Then he realised what it was. And he couldn’t understand how he could have been so sloppy. He put on his shoes, found a torch in one of the kitchen drawers, and left the flat. He drove out along Osterleden, turned right, and stopped outside Wetterstedt’s house, which lay in darkness. He opened the gate to the front yard. He gave a start when a cat vanished like a shadow among the bushes. He shone the torch along the base of the garage, and didn’t have to search long before he found what he was looking for. He took the torn-out pages of the magazine between his thumb and forefinger and shone the light on them. They were from an issue of The Phantom. He searched in his pockets for a plastic bag and put the pages inside.
Then he drove home. He was still annoyed that he had been so sloppy.
Adults can be so childlike.
A grown man could very well have sat on the garage roof reading an issue of The Phantom.
CHAPTER 16
When Wallander awoke just before 5 a.m., on Monday 27 June, a cloud bank had drifted in from the west and reached Ystad, but there was still no rain. Wallander lay in bed and tried in vain to go back to sleep. At 6 a.m. he got up, showered and made coffee. The fatigue was like a dull pain. Ten or 15 years ago he’d almost never felt tired in the morning, no matter how little sleep he’d got, he thought with regret. But those days were gone forever.
Just before 7 a.m. he walked into the station. Ebba had already arrived, and she smiled at him as she handed him some phone messages.
“I thought you were on holiday,” said Wallander in surprise.
“Hansson asked me to stay a few extra days,” said Ebba. “Now that there’s so much happening.”
“How’s your hand?”
“Like I said. It’s no fun getting old. Everything just starts to fall apart.”
Wallander couldn’t recall ever having heard Ebba make such a dramatic statement. He wondered whether to tell her about his father and his illness, but decided against it. He got some coffee and sat down at his desk. After looking through the phone messages and stacking them on top of the pile from the night before, he called Riga, feeling a pang of guilt at making a personal call. He was still old-fashioned enough not to want to burden his employer. He remembered how a few years ago Hansson had been consumed by a passion for betting on the horses. He had spent half his working day calling racetracks all over the country for tips. Everyone had known about it, but no-one had complained. Wallander had been surprised that only he had thought someone should talk to Hansson. But then one day all the form guides and half-completed betting slips vanished from Hansson’s desk. Through the grapevine Wallander heard that Hansson had decided to stop before he wound up in debt.
Baiba picked up the phone after the third ring. Wallander was nervous. Each time he called he was afraid that she’d tell him they shouldn’t see each other again. He was as unsure of her feelings as he was sure of his own. But she sounded happy, and her happiness was infectious. Her decision to go to Tallinn had been made quite hastily, she explained. One of her friends was going and asked Baiba to go with her. She had no classes at the university that week, and the translation job she was working on didn’t have a pressing deadline. She told him about the trip and then asked how he was. Wallander decided not to mention that their trip to Skagen might be jeopardised. He said that everything was fine. They agreed that he would call her that evening. Afterwards, Wallander sat worrying about how she’d react if he had to postpone their holiday.
Worry was a bad habit, which seemed to grow worse the older he got. He worried about everything. He worried when Baiba went to Tallinn, he worried that he was going to get sick, he worried that he might oversleep or that his car might break down. He wrapped himself in clouds of anxiety. With a grimace he wondered whether Mats Ekholm might be able to do a psychological profile of him and suggest how he could free himself from all the problems he created.
Svedberg knocked on his half-open door and walked in. He hadn’t been careful in the sun the day before. The top of his head was completely sunburnt, as were his forehead and nose.
“I’ll never learn,” Svedberg complained. “It hurts like hell.”
Wallander thought about the burning sensation he’d felt after being slapped the day before. But he didn’t mention it.
“I spent yesterday talking to the people who live near Wetterstedt,” Svedberg said. “He went for walks quite often. He was always polite and said hello to the people he met. But he didn’t socialise with anyone in the neighbourhood.”
“Did he also make a habit of taking walks at night?”
Svedberg checked his notes. “He used to go down to the beach.”
“So this was a routine?”
“As far as I can tell, yes.”
Wallander nodded. “Just as I thought,” he said.
“Something else came up that might be of interest,” Svedberg continued. “A retired civil servant named Lantz told me that a reporter had rung his doorbell on Monday 20 June, and asked for directions to Wetterstedt’s house. Lantz understood that the reporter and a photographer were going there to do a story. That means someone was at his house on the last day of his life.”
“And that there are photographs,” said Wallander. “Which newspaper was it?”
“Lantz didn’t know.”
“You’ll have to get someone to make some calls,” said Wallander. “This could be important.”
Svedberg nodded and left the room.
“And you ought to put some cream on that sunburn,” Wallander called after him. “It doesn’t look good.”
Wallander called Nyberg. A few minutes later he came in.
“I don’t think your man came on a bicycle,” said Nyberg. “We found some tracks behind the hut from a moped or a motorcycle. And every worker on the road team drives a car.”
An image flashed through Wallander’s mind, but he couldn’t hold on to it. He wrote down what Nyberg had said.
“What do you expect me to do with this?” asked Nyberg, holding up the bag with the pages from The Phantom.
“Check for fingerprints,” said Wallander. “Which may match other prints.”
“I thought only children read The Phantom,” said Nyberg.
“No,” replied Wallander. “There you’re wrong.”
When Nyberg had gone, Wallander hesitated. Rydberg had taught him that a policeman must always tackle what was most important at a given moment. But what was now? No one thing could yet be assumed to be more important than another. Wallander knew that what mattered now was to trust his patience.
He went out into the hall, knocked on the door of the office that had been assigned to Ekholm and opened the door. Ekholm was sitting with his feet on the desk, reading through some papers. He nodded towards the visitor’s chair and tossed the papers on the desk.
“How’s it going?” asked Wallander.
“Not so good,” said Ekholm evenly. “It’s hard to pin down this person. It’s a shame we don’t have a little more material to go on.”
“He needs to have committed more murders?”
“To put it bluntly, that would make the case easier,” said Ekholm. “In many investigations into serial murders conducted by the F.B.I., a breakthrough comes only after the third or fourth crime. Then it’s possible to sift out the things that are particular to each killing, and start to see an overall pattern. And a pattern is what we’re looking for, one that enables us to see the mind behind the crimes.”
“What can you say about adults who read comic books?” asked Wallander.
Ekholm raised his eyebrows.
“Does this have something to do with the case?”
“Maybe.”
Wallander told him about his discovery. Ekholm listened intently.
“Emotional immaturity or abnormality is almost always present in individuals who commit serial murders,” said Ekholm. “They don’t value other human beings. That’s why they don’t comprehend the suffering they cause.”