Suddenly a man in a uniform appeared by his side.
“Why haven’t you disembarked?”
Wallander looked at the man, who had a long beard and a ruddy complexion. There were several yellow stripes on his epaulettes. This is a large ferry, he thought. Not everyone knows what happened down in the engine room.
“I’m a police officer,” Wallander said. “Who are you?”
“I’m third mate on this ship.”
“That’s good,” Wallander said. “Go talk to your captain or first mate and they’ll tell you why I’m here.”
The man hesitated. But then he seemed to decide that Wallander was probably telling the truth and was not a lingering passenger that had to be dealt with. He disappeared. Martinsson came out of the kitchen with a tray.
“They were eating,” he said when he sat down. “They hadn’t heard anything about what happened, though they had of course noticed that the ferry cut back on power for part of the trip.”
“The third mate came by,” Wallander said. “He didn’t know anything, either.”
“Have we made a big mistake?” Martinsson asked.
“In what way?”
“Shouldn’t we have detained everyone for a while? At least until we could have checked the names on the list and all the cars?”
Martinsson was right, but at the same time, that kind of an operation would have required more manpower than they could have mustered at such short notice. Wallander also doubted that they would have had any results.
“Maybe,” he said. “But we should focus on the situation as is.”
“I dreamed about going to sea when I was younger,” Martinsson said.
“I did too,” Wallander said. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Then he dove right in.
“We have to come up with an interpretation,” he said. “We had begun to suspect that Jonas Landahl was the one who drove Sonja Hökberg to the power substation and then killed her. We had assumed that that was why he later fled from Snappehanegatan. Now he himself is killed. The question is simply how this changes the picture.”
“You still maintain it couldn’t be an accident?”
“Is that what you think it was?”
Martinsson shifted slightly.
“As I see it, there are two conclusions that can be drawn,” Wallander continued. “The first is that Landahl really did kill Sonja for some reason that we still don’t know, although we suspect it has to do with keeping something quiet. Afterward Landahl takes off to Poland. Whether he is driven by panic or following some deliberate plan, we don’t know. But then he is killed, perhaps as a kind of revenge. Perhaps because he has become a liability for someone else in turn.”
Wallander paused, but Martinsson didn’t say anything. Wallander continued.
“The other possibility is that an unknown person killed both Sonja Hökberg and now Landahl.”
“How does that account for Landahl’s quick getaway?”
“When he found out what happened to Sonja, he was scared. He fled, but someone caught up with him.”
Martinsson nodded. It seemed to Wallander that they were thinking along the same tracks now.
“Sabotage and death,” Martinsson said. “Hökberg’s body is used to cause a huge blackout in Scania. Then Landahl’s body is thrown down into the propeller axles of a huge ferry.”
“Do you remember what we talked about a little while ago?” Wallander asked. “We put it this way: first the minks were released, then there was the blackout, and now a ferry incident. What’s next?”
Martinsson shook his head despondently.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “I can understand releasing the minks, that a group of animal-rights activists would plan and execute that task. I can perhaps even see some logic to the blackout — perhaps someone wants to demonstrate the enormous weaknesses built into our society. But what would be the point of causing chaos down in the engine room of a ferry?”
“It’s like a game of dominoes. If one piece falls, the rest follow. And the first piece to fall was Falk.”
“What about Lundberg’s murder? How do you fit that in?”
“That’s just the problem. I can’t get it to fit, and therefore I’ve started thinking something else.”
“That Lundberg’s death is incidental to the rest of the events?”
Wallander nodded. Martinsson could think quickly when he tried.
“Do you mean that we should separate these two sequences of events? Even though Sonja figures so dominantly in both?”
“That’s just it,” Wallander said. “What if her role is far less important than we’ve thought?”
At that moment Hansson entered the cafeteria. He cast a longing glance at their coffee. Right behind him was a gray-haired, pleasant-looking man with many stripes on his epaulets who turned out to be the captain. Wallander got to his feet and introduced himself. When Captain Sund spoke, it was clear he was not from Scania.
“Terrible things,” he said.
“No one has seen anything,” Hansson said. “Even though you would think someone would have noticed the victim on his way down to the engine room.”
“So there are no witnesses?”
“I spoke to the two engineers who were on duty on the trip over from Poland. Neither one of them saw anything.”
“And the doors to the engine room aren’t locked?” Wallander asked.
“Our security measures don’t allow it. But they are clearly marked with signs that say ‘No entry.’ Everyone who works in the area knows to keep an eye out for stray passengers. Sometimes when people have had a bit too much to drink, they wander. But I never thought anything like this could happen.”
“I take it the ferry is completely empty by now,” Wallander said. “But there isn’t by any chance a car that hasn’t been claimed?”
Sund sent out a message on the radio in his hand. A crew member down in the car hold answered.
“All vehicles have been claimed,” Sund reported. “The car hold is completely empty.”
“What about the cabins? Is there any unclaimed luggage?”
Sund went off in search of an answer. Hansson sat down. Wallander noted that Hansson had been unusually careful in his questioning of the crew.
When the ferry left Swinoujscie the captain had estimated that the trip to Ystad would take about seven hours. Wallander asked if any of the engineers could point to a time when the body must have slipped into the axles. Could it have happened even before the ferry left Poland? Hansson had thought to ask this question and could report that yes, the body could indeed have been there at the very start of the trip.
There wasn’t much to add. No one had seen anything unusual, let alone noticed Landahl. There had been a couple hundred passengers aboard, most of them Polish truckers. There had also been a delegation from the Swedish cement industry. They were returning from an investment conference in Poland.
“We need to know if Landahl was traveling with anyone,” Wallander said when Hansson finished. “That’s very important. What we need is a photograph of him. Then someone will have to take the boat back and forth tomorrow and see if anyone recognizes him.”
“I hope that someone isn’t me,” Hansson said. “I get seasick.”
“Then find someone else,” Wallander said. “What I need you to do right now is to go up to Snappehanegatan and get his picture. Check with that boy who works in the hardware store to make sure it’s a decent likeness.”
“You mean that guy Ryss?”