with very well. But he wanted to know more about the unknown woman. He left Ystad and took Svartevägen out towards Rydsgård. The sea glittered temptingly on his left. He rolled down the window and drove slowly.
Suddenly he started to think about Linda, his eighteen-year-old daughter. Right now she was in Stockholm. She wavered between various ideas about what work she should pursue. Furniture refurbisher or physical therapist, or even actress. She and a friend rented an apartment in Kungsholmen. Wallander was not completely clear how she supported herself, but he did know that she waited tables at various restaurants from time to time. When she wasn't in Stockholm, she was with Mona in Malmö. And then she came often but irregularly to Ystad and visited him.
He could tell he was getting worried. At the same time there was so much in her character that he himself lacked. Deep down he had no doubt she would manage to find her own way through life. But the worry was there nonetheless. He couldn't do anything about it.
Wallander stopped in Rydsgård and ate a late lunch at the inn. Pork chops. At the table behind him, some farmers were loudly discussing the pros and cons of a new type of manure-spreading device. Wallander ate, trying to focus completely on his food. It was something that Rydberg had taught him. When he ate, he should think only of what was on his plate. Afterwards it felt as if his head had been aired out, like a house that is opened up after having been shut for a long time.
The care facility was near Rynge. Wallander followed Svedberg's directions and had no trouble finding it. He turned into the car park and stepped out of his car. The facility consisted of a mixture of old and new buildings. He went in through the main entrance. From somewhere a shrill laughter could be heard. A woman was in the middle of watering flowers. Wallander walked over to her and asked to speak to the director.
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