One Step Behind (5 page)

"How long have you been a policeman?" she asked suddenly.

"A long time. Too long, maybe. But I'm a policeman through and through. That's not going to change, at least until I retire."

She looked at him for a long time before asking her next question. "How do you keep going?"

"I don't know."

"Don't you ever run out of steam?"

"Sometimes. Why do you ask?"

"I'm thinking of what I said in the canteen earlier. I told you I'd had a bad summer and that's true. My husband and I are having problems. He's never at home. It can take us a week to get back to normal after his trips, and then he just has to leave again. This summer we started talking about a separation. That's never an easy thing, especially when you have children."

"I know," Wallander said.

"At the same time I've started questioning my work. I read in the paper that some of our colleagues in Malmö were arrested for racketeering. I turn on the television and learn that senior members of the force are involved in the world of organised crime. I see all this and I realise it's happening more and more. Eventually it leads me to wonder what I'm doing. Or, to put it another way, I wonder how I'm going to last another 30 years."

"It's all coming apart at the seams," Wallander agreed. "It's been going on for a long time. Corruption in the justice system is nothing new and there have always been police officers willing to cross the line. It's worse now, of course, and that's why it's even more important that people like you keep going."

"What about you?"

"That applies to me too."

"But how do you do it?"

Her questions were full of anger. He recognised a part of himself in her. How many times had he sat staring into his own desk, unable to find a reason to continue?

"I try to tell myself that things would be even worse without me," he said. "It's a consolation at times. A small one, but if I can't think of any other I take it."

She shook her head. "What's happening to our country?"

Wallander waited for her to continue, but she didn't. A truck rattled past on the street outside.

"Do you remember that violent attack last spring?" Wallander asked.

"The one in Svarte?"

"Two boys, both 14 years old, attack a third boy who is only 12. There's no provocation, no reason behind it. When he's lying there unconscious they start stomping on his chest. Finally he's not just unconscious, he's dead. I don't think it ever hit me so clearly before. People have always had fights, but they would stop when the other person was down. You can call it what you like. Fair play. Something you take for granted. But that's not the way it is any more, because these boys never learned it. It's as if a whole generation has been abandoned by their parents. Or as if not caring has become the norm. You have to rethink what it means to be a police officer because the parameters have changed. The experience you've acquired after years and years of grinding work doesn't apply any more."

He stopped. They heard voices from the corridor. Some of the officers on night duty were talking about a drunk driver. Then everything went quiet again.

"How have you been these past few years?" he asked her.

"You mean since I was shot?"

He nodded.

"I dream about it," she said. "I dream that I die or that the bullet hits me in the head. I think that's almost worse."

"It's easy to lose your nerve," Wallander said.

She got up. "The day I get seriously scared I'll quit," she said. "But I'm not quite there yet. Thanks for stopping by. I'm used to dealing with my problems on my own, but tonight I needed someone to talk to."

"It takes some strength to admit that."

She put her coat on and smiled her pale smile. Wallander wondered how well she was sleeping, but he didn't ask her.

"Can we talk about the car smugglers tomorrow?" she asked.

"How about in the afternoon? Don't forget we have to talk about these young people in the morning."

She looked at him closely.

"Are you really worried?"

"Eva Hillström is, and I can't disregard that."

They walked out together. She rejected his offer of a ride home.

"I need to walk," she said. "And it's so warm. What an August it's been!"

"We're in the dog days," he said. "Whatever that saying means."

They said goodbye. Wallander drove home. He drank a cup of tea and leafed through the Ystad daily paper, then went to bed. He left the window slightly open since it was so warm, and fell asleep at once.

A violent pain woke him up with a start. His left calf muscle was locked in a spasm. He lowered his leg onto the floor and flexed it. The pain disappeared. He lay down again carefully, afraid that the cramp would return. The alarm clock on the bedside table read 1.30 a.m. He had been dreaming about his father again, in a disjointed way. They walked around the streets of a city that Wallander didn't recognise. They were looking for someone. Who, he never found out.

The curtain in front of the window moved slowly. He thought about Linda's mother, Mona. He had been married to her for a long time. Now she was living a new life with another man who played golf and probably did not have elevated blood-sugar levels.

His thoughts kept wandering. All at once he saw himself walking along Skagen's endless beaches with Baiba. Then she was gone.

Suddenly he was wide awake. He sat up in bed. He didn't know where the thought came from; it simply appeared among the others and fought its way to the front: Svedberg.

The fact that he hadn't called in sick didn't make sense. Not only was he never sick, if something had happened he would have let them know. He should have thought of it before. If Svedberg hadn't been in contact, it could only mean one thing: something was preventing him from communicating with them.

Wallander felt himself getting worried. Of course it was just his imagination. After all, what could have happened to Svedberg? But the feeling of unease was strong. Wallander looked at the clock again, then went out into the kitchen, searched for Svedberg's number, and dialled it. After a few rings the machine picked up. Wallander hung up. Now he was sure that something was wrong. He put on his clothes and went down to the car. The wind had picked up but it was still warm. It took him only a few minutes to drive to the main square. He parked the car and walked towards Lilla Norregatan where Svedberg lived. The lights were on inside his flat. Wallander felt relieved, but only for a few seconds. Then the worry returned even more strongly. Why didn't Svedberg pick up the phone if he was at home? Wallander tried the door to the building. It was locked. He didn't know the security code, but the crack between the front doors was wide enough. Wallander took out a pocketknife and looked around. Then he slipped the thickest blade between the doors and pushed. They opened.

Svedberg lived on the fourth floor. Wallander was out of breath by the time he made it up the stairs. He pressed his ear against the door but heard nothing. Then he opened the letter slot. Nothing. He rang the bell, the sound echoing inside the flat. He rang three times, then pounded on the door. Still nothing.

Wallander tried to gather his thoughts. He felt a strong urge not to be alone. He groped for his mobile phone but realised it was still on the kitchen table at home. He went down the stairs and pushed a small stone between the two front doors. Then he hurried out to one of the telephone booths on the main square, and dialled Martinsson's number.

"I'm sorry to have to wake you up," Wallander said when Martinsson answered, "but I need your help."

"What is it?"

"Did you ever get hold of Svedberg?"

"No."

"Then something must have happened."

Martinsson didn't reply, but Wallander sensed that he was now fully awake.

"I'm waiting for you outside his block of flats on Lilla Norregatan," Wallander said.

"Ten minutes," Martinsson said. "At the most."

Wallander went to his car and unlocked the boot. He had some tools wrapped up in a dirty plastic bag. He took out a crowbar, then returned to Svedberg's building.

After less than ten minutes Martinsson drove up. Wallander saw that he was wearing his pyjama top under his jacket.

"What do you think has happened?"

"I don't know."

They walked upstairs together. Wallander nodded to Martinsson to ring the doorbell. Still no one answered. They looked at each other.

"Maybe he keeps some spare keys in his office."

Wallander shook his head.

"It'll take us too long," he said.

Martinsson took a step back. He knew what would be next. Wallander wedged the crowbar into the door, and forced it open.

The night of 8 August 1996 became one of the longest of Kurt Wallander's life. When he staggered out from the flat building on Lilla Norregatan at dawn, he still hadn't managed to rid himself of the feeling that he was caught up in an incomprehensible nightmare.

But everything he had seen during that long night had been real, and this reality was horrifying. He had witnessed the remains of a bloody and brutal drama many times in the course of his career, but never had it touched him as closely as now.

When he forced open the door to Svedberg's flat he still didn't know what lay in store for him. Yet from the moment he wedged the crowbar in the door he had feared the worst, and his fears had been confirmed.

They walked silently through the hall as if they were about to enter enemy territory. Martinsson stayed close behind. Lights were shining further down the hall. For a brief moment they stood there without making a sound. Wallander heard Martinsson's anxious breathing behind him. In the doorway to the living room, he jerked back so violently that he collided with Martinsson, who then bent forward to look at what Wallander had seen.

Wallander would never forget the sound Martinsson made, the way he whimpered like a child in front of the inexplicable thing before him on the floor.

It was Svedberg. One of his legs was hanging over the broken arm of a chair that had been knocked over. The torso was strangely twisted, as if Svedberg had no spine.

Wallander stood in the doorway, frozen with horror. There was no doubt in his mind about what he was seeing. The man he had worked with for so many years was dead. He no longer existed. He would never again sit in his usual place at the table in one of the conference rooms, scratching his bald spot with the end of a pencil.

Svedberg didn't have a bald spot any more. Half of his head was blown away.

A short distance from the body lay a double-barrelled shotgun. Blood was spattered several metres up the white wall behind the overturned chair. A confused thought went through Wallander's mind: now Svedberg will never be troubled by his phobia for bees again.

"What happened?" Martinsson said in an unsteady voice. Wallander realised that Martinsson was close to tears. He was a long way from such a reaction. He couldn't cry over something he didn't yet fully comprehend. And he really didn't comprehend the scene in front of him. Svedberg couldn't be dead. He was a 40-year-old police officer who would be in his usual chair again tomorrow when they had one of their regular team meetings. Svedberg with his bald spot, his fear of bees, who used the police station's sauna on his own every Friday night. It simply couldn't be Svedberg who lay there. It was someone else who looked just like him.

Wallander glanced instinctively at his watch. It was 2.09 a.m. They stood in the doorway for a few more seconds, then walked back out into the hall. Wallander turned on the light. He saw that Martinsson was shaking. He wondered what he looked like himself.

"Tell them to put all units on red alert."

There was a phone on a table in the hall, but no answerphone. Martinsson nodded and was about to pick up the receiver when Wallander stopped him.

"Wait," he said. "We need time to think."

But what was there really to think about? Maybe he was hoping for a miracle, that Svedberg would suddenly appear behind them and that nothing they had seen would turn out to be real.

"Do you know Lisa Holgersson's number?" he asked. He knew from experience that Martinsson had a good head for addresses and numbers. There used to be two with this particular gift: Martinsson and Svedberg. Now only one was left.

Martinsson recited the number, stammering. Wallander dialled and Lisa Holgersson picked up on the second ring. Her phone must be right beside her bed, he thought.

"This is Wallander. I'm sorry to wake you up."

She seemed awake at once.

"You should come down here right away," he said. "I'm in Svedberg's flat on Lilla Norregatan. Martinsson is also here. Svedberg is dead."

He heard her groan. "What happened?"

"I don't know. He's been shot."

"That's terrible. Is it murder?"

Wallander thought about the shotgun on the floor.

"I don't know," he said. "Murder or suicide, I don't know which."

"Have you been in touch with Nyberg?"

"I wanted to call you first."

"I'll be right over, I just have to get dressed."

"We'll contact Nyberg in the meantime."

Wallander handed the phone to Martinsson. "Start with Nyberg," he said.

The living room was accessible from two directions. While Martinsson used the phone, Wallander walked out through the kitchen. A kitchen drawer lay on the floor. The door to a cupboard was ajar. Papers and receipts lay strewn all over the room.

Wallander made a mental note of everything he saw. He could hear Martinsson explaining to Nyberg, the head of forensics in Ystad, what had happened. Wallander kept walking. He looked carefully where he was going before putting his feet down. He came to Svedberg's bedroom. All three drawers in a chest of drawers were pulled out. The bed was unmade and the blanket lay on the ground. With a feeling of boundless sorrow he noted that Svedberg had slept in flowery sheets. His bed was a meadow of wildflowers. Wallander kept going, arriving at a little study between the bedroom and living room. There were some bookcases and a desk. Svedberg was a neat person. His desk at the police station was kept meticulously free of clutter. But here his books had been pulled from their shelves, and the contents of the desk lay on the floor. There was paper everywhere.

Wallander entered the living room again, this time from the other side. Now he was closer to the shotgun, with Svedberg's twisted body at the far end. He stood completely still and took in the whole scene, every detail, everything that had been frozen and left behind as a marker of the drama that had taken place. The questions raced through his mind. Had someone heard the shot or shots? The scene suggested that a burglary had taken place. But when did it happen? And what else happened here?

Martinsson appeared in the doorway on the other side of the living room.

"They're on their way," he said.

Wallander slowly retraced his steps. When he was back in the kitchen he heard the bark of a German shepherd and then Martinsson's agitated voice. He hurried out to the hall and bumped into a dog patrol. Some people in bathrobes were huddled in the background. The patrol officer with the dog was called Edmundsson and had recently moved to Ystad.

"We received a call about a possible burglary," he said uncertainly when he saw Wallander. "At the flat of someone called Svedberg."

Wallander realised that Edmundsson had no idea which Svedberg the caller had been talking about.

"Good. There has been an incident here. By the way, it's Officer Svedberg's flat."

Edmundsson went pale. "I didn't know."

"How could you? But you can go back to the station. Back-up is on its way."

Edmundsson looked inquiringly at him. "What's happened?"

"Svedberg is dead," Wallander answered. "That's all we know."

He immediately regretted having said even that much. The neighbours were listening. Someone could take it into their heads to call the press. What Wallander wanted least of all was to have reporters hanging about. A policeman dying in mysterious circumstances was always news.

As Edmundsson disappeared down the stairs, Wallander thought fuzzily that he didn't know what the dog was called.

"Can you take care of the neighbours?" he said to Martinsson. "If nothing else, they must have heard the shots. Maybe we can establish a time of death."

"Was there more than one shot?"

"I don't know, but someone must have heard something."

The front door slammed below them and they heard approaching footsteps. Martinsson started rounding up the sleepy and anxious people and herded them into the flat next door. Lisa Holgersson came rushing up the stairs.

"I want you to prepare yourself," Wallander said.

"Is it that bad?"

"Svedberg was shot in the head with a shotgun at close range."

She made a face, then steeled herself. Wallander followed her into the hall and pointed to the living room. She went up to the doorway then quickly turned away and swayed as if she were about to faint. Wallander took her by the arm and helped her into the kitchen. She sank down on a blue kitchen chair, and looked up at Wallander with wide eyes.

"Who did this?" she asked.

"I don't know."

Wallander took a glass and gave her some water.

"Svedberg was away yesterday," he said. "Without telling anyone."

"That's unusual," said Holgersson.

"Very unusual. I woke up in the middle of the night with a feeling that things weren't quite right, so I drove over."

"So you don't think it happened yesterday?"

"No. Martinsson is talking to the neighbours to see if anyone heard anything unusual, which they probably did. A shotgun is loud. But we'll have to wait for the autopsy report."

Wallander heard his factual statement echo inside his head. He felt nauseated.

"I know he wasn't married," said Holgersson. "Did he have any family?"

Wallander thought back. He knew that Svedberg's mother had died a couple of years earlier. He didn't know anything about his father. The only relative Wallander knew about for sure was one he had met a few years earlier during a murder investigation.

"He has a cousin called Ylva Brink. She's an obstetric nurse. I can't think of anyone else."

They heard Nyberg's voice out in the hall.

"I'll stay here for a few minutes," said Holgersson.

Wallander went out to talk to Nyberg, who was kicking off his shoes.

"What the hell happened here?"

Nyberg was a brilliant forensic specialist, but he was moody and could be hard to work with. He seemed not to have understood that this emergency concerned a colleague. A dead colleague. Maybe Martinsson had forgotten to tell him.

"Do you know where you are?" Wallander asked carefully.

Nyberg shot him an angry look.

"Some flat on Lilla Norregatan," he answered. "But Martinsson was unusually muddled on the phone. What's going on?"

Wallander looked at him steadily. Nyberg noticed his demeanour and became quiet.

"It's Svedberg," Wallander said. "He's dead. It looks like he's been murdered."

"You mean Kalle?" Nyberg said incredulously.

Wallander nodded and felt a lump in his throat. Nyberg was one of the few who called Svedberg by his first name. His name was actually Karl Evert. Nyberg used his nickname, Kalle.

"He's in there," Wallander said. "Shot in the face with a shotgun."

Nyberg grimaced.

"I don't have to tell you what that looks like," Wallander said.

"No," Nyberg said. "You don't have to do that."

Nyberg went in. He turned away like the others when he reached the doorway. Wallander waited briefly, to give Nyberg a moment to comprehend what he saw in front of him. Then he walked over.

"I already have a question for you," he said. "One of the most important. As you see, the gun is at least two metres away from the body. My question is, could it have ended up over there if Svedberg committed suicide?"

Nyberg thought about it, then shook his head. "No," he said. "That's impossible. A shotgun aimed by himself wouldn't be thrown that far."

For a moment Wallander felt strangely relieved. Svedberg didn't kill himself, he thought.

People were beginning to congregate in the hall. The doctor arrived, as did Hansson. A technician was unpacking his bag.

"Please listen, everybody," Wallander said. "The person lying in there is your colleague, Officer Svedberg. He's dead, probably murdered. I want to prepare you for the fact that it's a terrible sight. We knew him and we grieve for him. He was our friend as well as our colleague and that makes our job much harder."

Wallander stopped. He felt he should say more but couldn't think of anything. He lacked the words. He returned to the kitchen while Nyberg and his assistants got to work. Holgersson was still sitting at the table.

"I have to call his cousin," she said. "If she's the closest living relative."

"I can do it," Wallander said. "After all, I already know her."

"Give me an overview of the events. What happened here?"

"I'll need Martinsson for that. I'll get him."

Wallander went out onto the stairs. The door to the next flat was slightly ajar. He knocked and went in. Martinsson was in the living room with four people. One of them was fully dressed, the others were still in their dressing gowns. There were two women and two men. He signalled for Martinsson to come with him.

"Please remain here for now," he told the others.

They went into the kitchen. Martinsson was very pale.

"Let's start from the beginning," Wallander said. "When was the last time anyone saw Svedberg?"

"I don't know if I was the last one," Martinsson said. "But I caught a glimpse of him in the canteen on Wednesday morning at around 11 a.m."

"How did he seem?"

"Since I didn't think about it, I suppose he must have been like he always was."

"You called me that afternoon. We decided to have a meeting on Thursday morning."

"I went into Svedberg's office straight after our conversation, but he wasn't there. At the front desk they told me he'd gone home for the day."

"What time did he leave?"

"I didn't ask."

"What did you do then?"

"I called him at home and left a message about the meeting. Then I called back a couple of times but I didn't get an answer."

Wallander thought hard. "Sometime on Wednesday, Svedberg leaves the police station. Everything seems normal. On Thursday he doesn't show up, which is unusual, regardless of whether he heard your message. Svedberg never stayed away without letting someone know."

"That means it could have happened as early as Wednesday," Lisa Holgersson said.

Wallander nodded. At what point does the normal suddenly become the abnormal? he thought. That's the moment we have to find.