Sidetracked - By Henning Mankell & Steven T. Murray Page 0,128

the front door, obviously in a hurry, and set off towards the town centre. He followed her and never let her out of his sight.

CHAPTER 32

When they got to the dock, ten kilometres west of Ystad, Wallander was immediately sure that it was the right place. It was just as he had imagined it. They had driven along the coast road and stopped where a man in shorts and a T-shirt advertising the golf course in Malmberget waved them down and directed them to a barely visible dirt road. They stopped just short of the dock, so they wouldn’t disturb the tyre marks.

The laboratory technician, Erik Wiberg, told them that in the summer he lived in a cabin on the north side of the coast road. He often came down to this dock to read his morning paper, as he had on 29 June. He’d noticed the tyre tracks and the dark spots on the brown wood, but thought nothing of it. He left that same day for Germany with his family, and it wasn’t until he saw in the paper on his return that the police were looking for a murder site, probably near the sea, that he remembered those dark spots. Since he worked in a laboratory, he knew that what was on the dock at least looked like blood. Nyberg, who had arrived just after Wallander and the others, was on his knees by the tyre tracks. He had toothache and was more irritable than ever. Wallander was the only one he could bear to talk to.

“It could be Fredman’s van,” he said, “but we’ll have to do a proper examination.”

They walked out on the dock together. Wallander knew they had been lucky. The dry summer helped. If it had rained there wouldn’t have been tracks. He looked for confirmation from Martinsson, who had the best memory for the weather.

“Has it rained since 28 June?” he asked.

“It drizzled on the morning of Midsummer Eve,” he said. “Ever since then it’s been fine.”

“Arrange to cordon off the whole place,” said Wallander, nodding to Höglund. “And be careful where you put your feet.”

He stood near the land end of the dock and looked at the patches of blood. They were concentrated in the middle of the dock, which was four metres long. He turned around and looked up towards the road. He could hear the noise, but he couldn’t see the cars, just the roof of a tall lorry flashing by. He had an idea. Höglund was on the phone to Ystad.

“And tell them to bring me a map,” he said. “One that includes Ystad, Malmö, and Helsingborg.” Then he walked to the end of the dock and looked into the water. The bottom was rocky. Wiberg was standing on the beach.

“Where’s the nearest house?” asked Wallander.

“A couple of hundred metres from here,” replied Wiberg. “Across the road.”

Nyberg had come out onto the dock.

“Should we call in divers?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Wallander. “Start with a radius of 25 metres around the dock.”

Then he pointed at the rings set into the wood.

“Prints,” he said. “If Fredman was killed here he must have been tied down. Our killer goes barefoot and doesn’t wear gloves.”

“What are the divers looking for?”

Wallander thought.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s see if they come up with anything. But I think you’re going to find traces of kelp on the slope, from the place where the tyre tracks stop all the way down to the dock.”

“The van didn’t turn around,” said Nyberg. “He backed it all the way up to the road. He couldn’t have seen whether any cars were coming. So there are only two possibilities. Unless he’s totally crazy.”

Wallander raised his eyebrows.

“He is crazy,” he said.

“Not in that way,” said Nyberg.

Wallander understood what he meant. He wouldn’t have been able to back up onto the road unless he had an accomplice who signalled when the road was clear. Or else it happened at night. When he’d see headlights and know when it was safe to back out onto the road.

“He doesn’t have an accomplice,” said Wallander. “And we know that it must have happened at night. The only question is why did he drive Fredman’s body to the pit outside the railway station in Ystad?”

“He’s crazy,” said Nyberg. “You said so yourself.”

When a car arrived with the map, Wallander asked Martinsson for a pen and then sat on a rock next to the dock. He drew circles around Ystad, Bjäresjö and Helsingborg. Then he marked