Torstensson had been to see him the night he met his death in the field.'
'He organises collections for the needy in parts of the Balkans ravaged by war,' Martinsson said. 'But maybe that's not so extraordinary when you have the limitless amounts of money he does.'
'Alfred Harderberg is a man worthy of our respect,' Bjork said.
Wallander could see he was getting annoyed. 'Who isn't?' he wondered aloud. 'I intend to pay him a visit even so.'
'Phone first,' Bjork said, getting to his feet.
The meeting was at an end. Wallander fetched a cup of coffee and repaired to his office. He needed time on his own to think over the significance of Mrs Duner being visited by a young Asian woman. Maybe there was nothing to it at all, but Wallander's instinct told him otherwise. He put his feet on his desk and leaned back in his chair, balancing his coffee cup between his knees.
The telephone rang. Wallander stretched to answer it, lost his grip on the cup, and coffee spilled all over his trouser leg as the cup fell to the floor.
'Shit!' he shouted, the receiver halfway to his ear.
'No need to be rude,' said his father. 'I only wanted to ask why you never get in touch.'
Wallander was instantly assailed by his bad conscience, and that in turn made him angry. He wondered if there would ever be a time when dealings with his father could be conducted on a less tense footing.
'I spilled a cup of coffee,' he said, 'and scalded my leg.'
His father seemed not to have heard what he said. 'Why are you in your office?' he asked. 'You're supposed to be on sick leave.'
'Not any more. I've started work again.'
'When?'
'Yesterday.'
'Yesterday?'
Wallander could tell that this conversation was going to be a very long one if he did not manage to cut it short. 'I owe you an explanation, I know,' he said, 'but I just haven't time at the moment. I'll come and see you tomorrow evening, and tell you what's happened.'
'I haven't seen you for ages,' his father said, and hung up.
Wallander sat for a moment with the receiver in his hand. His father would be 75 next year, and invariably managed to arouse in him contradictory emotions. Their relationship had been complicated for as long as he could remember. Not least on the day he told his father he intended to join the police. More than 25 years had passed since then and the old man never missed an opportunity of criticising that decision. Nevertheless, Wallander had a guilty conscience about the time he devoted to him. The previous year, when he had heard the astonishing news that his father was going to marry a woman 30 years younger than himself, a home help who came to his house three times a week, he had reckoned his father would not lack for company any more. Now, sitting there with the receiver in his hand, he realised that nothing had really changed.
He replaced the receiver, picked up the cup and wiped his trouser leg with a sheet torn from his notepad. Then he remembered he was supposed to get in touch with Akeson, the prosecutor. Akeson's secretary put him straight through. Wallander explained that he had been held up and Akeson suggested a time for the next morning instead.
Wallander went to fetch another cup of coffee. In the corridor he bumped into Hoglund carrying a pile of files.
'How's it going?' Wallander said.
'Slowly,' she said. 'And I can't shake off the feeling that there's something fishy about those two dead lawyers.'
'That's exactly how I feel,' Wallander said. 'What makes you think so?'
'I don't know.'
'Let's talk about it tomorrow,' Wallander said. 'Experience tells me you should never underestimate the significance of what you can't put into words, can't put your finger on.'
He went back to his office, unhooked the phone and pulled over his notepad. He went back in his mind to the freezing cold beach at Skagen, Sten Torstensson walking towards him out of the fog. That's where this case started for me, he thought. It started while Sten was still alive.
He went over everything he knew about the two solicitors. He was like a soldier cautiously retreating, keeping a close watch to his left and his right. It took him an hour to work his way through every one of the facts he and his colleagues had so far assembled.
What is it I can see and yet do not see? He asked himself this over and over as he sifted through the case notes. But when he tossed aside his pen all he had managed to achieve was a highly decorative and embellished question mark.
Two lawyers dead, he thought. One killed in a strange accident that was in all probability not an accident. Whoever killed Gustaf Torstensson was a cold, calculating murderer. That lone chair leg left in the mud was an uncharacteristic mistake. There's a
It came to him that there was something he could and should do. He found Mrs Duner's telephone number in his notes.
'I'm sorry to trouble you,' he said. 'Inspector Wallander here. I have a question I'd be grateful for an answer to right away.'
'I'd be pleased to help if I can,' she said.
Two questions in fact, Wallander thought, but I'll save the one about the Asian woman for another time.
'The night Gustaf Torstensson died he had been to Farnholm Castle,' he said. 'How many people knew he was going to visit his client that evening?'
There was a pause before she replied. Wallander wondered whether that was in order to remember, or to give herself time to think of a suitable answer.
'I knew, of course,' she said. 'It's possible I might have mentioned it to Miss Lundin, but nobody else knew.'
'Sten Torstensson didn't know, then?'
'I don't think so. They kept separate engagement diaries.'
'So most probably you were the only one who knew,' Wallander said.
'Yes.'
'Thank you. I apologise for disturbing you,' Wallander said, and hung up.
He returned to his notes. Gustaf Torstensson drives out to see a client, and is attacked on the way home, murder disguised as a road accident.
He thought about Mrs Duner's reply. I'm sure she was telling the truth, he thought, but what interests me is what lies behind that truth. What she said means that apart from herself the only other person who knew what Gustaf Torstensson was going to do that evening was the man at Farnholm Castle.
He continued his walk through the case. The landscape of the investigation constantly shifted. The cheerless house with its sophisticated security systems. The collection of icons hidden in the basement. When he thought he'd walked as far as he could go he switched to Sten Torstensson. The landscape shifted yet again and became almost impenetrable. Sten's unexpected appearance in Wallander's windswept haven, against a background of melancholy foghorns, and then the deserted cafe at the Art Museum - they seemed to Wallander like the ingredients of an unconvincing operetta. But there were moments in the plot when life was taken seriously. Sten had found his father restless and depressed. And the postcard from Finland, sent by an unknown hand but arranged by Sten: clearly there was a threat and a false trail was required. Always assuming that the false trail wasn't in fact the right trail.
Nothing takes us on to a next stage, Wallander thought, but these are facts that one can categorise. It's harder to know what to do with the mystery ingredients, the Asian woman, for example, who doesn't want anybody to see her visiting Berta Duner's pink house. And Mrs Duner herself, who's a good liar, but not good enough to deceive a detective inspector from the Ystad police - or, at least, for him not to notice that something isn't quite right.
Wallander stood up, stretched his back and stood at the window. It was 6 p.m., and it had grown dark.
