peek in through the high, half-open doors.
She was surprised by what she saw. There were two cars in there. She was not well-versed in cars, but she couldn’t help noticing that one was an extremely expensive Mercedes, and the other an equally valuable BMW.
There must be somebody in, then, she thought, and continued toward the whitewashed house. Somebody who’s not short of cash.
She knocked at the door, but nothing happened. She knocked again, harder this time; still no answer. She tried to peek in through a window next to the door, but the drapes were drawn. She knocked a third time, before going to see if there was a back door.
Behind the house was an overgrown orchard. The apple trees had certainly not been pruned for twenty or thirty years. Some half-rotten garden furniture was standing under a pear tree. A magpie flapped its wings loudly and flew away. She couldn’t find a door, and returned to the front of the house.
I’ll knock just one more time, she thought. If nobody answers, I’ll go back to Ystad. There’ll be time to stop by the sea for a while before I need to start making dinner.
She hammered on the door.
Still no answer.
She could feel rather than hear that someone had come up behind her from the courtyard. She turned abruptly.
The man was about a meter away from her. He was motionless, looking straight at her. She saw he had a scar on his forehead.
She suddenly felt uneasy.
Where had he come from? Why hadn’t she heard him? The courtyard was graveled. Had he crept up on her?
She took a step toward him and tried to sound normal.
“I hope I’m not intruding,” she said. “I’m a real estate agent, and I’m lost. I just wanted to ask my way.”
The man did not answer.
Maybe he’s not Swedish, she thought. Maybe he couldn’t understand what she was saying. There was something strange about his appearance that made her think he could be a foreigner.
She suddenly knew she had to get away. The motionless man and his cold eyes were scaring her.
“I won’t disturb you any longer,” she said. “Sorry to intrude.”
She started to walk away but stopped in mid-stride. The motionless man had suddenly come to life. He took something out of his jacket pocket. At first she couldn’t see what it was. Then she realized it was a pistol.
Slowly, he raised the gun and pointed it at her head.
Good God, she managed to think.
Good God, please help me. He’s going to kill me.
Good God, help me.
It was a quarter to four in the afternoon of April 24, 1992.
Chapter Two
When Detective Chief Inspector Kurt Wallander arrived at the police station in Ystad on Monday morning, April 27, The was furious. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in such a bad mood. His anger had even left its traces on his face, a band-aid on one cheek where he cut himself shaving.
He muttered a reply to colleagues who said good morning. When he got to his office, he slammed the door behind him, took the phone off its hook, and sat staring out the window.
Kurt Wallander was forty-four years old. He was considered a proficient cop, persistent and occasionally astute. That morning, though, he felt only anger and an increasingly bad temper. Sunday had been one of those days he would have preferred to forget all about.
One of the causes was his father, who lived alone in a house on the plain just outside Loderup. His relationship with his father had always been complicated. Things had gotten no better over the years as Kurt Wallander realized, with a growing feeling of annoyance, that he was becoming more and more like him. He tried to imagine himself at the same stage as his father, but this made him feel ill at ease. Would he also end up a sullen and unpredictable old man, capable of suddenly doing something absolutely crazy?
On Sunday afternoon Kurt Wallander had visited his father as usual. They played cards and drank coffee out on the veranda in the warm spring sunshine. Out of the blue his father announced his intention of getting married. Kurt Wallander thought at first he had misheard him.
“No,” he said, “I’m not going to get married.”
“I’m not talking about you,” his father responded, “I’m talking about me.”
Kurt Wallander stared at him in disbelief.
“You’re almost eighty,” he said. “You aren’t getting married.”
“I’m not dead yet,” interrupted his father. “I’ll do whatever I like. You’d be better off asking me who.”
Kurt Wallander did as he was told.
“You ought to be able to work it out for yourself,” said his father. “I thought cops were paid to draw conclusions?”
“But you don’t know anybody your age, do you? You keep pretty much to yourself.”
“I know one,” said his father. “And anyway, who says you have to marry somebody your own age?”
Kurt Wallander suddenly realized there was only one possibility: Gertrud Anderson, the fifty-year-old woman who came to do the cleaning and wash his father’s feet three times a week.
“Are you going to marry Gertrud?” he asked. “Have you thought of asking her if she wants to? There’s thirty years between you. How do you think you’re going to be able to live with another person? You’ve never been able to. Not even with my mother.”
“I’ve grown better-tempered in my old age,” replied his father mildly.
Kurt Wallander couldn’t believe his ears. His father was going to get married? Better-tempered in his old age? Now, when he was more impossible than he’d ever been?
Then they had quarreled. It ended up with his father throwing his coffee cup into the tulip bed and locking himself in the shed where he used to paint his pictures with the same motif, repeated over and over again: sunset in an autumnal landscape, with or without a wood grouse in the foreground, depending on the taste of whoever commissioned it.
Kurt Wallander drove home much too fast. He had to put a stop to this crazy business. How on earth could Gertrud Anderson work for his father for a year and not see it was impossible to live with him?
He parked the car on Mariagatan in central Ystad where he lived, and made up his mind to call his sister Kristina in Stockholm right away. He would ask her to come to Skane. Nobody could change his father’s mind. But perhaps Gertrud Anderson could be made to see sense.
He never got around to calling his sister. When he got up to his apartment on the top floor, he could see the door had been broken open. A few minutes later it was clear the thieves had marched off with his brand-new stereo equipment, CD player, all his discs and records, the television, radio, clocks, and a camera. He slumped into a chair and just sat there for a long while, wondering what to do. In the end, he rang his workplace and asked to speak with one of the CID inspectors, Martinson, who he knew was on duty that Sunday.
He was kept waiting for ages before Martinson eventually came to the phone. Wallander guessed he’d been having coffee and chatting to some of the cops who were taking a rest from the big traffic operation they were mounting that weekend.
“Martinson here. How can I help you?”
“It’s Wallander. You’d better get your ass over here.”
“Where? To your office? I thought you were off today?”
“I’m at home. Get out here.”
Martinson evidently realized it must be serious. He asked no more questions.
“OK,” he said. “I’m on my way ”
