Wallander nodded for him to continue.
“We can approach it from two directions,” said Ekholm. “We might ask why Fredman was the one to have his eyes put out. We could also turn the whole thing around and ask why the eyes of the other two men weren’t violated.”
“What’s your conclusion?”
“I don’t have one,” Ekholm said. “When we’re talking about someone’s psyche, especially that of a disturbed or sick person, we’re getting into territory in which there are no absolute answers.”
Ekholm looked as if he was waiting for a comment. But Wallander just shook his head.
“I see a pattern,” Ekholm went on. “The person who did this selected his victims in advance. He has some kind of relationship with these men. It’s not necessary for him to have known the first two personally. It might be a symbolic relationship. But I’m fairly certain that the mutilation of Fredman’s eyes reveals that the killer knew his victim. And knew him well.”
Wallander leaned forward and gave Ekholm a penetrating look.
“How well?” he asked.
“They might have been friends. Colleagues. Rivals.”
“And something happened?”
“Something happened, yes. In reality or in the killer’s imagination.”
Wallander tried to see the implications of Ekholm’s words. At the same time he asked himself whether he accepted his theory.
“So we ought to concentrate on Bjorn Fredman,” he said after he had thought carefully.
“That’s one possibility.”
Wallander was irritated by Ekholm’s tendency to avoid taking a decisive view. It bothered him, even though he knew that it was right to keep their options open.
“Let’s say you were in my place,” said Wallander. “I promise not to quote you. Or blame you if you’re wrong. But what would you do?”
“I would concentrate on retracing Fredman’s life,” he said. “But I’d keep my eyes open.”
Wallander nodded. He understood.
“What kind of person are we looking for?” he asked.
Ekholm batted at a bee that had flown in through the window.
“The basic conclusions you can draw yourself,” he said. “That it’s a man. That he’s strong. That he’s practical, meticulous and not squeamish.”
“And his prints aren’t in the criminal records,” Wallander added. “He’s a first-timer.”
“This reinforces my belief that he leads a quite normal life,” said Ekholm. “The psychotic side to his nature, the mental collapse, is well hidden. He could sit down at the dinner table with the scalps in his pocket and eat his meal with a healthy appetite.”
“In other words, there are two ways we can set about catching him,” Wallander said. “Either in the act, or by gathering a body of evidence that spells out his name in big neon letters.”
“That’s right. It’s not an easy task that we have ahead of us.”
Just as Ekholm was about to leave, Wallander asked one more question.
“Will he strike again?”
“It might be over,” said Ekholm. “Bjorn Fredman as the grand finale.”
“Is that what you think?”
“No. He’ll strike again. What we’ve seen so far is the beginning of a long series of murders.”
When Wallander was alone he shooed the bee out of the window with his jacket. He sat quite still with his eyes closed, thinking through everything Ekholm had said. At 4 p.m. he went to get some more coffee. Then he went to the conference room, where the rest of the team were waiting for him.
He began by asking Ekholm to repeat his theory. When Ekholm had finished the room was quiet for a long time. Wallander waited out the silence, knowing that each of them was trying to grasp the significance of what they had just heard. They’re each absorbing this information, he thought. Then we’ll work on determining the collective opinion of the team.
They agreed with Ekholm. They would make Bjorn Fredman’s life the prime focus. Having settled the next steps in the investigation, they ended the meeting at around 6 p.m. Martinsson was the only one who left the station, to go and collect his children. The rest of them went back to work.
Wallander stood by his window looking out at the summer evening. The thought that they were still on the wrong track gnawed at him. What was he missing? He turned and looked around the room, as if an invisible visitor had come in.
So that’s how things are, he thought. I’m chasing a ghost when I ought to be searching for a living human being. He sat there pondering the case until midnight. Only when he left the station did he remember the dirty laundry still heaped on the floor.
CHAPTER 24
Next morning at dawn Wallander went downstairs to the laundry room, still half asleep, and discovered to his dismay that someone had got there first. The washing machine was in use, and he had to sign up for a slot that afternoon. He kept trying to recapture the dream he’d had during the night. It had been erotic, frenzied, and passionate, and Wallander had watched himself from a distance, participating in a drama he never would have come close to in his waking life. But the woman in his dream wasn’t Baiba. Not until he was on his way back upstairs did he realise that the woman reminded him of the female vicar he had met at Smedstorp. At first it surprised him, and then he felt a little ashamed. Later, when he got back to his flat, it dissolved into what it actually was, something beyond his control.
He sat at the kitchen table and drank coffee, the heat already coming through the half-open window. Maybe Ann-Britt’s grandmother was right: they were in for a truly beautiful summer. He thought of his father. Often, especially in the morning, his thoughts would wander back in time, to the era of the “silk knights”, when he woke each morning knowing he was a child loved by his father. Now, more than 40 years later, he found it hard to remember what his father had been like as a young man. His paintings were just the same even then: he had painted that landscape with or without the grouse with total determination not to change a thing from one painting to the next. His father had only painted one single picture in his whole life. He never tried to improve on it. The result had been perfect from the first attempt.
He drank the last of his coffee and tried to imagine a world without his father. He wondered what he would do when his constant feelings of guilt were gone. The trip to Italy would probably be their last chance to understand each other, maybe even to reconcile. He didn’t want his good memories to end at the time when he had helped his father to cart out the paintings and place them in a huge American car, and then stood by his side, both of them waving to the silk knight driving off in a cloud of dust, on his way to sell them for three or four times what he had just paid for them.
At 6.30 a.m. he became a policeman again, sweeping the memories aside. As he dressed he tried to decide how he’d go about all the tasks he had set himself that day. At 7 a.m. he walked through the door of the station, exchanging a few words with Noren, who arrived at the same time. Noren was actually supposed to be on holiday, but he had postponed it, just as many of the others had.
“No doubt it’ll start raining as soon as we catch the killer,” he said. “What does a weather god care about a simple policeman when there’s a serial killer on the loose?”
Wallander muttered something in reply, but he did not discount the possibility that there might be some grim truth in Noren’s words.
He went in to see Hansson, who seemed now to spend all his time at the station, weighed down by anxiety. His face was as grey as concrete. He was shaving with an ancient electric razor. His shirt was wrinkled and his eyes bloodshot.
“You’ve got to try and get a few hours’ sleep once in a while,” said Wallander. “Your responsibility isn’t any greater than anyone else’s.”
Hansson turned off the shaver and gloomily observed the result in a pocket mirror.
“I took a sleeping pill yesterday,” he said. “But I still didn’t get any sleep. All I got was a headache.”