Wallander watched the Danish yacht. The crew had begun folding up the spinnaker. He took out his pad and looked at the last word he had written. Mystery. There was a hint of ritual to the murders. He had thought so himself, and Ekholm had pointed it out at the last meeting. The scalps were a ritual, as trophy collecting always was. The significance was the same as that of a moose’s head mounted on a hunter’s wall. It was the proof. The proof of what? For whom? For the killer alone, or for someone else as well? For a god or a demon conjured up in a sick mind? For someone else, whose demeanour was just as inconspicuous as the killer’s?
Wallander thought about what Ekholm had said about invocations and initiation rites. A sacrifice was made so that another could obtain grace. Become rich, make a fortune, get well? There were many possibilities. There were motorcycle gangs with rules about how new members proved themselves worthy. In the United States it wasn’t unusual to have to kill someone, whether picked at random or specially chosen, to be deemed worthy of membership. This macabre rite had spread, even to Sweden. Wallander thought of the motorcycle gangs in Skane, and he remembered the road workers’ hut at the bottom of Carlman’s hill. The thought was dizzying — that the tracks might lead them to motorcycle gangs. Wallander put aside this idea for the moment, although he knew that nothing could be ruled out.
He walked back to the other bench where he had sat before. He was back at the starting point. He realised that he couldn’t go any further without discussing it with someone. He thought of Ann-Britt Hoglund. Could he bother her on a Sunday? He got up and went over to his car to call her. She was at home. He was welcome to drop by. Guiltily, he postponed his visit to his father. He had to have someone else confront his ideas, and if he waited, there was a good chance he would get lost among multiple trains of thought. He drove back towards Ystad, keeping just above the speed limit. He hadn’t heard about any speed traps planned for this Sunday.
It was 3 p.m. when he pulled up in front of Hoglund’s house. She was in a light summer dress. Her two children were playing in a neighbour’s garden. She offered Wallander the porch swing while she sat in a wicker chair.
“I really didn’t want to bother you,” he said. “You could have said no.”
“Yesterday I was tired,” she replied. “As we all were. Are, I mean. But today I feel better.”
“Last night was definitely the night of the sleeping policemen,” said Wallander. “It reaches a point where you can’t push yourself any further. All you get is empty, grey fatigue. We’d reached that point.”
He told her about his trip to Simrishamn, about how he went back and forth between the benches in the park down by the harbour.
“I went over everything again,” he said. “Sometimes it’s possible to make unexpected discoveries. But you know that already.”
“I’m hoping something will come of Ekholm’s work,” she said. “Computers that are correctly programmed can cross-reference investigative material and come up with links that you wouldn’t have dreamed were there. They don’t think. But sometimes they combine better than we can.”
“My distrust of computers is partly because I’m getting old,” said Wallander. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t want Ekholm to succeed with his behavioural method. For me, of course, it’s of no importance who sets the snare that catches the killer just as long as it happens. And soon.”
She gave him a sombre look.
“Do you think that he will strike again?”
“I do. Without being able to get a handle on why, I think there’s something unfinished about this murder scenario. If you’ll pardon the expression. There’s something missing. It scares me. And yes, it makes me think he’ll strike again.”
“How are we going to find where Fredman was killed?” she asked.
“Unless we’re lucky, we won’t,” said Wallander. “Or unless somebody heard something.”
“I’ve been checking up on whether there have been any calls coming in from people who heard screams,” she said. “But I have found nothing.”
The unheard scream hung over them. Wallander rocked slowly back and forth on the swing.
“It’s rare that a solution comes clean out of the blue,” he said when the silence had lasted too long. “I was walking back and forth between the benches in the park, and I wondered whether I had already had the idea that would give me the solution. I might have got something right without being aware of it.”
She was thinking about what he had said. Now and then she glanced over at the neighbour’s garden.
“We didn’t learn anything at the police academy about a man who takes scalps and pours acid into the eyes of his victims,” she said. “Life really turns out to be as unpredictable as I imagined.”
Wallander nodded without replying. Then he started, unsure whether he could pull it off, and went over what he had been thinking about by the sea. He knew that telling someone else would shed a different light on it. But even though Ann-Britt listened intently, almost like a student at her master’s feet, she didn’t stop him to say that he had made a mistake or drawn a wrong conclusion. All she said when he had finished was that she was bowled over by his ability to dissect and then summarise the whole investigation, which seemed so overwhelming. But she had nothing to add. Even if Wallander’s equations were correct, they lacked the crucial components. Hoglund couldn’t help him, no-one could.
She went inside and brought out some cups and a thermos of coffee. Her youngest girl came and crept onto the porch swing next to Wallander. She didn’t resemble her mother, so he assumed she took after her father, who was in Saudi Arabia. Wallander realised he still hadn’t met him.
“Your husband is a puzzle,” he said. “I’m starting to wonder if he really exists. Or if he’s just someone you dreamed up.”
“I sometimes ask myself the same question,” she answered, laughing.
The girl went inside.
“What about Carlman’s daughter?” asked Wallander, watching the girl. “How is she?”
“Svedberg called the hospital yesterday,” she said. “The crisis isn’t over. But I had the feeling that the doctors were more hopeful.”
“She didn’t leave a note?”
“Nothing.”
“It matters most that she’s a well human being,” said Wallander. “But I can’t help thinking of her as a witness.”
“To what?”
“To something that might have a bearing on her father’s death. I don’t believe that the timing of the suicide attempt was coincidental.”
“What makes me think that you’re not convinced of what you’re saying?”
“I’m not,” said Wallander. “I’m groping and fumbling my way along. There’s only one incontrovertible fact in this investigation, and that is that we have no concrete evidence to go on.”
“So we have no way of knowing if we’re on the right track?”
“Or if we’re going in circles.”
She hesitated before she asked the next question.
“Do you think that maybe there aren’t enough of us?”
“Until now I’ve dug my heels in on that issue,” said Wallander. “But I’m beginning to have my doubts. The question will come up tomorrow.”
“With Per Akeson?”
Wallander nodded.
“What have we got to lose?”
“Small units move more easily than large ones, but you could also argue that more heads do better thinking. Akeson’s argument is that we can work on a broader front. The infantry is spread out and covers more ground.”
“As if we were all sweeping the area.”
Wallander nodded. Her image was telling. What was missing was that the sweep they were doing was happening in a terrain where they were only barely able to take their bearings. And they had no idea of whom they were looking for.
“There’s something we’re all missing,” said Wallander. “I’m still searching for something someone said right after Wetterstedt was murdered. I can’t remember who said it. I only know that it was important, but it was too soon for me to recognise the significance.”