“I can’t answer that yet,” said Ekholm. “I need time to get into the material before I can create a profile of the killer.”
“I hope you’re not considering today a day of rest,” said Wallander wearily. “We’ll need that profile as soon as possible.”
“I’ll try to get something together by tomorrow,” said Ekholm. “But you and your colleagues have to realise that the difficulties and the margins of error are daunting.”
“I realise that,” said Wallander. “We still need all the help you can give us.”
When the meeting was over Wallander drove down to the harbour and walked out onto the pier, where he had sat a few days earlier trying to write his speech for Bjork. He sat and watched a fishing boat on its way out to sea. He unbuttoned his shirt and closed his eyes, facing the sun. Somewhere close by he heard children laughing. He tried to empty his mind and enjoy the heat. But after a few minutes he stood up and left.
Your killer has already committed two murders. We can’t rule out that he intends to commit more, since we don’t know his motive.
Ekholm’s words might have been his own. He would not relax until they had caught Wetterstedt and Carlman’s killer. Wallander knew his strength was his determination. And sometimes he had moments of insight. But his weakness was also clear. He couldn’t keep his job from becoming a personal matter. Your killer, Ekholm had said. There was no better description of his weakness. The man who killed Wetterstedt and Carlman was actually his own responsibility. Whether he liked it or not.
He went back to his car, deciding to follow the plan he had made that morning. He drove out to Wetterstedt’s villa. The cordons on the beach were gone. Lindgren and an older man, who he assumed was Lindgren’s father, were busy sanding the boat. He didn’t feel like saying hello.
He still had Wetterstedt’s keys, and he unlocked the front door. The silence was deafening. He sat down in one of the leather chairs in the living-room. He could just hear sounds from the beach. He looked around the room. What did it tell him? Had the killer ever been inside the house? He was having a hard time gathering his thoughts. He got up and went over to the big window facing the garden, the beach and the sea. Wetterstedt had stood here many times. He could see that the parquet floor was worn at this spot. He looked out of the window. Someone had shut off the water to the fountain in the garden. He let his gaze wander as he went over the thoughts he’d had earlier.
On the hill outside Carlman’s house my killer stood and observed the party. He may have been there many times. From there he could see without being seen. Where is the hill from which you would have the same view of Wetterstedt? From what point could you see him without being seen?
He walked around the house, stopping at each window. From the kitchen he looked for a long time at a pair of trees growing just out-side Wetterstedt’s property. But they were young birches that wouldn’t have held a person’s weight.
Not until he came to the study and looked out of the window did he realise that he had found the answer. From the projecting garage roof it was possible to see straight into the room. He left the house and went around the garage. A younger, fit man could jump up, grab hold of the eaves and pull himself up. Wallander went and got a ladder he had seen on the other side of the house. He leaned it against the garage roof and climbed up. The roof was the old-fashioned tar-paper type. Since he wasn’t sure how much weight it would hold, he crawled on all fours over to a spot where he could look straight into Wetterstedt’s study. He searched until he found the point farthest away from the window that still had a good view inside. On his hands and knees he inspected the tar-paper. Almost at once he discovered some cuts in it criss-crossing each other. He ran his fingertips across the tar-paper. Someone had slashed it with a knife. He looked around. It was impossible to be seen either from the beach or from the road above Wetterstedt’s house.
Wallander climbed down and put the ladder back. Carefully he inspected the ground next to the garage, but all he found were some tattered pages from a magazine that had blown onto the property. He went back into the house. The silence was oppressive. He went upstairs. Through the window in Wetterstedt’s bedroom he could see Lindgren and his father turning their boat right side up. He could see that it took two people to turn it over.
And yet he now knew that the killer had been alone, both here and when he killed Carlman. Though there were few clues, his intuition told him that it had been one person sitting on Wetterstedt’s roof and on the hill above Carlman’s.
I’m dealing with a lone killer, he thought. A lone man who leaves his borderland and hacks people to death so he can then take their scalps as trophies.
He left Wetterstedt’s house, emerging into the sunshine again with relief. He drove over to a cafe and ate lunch at the counter. A young woman at a table nearby nodded to him and said hello. He replied, unable to remember who she was. Not until he left did he recall that she was Britta-Lena Boden, the bank teller whose excellent memory had been so important during an investigation.
By midday he was back at the station. Ann-Britt Hoglund met him in the foyer.
“I saw you from my window,” she said.
Wallander knew at once that something had happened. He waited, tense, for her to continue.
“There is a point of contact,” she said. “In the late 1960s Carlman did some time in prison. At Langholmen. Wetterstedt was minister of justice at the time.”
“That isn’t enough,” said Wallander.
“I’m not finished. Carlman wrote a letter to Wetterstedt. And when he got out of prison they met.”
Wallander stood motionless.
“How do you know this?”
“Come to my office and I’ll tell you.”
Wallander knew what this meant. If there was a connection, they had broken through the hard, outermost shell of the investigation.
CHAPTER 15
It had started with a telephone call.
Ann-Britt Hoglund had been on her way down the hall to talk to Martinsson when she was paged. She returned to her office and took the call. It was a man who spoke so softly that at first she thought he was sick or injured. But she understood that he wanted to talk to Wallander. No-one else would do, least of all a woman. She explained that Wallander had gone out and no-one could say when he was coming back. But the man was extremely persistent, although she didn’t understand how a man who spoke so softly could seem so strong-willed. She considered transferring the call to Martinsson and having him pretend to be Wallander. But something told her that he might know Wallander’s voice.
He said that he had important information. She asked him whether it had to do with Wetterstedt’s death. Maybe, he replied. Then she asked whether it was about Carlman. Maybe, he said once again. She knew that somehow she had to keep him talking. He had refused to give his name or phone number.
He finally resolved the impasse. He had been silent for so long that Hoglund thought he had hung up, but then he asked for the station fax number. Give the fax to Wallander, the man had said. Not to anyone else.
An hour later the fax had arrived. She handed it to Wallander. To his astonishment he saw that it was sent from Skoglund’s Hardware in Stockholm.
“I looked up the number and called them,” she said. “I also thought it was strange that a hardware shop would be open on Sunday. From a message on their answer machine I got hold of the owner via his mobile phone. He had no idea either how someone could have sent a fax from his office. He was on his way to play golf but promised to look into the matter. Half an hour later he called and reported that someone had broken into his office.”
“How strange,” said Wallander.
He read the fax. It was hand-written and hard to read. He must get reading glasses soon. He couldn’t pretend any longer he was just tired or stressed. The fax seemed to have been written in great haste. Wallander read it silently. Then he read it aloud to make sure he hadn’t misunderstood anything.