“You know that Eva Persson is still sticking to that story as well. That you hit her without any provocation.”
“Of course she is. If she’s lying about everything else she might as well lie about that, too.”
Wallander got up. He told her briefly about the break-in at Tynnes Falk’s apartment.
“Has the body been found yet?”
“Not as far as I know.”
Höglund was still sitting.
“Do you understand any of this?”
“No,” Wallander said, “It worries me. Don’t forget that a large area of Scania was left without power.”
They walked out into the hallway together. Hansson looked out of his room to say that the police in Växjö had located Eva Persson’s father.
“According to their report, he lives in a run-down shack somewhere between Växjö and Vislanda. Now they’re wondering what it is we want to know.”
“Nothing for now,” Wallander said. “We have other more important questions to cover.”
They decided to meet at half past one, when Martinsson would have returned. Wallander went back to his room and called the mechanic. His car was ready. He left the police station and walked down Frihemsgatan toward Surbrunn square. A gusty wind came and went.
The mechanic’s name was Holmlund, and he had worked on many of Wallander’s cars over the years. He loved motorcycles, had a number of missing teeth, and spoke with such a strong Scanian accent that Wallander had trouble understanding him. His appearance hadn’t changed a bit since Wallander had first met him. Wallander still couldn’t tell if he was fifty or sixty.
“It’s going to cost you,” Holmlund said and smiled his toothless smile. “But you’ll recoup some of the cost if you sell the car as soon as possible.”
Wallander drove away. The noise from the engine was gone. The thought of getting a new car excited him. The only question was if he was going to stay with a Peugeot or try a new brand. He decided to ask Hansson, who knew as much about cars as he did about horseracing.
Wallander drove down to a fast-food kiosk down by Österleden and ate. He tried to read a newspaper but couldn’t concentrate on it. His thoughts kept returning to the case. He had been trying to find a new focal point and had considered the blackout as a potential candidate. Then they weren’t only looking at a murder but a highly calculated form of sabotage. But what if he tried to form a center around something else, like the man who had appeared at the restaurant? He had made Sonja Hökberg trade places. He had a forged identity. And now he might have turned up in a photograph in Tynnes Falk’s apartment — a photograph that had since been stolen. Wallander cursed himself for not taking the photograph himself as he had been intending to. Then he could have asked Istvan to identify the man.
Wallander put down his fork and called Nyberg’s cell phone. He was about to hang up when Nyberg answered.
“Have you by any chance come across a group photo?” he asked. “Something with a large group of men?”
“I’ll ask.”
Wallander waited and picked at the essentially tasteless piece of fried fish in front of him.
Nyberg returned to the phone.
“We have a photo of three men holding up a number of salmon for the camera. A fishing trip in Norway from 1983.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes. How would you know that he would have a photograph like that, anyway?”
He’s not stupid, Wallander thought. Luckily he had prepared an answer ahead of time.
“I didn’t know. I’m trying to find as many pictures as I can of Falk’s aquaintances.”
“We’re almost done here,” Nyberg said.
“Found anything interesting?”
“It seems to be a standard case of breaking-and-entering. Possibly a drug addict.”
“No clues?”
“We have some fingerprints but they could all belong to Falk. I’m not sure how we’re going to verify that, now that the body is gone.”
“We’ll find him sooner or later.”
“I doubt it. When someone steals a body it’s normally in order to bury it.”
Nyberg was right. Wallander had an idea but Nyberg got there first.
“I asked Martinsson to look up Falk in the police files. We couldn’t rule out the possibility that we already had something on him.”
“And what did he find?”
“He was there, actually. But not his fingerprints.”
“What had he done?”
“According to Martinsson, Falk had been sued and fined for property damage.”
“In connection with what?”
“You’ll have to get the details from Martinsson,” Nyberg said irritably.
They finished the conversation. It was ten minutes past one. Wallander filled up the car and returned to the station. Martinsson walked in at the same time.
“None of the neighbors seemed to have heard or seen anything unusual,” Martinsson said as they walked across the parking lot together. “I managed to talk to all of them. Many are retired and home most of the day. One of them was a physical therapist about your age.”
Wallander had no comments to make. Instead, he brought up what Nyberg had said.
“What was all that business about Falk inflicting property damage?”
“I have the paperwork in my office. It was something about a mink farm.”
Wallander looked at him with curiosity but didn’t say anything. He read the report in Martinsson’s office. Tynnes Falk had been arrested by the police in 1991, slightly north of Sölvesborg. One night, a mink farmer had discovered that someone was opening the cages. He had called the police and two patrol cars had been dispatched. Tynnes Falk had not been working alone, but he was the only one who was caught. He had immediately confessed and given as his motivation the fact that he was vehemently opposed to animals being slaughtered for fur. He had, however, denied acting on behalf of any organization and had never given the names of his accomplices.
Wallander put down the report.
“I thought only young people did things like this,” he said. “Falk was over forty in 1991.”
“I suppose we could be more sympathetic to their cause,” Martinsson said. “My daughter is a Greenpeace supporter.”
“There’s a difference between wanting to protect the environment and taking away a mink farmer’s livelihood.”
“These organizations teach you to have an enormous respect for animal life.”
Wallander didn’t want to be dragged into a debate he felt he would eventually lose. But he was perplexed by Tynnes Falk’s involvement in animal-rights activism.
Wallander returned to his office and called Marianne Falk. An answering machine picked up, but as he started to leave his message her voice came on the line. They agreed to meet in the apartment on Apelbergsgatan around three o’clock. Wallander arrived in plenty of time. Nyberg and his forensic team had already left. A patrol car was parked outside. As Wallander was walking up the stairs to the apartment, the door to the apartment below, the one he would rather have forgotten about, suddenly opened. The door was opened by a woman who looked familiar, but he wasn’t sure.
“I saw you when I looked out the window,” she said, smiling. “I just wanted to say hello. If you even remember me, that is.”
“Of course I do,” Wallander said.
“You know, you never got in touch with me like you promised.”
Wallander couldn’t remember making any promises but he knew it was possible. When he was drunk and strongly attracted to a woman, he was capable of promising almost anything.
“Things came up,” he said. “You know how it is.”
“I do?”
Wallander mumbled something.