The Pyramid

by Henning Mankell

  Wallander sat up.

  'You don't mean that Yngve Leonard Holm lives up there? That he has a place there?'

  Martinsson nodded.

  'He's the one. It took a while for me to put it together.'

  Damn it, Wallander thought. I knew there was something about him. I even thought of the plane. But we had to let him go.

  'We'll bring him in,' Wallander said and banged a fist firmly on his desk.

  'That was exactly what I told our Sjöbo colleagues when I made the connection,' Martinsson said. 'But when they got out to Långelunda, Holm was gone.'

  'What do you mean, "gone"?'

  'Disappeared, gone, vanished. He did live there, even if he was registered in Ystad for the last couple of years. And built his mansion here. The Sjöbo colleagues talked to a couple of other individuals living there. Rough types, from what I gather. Holm was there as recently as yesterday. But no one has seen him since then. I went to his house here in Ystad, but it's locked up.'

  Wallander thought it over.

  'So Holm doesn't usually disappear like this?'

  'The people in the house actually seemed a little concerned.'

  'In other words, there could be a connection,' Wallander said.

  'I was thinking that Holm may have been intending to leave on the plane that crashed.'

  'Not likely,' Wallander said. 'Then you're assuming the plane had somewhere to land and pick him up. And the Sjöbo police haven't found any place like that, have they? An improvised landing strip? It would also exceed the time frame.'

  'A sport plane with a skilled pilot may only need a small level area to land and take off from.'

  Wallander hesitated. Martinsson could be right, even though Wallander doubted this was the case. On the other hand, he had no difficulty imagining that Holm could be involved in decidedly larger drug operations than they had believed.

  'We'll have to continue working on this,' Wallander said. 'Unfortunately, you'll be more or less alone on it. The rest of us have to focus on the murdered sisters.'

  'Have you found a possible motive?'

  'We have nothing other than an incomprehensible execution and an explosive fire,' Wallander replied. 'But if there's anything to be found in the remains of the fire, Nyberg will get it.'

  Martinsson left. Wallander noticed that his thoughts were alternating between the downed plane and the fire. It was two o'clock. His father would have landed in Cairo by now, if the plane had left on time from Kastrup. Then he thought about Björk's strange behaviour. He felt himself getting upset again and at the same time felt pleased that he had given his boss a piece of his mind.

  Since he was having trouble concentrating on his paperwork he drove down to the scene of the fire. Nyberg was on his knees in the rubble together with the other technicians. The smell of smoke was still strong. Nyberg saw Wallander and made his way out onto the street.

  'The fire burned with an intense heat, according to Edler's people,' he said. 'Everything appears to have melted. And that of course strengthens the suspicion of arson, about a fire started in several places at once. Perhaps with the help of petrol.'

  'We have to get the people who did this,' Wallander said.

  'That would be a good thing,' Nyberg said. 'One gets the feeling that this is the work of a madman.'

  'Or the opposite,' Wallander said. 'Someone who really knew what he was after.'

  'In a sewing shop? Run by two old unmarried sisters?'

  Nyberg shook his head disbelievingly and returned to the ruins. Wallander walked down to the harbour. He needed some air. It was a couple of degrees below freezing and there was almost no breeze. He stopped outside the theatre building and saw that there was going to be a performance by the National Theatre. A Dream Play by Strindberg. If only it had been an opera, he thought. Then I would have gone. But he hesitated to attend a regular play.

  He walked out onto the pier in the yacht harbour. A ferry to Poland was just leaving the large terminal that lay adjacent to it. Absentmindedly he wondered how many cars were being smuggled out of Sweden this time.

  He returned to the station at half past three. He wondered if his father had reached the hotel and settled in. And if he would receive a new reprimand from Björk for an unexplained absence. At four o'clock he gathered with his colleagues in the conference room. They reviewed the findings of the day. Their collected material was still thin.

  'Unusually thin,' Rydberg said. 'A building burns down in Ystad. And no one has noticed anything out of the ordinary.'

  Svedberg and Hansson reported what they had found. Neither of the sisters had been married. There were a number of distant relatives, cousins and second cousins. But no one who lived in Ystad. The sewing shop yielded an unremarkable declared income. Nor had they uncovered any bank accounts with large savings. Hansson had located a safedeposit box at Handels Bank. But since they lacked keys, Per Åkeson would have to submit a request that the box be opened. Hansson calculated that it could be done by the following day.

  Afterwards a heavy silence descended on the room.

  'There has to be a motive,' Wallander said. 'Sooner or later we'll find it. If we only have patience.'

  'Who knew these sisters?' Rydberg asked. 'They must have had friends and a bit of spare time now and again when they weren't working in the shop. Did they belong to any kind of organisation? Did they have a summer cabin? Did they take holidays? I still feel that we haven't scratched below the surface.'

  Wallander thought Rydberg sounded irritable. He's probably in a lot of pain, Wallander thought. I wonder what is really wrong with him. If it isn't only rheumatism.

  No one had anything to add to what Rydberg had said. They would go forward and delve deeper.

  Wallander remained in his office until close to eight o'clock. He made his own list of all the facts they had about the Eberhardsson sisters. As he read through what he had written he realised in earnest how thin it was. They had absolutely no leads to pursue.

  Before leaving the office he called Martinsson at home. Martinsson told him that Holm had still not turned up.

  Wallander went to his car. It took a long time for the engine to sputter into life. He angrily decided to take out a loan and get a new car as soon as he had the time.

  When he came home he booked a time for the laundry room and then opened a can of luncheon meat. Just as he was about to sit down in front of the TV with his plate perched on his lap the phone rang. It was Emma. She asked if she could come by.

  'Not tonight,' Wallander said. 'You've probably read about the fire and the two sisters. We're working round the clock right now.'

  She understood. After Wallander hung up he wondered why he couldn't tell her the truth. That he didn't want to be with her any more. But of course it was inexcusable cowardice to say this over the phone. Therefore he had to steel himself to go over to her place some evening. He promised himself he would as soon as he had time.

  He started to eat his food, which had already grown cold. It was nine o'clock.

  The telephone rang again. Annoyed, Wallander put the plate down and answered.

  It was Nyberg, who was still at the scene of the fire, calling from a patrol car.

  'Now I think we've found something,' he said. 'A safe, the expensive kind that can withstand extreme heat.'

  'Why didn't you find it earlier?'

  'Good question,' Nyberg answered, without taking offence. 'The safe had been lowered into the foundation. We found a heat-insulated trapdoor under all the rubble. When we managed to force it open we found a space underneath. And there was the safe.'

  'Have you opened it?'

  'With what? There are no keys. This is a safe that will be difficult to force open.'

  Wallander checked his watch. Ten minutes past nine.

  'I'm on my way,' he said. 'I wonder if you might have uncovered the lead we were looking for.'

  When Wallander got down to the street he couldn't get the car to start. He gave up and walked to H
amngatan.

  At twenty minutes to ten he stood at Nyberg's side and studied the safe, illuminated by a lone spotlight.

  At about the same time the temperature began to fall, and a gusty wind was moving in from the east.

  CHAPTER 6

  Shortly after midnight on the fifteenth of December, Nyberg and his men had managed to lift up the safe with the help of a crane. It was loaded onto the back of a truck and immediately taken to the station.

  But before Nyberg and Wallander left the scene, Nyberg examined the space under the foundation.

  'This was put in after the house was built,' he said. 'I have to assume it was constructed expressly to hold this safe.'

  Wallander nodded without a reply. He was thinking about the Eberhardsson sisters. The police had searched for a motive. Now they may have found it, even if they didn't yet know what was in the safe.

  But someone else may have known, Wallander thought. Both that the safe existed. And what was inside.

  Nyberg and Wallander left the scene of the fire and walked out to the street.

  'Is it possible to cut into the safe?' Wallander asked.

  'Yes, of course,' Nyberg answered. 'But it requires special welding equipment. This is not the kind of safe that a regular locksmith would dream of trying to crack open.'

  'We have to open it as soon as possible.'

  Nyberg pulled off his protective suit. He looked sceptically at Wallander.

  'Do you mean that the safe should be opened tonight?'

  'That would be best,' Wallander said. 'This is a double homicide.'

  'Impossible,' Nyberg said. 'I can only get hold of people with the requisite welding equipment tomorrow at the earliest.'

  'Are they here in Ystad?'

  Nyberg reflected.

  'There is a company that's a subcontractor for the armed forces,' he said. 'They probably have the equipment that would do the trick. I think their name is Fabricius. They're on Industrigatan.'

  Nyberg looked exhausted. It would be insane to drive him onward right now, Wallander thought. He himself shouldn't press on either.

  'Seven o'clock tomorrow,' Wallander said.

  Nyberg nodded.

  Wallander looked around for his car. Then he remembered that it hadn't started. Nyberg could drop him off, but he preferred to walk. The wind was cold. He passed a thermometer outside a shop window on Stora Östergatan. Minus six degrees Celsius. Winter is creeping in, Wallander thought. Soon it will be here.

  One minute to seven on the morning of the fifteenth of December, Nyberg entered Wallander's office. Wallander had the telephone directory open on his desk. He had already inspected the safe, which was being stored in a temporarily empty room next to reception. One of the officers just going off the night shift told him that they had needed a forklift to get the safe inside. Wallander nodded. He had noticed the marks outside the glass doors and seen that one of the hinges was bent. That won't make Björk happy, he thought. But he'll have to live with it. Wallander had tried to move the safe, without success. He had wondered again what it contained. Or if it was empty.

  Nyberg called the company on Industrigatan. Wallander went to get some coffee. Rydberg arrived at the same time. Wallander told him about the safe.

  'It was as I suspected,' Rydberg said. 'We know very little about these sisters.'

  'We're in the process of trying to find a welder who can take on this kind of safe,' Wallander said.

  'I hope you'll tell me before you open it,' Rydberg said. 'It will be interesting to be there.'

  Wallander returned to his office. He thought it seemed as if Rydberg was in less pain today.

  Nyberg was just getting off the phone when Wallander walked in with two cups of coffee.

  'I've just spoken to Ruben Fabricius,' Nyberg said. 'He thought they would be able to do the job. They'll be here in half an hour.'

  'Tell me when they arrive,' Wallander said.

  Nyberg left. Wallander thought about his father in Cairo. Hoped that his experiences were living up to his expectations. He studied the note with the telephone number of the hotel, Mena House. Wondered if he should call. But suddenly he was unsure of what the time difference was, or if there even was one. He dropped the thought and instead called Ebba to see who had come in.

  'Martinsson called in to say that he was on his way to Sjöbo,' she answered. 'Svedberg hasn't arrived yet. Hansson is showering. He's apparently had a water leak at home.'

  'We're going to open the safe soon,' Wallander said. 'That may get noisy.'

  'I went in to take a look at it,' Ebba said. 'I thought it would be bigger.'

  'One that size can hold a lot as well.'

  'Of course,' she said. 'Ugh.'

  Wallander wondered later what she had meant by her last comment. Did she expect that they would find a child's corpse in the safe? Or a decapitated head?

  Hansson appeared in the doorway. His hair was still wet.

  'I've just talked to Björk,' he said cheerily. 'He pointed out that the doors of the station were damaged last night.'

  Hansson had not yet heard about the safe. Wallander explained.

  'That may provide us with a motive,' Hansson said.

  'In the best-case scenario,' Wallander said. 'In the worst case, the safe is empty. And then we understand even less.'

  'It could have been emptied by the people who shot the sisters,' Hansson objected. 'Perhaps he shot one of them and forced the other to open the safe?'

  This had also occurred to Wallander. But something told him it was not what had actually happened. Without being able to say why he had that feeling.

  At eight o'clock, under Ruben Fabricius's direction, two welders started the work of cutting open the safe. It was, as Nyberg had predicted, a difficult task.

  'A special kind of steel,' Fabricius said. 'A normal locksmith would have to devote his whole life trying to open this kind of safe.'

  'Can you blow it up?' Wallander asked.

  'The risk would be that you'd take the whole building with you,' Fabricius answered. 'In that case I would first move the safe to an open field. But sometimes so much explosive is needed that the safe itself is blown to pieces. And the contents either burn or are pulverised.'

  Fabricius was a large, heavyset man who punctuated each sentence with a short laugh.

  'This kind of safe probably costs a hundred thousand kronor,' he said and laughed.

  Wallander looked astonished.

  'That much?'

  'Easily.'

  One thing at least is certain, Wallander thought as he recalled yesterday's discussion about the dead women's financial situation. The Eberhardsson sisters had much more money than they had reported to the authorities. They must have had undeclared income. But what can you sell of value in a sewing shop? Gold thread? Diamond-studded buttons?

  The welding equipment was turned off at a quarter past nine. Fabricius nodded to Wallander and chuckled.

  'All set,' he said.