“No.”
Wallander let him think.
“No,” he repeated. “I don’t know.”
Anette Fredman returned.
“Can either of you recall whether he had any contact with a man named Gustaf Wetterstedt? He was the minister of justice for a time. Or an art dealer named Arne Carlman?”
After looking at each other for confirmation, they both shook their heads. The interview limped along. Wallander tried to help them remember details. Now and then Forsfalt interjected. Finally Wallander could see that they weren’t going to get any further. He decided not to ask about the daughter again. Instead he nodded to Hoglund and Forsfalt that he was finished. But as they said goodbye out in the hall he told them he would have to call on them again, probably quite soon. He gave them his phone numbers at the station and at home.
Out on the street he saw Anette Fredman standing in the window looking down at them.
“The daughter,” said Wallander. “Louise Fredman. What do we know about her?”
“She wasn’t here yesterday either,” said Forsfalt. “She may have left home, of course. She’s 17.”
Wallander stood for a moment in thought.
“I want to talk to her,” he said.
The others didn’t react. He knew that he was the only one who had noticed the rapid change when he asked about her. He thought about the boy, Stefan, with his wary eyes. He felt sorry for him.
“That’ll be all for now,” said Wallander when they parted outside the Malmo police station. “But let’s keep in touch.”
They shook hands with Forsfalt and said goodbye.
They drove back towards Ystad, through the countryside of Skane during the most beautiful time of the year. Hoglund leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. Wallander could hear her humming. He wished he could share her ability to switch off from the investigation, which made him so anxious. Rydberg had said many times that a police officer was never completely free. For once, Wallander wished that Rydberg was wrong.
Just after they passed the exit to Skurup he noticed that Hoglund had fallen asleep. He drove as smoothly as he could, not wanting to wake her. She didn’t open her eyes until he had to stop at the roundabout on the outskirts of Ystad. At that moment the phone rang. He nodded to her to answer it. He couldn’t tell who it was, but he saw at once that something serious had happened. She listened in silence. They were almost at the station when she hung up.
“That was Svedberg,” she said. “Carlman’s daughter is on a respirator at the hospital. She tried to commit suicide.”
Wallander was silent until he had parked and switched off the engine. Then he turned to her. He knew she hadn’t told him everything yet.
“What else?”
“She’s probably not going to live.”
Wallander stared out of the window. He thought about how she had slapped him. He got out of the car without a word.
CHAPTER 23
It was hot. Wallander was sweating as he walked down the hill from the station towards the hospital.
He hadn’t even gone to the front desk to see whether he had any messages. He had stood motionless by the car, as if he’d lost his bearings, and then slowly, almost drawling, he told Hoglund that she would have to report on their interview while he went to the hospital where Carlman’s daughter lay dying. He hadn’t waited for an answer, but simply turned and left. It was then, on the hill, that he realised that the summer might indeed be long, hot and dry.
He didn’t notice when Svedberg drove past and waved. As always when he was preoccupied, he walked looking down at the footpath. He was trying to follow a train of thought. The starting point was quite simple. In less than ten days, a girl had burned herself to death, another had tried to commit suicide after her father was murdered, and a third, whose father had also been murdered, had perhaps disappeared or was being hidden. They were of different ages; Carlman’s daughter was the oldest, but all of them were young. Two of the girls had been affected by the same killer, while the third had killed herself. On the face of it, the third had no connection to the other two. But Wallander felt as if he had once again assumed personal responsibility for all three on behalf of his own generation, and especially as the bad father he felt he had been himself. Wallander had a tendency to self-criticise, growing gloomy, filled with melancholy. Often this led to a string of sleepless nights. But since he was now forced to carry on working in spite of everything, as a policeman in a tiny corner of the world, and as the head of a team, he did his best to shake off his unease and clear his head by taking a walk.
What kind of a world was he living in? A world in which young people burned themselves to death or tried to kill themselves by some other means. They were living in what could be called the Age of Failure. Something the Swedish people had believed in and built had turned out to be less solid than expected. All they had done was raise a monument to a forgotten ideal. Now society seemed to collapse around him, as if the political system was about to tip over, and no-one knew which architects were waiting to put a new one in place, or what that system would be. It was terrifying, even in the beautiful summertime. Young people took their own lives. People lived to forget, not remember. Houses were hiding places rather than cosy homes. And the police stood by helpless, waiting for the time when their jails would be guarded by men in other uniforms, men from private security companies.
This was enough, thought Wallander, wiping the sweat from his brow. He couldn’t take any more. A mental picture of the boy with the wary eyes sitting next to his mother became muddled with an image of Linda.
He reached the hospital. Svedberg was standing on the steps waiting for him. Wallander staggered, as if about to fall, suddenly dizzy. Svedberg took a step towards him, reaching out his hand. But Wallander waved him away and continued up the hospital steps. To protect himself from the sun, Svedberg was wearing a ridiculous cap that was much too big for him. Wallander muttered something unintelligible, and dragged him into the cafeteria to the right of the entrance. Pale people in wheelchairs, some connected to intravenous drips sat with friends and relatives, who probably wanted nothing more than to be out in the sunshine, and forget hospitals, death and misery. Wallander bought coffee and a sandwich, while Svedberg settled for a glass of water.
“Carlman’s widow phoned,” said Svedberg. “She was hysterical.”
“What did the girl do?” asked Wallander.
“She took pills. She was discovered quite by chance, in a deep coma. Her heart stopped just as they got to the hospital. She’s in very bad shape. You won’t be able to talk to her.”
Wallander nodded. This walk to the hospital had been more for his own state of mind than for any investigative reason.
“What did her mother say?” he asked. “Was there a letter? Any explanation?”
“No. Apparently it was quite unexpected.”
Wallander recalled how the girl had slapped him.
“She seemed unbalanced when I met her,” he said. “She really didn’t leave a note?”
“If she did, the mother didn’t mention it.”
Wallander thought for a moment.
“Do me a favour,” he said. “Drive there and find out if there was a note or not. If there is something, you’ll have to check it carefully.”
They left the cafeteria. Wallander went back to the station with Svedberg. He might as well get hold of a doctor by phone to hear how the girl was.
“I put a few reports on your desk,” said Svedberg. “I did a phone interview with the reporter and photographer who visited Wetterstedt the day he died.”
“Anything new?”
“Only a confirmation of what we already know. That Wetterstedt was his usual self. There didn’t seem to be anything threatening him. Nothing he was aware of, anyway.”
“So I don’t need to read the report?”