Henning Mankell - One step behind

Eventually he had returned to Ystad and started working again. He remembered Svedberg on his first day back at work. Bjork had just welcomed Wallander, and the conference room grew quiet. None of them had expected him to return. The person who finally broke the silence was Svedberg. Wallander could still remember exactly what he said.

"Thank God you finally came back, because I really don't think we could've made it another day without you."

Wallander held on to the memory and tried to see Svedberg clearly. He was the quiet type, but someone who could often ease an uncomfortable situation. He was a good policeman, not outstanding in any way, but good. Stubborn and conscientious. He didn't have a lot of imagination and he wasn't a particularly accomplished writer. His reports were often poorly written, and they irritated the prosecutors. But he had been an important part of the team.

Wallander got up and went into Svedberg's bedroom. There was no sign of the telescope. He sat down on the bed and picked up a book off the bedside table. It was called A History of the Sioux Indians and was written in English. Svedberg didn't speak very good English, but perhaps he was better at reading it.

Wallander flipped through the book absentmindedly and found himself staring at a remarkable picture of Sitting Bull. Then he got up and went into the bathroom. He opened a mirrored cabinet and found nothing that surprised him. His own bathroom cabinet was exactly the same.

Now only the living room remained. He would have preferred to skip it, but knew he couldn't. He went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water. It was close to 6 a.m. and he was very tired.

Finally he went out into the living room. Nyberg had put on knee-guards and was crawling around the black leather sofa that stood against a wall. The chair was still overturned and no one had moved the shotgun. The only thing that had been moved was Svedberg's body.

Wallander looked around the room and tried to imagine the events that had taken place. What had happened right before the fatal moment, before the gun went off? But he couldn't see anything. The feeling that he was ignoring something important came over him again. He stood completely still and tried to coax the thought to the surface, but he got nothing.

Nyberg came up to him and they looked at each other.

"Do you understand this?" Wallander asked.

"No," Nyberg answered. "It's strangely like a painting."

Wallander looked closely at him. "What do you mean 'a painting'?"

Nyberg blew his nose and carefully refolded his handkerchief.

"Everything is such a mess," he said. "Chairs have been overturned, drawers pulled out, papers and china thrown all over the place. It's almost as if it's too messy."

Wallander knew what he meant, although he had not yet followed this thought to its conclusion.

"You mean it looks arranged."

"Of course it's only a thought at this point. I don't have anything to back it up with."

"What exactly gave you this feeling?"

Nyberg pointed to a little porcelain rooster that lay on the ground.

"It seems plausible to assume that it came from that shelf over there," he said, and pointed it out to Wallander. "Where else could it have come from? But if it fell because someone was pulling out the drawers and going through them, why would it have landed all the way over here?"

Wallander nodded.

"There's probably a completely rational explanation," Nyberg said. "But if so, you'll have to tell me what it is."

Wallander didn't say anything. He stayed in the living room for a few more minutes, then left the flat. When he came out on the street it was already morning. A police car stood parked outside the building, but there were no onlookers. Wallander assumed that the police officers had been instructed not to give out any information.

He stood completely still and drew a couple of deep breaths. It was going to be a beautiful, late summer's day. Only now was he starting to sense the overwhelming nature of his sorrow, which stemmed as much from genuine affection as from the reminder of his own mortality. Death had come close this time. It was not like when his father had died. This frightened him.

It was 6.25 a.m. on Friday, 9 August. Wallander walked slowly to his car. A cement mixer started up in the distance.

Ten minutes later he walked through the doors of the police station.

They gathered in the conference room shortly after 8 a.m. and held an impromptu memorial service. Lisa Holgersson lit a candle at the place where Svedberg normally sat. All those at the station that morning were gathered in the room, filling it with a palpable sense of shock and sadness. Holgersson said only a few words, fighting to keep her composure. Everyone in the room prayed for her not to break down. It would make the situation unbearable. After she had spoken, they stood for a minute's silence. Uneasy images floated through Wallander's mind. He was already having trouble picturing Svedberg's face. He had experienced the same thing when his father died, and earlier with Rydberg.

Although one can certainly remember the dead, it's as if they never existed, he thought.

The impromptu service came to an end, people started to leave. Apart from the members of the investigative team, Holgersson was the only one to stay behind. They sat down at the table. The flame of the candle flickered when Martinsson closed one of the windows. Wallander looked questioningly at Holgersson, but she shook her head. It was his turn to speak.

"We're all tired," he began. "We're upset and sad and confused. What we've always feared the most has finally occurred. Normally we try to solve crimes, even violent crimes, that do not affect people from our own world. This time it's happened in our midst, but we still have to try to approach it as if it were a regular case."

He paused and looked around. No one spoke.

"Let's go over the facts," Wallander said. "Then we can begin to plot our strategy. We know very little. Svedberg was shot sometime between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday evening. It happened in his flat, which shows no signs of forced entry. We can assume that the shotgun lying on the floor was the murder weapon. The flat looks like it was burgled, which may indicate that Svedberg was confronted by an armed assailant. We don't know if this was the case; it is simply a possibility. We cannot disregard other scenarios. We have to keep our search as broad as possible. We also cannot disregard the fact that Svedberg was a policeman. This may or may not be significant. We have no exact time of death yet, and a perplexing fact is that none of the neighbours heard any shots. We therefore have to wait for the autopsy report."

He poured himself a glass of water and emptied it before continuing.

"This is what we know. The only thing to add is that Svedberg did not turn up for work on Thursday. We all appreciate how unusual this is. He gave no reason for his absence, and the only rational assumption is that there was something preventing him from coming in. We know what that means."

Nyberg interrupted him with a gesture.

"I'm not a pathologist," he said, "but I doubt that Svedberg died as early as Wednesday."

"Then we have to deal with the question of what could have prevented Svedberg from coming to work yesterday," Wallander said. "Why didn't he call in? When was he killed?"

Wallander described his conversation with Ylva Brink. "Apart from telling me about the only other relative that Svedberg was in touch with, she said something that stuck in my mind. She said that in the last few weeks Svedberg complained about feeling overworked. But he had just returned from holiday. It doesn't make any sense, particularly if you know that he didn't tend to take strenuous trips on his holiday."