The Man Who Smiled Part 14

"Not sure," he said vaguely. "I think I'm just tired."

Wallander drove on towards Malmo. Even though it was a longer way round, he wanted to stick to the main roads back to Ystad. There was not much traffic, and there was no sign of anybody following them. The gusting wind was buffeting the car.

"I didn't think that kind of thing happened around here," she said suddenly. "Being followed by some stranger in a car, I mean."

"I didn't think so either until a few years ago," Wallander said. "Then things changed. They say Sweden changed slowly and imperceptibly, but I think it was rather open and obvious. If you only knew where to look."

"Tell me," she said, "what it used to be like. And what happened."

"I don't know if I can," he said. "I just see things from the point of view of the man in the street. But in our everyday work, even in an insignificant little town like Ystad, we could see a change. Crime became more frequent and more serious: different, nastier, more complicated. And we started finding criminals among people who'd previously been irreproachable citizens. But what set it all off I have no idea."

"That doesn't explain why we have a record for solving crimes worse than practically everywhere else in the world, either," she said.

"Speak to Bjork about that," Wallander said. "It keeps him awake at night. I sometimes think that his ambition is for the Ystad force to make up for the rest of the country put together."

"But there must be an explanation," she insisted. "It can't just be that the Swedish force is undermanned, and that we don't have the resources which everybody talks about without anybody being able to say what they actually should be."

"It's like two different worlds meeting head on," Wallander said. "Many police officers think as I do, that we got our training and experience at a time when everything was different, when crime was more transparent, morals were clearer and the authority of the police unchallenged. Nowadays, we need a different kind of training and different experiences in order to be as efficient. But we don't have that. And the ones who come after us, such as you, don't as yet have much chance to influence what we do, to decide where our priorities should lie. It often feels as if there's nothing to stop criminals getting even further ahead of us than they are already. And all society does in response is to manipulate the statistics. Instead of giving the police rein to solve every crime committed, a lot of them are just written off. What used to be considered a crime ten years ago is now judged a non-crime. Things change by the day. What people were punished for yesterday can be something n.o.body thinks twice about today. At best it might spark off a report that then disappears in some invisible shredder. All that's left is something that never happened."

"That can't be good," she said hesitantly.

Wallander glanced at her. "Who said that it was?"

They had pa.s.sed Landskrona and were approaching Malmo. An ambulance overtook them at high speed, blue light flas.h.i.+ng. Wallander was tired. Without really knowing why, just for a moment he felt sorry for the woman sitting beside him. Over the coming years she would constantly have to rea.s.sess her work as a police officer. Unless she was an exceptional person, she would experience an unbroken sequence of disappointments, and very little joy.

He had no doubt about that. But he also thought that the reputation that had preceded her seemed to be true. He could remember Martinsson's first year when he'd just left Police Training College to join the Ystad force. He had not been a lot of use then, but now he was one of their best detectives.

"Tomorrow we'll make a thorough a.s.sessment of all the material we have," he said in an attempt to cheer her up. "There must be a chance of breaking through somewhere along the line."

"I hope you're right," she said. "But one of these days things could get so bad here that we start to regard certain types of murder murder as incidents that are best left alone." as incidents that are best left alone."

"If that happens, the police force will have to mutiny," Wallander said.

"The Police Commissioner would never go along with that."

"We'll rise up when he's out of the country eating posh dinners in the name of PR," Wallander said.

"We'll have plenty of opportunities, then," she said.

The conversation died out. Wallander stayed on the motorway to the east of Malmo, concentrating on the road with only the occasional vague thought about what had happened during the day.

It was when they had left Malmo behind and were heading for Ystad on the E65 that Wallander suddenly had the feeling that something was wrong. Hoglund had closed her eyes and her head had sunk down on one shoulder. There was no sign of headlights in the rear-view mirror.

He was suddenly wide awake. I've been on the wrong track, he thought. Instead of establis.h.i.+ng that we weren't being followed, I ought to have been wondering why. If Ann-Britt Hoglund was right, and I've no reason to doubt that somebody has been following us from the moment we left the police station, then the absence of a car behind us could indicate that they no longer considered it necessary.

He thought about the mine in Mrs Duner's garden.

Without a second thought he braked and pulled up on the hard shoulder with his warning lights blinking. Hoglund woke up. She stared at him drowsily.

"Get out of the car," Wallander said.

"Why?"

"Do as I say," he shouted.

She flung aside her safety belt and was out of the car before he was. "Take cover," he said.

"What's wrong?" she said, as they stood staring at the warning lights. It was cold, and the wind was gusty.

"I don't know," Wallander said. "Maybe nothing. I got worried because n.o.body was following us."

He did not need to explain further. She understood right away. That convinced Wallander on the spot that she was already a good police officer. She was intelligent, she knew how to react to the unexpected. But he also felt for the first time in ages that he now had somebody with whom he could share his fear. On that stretch of hard shoulder, just before the Svedala exit, he had the feeling that all that endless walking up and down the beach at Skagen had come to an end.

Wallander had been sufficiently alert to take the car phone with him. He started to dial Martinsson's number. "He'll think I've gone out of my mind," he said as he waited for a reply.

"What do you think's going to happen?"

"I don't know. But people who can bury a mine in a garden in Sweden would have no problem doing something to a car." "If it's the same people," she said. "Yes," Wallander said. "If it's the same people." Martinsson answered. Wallander could tell that he was half asleep.

"It's Kurt," he said. "I'm on the E65 just outside Svedala. Ann-Britt's here with me. I'd like you to phone Nyberg and ask him to come out here."

"What's happened?"

"I want him to have a look at my car."

"If your engine's packed up you could phone a breakdown firm," Martinsson said, puzzled.

"I haven't got time to explain," Wallander said, and could feel his irritation coming on. "Do as I say. Tell Nyberg he should bring with him equipment to test whether I've been driving round with a bomb under my feet."

"A car bomb?"

"You heard."

Wallander switched off and shook his head. "He's right, of course," he said. "It sounds ridiculous - we're on the E65 in the middle of the night and think there might be a bomb in the car."

"Is there?"

"I don't know," Wallander said. "I'm not sure."

It took Nyberg an hour to reach them. By then Wallander and Hoglund were frozen to the bone. Wallander expected Nyberg to be annoyed, being woken up by Martinsson for reasons that must have seemed dodgy, to say the least, but to his surprise Nyberg was friendly and prepared to believe that something serious had happened. Despite her protests, Wallander insisted that Hoglund should get into Nyberg's car and warm up.

"There's a thermos in the pa.s.senger seat," Nyberg said. "I think the coffee's still hot."

Then he turned to Wallander, who could see that he was still in his pyjamas under his overcoat. "What's wrong with the car?" he asked.

"I was hoping you could tell me that," Wallander said. "There's a real possibility that there's nothing wrong at all."

"What am I supposed to be looking for?"

"I don't know. All I can tell you is an a.s.sumption. The car was left unwatched for about half an hour. It was locked." "Do you have an alarm?" Nyberg said.

"I've got nothing," Wallander said. "It's an old car. Rubbish. I've always a.s.sumed n.o.body would want to steal it." "Go on," Nyberg said.

"Half an hour," Wallander repeated. "When I started the engine, nothing happened. Everything was normal. From Helsingborg to here is about 100 kilometres. We stopped on the way and had a cup of coffee. I'd filled the tank in Helsingborg. It must be about three hours since the car was left unattended."

"I shouldn't touch it," Nyberg said. "Not if you suspect it might blow up."

"I thought that happened when you started the engine," Wallander said.

"Nowadays you can set explosions to go off whenever you like," Nyberg said. "They could be anything from inbuilt, self-triggering delay mechanisms to radio-controlled ignition devices that can be set off from miles away."

"Maybe it's best just to leave it," Wallander said.

"Could be," Nyberg said. "But I'd like to take a look at it even so. Let's say I'm doing it of my own free will. You're not ordering me to do it."

Nyberg went back to his car and came back with a powerful torch. Wallander accepted a mug of coffee from Hoglund, who had now got out of the car again. They watched Nyberg as he lay down beside the car and shone his torch underneath. Then he started to walk round it, slowly.

"I think I'm dreaming," Hoglund murmured.

Nyberg had stopped by the open door on the driver's side. He peered inside and shone his torch in. An overloaded Volkswagen van with Polish number plates drove past on its way to the ferry in Ystad. Nyberg switched off his torch and came back towards them.

"Did I hear wrongly?" he asked. "Didn't you say you'd filled up with petrol on the way to Helsingborg?"

"I filled up in Lund," Wallander said. "Right to the top."

"Then you drove to Helsingborg? And to here?"

Wallander thought a moment. "It can't have been more than about 150 kilometres," he said.

Nyberg frowned.

"What's the matter?" Wallander asked.

"Have you ever had reason to think there was something wrong with your petrol gauge?"

"Never. It's always been spot on." "How many litres does the tank hold?" "Sixty."

"Then explain to me why the indicator suggests you've only got a quarter of a tank left," he said.

It didn't sink in at first. Then Wallander realised the significance of what Nyberg had said. "Somebody must have drained the tank," he said. "The car uses less than one litre per ten kilometres."

"Let's move further back," Nyberg said. "I'm going to move my own car further back as well."

They watched him drive further away. The warning lights were still flas.h.i.+ng on Wallander's car. The wind was still gusty. Another overfull car with Polish number plates pa.s.sed them going east. Nyberg came to join them. They all looked at Wallander's car.

"If somebody drains petrol from a tank, they do it to make room for something else," Nyberg said. "Somebody might have planted explosives with some kind of delayed ignition that is gradually eaten away by the petrol. Eventually it blows up. Does your petrol indicator usually go down when the engine's ticking over?"

"No."

"Then I reckon we should leave the car here till tomorrow," Nyberg said. "In fact, we ought to close off the E65 altogether."

"Bjork would never agree to that," Wallander said. "Besides, we don't know for sure that anybody's put anything in the petrol tank."

"I think we should call people out to cordon the area off, no matter what," Nyberg said. "This is the Malmo police district, isn't it?"

"I'm afraid it is," Wallander said. "But I'll phone them even so."

"My handbag's still in the car," Hoglund said. "Can I fetch it?"

"No," Nyberg said. "It'll have to stay there. And the engine can keep running."

Hoglund got back into Nyberg's car. Wallander called the police in Malmo. Nyberg had wandered off to the side of the road for a pee. Wallander looked up and contemplated the stars while he waited to be connected.

It was 3.04 in the morning.

Malmo answered. Wallander saw Nyberg zipping up his flies. Then the night exploded in a flash of white. The telephone was ripped from Wallander's hand.

CHAPTER 8 8.

The painful silence.

Afterwards, Wallander recalled the explosion as a large s.p.a.ce with all the oxygen squeezed out, the sudden arrival of a strange vacuum on the E65 in the middle of a November night, a black hole in which even the bl.u.s.tery wind had been silenced. It happened very quickly, but memory has the ability to stretch things out and in the end he remembered the explosion as a series of events, each one rapidly replacing the other but nevertheless distinct.

What surprised him most was that his telephone was lying on the wet asphalt just a few metres away. That was the most incomprehensible bit, not the fact that his car was enveloped by intense flames and seemed to be melting away.

Nyberg had reacted quickest. He grabbed hold of Wallander and dragged him away, possibly afraid there would be another explosion from the blazing car. Hoglund had flung herself out of Nyberg's car and sprinted to the other side of the road. Perhaps she had screamed, but it seemed to Wallander he might have been the one to scream, or Nyberg, or none of them; perhaps he had imagined it.

On the other hand, he thought he ought to have screamed. He ought to have screamed and yelled and cursed the fact that he had gone back to duty, that Sten Torstensson had been to see him in Skagen and dragged him into a murder investigation he should never have been involved in. He should never have gone back, he should have signed the doc.u.ments Bjork had prepared for him, attended the press conference and allowed himself to be interviewed for a feature in Swedish Police Swedish Police magazine, on the back page no doubt, and been out of it all. magazine, on the back page no doubt, and been out of it all.

In the confusion following the explosion there had been a moment of painful silence when Wallander had been able to think perfectly clearly as he looked at the telephone lying in the road and his old Peugeot going up in flames on the hard shoulder. His thoughts had been lucid and he had been able to reach a conclusion: the first indication that the double murder of the solicitors, the mine in Mrs Duner's garden and now the attempted murder of himself had a pattern, not itself clear as yet and with many locked doors still to open.

But a conclusion had been possible and unavoidable, amid the chaos, and it had been a terrifying one: somebody thought Wallander knew something they did not want him to know. He was convinced that whoever had put the explosives in the petrol tank had not planned to kill Ann-Britt Hoglund. That merely revealed another aspect of the people who lurked in the shadows: they didn't care about human life.

Wallander recognised, with a mixture of fear and despair, that these people who hid in cars with stolen number plates were wrong. He could have made an honest public statement that it was all based on a mistake and that he knew nothing of what lay behind the murders, or the mine, or even the suicide of the accountant Lars Borman, if indeed it was suicide.

The truth was that he knew nothing. But while his car was still ablaze and Nyberg and Hoglund were directing inquisitive late night drivers away from the scene and calling the police and fire brigade, he had gone on standing in the middle of the road, thinking things through to their conclusion. There was only one starting point for the awful mistake of thinking he knew something, and that was Sten's visit to Skagen. The postcard from Finland had not been sufficient. They had followed Sten to Jutland, they had been there among the dunes, hidden in the fog. They had been watching the Art Museum where Wallander had drunk coffee with Sten, but they had not been close enough to hear what was said, for if they had been, they would have known that Wallander knew nothing, since Sten knew nothing either; the whole business was no more than suspicions. But they had not been able to take the risk. That's why his old Peugeot was burning away by the side of the road; and that's why the neighbour's dog had been barking while they had been talking to the Forsdahls.

The painful silence, he thought. That's what's enveloping me, and there is one more conclusion to draw, perhaps the most vital one of all. For it means we have made a breakthrough in this awful case, we have found a point around which we can all gather and say: this is our starting point. It might not take us to the Holy Grail, but it might lead to something else that we need to find.

The chronology was right, he thought. It started with that muddy field where Gustaf Torstensson met his end almost a month ago. Everything else, including the execution of his son, must derive from what happened that night, when he was on his way home from Farnholm Castle. We know that now, which means we now know what we should be doing.

He bent to retrieve his telephone. The emergency number for the Malmo police was staring him in the face. He switched the phone off and established that it had not been damaged by the blast or by being dropped on the road.