Linda set the tray aside, leaned back in bed, and stretched.
“What were you doing up last night?” she asked. “Did you have trouble sleeping?”
“I slept like a rock,” said Wallander. “I didn’t even get up to go to the bathroom.”
“Then I must have been dreaming,” she said, yawning. “I thought you opened my door and came into my room.”
“You must have been,” he said. “For once I slept the whole night through.”
They agreed that they would meet at Osterport Square at 7 p.m. Linda asked him if he knew that Sweden would be playing Saudi Arabia in the quarter-finals at that time. Wallander said he didn’t give a damn, although he had bet that Sweden would win it 3–1 and advanced Martinsson another hundred kronor. The girls had managed to borrow an empty shop for their rehearsals.
After she left, Wallander took out his ironing board and started ironing his clean shirts. After doing a passable job on two of them, he got bored and called Baiba. She was glad to hear from him, he could tell. He told her that Linda was visiting and that he felt rested for the first time in weeks. Baiba was busy finishing her work at the university before the summer break. She talked about the trip to Skagen with childlike anticipation. After they hung up, Wallander went into the living-room and put on Aida, the volume turned up high.
He felt happy and full of energy. He sat out on the balcony and read through the newspapers from the past few days, skipping reports on the murders. He had granted himself half a day off, total escape until midday. Then he was going to get cracking again. But Akeson called him at 11.15 a.m. He had been in touch with the chief prosecutor in Malmo and they had discussed Wallander’s request. Akeson thought it would be possible for Wallander to get answers to some of his questions about Louise Fredman within the next few days. But he had one reservation.
“Wouldn’t it be simpler to get the girl’s mother to give you the answers you need?” he asked.
“I’m not sure I’d get the truth from her,” Wallander answered.
“Which is what?”
“The mother is protecting her daughter,” said Wallander. “It’s only natural. I would do the same. No matter what she told me, it would be coloured by the fact that she’s protecting her. Medical records and doctors’ reports speak another language.”
“You know best,” said Akeson, promising that he’d be in touch again as soon as he had something concrete to tell him.
The talk with Akeson set Wallander thinking about the case again. He decided to take a notebook and sit on the balcony to go over the plan of the investigation for the coming week. He was getting hungry, though, and thought he’d allow himself to eat out. Just before noon he left the flat, dressed all in white like a tennis player, wearing sandals. He drove east out of town along Osterleden, thinking that he could drop in on his father later on. If he hadn’t had the investigation hanging over his head, he could have taken Gertrud and his father to lunch somewhere. But right now he needed time to himself. Over the past few weeks he had been constantly surrounded by people, involved in team meetings, and in discussions with others. Now he wanted to be alone.
Hardly aware of where he was going, he drove all the way to Simrishamn. He parked by the marina and took a walk. He found a corner table to himself at the Harbour Inn, and sat watching the holiday makers all around him. One of these people could be the man I’m looking for, he thought. If Ekholm’s theories are right — that the killer lives a completely normal life, with no outward signs that he subjects his victims to the worst violence imaginable — then he could be sitting right here eating lunch. And at that instant the summer day slipped out of his hands. He went over everything one more time. He didn’t know why, but he began with the girl who died in the rape field. She had nothing to do with the other events; it had been a suicide, prompted by some as yet unknown cause. Still, that’s where Wallander began each time he started one of his reviews of the case.
But on this particular Sunday, in the Harbour Inn in Simrishamn, something started churning in his subconscious. It came to him that someone had said something in connection with the girl’s death. He sat there with his fork in his hand and tried to coax the thought to the surface. Who had said it? What had been said? Why was it important? After a while he gave up. Sooner or later he’d remember what it was. His subconscious always demanded patience. As if to prove that he actually possessed that patience, he ordered dessert. With satisfaction he noted that the shorts he’d put on for the first time that summer weren’t quite as tight as they had been the year before. He ate his apple pie and ordered coffee.
He tried to follow his thoughts the way a discerning actor reads through his part for the first time. Where were the gaps? Where were the faults? Where did he combine fact and circumstance too sloppily and draw a wrong conclusion? He went through Wetterstedt’s house again, through the garden, out onto the beach; he imagined Wetterstedt in front of him, and Wallander became the killer stalking Wetterstedt like a silent shadow. He climbed onto the garage roof and read a torn comic book while he waited for Wetterstedt to settle at his desk and maybe leaf through his collection of pornographic photographs.
Then he did the same thing with Carlman; he put a motorcycle behind the road workers’ hut and followed the tractor path up to the hill where he had a view over Carlman’s farm. Now and then he made a note on his pad. The garage roof. What did he hope to see? Carlman’s hill. Binoculars? He went over everything that had happened, deaf to the noise around him. He paid another visit to Hugo Sandin, he talked once more with Sara Bjorklund, and he made a note that he ought to get in touch with her again. Maybe the same questions would provoke different, fuller answers. What would the difference be? He thought for a long time about Carlman’s daughter. He thought about Louise Fredman, and her polite brother. He was rested, his fatigue was gone, and his thoughts rose easily and soared on the updraughts inside him.
He glanced at what he had scribbled on his pad, as if it were magic, automatic writing, and left the Harbour Inn. He sat on one of the benches in the park outside the Hotel Svea and looked out over the sea. There was a warm, gentle breeze blowing. The crew of a yacht with a Danish flag was struggling with an unruly spinnaker. Wallander read his notes again.
The connection was always shifting, from parents to children. He thought about Carlman’s daughter and Louise Fredman. Was it just a coincidence that one of them had tried to commit suicide after her father died and the other had been in a psychiatric clinic for a long time?
Wetterstedt was the exception. He had two adult children. Wallander recalled something Rydberg had once said. What happens first is not necessarily the beginning. Could that be true in this case? He tried to imagine that the killer they were looking for was a woman. But it was impossible. He thought of the physical strength needed for the scalpings, the axe blows, and the acid in Fredman’s eyes. It had to be a man. A man who kills men. While women commit suicide or suffer mental illness.
He got up and moved to another bench, as if to register the fact that there were other conceivable explanations. Gustaf Wetterstedt was involved in shady deals. There was a vague but still unexplained connection between him and Carlman. It had to do with art, art theft, maybe forgery. It all had to do with money. It wasn’t inconceivable that Bjorn Fredman could also be involved in the same area. He hadn’t found anything useful in the dossier on his life, but he couldn’t write it off yet. Nothing could be written off yet; that presented both a problem and an opportunity.