'You're going to the hospital,' Nyberg said. 'First things first.'
Wallander felt his cheek. His hand grew wet with blood. He was suddenly overcome with dizziness. Nyberg took his arm and helped him into the car.
Wallander was allowed to leave the hospital at four in the morning. By then Svedberg and Hansson had arrived. Various night squads had criss-crossed the city in the hunt for the man who had knocked him down. But since there was only a vague description, a mid-length coat that could have been black or navy blue, the effort had predictably been in vain. Wallander was patched up. The broken tooth would have to be attended to later in the day. Wallander's cheek had swollen up. The blood had come from a wound near his hairline.
When they left the hospital, Wallander insisted on going directly to the studio. Both Hansson and Svedberg protested and said he needed to rest first. But Wallander ignored their objections. Nyberg was already on the scene when they arrived. They turned on all of the available lights and gathered in the studio.
'I haven't been able to identify anything as missing or altered,' Nyberg said.
Wallander knew that Nyberg had a tremendous memory for details. But he realised at the same time that the man could have been searching for something that might not have been particularly noticeable. Above all, they had no way of knowing why the man had sought out the studio in the middle of the night.
'What about fingerprints?' Wallander asked. 'Footprints?'
Nyberg pointed to the floor where several areas had been taped and marked as restricted.
'I have checked the door handles. But I suspect the man was wearing gloves.'
'And the front door?'
'No marks. We can safely assume he had access to keys. I was the one who locked up last night.'
Wallander looked at his colleagues.
'Shouldn't there have been surveillance posted here?'
'It was my call,' Hansson said. 'I didn't see any reason for it, particularly given our current staffing issues.'
Wallander knew that Hansson was right. He wouldn't have ordered surveillance either if he had been in charge.
'We can only speculate as to who the man was,' he went on. 'And what he was after in here. Even if there was no visible police presence, he must have realised that it was possible we were keeping the place under surveillance. But I want someone to talk to Lars Backman, who not only called me at midnight but also took care of Hilda Walden yesterday morning. He seems like a good resource. He may have noticed something that he didn't think of at once.'
'It's four o'clock in the morning,' Svedberg pointed out. 'Do you want me to call him right now?'
'He is probably awake,' Wallander said. 'Yesterday morning he was out already at five a.m. He is both an early riser and a night owl.'
Svedberg nodded and left. There was no reason for Wallander to keep the others.
'We'll have to review the case thoroughly tomorrow,' he said when Svedberg had walked out the front door. 'The best thing you can do is get a few hours of sleep. For my part, I'm going to stay here for a while.'
'Do you think that's wise?' Hansson asked. 'After what you've been through?'
'I don't know if it's wise or not. But that's what I'm doing.'
Nyberg handed him the keys. When Hansson and Nyberg had left, Wallander locked the door. Even though he was exhausted and his cheek ached, his attention was sharp. He listened to the silence. Nothing appeared changed. He went into the inner room, did the same thing, scrutinising it. Nothing jumped out at him. But the man had come here for a reason. And he had been in a hurry. He could not wait. There could only be one explanation. There was something in the studio that he needed to get. Wallander sat down at the desk. There were no marks on the lock. He opened the cabinet, pulled out drawer after drawer. The album was the same as when he had last seen it. Nothing appeared to be missing. Wallander tried to calculate how long the man had been in the shop. The telephone call from Backman had come at four minutes to midnight. Wallander had arrived here at ten past twelve. His conversation with Backman and his call to Nyberg had not been longer than a couple of minutes apiece. At that point it was a quarter past twelve. Nyberg arrived at half past twelve. The unknown man was in the studio for forty minutes. When he left, he had been taken by surprise. That meant he had not been fleeing. He had left the studio because he was done.
Done with what?
Wallander looked around the room again, this time even more methodically. Somewhere something must have changed. He simply wasn't seeing it. Something was gone. Or added, returned? He walked out into the studio and repeated his initial examination, finally even in the shop portion.
Nothing. He returned to the inner room again. Something told him that was where he should search. In Simon Lamberg's secret room. He sat in the chair, allowing his gaze to wander around the walls, over the desk and bookcases. Then he stood up and walked over to the developing equipment. Turned on the red light. Everything was as he remembered. The faint smell of chemicals. The empty plastic tubs, the enlarger.
He walked back to the desk, pensive. Remained standing. Where the impulse came from he wasn't sure. But he walked over to the shelf where the radio was and turned it on.
The music was deafening.
He stared at the radio. The volume was at the same level as before.
But the music was not classical. It was loud rock music.
Wallander was convinced that neither Nyberg nor any of the other technicians would have switched the radio station. They did not alter anything unless it was absolutely necessary for their work.
Wallander took a handkerchief out of his pocket and turned off the radio. There was only one possibility.
The unknown man had turned the dial to a different frequency.
He had changed stations.
The question was simply: why?
The squad was finally able to start the meeting at ten o'clock in the morning. The delay was due to the fact that Wallander had not been able to get back from the dentist's before then. Now he was hurrying back for the meeting, his tooth provisionally repaired, with a swollen cheek and a large bandage at his hairline. He was seriously beginning to feel the effects of his lack of sleep. But more serious was the anxiety gnawing at him.
It had now been one day since Hilda Walden had discovered the dead photographer. Wallander began the meeting by summing up the state of their investigation. He then told them in detail what had happened during the night.
'The changed radio station is strange,' Svedberg said. 'Can there have been anything inside the radio itself?'
'We've examined it,' Nyberg answered. 'In order to remove the cover you have to loosen eight screws. This has not been done. The radio has never been opened since it was assembled at the factory. The finish still covers the screw heads.'
'There is a lot that's strange,' Wallander said. 'Something we shouldn't forget is the album with the distorted images. His widow tells us that Simon Lamberg was a man who had many secrets. Right now we should be concentrating on creating a better picture of who he really was. Clearly, the surface does not match up with what was underneath. The polite, quiet and fastidious photographer must in reality have been someone quite different.'
'The question is just who would know more about him,' Martinsson said. 'If, as seems to be the case, he doesn't have any friends. No one seems to have known him.'
'We have the amateur astronomers in Lund,' Wallander said. 'We have to get in touch with them, of course. Former assistants who worked for him. You can't live your whole life in a town like Ystad without anybody knowing you. And we've barely begun our conversations with Elisabeth Lamberg. In other words, we have a lot to dig into. Everything has to be pursued simultaneously.'
'I spoke to Backman,' Svedberg said. 'You were right about him being up. When I arrived at his apartment his wife was also up and dressed. It felt like the middle of the day, even though it was only four in the morning. Unfortunately he could not give any kind of description of the man who knocked you down. Nothing apart from the
