Henning Mankell - An Event in Autumn - A Kurt Wallander Mystery

After another quarter of an hour he was certain. The haphazard planting of the currant bushes told a story. About somebody who was either careless, or had been in a hurry. Or of course the person might come into both categories.

He took out his cell phone and rang Nyberg, who had just arrived at the police station.

“I’m sorry I rang you so late the other day,” said Wallander.

“If you were really sorry you’d have stopped ages ago ringing me at all hours of the day and night. You’ve frequently rung me at four or five in the morning without having any questions that couldn’t have waited until a decent time of day. I don’t recall you apologizing any of those times.”

“Perhaps I’ve become a better person.”

“Don’t talk shit! What do you want?”

Wallander told him where he was, and about his feeling that something was wrong. Nyberg was a person who would understand the significance of currant bushes planted in the wrong place.

“I’ll come out there,” said Nyberg when Wallander had finished. “But I’ll be on my own. Do you have a spade in your car?”

“No. But no doubt there’ll be one in the shed somewhere.”

“That’s not what I meant. I have my own spade. I just wanted to make sure that you wouldn’t start rooting around yourself before I got there.”

“I’ll do nothing at all until you arrive.”

They hung up. Wallander sat in his car, as he was feeling cold. He listened somewhat absentmindedly to the car radio. Somebody was going on about a new infectious disease that they suspected was spread by common ticks.

He switched off the radio and waited.

Nineteen minutes later Nyberg turned into the yard. He was wearing Wellington boots, overalls and a strange old hunting hat pulled down over his ears. He took a spade out of the trunk.

“I suppose we can be pleased that you didn’t stumble over that hand after the frost had made it impossible to dig in the soil.”

“Surely the ground doesn’t get frozen before Christmas in these parts? If it ever does.”

Nyberg mumbled something inaudible in response. They went to the spot in question at the back of the house. Wallander could see that Nyberg had understood the significance of his observations about the currant bushes without needing further explanation. Nyberg tested the ground with the edge of his spade, as if he were looking for something.

“The soil is pretty tightly packed,” he said. “Which suggests that it’s been a long time since anybody was digging here. The roots from the bushes bind the soil together.”

He started digging. Wallander stood to one side, watching. After only a few minutes, Nyberg stopped digging and pointed down at the soil. He picked up something that looked like a stone and handed it to Wallander.

It was a tooth. A human tooth.

Two days later, the whole of Karl Eriksson’s garden had been dug up. At the spot where Nyberg had picked up the tooth and handed it to Wallander, they had found a skeleton that Stina Hurlén and other forensic medicine experts had concluded was the remains of a man. He was also in his fifties at the time of death, and had also been lying in that grave for a long time. But there was an injury to his skull that suggested a blow from a heavy instrument.

There had naturally been an outburst of excitement when news of the discovery of a second skeleton reached the mass media. Large black headlines proclaimed “THE GARDEN OF DEATH” or “DEATH IN THE CURRANT BUSHES.”

Lisa Holgersson could no longer limit the allocation of resources. Wallander was put in charge of the case along with a female prosecutor, who had just returned from study leave during which she had undergone further training. She told Wallander to take his time, and to be thorough in all aspects of the investigation. Until the identity of those who had been buried in the garden had been established, there was very little that could be done with regard to finding a culprit.

Stefan Lindman continued to search through registers and old cases which might possibly give them a clue they could follow up. At first they had been looking for one woman. Now it was two missing persons. The general public came up with various tips — shadows of people who had disappeared mysteriously many years ago. Wallander allocated another police officer to assist Lindman in making a rough preliminary assessment of all the tips they received.

After two weeks, they still hadn’t got anywhere when it came to identifying the two dead bodies. Wallander gathered together all his assistants one Thursday afternoon in the large conference room, asked everybody to switch off their cell phones, and gave a thorough account of what had happened so far. They went back to the start, reassessed the forensic and medical reports, and listened to what Wallander described as a brilliant presentation by Stefan Lindman. After four hours, when everything had been discussed ad nauseam, Wallander adjourned the meeting briefly and aired the room, then reassembled everybody for a summary.

He used five words to say what they all knew already.

We’re still at square one .

They had two skeletons, the remains of two middle-aged people who had been murdered. But they had no identities, and didn’t even have any potentially rewarding leads to follow up.

“The past has closed all doors behind it,” said Wallander when the formal summary was complete and they were talking more freely about what had happened.

There was no need to allocate new duties — they were already following the only routes open to them. They would make no progress until they discovered new information about who these two people could have been.

During the two weeks that had passed Wallander and Martinson had tried, with increasing levels of impatience, to find people who could remember a little more about the years during the war when Ludvig Hansson had lived alone on the farm. But they were all dead. Wallander had a recurrent, creepy feeling that what he really ought to be doing was to set up interrogations with all the gravestones in nearby cemeteries. That was where all conceivable witnesses, and any others who might have been involved, were to be found now. There might even be a murderer lying there, with all the answers Wallander and his colleagues were looking for.

Martinson shared his superior’s feelings with regard to the seemingly hopeless search for some living person who could be of assistance to them. But they did not give up, of course. They followed their routines, kept sifting through various archives and old criminal investigations — looking for people who might still be alive and could possibly have something of interest to tell them.

One evening when Wallander returned home with a headache, Linda sat down opposite him at the kitchen table and asked how things were going.

“We’re not giving up,” he said. “We never give up.”

She asked no more questions. She knew her father.

He had said all he had to say.

The next day, November 29, it was snowing heavily over Skåne. A storm was blowing in from the west, and flights were disrupted at Sturup airport for several hours. Lots of cars skidded off the road between Malmö and Ystad. But after a few hours, the strong wind suddenly dropped, it became warmer, and it began to rain.

Wallander stood at his window in the police station, gazing out over the road and noting how the snow suddenly became rain. The telephone rang. As usual he gave a start. He answered it.

“It’s Simon,” said a voice.

“Simon?”

“Simon Larsson. Once upon a time we used to be colleagues.”

Wallander thought at first that he had misunderstood what had been said. Simon Larsson had been a police officer when Wallander had come to Ystad from Malmö. That was a long time ago. Simon Larsson had been old even then. Two years after Wallander’s arrival in Ystad Larsson had retired and been formally thanked at a party hosted by the then chief of police. As far as Wallander was aware, Simon Larsson had never set foot inside the police station since then. He had severed all contact. Wallander had heard a rumor that Larsson had an apple orchard just north of Simrishamn to which he devoted all his time.