Henning Mankell: The Pyramid

'If you say it was a suicide it probably was. Where is it?'

Wallander pointed to the entrance. They went in.

Wallander attentively followed Hemberg in his work. Watched him crouch down next to the body and discuss the bullet's point of entry with the doctor who had arrived. Studied the position of the weapon, the body, the hand. Then he walked around the apartment, examining the contents in the chest of drawers, the cupboards and the clothes.

After about an hour, he was done. He signalled to Wallander to join him in the kitchen.

'It certainly looks like suicide,' Hemberg said while he absently smoothed and read the football betting form on the table.

'I heard a bang,' Wallander said. 'That must have been the shot.'

'You didn't hear anything else?'

Wallander thought it was best to tell the truth.

'I was napping,' he said. 'The sudden noise woke me up.'

'And after that? No sound of anyone running in the stairwell?'

'No.'

'Did you know him?'

Wallander told him the little he knew.

'He had no relatives?'

'None that I'm aware of.'

'We'll have to look into the matter.'

Hemberg sat quietly for a moment.

'There are no family pictures,' he went on. 'Not on the chest of drawers in there or on the walls. Nothing in the drawers. Only two old sailing books. The only thing of interest that I could find was a colourful beetle in a jar. Larger than a stag beetle. Do you know what that is?'

Wallander did not.

'The largest Swedish beetle,' Hemberg said. 'But it is nearly extinct.'

He put down the betting form.

'There was also no suicide note,' he continued. 'An old man who has had enough and says goodbye to everything with a bang. According to the doctor he aimed well. Right in the heart.'

An officer came into the kitchen with a wallet and handed it to Hemberg, who opened it and took out an ID card issued by the post office.

'Artur Hålén,' Hemberg said. 'Born in 1898. He had many tattoos. Which is appropriate for a sailor of the old school. Do you know what he did at sea?'

'I think he was a ship's engineer.'

'In one of the sailing logs he is registered as an engineer. In an earlier one, simply as a deckhand. He worked in various capacities. Once he became infatuated with a girl named Lucia. That name was tattooed on both his right shoulder and on his chest. One could say he symboli- cally shot himself straight through this beautiful name.'

Hemberg put the ID card and wallet into a bag.

'The medical examiner will have to have the last word,' he said. 'And we will do a routine examination of both the weapon and the bullet. But it's definitely suicide.'

Hemberg threw another glance at the betting form.

'Artur Hålén did not know much about English football,' he said. 'If he had won on this prediction the jackpot would have been his alone.'

Hemberg stood up. At the same time the body was being carried out. The covered stretcher was carefully guided out through the narrow hall.

'It happens more often,' Hemberg said thoughtfully. 'Old people who take their final exit into their own hands. But not so often with a bullet. And even less often with a revolver.'

He was suddenly scrutinising Wallander.

'But of course this has already occurred to you.'

Wallander was taken aback.

'What do you mean?'

'That it was strange that he had a revolver. We have gone through the chest of drawers. But there is no licence.'

'He must have bought it sometime at sea.'

Hemberg shrugged.

'Of course.'

Wallander followed Hemberg down onto the street.

'Since you are the neighbour I thought perhaps you could take care of the key,' he said. 'When the others are done they will leave it with you. Make sure no one who is not supposed to enter goes in there until we are completely sure it is a suicide.'

Wallander went back into the building. In the stairwell he bumped into Linnea Almquist, who was on her way out with a bag of rubbish.

'What is all this commotion?' she asked irritably.

'Unfortunately there has been a death,' Wallander said politely. 'Hålén has passed away.'

She was clearly shaken by the news.

'He must have been very lonely,' she said slowly. 'I tried to get him to come in for a cup of coffee a few times. He excused himself with the fact that he didn't have time. But surely time was the only thing he had?'

'I hardly knew him,' Wallander said.

'Was it his heart?'

Wallander nodded.

'Yes,' he said. 'It was probably his heart.'

'We'll have to hope no noisy young people move in,' she said, and left.

Wallander returned to Hålén's apartment. It was easier now that the body had been removed. A technician was packing up his bag. The pool of blood had darkened on the linoleum floor. The Thorn was picking at his cuticles.

'Hemberg said that I should take the keys,' Wallander said.

The Thorn pointed to a key ring on the chest of drawers.

'I wonder who owns the building,' he said. 'I have a girlfriend who's looking for a place to live.'

'The walls are very thin,' Wallander said. 'Just so you know.'

'Haven't you heard about those new exotic waterbeds?' the Thorn asked. 'They don't creak.'

It was already a quarter past six when Wallander could finally lock the door to Hålén's apartment. There were still several hours left before he was supposed to meet Mona. He went back to his place and put on some coffee. The wind had picked up. He closed the window and sat down in the kitchen. He had not had any time to buy groceries and now the shop was closed. There was no shop that was open late nearby. It occurred to him that he would have to take Mona out for dinner. His wallet was on the table. There was enough money. Mona liked going out to dinner, but Wallander thought it was throwing away money for no reason.

The coffee pot started to whistle. He poured himself a cup and added three lumps of sugar. Waited for it to cool.

Something was nagging at him.

Where it came from, he didn't know.

But all at once the feeling was very strong.

He did not know what it was, other than that it had to do with Hålén. In his mind he went over what had happened. The bang that woke him, the door that was ajar, the dead body on the floor inside the room. A man who had committed suicide, a man who had been his neighbour.

Nonetheless something didn't add up. Wallander walked into the main room and lay down on the bed. Listened in his memory to the bang. Had he heard anything else? Before or after? Had any sounds penetrated his dreams? He searched but found nothing. Still, he was sure. There was something he had overlooked. He continued to go through his memories. But he remembered only silence. He got up from his bed and walked back out into the kitchen. The coffee had cooled.

I'm imagining things, he thought. I saw it, Hemberg saw it, everyone saw it. An old, lonely man who had had enough.

And yet it was as if he had seen something without realising what he was seeing.

At the same time he had to admit that there was something inherently attractive about this idea. That he may have noticed something that had escaped Hemberg. That would increase his chances of advancing to criminal investigator sooner rather than later.

He checked his watch. He still had time before he had to leave and meet Mona at the Denmark ferry. He put the coffee cup in the sink, grabbed the keys and entered Hålén's apartment. When he reached the main room everything was as it had been when he discovered the body, except that the body itself was now missing. But the room was unchanged. Wallander looked around slowly. How do you do this? he wondered. How do you discover what you see but aren't seeing?

It was something, he was sure of it.

But he couldn't put his finger on it.