“So nothing was stolen?”
“Nothing.”
“Not even any flowers?”
“Not that I could see.”
“Do you really know exactly how many flowers you have in the shop at any one time?”
“Yes, I do.”
Her reply was immediate and firm. Wallander nodded.
“Do you have any explanation for this break-in?”
“No.”
“You don’t own the shop, is that right?”
“The owner is Gosta Runfeldt. I work for him.”
“If I understand correctly, he’s away. Have you been in contact with him?”
“That’s not possible.”
Wallander looked at her attentively.
“Why not?”
“He’s on an orchid safari in Kenya.”
Wallander considered what she had said.
“Can you tell me something more? An orchid safari?”
“Gosta is a passionate orchid lover,” the woman answered. “He knows everything about them. He travels all over the world looking at all the types that exist. He’s been writing a book on the history of orchids. Right now he’s in Kenya. I don’t know where, exactly. All I know is he’ll be back next Wednesday.”
Wallander nodded.
“We’ll have to talk with him when he gets back,” said Wallander. “Maybe you could ask him to call us at the police station?”
Vanja Andersson promised to pass on the message. A customer came into the shop. Hoglund and Wallander went out into the rain and got into the car. Wallander waited to start the engine.
“Of course, it could be a burglar who made a mistake,” he said. “A thief who smashed the wrong window. There’s a computer shop right next door.”
“But what about the pool of blood?”
Wallander shrugged.
“Maybe the thief didn’t notice he cut himself. He stood there with his arm hanging down and looked around. The blood dripped from his arm. Blood dripping in the same spot will eventually form a puddle.”
She nodded. Wallander turned the ignition.
“This will be an insurance case,” he said. “Nothing more.”
They drove back to the police station in the rain.
It was 11 a.m. on Monday 26 September 1994.
In Wallander’s mind the week in Rome was slipping away like a slowly dissolving mirage.
CHAPTER 3
On Tuesday, 27 September, rain was still falling in Skane. The meteorologists had predicted that the hot summer would be followed by a wet autumn. Nothing had yet occurred to contradict their forecast.
Wallander had come home from his first day at work after his trip to Italy, put together a hasty meal and eaten it without pleasure. He made several attempts to reach his daughter, who lived in Stockholm. He propped open the door to the balcony when there was a brief lull in the rain, feeling annoyed that Linda hadn’t called to ask him how the holiday had been. He tried, without much success, to convince himself that she was too busy to make contact. This autumn she was combining studies at a private theatre school with work as a waitress at a restaurant on Kungsholmen.
Late that evening he had called Baiba in Riga. He had thought about her a great deal while he’d been in Rome. They’d spent some time together in Denmark, just a few months earlier, when Wallander was worn out and depressed after the terrible manhunt. On one of their last days together, he had asked Baiba to marry him. She gave him an evasive answer, not a definite no, but she made no attempt to conceal the reasons for her reluctance. They were walking along the vast beach at Skagen, where the two seas meet. Wallander had walked the same stretch many years before with his wife Mona, and once alone at a time when he had seriously considered leaving the police force.
The evenings in Denmark had been almost tropically hot. The World Cup had people glued to their TV sets, and the beaches were deserted. They had strolled along, picking up pebbles and shells, and Baiba told him she didn’t think she could ever live with a policeman again. Her first husband, the Latvian police major Karlis, had been murdered in 1992. That was when Wallander had met her, during that confused and unreal time in Riga.
In Rome, Wallander had asked himself whether deep down he really wanted to get married again. Was it even necessary to be married? To be tied by complicated, formal bonds which hardly had any meaning in this day and age?
He had been married to Linda’s mother for a long time. Then one day, five years earlier, she had confronted him out of the blue and told him that she wanted a divorce. He had been dumbfounded. It was only now that he felt able to understand and begin to accept the reasons she had wanted to begin a new life without him. He could see now why things had turned out the way they had. He could even admit that he bore most of the blame, because of his frequent absences and his increasing lack of interest in what was important in Mona’s life.
In Rome he had come to the conclusion that he did want to marry Baiba. He wanted her to leave Latvia and come to live in Ystad. And he had also decided to move, to sell his flat on Mariagatan and buy a house. Somewhere just outside town, with a flourishing garden. An inexpensive house, but in good enough shape that he could handle the necessary repairs himself. He had also thought about getting the dog he had been dreaming about for so long.
Now he talked about all of this with Baiba as the rain fell over Ystad. It was a continuation of the conversation he had been having in his head in Rome. On a few occasions he had started talking out loud to himself. His father, of course, hadn’t let this go unnoticed, trudging along at his side in the heat. He’d asked which of them was the one getting old and senile.
Baiba sounded happy. Wallander told her about the trip and then repeated his question from the summer. For a moment the silence bounced back and forth between Riga and Ystad. Then she said that she had been thinking too. She still had doubts; they hadn’t lessened, but they weren’t growing.
“Why don’t you come over here?” Wallander said. “We can’t talk about this on the phone.”
“You’re right,” she answered. “I’ll come.”
They didn’t decide on a time. They would talk about that later. She had her job at the University of Riga, and her time away had to be planned far in advance. But when Wallander hung up he felt that he was now on his way to a new phase of his life. She would come. He would get married again.
That night it took a long time for him to fall asleep. Twice he got up and stood by the kitchen window, staring out at the rain. He would miss the streetlight swinging on its wire out there, lonesome in the wind.
Even though he didn’t get much sleep, he was up early on Tuesday. A little after 7 a.m. he parked his car outside the police station and hurried through the rain and wind. He’d decided to start working through the pile of paperwork on the car thefts immediately. The longer he put it off, the more his lack of enthusiasm would weigh him down. He hung his jacket over the visitor’s chair to dry. Then he lifted all the files, piled almost half a metre high, down from the shelf. He was just starting to organise the papers when there was a knock at the door. Wallander knew it would be Martinsson. He called to him to come in.
“When you’re away I’m always the first one here in the morning,” Martinsson said. “Now I have to settle for second place again.”
“I’ve missed my cars,” Wallander said, pointing at the files all over his desk.
Martinsson had a piece of paper in his hand.
“I forgot to give this to you yesterday,” he said. “Chief Holgersson wanted you to have a look at it.”
“What is it?”
“Read it for yourself. You know that people expect us policemen to make statements about all kinds of topics.”
“Something political?”
“That sort of thing.”
Wallander gave him an inquiring look. Martinsson didn’t usually beat around the bush. Several years before, he had been active in the Liberal party and had probably dreamt of a political career. As far as Wallander knew, this hope had gradually faded as the party’s popularity had dwindled. He decided not to mention their showing in the election the week before.