'I'm the same.'
'I'm getting a divorce,' she said. 'We've finally agreed on it, if you can call it that when there are two young children involved.'
Wallander wasn't surprised. She had indicated that they were having serious problems early in the summer.
'I don't know what to say.'
'You don't have to say anything. I just wanted you to know.'
'I've gone through a divorce myself,' he said. 'Or was divorced. I know what hell it can be.'
'But you've done so well.'
'Have I? I would tend to say the opposite.'
'In that case you hide it well.'
The rain outside was falling harder.
'There was one other thing I wanted to tell you,' she said. 'Larstam is writing a book.'
'A book?'
'About the murders. About what it felt like to do it.'
'How do you know that?'
'I saw it in the papers.'
Wallander was upset. 'Who's paying him?'
'Some publishers. They're keeping the advance a secret, but I think we can safely assume it's quite large. I'm sure a mass murderer's memoirs will be a bestseller.'
Wallander shook his head angrily. 'It makes me sick.'
She got to her feet. 'I just wanted you to know.'
She turned when she reached the doorway. 'Have a nice trip,' she said. 'Wherever you're going.'
She disappeared. Wallander thought about what she had told him, about her divorce and the book. They had caught Larstam before he had managed to kill his ninth victim. Afterwards everyone who came into contact with him was struck by his gentle and reserved manner. They were expecting a monster, but this wasn't someone Sture Bjorklund would have been able to copy for a horror film. Wallander sometimes thought Larstam seemed like the most normal person he had ever met.
He had spent many days interrogating him. It struck him repeatedly that Ake Larstam wasn't just an enigma to the world around him but also to himself. He seemed to answer Wallander's questions honestly, but his answers shed no light.
'Why did you kill the young people celebrating Midsummer in the nature reserve?' Wallander had asked him. 'You opened their letters, you followed their preparations for the party, and you shot them. Why?'
'Is there a better way for life to end?'
'Was that why you killed them? Because you thought you were doing them a favour?'
'I think so.'
'Think? You must know why you did it.'
'It's possible to plan things and still not be sure why you do them.'
'You travelled all around Europe and sent postcards in their names. You hid their cars and buried their bodies. Why?'
'I didn't want them to be found.'
'But you buried them in a way that gave you the option of disinterring them again.'
'I wanted to have that option, yes.'
'Why?'
'I don't know, to make my presence known perhaps. I don't know.'
'You took the trouble of following Isa Edengren to Barnso and killing her there. Why not let her live?'
'You should finish what you start.'
Sometimes Wallander had to leave the room, knowing he was in fact talking to a monster and not a human being, despite the smiling and gentle exterior. But he always returned, determined to cover all the aspects of the case, from the newly-weds whose joy Larstam had been unable to tolerate, to Svedberg.
Svedberg. They discussed their long and complicated love affair. Bror Sundelius hadn't known that Svedberg was betraying him with another man. Nils Stridh found out and threatened to talk. They talked about Svedberg's growing fears that the man he had loved in secret for ten years was somehow connected with the disappearance of the young people.
Wallander never felt satisfied with the answers he received. There was something absentminded about Larstam's way of speaking. He was always polite, always apologetic when he couldn't recall an event to his satisfaction. But there was a space within him that he never managed to penetrate. Wallander never fully understood the relationship between Larstam and Svedberg.
'What happened that morning?' he asked.
'Which morning?'
'When you shot Svedberg.'
'I had to kill him.'
'Why?'
'He accused me of being involved with the disappearance of those young people.'
'They didn't just disappear, they were killed. How did Svedberg start to suspect your involvement in this?'
'I talked to him about it.'
'You told him what you had done?'
'No, but I told him about my dreams.'
'Which dreams?'
'That I got people to stop laughing.'
'Why didn't you want people to laugh?'
'Happiness always turns into its opposite sooner or later. I wanted to spare him this fate. So I told him about my dreams.'
'Your dreams of killing people who were happy?'
'Yes.'
'So he started to suspect you?'
'I didn't realise it until a few days before.'
'Before what?'
'Before I shot him.'
'What happened?'
'He was starting to ask questions. It was almost like he was interrogating me. It made me nervous. I didn't like feeling nervous.'
'So then you just went over to his place and shot him?'
'At first I was planning to ask him to stop making me so nervous, but he kept asking his questions. That's when I realised I had to do it. I went out into the hall and got my shotgun. I had brought it with me just in case. I got it out and I shot him.'
Wallander didn't say anything for a long time. He tried to imagine what Svedberg's last moments had been like. Did he have time to see what was coming? Or did it all happen too fast?
'That must have been very hard for you,' he said finally. 'To be forced to kill the person you loved.'
Larstam stared back at him without answering, devoid of any expression. Even when Wallander asked the question a second time, there was no answer. He finally brought up the evening when Larstam ambushed him in his flat on Mariagatan.
'Why did you choose me to be your ninth victim?'
'I didn't have anyone else.'
'What do you mean?'
'I was going to wait, maybe a year, maybe longer. But then I felt the need to keep going since things had turned out so well.'
'But I'm not a happy person. I don't laugh a lot.'
