Sidetracked - By Henning Mankell & Steven T. Murray Page 0,17

protests. Höglund was a good policewoman, in many ways much more talented than Svedberg.

A fly buzzed around his coffee cup. They waited.

Finally Höglund hung up and sat down at the table.

“A bike chain,” she said. “Children have a hard time understanding that their mothers might have something more important to do than come straight home and fix it.”

“Go ahead,” said Wallander on impulse. “We can do this run-through without you.”

She shook her head. “They’d come to expect it”, she said.

Hansson put the necklace in its plastic bag on the table in front of him.

“A woman commits suicide,” he said. “No crime has been committed. All we have to do is work out who she was.”

Hansson was starting to act like Björk, thought Wallander, just managing not to burst out laughing. He caught Ann-Britt’s eye. She seemed to be thinking the same thing.

“Calls have started coming in,” said Martinsson. “I’ve put a man on it.”

“I’ll give him my description of her,” said Wallander. “Otherwise we have to concentrate on people who’ve been reported missing. She might be one of them. If she’s not on that list, someone is going to miss her soon.”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Martinsson.

“The necklace,” said Hansson, opening the plastic bag. “A Madonna and the letters D.M.S. I think it’s solid gold.”

“There’s a database of abbreviations and acronyms,” said Martinsson, who knew the most about computers. “We can put in the letters and see if we get anything.”

Wallander reached for the necklace. It was still soot-marked.

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “But people in Sweden mostly wear a cross, don’t they? Madonnas are more common in Catholic countries.”

“It sounds as though you’re talking about a refugee or immigrant,” said Hansson.

“I’m talking about what the medallion represents,” replied Wallander. “In any case, it has to be included in the description of the girl, and the person taking the calls has to know what it looks like.”

“Shall we release a description?” Hansson asked.

Wallander shook his head.

“Not yet.”

He was thinking about the night before. He knew he wouldn’t give up until he knew what it was that had made the girl burn herself to death alone in the rape field. I’m living in a world where young people take their own lives because they can’t stand it any more, he thought. I have to understand why, if I’m going to keep on being a policeman.

He gave a start. Hansson had spoken.

“Do we have anything more to discuss right now?” Hansson asked again.

“I’ll take care of the pathologist in Malmö,” Wallander said. “Has anyone been in touch with Sven Nyberg? If not, I’ll drive over and talk to both of them.”

The meeting was over. Wallander went to his office and got his jacket. He hesitated a moment, wondering whether he ought to make another attempt to get hold of his sister. Or Baiba in Riga. But he decided against doing either.

He drove first to Salomonsson’s farm. Policemen were taking down the floodlights and rolling up the cables. The house was locked up, and he remembered that he must check and see how Salomonsson was doing. Maybe he had remembered something that would be of help.

He walked out into the field. The fire-blackened ground stood out sharply against the surrounding yellow crops. Nyberg was kneeling in the mud. In the distance he saw two other technicians who seemed to be searching along the edges of the burned area. Nyberg nodded curtly to Wallander. The sweat was running down his face.

“How’s it going?” asked Wallander. “Have you found anything?”

“She must have had a lot of petrol with her,” said Nyberg, getting up. “We found five half-melted containers. They were apparently empty when the fire broke out. If you draw a line through the spots where we found them, you can see that she had surrounded herself.”

“What do you mean?” Wallander asked.

Nyberg threw out one arm in a sweeping gesture.

“I mean that she built a fortress around herself. She poured petrol in a wide circle. It was a moat, and there was no way into her fortress. She was standing right in the middle, with the last container, which she had saved for herself. Maybe she was hysterical and depressed. Maybe she was mad or seriously ill. I don’t know. But that’s what she did. She knew full well what she was going to do.”

“Can you tell me anything about how she got here?”

“I’ve sent for a dog unit,” said Nyberg. “But they probably won’t be able to pick up her trail. The smell of