‘Have they sent you to deliver a message?’
‘Not at all - I came entirely of my own accord to see how you were.’
They went into the house. Martinsson took a look at Wallander’s library, which had become extensive over the years. Then they sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. Wallander said nothing about his trip to Malmo and the appointment with the doctor. Martinsson nodded at his plastered hand.
‘The cast will come off next week,’ said Wallander. ‘What does the gossip have to say?’
‘About your hand?’
‘About me. The gun at the restaurant.’
‘Lennart Mattson is an unusually taciturn man. I know nothing about what’s going on. But you can count on our support.’
‘That’s not true. You no doubt support me. But the leak must have come from somewhere. There are a lot of people at the police station who don’t like me.’
Martinsson shrugged.
‘That’s life. There’s nothing you can do about it. Who likes me?’
They talked about everything under the sun. It struck Wallander that Martinsson was now the only one left of the colleagues who were at the police station when he first moved to Ystad.
Martinsson seemed depressed as he sat there at the table. Wallander wondered if he was ill.
‘No, I’m not ill,’ said Martinsson. ‘But I’m resigned to the fact that it’s all over now. My career as a police officer, that is.’
‘Did you also leave your gun in a restaurant?’
‘I just can’t take it any more.’
To Wallander’s astonishment, Martinsson started crying. He sat there like a helpless child, his hands wrapped around his coffee cup as the tears ran down his cheeks. Wallander had no idea what to do. He had occasionally noticed that Martinsson was depressed over the years, but he had never broken down like this before. He decided simply to wait it out. When the phone rang he unplugged it.
Martinsson pulled himself together and dried his face.
‘What a thing to do!’ he said. ‘I apologise.’
‘Apologise for what? In my opinion anyone who can cry in front of another man displays great courage. Courage I don’t have, I’m afraid.’
Martinsson explained that he felt he had lost his way. He found himself questioning more and more the value of his work as a police officer. He wasn’t dissatisfied with the work he did, but he worried about the role of the police in the Sweden of today. The gap between what the general public expected and what the police could actually do seemed to be growing wider all the time. Now he had reached a point where every night was a virtually sleepless wait for a day he knew would bring more torture.
‘I’m packing it in this summer,’ he said. ‘There’s a firm in Malmo I’ve been in contact with. They provide security consultants for small businesses and private properties. They have a job for me. At a salary significantly higher than what I’m getting now, incidentally.’
Wallander recalled another time many years ago when Martinsson had made up his mind to resign. On that occasion Wallander had managed to persuade him to soldier on. That must have been at least fifteen years ago. He could see that this time, it was impossible to talk his colleague out of it. It wasn’t as if his own situation made his future in the police force particularly attractive.
‘I think I understand what you mean,’ he said. And I think you’re doing the right thing. Change course while you’re still young enough to do it.’
‘I’ll be fifty in a few years’ time,’ he said. ‘You call that young?’
‘I’m sixty,’ said Wallander. ‘By then you’re definitely on a one-way street to old age.’
Martinsson stayed a bit longer, talking about the work he would be doing in Malmo. Wallander realised the man was trying to show him that, despite everything, he still had something to look forward to, that he hadn’t lost all his enthusiasm.
Wallander walked him to his car.
‘Have you heard anything from Mattson?’ Martinsson asked tentatively.
‘There are four possible options,’ Wallander told him. A “constructive reprimand”. for instance. They can’t do that to me. That would make a laughing stock of the whole police force. A sixty-year-old officer sitting before some police commissioner like a naughty schoolboy, told to mend his ways.’
‘Surely they aren’t seriously considering that? They must be out of their minds!’
‘They could give me an official warning,’ Wallander went on. ‘Or they could give me a fine. As a last resort, they could give me the boot. My guess is I’ll get a fine.’
They shook hands when they came to the car. Martinsson vanished into a cloud of snow. Wallander went back into the house, leafed through his calendar, and established that three months had now passed since that unfortunate evening when he forgot his service pistol.
He remained on sick leave even after the cast had been removed. On 10 April an orthopaedic specialist at Ystad Hospital discovered that a bone in Wallander’s hand had not healed as it should have. For a brief, horrific moment Wallander thought they were going to break his wrist again, but the doctor assured him that there were other measures they could take. But it was important that Wallander not use his hand, so he couldn’t go back to work.
After leaving the hospital, Wallander stayed in town. There was a play by a modern American dramatist on at the Ystad theatre, and Wallander had been given a ticket by Linda, who had a bad cold and couldn’t go herself. As a teenager she had thought briefly about becoming an actress, but that ambition passed quickly. Now she was relieved she had realised early on that she didn’t have enough talent to go on the stage.
After only ten minutes, Wallander started checking his watch. The play was boring him. Moderately talented actors were wandering around in a room and reciting their lines from various places - a stool, a table, a window seat. The play was about a family in the process of breaking up as a result of internal pressures, unresolved conflicts, lies, thwarted dreams; it completely failed to engage his interest. When the first interval came at last, Wallander grabbed his jacket and left the theatre. He had been looking forward to the production, and he felt frustrated. Was it his fault, or was the play really as boring as he found it?
He had parked his car at the train station. He crossed over the tracks and followed a well-trodden path towards the rear of the station building. He suddenly felt a blow in the small of his back and fell over. Two young men, eighteen or nineteen, were standing over him. One of them was wearing a hooded sweater, the other a leather jacket. The one with the hood was carrying a knife. A kitchen knife, Wallander noted before being punched in the face by the one in the leather jacket. His upper lip split and started bleeding. Another punch, this time on the forehead. The boy was strong and was hitting hard, as if he was in a rage. Then he started tugging at Wallander’s clothes, hissing that he wanted his wallet and mobile phone. Wallander raised an arm to protect himself. The whole time, he was keeping an eye on the knife. It then dawned on him that the kids were more scared than he was, and that he didn’t need to worry about that trembling hand holding the weapon. Wallander braced himself, then aimed a kick at the kid with the knife. He missed, but grabbed hold of his hand and gave it a violent twist. The knife flew away. At the same time, he felt a heavy blow to the back of his neck, and he fell down again. This time the blow had been so hard that he couldn’t stand up. He managed to raise himself onto his knees, and he felt the chill from the wet ground through his trouser legs. He expected to be stabbed at any moment. But nothing happened. When he looked up, the kids had disappeared. He rubbed the back of his head, which felt sticky. He slowly got to his feet, realised that he was in danger of fainting, and grabbed hold of the fence surrounding the tracks. He took a few deep breaths, then made his way gingerly to the car. The back of his neck was bleeding, but he could take care of that when he got home. He didn’t seem to have any signs of a concussion.
He sat behind the wheel for a while without turning the ignition key. From one world to another, he thought. First I’m sitting in a theatre but don’t feel a part of what’s happening. So I leave and then find myself in a world I often come across from the outside; but this time I am the one lying there, injured, under threat.
He thought about the knife. Once, at the very beginning of his career, as a young police officer in Malmo, he had been stabbed in Pildamm Park by a madman running amok. If the knife had entered his body only an inch to one side it would have hit his heart. In that case he would never have spent all those years in Ystad, or seen Linda grow up. His life would have come to an end before it had started in earnest.
He remembered thinking at the time:
