the bathroom, then the light in the kitchen. Everything will be the way it always is.
He stands by the window and realises that he's freezing. He thinks about Maria and Johannes. We've had a marriage with them too, he thinks, as neighbours and as farmers. We've helped each other, shared the hardships and the bad years. But we've shared the good times too. Together we've celebrated Midsummer and eaten Christmas dinner. Our children ran back and forth between the two farms as if they belonged to both. And now we're sharing the long-drawn-out years of old age.
Without knowing why, he opens the window, carefully so as not to wake Hanna. He holds on tight to the latch so that the gusty winter wind won't tear it out of his hand. But the night is completely calm, and he recalls that the weather report on the radio had said nothing about a storm approaching over the Scanian plain.
The starry sky is clear, and it is very cold. He is just about to close the window again when he thinks he hears a sound. He listens and turns, with his left ear towards the open window. His good ear, not his right that was damaged by all the time he spent cooped up in stuffy, rumbling tractors.
A bird, he thinks. A night bird calling. Suddenly he is afraid. Out of nowhere fear appears and seizes him. It sounds like somebody shouting. In despair, trying to be heard. A voice that knows it has to penetrate thick stone walls to catch the attention of the neighbours.
I'm imagining things, he thinks. There's nobody shouting. Who would it be? He shuts the window so hard that it makes a flower-pot jump, and Hanna wakes up.
'What are you doing?' she says, and he can hear that she's annoyed.As he replies, he feels sure. The terror is real.
'The mare isn't whinnying,' he says, sitting down on the edge of the bed. 'And the Lovgrens' kitchen window is wide open. And someone is shouting.'She sits up in bed.'What did you say?'
He doesn't want to answer, but now he's sure that it wasn't a bird that he heard.
'It's Johannes or Maria,' he says. 'One of them is calling for help.'
She gets out of bed and goes over to the window. Big and wide, she stands there in her white nightgown and looks out into the dark.
'The kitchen window isn't open,' she whispers. 'It's smashed.'
He goes over to her, and now he's so cold that he's shaking.
'There's someone shouting for help,' she says, and her voice quavers.'What should we do?''Go over there,' she replies. 'Hurry up!''But what if it's dangerous?''Aren't we going to help our best friends?'
He dresses quickly, takes the torch from the kitchen cupboard next to the corks and coffee cans. Outside, the clay is frozen under his feet. When he turns around he catches a glimpse of Hanna in the window. At the fence he stops. Everything is quiet. Now he can see that the kitchen window is broken. Cautiously he climbs over the low fence and approaches the white house. But no voice calls to him.
I am just imagining things, he thinks. I'm an old man who can't figure out what's really happening anymore. Maybe I did dream about the bulls last night. The bulls that I would dream were charging towards me when I was a boy, making me realise that someday I would die.
Then he hears the cry. It's weak, more like a moan. It's Maria. He goes over to the bedroom window and peeks cautiously through the gap between the curtain and the window frame.
Suddenly he knows that Johannes is dead. He shines his torch inside and blinks hard before he forces himself to look. Maria is crumpled up on the floor, tied to a chair. Her face is bloody and her false teeth lie broken on her spattered nightgown. All he can see of Johannes is a foot. The rest of his body is hidden by the curtain.
He limps back and climbs over the fence again. His knee aches as he stumbles desperately across the frozen clay. First he calls the police. Then he takes his crowbar from a closet that smells of mothballs.'Wait here,' he tells Hanna. 'You don't need to see this.'
'What happened?' she asks with tears of fright in her eyes.
'I don't know,' he says. 'But I woke up because the mare wasn't neighing in the night. I know that for sure.' It is 7 January 1990. Not yet dawn.
CHAPTER 2
The incoming call was logged by the Ystad police at 5.13 a.m. It was taken by an exhausted officer who had been on duty almost without a break since New Year's Eve. He listened to the stammering voice on the phone and thought at first that it was just a deranged senior citizen. But something sparked his attention nevertheless. He started asking questions. When the conversation was over, he hesitated for just a moment before lifting the receiver again and dialling a number he knew by heart.
Kurt Wallander was asleep. He had stayed up far too long the night before, listening to recordings of Maria Callas that a good friend had sent him from Bulgaria. Again and again he had played her
He looked at the clock as he reached for the phone. A car crash, he thought instantly. Treacherous ice and someone driving too fast and then spinning off the E65. Or trouble with refugees arriving from Poland on the morning ferry.
He sat up in bed and pressed the receiver to his cheek, feeling the sting of his unshaven skin. 'Wallander.''I hope I didn't wake you.' 'No, damn it. I'm awake.'
Why do I lie? he thought. Why don't I just tell the truth? That all I want is to go back to sleep and recapture in a fleeting dream the form of a naked woman.'I thought I should call you ''Traffic accident?'
'No, not exactly. An elderly farmer called and said his name was Nystrom. Lives in Lunnarp. He claimed that the woman next door was tied up on the floor and that someone was dead.'
Wallander thought rapidly about where Lunnarp was. Not so far from Marsvinsholm, in a region that was unusually hilly for Skane.'It sounded serious. I thought it best to call you at home.''Who have you got at the station right now?'
'Peters and Noren are out trying to find someone who broke a window at the Continental. Shall I call them?'
'Tell them to drive to the crossroads between Kade Lake and Katslosa and wait till I get there. Give them the address. When did the call come in?''A few minutes ago.''Sure it wasn't just some drunk calling?'
'Didn't sound like it.''Huh. All right then.'
Wallander dressed quickly without showering, poured himself a cup of the lukewarm coffee that was still in the thermos, and looked out the window. He lived on Mariagatan in central Ystad, and the facade of the building across from him was cracked and grey. He wondered fleetingly whether there would be any snow in Skane this winter. He hoped not. Scanian snowstorms always brought periods of uninterrupted drudgery. Car wrecks, snowbound women going into labour, isolated old people, and downed power lines. With the snowstorms came chaos, and he felt ill-equipped to deal with chaos this winter. Anxiety at his wife's departure still burned inside him.
He drove down Regementsgatan until he came out onto Osterleden. At Dragongatan he stopped at a red light, and he turned on the car radio to listen to the news. An excited voice was talking about a plane that had crashed on a far-off continent.
He drove out of the city, passing the newly-built furniture warehouse at the edge of town, and caught a
