Wallander also called home. No answer. Linda wasn’t there. On his way out of the station he asked Ebba whether there was any word on his keys. Nothing. He drove down to the harbour and walked along the pier, then sat down in the harbour cafe and had a beer. He sat and watched the people passing by. Depressed, he got up and went back out on the pier, and sat on a bench next to the sea rescue hut.
It was a warm, windless evening. Someone was playing a concertina on a boat. One of the ferries from Poland was coming in. Without actually being conscious of it, he started to make a connection in his mind. He sat perfectly still and let his thoughts work. He was beginning to discern the contours of the drama. There were a lot of gaps still, but he could see where they should concentrate their investigation.
He didn’t think that the way they had been working so far was to blame. The problem was with the conclusions he had made. He drove home and wrote down a summary at his kitchen table. Linda arrived back just before midnight. She had seen the papers.
“Who is doing this? What is someone like this made of?” she asked.
Wallander thought for a while before he replied.
“He’s like you and me,” he said at last. “By and large, just like you and me.”
CHAPTER 31
Wallander woke with a start.
His eyes flew open and he lay completely still. The light of the summer night was grey. Someone was moving around in the flat. He glanced quickly at the clock on the bedside table. It was 2.15 a.m. His terror was instantaneous. He knew it wasn’t Linda. Once she fell asleep, she didn’t get up again until morning. He held his breath and listened. The sound was very faint.
The person moving around was barefoot.
Wallander got out of bed noiselessly. He looked for something to defend himself with. He had locked his service revolver in his desk at the station. The only thing in the bedroom he could use was the broken arm of a chair. He picked it up and listened again. The sound seemed to be coming from the kitchen. He came out of the bedroom and looked towards the living-room. He passed the door to Linda’s room. It was closed. She was asleep. Now he was very scared. The sounds were coming from the kitchen. He stood in the doorway of the living-room and listened. Ekholm was right after all. He prepared himself to meet someone who was very strong. The chair arm wouldn’t be much help. He remembered that he had a replica of a pair of old-fashioned brass knuckles in one of the drawers in the bookshelf. They had been the prize in a police lottery. He decided that his fists were better protection than the chair arm. He could still hear sounds in the kitchen. He moved cautiously across the parquet floor and opened the drawer. The brass knuckles were underneath a copy of his tax return. He put them on his right hand. At the same instant he realised that the sounds in the kitchen had stopped. He spun round and raised his arms.
Linda was in the doorway looking at him with a mixture of amazement and fear. He stared back at her.
“What are you doing?” she said. “What’s that on your hand?”
“I thought it was somebody breaking in,” he said, taking off the brass knuckles.
She could see that he was shaken.
“It was me. I couldn’t sleep.”
“The door to your room was closed.”
“I must have shut it behind me. I needed a drink of water.”
“But you never wake up in the night.”
“Those days are long gone. Sometimes I don’t sleep well. When I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
Wallander knew he ought to feel foolish. But his relief was too great. His reaction had confirmed something. He had taken Ekholm much more seriously than he thought. He sat down. Linda was still standing there staring at him.
“I’ve often wondered how you can sleep as well as you do,” she said. “When I think of the things you have to look at, the things you’re forced to do.”
“You get used to it,” said Wallander, knowing that wasn’t true at all.
She sat down next to him.
“I was looking through an evening paper while Kajsa was buying cigarettes,” she went on. “There was quite a bit about what happened in Helsingborg. I don’t know how you stand it.”
“The papers exaggerate.”
“How do you exaggerate somebody getting their head stuffed into an oven?”
Wallander tried to avoid her questions. He didn’t know whether it was for his sake or for hers.
“That’s a matter for the doctor,” he said. “I examine the scene and try to work out what happened.”
She shook her head, resigned.
“You never could lie to me. To Mama, maybe, but never to me.”
“I never lied to Mona, did I?”
“You never told her how much you loved her. What you don’t say can be a false affirmation.”
He looked at her in surprise. Her choice of words astonished him.
“When I was little I used to sneak looks at all the papers you brought home at night. I invited my friends too, sometimes, when you were working on something we thought was exciting. We would sit in my room and read transcripts of witness testimonies.”
“I had no idea.”
“You weren’t supposed to. So who did you think was in the flat?”
He decided to tell her at least part of the truth. He explained that sometimes, but very rarely, policemen in his position who had their pictures in the paper a lot or were on TV, might catch the attention of criminals who then became fixated on them. Perhaps “fascinated” was a better term. Normally there was nothing to worry about. But it was a good idea to acknowledge the phenomenon and to stay alert.
She didn’t believe him for a second.
“That wasn’t somebody standing there with brass knuckles on, showing how aware he was,” she said at last. “What I saw was my Dad who’s a policeman. And he was scared.”
“Maybe I had a nightmare,” he said unconvincingly. “Tell me why you can’t sleep.”
“I’m worried about what to do with my life,” she said.
“You and Kajsa were very good in the revue.”
“Not as good as we ought to be.”
“You’ve got time to feel your way.”
“But what if I want to do something else entirely?”
“Like what?”
“That’s what I think about when I wake up in the middle of the night. I open my eyes and think that I still don’t know.”
“You can always wake me up,” he said. “As a policeman at least I’ve learned how to listen, even if you can get better answers from someone else.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder.
“You’re a good listener. A lot better than Mama. But I have to find the answers for myself.”
They talked for a long time. Not until it was light outside did they go back to bed. Something Linda said made Wallander feel good: he listened better than Mona did. In some future life he wouldn’t mind doing everything better than Mona. But not now, when there was Baiba.
Wallander got up a little before 7 a.m. Linda was still asleep. He had a quick cup of coffee and left. The weather was beautiful, but the wind had started to blow. When he got to the station he ran into an agitated Martinsson, who told him that the whole holiday schedule had been thrown into chaos. Most holidays had been postponed indefinitely.
“Now I probably won’t be able to get time off until September,” he said angrily. “Who the hell wants a holiday at that time of year?”
“Me,” said Wallander. “I can go to Italy with my father.”