“Did I do all this?” he asked, looking at Wallander with restless eyes, as if he feared the answer.
“Who doesn’t get sick and tired of things?” Wallander said. “But it’s all over now. We’ll soon get this mess cleaned up.”
His father looked at the smashed door.
“Who needs doors in the middle of summer?” said Wallander. “There aren’t any closed doors in Rome in the summer. You’ll have to get used to that.”
His father walked slowly through the debris from the frenzy that neither he nor anyone else could explain. Wallander felt a lump in his throat. There was something helpless about his father, and he didn’t know how to deal with it. He lifted the broken door and leaned it against the wall. He began tidying up the room, discovering that many of the canvases had survived. His father sat on a stool at his workbench and watched. Gertrud came in and told them that coffee was ready. Wallander gestured to her to take his father inside. Then he cleaned up the worst of the mess.
Before he went into the kitchen he called home. Linda was there. She wanted to know what had happened; she could barely decipher his quickly scribbled note. Wallander didn’t want to worry her, so he said that her grandfather had just been feeling bad, but was fine now. To be on the safe side he’d decided to stay overnight in Loderup. He went in the kitchen. His father was feeling tired and had gone to lie down. Wallander stayed with Gertrud for a couple of hours, sitting at the kitchen table. There was no way to explain what had happened except that it was a symptom of the illness. But when Gertrud said this attack ruled out the trip to Italy in the autumn, Wallander protested. He wasn’t afraid of taking responsibility. He would manage. It was going to happen, so long as his father wanted to go and was able to stand on his own two feet.
That night he slept on a fold-out bed in the living-room. He lay staring out into the light summer night for a long time before he fell asleep.
In the morning, over coffee, his father seemed to have forgotten the whole episode. He couldn’t understand what had happened to the studio door. Wallander told him the truth, that he was the one who had broken it down. The studio needed a new door, and anyway, he would make it himself.
“When are you going to be able to do that?” asked his father. “You don’t even have time to call ahead of time and tell me you’re coming to visit.”
Wallander knew then that everything was back to normal. He left Loderup just after 7 a.m. It wasn’t the last time something like this might happen, he knew, and with a shiver imagined what might have occurred if Gertrud hadn’t been there.
Wallander went straight to the station. Everyone was talking about the match. He was surrounded by people in summer clothes. Only the ones who had to wear uniforms looked remotely like police officers. Wallander thought that in his white clothes he could have stepped out of one of the Danish productions of Italian opera he’d been to. As he passed the reception desk Ebba waved to him that he had a call. It was Forsfalt. They had found Fredman’s passport, well hidden in his flat, along with large sums of foreign currencies. Wallander asked about the stamps in the passport.
“I have to disappoint you,” Forsfalt told him. “He had the passport for four years, and it has stamps from Turkey, Morocco and Brazil. That’s all.”
Wallander was indeed disappointed, although he wasn’t sure what he had expected. Forsfalt promised to fax over the details on the passport. Then he said he had something else to tell him that had no direct bearing on the investigation.
“We found some keys to the attic when we were looking for the passport. Among all the junk up there we found a box containing some antique icons. We were able to determine pretty quickly that they were stolen. Guess where from.”
Wallander thought for a moment but couldn’t come up with anything. “I give up.”
“About a year ago there was a burglary at a house near Ystad. The house was under the administration of an executor, because it was part of the estate of a deceased lawyer named Gustaf Torstensson.”
Wallander remembered him. One of two lawyers murdered the year before. Wallander had seen the collection of icons in the basement that belonged to the older of the two lawyers. He even had one of them hanging on the wall of his bedroom, a present he’d received from the dead lawyer’s secretary. Now he also recalled the break-in; it was Svedberg’s case.
“So now we know,” said Wallander.
“You’ll be getting the follow-up report,” Forsfalt told him.
“Not me,” said Wallander. “Svedberg.”
Forsfalt asked how it was going with Louise Fredman.
“With a little luck we’ll know something later today,” said Wallander, and told him about his last conversation with Akeson.
“Keep me informed.”
After they hung up he checked his list of unanswered questions. He could cross out some of them, while others he would have to bring up at the team meeting. But first he had to see the two trainees who were keeping track of the tip-offs coming in from the public. Had anything come in that might indicate exactly where Fredman was murdered? Wallander knew this could be highly significant for the investigation.
One of the trainees had close-cropped hair and was named Tyren. He had intelligent eyes and was thought of as competent. Wallander quickly explained what he was looking for.
“Someone who heard screams?” asked Tyren. “And saw a Ford van? On the night of Tuesday, 28 June?”
“That’s right.”
Tyren shook his head.
“I would have remembered that,” he said. “A woman screamed in a flat in Rydsgard. But that was on Wednesday. And she was drunk.”
“Let me know immediately if anything comes in,” said Wallander.
He left Tyren and went down to the meeting room. Hansson was talking to a reporter in reception. Wallander remembered seeing him before. He was a stringer for one or other of the big national evening papers. They waited a few minutes until Hansson got rid of the reporter, and then closed the door. Hansson sat down and gave Wallander the floor at once. Just as he was about to start, Akeson came in and sat at the far end of the table, next to Ekholm. Wallander raised his eyebrows and gave him an inquiring look. Akeson nodded. Wallander knew that meant there was news about Louise Fredman. With difficulty, he contained his curiosity, and called on Hoglund. She reported the news from the hospital. Carlman’s daughter was in a stable condition. It would be possible to talk to her within 24 hours. No-one could see an objection to Hoglund and Wallander visiting the hospital.
Wallander went quickly down the list of unanswered questions. Nyberg was well prepared, as usual, able to fill in many of the gaps with laboratory results. But nothing was significant enough to provoke long discussion. Mostly they had confirmation of conclusions they had already drawn. The only new information was that there were faint traces of kelp on Fredman’s clothes. This could be an indication that Fredman had been near the sea on the last day of his life. Wallander thought for a moment.
“Where are the traces of kelp?” he asked.
Nyberg checked his notes.
“On the back of his jacket.”
“He could have been killed near the sea,” said Wallander. “As far as I can recall, there was a slight breeze that night. If the surf was loud enough, it might explain why no-one heard screams.”
“If it happened on the beach we would have found traces of sand,” said Nyberg.
“Maybe it was on a boat,” Svedberg suggested.
“Or a dock,” said Hoglund.
The question hung in the air. It would be impossible to check the thousands of pleasure boats and docks. Wallander noted that they should watch out for tip-offs from people who lived near the sea. Then he gave the floor to Akeson.
“I succeeded in gathering some information about Louise Fredman,” he said. “I remind you that this is highly confidential and cannot be mentioned to anyone outside the investigative team.”