Henning Mankell - The Pyramid

'My colleague Svedberg was here,' Wallander started.

She burst into laughter.

'I have never seen someone scratch his forehead as often as that man.'

Wallander nodded.

'We all have our ways. For example, I always think there are more questions to be asked than one may initially think.'

'I only told him about my impressions of Anna.'

'And Emilia?'

'They were different. Anna spoke in quick, choppy bursts. Emilia was quieter. But they were equally disagreeable. Equally introverted.'

'How well did you know them?'

'I didn't. Sometimes we bumped into each other on the street. Then we would exchange a few words. But never more than was necessary. Since I like to embroider, I often went to their shop. I always got what I needed. If something had to be ordered, it arrived quickly. But they were not pleasant.'

'Sometimes one needs time,' Wallander said. 'Time to allow one's memory to catch things one thought one had forgotten.'

'What would that be?'

'I don't know. You know. An unexpected event. Something that went against their habits.'

She thought about it. Wallander studied an impressive brass-inlaid compass on a bureau.

'My memory has never been good,' she said finally. 'But now that you mention it, I do remember something that happened last year. In the spring, I think it was. But I can't say if it's important.'

'Anything could be important,' Wallander said.

'It was one afternoon. I needed some thread. Blue thread, as I recall. I walked down to the shop. Both Emilia and Anna were behind the counter. Just as I was about to pay for the thread, a man entered the shop. I remember that he started, as if he hadn't been expecting anyone else to be in the shop. And Anna became angry. She gave Emilia a look that could kill. Then the man left. He had a bag in his hand. I paid for my thread and then I left.'

'Could you describe him?'

'He was not what one would call Swedish-looking. Swarthy, on the short side. A black moustache.'

'How was he dressed?'

'A suit. I think it was of good quality.'

'And the bag?'

'An ordinary black briefcase.'

'Nothing else?'

She thought back.

'Nothing that I can recall.'

'You only saw him that one time?'

'Yes.'

Wallander knew that what he had just heard was important. He could not yet determine what it meant. But it strengthened his impression that the sisters had led a double existence. He was slowly penetrating below the surface.

Wallander thanked her for the coffee.

'What was it that happened?' she asked when they were standing in the hall. 'I woke up with my room on fire. The light from the flames was so bright that I thought my own apartment was burning.'

'Anna and Emilia were murdered,' Wallander answered. 'They were dead when the fire started.'

'Who would have wanted to do something like that?'

'I would hardly be here if I knew the answer,' Wallander said and took his leave.

When he came back out onto the street he stopped for a while next to the scene of the fire and watched absently as a backhoe filled a truck with rubble. He tried to visualise the case clearly. Do what Rydberg had taught him. To enter a room where death had wreaked havoc and try to write the drama backwards. But here there is not even a room, Wallander thought. There is nothing.

He started walking back in the direction of Hamngatan. In the building next to Linnea Gunnér's there was a travel agency. He stopped when he noticed a poster in the window that depicted the pyramids. His father would be home again in four days. Wallander felt he had been unfair. Why couldn't he be happy that his father was realising one of his oldest dreams? Wallander looked at the other posters in the window. Majorca, Crete, Spain.

Suddenly something occurred to him. He opened the door and walked in. Both of the sales agents were busy. Wallander sat down to wait. When the first of them, a young woman hardly older than twenty, became free he got up and sat down at her desk. He had to wait a couple of minutes longer as she answered the phone. He saw from a nameplate on the desk that her name was Anette Bengtsson. She put down the receiver and smiled.

'Do you want to get away?' she asked. 'There are still spaces left around Christmas and New Year.'

'My errand is of a different nature,' Wallander said and held up his ID card. 'You have of course heard that two old ladies burned to death across the street from here.'

'Yes, it's terrible.'

'Did you know them?'

He received the answer he had been hoping for.

'They booked their trips through us. It's so awful that they're gone. Emilia was planning to travel in January. And Anna in April.'

Wallander nodded slowly.

'Where were they going?' he asked.

'To the same place as always. Spain.'

'More precisely?'

'To Marbella. They had a house there.'

What she said next surprised Wallander even more.

'I've seen it,' she said. 'I went to Marbella last year. We have ongoing professional training. There's stiff competition between travel agencies these days. One day when I had time, I drove out and looked at their house. I knew the address.'

'Was it large?'

'It was palatial. With a huge garden. High walls all around, and guards.'

'I would appreciate it if you could write down the address for me,' Wallander said, unable to conceal his eagerness.

She looked through her folders and then wrote it down.

'You said that Emilia was planning to travel in January?'

She entered something into her computer.

'The seventh of January,' she said. 'From Kastrup at 9.05 a.m., via Madrid.'

Wallander helped himself to a pencil from her desk and made a note.

'So she didn't take charter trips?'

'Neither of them did. They travelled first class.'

That's right, Wallander thought. These ladies were loaded.

She told him which airline Emilia had booked her flight with. Iberia, Wallander wrote.

'I don't know what happens now,' she said. 'The ticket has been paid for.'

'I'm sure it will sort itself out,' Wallander said. 'How did they pay for their travel, by the way?'

'Always in cash. In thousand-kronor notes.'

Wallander slipped his notes into his pocket and got up.

'You've been a great help,' he said. 'The next time I travel anywhere I'll come and book my trip here. But for me that will mean charter.'

It was close to four o'clock. Wallander walked past the bank, where he was due to pick up his loan documents and money for the car tomorrow. He braced himself against the wind as he crossed the square. He made it back to the station by twenty past four. Again he directed a ritual kick at the hinge. Ebba told him that Hansson and Svedberg were out. But, more important, she had called the hospital and been able to speak to Rydberg. He had said that he was feeling fine. But he was being kept in overnight.

'I'll go look in on him.'

'That was the last thing he said,' Ebba replied. 'That under no circumstances did he want to have any visitors or phone calls. And absolutely no flowers.'

'Well, that doesn't surprise me,' Wallander said. 'If you think about how he is.'

'You all work too hard, eat too much junk and don't get enough exercise.'

Wallander leaned over towards her.

'That goes for you too,' he said. 'You aren't as slim as you once were, you know.'

Ebba burst into laughter. Wallander went to the break room and found half a loaf of bread that someone had left. He made several sandwiches to bring back to his office. Then he wrote a report on his conversations with Linnea Gunnér and Anette Bengtsson. He was done at a quarter past five. He read through what he had written and asked himself how they should proceed with the case from here. The money comes from somewhere, he thought. A man is on his way into the shop but turns round on the doorstep. They had a system of signs worked out.