what appeared to be the only restaurant in the village, then found his way to the boat-hire establishment just a couple of hundred yards away, on one side of the long inlet known as Valdemarsviken. Wallander had packed a backpack containing, among other things, two torches and some food. He’d also taken warm clothes, despite the fact that it was a warm afternoon.
On the way up to Ostergotland he had driven through several downpours of rain. One of them, just outside Ronneby, was so heavy that he’d been forced to pull into a lay-by and wait until it passed. As he listened to the pattering on the car roof and watched the water cascading down his windscreen, he began to wonder if he really had judged the situation correctly. Had his instinct let him down, or - as it had so often before - would it turn out to be right after all?
He stayed in the lay-by, lost in thought, for almost half an hour before the rain stopped. He set off again and eventually came to Valdemarsvik. It was clear now, and there was hardly any wind. The water in the inlet was ruffled only occasionally by a light breeze.
There was a smell of mud. He remembered it from the last time he was here.
Wallander started the outboard motor and set out. The man who had rented him the boat stood for some time, watching him, before returning to his office. Wallander decided to leave the long inlet before darkness fell. Then he would moor somewhere and enjoy the summer twilight. He had tried to work out the current phase of the moon, without success. He could have called Linda, but since he didn’t want to reveal where he was going or why he was making this trip, he didn’t. Once he had left the inlet he would call Martinsson instead. If he decided to call anyone, that is. The task he had set himself wasn’t dependent on whether the night was dark or moonlit, but he wanted to know exactly what was in store for him.
When he glimpsed the open sea between the islands ahead of him, he let the engine turn over while he studied the sea chart in its plastic cover. Once he had established precisely where he was, he selected a place not too far from his final destination where he could moor and wait for dusk to fall. But it was already occupied by several boats. He continued and eventually found a small island, not much more than a rock with a few trees, where he could row to the beach, having first detached the outboard motor. He put on his jacket, leaned against one of the trees and took a drink of coffee from his Thermos. Then he called Martinsson. Once again it was a child who answered, possibly the same one as last time. Martinsson took the phone from her.
‘You’re a lucky man,’ he said. ‘My little granddaughter has become your secretary.’
‘The moon,’ said Wallander.
‘What about it?’
‘You’re asking too quickly. I haven’t finished yet.’
‘I’m sorry. But I can’t take my eyes off the grandchildren; they need watching all the time.’
‘I understand that, and I wouldn’t disturb you unless it was necessary. Do you have a calendar? What phase is the moon in right now?’
‘The moon? Is that what you’re asking about? Are you out on some sort of astronomical adventure?’
‘I could be. But can you answer my question?’
‘Hang on a minute.’
Martinsson put down the receiver. It was obvious from Wallander’s voice that he wasn’t going to get any sort of explanation.
‘It’s a new moon,’ he said when he returned to the phone. ‘A thin little crescent. Assuming you’re still in Sweden and not some other part of the world.’
‘I’m still in Sweden. Thank you for your help,’ said Wallander. ‘I’ll explain it all one of these days.’
‘I’m used to waiting.’
‘Waiting for what?’
‘For explanations. Including from my children when they don’t do as I tell them. But that was mainly when they were younger.’
‘Linda was just the same,’ said Wallander, in an attempt to appear interested. He thanked Martinsson again for his help regarding the moon, and hung up. He ate a couple of sandwiches, then lay down with a stone as a pillow.
The pains came from nowhere. He was lying there, looking up at the sky and listening to seagulls screeching in the distance, when he felt a stab of pain in his left arm, which then spread to his chest and stomach. At first he thought he must be lying on a sharp edge of stone, but then he realised that the pains were coming from inside his body, and he suspected that what he had always dreaded had now come to pass. He’d had a heart attack.
He lay completely motionless, stiff and terrified, and held his breath, afraid that if he tried to breathe he would use up the rest of his heart’s ability to beat.
The memory of his mother’s death suddenly came vividly into his mind. It was as if her last moments were being played out by his side. She had been only fifty years old. His mother had never worked outside the home, but had always struggled to maintain her marriage to her temperamental husband, whose income could never be relied on, and look after their two children, Kurt and Kristina. They had been living in Limhamn at the time, sharing a house with a family that Wallander’s father couldn’t stand. The father was a train conductor who never hurt a fly, but once, in the friendliest possible way, he asked Wallander’s father if it might be relaxing to paint some other motif rather than the same old landscape over and over again. Wallander had overheard the conversation. The conductor, whose name was Nils Persson, had used his own working life as an example. After a long period driving back and forth between Malmo and Alvesta, he was very pleased when he was transferred to an express route that went to Gothenburg, and sometimes even as far as Oslo. Wallander’s father had naturally reacted furiously. After that it had been Wallander’s mother who tried to smooth things over and make living alongside the other family not completely intolerable.
Her death had come suddenly one afternoon in the early autumn of 1962. She had been in their little garden, hanging up laundry. Wallander had just come home from school and was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich. He had looked out of the window and seen her hanging up sheets with some clothes pegs in her hand. He had returned to his sandwich. The next time he looked out, she was on her knees, clutching at her chest. At first he thought she had dropped something, but then he watched her fall over onto her side, slowly, as if she were trying hard not to. He ran outside, shouting her name, but she was beyond help. The doctor who performed the autopsy said she had suffered a massive heart attack. Even if she had been in a hospital when it happened, they wouldn’t have been able to save her.
Now he could see her in his mind’s eye, a series of blurred, jerky images as he tried to keep his own pains at arm’s length. He didn’t want his life to end early like hers had, and least of all now, all alone on a little island in the Baltic Sea.
He said silent, agitated prayers - not really to any god, but more to himself, urging himself to resist, not to allow himself to be dragged down into eternal silence. And he eventually realised that the pains were not getting any worse; his heart was still beating. He forced himself to remain calm, to act sensibly, not to sink into a desperate and blind panic. He sat up gingerly and felt for his mobile phone, which he had left next to his backpack. He started to dial Linda’s number but changed his mind. What would she be able to do? If he really had suffered a heart attack, he should be calling the emergency number.
But something held him back. Perhaps it was the feeling that the pain was receding? He carefully moved his left arm and found a position in which the pain was less, as well as other positions where it was worse. That was not in accordance with the symptoms of a serious heart attack. He sat up slowly and took his pulse. It was seventy-four beats per minute. His normal rate was somewhere between sixty-six and seventy-eight. Everything was as it should be. It’s stress, he thought. My body is simulating something that can afflict me if I don’t take it easy.
He lay down again. The pain faded away even more, even if it was still present, nagging away, a sort of background threat.
An hour later he was convinced that he hadn’t in fact suffered a heart attack. It had been a warning. He thought, I should stop fooling myself that I’m an irreplaceable police officer and take a proper holiday. Perhaps he should go home, call Ytterberg and tell him what conclusions he had drawn. But he decided to stay on. He had come a long way, and he was keen to establish if his suspicions were justified or not. No matter what the outcome, he could then hand the matter over to Ytterberg and not bother with it any more.
He felt very relieved. It was a sort of positive affirmation of life that he hadn’t experienced for years. He had an urge to stand up and roar in the direction of the open sea. But he remained seated, leaning against the tree
