“A moment of madness,” Harderberg said. “When a man does something that can only end with him being injured, or killed.”
Wallander turned gingerly and looked at him. He was smiling. Further back, where the light barely penetrated, he could just make out the outlines of two men, motionless.
Harderberg walked around the sofa and handed him the radio. His suit was immaculate, his shoes highly polished.
“It’s three minutes past midnight,” Harderberg said. “A few minutes ago somebody tried to contact you. I have no idea who it was, of course, and I don’t care. But I assume somebody is waiting for you to get in touch. You’d better do that. I don’t need to tell you, I am sure, that you shouldn’t attempt to raise the alarm. We’ve had enough madness for one day.”
Wallander called her up and she answered immediately.
“Everything’s OK,” he said. “I’ll report again an hour from now.”
“Have you found Ström?” she said.
He hesitated, unsure of what to say. Then he noticed that Harderberg was nodding at him encouragingly.
“Yes, I’ve found him,” Wallander said. “I’ll call again at one.”
Wallander put the radio on the sofa beside him.
“The woman police officer,” Harderberg said. “I take it that she’s in the vicinity. We could find her if we wanted to, of course. But we don’t.”
Wallander gritted his teeth and stood up.
“I have come in order to inform you,” he said, “that you are suspected of being an accessory to a number of serious crimes.”
Harderberg observed him thoughtfully. “I waive my right to have a lawyer present. Please go on, Inspector Wallander.”
“You are suspected of being an accessory to the deaths of Gustaf Torstensson and his son Sten Torstensson. Furthermore, you are now also suspected of being implicated in the death of your own chief of security, Kurt Ström. In addition, there is the attempted murder of the solicitors’ secretary, Mrs. Dunér, and of myself and Officer Höglund. There are a number of other possible charges, including ones connected to the fate of the accountant Borman. The public prosecutor will have to work out the details.”
Harderberg sat down slowly in an armchair. “Are you saying that I am under arrest, Inspector Wallander?” he said.
Wallander felt on the point of fainting, and sat again on the sofa. “I don’t have the necessary papers,” he said. “But that doesn’t affect the basic circumstances.”
Harderberg leaned forward in his armchair, chin resting on one hand. Then he leaned back again and nodded. “I’ll make things easy for you,” he said. “I confess.”
Wallander stared at him, unable to believe his ears.
“You’re absolutely right,” Harderberg said. “I admit to being guilty on all counts.”
“Including Borman?”
“Including Borman, of course.”
Wallander could feel his fear creeping up on him again, but this time colder, more threatening than before. The whole situation was off-kilter. He was going to have to get out of the castle.
Harderberg watched him attentively, as if trying to read Wallander’s thoughts. To give himself time to work out how he could get an SOS to Höglund without Harderberg realizing, Wallander started asking questions, as if they were in an interrogation room. But he still could not tell what Harderberg was up to. Had he known Wallander was on the grounds from the moment he passed through the gate? What had Ström given away before he was killed?
“The truth,” Harderberg said, interrupting Wallander’s train of thought. “Does it exist for a Swedish police officer?”
“Establishing the line between a lie and a fact, the real truth, is the basis of all police work,” Wallander said.
“A correct answer,” Harderberg said approvingly. “But it’s wrong all the same. Because there’s no such thing as an absolute truth or an absolute lie. There are just agreements. Agreements that can be entered into, kept or broken.”
“If somebody uses a gun to kill another human being, that can hardly be anything but a factual happening,” Wallander said.
He could hear a faint note of irritation in Harderberg’s voice when he answered. “We don’t need to discuss what’s self-evident,” he said. “I’m looking for a truth that goes deeper than that.”
“Death is deep enough for me,” Wallander said. “Gustaf Torstensson was your lawyer. You had him killed. The attempt to disguise the murder as a car accident failed.”
“I’d be interested to know how you reached that conclusion.”
“A chair leg was left lying in the mud. The rest of the chair was in the car trunk. The trunk was locked.”
“So simple! Pure carelessness.”
Harderberg made no attempt to conceal the look he gave the two men skulking in the shadows.
“What happened?” Wallander said.
“Torstensson’s loyalty began to waver. He saw things he shouldn’t have seen. We were forced to ensure his loyalty, once and for all. Occasionally we amuse ourselves here at the castle with shooting practice. We use mannequins, tailors’ dummies, as targets. We put a dummy in the road. He stopped. He died.”
“And thus his loyalty was ensured.”
Harderberg nodded but seemed to be miles away. He jumped to his feet and stared at rows of figures that had appeared on one of the flickering computer screens. Wallander guessed they were stock prices from some part of the world where it was already daytime. But then, did stock exchanges open on Sundays? Perhaps the figures he was checking had to do with quite different financial activities.
Harderberg returned to his armchair.
“We couldn’t be sure how much his son knew,” he said, as if he had never paused. “We kept him under observation. He went to visit you in Jutland. We couldn’t be sure how much he had told you. Or Mrs. Dunér, for that matter. I think you have analyzed the circumstances very skillfully, Inspector Wallander. But of course, we saw right away that you wanted us to think you had another lead you were following. I’m hurt to think that you underestimated us.”
Wallander was beginning to feel sick. The cold-blooded indifference that oozed from the man in the armchair was something he had never encountered before. Nevertheless, his curiosity led him to ask more questions.
“We found a plastic container in the car,” he said. “I suspect it was substituted for another one when you killed him.”
“Why would we want to substitute it?”
“Our technicians could prove that it had never contained anything. We assumed that the container itself was of no significance: what was important was what it was meant to be used for.”
“And what was that, pray?”
“Now you’re asking the questions,” Wallander said. “And I’m expected to answer them.”
“It’s getting late,” Harderberg said. “Why can’t we give this conversation a touch of playfulness? It’s quite meaningless, after all.”
“We’re talking about murder,” Wallander said. “I suspect that plastic container was used to preserve and carry transplant organs, cut out of murdered people.”
Just for a moment Harderberg stiffened. It was gone in a flash, but Wallander noticed it even so. That clinched it. He was right.
“I look for business deals wherever I can find them,” Harderberg said. “If there’s a market for kidneys, I buy and sell kidneys, just to give one example.”
“Where do they come from?”
“From deceased persons.”
“People you’ve killed.”