He vanished without a sound. Wallander stood still for a moment, looking at the yellow house. Lights were on in two of the windows, one on the lower floor and one upstairs. The curtains were drawn. He looked at his watch. Just after midnight. Rydberg had not returned. So everything must be quiet at the station in Ystad.
He hurried across the street and opened the gate to the yard of the empty house. He fumbled his way in the dark and found the bench that Rydberg had mentioned. From there he had a good view. To keep warm, he started pacing, five steps forwards and five steps back.
The next time he looked at his watch, it was only 12.50 a.m. It was going to be a long night. He was already feeling cold. He tried to make the time pass by studying the starry sky. When his neck started to hurt, he resumed his pacing.
At 1.30 a.m. the light on the ground floor went out. Wallander thought he could hear a radio on the second floor. Mr Bergman keeps late hours, he thought. Maybe that's what happens if you take early retirement. At 1.55 a.m. a car drove past, immediately followed by another one. Then all was quiet again. The light was still on upstairs. Wallander was freezing.
At 2.55 a.m. the light went out. Wallander listened for the radio. But everything was quiet. He flapped his arms to keep warm. In his head he hummed the melody of a Strauss waltz.The sound was so slight that he almost missed it.
The click of a door latch. That was all. Wallander stood stock-still and listened. Then he noticed the shadow.
The man must have been moving very quietiy. Even so, Wallander caught a glimpse of Rune Bergman as he slipped through the back yard of his house. Wallander waited a few seconds. Then cautiously he climbed over the fence. It was hard to get his bearings in the dark, but he could just make out a narrow passage between a shed and the yard opposite Bergman's house. He moved fast. Too fast, considering how little he could see.
He emerged onto the street parallel to Rosenalle. One second later and he would not have seen Bergman vanish down a cross-street to the right.
For a moment Wallander hesitated. His car was only 50 metres away. If he didn't get it now, and Bergman had another car parked somewhere nearby, he would have no chance of following him.
He ran like a madman. His frozen joints creaked and he was soon out of breath. He fumbled with his keys, and yanked open the door, deciding to try to intercept Bergman.
He turned into the street that he thought was the right one. Too late he saw that it was a dead end. He swore and backed up. Bergman probably had any number of streets to choose from. There was also a park nearby.
Make up your mind, he thought furiously. Make up your mind, damn it.
He drove towards the big car park between the Jagersro track and some large department stores. He was just about to give up when he caught sight of Bergman. He was in a phone box over by a new hotel next to the stables.
Wallander pulled over and turned off his engine and headlights. The man in the phone box hadn't noticed him.
A few minutes later a taxi pulled up and Bergman got into the back. Wallander started the car. The taxi took the motorway heading towards Goteborg. Wallander had to let a lorry go by before he took up the chase. He glanced at the petrol gauge. He wasn't going to be able to follow the taxi further than Halmstad. Suddenly it indicated a right turn. He was going to take the exit for Lund. Wallander followed.
The taxi stopped at the railway station. As Wallander drove past, Bergman was paying the driver. He turned off the main road and parked hurriedly. Bergman was walking fast. Wallander followed him, hugging the shadows.
Rydberg had been right. The man was on his guard. Without warning he stopped short and looked around. Wallander threw himself headlong into a doorway. He struck his forehead on the edge of a step and could feel the lump above his eye split open. Blood ran down his face. He wiped it off with his glove, counted slowly to ten, and took up his pursuit. The blood over his eye was sticky.
Bergman stopped outside a building covered with scaffolding and protective sacking. Again he looked around, and Wallander crouched down behind a parked car.
Then he was gone. Wallander waited until he heard a door shut. Soon afterwards the lights went on in rooms on the third floor.
He ran across the street and pushed his way behind the sacking. Without hesitating, he climbed up onto the scaffolding. It creaked and groaned under him. He had to keep wiping away the blood trickling into his eye. He heaved himself up onto the second level. The lit windows were barely a metre above his head. He took out his handkerchief and tied it around his head to stem the blood.
Cautiously he hauled himself up onto the next platform. The effort so exhausted him that he had to remain lying down for over a minute before he could go on. He crept forwards along the freezing planks, which were covered with scraped off stucco. He dared not think how far above the ground he was, or he would get vertigo at once.
He peered over the window ledge into the first lit room. Through the net curtains he could see a woman sleeping in a double bed. The covers next to her had been thrown back as if someone had got out in a hurry.
He crawled further along. When he looked over the next window ledge, he saw Bergman talking to a man wearing a dark-brown dressing gown. Wallander felt as if he had actually seen him before. That was how well the Romanian woman had described the man standing in the field eating an apple.
He felt his heart pounding. So he had been right after all. It had to be the same man. They were talking in low voices. Too low to hear what they were saying. The man in the dressing gown disappeared through a door and at the same moment Bergman looked straight at Wallander.
Caught, he thought, as he pulled back his head. Those bastards won't hesitate to shoot me. He was paralysed with fear. I'm going to die, he thought desperately. They're going to blow my head off. But nothing happened.
Finally he got up the nerve to peer inside again. The man in the dressing gown was standing there, eating an apple. Bergman was holding two shotguns. He laid one of them on a table. The other one he stuffed under his coat. Wallander realised he had seen more than enough. He turned and crept back the way he had come.How it happened, he would never know.
He lost his footing in the dark. When he reached for the scaffolding, his hand grabbed at empty space. He fell. He had no time to think that he was going to die. One of his legs caught between two planks. He jerked to a halt, the pain excruciating. He was hanging upside down with his head a metre above the ground.
He tried to wriggle loose. But his foot was wedged tight. He was hanging in midair, unable to do anything. The blood was pounding in his temples. The pain was so bad that he had tears in his eyes. At that moment he heard the outside door open.
Bergman had left the flat. Wallander bit his knuckles to keep from screaming. Through the sacking he saw the man stop suddenly. Right in front of him. He saw a flash. The shot, thought Wallander. Now I'm going to die.
He realised that Bergman had lit a cigarette. The footsteps moved away. Wallander was about to pass out. An image of Linda flickered before him.
With enormous effort he swung his body and with one hand managed to grab hold of one of the uprights on the scaffolding. He pulled himself up far enough to get a grip on the planks where his foot was wedged tight. He gathered all his remaining strength. Then he tugged hard. His foot broke loose, and he lost his grip. He landed on his back in a mound of gravel. He lay perfectly still, trying to feel if anything was broken.
When he stood up, he was so dizzy that he had to hold on to the wall so he wouldn't fall. It took him almost 20 minutes to make his way back to the car. He saw the hands of the station clock pointing to 4.30 a.m.
Wallander sank into the driver's seat and closed his eyes. Then he drove back to Ystad. I have to get some sleep, he thought. Tomorrow is another day. Then I'll do what has to be done.
He groaned when he saw his face in the bathroom mirror. He rinsed his wounds with warm water.
It was almost 6 a.m. by the time he crawled between the sheets. He set the alarm clock
for 6.45. He didn't dare sleep any later than that.
He tried to find the position that hurt the least. Just as he was falling asleep, he was jerked awake by a bang on the front door. The morning paper. Then he stretched out again. In his dreams Anette Brolin was coming towards him. Somewhere a horse neighed.
It was Sunday, 14 January. The day dawned with increased wind from the northeast.Kurt Wallander slept.
CHAPTER 12
He thought he had slept for a long time, but when he woke up and looked at the clock, he realised that he had been asleep only briefly. The telephone had woken him. Rydberg was calling from a phone box in Malmö.
"Come on back," said Wallander. "You don't have to stand there freezing. Come here, to my place.""What happened?""It's him.""Are you sure?""Absolutely positive.""I'm on my way."
Wallander climbed painfully out of bed. His body ached and his temples were throbbing. While the coffee was brewing, he sat at the kitchen table with a pocket mirror and a piece of cotton wool. With great difficulty he succeeded in fastening a gauze pad over the wound on his forehead. His whole face was a palette of shades of blue and purple.
Rydberg appeared in the doorway less than an hour later. While they drank coffee, Wallander told him his story.
"Good," Rydberg said afterwards. "Excellent work. Now we'll bring in those bastards. What was the name of the guy in Lund?"
"I forgot to look at the name in the doorway. And we're not the ones who'll bring them in. That's Björk's job.""Is he back?"
"He was supposed to get in last night.""Then let's haul him out of his bed."
"The prosecutor too. And we'll have to co-ordinate with Malmö and Lund, right?"
While Wallander was dressing, Rydberg was on the phone. Wallander was gratified to hear that he wasn't taking no for an answer. He wondered whether Anette Brolin's husband was visiting this weekend.
Rydberg stood in the bedroom doorway and watched him knot his tie.
"You look like a boxer," he said, laughing. "A punch-drunk boxer.""Did you get Björk?"
"He seems to have spent the evening catching up with everything that's happened. He was relieved to hear that we had solved one of the murders, at least.""The prosecutor?""She'll come right away."
"Was she the one who answered the phone?"
Rydberg looked at him in surprise. "Who else would have answered?""Her husband, for instance.""What difference would that have made?"
Wallander didn't feel like answering. "God, I feel like shit," he said instead. "Let's go."
They went out into the early dawn. A gusty wind was still blowing and the sky was overcast with dark clouds."You think it's going to snow?" asked Wallander.
"Not before February," said Rydberg. "I can feel it. But then it'll be a hard winter."
A Sunday calm prevailed at the station. Norén had been relieved by Svedberg. Rydberg gave him a swift run down of what had happened during the night.
"Well, I'll be damned," said Svedberg. "A policeman?""An ex-policeman.""Where did he hide the car?"
"We don't know yet.""Is the case airtight?""I think so."
Björk and Anette Brolin arrived at the station at the same moment. Björk, who was 54 and originally from Vastmanland, had a nice tan. Wallander had always imagined him to be the ideal chief for a medium-sized police district. He was friendly, not too intelligent, and at the same time extremely concerned with the good name and reputation of the police.
He gave Wallander a dismayed look. "You look really terrible.""They beat me up," said Wallander. "Beat you up? Who?"
"The other officers. That's what happens when you're acting chief. They let you have it." Björk laughed.
Anette Brolin looked at him with what seemed to be genuine sympathy."That must hurt," she said."I'll be all right," replied Wallander.
He turned his face away when he answered, remembering that he had forgotten to brush his teeth. They all went into Björk's office. Since there was no written report, Wallander gave a summary of the case. Björk and Anette Brolin both asked a lot of questions.
"If it had been anyone but you who dragged me out of bed on Sunday morning with this kind of cops-and-robbers story, I wouldn't have believed it," said Björk.
Then he turned to Anette Brolin. "Do we have enough to detain them? Or should we just bring them in for questioning?"
"I'll get the detention order on them based on the interrogation results," said Anette Brolin. "Then, of course, it would be good if that Romanian woman could identify the man in Lund in a line-up.""We'll need a court order for that," said Björk.
"Yes " said Anette Brolin. "But we could do a provisional identification."Wallander and Rydberg looked at her with interest.
"We could bring in the woman," she went on. "Then they could pass each other in the corridor by chance."
Wallander nodded in approval. Anette Brolin was a prosecutor who was Per Akeson's equal when it came to taking a flexible view of the rules.
"Right," said Björk. "I'll get in touch with our colleagues in Malmö and Lund. Then we'll pick up the suspects in two hours. At ten o'clock."
"What about the woman in the bed?" asked Wallander. "The one in Lund?"
"We'll bring her in too," said Björk. "How should we divide up the interrogations?"
"I want Bergman," said Wallander. "Rydberg can talk to the man who munches on apples."
"At 3 p.m. we'll decide about the detention order," said Anette Brolin. "I'll be at home until then."
Wallander accompanied her out to the reception. "I was thinking about asking you to dinner last night," he said. "But something came up."
"There'll be plenty more evenings," she said. "I think you've done a good job on this case. How did you work out that he was the one?""I didn't. It was just a hunch."
He watched her as she headed towards town. It came to him that he hadn't thought of Mona at all since the evening they had had dinner together.
Everything started to move very fast. Hansson was wrenched out of his Sunday peace and told to collect the Romanian woman and an interpreter.
"Our colleagues don't sound happy," Björk said with concern. "It's never anyone's idea of fun to bring in someone from your own force. It's going to be a wretched winter because of this.""What do you mean by wretched?" asked Wallander."Fresh attacks on the police force.""He'd retired early, hadn't he?"
"Even so. The papers will be screaming about the fact that the murderer was a policeman. There will be new persecution of the force."
Shortly before 10 a.m. Wallander arrived at the building that was covered in scaffolding and sacking. He had four plain clothes policemen from Lund with him.
"He has guns," said Wallander while they were still sitting in the car. "And he has committed a cold-blooded execution. Still, I think we can take it easy. He's certainly not anticipating us. Two guns drawn should be enough."
Wallander had brought along his revolver. On the way to Lund he tried to remember when he had last taken it out. He'd realised that it was more than three years earlier, in the course of the capture of an escaped convict from Kumla prison who had barricaded himself in a summer-house near Mossby beach.
Now they were sitting in a car outside the building in Lund. Wallander realised that he had climbed much higher than he had thought. If he had fallen all the way to the ground, he would have crushed his spine.
That morning the police in Lund had sent out an inspector pretending to do the paper round to case the flat.
"Let's review the situation," said Wallander. "No back stairs?"The officer sitting next to him shook his head. "No scaffolding on the rear side?" "Nothing."
According to the officer, the flat was occupied by a man named Valfrid Ström. He wasn't listed in any police files. Nor did anyone know how he made his living.
At 10 a.m. on the dot they got out of the car and crossed the street. One officer stayed at the main door of the building. There was an intercom system, but it wasn't working. Wallander jemmied the door open with a screwdriver
.
"One man should stay in the stairwell," he said. "You and I will go upstairs. What's your name?""Enberg.""You've got a first name, haven't you?" "Kalle.""OK, Kalle, let's go."
They listened in the dark outside the door. Wallander drew his revolver and nodded to Enberg to do the same. Then he rang the doorbell.
The door was opened by a woman wearing a dressing gown. Wallander recognised her. It was the same woman who had been asleep in the double bed. He hid his revolver behind his back.
"We're with the police," he said. "We're looking for your husband, Valfrid Ström."
The woman, who was in her 40s and had a harried expression, looked scared. She stepped aside and let the policemen in.
Suddenly Valfrid Ström was standing in front of them. He was dressed in a green tracksuit.
"Police," said Wallander. "We need to ask you to come with us."
The man with the half-moon-shaped bald patch looked at him tensely. "Why?" "For questioning." "About what?""You'll find out at the station."
Wallander turned to the woman. "You'd better come along too. Put on some clothes."
The man seemed completely calm. "I'm not going anywhere if you don't tell me why," he said. "Perhaps you could start by showing me some identification."
When Wallander put his right hand in his inside pocket, he couldn't hide the fact that he was carrying a gun. He switched it over to his left hand and fumbled for his wallet, where he kept his identity card.
In the same instant Ström leapt straight at him. He butted Wallander right in the forehead, smack in the middle of his wound. Wallander went sailing backwards, and the revolver flew out of his hand. Enberg didn't have time to react before the man in the green tracksuit had disappeared out the door. The woman shrieked, and Wallander fumbled for his revolver. He dashed down the stairs after the man, yelling a warning to the two officers posted below.
Ström was fast. He gave the policeman standing inside the door an elbow to the chin. The man outside was rammed by the front door when Ström flung himself out into the street. Wallander, who could hardly see for the blood streaming into his eyes, stumbled over the unconscious policeman in the stairwell. He pulled at the safety catch on his revolver, which was stuck.
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