It was close to six o'clock when they finally returned to the hotel. Since he was travelling very early the next morning they decided to eat dinner in the hotel, where there were several restaurants to choose from. At his father's suggestion they booked a table at an Indian restaurant and Wallander thought afterwards that he had rarely had such a good meal. His father had been pleasant the entire time and Wallander understood that he had now dismissed all thoughts of climbing the pyramids.
They parted at eleven. Wallander would be leaving the hotel at six.
'Of course I'll get up and see you off,' his father said.
'I'd rather you didn't,' Wallander said. 'Neither of us likes goodbyes.'
'Thank you for coming here,' his father said. 'You're probably right about it being hard to spend two years in prison without being able to paint.'
'Come home on the twenty-first and everything will be forgotten,' Wallander answered.
'The next time we'll go to Italy,' his father said and walked away towards his room.
That night Wallander slept heavily. At six o'clock he sat in the taxi and crossed the Nile for the sixth and hopefully final time. The plane left at the assigned time and he landed in Kastrup on time. He took a taxi to the ferries and was in Malmo at a quarter to four. He ran to the station and just made a train to Ystad. He walked home to Mariagatan, changed his clothes and walked in through the front doors of the station at half past six. The damaged hinge had been replaced. Bjork knows where to set his priorities, he thought grimly. Martinsson's and Svedberg's offices were empty, but Hansson was in. Wallander told him about his trip in broad strokes. But first he asked how Rydberg was doing.
'He's supposed to be coming in tomorrow,' Hansson said. 'That was what Martinsson said.'
Wallander immediately felt relieved. Apparently it had not been as serious as they had feared.
'And here?' he asked. 'The investigation?'
'There has been another important development,' Hansson said. 'But that has to do with the plane that crashed.'
'What is it?'
'Yngve Leonard Holm has been found murdered. In the woods outside Sjobo.'
Wallander sat down.
'But that isn't all,' Hansson said. 'He hasn't only been murdered. He was shot in the back of the head, just like the Eberhardsson sisters.'
Wallander held his breath.
He had not expected this. That a connection would suddenly appear between the crashed plane and the two murdered women who had been found in the remains of a devastating fire.
He looked at Hansson.
What does it mean, he thought. What is the significance of what Hansson is telling me?
All at once the trip to Cairo felt very distant.
CHAPTER 9
At ten o'clock in the morning on the nineteenth of December, Wallander called the bank and asked if he could increase his loan by another twenty thousand kronor. He lied and said he had misheard the price of the car he intended to buy. The bank loan officer replied that it shouldn't present any difficulties. Wallander could come by and sign the loan documents and collect the money the same day. After Wallander hung up the phone, he called Arne, who was selling him the car, and arranged for him to deliver the new Peugeot to Mariagatan at one o'clock. Arne would also either try to bring the old one to life or tow it back to his garage.
Wallander made these two calls right after the morning meeting. They had met for two hours, starting at a quarter to eight. But Wallander had been at the station since seven o'clock. The night before, when he had learned that Yngve Leonard Holm had been murdered and that there was a possible connection between him and the Eberhardsson sisters, or at least with their killer, he had perked up and sat with Hansson for close to an hour, learning all the available facts. But then he had suddenly felt exhausted. He had gone home and stretched out on the bed in order to rest before undressing but had fallen asleep and slept through the night. When he woke up at half past five he felt restored. He stayed in bed for a while and thought about his trip to Cairo, which was already a distant memory.
When he reached the station, Rydberg was already there. They went to the break room, where they found several bleary-eyed officers who had just finished the night shift. Rydberg had tea and rusks. Wallander sat down across from him.
'I heard you went to Egypt,' Rydberg said. 'How were the pyramids?'
'High,' Wallander said. 'Very strange.'
'And your father?'
'He could have gone to prison. But I got him out by paying almost ten thousand kronor in fines.'
Rydberg laughed.
'My dad was a horse-trader,' he said. 'Have I told you that?'
'You've never said anything about your parents.'
'He sold horses. Travelled around to markets, checking the teeth, and was apparently a devil at inflating the price. That old stereotype about the horse-trader's wallet is actually true. My dad had one of those filled with thousand-kronor notes. But I wonder if he even knew that the pyramids were in Egypt. It's even less likely that he knew the capital was Cairo. He was completely uneducated. There was only one thing he knew and that was horses. And possibly women. All his dalliances drove my mother crazy.'
'One has the parents one has,' Wallander said. 'How are you feeling?'
'Something is wrong,' Rydberg said firmly. 'One doesn't collapse like that from rheumatism. Something is wrong. But I don't know what it is. And right now I'm more interested in this Holm who got a bullet in the back of his head.'
'I heard about it from Hansson yesterday.'
Rydberg pushed his teacup away.
'It is of course an incredibly compelling thought that the Eberhardsson sisters might turn out to have been involved in drug trafficking. Something like that would strike at the very foundations of the Swedish sewing supplies industry. Out with the embroidery, in with the heroin.'
'The thought has crossed my mind,' Wallander said. 'I'll see you in a while.'
As he walked to his office he thought that Rydberg would never have been as open about his health if he wasn't convinced that something was wrong. Wallander felt himself starting to worry.
Until a quarter to eight he went through some reports that had piled up on his desk during his absence. He had spoken to Linda the day before – just after he had got home and put his bag down. She had promised to go to Kastrup and meet her grandfather and make sure he made it home to Loderup. Wallander had not dared to hope that he would really be approved for a new loan and therefore be able to get a new car and pick up his father in Malmo.
He found a message that Sten Widen had called. And his sister. He saved these messages. His colleague Gosta Boman in Kristianstad had tried to reach him. Boman was a police officer he got together with from time to time after they had met at one of the countless National Police Commission seminars. He also put this message aside. The rest of them he swept into the bin.
The investigative meeting started with Wallander briefly describing his adventures in Cairo and the helpful police officer Radwan. Then a discussion broke out about when exactly the death penalty had been abolished in Sweden. There were many guesses. Svedberg claimed that convicts had been executed by firing squad as late as the 1930s, which was firmly dismissed by Martinsson, who maintained that no executions had taken place in Sweden since Anna Mansdotter had her head cut off at the Kristianstad prison sometime in the 1890s. It ended with Hansson calling a crime reporter in Stockholm who shared his interest in horse racing.
'Abolished in 1910,' he said when he got off the phone. 'It was the first and last time the guillotine was used in Sweden. On a man by the name of Ander.'
'Didn't he fly in a balloon to the North Pole?' Martinsson said.
