‘Is her name Signe?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know when she was born?’
Nordlander thought for a moment before answering.
‘She must be nearly ten years older than her brother. I think her handicap was such a shock to them that it was a long time before they dared to try again.’
‘So she must be over forty now,’ said Wallander. ‘Do you know where she lives? The name of the home or institution?’
‘I think Hakan once said it was somewhere near Mariefred, but I never heard a name.’
Wallander rushed to end the call. Finding Signe felt urgent, despite the fact that the case was none of his business. He knew that he should contact Ytterberg first, but his curiosity got the better of him. He searched through his hopelessly messy address book until he found the phone number he was looking for. It belonged to a woman who worked for the Ystad Social Welfare Board. She was the daughter of a former civilian secretary at the police station. Wallander had met her in connection with a paedophile ring a few years back. Her name was Sara Amander, and she answered almost immediately. They exchanged a few pleasantries before Wallander came to the point.
‘I’m looking for an institution for the handicapped not far from Mariefred. Maybe there’s more than one? I need addresses and phone numbers.’
‘Can you give me any more information? Are you talking about congenital brain damage, for instance?’
‘It’s mainly physical, as I understand it. A child who needed care from the day she was born. But it’s also possible that she has mental limitations. No doubt it would be an advantage for a person that handicapped not to be fully aware of what an awful life she was condemned to lead.’
‘We have to be careful when we talk about other people’s lives,’ said Sara Amander. ‘There are severely handicapped people whose lives are filled with much happiness. But I’ll see what I can find out.’
Wallander hung up, went to get some coffee, and exchanged a few words with Kristina Magnusson, who reminded him that her colleagues were going to have a casual summer party in her garden the following evening. Wallander had forgotten all about it, of course, but he said he’d be there. He went back to his office and wrote a reminder in large letters that he placed by the phone.
A couple of hours later Sara Amander called back. She had two possibilities for him. One was a private care home called Amalienborg, on the very edge of Mariefred. The other was a state-run home, Niklasgarden, not far from Gripsholm Castle. Wallander made a note of the addresses and phone numbers and was about to call the first one when Martinsson appeared in the half-open door. Wallander replaced the receiver and waved him in. Martinsson pulled a face.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘A poker party that ran off the rails. An ambulance just took a man to the hospital with stab wounds. We have a car there, but you and I should go too.’
Wallander grabbed his jacket and followed Martinsson out of the room. It took the rest of the day and part of the night for them to figure out what caused the poker party to collapse into chaos and violence. It was only when Wallander returned to the police station at about eight o’clock that he was able to call the numbers from Sara Amander. He began with Amalienborg. A friendly woman answered the phone. Even as he asked his question about Signe von Enke he realised his mistake. He wouldn’t get an answer, of course. An institution that took care of severely handicapped people naturally couldn’t hand out information to any old Tom, Dick or Harry. And that was the reply he was given. He didn’t even receive a reply to his other questions about whether they had residents of varying ages or if the home was only for adults. The friendly woman continued to inform him patiently that she wasn’t allowed to tell him anything. Unfortunately, she couldn’t help him at all, no matter how much she would like to. Wallander hung up and thought he should give Ytterberg a call. But he decided against it. There was no reason to disturb his evening. The conversation could wait until the following day.
Since it was a pleasant evening, warm and calm, he ate dinner outside in the garden. Jussi lay at his feet, and snapped up everything that fell off Wallander’s fork. In the surrounding fields the oilseed rape was now a sea of gleaming yellow.
But the thought of that sister wouldn’t go away. He tried to understand the silence that surrounded her, and thought about how he and Mona would have reacted if they’d had a child that needed the expert care of outsiders from birth. He shuddered at the thought, which was impossible for him to come to grips with. He was sitting lost in thought when eventually he noticed that the phone was ringing. Jussi pricked up his ears. It was Linda. She spoke in a low voice and explained that Hans was asleep.
‘He’s completely shattered,’ she said. ‘The worst thing, he says, is that now he has nobody he can ask about her.’
‘I’m trying to track her down,’ said Wallander. ‘Give me another couple of days and I should know where she is.’
‘Do you understand how Hakan and Louise could do something like this?’
‘No. But maybe it’s the only way they could cope with having such a severely handicapped child - to pretend she simply didn’t exist.’
Then Wallander described the view of the oilseed rape fields and the distant horizon for her.
‘I’m looking forward to when Klara can run around here,’ he said eventually.
‘You should get yourself a woman.’
‘You don’t “get yourself” a woman!’
‘You won’t find one if you don’t make an effort! Loneliness will eat you up from the inside. You’ll become an unpleasant old man.’
Wallander sat outside until after ten o’clock, thinking about what Linda had said. But despite everything, he slept soundly and woke up fully rested soon after five. He was in his office by six thirty. A thought had begun to develop in his mind. He checked his calendar for the period between now and midsummer, and established that nothing compelled him to stay in Ystad. Somebody else could take charge of the poker case. Since Lennart Mattson was an early bird, Wallander knocked on his door. Mattson had just arrived when Wallander came to ask for four days’ leave, starting the next day.
‘I’m aware that this request comes out of the blue,’ he said. ‘But I have a personal reason. And I can make myself available during the midsummer holiday, even though I’m down for a week’s break then.’
Mattson didn’t protest. Wallander was granted four days off. He went back to his office and looked up on the Internet the exact locations of Amalienborg and Niklasgarden. The information he found about the two institutions wasn’t enough to help him decide which was the right one. Both of them seemed to care for people with a wide variety of serious disabilities.
He handed Jussi over to his neighbours, who would look after him for the next few days. The dog’s kennel was deserted. Wallander lay down on top of the bed, set the alarm clock for three and slept for a few hours. It was four o’clock when he got into his car and set off northward. Dawn was enveloped by a diaphanous mist, but that meant it would be a fine day. He arrived in Mariefred shortly after noon. After lunch in a roadside restaurant, he dozed in his car for a while, then set off for Amalienborg, a former college with an annexe that had been turned into a nursing home. At the front desk Wallander produced his police ID and hoped that would be sufficient for him to find out whether he had come to the right place. The receptionist wasn’t sure what to do and got her supervisor, who studied Wallander’s ID carefully.
‘Signe von Enke,’ he said in a friendly tone. ‘That’s all I need to know. Is she here or not? It’s really about her parents, who have disappeared.’
The supervisor’s badge indicated that her name was Anna Gustafsson.
She listened to Wallander, then studied him for a moment before answering.
A naval commander?’ she said. ‘Is that him?’
‘Yes, that’s him,’ said Wallander, making no attempt to conceal his surprise.
‘I’ve read about him in the newspapers.’
‘I’m talking about his daughter,’ said Wallander. ‘Is she here?’
Anna Gustafsson shook her head.
‘No,’ she said. ‘We don’t have anyone named Signe. None of our patients is the daughter of a naval commander. I can promise you that.’
