The Pyramid

Wallander hung up.

'That is a very beautiful opera,' Wallander said. 'The music, I mean. I have unfortunately never seen it performed.'

'I never go to the opera,' the man said. 'The music is enough for me.'

Wallander thanked him and left. Then he drove around for a long time until he managed to find the station in Lund. The pedestrian streets and dead ends seemed innumerable. He parked in a no-parking zone. Then he tore off a number of sheets of toilet paper, put them in his pocket and walked across the street. He pressed the button with the name Boman. The door lock buzzed open and Wallander walked in. The apartment was on the second floor. Wallander looked around for a lift, but there was none. Even though he walked slowly, he got out of breath. A woman who was very young, hardly twenty-five, was standing in the doorway waiting for him. She had very short hair and several rings in her ears. Wallander introduced himself and showed her his ID. She didn't even glance at it but asked him to come in. Wallander looked around with astonishment. There was almost no furniture in the apartment. The walls were bare. And yet it was cosy somehow. There was nothing in the way. It only contained what was absolutely necessary.

'Why do the police in Ystad want to speak with me?' she asked. 'I have enough trouble with the cops in Lund.'

He could tell that she was not overly fond of the police. She had sat down in a chair and was wearing a very short skirt. Wallander searched around for a spot next to her face where he could direct his gaze.

'I'll get right to the point,' Wallander said. 'Rolf Nyman.'

'What about him?'

'Nothing. But does he work for you?'

'I have him as a reserve. In case one of my regular DJs gets ill.'

'My question may strike you as strange,' Wallander said. 'But I have to ask it.'

'Why aren't you looking me in the eye?' she asked abruptly.

'That is probably because your skirt is so very short,' Wallander replied, surprised at his own directness.

She burst into laughter, reached for a blanket and laid it across her legs. Wallander looked at the blanket and then her face.

'Rolf Nyman,' he repeated. 'Has he ever borrowed any lighting equipment from your establishment?'

'Never.'

Wallander caught an almost imperceptible cloud of uncertainty that crossed her face. His attention sharpened at once.

'Never?'

She bit her lip.

'The question is odd,' she said. 'But the fact is that a number of lights disappeared from the disco about a year ago. We reported it to the police as a burglary. But they never found any leads.'

'When was that? Was it after Nyman started to work for you?'

She thought back.

'Exactly one year ago. In January. After Nyman had started.'

'You never suspected that it could be an inside job?'

'No, actually.'

She got up and quickly left the room. Wallander looked at her legs. After a moment's absence she returned with a pocket calendar in her hand.

'The lights disappeared sometime between the ninth and twelfth of January. And now that I look I can see that it was actually Rolf who was working then.'

'What kind of lights?' Wallander asked.

'Six spotlights. Not really useful for a disco. They're more for theatre work. Very strong, around two thousand watts. There were also a number of cables that went missing.'

Wallander nodded slowly.

'Why are you asking about this?'

'I can't tell you that right now,' Wallander said. 'But I have to ask you one thing, and I want you to regard it as an order. That you don't mention this to Rolf Nyman.'

'Request granted as long as you have a word with your Lund colleagues and ask them to leave me alone.'

'I'll see what I can do.'

She followed him out into the hall.

'I don't think I ever asked you for your first name,' he said.

'Linda.'

'That's my daughter's name. Therefore it's a very beautiful name.'

Wallander was overcome by a sneeze. She drew back a few steps.

'I won't shake your hand,' he said. 'But you gave me the answer I had been hoping for.'

'You realise, of course, that I'm curious?'

'You'll get your answer,' he said, 'in time.'

She was just about to close the door when Wallander realised he had yet another question.

'Do you know anything about Rolf Nyman's private life?'

'No, nothing.'

'So, you don't know about his girlfriend who has a drug addiction?'

Linda Boman looked at him for a long time before she answered.

'I don't know if he has a girlfriend who takes drugs,' she said finally. 'But I do know that Rolf has serious problems with heroin. How long he'll manage to control it, I have no idea.'

Wallander went back down onto the street. The time was already ten o'clock and the night was cold.

We are through, he thought.

Rolf Nyman. Surely he's the one.

CHAPTER 12

Wallander was almost back in Ystad when he decided not to go straight home. At the second roundabout on the edge of town he turned north instead. It was ten minutes to eleven. His nose continued to run, but his curiosity drove him on. He thought that what he was doing again – how many times now, he had no idea – was at odds with the most fundamental rules governing police work. Above all, the rule that forbade placing yourself in dangerous situations alone.

If it was true, as he was now convinced, that it was Rolf Nyman who had shot Holm and the Eberhardsson sisters, Nyman definitely counted as potentially dangerous. In addition, he had tricked Wallander. And he had done so effortlessly and with great skill. On his car ride from Malmö, Wallander had been wondering what could be driving him. What was the crack that had appeared in the pattern? The answers he came up with pointed in at least two different directions. It could be a power struggle or about influence over the drug trade.

The point in the whole situation that worried him most was what Linda Boman had said about Nyman's own drug habit. That he was a heroin addict. Wallander had almost never come across drug dealers above the absolute bottom level who were also addicts. The question went around in Wallander's head. There was something that did not make sense, a piece that was missing.

Wallander turned by the road that led to the house where Nyman lived. He turned off the engine and the headlights. He took out a torch from the glove compartment. Then he carefully opened the door after first turning off the interior lights. Listened out into the darkness and then closed the car door as quietly as he could. It was about a hundred metres to the yard entrance. He shielded the torch with one hand and directed the beam in front of him. The wind was cold, he felt. Time for a warmer sweater. But his nose had almost dried up. When he reached the edge of the woods, he turned out the torch. One window in the house was lit up. Someone must be home. Now comes the dog, he thought. He walked back the way he had come, about fifty metres. Then he went into the woods and turned the torch back on. He was going to approach the house from the back. As far as he could recall, the room with the lighted window had windows both to the front and back of the house.

He moved slowly, trying to avoid stepping on twigs. He was sweating by the time he had reached the back of the house. He had also started to question himself more and more as to what he thought he was up to. In the worst-case scenario the dog would bark and give Rolf Nyman the first warning that someone was watching him. He stood still and listened. All he could hear was the sighing of the trees. In the distance a plane was coming in for landing at Sturup. Wallander waited until his breathing was back to normal before he carefully walked up to the house. He crouched down and held the torch only a few centimetres from the ground. Just before he entered the area lit up by the window, he turned off the torch and drew back into the shadows next to the house. The dog was still quiet. He listened with his ear pressed against the cold wall. No music, no voices, nothing. Then he stretched up and carefully peered in through the window.