'Not quite. There's one more point I need to cover. All of the post is sorted here in this building, right? Do the postmen sort their own post?'
'Yes.'
He gave the glasses back to Albinsson. 'That's all. I won't keep you from your work any longer.'
He stood up. 'What is it you're trying to find out?' Albinsson asked.
'Just what I said. This is a routine check.'
Albinsson shook his head. 'I don't believe that. Why would the chief inspector on a pressing murder case drop by as a matter of routine? You're trying to solve the murder of one of your colleagues, as well as that of those youngsters in the Hagestad nature reserve, and the newly-weds. Your visit here has something to do with all that, doesn't it?'
'That wouldn't change the fact that this is still a routine check,' Wallander said.
'I think you're looking for something in particular,' Albinsson said.
'I've told you as much as I can.'
Albinsson didn't ask any more questions. They parted at the front door, and Wallander walked out into the sunny yard. What a strange August this is, he thought. The heat just won't let up, and there's never even a hint of a breeze.
He walked back to the station, wondering whether to wear his uniform at Svedberg's funeral. He also wondered whether Hoglund was regretting having promised to give a speech, let alone one she hadn't written herself.
When he walked into reception, Ebba said that Holgersson wanted to speak to him. Ebba seemed depressed.
'How are things with you these days?' he asked. 'We never have time to talk any more.'
'Things are as they are,' she said.
It was the kind of thing his father used to say when he spoke of getting old.
'As soon as all this is over, we'll talk,' he said.
She nodded. Wallander sensed that something was different about her, but he had no time to ask more. He went to Holgersson's office. Her door was wide open as usual.
'This is a significant breakthrough,' she said as soon as he had sat down in the comfortable armchair across from her. 'Thurnberg is impressed.'
'Impressed by what?'
'You'll have to ask him that. But you're living up to your reputation.'
Wallander was surprised. 'Are things really so bad?'
'I'd say just the opposite.'
Wallander made an impatient gesture with his hand. He didn't want to talk about his own performance, especially since he knew it was seriously flawed.
'The national chief of police will officiate at the funeral tomorrow,' she said, 'together with the minister of justice. They're landing at Sturup tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. I'll be there to greet them and escort them back here. They have both requested a briefing on the state of our investigation, so I've scheduled that for 11.30 a.m., in the large conference room. It'll be you, me, and Thurnberg.'
'Could you handle it on your own, or with Martinsson? He can speak more eloquently than I can.'
'You're the one in charge of the investigation,' she said. 'It'll only take half an hour, then we'll break for lunch. They fly back to Stockholm straight after the funeral.'
'I'm dreading this funeral,' Wallander said. 'It's different when the dead person has been brutally murdered.'
'You're thinking about your old friend Rydberg?'
'Yes.'
The phone rang and she picked it up, listened for a moment, and then asked the caller to get back to her later.
'Have you chosen the music?' Wallander asked.
'We let the cantor choose it for us. I'm sure it'll be appropriate. What is it usually? Bach and Buxtehude? And then the old standard hymns, of course.'
Wallander got up to leave. 'I hope you'll make the most of this opportunity,' he said. 'What with the national chief of police and the minister of justice here.'
'What opportunity?'
'To tell them they can't let things go on like this. The cuts in staff and funding are starting to look like a conspiracy to make us unable to do our jobs, not like a matter of fiscal responsibility. The criminal element is taking over. Tell them it will be the end of all of us if they don't do something to stop it. We're not quite there yet, but we will be soon.'
Holgersson shook her head in amazement. 'I don't think we see eye to eye on this.'
'I know you've noticed it too.'
'Why don't you tell them yourself?'
'I probably will. But I have a killer to track down in the meantime.'
'Not you,' she corrected him. 'We.'
Wallander went to Martinsson's office. Hoglund was with him and they were studying a picture on the computer screen: Louise's face. Martinsson had erased her hair.
'I'm using a programme developed by the FBI,' Martinsson told him. 'We can add details such as hairstyles, beards and moustaches. You can even add pimples.'
'I don't think he had any of those,' Wallander said. 'The only thing I'm interested in is what was under his wig.'
'I called a wigmaker in Stockholm about that,' Hoglund said. 'I asked him how much hair you could hide under a wig, but it was hard to get a clear answer from him.'
'So he could have bushy hair for all we know,' Wallander said.
'The programme can do other things, too,' Martinsson said 'We can fold out the ears and flatten the nose.'
'We don't have to fold out or flatten anything,' Wallander said. 'The photograph is already so similar to his face.'
'What about the eye colour?' Martinsson asked.
Wallander thought for a moment. 'Blue,' he answered.
'Did you see her teeth?'
'Not her teeth. His teeth.'
'Did you see them?'
'Not very closely. But I think they were white and well kept.'
'Psychopaths are often fanatics about oral hygiene,' Martinsson said.
'We don't know if he's a psychopath,' Wallander said.
Martinsson entered the information about eyes and teeth into the computer.
'How old was she?' Hoglund asked.
'You mean he,' Wallander said.
'But the person you saw was a woman. You only realised later that she had to be a man.'
She was right. He had seen a woman, not a man, and that was the image he had to return to in order to judge the person's age.
'It's always hard to tell with women who wear a lot of make-up,' he said. 'But the photograph we have must be fairly recent. I would say around 40 years old.'
'How tall was she?' Martinsson asked.
Wallander tried hard to remember. 'I'm not sure,' he answered. 'But I think she was quite tall, between 170 and 175 centimetres.'
Martinsson entered in the numbers. 'What about her body?' he said. 'Was she wearing falsies?'
Wallander realised he hadn't noticed very much about her at all.
'I don't know,' he said.
Hoglund looked at him with a hint of a smile. 'The latest studies indicate that the first thing a man notices
