Henning Mankell - The Pyramid

Wallander went to his car. It took a long time for the engine to sputter into life. He angrily decided to take out a loan and get a new car as soon as he had the time.

When he came home he booked a time for the laundry room and then opened a can of luncheon meat. Just as he was about to sit down in front of the TV with his plate perched on his lap the phone rang. It was Emma. She asked if she could come by.

'Not tonight,' Wallander said. 'You've probably read about the fire and the two sisters. We're working round the clock right now.'

She understood. After Wallander hung up he wondered why he couldn't tell her the truth. That he didn't want to be with her any more. But of course it was inexcusable cowardice to say this over the phone. Therefore he had to steel himself to go over to her place some evening. He promised himself he would as soon as he had time.

He started to eat his food, which had already grown cold. It was nine o'clock.

The telephone rang again. Annoyed, Wallander put the plate down and answered.

It was Nyberg, who was still at the scene of the fire, calling from a patrol car.

'Now I think we've found something,' he said. 'A safe, the expensive kind that can withstand extreme heat.'

'Why didn't you find it earlier?'

'Good question,' Nyberg answered, without taking offence. 'The safe had been lowered into the foundation. We found a heat-insulated trapdoor under all the rubble. When we managed to force it open we found a space underneath. And there was the safe.'

'Have you opened it?'

'With what? There are no keys. This is a safe that will be difficult to force open.'

Wallander checked his watch. Ten minutes past nine.

'I'm on my way,' he said. 'I wonder if you might have uncovered the lead we were looking for.'

When Wallander got down to the street he couldn't get the car to start. He gave up and walked to Hamngatan.

At twenty minutes to ten he stood at Nyberg's side and studied the safe, illuminated by a lone spotlight.

At about the same time the temperature began to fall, and a gusty wind was moving in from the east.

Shortly after midnight on the fifteenth of December, Nyberg and his men had managed to lift up the safe with the help of a crane. It was loaded onto the back of a truck and immediately taken to the station.

But before Nyberg and Wallander left the scene, Nyberg examined the space under the foundation.

'This was put in after the house was built,' he said. 'I have to assume it was constructed expressly to hold this safe.'

Wallander nodded without a reply. He was thinking about the Eberhardsson sisters. The police had searched for a motive. Now they may have found it, even if they didn't yet know what was in the safe.

But someone else may have known, Wallander thought. Both that the safe existed. And what was inside.

Nyberg and Wallander left the scene of the fire and walked out to the street.

'Is it possible to cut into the safe?' Wallander asked.

'Yes, of course,' Nyberg answered. 'But it requires special welding equipment. This is not the kind of safe that a regular locksmith would dream of trying to crack open.'

'We have to open it as soon as possible.'

Nyberg pulled off his protective suit. He looked sceptically at Wallander.

'Do you mean that the safe should be opened tonight?'

'That would be best,' Wallander said. 'This is a double homicide.'

'Impossible,' Nyberg said. 'I can only get hold of people with the requisite welding equipment tomorrow at the earliest.'

'Are they here in Ystad?'

Nyberg reflected.

'There is a company that's a subcontractor for the armed forces,' he said. 'They probably have the equipment that would do the trick. I think their name is Fabricius. They're on Industrigatan.'

Nyberg looked exhausted. It would be insane to drive him onward right now, Wallander thought. He himself shouldn't press on either.

'Seven o'clock tomorrow,' Wallander said.

Nyberg nodded.

Wallander looked around for his car. Then he remembered that it hadn't started. Nyberg could drop him off, but he preferred to walk. The wind was cold. He passed a thermometer outside a shop window on Stora Östergatan. Minus six degrees Celsius. Winter is creeping in, Wallander thought. Soon it will be here.

One minute to seven on the morning of the fifteenth of December, Nyberg entered Wallander's office. Wallander had the telephone directory open on his desk. He had already inspected the safe, which was being stored in a temporarily empty room next to reception. One of the officers just going off the night shift told him that they had needed a forklift to get the safe inside. Wallander nodded. He had noticed the marks outside the glass doors and seen that one of the hinges was bent. That won't make Björk happy, he thought. But he'll have to live with it. Wallander had tried to move the safe, without success. He had wondered again what it contained. Or if it was empty.

Nyberg called the company on Industrigatan. Wallander went to get some coffee. Rydberg arrived at the same time. Wallander told him about the safe.

'It was as I suspected,' Rydberg said. 'We know very little about these sisters.'

'We're in the process of trying to find a welder who can take on this kind of safe,' Wallander said.

'I hope you'll tell me before you open it,' Rydberg said. 'It will be interesting to be there.'

Wallander returned to his office. He thought it seemed as if Rydberg was in less pain today.

Nyberg was just getting off the phone when Wallander walked in with two cups of coffee.

'I've just spoken to Ruben Fabricius,' Nyberg said. 'He thought they would be able to do the job. They'll be here in half an hour.'

'Tell me when they arrive,' Wallander said.

Nyberg left. Wallander thought about his father in Cairo. Hoped that his experiences were living up to his expectations. He studied the note with the telephone number of the hotel, Mena House. Wondered if he should call. But suddenly he was unsure of what the time difference was, or if there even was one. He dropped the thought and instead called Ebba to see who had come in.

'Martinsson called in to say that he was on his way to Sjöbo,' she answered. 'Svedberg hasn't arrived yet. Hansson is showering. He's apparently had a water leak at home.'

'We're going to open the safe soon,' Wallander said. 'That may get noisy.'

'I went in to take a look at it,' Ebba said. 'I thought it would be bigger.'

'One that size can hold a lot as well.'

'Of course,' she said. 'Ugh.'

Wallander wondered later what she had meant by her last comment. Did she expect that they would find a child's corpse in the safe? Or a decapitated head?

Hansson appeared in the doorway. His hair was still wet.

'I've just talked to Björk,' he said cheerily. 'He pointed out that the doors of the station were damaged last night.'

Hansson had not yet heard about the safe. Wallander explained.

'That may provide us with a motive,' Hansson said.

'In the best-case scenario,' Wallander said. 'In the worst case, the safe is empty. And then we understand even less.'

'It could have been emptied by the people who shot the sisters,' Hansson objected. 'Perhaps he shot one of them and forced the other to open the safe?'

This had also occurred to Wallander. But something told him it was not what had actually happened. Without being able to say why he had that feeling.

At eight o'clock, under Ruben Fabricius's direction, two welders started the work of cutting open the safe. It was, as Nyberg had predicted, a difficult task.

'A special kind of steel,' Fabricius said. 'A normal locksmith would have to devote his whole life trying to open this kind of safe.'

'Can you blow it up?' Wallander asked.