One Step Behind (3 page)

It was already midday, and he realised he was hungry. A quick look in the refrigerator told him there wasn't much there. He put on his coat and went out. It was a nice day. As he walked to the centre of town, he looked at the properties for sale in the windows of three separate real estate offices, and realised that the price Robert Åkerblom had suggested was fair. They could hardly get more than 300,000 kronor for the house in Löderup.

He stopped at a takeaway restaurant, ate a hamburger and drank two bottles of mineral water. Then he went into a shoe shop where he knew the owner, and used the lavatory. When he came back out onto the street, he felt unsure of what to do next. He should have used his day off to do his shopping. He had no food in the house, but he didn't have the energy to go back for the car and drive to a supermarket.

Just past Hamngatan, he crossed the train tracks and turned down Spanienfararegatan. When he arrived down at the waterfront, he strolled along the pier and looked at the sailing boats, wondering what it would be like to sail. It was something he had never experienced. He realised he needed to pee again, and used the lavatories at the harbour cafe, drank another bottle of mineral water, and sat down on a bench outside the red coast guard building.

The last time he had been here it had been winter, the night Baiba left. It was already dark as he drove her to Sturup Airport, and the wind made whirls of snow dance in the headlights. They hadn't said a word. After he had watched her disappear past the checkpoint, he had returned to Ystad and sat on this bench. The wind had been very cold and he was freezing, but he sat here and realised that everything was over. He wouldn't see Baiba again. Their breakup was final.

She came to Ystad in December of 1994. His father had recently died and he had just finished one of the most challenging investigations of his career. But that autumn he had also, for the first time in many years, been making plans for the future. He decided to leave Mariagatan, move to the country, and get a dog. He had even visited a kennel and looked at Labrador puppies. He was going to make a fresh start. And above all, he wanted Baiba to come and live with him. She visited him over Christmas and Wallander could tell that she and Linda got along well. Then, on New Year's Eve 1995, the last few days before she was due to return to Riga, they talked seriously about the future. Maybe she would move to Sweden permanently as early as next summer. They looked at houses together. They looked at a house on a subdivision of an old farm outside Svenstorp several times. But then, one evening in March, when Wallander was already in bed, she called from Riga and told him she was having doubts. She didn't want to get married, didn't want to move to Sweden – at least not yet. He thought he would be able to get her to change her mind, but the conversation ended with an unpleasant quarrel, their first, after which they didn't speak for more than a month. Finally, Wallander called her and they decided he would go to Riga that summer. They spent two weeks by the sea in a run-down old house that she had borrowed from one of her colleagues at the university.

They took long walks on the beach and Wallander made a point of waiting for her to broach the question of the future. But when she finally did, she was vague and noncommittal. Not now, not yet. Why couldn't things stay as they were?

When Wallander returned to Sweden, he felt dejected and unsure of where things stood. The autumn went by without another meeting. They had talked about it, made plans, and considered various alternatives, but nothing had eventuated. Wallander became jealous. Was there another man in Riga? Someone he didn't know anything about? On several occasions he called her in the middle of the night and although she insisted that she was alone, he had the distinct feeling that there was someone with her.

Baiba had come to Ystad for Christmas that year. Linda had been with them on Christmas Eve before leaving for Scotland with friends. And it was then, a couple of days into the new year, that Baiba had told him she could never move to Sweden. She had gone back and forth in her mind for a long time. But now she knew. She didn't want to lose her position at the university. What could she do in Sweden, especially in Ystad? She could perhaps become an interpreter, but what else? Wallander tried in vain to persuade her to change her mind. Without saying so explicitly, they knew it was over. After four years there was no longer any road leading into the future. Wallander spent the rest of that winter evening on the frozen bench, feeling more abandoned than ever before. But then another feeling had crept over him. Relief. At least he now knew where things stood.

A motorboat sped out of the harbour. Wallander got up. He needed to find a lavatory again.

They called each other from time to time, but gradually that had stopped too. Now they hadn't been in touch for over six months. One day when he and Linda were walking around Visby she had asked if things with Baiba were finally over.

"Yes," he replied. "It's over."

She had waited for him to continue.

"I don't think either of us really wanted to break it off," he had told her. "But it was inevitable."

When he got home, he lay down on the sofa to read the paper but fell asleep almost immediately. An hour later he woke up with a start in the middle of a dream. He had been in Rome with his father. Rydberg had also been with them, and some small, dwarf-like creatures who insisted on pinching their legs.

I'm dreaming about the dead, he thought. What does that mean? I dream about my father almost every night and he's dead. So is Rydberg, my old colleague and friend, the one who taught me everything I can claim to know. And he's been gone for almost five years.

He went out to the balcony. It was still warm and calm. Clouds were starting to pile up on the horizon. Suddenly it struck him how terribly lonely he was. Apart from Linda, who lived in Stockholm and whom he saw only occasionally, he had almost no friends. The people he spent time with were people from work. And he never saw them socially.

He went into the bathroom and washed his face. He looked in the mirror and saw that he had a tan, but the tiredness still shone through. His left eye was bloodshot. His hairline had receded further. He stepped on the scales, and noted that he weighed a couple of kilos less than he had at the start of the summer, but it was still too much.

The phone rang. It was Gertrud.

"I just wanted to let you know that I made it safely to Rynge. Everything went well."

"I've been thinking about you," Wallander told her. "I should have stayed there with you."

"I think I needed to be alone with all my memories. But things will be fine here. My sister and I get along well. We always have."

"I'll be out to see you in a week or so."

After he had hung up the phone rang again immediately. This time it was his colleague Ann-Britt Höglund.

"I just wanted to hear how it went," she said.

"How what went?"

"Weren't you supposed to meet with an estate agent today to discuss selling your father's house?"

Wallander recalled that he had mentioned it to her the day before.

"It went pretty well," he said. "You can buy it for 300,000 kronor if you like."

"I never even got to see it," she replied.

"It feels quite strange," he told her. "The house is so empty now. Getrud has moved and someone else will buy it. It'll probably be used as a summer house. Other people will live in it and not know anything about my father."

"All houses have ghosts," she said. "Except the newest ones."

"The smell of turpentine will linger for a while," Wallander said. "But when that's gone there will be nothing left of the people who once lived there."

"That's so sad."

"It's just the way it is. I'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for calling."

Wallander went to the kitchen and drank some water. Ann-Britt was a very thoughtful person. She remembered things. He would never have thought to do the same if the situation had been reversed.

It was already 7 p.m. He fried some Falu sausage and potatoes and ate in front of the TV. He flipped through the channels, but nothing seemed interesting. Afterwards he took his cup of coffee and went out onto the balcony. As soon as the sun went down, it grew cooler, and he went back in again.

He spent the rest of the evening going through the things he had brought back from Löderup earlier that day. At the bottom of one of the boxes there was a brown envelope. When he opened it he found a couple of old, faded photographs. He couldn't recall ever having seen them before. He was in one of them, aged four or five, perched on the hood of a big American car. His father was standing beside him so he wouldn't fall off.

Wallander took the photograph into the kitchen and got a magnifying glass from one of the kitchen drawers.

We're smiling, he thought. I'm looking straight into the camera and beaming with pride. I've been allowed to sit on one of the art dealer's cars, one of the men who used to buy my father's paintings for outrageous prices. My father is also smiling, but he's looking at me.

Wallander sat with the snapshot for a long time. It spoke to him from a distant and unreachable past. Once upon a time he and his father had been very close, but all that had changed when he decided to become a policeman. In the last few years of his father's life, they had slowly been retracing their steps back to the closeness that had been lost.

But we never made it this far, Wallander thought. Not all the way back to the smile I had as I sat on the hood of this gleaming Buick. We almost got there in Rome, but it still wasn't like this.

Wallander tacked the photo to his kitchen door. Then he went back out onto the balcony. The clouds had come closer. He sat down in front of the TV and watched the end of an old movie.

At midnight he went to bed. He had a meeting with Svedberg and Martinsson the next day, and he had to go to the doctor. He lay awake in the darkness for a long time. Two years ago he had thought about moving from the flat on Mariagatan. He had dreamed of getting a dog, of living with Baiba. But nothing had come of it. No Baiba, no house, no dog. Everything had stayed the same.

Something's got to happen, he thought. Something that makes it possible for me to start thinking about the future again.

It was almost 3 a.m. before he finally fell asleep.

The clouds started clearing during the early hours of the morning. Wallander was already awake at 6 a.m. He had been dreaming about his father again. Fragmented and unconnected images had flickered through his subconscious. In the dream he had been both a child and an adult. There had been no coherent story. Recalling the dream was like trying to follow a ship into fog.

He got up, showered, and drank some coffee. When he walked out onto the street he noticed that the warmth of summer still lingered and that it was unusually calm. He drove to the police station. It was not yet 7 a.m., and the corridors were empty. He got another cup of coffee and went into his office. For once his desk was virtually free of folders and he wondered when he'd last had so little to do. During the past few years Wallander had seen his workload increase in proportion to the diminishing resources of the police force. Investigations were rushed or ignored altogether. Often a preliminary report resulted in a suspected crime going uninvestigated. Wallander knew that this would not be the case if only they had more time, if only there were more of them.

Did crime pay? That age-old question was still open to debate. Even those who felt that crime now had the upper hand were hard-pressed to pinpoint the moment when the tables had turned. Wallander was convinced that the criminal element had a stronger hold in Sweden than ever before. Criminals engaged in sophisticated financial dealings seemed to live in a safe haven, and the judicial system seemed to have capitulated completely.

Wallander often discussed these problems with his colleagues. He noticed that civilian fears at these developments were growing. Gertrud talked about it. The neighbours he ran into in the laundry talked about it. Wallander knew their fears were justified. But he didn't see any signs of preventive measures being taken. On the contrary, the reduction of numbers within the police force and judicial personnel continued. He took off his coat, opened the window, and looked out at the old water tower.

During the last few years, vigilante groups had been on the rise in Sweden, groups like The Civilian Guard. Wallander had long feared this development. When the justice system started to break down, the lynching mentality of the mob took over. Taking justice into one's own hands came to seem normal.

As he stood there at the window, he wondered how many illegal weapons were floating around Sweden. And he wondered what the figures would be in a couple of years.

He sat down at his desk. His door was slightly ajar and he heard voices out in the corridor, and a woman's laugh. Wallander smiled. That was their chief of police, Lisa Holgersson. She had replaced Björk a few years ago. Many of Wallander's colleagues had resisted the idea of a woman in such a high position, but Wallander gained respect for her early on.

The phone rang. It was Ebba, the receptionist.

"Did it go well?" she asked.

Wallander realised she meant yesterday. "The house isn't sold yet, of course," he said. "But I'm sure it will go well."

"I'm calling to see if you have time to talk to some visitors at 10.30 this morning."

"Visitors at this time of year?"

"It's a group of retired marine officers who meet in Skåne every August. They have some sort of society. I think they call themselves 'The Sea Bears'."

Wallander thought about his doctor's appointment. "I think you'll have to ask someone else this time," he answered. "I'm going to be out between 10.30 and midday."

"Then I'll ask Ann-Britt. These old sea captains might enjoy talking to a woman police officer."

"Or else they'll think just the opposite," Wallander said.

By 8 a.m. Wallander had not managed to do anything more than rock back and forth in his chair and look out the window. Tiredness gnawed at his body, and he was worried about what the doctor would find. Were the fatigue and cramps signs of a serious illness?

He got up out of his chair and walked to one of the conference rooms. Martinsson was already there, looking clean-cut and tanned. Wallander thought about the time, two years earlier, when Martinsson had come very close to giving up his career. His daughter had been attacked in the playground because her father was a policeman. But he had stuck it out. To Wallander he would always be the young man who had just joined the force, despite the fact that he had worked in Ystad longer than most of them.

They sat down and talked about the weather. After five minutes Martinsson said, "Where the hell is Svedberg?"

His question was justified, since Svedberg was known for his punctuality.

"Did you talk to him?"

"He had already gone when I tried to reach him. But I left a message on his answerphone."

Wallander nodded in the direction of the telephone that stood on the table.

"You should probably give him another call."

Martinsson dialled the number.

"Where are you?" he asked. "We're waiting for you."

He put the receiver down. "I'm just getting the machine."

"He must be on his way," Wallander said. "Let's start without him."

Martinsson leafed through a stack of papers. Then he pushed a postcard over to Wallander. It was an aerial shot of central Vienna.

"This is the card that the Hillström family found in their letter box on Tuesday, 6 August. As you can see, Astrid Hillström says that they're thinking of staying a little longer than they had originally planned. But everything is fine and they all send their regards. She asks her mother to call around and tell everyone that they're well."

Wallander read the card. The handwriting reminded him of Linda's. It was the same round lettering. He put it back.

"Eva Hillström came here, you said."

"She literally burst into my office. We knew she was the nervous type, but this was something else. She's clearly terrified and convinced that she's right."

"What's she so sure of?"

"That something's happened to them. That her daughter didn't write that postcard."

Wallander thought for a moment. "Is it the handwriting? The signature?"

"It resembles Astrid Hillström's writing. But her mother claims it's a very easy style to copy, as is her signature. She's right about that."

Wallander pulled over a notebook and a pen. In less than a minute he had perfected Astrid Hillström's handwriting and signature.

"Eva Hillström is anxious about her daughter's welfare and turns to the police. That's understandable. But if it isn't the handwriting or the signature that's worrying her, then what is it?"

"She couldn't say."

"But you did ask her."

"I asked her about everything. Was there something about the choice of words? Or was there something in the way she put it? She didn't know. But she was certain that her daughter hadn't written the card."

Wallander made a face and shook his head. "It must have been something."

They looked at each other.

"Do you remember what you said to me yesterday?" Wallander asked. "That you were starting to get worried yourself?"

Martinsson nodded. "Something doesn't add up," he said. "I just can't put my finger on it."

"Let's put the question another way," Wallander said. "If they haven't left on this unplanned holiday, then what's happened? And who's writing these cards? We know that their cars and their passports are missing."

"I'm obviously mistaken," Martinsson answered. "I was probably influenced by Eva Hillström's anxiety."

"Parents always worry about their children," Wallander said. "If you only knew how many times I've wondered what Linda was up to. Especially when you get postcards from strange places all around the world."

"So what do we do?" Martinsson asked.

"We continue to keep the situation under surveillance," Wallander said. "But let's go over the facts from the beginning, just to make sure we haven't missed anything."

Martinsson summarised the events in his unfailingly clear fashion. Ann-Britt Höglund had once asked Wallander if he realised that Martinsson had learned how to make presentations by observing him. Wallander had scoffed at this, but Höglund had stood her ground. Wallander still didn't know if it was true.

The chain of events was simple enough. Three people, all between the ages of 20 and 23, decided to celebrate Midsummer's Eve together. One of them, Martin Boge, lived in Simrishamn, while the other two, Lena Norman and Astrid Hillström, came from the western part of Ystad. They were old friends and spent a lot of time together. Their parents were all wealthy. Lena Norman was studying at Lund University while the other two had temporary jobs. None of them had ever had any problems with the law or with drugs. Astrid Hillström and Martin Boge still lived at home; Lena Norman lived in halls of residence in Lund. They didn't tell anyone where they were planning to hold their Midsummer's Eve party. Their parents had talked to one another and to their friends but no one seemed to know anything. This was not unusual, since they were often secretive and never divulged their plans to outsiders. At the time of their disappearance, they had two cars at their disposal: a Volvo and a Toyota. These cars disappeared at the same time as their owners, on the afternoon of 21 June. After that no one had seen them again. The first postcard was sent on 26 June from Hamburg, stating their intention to travel through Europe. A couple of weeks later, Astrid Hillström had sent a second postcard from Paris in which she explained that they were on their way south. And now she had apparently sent a third postcard.

Martinsson stopped talking.

Wallander reflected on what he had said. "What could possibly have gone wrong?" he asked.

"I have no idea."

"Is there any indication of anything out of the ordinary in relation to their disappearance?"

"Not really."

Wallander leaned back in his chair. "The only thing we have is Eva Hillström's anxiety," he said. "A worried mother."

"She claims her daughter didn't write the cards."

Wallander nodded. "Does she want us to file a missing persons report?"

"No. She wanted us to do something. That was how she put it: 'You have to do something.'"

"What can we really do other than file the report? We've alerted Customs."

They fell silent. It was already 8.45 a.m. Wallander looked questioningly at Martinsson.

"Svedberg?"

Martinsson picked up the receiver and dialled Svedberg's number, then hung up.

"The answerphone again."

Wallander pushed the postcard back across the table to Martinsson. "I don't think we're going to get much further," he said. "But I think I'll have a talk with Eva Hillström. Then we'll evaluate what action to take from here. But we have no grounds for declaring this a missing persons case, at least not yet."

Martinsson wrote her number on a piece of paper. "She's an accountant."

"And the father?"

"They're divorced. I think he called once, just after Midsummer."

Wallander got up while Martinsson collected the papers. They left the conference room together.

"Maybe Svedberg did the same thing I did and took a day off without us being told about it."

"He's already been on holiday," Martinsson said emphatically. "He hasn't got any holidays left."

Wallander looked at him with surprise. "How do you know that?"

"I asked him if he could switch one of his weeks with me. But he couldn't because for once he wanted an unbroken chunk of time."

"I don't think he's ever done that before," Wallander said.

They parted outside Martinsson's office and Wallander went to his office. He sat down at his desk and dialled the first phone number Martinsson had given him. Eva Hillström answered the phone. They agreed that she should come by the police station later that afternoon.

"Has anything happened?" she asked.

"No," Wallander answered. "I just think I should talk to you as well."

He hung up and was about to go and get a cup of coffee when Höglund appeared at his door. Although she had just returned from a holiday, she was as pale as ever. Wallander thought her pallor came from within. She still hadn't recovered from a serious gunshot wound of two years earlier. She was healed physically, but Wallander doubted how well she was emotionally. Sometimes he felt that she was still afraid. It didn't surprise him. Almost every day, he thought about the time that he had been stabbed. And that had happened more than 20 years ago.

"Is this a good time?"

Wallander gestured to the chair opposite his desk, and she sat down.

"Have you seen Svedberg?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"He was supposed to come to a meeting with me and Martinsson, but he didn't show up."

"He's not one to miss a meeting."

"You're right. But he did today."

"Have you called him at home? Is he sick?"

"Martinsson left several messages on his answerphone. And besides, Svedberg is never sick."

They contemplated Svedberg's absence for a while.

"What was it you wanted to talk to me about?" Wallander asked finally.

"Do you remember those Baltic car smugglers?"

"How could I forget? I worked on that miserable case for two years before we got them. At least the ones in Sweden."

"Well, it seems as though it's started up again."

"Even with the leaders in jail?"

"It looks like others have stepped in to fill their shoes. Only this time they aren't working out of Gothenburg. Their tracks point towards Lycksele, among other places."

Wallander was surprised. "Lapland?"

"With today's technology you can operate from virtually anywhere."

Wallander shook his head, but he knew that Höglund was right. Organised criminals always made use of the latest technology.

"I don't have the energy to start again," he said. "No more car smuggling for me."

"I'll take it on. Lisa asked me to. I think she realises how tired you are of stolen cars. But I'd like you to outline the situation for me, as well as give me a couple of pointers."

Wallander nodded. They set a time for the next day, then went and got some coffee and sat down by an open window in the canteen.