'Do you mean that the safe should be opened tonight?'
'That would be best,' Wallander said. 'This is a double homicide.'
'Impossible,' Nyberg said. 'I can only get hold of people with the requisite welding equipment tomorrow at the earliest.'
'Are they here in Ystad?'
Nyberg reflected.
'There is a company that's a subcontractor for the armed forces,' he said. 'They probably have the equipment that would do the trick. I think their name is Fabricius. They're on Industrigatan.'
Nyberg looked exhausted. It would be insane to drive him onward right now, Wallander thought. He himself shouldn't press on either.
'Seven o'clock tomorrow,' Wallander said.
Nyberg nodded.
Wallander looked around for his car. Then he remembered that it hadn't started. Nyberg could drop him off, but he preferred to walk. The wind was cold. He passed a thermometer outside a shop window on Stora Ostergatan. Minus six degrees Celsius. Winter is creeping in, Wallander thought. Soon it will be here.
One minute to seven on the morning of the fifteenth of December, Nyberg entered Wallander's office. Wallander had the telephone directory open on his desk. He had already inspected the safe, which was being stored in a temporarily empty room next to reception. One of the officers just going off the night shift told him that they had needed a forklift to get the safe inside. Wallander nodded. He had noticed the marks outside the glass doors and seen that one of the hinges was bent. That won't make Bjork happy, he thought. But he'll have to live with it. Wallander had tried to move the safe, without success. He had wondered again what it contained. Or if it was empty.
Nyberg called the company on Industrigatan. Wallander went to get some coffee. Rydberg arrived at the same time. Wallander told him about the safe.
'It was as I suspected,' Rydberg said. 'We know very little about these sisters.'
'We're in the process of trying to find a welder who can take on this kind of safe,' Wallander said.
'I hope you'll tell me before you open it,' Rydberg said. 'It will be interesting to be there.'
Wallander returned to his office. He thought it seemed as if Rydberg was in less pain today.
Nyberg was just getting off the phone when Wallander walked in with two cups of coffee.
'I've just spoken to Ruben Fabricius,' Nyberg said. 'He thought they would be able to do the job. They'll be here in half an hour.'
'Tell me when they arrive,' Wallander said.
Nyberg left. Wallander thought about his father in Cairo. Hoped that his experiences were living up to his expectations. He studied the note with the telephone number of the hotel, Mena House. Wondered if he should call. But suddenly he was unsure of what the time difference was, or if there even was one. He dropped the thought and instead called Ebba to see who had come in.
'Martinsson called in to say that he was on his way to Sjobo,' she answered. 'Svedberg hasn't arrived yet. Hansson is showering. He's apparently had a water leak at home.'
'We're going to open the safe soon,' Wallander said. 'That may get noisy.'
'I went in to take a look at it,' Ebba said. 'I thought it would be bigger.'
'One that size can hold a lot as well.'
'Of course,' she said. 'Ugh.'
Wallander wondered later what she had meant by her last comment. Did she expect that they would find a child's corpse in the safe? Or a decapitated head?
Hansson appeared in the doorway. His hair was still wet.
'I've just talked to Bjork,' he said cheerily. 'He pointed out that the doors of the station were damaged last night.'
Hansson had not yet heard about the safe. Wallander explained.
'That may provide us with a motive,' Hansson said.
'In the best-case scenario,' Wallander said. 'In the worst case, the safe is empty. And then we understand even less.'
'It could have been emptied by the people who shot the sisters,' Hansson objected. 'Perhaps he shot one of them and forced the other to open the safe?'
This had also occurred to Wallander. But something told him it was not what had actually happened. Without being able to say why he had that feeling.
At eight o'clock, under Ruben Fabricius's direction, two welders started the work of cutting open the safe. It was, as Nyberg had predicted, a difficult task.
'A special kind of steel,' Fabricius said. 'A normal locksmith would have to devote his whole life trying to open this kind of safe.'
'Can you blow it up?' Wallander asked.
'The risk would be that you'd take the whole building with you,' Fabricius answered. 'In that case I would first move the safe to an open field. But sometimes so much explosive is needed that the safe itself is blown to pieces. And the contents either burn or are pulverised.'
Fabricius was a large, heavyset man who punctuated each sentence with a short laugh.
'This kind of safe probably costs a hundred thousand kronor,' he said and laughed.
Wallander looked astonished.
'That much?'
'Easily.'
One thing at least is certain, Wallander thought as he recalled yesterday's discussion about the dead women's financial situation. The Eberhardsson sisters had much more money than they had reported to the authorities. They must have had undeclared income. But what can you sell of value in a sewing shop? Gold thread? Diamond-studded buttons?
The welding equipment was turned off at a quarter past nine. Fabricius nodded to Wallander and chuckled.
'All set,' he said.
Rydberg, Hansson and Svedberg had arrived. Nyberg had been following the work from the beginning. Using a crowbar, he now forced out the back piece that had been freed with a welding torch. Everyone who was crowded around leaned forward. Wallander saw a number of plastic-wrapped bundles. Nyberg picked up one that lay on top. The plastic was white and sealed with tape. Nyberg placed the bundle on a chair and cut open the tape. Inside there was a thick wad of notes. American hundred-dollar bills. There were ten wads, each a stack of ten thousand dollars.
'A lot of money,' Wallander said.
He carefully pulled out a bill and held it up to the light. It appeared genuine.
Nyberg took out the other bundles, one after another, and opened them. Fabricius stood in the background and laughed each time a new package of money was revealed.
'Let's take the rest to a conference room,' Wallander said.
Then he thanked Fabricius and the two men who had cut open the safe.
'You'll have to send us a bill,' Wallander said. 'Without you, we would never have been able to get this open.'
'I think this one's on us,' Fabricius said. 'It was an experience for a tradesman. And a wonderful opportunity for professional training.'
'There is also no need to mention what was inside,' Wallander said and tried to sound serious.
Fabricius let out a short laugh and saluted him. Wallander understood that it was not intended to be ironic.
When all of the bundles had been opened and the wads of notes counted, Wallander made a swift calculation. Most of it had been in US dollars. But there had also been British pounds and Swiss francs.
'I estimate it to be around five million kronor,' he said. 'No insignificant sum.'
'There would also not have been room for more in this safe,' Rydberg said. 'And this means, in other words,
