'Papa,' she said, and he heard the coin dropping into the pay phone.'Hello,' he said. 'Where are you calling from?'
Just so long as it's not Lima, he thought. Or Katmandu. Or Kinshasa.'I'm here in Ystad.'He felt happy. That meant he'd get to see her.
'I came to visit you,' she said. 'But I've changed my plans. I'm at the train station. I'm leaving now. I just wanted to tell you that at least I thought about seeing you.'
Then the conversation was cut off, and he was left sitting there with the receiver in his hand. It was like holding something dead, something hacked off. That damned kid, he thought. Why does she do things like this?
His daughter Linda was 19. Until she was 15 their relationship had been good. She came to him rather than to her mother when she had a problem or when there was something she really wanted to do but didn't quite dare. He had seen her metamorphose from a chubby little girl to a young woman with a defiant beauty. Before she was 15, she never gave any hint that she was carrying around secret demons that one day would drive her into a precarious and inscrutable landscape.
One spring day, soon after her 15th birthday, Linda had without warning tried to commit suicide. It happened on a Saturday afternoon. Wallander had been fixing one of the garden chairs and his wife was washing the windows. He had put down his hammer and gone into the house, driven by a sudden unease. Linda was lying on the bed in her room. She had used a razor to cut her wrists and her throat. Afterwards, when it was all over, the doctor told Wallander that she would have died if he hadn't come in when he did and had the presence of mind to apply pressure bandages.
He couldn't get over the shock. All contact between him and Linda was broken off. She pulled away, and he never managed to understand what had driven her to attempt suicide. When she finished school she took a string of odd jobs, and would abruptly disappear for long periods of time. Twice his wife had pressed him to report her missing. His colleagues had seen his pain when Linda became the subject of his own investigation. But then she would reappear, and the only way he could follow her travels was to go through her pockets and leaf through her passport on the sly.
Hell, he thought. Why didn't you stay? Why did you change your mind?
The telephone rang again and he snatched up the receiver.'This is Papa,' said Wallander without thinking.
'What do you mean?' said his father. 'What do you mean by picking up the phone and saying Papa? I thought you were a policeman.'
'I don't have time to talk to you right now. Can I call you later?''No, you can't. What's so important?'
'Something serious happened this morning. I'll call later.'
'So what happened?'
His elderly father called him almost every day. On several occasions Wallander had told the switchboard not to put through any calls from him. But then his father saw through his ruse and started giving false names and disguising his voice to fool the operators.Wallander saw only one possibility of evading him.
'I'll come out and see you tonight,' he said. 'Then we can talk.'
His father reluctantly let himself be persuaded. 'Come at seven. I'll have time to see you then.'
'I'll be there at seven. See you.'
Wallander hung up and pushed the button to block incoming calls. For a moment he considered taking the car and driving down to the train station to try and find his daughter. Talk to her, try to rekindle the contact that had been lost so mysteriously. But he knew that he wouldn't do it. He didn't want to risk her running away from him for good.The door opened and Naslund stuck his head in.'Hello,' he said. 'Should I show him in?''Show who in?'Naslund looked at his watch.
'It's nine o'clock. You told me yesterday that you wanted Klas Manson here for an interview at nine.' 'Who's Klas Manson?'
Naslund looked at him quizzically. 'The guy who robbed the shop on Osterleden. Have you forgotten about him?'
It came back to Wallander, and at the same time he realised that Naslund obviously hadn't heard about the murder that had been committed in the night.
'You deal with Manson,' he said. 'We had a murder last night out in Lunnarp. Maybe a double murder. An elderly couple. You can take over Manson. But put it off for a while. The thing we have to do first is plan the investigation at Lunnarp.'
'Manson's lawyer is already here,' said Naslund. 'If I send him away, he's going to raise hell.'
'Do a preliminary questioning,' said Wallander. 'If the lawyer makes a fuss later, it can't be helped. Set up a case meeting in my office for ten o'clock. Make sure everyone comes.'
Now he was in motion. He was a policeman again. His anxiety about his daughter and his wife would have to wait. Right now he had to begin the arduous hunt for a murderer. He removed the piles of paper from his desk, tore up a football lottery form he wouldn't get around to filling out anyway, and went out to the canteen and poured himself a cup of coffee.
At 10 a.m. everyone gathered in his office. Rydberg had been called in from the scene of the crime and was sitting in a chair by the window. Seven police officers in all, sitting and standing, filled the room. Wallander phoned the hospital and managed to ascertain that Mrs Lovgren's condition was still critical. Then he told them what had happened.
'It was worse than you could imagine,' he said. 'Wouldn't you say so, Rydberg?'
'You're right,' replied Rydberg. 'Like an American movie. It even smelt like blood. That doesn't usually happen.'
'We have to find whoever did this,' said Wallander, concluding his presentation. 'We can't leave maniacs like this on the loose.'
The policemen fell silent. Rydberg was drumming his fingertips on the arm of his chair. A woman could be heard laughing in the corridor outside. Wallander looked around the room. All of them were his colleagues. None of them was his close friend. And yet they were a team.'Well,' he said, 'what are we waiting for? Let's get started.'It was 10.40 a.m.
CHAPTER 3
At 4 p.m. that afternoon Wallander discovered that he was hungry. He hadn't had a chance to eat lunch. After the case meeting in the morning he had spent his time organising the hunt for the murderers in Lunnarp. He found himself thinking about them in the plural. He had a hard time imagining that one person could have been responsible for that blood bath.
It was dark outside when he sank into the chair behind his desk to try and put together a statement for the press. There was a pile of messages, left by one of the women from the switchboard. After searching in vain for his daughter's name among the slips, he placed them all in his in-tray. To escape the unpleasantness of standing in front of the TV cameras of News South and telling them that at present the police had no leads on the criminal or criminals who had carried the heinous murder of Johannes Lovgren, Wallander had appealed to Rydberg to take on that task. But he had to write and give the press release himself. He took a sheet of paper from a desk drawer. But what would he write? The day's work had involved little more than collecting a large number of questions.
It had been a day of waiting. In the intensive care unit the old woman who had survived the noose was fighting for her life. Would they ever find out what she had witnessed on that appalling night in the lonely farmhouse?
Or would she die before she could tell them anything?
