and went in. Peeling wallpaper, stale air, a mess. Broken couches, mattresses on the floor. Yet there was a large- screen television and a relatively new video recorder. A CD player with large speakers. He called out again and listened. No answer. There was indescribable chaos in the kitchen. Dishes piled up in the sink. Paper bags, plastic bags, empty pizza cartons on the floor to which various lines of ants led.
A mouse scuttled past in a corner. The place smelled musty. Wallander walked on. Stopped outside a door that had been spray-painted with the words 'Yngve's Church'. He pushed open the door. There was a real bed inside, but only a bottom sheet and a blanket on it. A chest of drawers, two chairs. A radio in the window. A clock that had stopped at ten minutes to seven. Yngve Leonard Holm had lived here. While he was having a large house built in Ystad. On the floor there was a tracksuit top. He had been wearing it when Wallander questioned him. Wallander sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed, afraid that it would give way, and looked around. A person lived here, he thought. A person who lived by herding other people into various forms of drug hell. He shook his head with distaste. Then he leaned over and looked under the bed. Dust. A slipper and some porn magazines. He stood up and pulled out the chest drawers. More magazines with undressed, splay-legged women. Several of them frighteningly young. Underwear, painkillers, Band-Aids.
Next drawer. An old kerosene blowtorch. The kind you used to start engines on fishing boats. In the final drawer, piles of papers. Old report cards. Wallander saw that Holm had been proficient only in what was also his own favourite subject, geography. Otherwise his marks were forgettable. Some photographs. Holm at a bar somewhere with a glass of beer in each hand. Drunk. Red-eyed. Another photograph: Holm naked on a beach. Grinning straight at the camera. Then an old black-and-white photograph of a man and a woman on a road. Wallander turned it over. Bastad, 1937. It could be Holm's parents.
He continued to search among the papers. Stopped at an old aeroplane ticket. Took it over to the window. Copenhagen-Marbella, return. The twelfth of August, 1989. The return dated the seventeenth. Five days in Spain, and not on a charter ticket. He was unable to determine if the code was tourist or business class. He tucked it into his pocket and closed the drawer after a few more minutes of searching.
There was nothing of interest in the wardrobe. More clutter and chaos. Wallander sat back down on the bed. Wondered where the other people who lived in the house were. He walked into the living room. There was a telephone on the table. He called the station and spoke to Ebba.
'Where are you?' she asked. 'People have been asking for you.'
'Who is asking for me?'
'You know how it is. As soon as you aren't here everyone wants you.'
'I'm on my way,' Wallander said.
Then he asked her to look up the number of the travel agency where Anette Bengtsson worked. He made a mental note of it, finished his conversation with Ebba and dialled the agency. It was the other girl who answered. He asked to speak with Anette. It took several minutes but then she picked up. He told her who it was.
'How was the trip to Cairo?' she asked.
'Good. The pyramids are very high. Remarkable, really. It was also very warm.'
'You should have stayed longer.'
'I'll have to do that another time.'
Then he asked her if she could tell him if Anna or Emilia Eberhardsson had been in Spain between the twelfth and seventeenth of August.
'That will take a while,' she said.
'I'll wait,' Wallander said.
She put the receiver down. Wallander again caught sight of a mouse in a corner. He could not of course be sure that it was the same mouse. Winter is coming, he thought. The mice are on their way back into the house. Anette Bengtsson came back.
'Anna Eberhardsson left Ystad on the tenth of August,' she said. 'She returned at the beginning of September.'
'Thanks for the help,' Wallander replied. 'I would very much like to have an inventory of all of the sisters' trips last year.'
'What for?'
'For the police investigation,' he said. 'I'll come in tomorrow.'
She promised to help him. He hung up. Thought that he would probably have fallen in love with her if he had been ten years younger. Now it would be senseless. She would look on advances from him with distaste. He left the house and thought alternately of Holm and Emma Lundin. Then his thoughts returned to Anette Bengtsson. He couldn't be completely sure that she would be offended. But she probably already had a boyfriend. Although he could not recall seeing a ring on her left hand.
The dog barked like crazy. Wallander walked up to the dog run and screamed at it and then it went quiet. As soon as he turned round and left it started to bark again. I should be grateful, he thought, that Linda doesn't live in a house like this. How many people in Sweden, how many normal, unthinking citizens, are familiar with these environments? Where people live in constant mists, misery, despair. He got into the car and drove away. But first he had checked the mailbox. There was a letter in it, addressed to Holm. He opened it. It was the final notice of a bill from a car-hire agency. Wallander put the letter in his pocket.
He was back at the station at four o'clock. A note from Martinsson was on his desk. Wallander went to Martinsson's office. He was on the phone. When Wallander turned up in the doorway, he said he'd call back. Wallander assumed he had been talking with his wife. Martinsson hung up.
'The Spanish police are searching the villa in Marbella right now,' he said. 'I've been in touch with a colleague by the name of Fernando Lopez.
He speaks excellent English and seems to be a very high-ranking officer.'
Wallander told him about his excursion and his conversation with Anette Bengtsson. He showed Martinsson the ticket.
'That bastard flew business class,' Martinsson said.
'Be that as it may,' Wallander said, 'we now have another connection. No one can still say this is a coincidence.'
That was also what he said at the case meeting at five o'clock. It was very brief. Per Akeson sat in on it without saying anything. He's already finished, Wallander thought. He's physically here, but mentally he's already away on his leave.
When there was nothing more to say, they finished the meeting. Each of them went back to his tasks. Wallander called Linda and told her he now had a car that worked and could pick up her grandfather in Malmo. He went home a little before seven. Emma Lundin called. This time Wallander said yes. She stayed until just past midnight, as usual. Wallander thought of Anette Bengtsson.
The following day he stopped by the travel agency and picked up the information he had requested. There were many customers looking for seats for Christmas. Wallander would have liked to stay for a while and talk to Anette Bengtsson, but she didn't have time. He also stopped outside the old sewing shop. The rubble had now been cleared. He walked into town. Suddenly he realised there was only a week left until Christmas. The first one since the divorce.
That day nothing happened that took the investigation further. Wallander pondered his pyramid. The only addition he made was a thick line between Anna Eberhardsson and Yngve Leonard Holm.
The next day, the twenty-first of December, Wallander drove to Malmo to pick up his father. He felt great relief when he saw him walk out of the ferry terminal. He drove him back to Loderup. His father talked non-stop about his wonderful trip. He appeared to have forgotten the fact that he had been in prison and that Wallander had actually also been to Cairo.
That evening Wallander went to the annual police Christmas function. He avoided sitting at the same table as Bjork. But the toast the police chief made was unusually successful. He had taken the trouble to look into the history of the Ystad police. His account was both entertaining and well presented. Wallander chuckled on several occasions. Bjork was without a doubt a good orator.
He was drunk when he came home. Before falling asleep he thought of Anette Bengtsson. And decided in the next moment to immediately stop thinking about her.
On the twenty-second of December they reviewed the state of the investigation. Nothing new had happened. The Spanish police had not found anything noteworthy in the sisters' villa. No hidden valuables, nothing. They were
