woman. No sign of the shyness so characteristic of her in the old days. He gave her a hug, but felt there was something about it that wasn’t quite right.
She said she was hungry. It had started raining, and they ran to a cafe on Vasagatan, across from the main post office.
He watched her eat. He shook his head when she asked if he wanted anything.
“Mom was here last week,” she announced suddenly in between chews. “She wanted to show off her new man. Have you met him?”
“I haven’t spoken with her for more than six months,” said Wallander.
“I don’t think I like him,” she went on. “In fact, I got the impression he was more interested in me than he was in Mom.”
“Really?”
“He imports machine tools from France,” she said. “But he went on and on about playing golf. Did you know Mom had taken up golf?”
“No,” said Wallander, taken aback. “I didn’t know that.”
She stared at him for a moment before continuing.
“It’s not right that you don’t know what she’s up to,” she said. “I mean, she is the most important woman in your life to date. She knows all about you. She knows about that woman in Latvia, for instance.”
Wallander was surprised. He had never mentioned Baiba Liepa to his ex-wife.
“How come she knows about her?”
“Somebody must have told her.”
“Who?”
“Does it matter?”
“I just wondered.”
She suddenly changed the subject.
“What are you doing here in Stockholm?” she asked. “It can’t be just to see me.”
He told her what had happened. Traced all the events back to the day two weeks ago when his father had announced he was going to get married, and Robert Akerblom came to his office to report that his wife was missing. She listened attentively, and for the very first time he had the impression his daughter was a grown-up. A person who undoubtedly had much more experience in certain fields than he did himself.
“I’ve been missing somebody to talk to,” he said when he’d finished. “If only Rydberg were still alive. Do you remember him?”
“Was he the one who always seemed so miserable?”
“That’s the one. He could appear strict as well.”
“I remember him. I hoped you’d never be like him.”
Now it was his turn to change the subject.
“What do you know about South Africa?” he asked.
“Not a lot. Just that the blacks are treated like slaves. And I’m against that, of course. We had a visit at school by a black woman from South Africa. You just couldn’t believe what she had to say was true.”
“You know more than I do in any case,” he said. “When I was in Latvia last year, I often used to wonder how I could have gotten to be over forty without having a clue about what was going on in the world.”
“You just don’t keep in touch,” she said. “I remember when I was twelve, thirteen, and tried to ask you things. Neither you nor Mom had the slightest idea about what was going on beyond your own back yard. All you wanted to know about was the house and the flower beds and your work. Nothing else. Is that why you divorced?”
“You think?”
“You had made your lives a matter of tulip bulbs and new faucets in the bathroom. That’s all you ever talked about, when you did talk with each other, that is.”
“What’s wrong with talking about flowers?”
“The flower beds grew so high, you couldn’t see anything that was happening beyond them.”
He decided to put an end to that discussion.
“How much time do you have?”
“An hour, at least.”
“No time at all, really. How about meeting tonight, if you feel like it?”
They went out into the street when the rain had stopped.
“Don’t you find those high heels difficult to walk in?” he asked.
“Of course,” she replied. “But you get used to them. Like a try?”
Wallander was just pleased that she existed. Something inside him eased up. He watched as she walked to the subway, waving to him.
At that very moment it dawned on him what he had seen in the apartment in Hallunda earlier that day. What it was that had caught his attention, although he couldn’t say why.
Now he knew.
There was a shelf hanging on the wall, and on it was an ashtray. He’d seen an ashtray like that somewhere before. It might have been a coincidence. But he did not think so.
He remembered his meal at the Continental Hotel in Ystad. He’d started out in the bar. On the table in front of him was a glass ashtray. Exactly the same as the one in the guest room in Tania’s and Vladimir’s guest room.
Konovalenko, he thought.
At some time or other, he’s been at the Continental Hotel. He might even have been sitting at the same table as me. He couldn’t resist the temptation to take home one of their heavy glass ashtrays. A human failing, one of the most common. He could never have imagined that a detective inspector from Ystad would ever take a look at the little room in Hallunda where he occasionally spends his nights.
Wallander went up to his hotel room and thought he might not be such an incompetent cop after all. The times had not passed him by completely, not just yet. Maybe he was still capable of solving the pointless and brutal murder of a woman who happened to take a wrong turn not far from Krageholm.
He synopsized what he thought he had established so far. Louise Akerblom and Klas Tengblad had been shot by the same weapon. Tengblad by a white man with a foreign accent. The black African who had been around when Louise Akerblom was killed had been chased by a man who also had a foreign accent, and was probably called Konovalenko. This Konovalenko was known to Rykoff, even though he denied it. To judge by his build, Rykoff could very well be the guy who had rented the house from Alfred Hanson. And in Rykoff’s apartment was an ashtray that proved somebody had been to Ystad. It was not a lot to go on, and had it not been for the bullets, the link would have been tenuous, to say the least. But he also had his hunches, and he knew it made sense to pay attention to them. A raid on Rykoff could provide the answers they were so eager to obtain.
That evening he had dinner with Linda in a restaurant not far from the hotel.
This time he felt more secure in her presence. When he got to bed shortly before one, it occurred to him that this was the most pleasant evening he’d had for a long time.
Wallander arrived at the Kungsholmen police station just before eight the next morning. An audience of cops listened in astonishment to what he had discovered in Hallunda, and the conclusions he had drawn. As he spoke, he could feel the skepticism that surrounded him. But the desire of the cops to catch the man who had shot their colleague was overwhelming, and he could feel the mood slowly changing. In the end, nobody challenged his conclusions.
Things moved quickly throughout the morning. The apartment block in Hallunda was placed under observation while the raid was prepared. An energetic young prosecutor had no hesitation in approving plans for arrest.
The raid was set for two o’clock. Wallander kept discreetly in the background while Loven and his colleagues went through what was going to happen in detail. At about ten, right in the middle of the most chaotic phase of the preparations, he went to Loven’s office and made a call to Bjork in Ystad. He explained about the action planned for that afternoon, and how the murder of Louise Akerblom might soon be solved.
“I have to say it all sounds pretty improbable,” said Bjork.
“We live in an improbable world,” said Wallander.
“Whatever happens, you’ve done a good job,” said Bjork. “I’ll let everybody at this end know what’s going
