them might have a grudge.'
'We've already started on that,' Wallander said.
They agreed to meet in Akeson's office that afternoon.
Wallander forced himself to return to the investigation plan he had started to sketch out, but his concentration wandered. He put his pen down in irritation and went to fetch a cup of coffee. He hurried back to his office, not wanting to meet anybody. It was 8.15 by now. He drank his coffee and wondered how long it would be before he lost his fear of being with people. At 8.30 he gathered his papers together and went to the conference room. On the way there it struck him that unusually little had been achieved during the five or six days that had passed since Sten Torstensson had been found murdered. All murder investigations are different, but there always used to be a mood of intense urgency among the officers involved. Something had changed while he had been away. What?
They were all present by 8.40, and Bjork tapped the table as a sign that work was about to commence. He turned at once to Wallander.
'Kurt,' he said, 'you've just come into this case and can view it with fresh eyes. What do you think we should do now?'
'I hardly think I'm the one to decide that,' Wallander said. 'I haven't had time to get into it properly.'
'On the other hand, you're the only one who's so far come up with anything useful,' Martinsson said. 'If I know you, you'll have sat up last night and sketched out an investigation plan. Am I right?'
Wallander nodded. He realised that in fact he had no objection to taking over the case.
'I have tried to write a summary,' he began. 'But first let me tell you about something that happened just over a week ago, when I was in Denmark. I ought to have mentioned it yesterday, but it was all a bit hectic for me, to say the least.'
Wallander told his astonished colleagues about Sten Torstensson's trip to Skagen. He tried hard to leave out no detail. When he finished, there was silence. Bjork eventually spoke, making no attempt to conceal the fact that he was cross.
'Very odd,' he said. 'I don't know why it is that you always seem to find yourself in situations that are out of normal procedures.'
'I did refer him to you,' Wallander objected, and could feel his anger rising.
'It's nothing for us to get excited about now,' Bjork said impassively. 'But it is a bit strange, you must agree. What is of course clear is that we have to reopen the investigation into Gustaf Torstensson's accident.'
'It seems to me both natural and necessary that we advance on two fronts,' Wallander said. 'The assumption being that two people have been murdered, not one. It's a father and a son, moreover. We have to think two thoughts at the same time. There may be a solution to be found in their private lives, but it might also be something to do with their work, two lawyers working for the same firm of solicitors. The fact that Sten came to see me to talk about his father being on edge might suggest that the key concerns Gustaf Torstensson. But that is not a foregone conclusion - for one thing, there's the postcard Sten sent to Mrs Duner from Finland when at the time he was in Denmark.'
'That tells us something else as well,' Hoglund said.
Wallander nodded. 'That Sten also thought that he was under threat. Is that what you mean?'
'Yes,' Hoglund said. 'Why else would he have laid a false trail?'
Martinsson put his hand up, indicating he wanted to say something. 'It would be simplest if we split into two groups,' he said. 'One to concentrate on the father, and the other on the son. Then let's see if we come up with anything that points in the same direction.'
'I agree with that,' Wallander said. 'At the same time I can't help thinking there's something odd about all this. Something we ought to have discovered already.'
'All murder cases are odd, surely,' Svedberg said.
'Yes, but there's something more,' Wallander said. 'And I can't put my finger on it.'
Bjork indicated it was time to conclude the meeting.
'As I've already started delving into what happened to Gustaf Torstensson, I might as well go on,' Wallander said. 'If nobody has any objections.'
'The rest of us can devote ourselves to Sten Torstensson, then,' Martinsson said. 'Can I assume that you'll want to work on your own to start with, as usual?'
'Not necessarily. But if I understand it rightly, the Sten case is much more complicated. His father didn't have so many clients. His life seems to be more transparent.'
'Let's do that then,' Bjork said, shutting his diary with a thud. 'We'll meet every day at 4.00, as usual, to see how far we've got. Oh, and I need help with a press conference later today.'
'Not me,' Wallander said. 'I haven't got the strength.'
'I thought Ann-Britt might do it,' Bjork said. 'It won't do any harm for people to know she's here with us now.'
'That's fine by me,' she said, to the others' surprise. 'I need to learn about such things.'
After the meeting Wallander asked Martinsson to stay behind. When the others had left, he closed the door.
'We need to have a few words,' Wallander said. 'I feel as though I'm barging in and taking over, when what I was really supposed to be doing was confirming my resignation.'
'We're all a bit surprised, certainly,' Martinsson said. 'You must accept that. You're not the only one who's a bit unsure of what's going on.'
'I don't want to stand on anybody's toes.'
Martinsson burst out laughing. Then blew his nose. 'The Swedish police force is full of officers suffering from sore toes and heels,' he said. 'The more bureaucratic the force becomes, the more people get obsessed about their careers. All the regulations and the paperwork - it gets worse every day - result in misunderstandings and a lack of clarity, so it's no wonder people stand on each other's toes and kick their heels. Sometimes I think I understand why Bjork is worried about the way things are going. What's happening to ordinary straightforward police work?'
'The police force has always reflected society at large,' Wallander said. 'But I know what you mean. Rydberg used to say the same thing. What's Hoglund going to say?'
'She's good,' Martinsson said. 'Hanson and Svedberg are both frightened of her precisely because she's so good. Hanson especially is worried that he might get left behind. That's why he spends most of his time on courses nowadays, picking up extra qualifications.'
'The new-age police officer,' Wallander said, getting to his feet. 'That's what she is.' He paused in the doorway. 'You said something yesterday that rang a bell. Something about Sten Torstensson. I'm not sure what, but I have the feeling it was more important than it sounded.'
'I was reading aloud from my notes,' Martinsson said. 'You can have a copy.'
'I dare say I'm imagining things,' Wallander said.
When he got back to his office and had closed the door, he knew that he had experienced something he had almost forgotten existed. It was as if he had rediscovered his drive. Not everything, it seemed, had been lost during the time he had been away.
He sat at his desk, feeling that he could now examine himself at arm's length: the man staggering around in the West Indies, the miserable trip to Thailand, all those days and nights when everything seemed to have ground to a halt apart from his automatic bodily functions. He was looking at himself, but he realised that that person was somebody he no longer knew. He had been somebody else.
He shuddered to contemplate the catastrophic consequences that some of his actions could have had. He thought hard about his daughter Linda. It was only when Martinsson knocked on the door and delivered a photocopy of his notes from the previous day that Wallander succeeded in banishing all the memories. Everybody had within himself a secret room, it seemed to him, where memories and recollections were all jumbled up together. Now he had bolted the door, and attached a strong padlock. Then he went to the toilet and flushed away the antidepressants he had been carrying around in a tube in his pocket.
He returned to his office and started work. It was 10 a.m. He read carefully through Martinsson's notes without identifying what it was that had caught his attention. It's too soon, he thought. Rydberg would have advised patience. Now I have to remember to advise myself.
