Sidetracked - By Henning Mankell & Steven T. Murray Page 0,100

he managed to get two machines started. Satisfied, he went back up to his flat.

He had just closed the door when the phone rang. It was Forsfält, who told him that Marianne Eriksson was in Spain. He was going to keep trying to reach her at the hotel where the travel agent said she was staying. Wallander unpacked the contents of the black plastic bag. The files covered his whole kitchen table. He took a beer out of the refrigerator and sat down in the living-room. He listened to Jussi Björling on the stereo. After a while he stretched out on the sofa with the can of beer beside him on the floor. Soon he was asleep.

He woke with a start when the music ended. Lying on the sofa, he finished the can of beer. The phone rang. It was Linda. Could she stay at his place for a few days? Her friend’s parents were coming home. Wallander suddenly felt energetic. He gathered up all the papers spread out on the kitchen table and carried them to his bedroom. Then he made up the bed in the room where Linda slept. He opened all the windows and let the warm evening breeze blow through the flat. He went downstairs and got his laundry out of the machines. To his surprise none of the colours had run. He hung the laundry in the drying room. Linda had told him that she wouldn’t want any food, so he boiled some potatoes and grilled a piece of meat for his supper. As he ate he wondered whether he should call Baiba. He also thought about his lost keys. About Louise Fredman. About Peter Hjelm. And about the stack of papers waiting for him in his bedroom. And he thought about the man who was out there somewhere in the summer night. The man they would have to catch soon. When he’d finished, he stood by the open window until he saw Linda coming down the street.

“I love you,” he said aloud.

He dropped the keys from the window and she caught them with one hand.

CHAPTER 26

Wallander sat up half the night talking with Linda, but he still forced himself to get up at 6 a.m. He stood in the shower for a long time before managing to shake off his weariness. He moved quietly through the flat and thought that it was only when either Baiba or Linda was there that it really felt like home. When he was alone it felt like little more than a temporary roof over his head. He made coffee and went down to the drying room. One of his neighbours pointed out that he hadn’t cleaned up after himself the day before. She was an old woman who lived alone, and he greeted her when they ran into each other, but didn’t know her name. She showed him a spot on the floor where there was some spilled washing powder. Wallander apologised and promised to do better in the future. What a nag, he thought as he went upstairs. But he knew she was right, he had been too lazy to clean up.

He dumped his laundry on the bed and then carried the papers Forsfält had given him out to the kitchen. He felt guilty because he hadn’t read them the night before. But the talk with Linda had been important. They had sat out on the balcony in the warm night. Listening to her, he felt for the first time that she was an adult. She told him that Mona was talking about remarrying. Wallander was depressed at this news. He knew that Linda had been asked to inform him. But for the first time he talked about why he thought the marriage had fallen apart. From her response he could tell that Mona saw it quite differently. Then she asked him about Baiba, and he tried to answer her as honestly as he could, though there was a lot that was still unresolved about their relationship. And when they finally turned in, he felt sure that she didn’t blame him for what had happened, and that now she could view her parents’ divorce as something that had been necessary.

He sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the extensive material describing Björn Fredman’s life. It took him two hours just to skim through it all. Once in a while he would jot down notes. By the time he pushed aside the last folder and stretched,