assume that the two cases are linked. There is no other satisfactory explanation.'
He looked at his colleagues, who were all staring fixedly at him. The Caribbean island and the endless sands at Skagen were now far, far away. He was aware that he had sloughed off that skin, and returned to the life he thought he had abandoned for good.
'In short, I have only one more thing to say,' he said, thoughtfully. 'I can prove he was murdered.'
Nobody spoke. Martinsson eventually broke the silence.
'By whom?'
'By somebody who made a bad mistake.' Wallander rose to his feet.
Soon afterwards they were in three cars in a convoy on their way to that fateful stretch of road near Brosarp Hills.
When they got there dusk was settling in.
Chapter 4
In the late afternoon of November 1, Olof Jonsson, a Scanian farmer, had a strange experience. He was walking his fields, planning ahead for the spring sowing, when he caught sight of a group of people standing in a semicircle up to their ankles in mud, as if looking down at a grave. He always carried binoculars with him when he was inspecting his land - he sometimes saw deer along the edge of one of the copses that here and there separated the fields - so he was able to get a good view of them. One of them he thought he recognised - something familiar about the face - but he could not place him. Then he realised that the four men and one woman were in the place where the old man had died in his car the previous week. He did not want to intrude, so he lowered his binoculars. Presumably they were relatives who had come to pay their respects by visiting the scene of his death. He turned and walked away.
When they came to the scene of the accident Wallander started to wonder, just for a moment, if he had imagined it all. Perhaps it wasn't a chair leg he had found in the mud and thrown away. As he strode into the field the others stayed on the road, waiting. He could hear their voices, but not what they said.
They think I've lost my grasp, he thought, as he searched for the leg. They wonder if I am fit to be back in my old job after all.
But there was the chair leg, at his feet. He examined it quickly, and now he was certain. He turned and beckoned to his colleagues. Moments later they were grouped round the chair leg lying in the mud.
'You could be right,' Martinsson said, hesitantly. 'I remember there was a broken chair in the boot. This could be a piece of it.'
'I think it's very odd, even so,' Bjork said. 'Can you repeat your line of reasoning, Kurt?'
'It's simple,' Wallander said. 'I read Martinsson's report. It said that the boot had been locked. There's no way that the boot could have sprung open and then reclosed and locked itself. In that case the back of the car would have been scored or dented when it hit the ground, but it isn't.'
'Have you been to look at the car?' Martinsson said, surprised.
'I'm simply trying to catch up with the rest of you,' Wallander said, and felt as if he were making excuses, as if his visit to Niklasson's had implied that he didn't trust Martinsson to conduct a simple accident investigation. Which was true, in fact, but irrelevant. 'It just seems to me that a man alone in a car that rolls over and over and lands up in a field doesn't then get out, open the boot, take out a leg of a broken chair, shut the boot again, get back into the car, fasten his safety belt and then die as a result of a blow to the back of the head.'
Nobody spoke. Wallander had seen this before, many times. A veil is peeled away to reveal something nobody expected to see.
Svedberg took a plastic bag from his overcoat pocket and carefully slotted the chair leg into it.
'I found it about five metres from here,' Wallander said, pointing. 'I picked it up, and then tossed it away.'
'A bizarre way to treat a piece of evidence,' Bjork said.
'I didn't know at the time that it had anything to do with the death of Gustaf Torstensson,' Wallander said. 'And I still don't know what the chair leg is telling us exactly.'
'If I understand you rightly,' Bjork said, ignoring Wallander's comment, 'this must mean that somebody else was there when Torstensson's accident took place. But that doesn't necessarily mean he was murdered. Somebody might have stumbled upon the crashed car and looked to see if there was anything in the boot worth stealing. In that case it wouldn't be so odd if the person concerned didn't get in touch with the police, or if he threw away a leg from the broken chair. People who rob dead bodies very rarely publicise their activities.'
'That's true,' Wallander said.
'But you said you could prove he was murdered,' Bjork said.
'I was overstating the case,' Wallander said. 'All I meant was that this goes some way towards changing the situation.'
They made their way back to the road.
'We'd better have another look at the car,' Martinsson said. 'The forensic boys will be a bit surprised when we send them a broken kitchen chair, but that can't be helped.'
Bjork made it plain that he would like to put an end to this roadside discussion. It was raining again, and the wind was getting stronger.
'Let's decide tomorrow where we go from here,' he said. 'We'll investigate the various leads we've got, and unfortunately we don't have very many. I don't think we're going to get any further at the moment.'
As they returned to their cars, Hoglund hung back. 'Do you mind if I go in your car?' she said. 'I live in Ystad itself, Martinsson has child seats everywhere and Bjork's car is littered with fishing rods.'
Wallander nodded. They were the last to leave. They drove in silence for several kilometres. It felt odd to Wallander to have somebody sitting beside him. He realised he had not spoken properly to anybody apart from his daughter since the day 18 months ago when he had lapsed into his long silence.
She was the one who finally started talking. 'I think you're right,' she said. 'There must be a connection between the two deaths.'
'It's a possibility we'll have to look into in any case,' Wallander said.
They could see a patch of sea to the left. There were white horses riding on the waves.
'Why does anybody become a police officer?' Wallander wondered aloud.
'I can't answer for others,' she said, 'but I know why I became one. I remember from Police Training College that hardly anybody had the same dreams as the other students.'
'Do police officers have dreams?' Wallander said, in surprise.
She turned to him. 'Everybody has dreams,' she said. 'Even police officers. Don't you?'
Wallander didn't know what to say, but her question was a good one, of course. Where have my dreams gone to? he thought. When you're young, you have dreams that either fade away or develop into a driving force that spurs you on. What have I got left of all my ambitions?
'I became a police officer because I decided not to become a vicar,' she said. 'I believed in God for a long time. My parents are Pentecostalists. But one day I woke up and found it had all gone. I agonised for ages over what to do, but then something happened that made my mind up for me, and I resolved to become a police officer.'
'Tell me,' he said. 'I need to know why people still want to become police officers.'
'Some other time,' she said. 'Not now.'
They were approaching Ystad. She told him how to get to where she lived, to the west of the town, in one of the newly built brick houses with a view over the sea.
'I don't even know if you have a family,' Wallander said, as they turned into a road that was still only half finished.
'I have two children,' she said. 'My husband's a service mechanic. He installs and repairs pumps all over the world, and is hardly ever at home. But he's earned enough for us to buy the house.'
'Sounds like an exciting job.'
'I'll invite you round one evening when he's at home. He can tell you himself what it's like.'
He drew up outside her house.
