One Step Behind (1997)

Wallander went straight to Lisa Holgersson's office. The door was slightly ajar, and he could see her behind the desk. Her eyes seemed wet. He knocked and looked in. She gestured for him to come in.

'Do you regret going to Lund?'

'There's nothing to regret. But it was as terrible as you said it would be. There are no words to offer someone at a time like this. Parents are called down on a summer's day to identify their dead child. The people who had fixed up the bodies had done a great job, but they couldn't completely hide the fact that they had been dead for a long time.'

'Hansson said Eva Hillstrom came by herself.'

'She was the most restrained, perhaps because she had feared the worst all along.'

'She's going to accuse us of not moving fast enough on this. Perhaps with some justification.'

'Is that really your opinion?'

'No, but I don't know how much my opinion matters. If we had had more personnel, if it hadn't been in the middle of everyone's holiday time . . . things might have been different. But there are always excuses. And now a mother is forced to confront her worst fear.'

'I'd like to discuss the possibility of getting some reinforcements down here as soon as possible.'

Wallander was too tired to argue, but he didn't agree with her. There was always the hope that greater numbers meant greater efficiency. But in his experience this was almost never the case. It was often a small, well- run investigative team that produced the best results.

'What do you think?'

Wallander shrugged. 'I think you know my opinion on this. But I'm not going to object if you want reinforcements.'

'I'd like to talk to the others about it tonight.'

'They're exhausted,' he said. 'You won't get any rational answers. Why don't you wait until tomorrow?'

It was 10.45 p.m. Wallander got up and went to the conference room. Svedberg's chair was still empty. Nyberg came in straight from the crime scene and Wallander saw him shake his head. No new finds.

Wallander started by telling them about his visit to the hospital. He had brought the tape recorder and cassette with him. There was an eerie silence in the room when he played the recording of Svedberg's voice. After Wallander told them about his conclusions, he noticed that the exhaustion of the group seemed to lift a little. Svedberg had known something. Was that why he had been killed?

They slowly went over all the facts of the case again. The meeting stretched long into the night, and the team slowly overcame their tiredness and low spirits. They took a short break just after midnight. When they returned, Martinsson sat down in Svedberg's chair by mistake. He changed his seat when he realised what he had done. Wallander got up to go to the men's room and drink some water. His mouth was dry and his head ached, but he knew he had to push on. During the break he went to his office to call the hospital. After waiting for a long time he finally talked to the nurse who had checked his blood-sugar level.

'She's sleeping,' she said. 'She wanted a sleeping pill. Naturally we couldn't give her one, but she fell asleep anyway.'

'Has anyone called her? Her mother?'

'Only a man who said he was her neighbour.'

'Lundberg?'

'Yes, that was his name.'

'The full impact of what has happened will probably only hit her tomorrow,' Wallander said.

'What is it that's happened?'

Wallander couldn't think of any reason not to tell her. There was a stunned silence.

'I can't believe it,' she said.

'I don't know,' he said honestly. 'I don't understand it any better than you.'

He returned to the conference room. It was time for him to summarise the events as they knew them.

'I don't know why this happened,' he started. 'I see no possible motive and therefore no possible suspect. But I am aware of a chain of events, as you all are. This chain is not completely without gaps, but I'll tell you what I see. Correct me if I leave anything out.'

He reached for some sparkling mineral water and filled his glass. 'Some time during the afternoon on 21 June, three young people drove out to Hagestad nature reserve. They probably arrived in two cars, both of which remain missing. According to Isa Edengren, who was supposed to have been with them but fell ill, they had chosen the place for their party in advance. They were going to make it a masquerade, which they had done before. We should try to understand this game as well as we can. I think there were very strong ties between these young people, something more than simple friendship.

'Their era this time was the 18th century, the age of Bellman. They wore costumes and wigs and played songs from Fredman's Epistles. We don't know if they were being observed at this point. The spot they had chosen was hidden from view. The killer appeared from somewhere and shot them. They were each shot in the forehead. We don't yet know what kind of weapon was used. Everything points to the killer carrying out the deed deliberately and without hesitation. We find them 51 days later. That's the most likely scenario, but until we know exactly how long they have been dead we cannot rule out that they may not have been killed at the Midsummer feast. It may have happened at a later date. We simply don't know. But we do know that the killer must have been privy to certain information. It's not really believable that this triple homicide was a chance occurrence. We can't rule out the possibility of a lunatic, since we can't rule anything out, but the signs point to a carefully planned and executed killing. The motive for this crime I cannot even begin to speculate about. Who would want to kill young people in the midst of the happiest time of their lives? I don't think I've ever been involved in a case like this before.'

He looked around. He wasn't quite done with his summary of the events, but he wanted to see if there were any questions. No one spoke.

'There is more to this story,' he said. 'We don't know if it is a beginning, an end, or a parallel event, but Svedberg was also murdered, and we found a photograph of these young people in his flat. We know that he was investigating their disappearance and that he started to do so as soon as he heard from Eva Hillstrom and the other parents. There is a connection here. We don't know what it is but we have to find it. That's where we have to begin.'

He put his pencil down and leaned back in his chair. His back ached. He looked over at Nyberg.

'I should perhaps add that both Nyberg and I feel there is something artificial and arranged about the scene of the crime.'

'I just can't understand how they could have lain there for 51 days without anyone finding them,' Hansson said despondently. 'A lot of people visit the reserve during the summer.'

'I don't either,' Wallander said. 'There are three possibilities. We could be completely wrong about the time of death. Maybe it wasn't Midsummer's Eve; maybe it was later than that. Or else the scene of the crime and the place we found the bodies aren't the same. The third possibility is that these two places are one and the same, but someone moved the bodies and returned them at a later date.'

'Who would do that?' Hoglund asked. 'And why?'

'That's what I think happened,' Nyberg said.

Everyone looked at him. It was unusual for Nyberg to speak with such conviction so early on in an investigation.

'At first I just kept seeing the same thing Kurt did,' he began. 'That there was something fake about the whole scene, like a photographer had arranged it for the camera. Then I found some things that made me rethink.'

Wallander waited with excitement, but it was as if Nyberg lost his train of thought.

'Go on,' he said.

Nyberg shook his head. 'It doesn't make any sense,' he said. 'Why would anyone move the bodies just to return them at a later date?'

'There might be a lot of reasons,' Wallander said. 'To delay a discovery or to give himself time to escape.'

'Or to send a number of postcards,' Martinsson said.

Wallander nodded. 'We'll take this step by step. We don't know if our thinking is right or wrong.'