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

“There’s an old lady there called Elin,” said Martinson. “Elin Trulsson. She’s been to visit Karl a few times — but she’s also old. Maybe not quite as senile as he is, though.”

Wallander stood up.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

Linda surprised Wallander by having dinner ready when he came back home. Although it was an ordinary weekday he was tempted to open a bottle of wine — but if he did Linda would only start stirring up trouble, so he didn’t. Instead he told her about the return visit he and Martinson had made in Löderup.

“Did you find anything?”

“I now have an overall view of who owned the property over the past fifty years. But, of course, it’s too early to say whether that knowledge will prove to be useful to us.”

“I spoke to Stefan. He hadn’t discovered any missing woman who might fit in the picture.”

“I didn’t expect he would.”

They ate in silence. It was only when they came to the coffee that they resumed talking.

“You could have bought the house,” she said. “You could have lived there until the day you died without knowing that there was a cemetery in your garden; lived there for the rest of your life without knowing that every summer you walked around in your bare feet on grass that was growing over a grave.”

“I keep thinking about that hand,” he said. “Something had caused it to come up to the surface. Obviously, if you have a tendency to believe in ghosts you might well think that the hand was sticking up on purpose in order to attract the attention of a visiting police officer.”

Their conversation was interrupted by a call to Linda’s cell phone. She answered, listened, then hung up.

“That was Stefan. I’m going to drive over to his place.”

Wallander immediately felt that nagging feeling of jealousy. He made an unintentional grimace, which of course she noticed.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“I can see that there is something. You’re pulling a face.”

“That’s just because something’s got caught in my teeth.”

“When will you learn that you can never get away with telling me lies?”

“I’m just a simple, jealous old father. That’s all.”

“Find yourself a woman. You know what I’ve said. If you don’t find someone to fuck soon, you’ll die.”

“You know I don’t like you using words like that.”

“I think you need somebody to annoy you sometimes. Bye.”

Linda left the room. Wallander thought for a few moments. Then he stood up, opened the bottle of wine, took out a glass and went into the living room. He dug out a record of Beethoven’s last string quartet and sat down in his armchair. His thoughts started to wander as he listened to the music. The wine was making him dozy. He closed his eyes, and was soon half asleep.

He suddenly opened his eyes. He was wide awake again. The music was finished — the record had come to an end. A thought had struck him deep in his subconscious mind. That hand he had stumbled over. He had received an explanation from Nyberg that the forensic officer thought was plausible. Groundwater could rise and fall, the clay soil could sink down and hence force the undersoil up toward the surface. And so the hand had risen up to ground level. But why just the hand? Was that remark at the dinner table more significant than he had realized? Had that hand risen to the surface specifically in order to be observed?

He poured another glass of wine, then telephoned Nyberg. It was always a bit dodgy calling him because he could object angrily to someone disturbing him. Wallander waited, listening to the phone ringing at the other end.

“Nyberg.”

“It’s Kurt. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Of course you’re disturbing me, for Christ’s sake. What do you want?”

“That hand sticking up out of the ground. The one I stumbled over. You said that the clay soil keeps shifting, gliding around, and that the groundwater level is changing constantly. But I still don’t understand why that hand should emerge through the topsoil just now.”

“Who said it happened just now? I didn’t. It could have been lying there for many years.”

“But surely somebody ought to have seen it in that case?”

“That’s a problem for you to solve. Was that all?”

“Not really. Would it be possible for the hand to have been placed there on purpose? Specifically for it to be discovered? Did you notice if the ground there had been dug up recently?”

Nyberg was breathing heavily. Wallander was worried that he might burst into a fit of rage.

“That hand had moved there of its own accord,” said Nyberg.

He hadn’t become angry.

“It was exactly that I was wondering about,” said Wallander. “Thank you for taking the trouble to respond.”

He hung up and returned to his glass of wine.

Linda returned home shortly after midnight. By then he had already gone to bed and fallen asleep, after washing his glass and hiding away the empty bottle.

At a quarter past ten the next day, October 29, Martinson and Wallander drove along the slushy roads to Löderup in order to speak to Elin Trulsson, and possibly other neighbors, in an attempt to find out more about who had been living in that house many years ago.

Earlier that morning they had attended a meeting, which had turned out to be very brief. Lisa Holgersson had insisted that no extra resources could be allocated to the investigation into the skeleton until the forensic report was completed.

“Winter,” said Martinson. “I hate all this slush. I buy scratch cards and scrape away hopefully. I don’t envisage masses of banknotes raining down over me: instead I see a house somewhere in Spain or on the Riviera.”

“What would you do there?”

“Make long-pile rugs. Just think of all the slush and wet feet I’d avoid.”

“You’d be bored stiff,” said Wallander. “You’d make your damned rugs covered in motifs depicting snowstorms, and you’d long to be back here in this shitty weather.”

They turned into the drive leading to the pink house a few hundred meters from Karl Eriksson’s property. A middle-aged man was just about to clamber onto his tractor. He looked at them with a surprised look on his face. They all shook hands. The man introduced himself as Evert Trulsson, the owner of the neighboring farm. Wallander explained why they had come there.

“Who would have thought anything like that about Karl?” he said when Wallander had finished.

“Thought anything like what?”

“That he’d have a dead body buried in his garden.”

Wallander glanced at Martinson and tried to understand the strange logic in what Evert Trulsson had said.

“Can you explain what you mean? Are you suggesting that he buried the body himself?”

“I’ve no idea. What do you know about your neighbors nowadays? In the old days you used to know more or less everything about the people you had around you. But now you haven’t a clue about anything.”

Wallander wondered if he had before him one of those ultraconservative people who had no doubt that everything used to be better in the old days. He made up his mind not to be dragged into a pointless conversation.

“Elin Trulsson,” he said. “Who’s she?”

“She’s my mother.”

“We understand that she’s been to visit Karl Eriksson in his care home.”

“I have an old mum who cares about other people. I think she visits Karl because nobody else does.”

“So they were friends, were they?”

“We were neighbors. That’s not the same as being friends.”