you find acceptable?'
'We have a high level of security at Farnholm Castle,' Strom said. 'We're pretty careful about who we let in.'
'What kind of treasure do you have hidden away here?'
'No treasure, but there's a man with very big business interests.'
'Harderberg?'
'That's the one. He has something a lot of people would like to get their hands on.'
'What's that?'
'Knowledge, know-how. Worth more than owning your own mint.'
Wallander had no patience with the servile manner Strom was displaying as he spoke of the great man.
'Once upon a time you were a police officer,' Wallander said. 'I still am. Perhaps you understand why I'm here?'
'I read the papers,' Strom said. 'I suppose it's got something to do with that lawyer.'
'Two lawyers have died, not just one,' Wallander said. 'But if I understand it right, only the elder one worked with Harderberg.'
'He came here a lot,' Strom said. 'A nice man. Very discreet.'
'He was last here on October 11, in the evening,' Wallander said. 'Were you on duty then?'
Strom nodded.
'I take it you make notes on all the cars and people that come in and out?'
Strom laughed out loud. 'We stopped that a long time ago,' he said. 'It's all done by computer nowadays.'
'I'd like to see a printout for the evening of October 11,' Wallander said.
'You'll have to ask them up at the castle,' Strom said. 'I'm not allowed to do things like that.'
'But I dare say you're allowed to remember,' Wallander said.
'I know he was here that evening,' Strom said. 'But I can't remember when he arrived and when he left.'
'Was he on his own in the car?'
'I can't say.'
'Because you're not allowed to say?'
Strom nodded again.
'I've sometimes thought about applying for a job with a security company,' Wallander said, 'but I think I'd find it hard to get used to not being allowed to answer questions.'
'Everything has its price,' Strom said.
Wallander thought he could say 'hear, hear' to that. He watched Strom for a few moments. 'Harderberg,' he said eventually. 'What's he like as a person?'
The reply surprised him.
'I don't know,' Strom said.
'You must have some sort of an opinion, surely? Or aren't you allowed to comment on that either?'
'I've never met him,' Strom said.
'And you have been working for him how long?'
'Nearly five years.'
'You've never once seen him?'
'Never.'
'He's never passed through these gates?'
'His car has one-way glass in the windows.'
'I take it that's part of the security system?' Wallander thought for a moment. 'In other words, you are never completely sure whether he's here or not. You don't know if he's in the car when it passes in or out through the gates?'
'No. It's all to do with security,' Strom said.
Wallander went back to his car. Strom disappeared through the steel door, and shortly afterwards the gates opened without a sound. It's like entering a different world, Wallander thought.
After about a kilometre the forest opened up. The castle stood on a hill, surrounded by extensive and well- tended grounds. The large main building, like the freestanding outbuildings surrounding it, was in dark red brick. The castle had towers and steeples, balustrades and balconies. The only thing to break the mood of another world, another age, was a helicopter on a concrete pad. Wallander had the impression of a large insect with its wings half folded, a wild beast at rest but liable to come back to life with a jerk.
He drove slowly up to the main entrance. Peacocks strolled leisurely around on the road, in front of the car. He parked behind a black BMW and got out. It was very quiet all around. The tranquillity reminded him of the previous day when he'd walked up the gravel drive to Gustaf Torstensson's house. Perhaps tranquillity is what distinguishes the environment in which wealthy people live, he thought. It's not the orchestral fanfares, but the tranquillity.
Just then one of the double doors at the main entrance to the castle opened. A woman in her thirties, dressed in well-fitting and, Wallander guessed, expensive clothes emerged on to the steps.
'Please come in,' she said with a ready smile, a smile that seemed to Wallander just as cold and unwelcoming as it was correct.
'I don't know if I have any identification papers you would regard as acceptable,' he said, 'but the guard who goes by the name of Strom recognised me.'
'I know,' said the woman.
It was not the woman who'd answered the phone when he rang from the cafe. He went up the steps, held out his hand and introduced himself. She ignored his hand but simply reproduced the same distant smile. He followed her in through the doors. They walked across a large entrance hall. Modernistic sculptures on stone pedestals were dotted around, illuminated by invisible spotlights. In the background, by the wide staircase leading to the upper floor, he detected two men lurking in the shadows. Wallander could sense their presence, but could not make out their faces. Tranquillity and shadows, he thought. The world of Harderberg, as I know it so far. He followed her through a door on the left, leading into a large oval room that was also decorated with sculptures. But as a reminder of the fact that they were in a castle with a history going back deep into the Middle Ages, there were also some suits of armour keeping watch over him. In the centre of the highly polished oak parquet floor was a desk and a single visitor's chair. There was no paper on the desk, only a computer and an advanced telephone exchange that was hardly any bigger than an ordinary telephone. The woman invited him to sit down, then keyed a command into the computer. She handed him a sheet from a printer invisible somewhere under the desk.
'I gather you wanted a printout of the gate-control data for the evening of October 11,' the woman said. 'You can see from this when Mr Torstensson arrived, and when he left Farnholm.'
Wallander took the printout and put it on the floor beside him.
'That's not the only reason why I've come,' he said. 'I have several other questions.'
'Fire away.'
The woman had sat down behind the desk. She pressed various buttons on the telephone exchange. Wallander assumed she was switching all incoming calls to another exchange somewhere in the huge building.
'The information I've received informs me that Gustaf Torstensson had Alfred Harderberg as a client,' Wallander said. 'If I understand it rightly, he's out of the country at present.'
'He's in Dubai,' the woman said.
Wallander frowned. 'An hour ago he was in Geneva,' he said.
'That's right,' the woman said without batting an eyelid. 'But he's now left for Dubai.'
Wallander took a notebook and pencil from his jacket pocket.
'May I ask your name and what you do here?'
'I'm one of Alfred Harderberg's secretaries,' she said. 'My name's Anita Karlen.'
'Does Mr Harderberg have many secretaries?' Wallander wondered.
'That depends on how you look at it,' Anita Karlen replied. 'Is that really relevant?'
Once again Wallander started to get annoyed at the way in which he was being treated. He decided he would have to change his approach if the whole visit to Farnholm were not to be a waste of time.
