‘I have no idea what happened,’ he said. ‘But I suppose I must have put the gun in my pocket when I went out.’
Martinsson stood up and opened the door.
‘Would you like a coffee?’
Wallander shook his head. Martinsson disappeared into the hall. Wallander reached for the gun and saw that it was loaded. He broke into a sweat. The thought of shooting himself flashed through his mind. He moved the gun so that the barrel was pointing at the window. Martinsson came back.
‘Can you help me?’ Wallander asked.
‘I’m afraid not this time. The waiter recognised you. You’ll have to go from here straight to the boss.’
‘Have you already spoken to him?’
‘It would have been dereliction of duty if I hadn’t.’
Wallander had nothing more to say. They sat there in silence. Wallander tried to find an escape route that he knew didn’t exist.
‘What will happen now?’ he asked eventually.
‘I’ve been trying to read up on it in the rule book. There will be an internal investigation, of course. There’s also a risk that the waiter - Ture Saage is his name, incidentally, if you didn’t know that already - might leak information to the press. Nowadays you can earn a few kronor if you have the right kind of information to sell. Careless, drunken policemen could well sell a few extra copies.’
‘I hope you told him to keep his mouth shut?’
‘Of course I did! I even told him he could be arrested if he leaked any details of a police investigation. But I think he saw through me.’
‘Should I talk to him?’
Martinsson leaned over his desk. Wallander could see that he was both tired and depressed. That made him feel sad.
‘How many years have we been working together? Twenty? More? At first you were the one who told me what to do. You told me off, but you also gave credit when it was due. Now it’s my turn to tell you what to do. Nothing. You could only make things worse. Don’t speak to the waiter; don’t speak to anyone. Except for Lennart. And you need to see him now. He’s expecting you.’
Wallander nodded and stood up.
‘We’ll try to make the best of this,’ said Martinsson.
Wallander could tell from his tone of voice that he was not particularly hopeful.
Wallander reached out for his gun, but Martinsson shook his head.
‘That had better stay here,’ he said.
Wallander went out into the hallway. Kristina Magnusson was passing, a mug of coffee between her hands. She nodded to him. Wallander could tell that she knew. He didn’t turn round to check her out as he usually did. Instead he went into a toilet and locked the door. The mirror over the sink was cracked. Just like me, Wallander thought. He rinsed his face, dried it, and contemplated his bloodshot eyes. The crack divided his face in two.
Wallander sat down on the toilet seat. There was another feeling nagging at him, not just the shame and the fear following what he had done. Nothing like this had ever happened before. He couldn’t recall ever having handled his service-issue pistol in a way that broke the rules. Whenever he took it home he always locked it away in the cabinet where he kept a licensed shotgun that he used on the very infrequent occasions he hunted hares with his neighbours. But there was something affecting him much more deeply than having been drunk. Another sort of forgetfulness that he didn’t recognise. A darkness in which he could find no lamps to light.
When he finally stood up and went to see the chief of police, he had been sitting in the toilet for over twenty minutes. If Martinsson called to say I was on my way, they probably think I’ve run off, he thought. But it’s not quite as bad as that.
Following two female police chiefs, Lennart Mattson had taken up his post in Ystad the previous year. He was young, barely forty, and had risen surprisingly quickly through the police bureaucracy, which is where most senior officers came from nowadays. Like most active police officers, Wallander regarded this type of recruitment as ominous for the ability of the police force to carry out its duties properly. The worst part was that Mattson came from Stockholm and complained often that he had difficulty understanding the Skane dialect. Wallander was aware that some of his colleagues made an effort to speak as broadly as possible whenever they had to talk to Mattson, but Wallander refrained from such malevolent demonstrations. He had decided to keep to himself and not get involved in anything Mattson was doing, as long as he didn’t interfere too much in real police work. Since Mattson also seemed to respect him, Wallander had not had any problems with his new boss so far.
But he realised that things had now changed once and for all.
The door to Mattson’s office was ajar. Wallander knocked and went in when he heard Mattson’s high-pitched, almost squeaky voice.
A patterned sofa and matching armchairs had been squeezed into the office with considerable difficulty. Wallander sat down. Mattson had developed a technique of never opening a conversation if it could possibly be avoided, even if he was the one who had called the meeting. There was a rumour that a consultant from the National Police Board had sat in silence with Mattson for half an hour before standing up, leaving the room without a word having been spoken, and flying back to Stockholm.
Wallander toyed with the idea of challenging Mattson by not saying anything. But that would only have made him feel worse - he needed to clear the air as quickly as possible.
‘I have no excuse for what happened,’ he began. ‘I accept that it is indefensible, and that you have to take whatever disciplinary steps the regulations specify.’
Mattson seemed to have prepared his questions in advance, since they came out like machine-gun fire.
‘Has it happened before?’
‘That I’ve left my gun in a restaurant? Of course not!’
‘Do you have an alcohol problem?’
The question made Wallander frown. What had given Mattson that idea?
‘I’m a moderate drinker,’ Wallander said. ‘When I was younger I suppose I drank a fair amount on the weekend. But I don’t do that any more.’
‘But nevertheless you went out boozing on a weekday evening?’
‘I didn’t go out
‘A bottle of wine and a cognac with your coffee?’
‘If you already know what I drank, why are you asking? But I don’t call that boozing. I don’t think any sane person in this country would call it that. Boozing is when you swill down schnapps or vodka, probably straight from the bottle, and drink in order to get drunk, not for any other reason.’
Mattson thought for a moment before his next question. Wallander was annoyed by his squeaky voice and wondered if the man sitting opposite him had the slightest idea of what police work in the field entailed, what horrific experiences it could involve.
‘About twenty years ago you were apprehended by some of your colleagues for driving under the influence. They hushed it up, and nothing came of it. But you must understand that I wonder if you do in fact have an alcohol problem that you have been keeping under wraps, and which has now led to a most unfortunate consequence.’
Wallander remembered that occasion all too well. He had been in Malmo and had dinner with Mona. It was after their divorce, at a time when he still imagined he would be able to persuade her to come back to him. They had ended up arguing, and he had seen her being picked up outside the restaurant by a man he didn’t recognise. He was so jealous and upset that he took leave of his senses and drove home, instead of getting a hotel room or sleeping in the car. His colleagues brought him back to his apartment and parked his car there, and he heard nothing more about it. One of the officers who had arrested him that night was now dead; the other had retired. But evidently rumours were still buzzing around the station. That surprised him.
‘I’m not denying that. But as you said yourself, it was twenty years ago. And I assure you, I don’t have an alcohol problem. If I choose to eat out one night in the middle of the week, I can’t see why that should be anybody’s business but my own.’
‘I will have to take the necessary steps. Since you are due some holiday time and are not involved in a serious investigation at the moment, I suggest you take a week off. There will have to be an internal investigation, of course. That’s all I can say at the moment.’
