mind had seemed to change. A few days later he himself was shot in his office late at night. He had talked about his father being on edge, but he was not on edge himself.
Deep in thought, Wallander pulled towards him the notebook in which he had previously written Torstensson's name. He added another: Gustaf Torstensson. Then he wrote them again in the reverse order.
He picked up the phone and dialled Martinsson's number. No answer. He tried again, still no answer. Then it dawned on him that the numbers must have been changed while he was away. He walked down the corridor to Martinsson's office. The door was open.
'I've been through the investigation reports,' he said, sitting down on Martinsson's rickety visitor's chair.
'Nothing much to go on, as you'll have noted,' Martinsson said. 'One or more intruders break into Torstensson's offices and shoot him. Apparently nothing was stolen. His wallet still in his inside pocket. Mrs Duner's been working there for more than 30 years and she is sure that nothing is missing.'
Wallander nodded. He still hadn't unearthed what it was that Martinsson had said or not said earlier which had made him react.
'You were first on the scene, I suppose?' he said.
'Peters and Noren were there first, in fact,' Martinsson said. 'They sent for me.'
'One usually gets a first impression on occasions like this,' Wallander said. 'What did you think?'
'Murder with intent to rob,' Martinsson said without hesitation.
'How many of them were there?'
'We've found no evidence to suggest whether there was just one, or more than one. But only one weapon was used, we can be pretty sure of that, even if the technical reports are not all in yet.'
'So, was it a man who broke in?'
'I think so,' Martinsson said. 'But that's just a gut feeling with nothing to support or reject it.'
'Torstensson was hit by three bullets,' Wallander said. 'One in the heart, one in the stomach just below the navel, and one in his forehead. Am I right in thinking that that suggests a marksman who knew what he was doing?'
'That struck me too,' Martinsson said. 'But of course it could have been pure coincidence. They say death is caused just as often by random shots as by shots from a skilled marksman. I read that in some American report.'
Wallander got to his feet. 'Why should anybody want to break into a solicitor's office?' he asked. 'Presumably because lawyers are said to earn huge amounts of money. But would anybody really expect to find the money piled up in their office?'
'There's only one or perhaps two persons who could answer that question,' Martinsson said.
'We'll catch them,' Wallander said. 'I think I'll go there and have a look around.'
'Mrs Duner is pretty shaken, naturally,' Martinsson said. 'In less than a month the whole fabric of her life has collapsed. First old man Torstensson dies. Hardly has she got over sorting out the funeral arrangements than his son is murdered. She's in shock, but even so it's surprisingly easy to talk to her. Her address is on the transcript of the conversation Svedberg had with her.'
'Stickgatan 26,' Wallander read. 'That's just behind the Continental Hotel. I sometimes park there.'
'Isn't that an offence?' Martinsson said.
Wallander collected his jacket and left the station. He had never seen the girl in reception before. He thought that perhaps he ought to have introduced himself. Not least to find out whether Ebba, who had been there for years, had stopped working evenings. But he let it pass. The time he had spent in the station so far today had seemed on the face of it to be nothing dramatic, but that did not reflect the tension inside him. He felt he needed to be on his own. For some considerable time now he had spent most of his days alone. He needed time to make the transformation. He drove down the hill towards the hospital, and just for a moment felt a vague yearning for the solitariness of Skagen, for his isolated sentry duty and his beach patrols that were guaranteed not to be disturbed.
But that was all in the past. He was back at work now.
I'm not used to it, he thought. It'll pass, even if it takes time.
The solicitors' offices were in a yellow-painted stone building in Sjomansgatan, not far from the old theatre that had been getting a facelift. A patrol car was parked outside, and on the opposite pavement a handful of onlookers were discussing what had happened. The wind was gusting in from the sea, and Wallander shuddered as he clambered out of his car. He opened the heavy front door and almost collided with Svedberg on his way out.
'I thought I'd get a bite to eat,' he said.
'Go ahead,' Wallander said. 'I expect to be here for a while.'
A young clerk was sitting in the front office with nothing to do. She looked anxious. Wallander remembered from the reports that her name was Sonia Lundin, and that she had been working there only a few months. She had not been able to provide the investigation with any useful information.
Wallander shook hands with her and introduced himself.
'I'm just going to take a look around,' he said. 'Mrs Duner's not here, I suppose?'
'She's at home, crying,' the girl said.
Wallander had no idea what to say.
'She'll never survive all this,' Lundin said. 'She'll die too.'
'Oh, I don't think so,' Wallander said, conscious of how hollow his response sounded.
The Torstensson legal practice had been a workplace for solitary people, he thought. Gustaf Torstensson had been a widower for more than 15 years and so his son Sten had been without a mother all that time and was a bachelor to boot. Mrs Duner had been divorced since the early '70s. Three solitary people who came into contact with each other day after day. And now two of them were gone, leaving the third more alone than ever.
Wallander had no difficulty in understanding why Mrs Duner was at home crying.
The door to the meeting room was closed. Wallander could hear murmuring from inside. The lawyers' nameplates were on the doors on either side of the meeting room, fancily printed on highly polished brass plates.
On the spur of the moment he opened first the door to Gustaf Torstensson's office. The curtains were drawn and the room was in darkness. There was a faint aroma of cigar smoke. Wallander looked around and had the feeling that he had gone back to an earlier age. Heavy leather sofas, a marble table, paintings on the walls. It occurred to him that he had overlooked one possibility: that whoever murdered Sten Torstensson was there to steal the objets d'art. He walked up to one of the paintings and tried to decipher the signature, trying also to establish whether it was a copy or an original. Without having been successful on either count, he moved on. There was a large globe next to the solid-looking desk, which was empty, apart from some pens, a telephone and a Dictaphone. He sat in the comfortable desk chair and continued to look around the room, thinking again about what Sten Torstensson had said to him in the cafe at the Art Museum in Skagen.
A car accident that wasn't a car accident. A man who had spent the last months of his life trying to hide something that was worrying him.
Wallander asked himself what would be the characteristics of a solicitor's life. Supplying legal advice. Defending when a prosecutor prosecutes. A solicitor was always receiving confidential information. Lawyers were under a strict oath of confidentiality. It dawned on him that solicitors had a lot of secrets to keep. He hadn't thought of that before.
He got to his feet after a while. It was too soon to draw any conclusions.
Lundin was still sitting motionless on her chair. He opened the door to Sten Torstensson's office. He hesitated for a second, as if half expecting to see the dead man's body lying there on the floor, as it was in the photographs he had seen in the case reports, but all that was left was a plastic sheet. The technical team had taken the dark green carpet away with them.
The room was not unlike the one he had just left. The only obvious difference was a pair of visitors' chairs in front of the desk. This time Wallander refrained from sitting down. There were no papers on the desk.
I'm still only scraping at the surface, he thought. I feel as if I'm listening as much as I am trying to get my bearings by looking.
He went out to the reception area, closing the door behind him. Svedberg was back and was trying to persuade the girl to have one of his sandwiches. Wallander shook his head on being offered one as well. He pointed
