Wallander walked to and fro in the apartment, restless, anxious. Mona had disappointed him. And it had been his fault.
From the street he heard a car drive by. Music was streaming from the open car window. ‘The House of the Rising Sun’. The song had been extremely popular a few years earlier. But what was the name of the group? The Kinks? Wallander could not remember. Then it occurred to him that at this time he normally heard the faint sound of Halen’s TV through the wall. Now everything was quiet.
Wallander sat down on the sofa and put his feet on the coffee table. Thought about his father. The winter coat and hat, the shoes worn without socks. If it hadn’t been so late he might have driven out to play cards with him. But he was starting to get tired, even though it was not yet eleven. He turned on the television. As usual there was a public television talk show. It took a while before he understood that the participants were discussing the pros and cons of the approaching era. The age of computers. He turned it off. Stayed put for a while before he undressed and went to bed, yawning the whole time.
Soon he had fallen asleep.
Later he could never figure out what had woken him up. But all of a sudden he was wide awake, listening intently to the dim summer night. Something had awakened him, he was sure of it. Perhaps it was a car with a broken tailpipe driving by? The curtain moved gently in the open window. He closed his eyes again.
Then he heard it, right next to his head.
Someone was in Halen’s apartment. He held his breath and continued to listen. There was a clang, as if someone had moved an object. Shortly thereafter he heard the sound of something dragging on the floor. Someone moving a piece of furniture. Wallander looked at the clock on his bedside table. A quarter to three. He pressed his ear against the wall. He had started to think it was his imagination when he heard another sound. There was no doubt that someone was in there.
He sat up in bed and wondered what he should do. Call his colleagues? If Halen didn’t have any relatives then surely no one had any reason to be in the apartment. But they weren’t sure of his family situation. And he may have given a spare key to someone they did not know about.
Wallander got out of bed and pulled on his trousers and shirt. Then he walked barefoot out onto the landing. The door to Halen’s apartment was closed. He had the keys in his hand. Suddenly he wasn’t sure what he should do. The most reasonable thing was to ring the doorbell. After all, Hemberg had given him the keys and thus conferred a certain responsibility on him. He pressed the buzzer. Waited. Now it was completely quiet in the apartment. He buzzed again. Still no reaction. At that moment he realised that a person inside the apartment could very easily escape through a window. It was barely two metres to the ground. He swore and ran out onto the street. Halen had a corner apartment, and Wallander hurried round to the other side. The street was empty. But one of Halen’s windows was wide open.
Wallander went back into the building and unlocked Halen’s door. Before he walked in he called out but received no answer. He turned on the hall light and walked into the main room. The chest drawers were pulled out. Wallander looked around. Someone had been in the apartment and looking for something. He walked over to a window and tried to see if it had been forced open. But he found no marks on it. That meant he could draw two conclusions. The unknown person who had been in the apartment had had access to keys. And he or she had not wanted to be found out.
Wallander turned on the light in the room and started to look around to see if anything that had been there earlier in the day had gone missing. But he was unsure of his memory. The most noticeable things were still there. The beetle from Brazil, the sea logs and the old photograph. But the photograph had been removed from the envelope and was lying on the floor. Wallander crouched down and studied the envelope. Someone had taken the picture out. The only explanation he could think of was that someone had been looking for something that might be found in an envelope.
He got up and continued to look around. The bedclothes were torn from the bed, the cupboard door was open. One of Halen’s two suits had ended up on the floor.
Someone has been searching, Wallander thought. The question is, for what? And did he or she find it before I rang the doorbell?
He walked out to the kitchen. The cabinets were open. A pot had fallen to the floor. Maybe that was what had woken him up? Really, he thought, the answer is obvious. If the person who was in here had found what he was looking for, he would have left. And hardly through the window. Therefore whatever the person was looking for was still here. If it ever had been.
Wallander returned to the room and looked at the dried blood on the floor.
What happened? he thought. Was it really suicide?
He continued to search the apartment. But at ten past four he gave up, returned to his apartment and got back into bed. He set his alarm for seven. He was going to talk to Hemberg first thing in the morning.
A few hours later Wallander had to run to the bus stop in pouring rain. He had had a restless sleep and woken up long before the alarm went off. The thought that he might be able to impress Hemberg with his attentiveness had led him to lie there fantasising about how he would one day be a criminal investigator a cut above the rest. This thought also made him decide to stand his ground with Mona. You could not expect a policeman to be punctual.
It was four minutes to seven when he arrived at the station. He had heard that Hemberg often showed up very early to work and an enquiry to reception revealed this to be correct. Hemberg had been there since six o’clock. Wallander walked up to the section where the crime squad was based. Most of the offices were still empty. He walked straight to Hemberg’s door and knocked. When he heard Hemberg’s voice he opened it and walked in. Hemberg was sitting in the visitor’s chair, cutting his nails. When he saw that it was Wallander he frowned.
‘Do we have a scheduled appointment? I don’t recall seeing anything like that.’
‘No. But I have something to report.’
Hemberg put the nail scissors next to his pens and sat down at his desk.
‘If this is going to take more than five minutes, you can sit down,’ he said.
Wallander remained standing. Then he told him what had happened. He started with the salesman and went on to the night’s events. He could not determine if Hemberg was listening with interest or not. His face revealed nothing.
‘That was it,’ Wallander finished. ‘I thought I should report this as soon as possible.’
Hemberg gestured for Wallander to have a seat. Then he pulled over a pad of paper, chose a pen, and wrote down the name and number of the encyclopedia salesman, Holmberg. Wallander made a mental note to himself about the notepad. Hemberg did not favour loose papers or preformatted report forms.
‘The nightly visit appears strange,’ he then said. ‘But in the end it does not change anything. Halen committed suicide. I am convinced of it. When the autopsy and weapons report come in we’ll have that confirmed.’
‘The question is who was there last night.’
Hemberg shrugged.
‘You have given a possible answer yourself. Someone with keys. Someone looking for something he or she did not want to let slip out of their hands. Rumours spread quickly. People saw the police cars and ambulance. Many people must have known that Halen was dead after only a couple of hours.’
‘But it’s strange that this person jumped out of the window.’