her.
'We don't know yet,' he said. 'But we suspect it was more than just an accident. Something might have caused it, or happened afterwards.'
'He'd driven along that road lots of times,' she said. 'He knew it inside out. And he never drove fast.'
'If I understand it rightly, he'd been to see one of his clients,' Wallander said.
'The man at Farnholm,' was all she said.
'The man at Farnholm?'
'Alfred Harderberg. The man at Farnholm Castle.'
Wallander knew that Farnholm Castle was in a remote area to the south of the Linderod Ridge. He had often driven past the turning, but had never been there.
'He was our biggest client,' Mrs Duner went on. 'For the last few years he'd been in effect Gustaf Torstensson's only client.'
Wallander wrote the name on a scrap of paper he found in his pocket.
'I've never heard of him,' he said. 'Is he a farmer?'
'He's the man who owns the castle,' Mrs Duner said. 'But he's a businessman. Big business, international.'
'I'll be in touch with him, obviously,' Wallander said. 'He must be one of the last people to see Mr Torstensson alive.'
A packet of mail suddenly dropped through the letter box. Wallander noticed that Mrs Duner gave a start.
Three scared people, he thought. Scared of what?
'Gustaf Torstensson,' he started again. 'Let's try again. Tell me what he was like.'
'He was the most private person I have ever met,' she said, and Wallander detected a hint of aggression. 'He never allowed anybody to get close to him. He was a pedant, never varied his routine. He was one of those people folk say you could set your watch by. That was absolutely true in Gustaf Torstensson's case. He was a sort of bloodless, cut-out silhouette, neither nice nor nasty. Just boring.'
'According to Sten Torstensson, he was also cheerful,' Wallander said.
'You could have fooled me,' Mrs Duner said.
'How did the two of them get on?'
She did not hesitate, she answered directly to the point. 'Gustaf Torstensson was annoyed that his son was trying to modernise the business,' she said. 'And naturally enough, Sten Torstensson thought his father was a millstone round his neck. But neither of them revealed their true feelings to the other. They were both afraid of fighting.'
'Before Sten Torstensson died he said something had been upsetting and worrying his father for several months,' Wallander said. 'Can you comment on that?'
This time she paused before answering.
'Maybe,' she said. 'Now that you mention it, there was something distant about him in the last months of his life.'
'Have you any explanation for that?'
'No.'
'Nothing unusual that happened?'
'No, nothing.'
'Please think carefully. This could be very important.'
She poured another cup of tea while she was thinking. Wallander waited. Then she looked up at him.
'I can't say,' she said. 'I can't explain it.'
Wallander knew she was not telling the truth, but he decided not to press her. Everything was still too vague and uncertain. The time wasn't ripe.
He pushed his cup to one side and rose to his feet. 'I won't disturb you any longer,' he said. 'But I'll be back, I'm afraid.'
'Of course,' Mrs Duner said.
'If you think of anything you'd like to say, just give me a ring,' Wallander said as he left. 'Don't hesitate. The slightest detail could be significant.'
'I'll bear that in mind,' she said as she closed the door behind him.
Wallander sat in his car without starting the engine. He felt very uneasy. Without being able to say exactly why, he had the feeling there was something very serious and disturbing behind the deaths of the two lawyers. They were still only scratching the surface.
Something is pointing us in the wrong direction, he thought. The postcard from Finland might not be a red herring, might be the thing we really ought to be looking into. But why?
He was about to start the engine and drive off when he noticed that somebody was standing on the opposite pavement, watching him.
It was a young woman, hardly more than 20, of some Asiatic origin. When she saw that Wallander had noticed her, she hurried away. Wallander could see in his rear-view mirror that she had turned right into Hamngatan without looking back.
He was certain he had never seen her before.
That didn't mean she had not recognised him. Over the years as a police officer he had often come up against refugees and asylum seekers in various contexts.
He drove back to the police station. The wind was still squally, and clouds were building up from the east. He had just turned into Kristianstadsvagen when he slammed his foot on the brake. A lorry behind him sounded its horn.
I'm reacting far too slowly, he thought. I'm not seeing the wood for the trees.
He made an illegal U-turn, parked outside the post office in Hamngatan and made his way swiftly into the side street that led into Stickgatan from the north. He positioned himself so that he could see the pink building where Mrs Duner lived.
It was getting chilly, and he started walking up and down while keeping an eye on the building. After an hour he wondered whether he ought to give up. But he was sure he was right. He kept on watching the building. By now Akeson was waiting for him, but he would wait in vain.
At 3.43 p.m. the door to the pink building suddenly opened. Wallander hid behind a wall. He
It had started raining.
Chapter 5
The meeting of the investigation team started at 4 p.m. and finished exactly seven minutes later. Wallander was the last to arrive and flopped down on his chair. He was out of breath, and sweating. His colleagues around the table observed him in surprise, but no-one made any comment.
It took Bjork a few minutes to establish that no-one had any significant progress to report or matters to discuss. They had reached a point in the investigation where they had become 'tunnel diggers', as they used to say. They were all trying to break through the surface layer to find what might be concealed underneath. It was a familiar phase in criminal investigations, and no discussion was needed. The only one who came up with a question at the end of the meeting was Wallander.
'Who is Alfred Harderberg?' he asked, after consulting a scrap of paper on which he'd written down the name.
'I thought everybody knew that,' Bjork said. 'He's one of Sweden's most successful businessmen just now. Lives here in Skane. When he's not flying all over the world in his private jet, that is.'
'He owns Farnholm Castle,' Svedberg said. 'It's said that he has an aquarium with genuine gold dust at the bottom instead of sand.'
'He was a client of Gustaf Torstensson's,' Wallander said. 'His principal client, in fact. And his last.
