The rest of Sunday was spent doing a technical investigation of the apartment and writing a case report. Martinson, one of the younger cops Wallander worked with, was sometimes careless and impulsive. All the same, Wallander liked working with him, not least because he often proved to be surprisingly perceptive. When Martinson and the police technician had left, Wallander did a very provisional repair job on the door.
He spent most of the night lying awake, thinking about how he’d beat the shit out of the thieves if he ever laid hands on them. When he could no longer bear to torture himself thinking about the loss of all his discs, he lay there worrying about what to do with his father, feeling more and more resigned to it all.
At dawn he got up, brewed some coffee and looked for his home insurance documents. He sat at his kitchen table going through the papers, getting increasingly annoyed at the insurance company’s incomprehensible jargon. In the end he flung the papers to one side and went to shave. When he cut himself, he considered calling the station and telling them he was sick, then going back to bed with the cover over his head. But the thought of being in his apartment without even being able to listen to a CD was too much for him.
Now it was half past seven in the morning and he was sitting in his office with the door closed. With a groan, he forced himself to become a policeman again, and replaced the phone.
It rang immediately. It was Ebba, the receptionist.
“Sorry to hear about the burglary,” she said. “Did they really take all your records?”
“They left me a few 78s. I thought I might listen to them tonight. If I can get hold of a wind-up gramophone.”
“It’s awful.”
“That’s the way it goes. What do you want?”
“There’s a man out here who insists on talking to you.”
“What about?”
“About some missing person or other.”
Wallander looked at the stack of case notes on his desk.
“Can’t Svedberg look after him?”
“Svedberg’s out hunting.”
“He’s what?”
“I don’t quite know what to call it. He’s out looking for a young bull that broke out of a field at Marsvinsholm. It’s running around on the E14- freeway, playing havoc with the traffic.”
“Surely the traffic cops can deal with that? Why should one of our men have to get involved?”
“It was Bjork who sent Svedberg.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Shall I send him in to you, then? The man who wants to report a missing person?”
Wallander nodded into the phone.
“All right,” he said.
The knock on his door a few minutes later was so discreet, Wallander was not sure at first whether he’d heard anything at all. When he shouted “Come in,” however, the door opened right away.
Wallander had always been convinced the first impression a person makes is crucial.
The man who entered Wallander’s office was not at all conspicuous. Wallander guessed he was about thirty- five with a dark brown suit, close-cropped blond hair, and glasses.
Wallander immediately noticed something else as well.
The man was obviously worried. Wallander was clearly not the only one with a sleepless night behind him.
He got to his feet and offered his hand.
“Kurt Wallander. Detective Inspector Wallander.”
“My name is Robert Akerblom,” said the man. “My wife has disappeared.”
Wallander was surprised by the man’s forthright statement.
“Let’s start from the beginning,” he said. “Please sit down. I’m afraid the chair’s a bit old. The left armrest keeps dropping off. Don’t worry about it.”
The man sat down on the chair.
He suddenly started sobbing, heart-broken, desperate.
Wallander remained standing at his desk, at a loss. Then he decided to wait.
The man in the visitor’s chair calmed down after a couple of minutes. He dried his eyes and blew his nose.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Something must have happened to Louise, though. She would never go away of her own accord.”
“Cup of coffee?” asked Wallander. “Maybe we can get a pastry or something as well.”
“No thank you,” said Robert Akerblom.
Wallander nodded and took a notebook out of one of the desk drawers. He used regular note pads he bought himself at the local bookstore, with his own money. He’d never managed to get around to coping with the flood of printed report forms the Central Police Authority used to overwhelm the force with. He’d occasionally thought of writing a letter to Swedish Policeman proposing that whoever drew up the forms should be presented with printed replies.
“You’d better start by giving me your personal details,” said Wallander.
“My name’s Robert Akerblom,” the man said. “I run Akerblom’s Real Estate with my wife.”
Wallander nodded as he wrote. He knew the offices were close to the Saga cinema.
“We have two children,” Robert Akerblom went on, “ages four and seven. Two girls. We live in a row house, 19 Akarvagen. I was born in this town. My wife comes from Ronneby.”
He broke off, took a photo out of his inside pocket, and put it on the desk in front of Wallander. It was a woman; she looked like any other woman. She was smiling at the photographer, and Wallander could see it was taken in a studio. He contemplated her face and decided it was somehow or other just right for Robert Akerblom’s wife.
“The photo was taken only three months ago,” said Robert Akerblom. “That’s exactly what she looks like.”
“And she’s disappeared, has she?” asked Wallander.
“Last Friday she was at the Savings Bank in Skurup, clinching a property deal. Then she was going to look at a house somebody was putting on the market. I spent the afternoon with our accountant, at his office. I stopped in at the agency on my way home. She’d left a message on the answering machine saying she’d be home by five. She said it was a quarter after three when she called. That’s the last we know.”
Wallander frowned. It was Monday today. She’d already been away for three days. Three whole days, with two small children waiting for her at home.
Wallander felt instinctively that this was no ordinary disappearance. He knew that most people who went missing came back sooner or later, and that a natural explanation would gradually emerge. It was very common for people to go away for a few days or even a week, for instance, and forget to tell anybody. On the other hand, he also knew that relatively few women abandoned their children. That worried him.
He made a few notes on his pad.
“Do you still have the message she left on the answering machine?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Robert Akerblom. “I didn’t think of bringing the cassette with me, though.”
“That’s OK, we’ll sort that out later,” said Wallander. “Was it clear where she was calling from?”
“She used the car phone.”
Wallander put down his pen and contemplated the man on the visitor’s chair. His anxiety gave the impression of being absolutely genuine.
“You can’t think of why she might have had to go away?” Wallander asked.
“No.”
“She can’t be visiting friends?”
“No.”
“Relatives?”
“No.”
“There’s no other possibility you can think of?”
