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

The clouds were gathering again.

He also noticed that it was getting colder.

Wallander opened the front door and listened. Linda wasn’t at home. He made some tea and sat down at the kitchen table. The discovery of the hand had disappointed him. For a brief time during his visit to the house, he had been convinced: it was exactly the place he had been looking for. That house and no other. But then its garden had been transformed into a crime scene. Or, at least, somewhere concealing a dark secret.

I shall never find a house, he thought. No house, no dog, no new woman either. Everything will remain the same as it always has been.

He drank his tea then went to lie down on the bed. As it was Sunday, he ought to comply with the routine — a routine introduced by Linda — and change the sheets. But he didn’t have the strength.

When he woke up he found he had been asleep for several hours. It was pitch-black outside. Linda still hadn’t come home. He went into the kitchen and drank some water. As he placed the glass on the draining board, the telephone rang.

“Wallander.”

“It’s Nyberg here. We’re waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For you. What do you think?”

“Why are you waiting for me?”

Nyberg sighed profoundly. Wallander could hear that he was tired and irritated.

“Hasn’t the switchboard rung you?”

“Nobody has rung here.”

“How the hell can it be possible to carry out police work when you can’t even rely on various messages being passed on?”

“Never mind that now. What’s happened?”

“We’ve found a body.”

“A body or a skeleton?”

“What do you think? A skeleton, of course.”

“I’ll be there.”

Wallander replaced the receiver, selected a sweater from the wardrobe and scribbled a note, which he placed on the kitchen table. Gone to work . He hurried to the police station and collected his car. When he got there and felt in his pocket for the key, he remembered that he had put it on the kitchen table.

For a brief moment he felt like crying. Or just walking away from it all, without turning back. Walking away never to return.

He felt like an idiot. An idiot he felt sorry for, just for a moment. Then he went over to one of the patrol cars and asked them to drive him out to the house. His self-pity had faded away and been replaced by anger. Somebody had failed to inform him that he had needed to drive out to Löderup.

He leaned back in the car seat, listening to the various messages coming through over the police radio. The image of his father suddenly appeared in his thoughts.

Once upon a time he’d had a father. But one day he passed away, and the urn with his ashes had been buried in the cemetery. And now, in a flash, the time that had passed since then had been erased. It was as if it had happened the previous day. Or had merely been a dream.

The garden was illuminated by strong spotlights. Every time Wallander went to a crime scene at night, when work was in progress, he had the feeling that he was on a film set.

Nyberg came toward him. The forensic officer was covered in soil and clay from top to toe — Nyberg’s filthy overalls were so well known that they had once been featured in an article in the local newspaper.

“I don’t know why you weren’t informed,” he said.

Wallander made a dismissive gesture.

“It doesn’t matter. What have you found?”

“I’ve already told you.”

“A skeleton?”

“Exactly.”

Wallander accompanied Nyberg to a spot close to where he had stumbled in the first instance. There was now a hole, just over a meter deep. In it were the remains of a person. In addition to the skeleton, which seemed to be more or less intact, there were a few scraps of clothing.

Wallander walked around the corpse. Nyberg coughed and blew his nose. Martinson came out of the house, yawned — and looked at Wallander, who said nothing until he had completed his inspection of the skeleton.

“Where’s Hurlén?”

“She had just gone home,” said Nyberg ironically. “But I phoned her when we started to find several bones. She’ll be back here soon.”

Wallander and Martinson crouched down.

“Man or woman?”

It was Martinson who asked the question. Wallander had learned over the years that the easiest way of distinguishing between the skeleton of a man and a woman was by examining the pelvis. But what exactly was it he should be looking for? He found that he could no longer remember.

“A man,” he said. “At least, I hope it’s a man.”

Martinson looked at him in surprise.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I don’t like the thought of thinking about buying a house with a dead woman lying in the garden.”

Wallander’s knees creaked as he stood up.

“One wonders about that hand,” he said. “Why did it suddenly start poking up out of the ground?”

“Perhaps it wanted to wave to us and tell us there was something hidden away under the ground that shouldn’t be there.”

Martinson was well aware that his comment sounded idiotic. But Wallander said nothing.

Stina Hurlén suddenly appeared under the spotlights. There was a squelching sound as her rubber boots tramped their way over the downtrodden soil. She did the same as Wallander had done, and walked around the hole before crouching.

“Man or woman?” asked Wallander.

“Woman,” said Hurlén. “Definitely a woman. No doubt about it. But don’t ask me about her age, or anything else come to that. I’m too tired to start guessing.”

“Just one more thing,” said Martinson. “You thought before that the hand had been lying here for a long time. Does the discovery of the skeleton change that opinion? Or do you still think she’s been lying here for ages?”

“I don’t think. My guess is she’s been here for a long time.”

“Can you see anything that might indicate the cause of her death?” asked Martinson.

“That was question number two,” said Hurlén. “One question too many. You’re not going to get an answer.”

“That hand,” said Wallander. “Why is it sticking up?”

“That’s not unusual,” answered Nyberg when Hurlén remained silent. “Things lying in the ground move around. It can be due to differences in groundwater levels. And besides, this is Scanian clay soil — subsidence takes place. Personally I think the hand came up to the surface as a result of all the rain we’ve had this autumn. But of course it could also have been field mice.”

Nyberg’s cell phone rang. He did not conclude his analysis of why the hand had stuck up through the earth.

“What do you think he meant?” wondered Martinson. “That reference to field mice?”

“I’ve always thought that Nyberg is a brilliant forensic officer. But I’ve also always been convinced that he’s hopeless when it comes to explaining what he means.”

“I’m going home to get some sleep,” said Martinson. “I think you ought to do that as well. There’s not much we can do here in any case.”

Martinson drove Wallander home. As usual, he drove very jerkily; but Wallander said nothing. He had given up many years ago. Martinson drove in a way that would never change.

Linda was still up and about when Wallander came in through the door. She was in her dressing gown, and eyed his muddy shoes. They sat down in the kitchen and he told her what had happened.

“That sounds very strange,” she said when he had finished. “A house Martinson tipped you off about? And there’s a dead body buried in the garden?”

“It may sound strange, but it’s true.”