The blood was pounding in his temples. The pain was so bad that he had tears in his eyes. At that moment he heard the outside door open.
Bergman had left the flat. Wallander bit his knuckles to keep from screaming. Through the sacking he saw the man stop suddenly. Right in front of him. He saw a flash. The shot, thought Wallander. Now I'm going to die.
He realised that Bergman had lit a cigarette. The footsteps moved away. Wallander was about to pass out. An image of Linda flickered before him.
With enormous effort he swung his body and with one hand managed to grab hold of one of the uprights on the scaffolding. He pulled himself up far enough to get a grip on the planks where his foot was wedged tight. He gathered all his remaining strength. Then he tugged hard. His foot broke loose, and he lost his grip. He landed on his back in a mound of gravel. He lay perfectly still, trying to feel if anything was broken.
When he stood up, he was so dizzy that he had to hold on to the wall so he wouldn't fall. It took him almost 20 minutes to make his way back to the car. He saw the hands of the station clock pointing to 4.30 a.m.
Wallander sank into the driver's seat and closed his eyes. Then he drove back to Ystad. I have to get some sleep, he thought. Tomorrow is another day. Then I'll do what has to be done.
He groaned when he saw his face in the bathroom mirror. He rinsed his wounds with warm water.
It was almost 6 a.m. by the time he crawled between the sheets. He set the alarm clock for 6.45. He didn't dare sleep any later than that.
He tried to find the position that hurt the least. Just as he was falling asleep, he was jerked awake by a bang on the front door. The morning paper. Then he stretched out again. In his dreams Anette Brolin was coming towards him. Somewhere a horse neighed.
It was Sunday, 14 January. The day dawned with increased wind from the northeast.Kurt Wallander slept.
CHAPTER 12
He thought he had slept for a long time, but when he woke up and looked at the clock, he realised that he had been asleep only briefly. The telephone had woken him. Rydberg was calling from a phone box in Malmo.
'Come on back,' said Wallander. 'You don't have to stand there freezing. Come here, to my place.''What happened?''It's him.''Are you sure?''Absolutely positive.''I'm on my way.'
Wallander climbed painfully out of bed. His body ached and his temples were throbbing. While the coffee was brewing, he sat at the kitchen table with a pocket mirror and a piece of cotton wool. With great difficulty he succeeded in fastening a gauze pad over the wound on his forehead. His whole face was a palette of shades of blue and purple.
Rydberg appeared in the doorway less than an hour later. While they drank coffee, Wallander told him his story.
'Good,' Rydberg said afterwards. 'Excellent work. Now we'll bring in those bastards. What was the name of the guy in Lund?'
'I forgot to look at the name in the doorway. And we're not the ones who'll bring them in. That's Bjork's job.''Is he back?'
'He was supposed to get in last night.''Then let's haul him out of his bed.'
'The prosecutor too. And we'll have to co-ordinate with Malmo and Lund, right?'
While Wallander was dressing, Rydberg was on the phone. Wallander was gratified to hear that he wasn't taking no for an answer. He wondered whether Anette Brolin's husband was visiting this weekend.
Rydberg stood in the bedroom doorway and watched him knot his tie.
'You look like a boxer,' he said, laughing. 'A punch-drunk boxer.''Did you get Bjork?'
'He seems to have spent the evening catching up with everything that's happened. He was relieved to hear that we had solved one of the murders, at least.''The prosecutor?''She'll come right away.'
'Was she the one who answered the phone?'
Rydberg looked at him in surprise. 'Who else would have answered?''Her husband, for instance.''What difference would that have made?'
Wallander didn't feel like answering. 'God, I feel like shit,' he said instead. 'Let's go.'
They went out into the early dawn. A gusty wind was still blowing and the sky was overcast with dark clouds.'You think it's going to snow?' asked Wallander.
'Not before February,' said Rydberg. 'I can feel it. But then it'll be a hard winter.'
A Sunday calm prevailed at the station. Noren had been relieved by Svedberg. Rydberg gave him a swift run down of what had happened during the night.
'Well, I'll be damned,' said Svedberg. 'A policeman?''An ex-policeman.''Where did he hide the car?'
'We don't know yet.''Is the case airtight?''I think so.'
Bjork and Anette Brolin arrived at the station at the same moment. Bjork, who was 54 and originally from Vastmanland, had a nice tan. Wallander had always imagined him to be the ideal chief for a medium-sized police district. He was friendly, not too intelligent, and at the same time extremely concerned with the good name and reputation of the police.
He gave Wallander a dismayed look. 'You look really terrible.''They beat me up,' said Wallander. 'Beat you up? Who?'
'The other officers. That's what happens when you're acting chief. They let you have it.' Bjork laughed.
Anette Brolin looked at him with what seemed to be genuine sympathy.'That must hurt,' she said.'I'll be all right,' replied Wallander.
He turned his face away when he answered, remembering that he had forgotten to brush his teeth. They all went into Bjork's office. Since there was no written report, Wallander gave a summary of the case. Bjork and Anette Brolin both asked a lot of questions.
'If it had been anyone but you who dragged me out of bed on Sunday morning with this kind of cops-and- robbers story, I wouldn't have believed it,' said Bjork.
Then he turned to Anette Brolin. 'Do we have enough to detain them? Or should we just bring them in for questioning?'
'I'll get the detention order on them based on the interrogation results,' said Anette Brolin. 'Then, of course, it would be good if that Romanian woman could identify the man in Lund in a line-up.''We'll need a court order for that,' said Bjork.
'Yes ' said Anette Brolin. 'But we could do a provisional identification.'Wallander and Rydberg looked at her with interest.
'We could bring in the woman,' she went on. 'Then they could pass each other in the corridor by chance.'
Wallander nodded in approval. Anette Brolin was a prosecutor who was Per Akeson's equal when it came to taking a flexible view of the rules.
'Right,' said Bjork. 'I'll get in touch with our colleagues in Malmo and Lund. Then we'll pick up the suspects in two hours. At ten o'clock.'
'What about the woman in the bed?' asked Wallander. 'The one in Lund?'
'We'll bring her in too,' said Bjork. 'How should we divide up the interrogations?'
'I want Bergman,' said Wallander. 'Rydberg can talk to the man who munches on apples.'
'At 3 p.m. we'll decide about the detention order,' said Anette Brolin. 'I'll be at home until then.'
Wallander accompanied her out to the reception. 'I was thinking about asking you to dinner last night,' he said. 'But something came up.'
'There'll be plenty more evenings,' she said. 'I think you've done a good job on this case. How did you work out that he was the one?''I didn't. It was just a hunch.'
He watched her as she headed towards town. It came to him that he hadn't thought of Mona at all since the
