Henning Mankell - The Pyramid

During that time Wallander had lain on the floor, shot at the ceiling light, rushed out into the yard and killed a dog – and injured Rolf Nyman with a bullet to his side.

Wallander had thought several times since returning to Ystad that he should be furious. But he could decide for himself who he should blame. It had been an unfortunate series of misunderstandings that could have ended very badly, with not only a dog left dead. That had not happened. But it had been a close shave.

There is a time to live, and a time to die, Wallander thought. This was a mantra he had carried with him ever since the time he had been stabbed in Malmö many years ago. Now it had been a close call again.

Rydberg came into the break room.

'Rolf Nyman is going to be fine,' he said. 'You hit him in a good spot. He will suffer no permanent damage. The doctors seemed to think we could talk to him as early as tomorrow.'

'I could easily have missed,' Wallander said. 'Or hit him right between the eyes. I'm a terrible shot.'

'Most policemen are,' Rydberg said.

Wallander slurped more of the hot coffee.

'I talked to Nyberg,' Rydberg went on. 'He said that the weapon looked like a probable match with the one that was used to kill the Eberhardsson sisters and Holm. They've also found Holm's car. It was parked on a street in Sjöbo. Nyman probably drove it there.'

'So something has been solved,' Wallander said. 'But we still have no idea what's really behind all this.'

Rydberg had no answer to that.

It would take several weeks for the whole picture to emerge. But when Nyman began to speak, the police were able to uncover a skilfully constructed organisation that managed the importation of large quantities of heavy drugs into Sweden. The Eberhardsson sisters had been Nyman's ingenious camouflage. They organised the supply links in Spain, where the drugs – which had their origin in distant producers in both Central America and Asia – arrived on fishing boats. Holm had been Nyman's henchman. But then, at a moment that they were unable to pinpoint, Holm and the Eberhardsson sisters had joined forces in their greed and decided to oust Nyman. When he had realised what was happening, he had struck back. The plane crash had occurred during this time. Drugs were being transported from Marbella to northern Germany. The night-time air trips to Sweden had taken off from a private airstrip outside Kiel. The plane had always returned there, except this last time when it had gone down. The commission in charge of investigating the accident was never able to determine the actual cause. But there were many indications that the plane was in such poor condition that several factors had worked together.

Wallander himself led the first questioning of Nyman. But when two other serious crimes occurred he had to hand the case over. Nonetheless he had understood from the start that Rolf Nyman was not the head of the pyramid that he had drawn. There were others above him – financiers, invisible men – who behind the facade of blameless citizens saw to it that the flood of drugs into Sweden did not dry up.

Many evenings Wallander thought about the pyramids. To the top that his father had been trying to reach. Wallander thought that this climb could stand as a symbol for his own work. He never reached the summit. There were always some who sat so high and far above everyone else that they could never be reached.

But this morning, the seventh of January 1990, Wallander was simply tired.

At half past five he could no longer take it. Without saying a word to anyone other than Rydberg he went home to the apartment on Mariagatan. He showered and crawled into bed without being able to fall asleep. Only when he managed to find a sleeping pill in an old bottle in the bathroom cabinet was he finally able to sleep, and he did not wake up until two o'clock in the afternoon.

He spent the rest of the day at the station and the hospital. Björk turned up and congratulated Wallander on his efforts. Wallander did not reply. He thought that most of what he had done had been wrong. It had been their luck, not their skill, that had finally felled Rolf Nyman.

Then he had had his first conversation with Nyman at the hospital. The man had been pale but collected. Wallander had expected Nyman to refuse to say a word. But he had answered many of Wallander's questions.

'The Eberhardsson sisters?' Wallander asked before he concluded the session. Rolf Nyman smiled.

'Two greedy old ladies,' he said. 'Who were tempted by the fact that someone rode into their hopeless lives and brought the scent of adventure.'

'That sounds implausible,' Wallander said. 'It's too big a step.'

'Anna Eberhardsson had lived a fairly wild life when she was younger. Emilia had always had to keep an eye on her. Perhaps deep down she had wanted to live the same life. What do we know about people? Other than that they have their weaknesses. And those are the things you need to know.'

'How did you meet them?'

The answer came as a surprise.

'I bought a zip. It was a time in my life when I mended my own clothes. I saw those old ladies and had a crazy idea. That they could be useful. As a cover.'

'And then?'

'I started dropping by. Bought some thread. Talked about my travels around the world. How easy it was to make money. And that life is short. But that nothing was ever too late. I saw that they listened.'

'And then?'

Rolf Nyman shrugged.

'One day I made them an offer. How does that go again? An offer they couldn't refuse.'

Wallander wanted to ask more. But suddenly Nyman did not want to talk about it any more.

Wallander changed the subject.

'And Holm?'

'He was also greedy. And weak. Too stupid to realise that he wouldn't be able to trick me.'

'How did you catch onto their plans?'

Rolf Nyman shook his head.

'I won't give you that answer,' he said.

Wallander walked from the hospital to the station. A press conference was going on that to his relief he had managed to get out of. When he got to his office there was a package on the floor. Someone had written a note and said that the package had ended up sitting around in reception by mistake. Wallander saw that it had come from Sofia in Bulgaria. Immediately he knew what it was. Several months earlier he had participated in an international police conference in Copenhagen. While there he had become good friends with a Bulgarian detective who shared his interest in opera. Wallander opened it. It contained a recording of La Traviata with Maria Callas.

Wallander wrote up a report on his first conversation with Rolf Nyman. Then he went home. Cooked some food, slept a few hours. Thought of calling Linda but didn't.

In the evening he listened to the record from Bulgaria. Thought that what he needed most right now was a couple of days off.

He only went to bed and fell asleep when it was close to two.

The incoming call was registered by the Ystad police dispatcher at 5.13 a.m., the eighth of January. It was received by an exhausted policeman who had been on duty almost without a break since New Year's Eve. He had listened to the stammering voice on the phone and at first thought that it was a confused elderly person. But something nonetheless alerted his attention. He started to ask questions. When the conversation was over he only had to reflect for a moment before he lifted the receiver again and dialled a number he knew by heart.

When the telephone signals jerked Wallander from his slumber he had been deeply enmeshed in an erotic dream.

He checked his watch as he reached his hand out for the telephone receiver. A car accident, he thought quickly. An icy road, or someone driving too fast. People dead. Or clashes with refugees who arrived on the morning ferry from Poland.