They shook hands and said goodnight.
“It was nice to meet you,” she said.
“Yes,” Wallander said. “Likewise.”
He watched her until she had rounded the corner of the hotel. Then he walked over to his car and drove back toward Ystad. He put on a cassette tape of the tenor Jussi Björling. Music filled the car as he drove. As he passed the turn off to Stjarnsund, where Sten Widén’s ranch was, he thought that his normal sting of jealousy was not as strong now.
It was half past one by the time he parked the car. He walked up to his apartment and sat down on the sofa. It had been a long time since he had felt as happy as he did this evening. The last time must have been when he started to sense that Baiba reciprocated his feelings.
He went to bed without even thinking about the case.
For the first time in a long while, work had taken a back seat.
Wallander arrived at the station on Friday morning with explosive energy. The first thing he did was cancel the surveillance on Falk’s apartment on Apelbergsgatan. He did, however, want the surveillance at Runnerström Square to continue. Then he walked over to Martinsson’s office. It was empty. Hansson was also not in yet. But he bumped into Höglund in the hall. She looked unusually tired and grumpy. He thought he should say some encouraging words to her but couldn’t think of anything that would sound genuine.
“Sonja Hökberg’s phone book still hasn’t turned up,” she said. “The one she carried in her purse.”
“Have we established that she had one?”
“Eva Persson has corroborated Sonja’s mother’s claim. It was a small, dark-blue book with a rubber band around the middle.”
“Then we’re assuming that whoever killed her and tossed her handbag had first pocketed this book?”
“That seems plausible.”
“The question is what phone numbers were in there. And what names.”
Höglund shrugged. Wallander looked more closely at her.
“How are things with you, anyway?”
“Things are as they are,” she said. “But they sure as hell could be better.”
She went into her office and closed the door. Wallander hesitated but decided to knock on her door. When he heard her voice, he went in.
“We have some other things to talk about,” he said.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
He sat down. As usual, her office was perfectly neat.
“We have to sort out this business with the rape,” he said. “I haven’t spoken to Sonja’s mother yet. I have a meeting with Viktorsson at half past eight, but then I’m going to head over to their house. I take it she’s back from staying with her sister?”
“They’re planning the funeral. I think it’s very hard on them.”
Wallander got up.
“What’s going to happen to Eva Persson?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Even if she manages to lay the blame on Sonja, her life has been destroyed.”
Höglund made a face.
“I don’t know if I would go that far. Eva Persson seems like one of these people who can let everything wash over her and not let it affect her. How you get like that, I don’t know.”
Wallander thought about what she had said. Perhaps he would understand it better later.
“Have you seen Martinsson?” he asked as he was leaving.
“I saw him come in.”
“He wasn’t in his office.”
“I saw him go into Lisa’s office.”
“I didn’t think she ever came in this early.”
“They were having a meeting.”
Something in her voice made him stop. She saw his hesitation and seemed to make a decision. Then she gestured for him to come back inside and close the door.
“A meeting about what?”
“Sometimes you really surprise me,” she said. “You see and hear everything. You’re a great police officer and you know how to keep your investigative team motivated. But at the same time it’s as if you see nothing that’s going on around you.”
Wallander felt something cramp up in his gut. He didn’t say anything, he just waited for her to go on.
“You always speak well of Martinsson, and he always follows where you lead. You work well together.”
“I’m constantly worried that he’s going to get fed up and leave.”
“He won’t, believe me.”
“That’s what he always tells me. And it would be a shame. He is a good police officer.”
She looked squarely at him.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I will anyway. You trust him way too much.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that he’s going behind your back. What do you think is going on in Lisa’s office right now? They may very well be talking about it being high time for some changes around here. Changes, I might add, that would be to your detriment rather than Martinsson’s.”
Wallander heard what she said but couldn’t believe it.
“How do you mean ‘going behind my back’?”
She threw her letter opener across her desk in an angry gesture.
“It took me a while to see it. Martinsson is smart. He’s manipulative, and good at it. He goes and complains to Lisa about the way you’re handling this investigation.”
“He tells her I’m incompetent?”
“I don’t think he would ever express himself so directly. He simply implies certain deficiencies. Weak leadership, strange priorities. He went straight to Lisa when you brought in Robert Modin, for example.”
Wallander was amazed.
“I can’t believe what you’re telling me.”
“You should. But I hope you understand that I’m telling you this in confidence.”
Wallander nodded. His stomach was hurting now.
“I just thought you should know. That’s all.”
Wallander looked at her.
“Do you agree with him?”
“If I did, I would tell you to your face. Not go behind your back.”
“What about Hansson? Nyberg?”
“This is Martinsson’s game. No one else’s. He’s going after the throne.”
“But what about his constant complaints about work? He doesn’t even know if he wants to stay in the force.”
“Aren’t you the one who’s always telling us to look past the surface to the very bottom? You always take Martinsson at face value. But I can tell you I’ve seen what’s underneath, and I don’t like what I see.”
Wallander felt almost paralyzed. The energy and joy he had felt when he woke up was gone. Somewhere inside him, anger was starting to bubble up.
“I’m going to get him for this,” he said. “I’m going to grab him right now and see what he has to say for himself.”
“That is not a good idea.”
“How am I supposed to keep working with someone like him?”
“I can’t tell you that. But you have to wait for a better opportunity to confront him. If you say anything now, you’ll just give him more reasons to complain about you being unbalanced. He also thinks that the slap you gave Eva Persson was no coincidence.”
“Maybe you know that Lisa is thinking of suspending me.”
“It wasn’t Lisa’s idea,” Höglund said grimly. “It was Martinsson.”
“How do you know all this?”
“He has a weakness,” she said. “He trusts me. He thinks I agree with him, even though I’ve told him I think he should stop going behind your back.”
Wallander got up from the chair.
“Don’t do anything rash,” she repeated. “Try to think of this information as having a leg up on him. Use it when the time comes.”
She was right.
Wallander went back to his office. His anger was tinted with sadness. He could have believed it about almost anyone, just not Martinsson. Not Martinsson.