'Yes, it is,' said Wallander. 'Sometimes I wonder what's happening to this country'
When he went out through the glass doors of the police station the wind hit him in the face. It was cold and biting, and he hunched his shoulders as he hurried to the car park. As long as it doesn't snow, he thought. Not until we catch whoever paid the visit to Lunnarp.
He clambered into his car and spent a long time looking through the cassettes he kept in the glove compartment. Without really making a decision, he shoved Verdi's
He ate a hamburger special. He ate it so fast that it gave him diarrhoea. As he sat on the toilet he noticed that he ought to change his underwear. He realised how exhausted he was. He didn't get up until someone banged on the door.
He filled the petrol tank, and drove east, through Sandskogen, turning off onto the road to Kaseberga. His father lived in a little farmhouse that seemed to have been flung onto a field between Loderup and the sea. It was just before 7 p.m. when he swung onto the gravel drive in front of the house. The drive had been the cause of the latest and most drawn-out of his arguments with his father. It had been a lovely cobblestone courtyard as old as the farmhouse itself. One day his father had got the idea of covering it with gravel. When Wallander had protested, he was outraged.'I don't need a guardian!' he had shouted.
'Why do you have to destroy the beautiful cobblestone courtyard?' Wallander had asked.
Then they had quarrelled. And now the courtyard was covered with grey gravel that crunched under the car's tyres. He could see that a light was on in the shed. Next time it could be my father, he thought. The night-time killers might pick him out as a suitable old man to rob, maybe even to murder.
No-one would hear him scream for help. Not in this wind, half a kilometre from the nearest neighbour, an old man himself.
He listened to the end of 'Dies Irae' before he climbed out of the car and stretched. He went over to the shed, which was his father's studio where he painted his pictures, as he had always done. This was one of Wallander's earliest childhood memories. The way his father had smelled of turpentine and oil. And the way he stood in front of his sticky easel in his dark-blue overalls and cut-off rubber boots.
Not until Wallander was 5 or 6 years old did he realise that his father wasn't working on the same painting year after year. It was just that the motif never changed. He painted a melancholy autumn landscape, with a shiny mirror of a lake, a crooked tree with bare branches in the foreground, and, far off on the horizon, mountain ranges surrounded by clouds that shimmered in an improbably colourful sunset. Now and then he would add a grouse standing on a stump at the far left edge of the painting.
At regular intervals men in silk suits with heavy gold rings on their fingers would visit the house. They came in rusty vans or shiny American gas-guzzlers, and they bought the paintings, with or without the grouse.
His father had been painting that same motif all his life. The family had lived off the sale of his paintings, which were sold at fairs and auctions. They had lived in Klagshamm outside Malmo, in a converted smithy. Wallander had grown up there with his sister Kristina, and their childhood had been wrapped in the pungent odour of turpentine.
When his father was widowed he sold the smithy and moved out to the country. Wallander had never really understood why, since his father was continually complaining about the loneliness.
He opened the door to the shed and saw that his father was working on a painting without the grouse. Just now he was painting the tree in the foreground. He muttered a greeting and continued dabbing with his brush. Wallander poured a cup of coffee from a dirty pot that stood on a smoking spirit stove.
He looked at his father, who was almost 80, short and stooped, but still radiating energy and strength of will. Am I going to look like him when I'm old? he thought. As a boy I took after my mother. Now I look like my grandfather. Maybe I'll be like my father when I get old.
'Have a cup of coffee,' said his father. 'I'll be ready in a minute.''I've got one,' said Wallander.'Then have another,' said his father.
He's in a bad mood, thought Wallander. He's a tyrant with his changeable moods. What does he want with me, anyway?
'I've got a lot to do,' said Wallander. 'Actually I have to work all night. I thought there was something you wanted.''Why do you have to work all night?''I have to sit at the hospital.''How come? Who's sick?'
Wallander sighed. Even though he had carried out hundreds of interrogations himself, he would never be able to match his father's persistence in questioning him. And his father didn't even give a damn about his career. Wallander knew that his father had been deeply disappointed when he had decided, at 18, to become a policeman. But he was never able to find out what aspirations his father had actually had for him. He had tried to talk to him about it, but without success.
On the few occasions that he had spent time with his sister Kristina, who lived in Stockholm and owned a beauty salon, he had tried to ask her, since he knew that she and his father were close. But even she had no idea. He drank the lukewarm coffee, wondering whether his father had wanted him to take up the brush and continue to paint the same motif for another generation.
His father put down his brush and wiped his hands on a dirty rag. When he came over to him and poured a cup of coffee, Wallander could smell the stink of dirty clothes and his father's unwashed body.
How do you tell your father that he smells bad? he thought. Maybe he can't take care of himself any longer. And then what do I do? I can't have him at my place, that would never work. We'd murder each other. He watched his father rub his nose with one hand as he slurped his coffee.
'You haven't come out to see me in a long time,' his father said reproachfully.'I was here the day before yesterday, wasn't I?''For half an hour!''Well, I was here, anyway.''Why don't you want to visit me?''I do! It's just that I have a lot to do sometimes.'
His father sat down on a rickety, ancient toboggan that creaked under his weight.
'I just wanted to tell you that your daughter came to visit me yesterday.'Wallander was astounded.'Linda was here?''Aren't you listening to what I'm telling you?' 'Why did she come?' 'She wanted a painting.' 'A painting?''Unlike you, she actually appreciates what I do.'
Wallander had a hard time believing what he was hearing. Linda had never shown any interest in her grandfather, except when she was very small.'What did she want?''A painting, I told you! You're not listening!'
'I am listening! Where did she come from? Where was she going? How the hell did she get out here? Do I have to drag everything out of you?'
'She came in a car,' said his father. 'A young man with a black face drove her.''What do you mean by black?''Haven't you heard of Negroes? He was very polite and
spoke excellent Swedish. I gave her the painting and then they left. I thought you'd like to know, since you have so litde contact with each other.''Where did they go?''How should I know?'
Wallander realised that neither of them knew where Linda actually lived. Occasionally she slept at her mother's house. But then she would quickly disappear again, off on her own mysterious paths. I've got to talk to Mona, he thought. Separated or not, we have to talk to each other. I can't stand this any more.'Do you want a drink?' his father asked.
The last thing Wallander wanted was a drink. But he knew it was useless to say no.'All right, thanks,' he said.
A path connected the shed with the house, which was low-ceilinged and sparsely furnished. Wallander noticed at once that it was messy and dirty. He doesn't even see the mess, he thought. And why didn't I notice it before? I've got to talk to Kristina about it. He can't keep living alone like this. At that moment the telephone rang. His father picked it up.
