Henning Mankell - The Pyramid

Wallander was filled with dread at the prospect of what awaited him. The day's morning prayer had been in vain.

When they got to Mossby Beach, Martinsson turned to the right and pointed. Wallander had already seen the pillar of smoke that rose to the sky.

They arrived a few minutes later. The plane had come down in the middle of a muddy field, about one hundred metres from a farmhouse. Wallander assumed that it was from there that the call had been made. The firefighters were still spraying foam on the wreck. Martinsson took a pair of wellingtons from the boot. Wallander looked unhappily down at his own shoes, a pair of winter boots, almost brand new. Then they started to make their way through the slippery mud. The man in charge of the fire crew was Peter Edler. Wallander had met him on numerous occasions. He liked him. It was easy for them to work together. Apart from the two fire engines and the ambulance, there was also a patrol car. Wallander nodded at Peters, a patrol officer. Then he turned to Peter Edler.

'What do we have?' he asked.

'Two dead,' Edler replied. 'I have to warn you that it is not a pretty sight. That's what happens when people burn in petrol.'

'You don't have to warn me,' Wallander said. 'I know what that looks like.'

Martinsson came up next to Wallander.

'Find out who made the call,' Wallander said. 'Probably someone in that farm over there. Find out what the time was. And then someone has to have a serious talk with the control tower at Sturup.'

Martinsson nodded and set off towards the farm. Wallander approached the plane. It was lying on its left side, embedded in the mud. The left wing had been torn off completely and had broken into several parts that were strewn out across the field. The right wing was still intact near the fuselage but had been broken off at the tip. Wallander observed that it was a single-engine plane. The propeller was bent and driven deep into the ground. He slowly circled the plane. It was black with soot and covered in foam. He waved Edler over.

'Is it possible to remove the foam?' he asked. 'Don't aeroplanes tend to have some kind of markings on the fuselage and under the wings?'

'I think we should let the foam stay on a while longer,' Edler said. 'You never know with petrol. There may still be some left in the fuel tanks.'

Wallander knew he had no choice but to obey Edler's directives. He walked closer and peered into the plane. Edler had been right. It was impossible to discern any facial features. He circled the plane one more time. Then he lumbered out into the muddy field where the largest piece of wing lay. He crouched down. He could not make out any numbers or letter combinations. It was still very dark. He called out to Peters and asked for a torch. Then he studied the wing intently. Scraped the outside with his fingertips. It appeared to have been painted over. Could that mean that someone had wanted to conceal the identity of the plane?

He stood up. He was jumping to conclusions again. It was Nyberg and his team's job to sort this out. He looked over absently at Martinsson, who was making his way to the farm with deliberate strides. Several cars with curious onlookers had pulled over by a dirt road. Peters and his partner were trying to convince them to keep going. Yet another police car had arrived, with Hansson, Rydberg and Nyberg. Wallander walked over and said hello. Explained the situation in brief and asked Hansson to cordon off the area.

'You have two bodies inside the plane,' Wallander repeated to Nyberg, who would be responsible for the preliminary forensic investigation.

Eventually, an accident commission would be appointed to investigate the cause of the crash. But at that point Wallander would no longer have to be involved.

'I think it looks as if the wing that was torn off had been repainted,' he said. 'As if someone wanted to eliminate all possibility of identifying the plane.'

Nyberg nodded mutely. He never wasted his words.

Rydberg appeared behind Wallander.

'One shouldn't have to tramp around in the mud at my age,' he said. 'And this damned rheumatism.'

Wallander threw a quick glance at him.

'You didn't have to come out here,' he said. 'We can handle it. Then the accident commission can take over.'

'I'm not dead yet,' Rydberg said with irritation. 'But who the hell knows…' He didn't finish the sentence. Instead he made his way over to the plane, bent down and looked in.

'This one will have to be dental,' he said. 'I don't think there will be any other way of getting a positive ID.'

Wallander ran through the main points for Rydberg's benefit. They worked well together and never had to give each other lengthy explan ations. Rydberg was also the one who had taught Wallander what he now knew about being a criminal investigator. That is, after the foundation had been laid in Malmö with Hemberg, who sadly had died in a traffic accident last year. Wallander had departed from his usual habit of never attending funerals and attended the ceremony in Malmö. But after Hemberg, Rydberg had been his role model. They had worked together for many years now. Wallander had often thought that Rydberg must be one of the most skilful criminal investigators in Sweden. Nothing escaped him, no hypothesis was so outlandish that Rydberg did not test it. His ability to read a crime scene always surprised Wallander, who greedily absorbed it all.

Rydberg was single. He did not have much of a social life and did not appear to want one. Wallander was still, after all these years, not sure if Rydberg actually had any interests apart from his work.

On the occasional warm evening in early summer, they would sometimes get together and sit on Rydberg's balcony and drink whisky. Often in a pleasant silence that was broken from time to time with some comment about work.

'Martinsson is trying to establish some clarity with regard to the time of the events,' Wallander said. 'Then it seems to me that we have to find out why the control tower at Sturup didn't raise the alarm.'

'You mean, why the pilot didn't raise the alarm,' Rydberg corrected him.

'Maybe he didn't have time?'

'It doesn't take many seconds to send an SOS,' Rydberg said. 'But you must be right. The plane would have been flying in an assigned air lane. If it wasn't flying illegally, of course.'

'Illegally?'

Rydberg shrugged.

'You know the rumours,' he said. 'People hear aeroplane noise at night. Low-flying, darkened planes slipping covertly into these areas close to the border. At least that's how it was during the Cold War. Perhaps it's not completely over yet. Sometimes we get reports about suspected espionage. And then you can always question if all drugs actually come in by way of the sound. We will never know for sure about this plane. It may simply be our imagination. But if you fly low enough you escape the defence department's radar. And the control tower.'

'I'll drive in and talk to Sturup,' Wallander said.

'Wrong,' Rydberg said. 'I'll do that. I leave this mud to you, by the rights of my old age.'

Rydberg left. It was starting to get light. One of the technicians was photographing the wreck from various angles. Peter Edler had delegated his responsibilities to someone else and returned to Ystad in one of the fire engines.

Wallander saw Hansson talking to several reporters down on the dirt road. He was happy not to have to do it himself. Then he spotted Martinsson tramping back through the mud. Wallander walked over to meet him.

'You were right,' Martinsson said. 'There's an old man in there who lives by himself. Robert Haverberg. Seventies, alone with nine dogs. To be honest, it smelled like hell in there.'

'What did he say?'

'He heard the roar of a plane. Then it got quiet. And then the sound returned. But at that point it sounded more like a whine. And then he heard the crash.'