The Pyramid

by Henning Mankell

  Wallander knew he had only one choice. A thought that was more repellent to him than anything. But he had no choice. He took several deep breaths. Then he got to his feet, rushed out into the hall, kicked open the door, threw himself to the side, and aimed three shots into the dog run. A howl signalled that he had hit the mark. Every second that went by, Wallander expected to die. But the dog's howls gave him time to slip into the shadows. Then he spotted Rolf Nyman. He was standing in the middle of the yard, momentarily bewildered by the shooting of the dog. Then he saw Wallander.

  Wallander closed his eyes and fired two shots. When he opened his eyes again he saw that Rolf Nyman had fallen to the ground. Slowly Wallander walked up to him.

  He was alive. A bullet had caught him in the side. Wallander took the weapon out of his hand, and then went up to the dog run. The dog was dead.

  Wallander heard sirens approaching in the distance.

  His whole body shaking, he sat down on the front steps and waited.

  At that moment he noticed that it had started to rain.

  EPILOGUE

  At a quarter past four, Wallander was sitting in the station break room drinking a cup of coffee. His hands were still shaking. After the first chaotic hour when no one had really been able to explain what had happened, the picture had finally cleared up. When Martinsson and Svedberg had left Nyman's home and contacted Hansson on the police dispatch, the police in Lund had stormed Linda Boman's disco, since they suspected that the number of people inside exceeded the legal limit. In the general chaos that had ensued Hansson had misunderstood what Martinsson had said. He had believed that everyone had left Nyman's house. Then he had also realised too late that Nyman had sneaked out a back door that he had missed due to an oversight when he had inspected the disco. He had asked an officer in charge where the employees were and had been told that they had been brought down to the Lund station for questioning. He had assumed that this group included Rolf Nyman. Then he had decided there was no longer any reason for him to stay in Lund and had driven back to Ystad with the belief that Nyman's house had been empty for more than an hour.

  During that time Wallander had lain on the floor, shot at the ceiling light, rushed out into the yard and killed a dog – and injured Rolf Nyman with a bullet to his side.

  Wallander had thought several times since returning to Ystad that he should be furious. But he could decide for himself who he should blame. It had been an unfortunate series of misunderstandings that could have ended very badly, with not only a dog left dead. That had not happened. But it had been a close shave.

  There is a time to live, and a time to die, Wallander thought. This was a mantra he had carried with him ever since the time he had been stabbed in Malmö many years ago. Now it had been a close call again.

  Rydberg came into the break room.

  'Rolf Nyman is going to be fine,' he said. 'You hit him in a good spot. He will suffer no permanent damage. The doctors seemed to think we could talk to him as early as tomorrow.'

  'I could easily have missed,' Wallander said. 'Or hit him right between the eyes. I'm a terrible shot.'

  'Most policemen are,' Rydberg said.

  Wallander slurped more of the hot coffee.

  'I talked to Nyberg,' Rydberg went on. 'He said that the weapon looked like a probable match with the one that was used to kill the Eberhardsson sisters and Holm. They've also found Holm's car. It was parked on a street in Sjöbo. Nyman probably drove it there.'

  'So something has been solved,' Wallander said. 'But we still have no idea what's really behind all this.'

  Rydberg had no answer to that.

  It would take several weeks for the whole picture to emerge. But when Nyman began to speak, the police were able to uncover a skilfully constructed organisation that managed the importation of large quantities of heavy drugs into Sweden. The Eberhardsson sisters had been Nyman's ingenious camouflage. They organised the supply links in Spain, where the drugs – which had their origin in distant producers in both Central America and Asia – arrived on fishing boats. Holm had been Nyman's henchman. But then, at a moment that they were unable to pinpoint, Holm and the Eberhardsson sisters had joined forces in their greed and decided to oust Nyman. When he had realised what was happening, he had struck back. The plane crash had occurred during this time. Drugs were being transported from Marbella to northern Germany. The night-time air trips to Sweden had taken off from a private airstrip outside Kiel. The plane had always returned there, except this last time when it had gone down. The commission in charge of investigating the accident was never able to determine the actual cause. But there were many indications that the plane was in such poor condition that several factors had worked together.

  Wallander himself led the first questioning of Nyman. But when two other serious crimes occurred he had to hand the case over. Nonetheless he had understood from the start that Rolf Nyman was not the head of the pyramid that he had drawn. There were others above him – financiers, invisible men – who behind the facade of blameless citizens saw to it that the flood of drugs into Sweden did not dry up.

  Many evenings Wallander thought about the pyramids. To the top that his father had been trying to reach. Wallander thought that this climb could stand as a symbol for his own work. He never reached the summit. There were always some who sat so high and far above everyone else that they could never be reached.

  But this morning, the seventh of January 1990, Wallander was simply tired.

  At half past five he could no longer take it. Without saying a word to anyone other than Rydberg he went home to the apartment on Mariagatan. He showered and crawled into bed without being able to fall asleep. Only when he managed to find a sleeping pill in an old bottle in the bathroom cabinet was he finally able to sleep, and he did not wake up until two o'clock in the afternoon.

  He spent the rest of the day at the station and the hospital. Björk turned up and congratulated Wallander on his efforts. Wallander did not reply. He thought that most of what he had done had been wrong. It had been their luck, not their skill, that had finally felled Rolf Nyman.

  Then he had had his first conversation with Nyman at the hospital. The man had been pale but collected. Wallander had expected Nyman to refuse to say a word. But he had answered many of Wallander's questions.

  'The Eberhardsson sisters?' Wallander asked before he concluded the session. Rolf Nyman smiled.

  'Two greedy old ladies,' he said. 'Who were tempted by the fact that someone rode into their hopeless lives and brought the scent of adventure.'

  'That sounds implausible,' Wallander said. 'It's too big a step.'

  'Anna Eberhardsson had lived a fairly wild life when she was younger. Emilia had always had to keep an eye on her. Perhaps deep down she had wanted to live the same life. What do we know about people? Other than that they have their weaknesses. And those are the things you need to know.'

  'How did you meet them?'

  The answer came as a surprise.

  'I bought a zip. It was a time in my life when I mended my own clothes. I saw those old ladies and had a crazy idea. That they could be useful. As a cover.'

  'And then?'

  'I started dropping by. Bought some thread. Talked about my travels around the world. How easy it was to make money. And that life is short. But that nothing was ever too late. I saw that they listened.'

  'And then?'

  Rolf Nyman shrugged.

  'One day I made them an offer. How does that go again? An offer they couldn't refuse.'

  Wallander wanted to ask more. But suddenly Nyman did not want to talk about it any more.

  Wallander changed the subject.

  'And Holm?'

  'He was also greedy. And weak. Too stupid to realise that he wouldn't be able to trick me.'

  'How did you catch onto their plans?'

  Rolf Nyman shook his head.

  'I won't give you that answer,' he said.

  Wallander walked from the hospital to the station.
A press conference was going on that to his relief he had managed to get out of. When he got to his office there was a package on the floor. Someone had written a note and said that the package had ended up sitting around in reception by mistake. Wallander saw that it had come from Sofia in Bulgaria. Immediately he knew what it was. Several months earlier he had participated in an international police conference in Copenhagen. While there he had become good friends with a Bulgarian detective who shared his interest in opera. Wallander opened it. It contained a recording of La Traviata with Maria Callas.

  Wallander wrote up a report on his first conversation with Rolf Nyman. Then he went home. Cooked some food, slept a few hours. Thought of calling Linda but didn't.

  In the evening he listened to the record from Bulgaria. Thought that what he needed most right now was a couple of days off.

  He only went to bed and fell asleep when it was close to two.

  *

  The incoming call was registered by the Ystad police dispatcher at 5.13 a.m., the eighth of January. It was received by an exhausted policeman who had been on duty almost without a break since New Year's Eve. He had listened to the stammering voice on the phone and at first thought that it was a confused elderly person. But something nonetheless alerted his attention. He started to ask questions. When the conversation was over he only had to reflect for a moment before he lifted the receiver again and dialled a number he knew by heart.

  When the telephone signals jerked Wallander from his slumber he had been deeply enmeshed in an erotic dream.

  He checked his watch as he reached his hand out for the telephone receiver. A car accident, he thought quickly. An icy road, or someone driving too fast. People dead. Or clashes with refugees who arrived on the morning ferry from Poland.

  He sat up in bed and pressed the receiver against his cheek, where his stubble stung.

  'Wallander!' he barked.

  'I didn't wake you, did I?'

  'I was awake.'

  Why do I lie? he wondered. Why don't I tell the truth? That most of all I would like to return to my sleep and catch a fleeting dream in the form of a naked woman.

  'I thought I should call you. An old farmer called in, said his name was Nyström and that he lived in Lenarp. He claimed that a neigh-bouring woman was tied up on the floor and that someone was dead.'

  Wallander swiftly located Lenarp in his mind. Not so far from Marsvinsholm, in an unusually hilly area for Skåne.

  'It sounds serious. I thought it was best to call you directly.'

  'Who is available right now?'

  'Peters and Norén are out looking for someone who broke a window at the Continental. Should I call them in?'

  'Tell them to drive to the intersection of Kadesjö and Katslösa and wait until I get there. Give them the address. When did you receive this call?'

  'A couple of minutes ago.'

  'Are you sure it's not some drunk?'

  'It didn't sound like it.'

  Wallander got out of bed and got dressed. The rest that he needed so much was not to be granted him.

  He drove out of the city, passing the newly built furniture warehouse by the main road into town, and sensed the dark sea beyond it. The sky was covered in clouds.

  The snowstorms are coming, he thought.

  Sooner or later they will be on top of us.

  Then he tried to concentrate on whatever sight it was that he would encounter.

  The patrol car was waiting for him by the road to Kadesjö.

  It was still dark.