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

He soon dozed off. The keys fell to the floor, and as they did so Martinson opened the door.

Wallander gathered that Stina Hurlén had sent in her report at last.

The preliminary, but by no means final, forensic report had come from Lund by courier. It was lying on Martinson’s desk.

“I think you’d better read it yourself,” said Martinson.

“I take it that means the discovery of the skeleton is what we suspected it would be — the beginning of a criminal investigation.”

“It seems so, yes.”

Martinson went to get some coffee while Wallander read the report. Stina Hurlén wrote simply and clearly. Over the years Wallander had often wondered why police officers and pathologists, prosecutors and defense lawyers sometimes wrote such hopelessly unreadable texts. They turned out masses of words instead of writing simple, meaningful sentences.

It took him just over ten minutes to read the report. Whenever he had an important document in his hands, he forced himself to read slowly, at a speed all his thoughts could keep up with.

Stina Hurlén confirmed that the body was definitely that of a woman. She judged that the woman would have been about fifty when she died. Further analyses would be needed to be precise about her age, but Hurlén could already give the probable cause of death. The dead woman had been hanged. There was an injury on the nape of her neck which indicated this. Needless to say, Hurlén could not be certain that the injury hadn’t been caused after her death, but she thought that was unlikely. As yet she was unable to say how long the woman had been dead, but there were indications that the corpse had been lying in the grave for many years.

Wallander put the report down on the desk and picked up the cup of coffee Martinson had brought him.

“What do we know then?” said Wallander. “If we sum up.”

“Unusually little. A dead woman in a shallow grave in a garden in Löderup. Who was about fifty when she died. But we don’t know when she died. If I understand Hurlén rightly, that woman could have been lying under the ground for a hundred years. Or more.”

“Or less,” said Wallander. “What’s the name of the owner of the house? Your relative?”

“Karl Eriksson. My wife’s cousin.”

“I suppose the best we can do is to have a chat with him.”

“No,” said Martinson. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

“Why not?”

“He’s ill. He’s old.”

“Being old doesn’t mean being ill. What are you implying?”

Martinson walked over to the window and looked out.

“All I’m saying is that my wife’s cousin Karl Eriksson is ninety-two years old. He was clear in the head until a few months ago, but then something happened. One day he went out into the street naked, and when people tried to help him he didn’t know who he was or where he lived. He’d managed on his own at home until then. Dementia normally comes creeping up on you — but in his case it hit him with a bang.”

Wallander looked at Martinson in surprise.

“But if he became senile so suddenly, how could he ask you to look after the sale of his house?”

“I’ve already told you. We drew up an agreement about that several years ago. Perhaps he had an inkling that one of these days he would float off into the mists, and wanted to have his affairs in order before it happened.”

“Does he have any moments of clarity?”

“None at all. He doesn’t recognize anybody anymore. The only person he ever talks about is his mother, who died about fifty years ago. He keeps saying he must go and buy some milk. He repeats that over and over again all the time he’s awake. He lives in a care home for people who no longer live in the real world.”

“Surely there must be someone else who can answer questions?”

“No, there isn’t. Karl Eriksson and his wife, who died sometime in the 1970s, didn’t have any children. Or rather, they had two children, two daughters, who died in a horrific accident in a muddy pond a long time ago. There were no other relatives. They lived isolated lives — the only people they were occasionally in contact with were me and my family.”

Wallander felt impatient. And he was also hungry — the sandwich Linda had given him had long since proved insufficient.

“We’d better start searching the house,” he said, rising to his feet. “There must be deeds. All people have a story; so do all houses. Let’s go and have a word with Lisa.”

They sat down in Lisa Holgersson’s office. Wallander let Martinson tell her about Stina Hurlén’s report and the senile Karl Eriksson. It had become a characteristic of their working relationship that they took it in turns to report on specific cases so that the other one could listen and keep the whole business at arm’s length.

“We can’t devote much in the way of resources to this,” said Holgersson when Martinson had finished. “It seems highly probable that it will end up as an old murder inquiry in any case.”

That was exactly the reaction that Wallander had expected. It seemed to him that in recent years fewer and fewer police resources were allocated to what ought to have been most important: fieldwork. More and more of his colleagues were glued to their desks, and had to work in accordance with confusing and meaningless priorities that were changing all the time. An old murder, if that was really what had come up to the surface in Löderup, was not something that could be allocated anything more than strictly limited resources.

He had expected that answer, but was angry even so.

“We’ll keep you informed,” he said. “We’ll just say for the moment what we know, and that we think perhaps we ought to make a thorough investigation. We’re not asking for much in the way of resources. At least, not until we receive more detailed reports from the Center for Forensic Medicine in Lund. And Nyberg’s report. After all, that’s the least we can do — find out who it is who’s been lying there buried for years. If we still want to call ourselves police officers.”

Lisa Holgersson gave a start and glared sternly at him.

“What did you mean by that last sentence?”

“It’s the results of what we do that show we’re police officers. Not all those statistics we’re forced to spend time working out.”

“Statistics?”

“You know as well as I do that our ability to clear up crime is much too limited. Because we’re obliged to spend so much time messing around with unimportant paperwork.”

Wallander could feel that he was on the verge of bursting into a fit of rage. But he managed to control himself sufficiently for Lisa Holgersson not to notice just how furious he actually was.

Martinson saw through him, of course.

Wallander stood up hastily.

“We’ll go and take a look out there,” he said, trying hard to maintain a friendly tone. “Who knows what we might find?”

He left the room and strode rapidly along the corridor. Martinson half ran behind him.

“I thought you were going to burst,” said Martinson. “Not a good idea on a Monday in October as winter is approaching.”

“You talk too much,” said Wallander. “Fetch your jacket — we’re going for a drive out into the sticks.”

When they arrived at the house in Löderup, nearly all the spotlights were switched off. The hole in which they had discovered the body was covered by a tarpaulin. A single police car was parked by the cordoned-off area; Nyberg and the other forensic officers had left. Wallander still had the house keys in his pocket. He handed them over to Martinson.

“I’m not out viewing houses now,” he said. “These are your keys, so it’s up to you to open up.”