'Who told you that?' Wallander said.
'Gertrud. They've been writing about you in the newspapers. I don't read them, but she claims they say you're a good police officer.'
'Newspapers say all kinds of things.'
'I'm only repeating what she says.'
'What do
'That I tried to put you off joining, and I still think you should be doing something else.'
'I don't suppose I'll ever stop,' Wallander said. 'I'm coming up to 50. I'll be a police officer as long as I work.'
They heard Gertrud shouting that the food was on the table.
'I'd never have thought you'd have remembered Anton and the Pole,' said his father as they walked over to the house.
'It's one of the most vivid memories I have of my childhood,' Wallander said. 'Do you know what I used to call all those strange people who came to buy your paintings?'
'They were art dealers,' his father said.
'I know,' Wallander said. 'But to me they were the Silk Knights.'
His father stopped in his tracks and stared at him. He burst out laughing.
'That's an excellent name,' he said. 'That's exactly what they were. Knights in silk suits.'
They said goodbye at the bottom of the steps.
'Are you sure you wouldn't like to stay?' Gertrud asked. 'There's plenty of food.'
'I've got work to do,' Wallander said.
He drove back to Ystad through the dark autumn countryside. He tried to think what it was about his father that reminded him of himself.
But he could not find the answer.
On Friday, November 5, Wallander arrived at the station shortly after 7.00, feeling that he had caught up on his sleep and was raring to go. He made himself coffee, then spent the next hour preparing for the meeting of the investigation team that was due to start at 8.00. He drew up a schematic and chronological presentation of all the facts and tried to work out where they should go from there. He was bearing in mind that one or more of his colleagues might have come up with something the previous day that would throw new light on existing facts.
He had the feeling still that there was no time to spare, that the shadows behind the two dead solicitors were growing and becoming more frightening.
He put down his pen, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He was at once back at Skagen, the beach stretching away in front of him, shrouded in fog. Sten Torstensson was there somewhere. Wallander tried to see past him to catch a glimpse of the people who must have followed him and were watching his meeting with the police officer on sick leave. They must have been close, for all that they were invisible, hidden among the dunes.
He thought of the woman walking her dog. Could it have been her? Or the girl working in the Art Museum cafe? That seemed impossible. There must have been somebody else there in the fog, somebody neither Sten nor he had seen.
He glanced at the clock. Time for the meeting. He gathered up his papers.
The meeting went on for more than four hours, but by the end of it Wallander felt that they had made a breakthrough, that a pattern was now beginning to appear, although there was much that was still obscure and the evidence of the involvement of any particular individuals was as yet inconclusive. Nevertheless, they had agreed that there could hardly be any doubt that what they were dealing with was not a string of unassociated events, but a deliberate chain of acts, even if at this stage they could not be clear about the links. By the time Wallander was able to summarise their conclusions, the atmosphere was stuffy and Svedberg had started to complain of a headache, and they were all exhausted.
'It's possible, even probable, that this investigation will take a long time, but we'll get all the bits of the jigsaw sooner or later. And that will lead to the solution. We must exercise the greatest care: we've already met with one booby trap, a mine. There may be more, metaphorically speaking. But now is the time to start ferreting away.'
They had spent the morning going over their material - point by point - discussing it, evaluating it. They had scrutinised every detail from all possible points of view, tested various interpretations, and then agreed on how to proceed. They had reached a crucial moment in the investigation, one of the most critical stages at which it could so easily go wrong if any one of them had a lapse of concentration. All contradictory evidence had to be taken as the starting point of a positive and constructive re-examination, not as grounds for automatic oversimplification or too-swift judgments. It's like being at the exploratory stage of designing a house, Wallander thought. We're constructing many of different models, and we must not dismantle any one of them too hastily. All the models are built on the same foundation.
It was almost a month since Gustaf Torstensson had died in the muddy field near Brosarp Hills. It was ten days since his son had been in Skagen and then murdered in his office. They kept coming back to those starting points.
The first to give their report that morning was Martinsson, supported by Nyberg.
'We've received the forensic analysis on the weapon and ammunition used to kill Sten Torstensson,' Martinsson said, holding up the documents. 'There's at least one point which we need to pay attention to.'
Nyberg took over. 'Sten Torstensson was hit by three 9 mm rounds. Standard ammunition. But the most interesting thing is that the experts believe the weapon used was an Italian pistol known as a Bernadelli Practical. I won't go into technical details as to why they think so. It could have been a Smith & Wesson 3914 or 5904, but it's more likely to have been a Bernadelli. That is a rather rare pistol in Sweden. There are no more than 50 or so registered. Of course, nobody knows how many illegal ones there might be floating about, but an informed guess would be about 30.'
'Who would want to use that Italian pistol?' Wallander said.
'Somebody who knows a lot about guns,' Nyberg said. 'Somebody who chose it for specific reasons.'
'Are you saying it could be a foreign professional hit man?'
'We shouldn't disregard that possibility,' Nyberg said.
'We're going to go through the list of Bernadelli owners,' Martinsson said. 'From first checks, no registered owner of a Bernadelli pistol has reported it missing.'
They moved to the next point.
'The number plate on one of the cars that followed you was stolen,' Svedberg said. 'From a Nissan in Malmo. Malmo are looking into it. They've found lots of fingerprints, but we shouldn't set our hopes very high.'
Wallander agreed. 'Anything else?' he said.
'You asked me to dig out some facts about Kurt Strom,' Svedberg said.
Wallander gave a brief account of his visit to Farnholm Castle and his meeting with the former policeman at the castle gates.
'Kurt Strom was not a good advertisement for the police force,' Svedberg said. 'He had dealings with several fences. What they never managed to prove but was almost certainly the case was that he tipped them off about police raids. He was kicked out, but there was no publicity.'
Bjork spoke for the first time. 'This sort of thing is deplorable. We can't afford to have people like Strom in the force. What's worrying is that they then turn up in one of these security firms, no problem. The checks made on them are obviously nowhere near thorough enough.'
Wallander refrained from commenting on Bjork's outburst. He knew from experience the risk of being sidetracked into a discussion that had no direct bearing on the case.
'As to the explosion in your car,' Nyberg said, 'we can be sure that the device was planted in your petrol tank. I gather that this method of using the petrol to eat its way through a fuse and delay the explosion is common in Asia.'
'An Italian pistol,' Wallander said, 'and an Asian car bomb. Where does that leave us?'
'With a false conclusion, if we're not careful,' Bjork said firmly. 'It needn't be people from the other end of the world behind all this. Nowadays Sweden is a crossroads and a meeting place for everything you can think of.'
