“You don’t have very high expectations for Sweden,” said Martinsson.
“Not when it comes to football, anyway,” replied Wallander, handing him another 100-krona note.
Martinsson left and Wallander began to mull over what he had been told, but then he dismissed the rumours with irritation. He would find out soon enough what was true and what wasn’t. It was already 4.30 p.m. He pulled over a folder of material about an organised crime ring exporting stolen cars to the former Eastern-bloc countries. He had been working on the investigation for several months. So far the police had only succeeded in tracking down parts of the operation. He knew that this case would haunt him for many more months yet. During his leave, Svedberg would take over, but he suspected that very little would happen while he was gone.
There was a knock on the door, and Ann-Britt Hoglund walked in. She had a black baseball cap on her head.
“How do I look?” she asked.
“Like a tourist,” replied Wallander.
“This is what the new caps are going to look like,” she said. “Just imagine the word POLICE above the peak. I’ve seen pictures of it.”
“They’ll never get one of those on my head,” said Wallander. “I suppose that I should be glad I’m not in uniform any more.”
“Someday we might discover that Bjork was a really good chief,” she said. “I think what you said in there was great.”
“I know the speech wasn’t any good,” said Wallander, starting to feel annoyed. “But you are all responsible for having picked me.”
Hoglund stood up and looked out of the window. She had managed to live up to the reputation that preceded her when she came to Ystad the year before. At the police academy she had shown great aptitude for police work, and had developed even more since. She had filled part of the void left by Rydberg’s death a few years ago. Rydberg was the detective who had taught Wallander most of what he knew, and sometimes Wallander felt that it was his task to guide Hoglund in the same way.
“How’s it going with the cars?” she asked.
“They keep on being stolen,” said Wallander. “The organisation seems to have an incredible number of branches.”
“Can we punch a hole in it?” she asked.
“We’ll crack it,” replied Wallander. “Sooner or later. There’ll be a lull for a few months. Then it’ll start up again.”
“But it’ll never end?”
“No, it’ll never end. Because of Ystad’s location. Just 200 kilometres from here, across the Baltic, there’s an unlimited number of people who want what we’ve got. The only problem is they don’t have the money to pay for it.”
“I wonder how much stolen property is shipped with every ferry,” she mused.
“You don’t want to know,” said Wallander.
Together they went and got some coffee. Hoglund was supposed to go on holiday that week. Wallander knew that she was going to spend it in Ystad, since her husband, a machinery installer with the whole world as his market, was currently in Saudi Arabia.
“What are you going to do?” she asked when they started talking about their upcoming breaks.
“I’m going to Denmark, to Skagen,” said Wallander.
“With the woman from Riga?” Hoglund wondered with a smile.
Wallander was taken aback.
“How do you know about her?”
“Oh, everybody does,” she said. “Didn’t you realise? You might call it the result of an ongoing internal investigation.”
Wallander had never told anyone about Baiba, whom he had met during a criminal investigation. She was the widow of a murdered Latvian policeman. She had been in Ystad over Christmas almost six months ago. During the Easter holiday Wallander had visited her in Riga. But he had never spoken about her or introduced her to any of his colleagues. Now he wondered why not. Even though their relationship was new, she had pulled him out of the melancholy that had marked his life since his divorce from Mona.
“All right,” he said. “Yes, we’ll be in Denmark together. Then I’m going to spend the rest of the summer with my father.”
“And Linda?”
“She called a week ago and said she was taking a theatre class in Visby.”
“I thought she was going to be a furniture upholsterer?”
“So did I. But now she’s got it into her head that she’s going to do some sort of stage performance with a girlfriend of hers.”
“That sounds exciting, don’t you think?”
Wallander nodded dubiously.
“I hope she comes here in July,” he said. “I haven’t seen her in a long time.” They parted outside Wallander’s door.
“Drop in and say hello this summer,” she said. “With or without the woman from Riga. With or without your daughter.”
“Her name is Baiba,” said Wallander.
He promised he’d come by and visit.
After Ann-Britt left he worked on the file for a good hour. Twice he called the police in Goteborg, trying without success to reach a detective who was working on the same investigation. At 5.45 p.m. he decided to go out to eat. He pinched his stomach and noted that he was still losing weight. Baiba had complained that he was too fat. After that, he had no problem eating less. He had even squeezed into a tracksuit a few times and gone jogging, boring though he found it.
He put on his jacket. He would write to Baiba that evening. The telephone rang just as he was about to leave the office. For a moment he wondered whether to let it ring. But he went back to his desk and picked up the receiver.
It was Martinsson.
“Nice speech you made,” said Martinsson. “Bjork seemed genuinely moved.”
“You said that already,” said Wallander. “What is it? I’m on my way home.”
“I just got a call that was a little odd,” said Martinsson. “I thought I ought to check with you.”
Wallander waited impatiently for him to go on.
“It was a farmer calling from out near Marsvinsholm. He claimed that there was a woman acting strangely in his rape field.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
“A woman acting strangely out in a rape field? What was she doing?”
“If I understood him correctly, she wasn’t doing anything. The peculiar thing was that she was out in the field.”
Wallander thought for a moment before he replied.
“Send out a squad car. It sounds like something for them.”
“The problem is that all the units seem to be busy right now. There were two car accidents almost simultaneously. One by the road into Svarte, the other outside the Hotel Continental.”
“Serious?”
“No major injuries. But there seems to be quite a mess.”
“They can drive out to Marsvinsholm when they have time, can’t they?”
“That farmer seemed pretty upset. I can’t quite explain it. If I didn’t have to pick up my children, I’d go myself.”
“All right, I can do it,” said Wallander. “I’ll meet you in the hall and get the name and directions.”
A few minutes later Wallander drove off from the station. He turned left at the roundabout and took the road towards Malmo. On the seat next to him was a note Martinsson had written. The farmer’s name was Salomonsson, and Wallander knew the road to take. When he got out onto the E65 he rolled down the window. The yellow rape fields stretched out on both sides of the road. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt as good as he did now. He stuck in a cassette of The Marriage of Figaro with Barbara Hendricks singing Susanna, and he thought about meeting Baiba in Copenhagen. When he reached the side road to Marsvinsholm he turned left, past the castle and the castle church, and turned left again. He glanced at Martinsson’s directions and swung onto a narrow road that led across the fields. In the distance he caught a glimpse of the sea.
Salomonsson’s house was an old, well-preserved Skane farmhouse. Wallander got out of the car and looked around. Everywhere he looked were yellow rape fields. The man standing on the front steps was very old. He had a pair of binoculars in his hand. Wallander thought that he must have been imagining the whole thing. All too often, lonely old people out in the country let their imaginations run riot. He walked over to the steps and nodded.