He went back downstairs and searched the car without finding them. He called Forsfalt and was told that he had gone out. One of his colleagues went into his office and looked to see whether they were on his desk. They weren’t there. He called Peter Hjelm, who picked up the phone almost at once. He came back minutes later and said he couldn’t find them.
Wallander fished out the piece of paper with the Fredmans’ number in Rosengard. The son answered. Wallander waited while he looked for the keys, but he couldn’t find them. Wallander wondered whether to tell him that he now knew his sister Louise had been in a hospital for several years, but decided not to.
He thought for a while. He might have dropped his keys at the place where he ate lunch with Forsfalt, or in the shop where he had bought the new shirt. Annoyed, he went back to his car and drove to the station. Ebba kept a spare set of keys for him. He told her the name of the clothing shop and the restaurant in Malmo. She said she would check whether they had found them. Wallander left the station and went home without talking to any of his colleagues. He needed to think over all that had happened that day. In particular, he wanted to plan his conversation with Akeson. He carried in the groceries and put them away. He had missed the laundry time he had signed up for. He took the box of washing powder and gathered up the huge pile of laundry. When he got downstairs, the room was still empty. He sorted the pile, guessing which types of clothes required the same water temperature. With some fumbling he managed to get two machines started. Satisfied, he went back up to his flat.
He had just closed the door when the phone rang. It was Forsfalt, who told him that Marianne Eriksson was in Spain. He was going to keep trying to reach her at the hotel where the travel agent said she was staying. Wallander unpacked the contents of the black plastic bag. The files covered his whole kitchen table. He took a beer out of the refrigerator and sat down in the living-room. He listened to Jussi Bjorling on the stereo. After a while he stretched out on the sofa with the can of beer beside him on the floor. Soon he was asleep.
He woke with a start when the music ended. Lying on the sofa, he finished the can of beer. The phone rang. It was Linda. Could she stay at his place for a few days? Her friend’s parents were coming home. Wallander suddenly felt energetic. He gathered up all the papers spread out on the kitchen table and carried them to his bedroom. Then he made up the bed in the room where Linda slept. He opened all the windows and let the warm evening breeze blow through the flat. He went downstairs and got his laundry out of the machines. To his surprise none of the colours had run. He hung the laundry in the drying room. Linda had told him that she wouldn’t want any food, so he boiled some potatoes and grilled a piece of meat for his supper. As he ate he wondered whether he should call Baiba. He also thought about his lost keys. About Louise Fredman. About Peter Hjelm. And about the stack of papers waiting for him in his bedroom. And he thought about the man who was out there somewhere in the summer night. The man they would have to catch soon. When he’d finished, he stood by the open window until he saw Linda coming down the street.
“I love you,” he said aloud.
He dropped the keys from the window and she caught them with one hand.
CHAPTER 26
Wallander sat up half the night talking with Linda, but he still forced himself to get up at 6 a.m. He stood in the shower for a long time before managing to shake off his weariness. He moved quietly through the flat and thought that it was only when either Baiba or Linda was there that it really felt like home. When he was alone it felt like little more than a temporary roof over his head. He made coffee and went down to the drying room. One of his neighbours pointed out that he hadn’t cleaned up after himself the day before. She was an old woman who lived alone, and he greeted her when they ran into each other, but didn’t know her name. She showed him a spot on the floor where there was some spilled washing powder. Wallander apologised and promised to do better in the future. What a nag, he thought as he went upstairs. But he knew she was right, he had been too lazy to clean up.
He dumped his laundry on the bed and then carried the papers Forsfalt had given him out to the kitchen. He felt guilty because he hadn’t read them the night before. But the talk with Linda had been important. They had sat out on the balcony in the warm night. Listening to her, he felt for the first time that she was an adult. She told him that Mona was talking about remarrying. Wallander was depressed at this news. He knew that Linda had been asked to inform him. But for the first time he talked about why he thought the marriage had fallen apart. From her response he could tell that Mona saw it quite differently. Then she asked him about Baiba, and he tried to answer her as honestly as he could, though there was a lot that was still unresolved about their relationship. And when they finally turned in, he felt sure that she didn’t blame him for what had happened, and that now she could view her parents’ divorce as something that had been necessary.
He sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the extensive material describing Bjorn Fredman’s life. It took him two hours just to skim through it all. Once in a while he would jot down notes. By the time he pushed aside the last folder and stretched, it was after 8 a.m. He poured another cup of coffee and stood by the open window. It was going to be a beautiful day. He couldn’t remember the last time that it had rained.
He tried to think through what he had read. Bjorn Fredman had been a sorry character from the outset. He had had a difficult and troubled home life as a child, and his first brush with the police, over a stolen bicycle, occurred when he was seven. He had been in constant trouble ever since. Bjorn Fredman had struck back at a life that had never given him any pleasure. Wallander thought of how many times during his career he’d read these grey, colourless sagas in which it was clear from the first sentence that the story would end badly.
Sweden had pulled herself out of material poverty, largely under her own steam. When Wallander was a child there had still been desperately poor people, even though they were few in number by then. But the other kind of poverty, he thought, we’ve never dealt with that. And now that progress seemed to have stopped for the time being, and the welfare state was being eroded, the spiritual poverty that had been there all along was beginning to surface.
Fredman was not the only one. We haven’t created a society where people like him could feel at home, Wallander thought. When we got rid of the old society, where families stuck together, we forgot to replace it with something else. The great loneliness that resulted was a price we didn’t know we were going to have to pay. Or perhaps we chose to ignore it.
He put the folders back in the black plastic bag and then listened once again outside Linda’s door. She was asleep. He couldn’t resist the temptation to open the door a crack, and peek in at her. She was sleeping curled up, turned to the wall. He left a note on the kitchen table and wondered what to do about his keys. He called the station. Ebba was at home. He looked up her home number. Neither the restaurant nor the clothing shop had found his keys. He added to the note that Linda should put the house keys under the doormat. Then he drove to the station.
Hansson was sitting in his office, looking greyer than ever. Wallander felt sorry for him, and wondered how long he would last. They went to the canteen and had some coffee. There was little sign that the biggest manhunt in the history of the Ystad police force was under way. Wallander told Hansson that he realised now that they needed reinforcements. And that Hansson needed a break. They had enough manpower to send out in the field, but Hansson needed relief on the home front. He tried to protest, but Wallander refused to back down. Hansson’s grey face and harried eyes were evidence enough. Finally Hansson gave in and promised to speak to the county chief of police on Monday. They would have to borrow a sergeant from another district.