“I mean what I say,” said Svedberg again. “Nothing has happened. That’s what you have to remember. You’ll just have to believe me when I say it’s important.”
“Is there anything we can do?” asked Peters.
“Yes,” said Svedberg. “Go home and get some sleep.”
Then Svedberg searched in vain for clues in the courtyard and inside the house. He searched the copse where the oil drum had been. There were tire tracks leading there, but nothing else. He went back to the house and spoke again with Wallander’s father. He was in the kitchen drinking coffee, and was scared stiff.
“What’s happened?” he asked, worried. “There’s no sign of Linda.”
“I don’t know,” said Svedberg, honestly. “But it’ll all work itself out, that’s for sure.”
“You think?” said Wallander’s father. His voice was full of doubt. “I could hear how upset Kurt was on the telephone. Where is he, come to that? What’s going on?”
“I guess it’ll be best if he explains that himself,” said Svedberg, getting to his feet. “I’m going to see him.”
“Say hello from me,” said the old man. “Tell him I’m doing just fine.”
“I’ll do that,” said Svedberg, and left.
Wallander was barefoot on the gravel outside Sten Widen’s house when Svedberg drove up. It was nearly eleven in the morning. Svedberg explained in detail what must have happened while they were still out in the courtyard. He did not refrain from mentioning how easily Peters and Noren had been lured away for the short time needed to abduct his daughter. Finally he passed on the greeting from his father.
Wallander listened attentively all the time. Even so, Svedberg had the impression there was something distant about him. Normally he could always look Wallander in the eye when he spoke to him, but now his eyes were wandering about aimlessly. Svedberg could see that mentally, he was with his daughter, wherever she might be.
“No clues?” asked Wallander.
“Nothing at all.”
Wallander nodded. They went into the house.
“I’ve been trying to think,” said Wallander when they sat down. Svedberg could see his hands were shaking.
“This is Konovalenko’s work, of course,” he continued. “Just as I’d feared. It’s all my fault. I ought to have been there. Everything should have been different. Now he’s using my daughter to get hold of me. He evidently has no assistants. He’s working on his own.”
“He must have at least one,” objected Svedberg cautiously. “If I understood Peters and Noren right, he couldn’t possibly have had time to light the fire himself, then tie up your dad and run off with your daughter.”
Wallander thought for a moment.
“The oil drum was lit by Tania,” he said. “Rykoff’s wife. So there are two of them. We don’t know where they are. Presumably in a house somewhere in the countryside. Not far from Ystad. A remotely situated house. A house we could have found if circumstances had been different. We can’t now.”
Sten Widen tiptoed to the table and served coffee. Wallander looked at him.
“I need something stronger,” he said.
Sten Widen returned with a half-empty bottle of whiskey. Without hesitation Wallander took a gulp straight from the bottle.
“I’ve been trying to figure out what’ll happen next,” said Wallander. “He’ll get in touch with me. And he’ll use my dad’s house. That’s where I’ll wait until I hear from him. I don’t know what he’ll propose. At best my life for hers. At worst, God only knows.”
He turned to Svedberg.
“That’s how I see it,” he said. “Do you think I’m wrong?”
“You’re probably right,” replied Svedberg. “The question is just what we’re going to do about it.”
“Nobody should do anything,” said Wallander. “No cops around the house, nothing. Konovalenko will smell the slightest whiff of danger. I’ll have to be alone in the house with my father. Your job will be to make sure nobody goes there.”
“You can’t handle this on your own,” said Svedberg. “You’ve got to let us help you.”
“I don’t want my daughter to die,” said Wallander quite simply. “I have to sort this out myself.”
Svedberg realized the conversation was over. Wallander had made up his mind.
“I’ll take you to Loderup,” said Svedberg.
“That won’t be necessary. You can take the Duett,” said Sten Widen.
Wallander nodded.
He almost fell as he stood up. He grabbed the edge of the table.
“No problem,” he said.
Svedberg and Sten Widen stood in the courtyard, watching him drive off in the Duett.
“How will it all end?” asked Svedberg.
Sten Widen did not answer.
When Wallander reached Loderup he found his father painting in his studio.
Wallander saw that for the first time ever he had abandoned his eternal theme, a landscape in the evening sun, with or without a wood grouse in the front corner. This time he was painting a different landscape, darker, more chaotic. The picture did not hang together. The woods were growing directly out of the lake, and the mountains in the background overwhelmed the viewer.
He put down his brushes after Wallander had been standing behind his back for a while. When he turned around Wallander could see he was scared.
“Let’s go in,” said his father. “I sent the aide home.”
His father placed his hand on Wallander’s shoulder. He could not remember the last time the old man had made a gesture like that.
When they were inside Wallander told him everything that had happened. He could see his father was incapable of separating out the various incidents as they crisscrossed one another. Even so he wanted to give him an idea of what had been going on these last three weeks. He did not want to hide the fact that he had killed another human being, nor that his daughter was in great danger. The man holding her prisoner, who had tied him up in his own bed, was absolutely ruthless.
Afterwards his father sat looking down at his hands.
“I can deal with it,” said Wallander. “I’m a good cop. I’ll stay here until this man contacts me. It could be any time now. Or he could wait until tomorrow.”
The afternoon was close to being evening, and still no word from Konovalenko. Svedberg called twice, but Wallander had nothing new to tell him. He sent his father out into the studio to go on painting. He couldn’t stand him sitting in the kitchen, staring at his hands. His father would normally have been furious at the thought of having to do what his son told him, but on this occasion he just stood up and went. Wallander paced up and down, sat down on a chair for a moment, then got up again right away. Occasionally he would go out into the courtyard and gaze out over the fields. Then he would come back in and start pacing again. He tried eating twice, but could not tolerate anything. His anguish, his worry and his helplessness made it impossible for him to think straight. On several occasions Robert Akerblom came into his mind. But he sent him packing, scared that the very thought could be a bad omen for what might happen to his daughter.
Evening came and Konovalenko still had not made contact. Svedberg called to say he could be reached at home from now on. Wallander called Sten Widen but did not really have anything to say. At ten o’clock he sent his father to bed. It was spring, and still light outside. He sat on the steps outside the kitchen door for a while. When he was sure his father was asleep, he called Baiba Liepa in Riga. No reply at first. But she was home when he tried again half an hour later. He was icily calm as he told her his daughter had been abducted by a very dangerous man. He said he had no one to talk to, and just then he felt he was telling the absolute truth. Then he apologized once again for the night when he had been drunk and woken her up with his call. He tried to explain his feelings for her, but without success. The words he needed were outside his grasp of English. Before hanging up he promised to get back to her. She listened to what he had to say, but hardly said anything herself from start to finish. Afterwards he wondered whether he really had been talking to her, or whether it was all in his imagination.
He spent a sleepless night. Occasionally he slumped down into one of his father’s worn old armchairs and
