ambition is for the Ystad force to make up for the rest of the country put together.'
'But there must be an explanation,' she insisted. 'It can't just be that the Swedish force is undermanned, and that we don't have the resources which everybody talks about without anybody being able to say what they actually should be.'
'It's like two different worlds meeting head on,' Wallander said. 'Many police officers think as I do, that we got our training and experience at a time when everything was different, when crime was more transparent, morals were clearer and the authority of the police unchallenged. Nowadays, we need a different kind of training and different experiences in order to be as efficient. But we don't have that. And the ones who come after us, such as you, don't as yet have much chance to influence what we do, to decide where our priorities should lie. It often feels as if there's nothing to stop criminals getting even further ahead of us than they are already. And all society does in response is to manipulate the statistics. Instead of giving the police rein to solve every crime committed, a lot of them are just written off. What used to be considered a crime ten years ago is now judged a non-crime. Things change by the day. What people were punished for yesterday can be something nobody thinks twice about today. At best it might spark off a report that then disappears in some invisible shredder. All that's left is something that never happened.'
'That can't be good,' she said hesitantly.
Wallander glanced at her. 'Who said that it was?'
They had passed Landskrona and were approaching Malmo. An ambulance overtook them at high speed, blue light flashing. Wallander was tired. Without really knowing why, just for a moment he felt sorry for the woman sitting beside him. Over the coming years she would constantly have to reassess her work as a police officer. Unless she was an exceptional person, she would experience an unbroken sequence of disappointments, and very little joy.
He had no doubt about that. But he also thought that the reputation that had preceded her seemed to be true. He could remember Martinsson's first year when he'd just left Police Training College to join the Ystad force. He had not been a lot of use then, but now he was one of their best detectives.
'Tomorrow we'll make a thorough assessment of all the material we have,' he said in an attempt to cheer her up. 'There must be a chance of breaking through somewhere along the line.'
'I hope you're right,' she said. 'But one of these days things could get so bad here that we start to regard certain types of
'If that happens, the police force will have to mutiny,' Wallander said.
'The Police Commissioner would never go along with that.'
'We'll rise up when he's out of the country eating posh dinners in the name of PR,' Wallander said.
'We'll have plenty of opportunities, then,' she said.
The conversation died out. Wallander stayed on the motorway to the east of Malmo, concentrating on the road with only the occasional vague thought about what had happened during the day.
It was when they had left Malmo behind and were heading for Ystad on the E65 that Wallander suddenly had the feeling that something was wrong. Hoglund had closed her eyes and her head had sunk down on one shoulder. There was no sign of headlights in the rear-view mirror.
He was suddenly wide awake. I've been on the wrong track, he thought. Instead of establishing that we weren't being followed, I ought to have been wondering why. If Ann-Britt Hoglund was right, and I've no reason to doubt that somebody has been following us from the moment we left the police station, then the absence of a car behind us could indicate that they no longer considered it necessary.
He thought about the mine in Mrs Duner's garden.
Without a second thought he braked and pulled up on the hard shoulder with his warning lights blinking. Hoglund woke up. She stared at him drowsily.
'Get out of the car,' Wallander said.
'Why?'
'Do as I say,' he shouted.
She flung aside her safety belt and was out of the car before he was.
'Take cover,' he said.
'What's wrong?' she said, as they stood staring at the warning lights. It was cold, and the wind was gusty.
'I don't know,' Wallander said. 'Maybe nothing. I got worried because nobody was following us.'
He did not need to explain further. She understood right away. That convinced Wallander on the spot that she was already a good police officer. She was intelligent, she knew how to react to the unexpected. But he also felt for the first time in ages that he now had somebody with whom he could share his fear. On that stretch of hard shoulder, just before the Svedala exit, he had the feeling that all that endless walking up and down the beach at Skagen had come to an end.
Wallander had been sufficiently alert to take the car phone with him. He started to dial Martinsson's number. 'He'll think I've gone out of my mind,' he said as he waited for a reply.
'What do you think's going to happen?'
'I don't know. But people who can bury a mine in a garden in Sweden would have no problem doing something to a car.'
'If it's the same people,' she said.
'Yes,' Wallander said. 'If it's the same people.'
Martinsson answered. Wallander could tell that he was half asleep.
'It's Kurt,' he said. 'I'm on the E65 just outside Svedala. Ann-Britt's here with me. I'd like you to phone Nyberg and ask him to come out here.'
'What's happened?'
'I want him to have a look at my car.'
'If your engine's packed up you could phone a breakdown firm,' Martinsson said, puzzled.
'I haven't got time to explain,' Wallander said, and could feel his irritation coming on. 'Do as I say. Tell Nyberg he should bring with him equipment to test whether I've been driving round with a bomb under my feet.'
'A car bomb?'
'You heard.'
Wallander switched off and shook his head. 'He's right, of course,' he said. 'It sounds ridiculous - we're on the E65 in the middle of the night and think there might be a bomb in the car.'
'Is there?'
'I don't know,' Wallander said. 'I'm not sure.'
It took Nyberg an hour to reach them. By then Wallander and Hoglund were frozen to the bone. Wallander expected Nyberg to be annoyed, being woken up by Martinsson for reasons that must have seemed dodgy, to say the least, but to his surprise Nyberg was friendly and prepared to believe that something serious had happened. Despite her protests, Wallander insisted that Hoglund should get into Nyberg's car and warm up.
'There's a thermos in the passenger seat,' Nyberg said. 'I think the coffee's still hot.'
Then he turned to Wallander, who could see that he was still in his pyjamas under his overcoat. 'What's wrong with the car?' he asked.
'I was hoping you could tell me that,' Wallander said. 'There's a real possibility that there's nothing wrong at all.'
'What am I supposed to be looking for?'
'I don't know. All I can tell you is an assumption. The car was left unwatched for about half an hour. It was locked.'
'Do you have an alarm?' Nyberg said.
'I've got nothing,' Wallander said. 'It's an old car. Rubbish. I've always assumed nobody would want to steal it.'
'Go on,' Nyberg said.
'Half an hour,' Wallander repeated. 'When I started the engine, nothing happened. Everything was normal. From Helsingborg to here is about 100 kilometres. We stopped on the way and had a cup of coffee. I'd filled the tank in Helsingborg. It must be about three hours since the car was left unattended.'
