“A couple of hundred metres from here,” replied Wiberg. “Across the road.”
Nyberg had come out onto the dock.
“Should we call in divers?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Wallander. “Start with a radius of 25 metres around the dock.”
Then he pointed at the rings set into the wood.
“Prints,” he said. “If Fredman was killed here he must have been tied down. Our killer goes barefoot and doesn’t wear gloves.”
“What are the divers looking for?”
Wallander thought.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s see if they come up with anything. But I think you’re going to find traces of kelp on the slope, from the place where the tyre tracks stop all the way down to the dock.”
“The van didn’t turn around,” said Nyberg. “He backed it all the way up to the road. He couldn’t have seen whether any cars were coming. So there are only two possibilities. Unless he’s totally crazy.”
Wallander raised his eyebrows.
“He is crazy,” he said.
“Not in that way,” said Nyberg.
Wallander understood what he meant. He wouldn’t have been able to back up onto the road unless he had an accomplice who signalled when the road was clear. Or else it happened at night. When he’d see headlights and know when it was safe to back out onto the road.
“He doesn’t have an accomplice,” said Wallander. “And we know that it must have happened at night. The only question is why did he drive Fredman’s body to the pit outside the railway station in Ystad?”
“He’s crazy,” said Nyberg. “You said so yourself.”
When a car arrived with the map, Wallander asked Martinsson for a pen and then sat on a rock next to the dock. He drew circles around Ystad, Bjaresjo and Helsingborg. Then he marked the dock. He wrote numbers next to his marks. He waved over Hoglund, Martinsson and Svedberg, who had arrived last, wearing a dirty sun hat instead of his cap for a change. He pointed at the map on his knee.
“Here we have his movements,” he said. “And the murder sites. Like everything else they form a pattern.”
“A road,” Svedberg said. “With Ystad and Helsingborg as the end points. The scalp murderer on the southern plain.”
“That isn’t funny,” Martinsson snapped.
“I’m not trying to be funny,” Svedberg protested. “It’s how it is.”
“Looking at the big picture, you’re probably right,” said Wallander. “The area is limited. One murder takes place in Ystad. One murder occurs here, perhaps, we aren’t sure yet, and the body is taken to Ystad. One murder happens just outside Ystad, in Bjaresjo, where the body is also discovered. And then we have Helsingborg.”
“Most of them are concentrated around Ystad,” said Hoglund. “Does that mean that the man we’re looking for lives here?”
“With the exception of Fredman the victims were found close to or inside their homes,” said Wallander. “This is the map of the victims, not the murderer.”
“Then Malmo should be marked too,” said Svedberg. “That’s where Fredman lived.”
Wallander circled Malmo. The breeze tugged at the map.
“Now the picture is different,” said Hoglund. “We get an angle, not a straight line. Malmo is in the middle.”
“It’s always Fredman who’s different,” said Wallander.
“Maybe we should draw another circle,” said Martinsson. “Around the airport. What do we get then?”
“An area of movement,” said Wallander. “Revolving around Fredman’s murder.”
He knew that they were on their way towards a crucial conclusion.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said. “Fredman lives in Malmo. Together with the man who kills him, either held captive or not, he is driven east in the van. They come here, where Fredman dies. The journey continues to Ystad. The body is dumped in a hole under a tarpaulin in Ystad. Later the van returns west. It’s parked at the airport, about halfway between Malmo and Ystad. There the tracks vanish.”
“There are plenty of ways to get away from Sturup,” said Svedberg. “Taxis, airport buses, rental cars. Another vehicle parked there earlier.”
“So the murderer probably doesn’t live in Ystad,” Wallander said. “Malmo’s a good possibility. But it could just as well be Lund. Or Helsingborg. Or why not Copenhagen?”
“Unless he’s leading us on a wild-goose chase,” Hoglund said. “And he really does live in Ystad.”
“That’s possible, of course,” said Wallander, “but I don’t buy it.”
“Which means that we ought to concentrate on Sturup more than we have so far,” Martinsson said.
Wallander nodded. “I believe that the man we’re looking for uses a motorcycle,” he said. “We talked about this before. Witnesses may have seen one outside the house in Helsingborg. Sjosten is working on that right now. Since we’re getting reinforcements this afternoon, we can afford to do a careful examination of the transport options from Sturup. We’re looking for a man who parked the van there on the night of 28 June. And somehow left. Unless he works at the airport.”
“There’s one question we can’t yet answer,” said Svedberg. “And that is: what does this monster look like?”
“We know nothing about his face,” Wallander said. “But we know he’s strong, and a basement window in Helsingborg tells us that he’s thin. We’re dealing with someone in good shape, who goes barefoot.”
“You mentioned Copenhagen just now,” Martinsson said. “Do you think he’s a foreigner?”
“I doubt it,” Wallander replied. “I think we’re dealing with a 100 per cent Swedish serial killer.”
“That’s not much to go on,” said Svedberg. “Haven’t we found a single hair? Does he have light or dark hair?”
“We don’t know. According to Ekholm he probably tries not to attract attention. And we can’t say anything about the way he’s dressed when he commits the murders.”
“What about his age?” asked Hoglund.
“His victims have been men in their 70s, except for Fredman. But he’s in good shape, goes barefoot, and may ride a motorcycle, and these facts don’t imply an older man. We just can’t guess.”
“Over 18,” said Svedberg. “If he rides a motorcycle.”
“Can’t we start with Fredman?” asked Hoglund. “He differs from the other men, who are considerably older. Maybe we can assume that Fredman and the man who killed him are the same age. Then we’re talking about a man who’s under 50. And there are quite a few of them who are in good shape.”
Wallander gave his colleagues a gloomy look. They were all under 50; Martinsson, the youngest, was barely 30. None of them was in particularly good shape.
“Ekholm is working on the psychological profile,” said Wallander, getting to his feet. “It’s important that we all read through it every day. It might give us some ideas.”
Noren came towards Wallander with a telephone in his hand. Wallander squatted down out of the wind. It was Sjosten.
“I think I’ve got someone for you,” he said. “A woman who was at parties at Liljegren’s villa.”
“Well done,” Wallander said. “When can I meet her?”
“Any time.”
Wallander looked at his watch. “I’ll be there no later than 3 p.m.,” he said. “By the way, we think we’ve found the place where Fredman died.”
“I heard about it,” Sjosten said. “I also heard that Ludwigsson and Hamren are on their way from Stockholm. They’re good men, both of them.”
“How’s it going with the witnesses who saw a man on a motorcycle?”
“They didn’t see a man,” Sjosten answered. “But they did see a motorcycle. We’re trying to establish what kind it was. But it’s not easy. Both the witnesses are old. They’re also passionate health nuts who despise all petrol-powered vehicles. In the end it may turn out to be a lawnmower they saw.”
A scratchy noise came from the phone. The conversation sputtered out in the wind. Nyberg was looking at the dock, rubbing his swollen cheek.
“How’s it going?” Wallander asked him cheerily.
“I’m waiting for the divers.”
“Are you in a lot of pain?”
“It’s a wisdom tooth.”
“Get it removed.”
“I will. But first I want those divers here.”