saw him. Even in this light Wallander could tell he looked Asian.
Wallander's left foot slipped out from under him, as if he had been on an ice floe. He couldn't recover his balance and fell head first into the mud. At that moment his opponent found his gun. Wallander was now up on one knee and saw that the gun was aimed straight at him. Wallander squeezed his trigger. The gun didn't work. He squeezed again with the same result. In a last desperate attempt to survive Wallander threw himself into the mud and tried to slide down into it. That was when the shot was fired. Wallander flinched, but had not been hit. He lay motionless and waited for his opponent to fire again. But nothing happened. Wallander had no sense of how long he lay there. He felt as if he were watching himself, observing the situation from a distance. So this is how it would end: a pointless death in a muddy field. This is where he had brought his dreams and ambitions. Nothing would come of them now. He would vanish into the final darkness with his face pressed into the cold, wet clay, and he was not even wearing shoes.
Only when he heard the sound of the fast-approaching helicopter did he dare to think he might survive. He carefully looked up.
The man lay on his back with his arms spread. Wallander got up and slowly approached. He could see the floodlights from the helicopter starting to search the far end of the field. Dogs were barking and somewhere far away he heard Martinsson's voice.
The man was dead. That shot he had heard had not been meant for Wallander after all. The man lying in the mud had shot himself in the temple. Wallander was overcome by a sudden onset of nausea and dizziness and had to sit down. His clothes were cold and wet and now he started shaking.
Wallander looked down at the body. He didn't know who this man was or why he had come to Ystad, but his death was a relief. This was the man who had entered Falk's flat when Wallander was there waiting for Marianne Falk. He had twice tried to kill Wallander. Probably he was also the one who had dragged H枚kberg to the power substation, and thrown Landahl into the propeller shaft on the Polish ferry. There were many question marks, but as Wallander sat there on the muddy field he felt that something at least had come to an end.
He no longer had to fear for his colleagues' or Modin's safety.
There was no way for him to know that he was wrong about this assumption. It was something he would only come to understand in time.
Martinsson was the first to reach Wallander. The latter stood up. Elofsson was also nearby. Wallander asked him to try to find his shoes.
"Did you shoot him?" Martinsson said, in disbelief.
Wallander shook his head. "He shot himself. If he hadn't, I wouldn't be here now."
Holgersson appeared, as if from thin air. Wallander let Martinsson do the explaining. Elofsson reappeared with both of Wallander's shoes, wiping the thick clay from them. Wallander wanted to get away. Not only to be able to change his clothes, but to escape from the memory of what it was like to lie there in the mud expecting the end. The depressingly pathetic end.
Somewhere deep inside there was probably a flicker of happiness, but for the moment a feeling of emptiness dominated.
The helicopter was gone. Hansson had dismissed it and the whole operation was being dismantled. The only ones left were the team who would do the investigation surrounding the gunman's death.
Hansson made his way through the mud. He was wearing bright orange boots.
"You should go home," he told Wallander.
Wallander nodded and started walking the same way he had come. All around him he saw the flickering of flashlights. Several times he nearly lost his footing.
As he reached the road, Holgersson caught up with him.
"I think I have a fairly complete picture of what happened," she said. "But tomorrow we'll have to have a thorough debriefing. It's lucky things turned out as well as they did."
"The main thing is to determine if this is the individual responsible for H枚kberg's and Landahl's deaths."
"But why? Why did all this happen?"
"We don't know why yet, but Falk is at the heart of it. Or rather, whatever it is that's in his computer."
"This hypothesis still seems unfounded to me" Holgersson said.
"I can