The Pyramid

by Henning Mankell

  'I am. But that won't stop me from thinking about the future. Should I continue as a public prosecutor for the rest of my life? Or is there something else I should do?'

  'You could learn to sail and become a vagabond of the seas.'

  Åkeson shook his head energetically.

  'Nothing like that. But I am thinking about applying for something overseas. Perhaps in a project where one feels one is really making a difference. Perhaps I could be part of building a workable justice system where there was none before? In Czechoslovakia, for example.'

  'I hope you write and tell me,' Wallander said. 'Sometimes I also wonder about the future, if I'm going to stay in this business until I retire. Or do something else.'

  The pizza was tasteless. Åkeson, however, was tucking into his porridge with gusto.

  'What's the story with that plane?' Åkeson asked.

  Wallander told him what they knew.

  'That sounds strange,' Åkeson said when Wallander had finished. 'Could it be drugs?'

  'Yes, it could,' Wallander replied and regretted not having asked Holm if he owned an aeroplane. If he could afford to build a house he could probably afford to keep a private plane. Drug profits could be astronomical.

  They stood at the sink together and cleaned their plates. Wallander had left half of his pizza uneaten. The divorce was still having an effect on his appetite.

  'Holm is a criminal,' Wallander said. 'We'll get him sooner or later.'

  'I'm not so sure of that,' Åkeson said. 'But of course I hope you're right.'

  Wallander was back in his office a little after one o'clock. He considered calling Mona in Malmö. Linda lived with her right now. She was the one Wallander wanted to talk to. It had been almost a week since they talked last. She was nineteen and a little lost. Lately, she was back to thinking she wanted to work upholstering furniture. Wallander suspected she would change her mind many more times.

  Instead Wallander called Martinsson and asked him to come by. Together they went over the events of the morning. It was Martinsson who was going to write the report.

  'People have called both from Sturup and the Department of Defence,' he said. 'There is something not right about that plane. It doesn't seem to have existed. And it seems you were right in thinking the wings and fuselage had been painted over.'

  'We'll see what Nyberg comes up with,' Wallander said.

  'The bodies are in Lund,' Martinsson went on. 'The only way we have of identifying them is through dental records. The bodies were so badly burned they fell to pieces when they were moved onto stretchers.'

  'We'll have to wait and see, in other words,' Wallander said. 'I was going to suggest to Björk that you act as our representative in the accident commission. Do you have anything against that?'

  'I'll always learn something new,' Martinsson said.

  When Wallander was alone again he ended up thinking about the difference between Martinsson and himself. Wallander's ambition had always been to become a good criminal investigator. And he had succeeded in this. But Martinsson had other ambitions. What tempted him was the post of chief of police in a not-too-distant future. To perform well in the field was for him only a step in his career.

  Wallander dropped his thoughts about Martinsson, yawned, and listlessly pulled over the folder that was at the top of the pile on his desk. It still irritated him that he hadn't asked Holm about the plane. At least to get to see his reaction. But Holm was probably lying in his whirlpool by now. Or enjoying a delicious lunch at the Continental with his lawyer.

  The folder remained unopened in front of Wallander. He decided he might as well talk to Björk about Martinsson and the accident commission. Then that could be checked off the list. He walked to the end of the corridor where Björk had his office. The door was open. Björk was on his way out.

  'Do you have time?' Wallander asked.

  'A few minutes. I'm on my way to a church to give a speech.'

  Wallander knew that Björk was constantly giving lectures in the most unexpected settings. Apparently he loved performing in public, something that Wallander disliked intensely. Press conferences were a constant scourge. Wallander started to tell him about the morning's events, but apparently Björk had already been briefed. He had no objection to Martinsson's being appointed as police representative to the accident commission.

  'I take it the plane was not shot down,' Björk said.

  'Nothing so far indicates that it was anything other than an accident,' Wallander answered. 'But there is definitely something fishy about that flight.'

  'We'll do what we can,' Björk said, indicating that the conversation was over. 'But we won't exert more of an effort than we have to. We have enough to do as it is.'

  Björk left in a cloud of aftershave. Wallander shuffled back to his office. On the way he looked into Rydberg's and Hansson's offices. Neither one was around. He got himself a cup of coffee and then spent several hours reviewing the assault case that had occurred the week before in Skurup. New information had turned up that seemed to ensure that the man who had beaten up his sister-in-law could actually be charged with battery. Wallander organised the material and decided he would hand it over to Åkeson tomorrow.

  It was a quarter to five. The police station seemed unusually deserted this day. Wallander decided he would go home and get his car and then go shopping. He would still have time to make it to his father's by seven. If he wasn't there on the dot, his father would burst out in a long tirade of accusations about how badly his son treated him.

  Wallander took his coat and walked home. The snow-slush had increased. He pulled up his hood. When he sat down in his car he checked that he still had the grocery list in his pocket. The car was hard to start and he would soon have to get a new one. But where would he get the money? He managed to get the engine going and was about to put it in gear when he was struck by a thought. Even though he realised that what he wanted to do was meaningless, his curiosity proved too strong. He decided to put his shopping trip on hold. Instead he turned out onto Österleden and drove in the direction of Löderup.

  The thought that had struck him was very simple. In a house just past the Strandskogen Forest, there lived a retired air traffic controller Wallander had got to know a few years earlier. Linda had been friends with his youngest daughter. It occurred to Wallander that he might be able to answer a question that Wallander had been thinking about ever since he had stood next to the wrecked plane and listened to Martinsson's summary of his conversation with Haverberg.

  Wallander turned into the driveway of the house where Herbert Blomell lived. As Wallander got out of his car, he saw Blomell standing on a ladder, in the process of repairing a gutter. He nodded pleasantly when he saw who it was and carefully climbed down onto the ground.

  'A broken hip can be devastating at my age,' he said. 'How are things with Linda?'

  'Fine,' Wallander said. 'She's with Mona in Malmö.'

  They went in and sat in the kitchen.

  'A plane crashed outside Mossby this morning,' Wallander said.

  Blomell nodded and pointed to a radio on the windowsill.

  'It was a Piper Cherokee,' Wallander continued. 'A single-engine plane. I know that you weren't just an air traffic controller in your day. You also had a pilot's licence.'

  'I've actually flown a Piper Cherokee a few times,' Blomell answered. 'A good plane.'

  'If I put my finger on a map,' Wallander said, 'and then gave you a compass direction, and ten minutes, how far would you be able to fly the plane?'

  'A matter of straightforward computation,' Blomell said. 'Do you have a map?'

  Wallander shook his head. Blomell stood up and left. Several minutes later he returned with a rolled-up map. They spread it out on the kitchen table. Wallander located the field that must have been the crash site.

  'Imagine that the plane came straight in off the coast. The engine noise is heard here at one point. Then, at most twenty minutes later, it returns. Of course, we cannot
know that the pilot held the same course for the duration, but let us assume he did. How far did he go, then, in half that time? Before he turned round?'

  'The Cherokee normally flies at around 250 kilometres an hour,' Blomell said. 'If the load is of a normal weight.'

  'We don't know about that.'

  'Then let's assume maximum load and an average headwind.'

  Blomell computed silently, then pointed to a spot north of Mossby. Wallander saw that it was close to Sjöbo.

  'About this far,' Blomell said. 'But keep in mind that there are many unknowns included in this estimation.'

  'Still, I know a lot more now than just a moment ago.'

  Wallander tapped his fingers on the table reflectively.

  'Why does a plane crash?' he asked after a while.

  Blomell looked quizzically at him.

  'No two accidents are alike,' he said. 'I read some American magazines that refer to various accident investigations. There may be recurring causes. Errors in the plane's electrical wiring, or something else. But in the end there is nonetheless almost always some exceptional reason at the root of any given accident. And it almost always involves some degree of pilot error.'

  'Why would a Cherokee crash?' Wallander asked.

  Blomell shook his head.

  'The engine may have stalled. Poor maintenance. You'll have to wait and see what the accident commission comes up with.'

  'The plane's identifying marks had been painted over, both on the fuselage and the wings,' Wallander said. 'What does that mean?'

  'That it was someone who didn't want to be known,' Blomell said. 'There is a black market for aeroplanes just as for anything else.'

  'I thought Swedish airspace was secure,' Wallander said. 'But you mean that planes can sneak in?'

  'There is nothing in this world that is absolutely secure,' Blomell answered. 'Nor will there ever be. Those who have enough money and enough motivation can always find their way across a border, and back again, without interception.'

  Blomell offered him a cup of coffee, but Wallander declined.

  'I have to look in on my father in Löderup,' he said. 'If I'm late I'll never hear the end of it.'

  'Loneliness is the curse of old age,' Blomell said. 'I miss my air control tower with a physical ache. All night I dream of ushering planes through the air corridors. And when I wake up it's snowing and all I can do is repair a gutter.'

  They took leave of each other outside. Wallander stopped at a grocery shop in Herrestad. When he drove away again, he cursed. Even though it had been on his list he had forgotten to buy toilet paper.

  He arrived at his father's house at three minutes to seven. The snow had stopped, but the clouds hung heavy over the countryside. Wallander saw the lights on in the little side building that his father used as a studio. He breathed in the fresh air as he walked across the yard. The door was ajar; his father had heard his car. He was sitting at his easel, an old hat on his head and his near-sighted eyes close to the painting he had just started. The smell of paint thinner always gave Wallander the same feeling of home. This is what is left of my childhood. The smell of paint thinner.

  'You're on time,' his father observed without looking at him.

  'I'm always on time,' Wallander said as he moved a couple of newspapers and sat down.

  His father was working on a painting that featured a wood grouse. Just as Wallander had stepped into the studio he had placed a stencil onto the canvas and was painting a subdued sky at dusk. Wallander looked at him with a sudden feeling of tenderness. He is the last one in the generation before me, he thought. When he dies, I'll be the next to go.

  His father put away his brushes and the stencil and stood up.

  They went into the main house. His father put on some coffee and brought some shot glasses to the table. Wallander hesitated, then nodded. He could take one glass.

  'Poker,' Wallander said. 'You owe me fourteen kronor from last time.'

  His father looked closely at him.

  'I think you cheat,' he said. 'But I still don't know how you do it.'

  Wallander was taken aback.

  'You think I'd cheat my own father?'

  For once his father backed down.

  'No,' he said. 'Not really. But you did win an unusual amount last time.'

  The conversation died. They drank coffee. His father slurped as usual. This irritated Wallander as much as it always did.

  'I'm going to go away,' his father said suddenly. 'Far away.'

  Wallander waited for more, but none came.

  'Where to?' he asked finally.

  'To Egypt.'

  'Egypt? What are you going to do there? I thought it was Italy you wanted to see.'

  'Egypt and Italy. You never listen to what I say.'

  'What are you going to do in Egypt?'

  'I'm going to see the Sphinx and the pyramids. Time is running out. No one knows how long I will live. But I want to see the pyramids and Rome before I die.'

  Wallander shook his head.

  'Who are you going with?'

  'I'm flying with Egypt Air, in a few days. Straight to Cairo. I'm going to stay in a very nice hotel called Mena House.'

  'But you're going alone? Is it a charter trip? You can't be serious,' Wallander said in disbelief.

  His father reached for some tickets on the windowsill. Wallander looked through them and realised that what his father said was true. He had a regular-fare ticket from Copenhagen to Cairo for the fourteenth of December.

  Wallander put the tickets down on the table.

  For once he was completely speechless.

  CHAPTER 3

  Wallander left Löderup at a quarter past ten. The clouds had started to break up. As he walked to the car he noticed that it had turned colder. This in turn would mean that the Peugeot would be harder to start than usual. But it wasn't the car that occupied his thoughts, it was the fact that he had not managed to talk his father out of taking the trip to Egypt. Or at least wait until a time when he or his sister could accompany him.

  'You're almost eighty years old,' Wallander had insisted. 'At your age, you can't do this kind of thing.'

  But his arguments had been hollow. There was nothing visibly wrong with his father's health. And even if he dressed unconventionally at times, he had a rare ability to adapt to new situations and the new people he met. When Wallander realised that the ticket included a shuttle bus from the airport to the hotel that was situated close to the pyramids, his concerns had slowly dissipated. He did not understand what drove his father to go to Egypt, to the Sphinx and the pyramids. But he couldn't deny that – many years ago now, when Wallander was still young – his father had actually told him many times about the marvellous structures on the Giza plateau, just outside Cairo.

  Then they had played poker. Since his father ended in the black, he was in a great mood when Wallander said his goodbyes.

  Wallander paused with his hand on the car-door handle and drew in a breath of night air.

  I have a strange father, he thought. That's something I'll never escape.

  Wallander had promised to drive him into Malmö on the morning of the fourteenth. He had made a note of the telephone number for Mena House, where his father would be staying. Since his father never spent money unnecessarily, he had of course not taken any travel insurance and so Wallander was going to ask Ebba to take care of it tomorrow.