Sidetracked - By Henning Mankell & Steven T. Murray Page 0,20

“But I think she was younger.”

“What makes you think so?”

“I’ll tell you when I know. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out she was only 15.”

“Could a 15-year-old really kill herself in that way?” Wallander asked. “I have a hard time believing that.”

“Last week I put together the pieces of a seven-year-old girl who blew herself up,” replied the doctor. “She had planned it very carefully. She made certain that no-one else would be hurt. Since she could barely write, she left behind a drawing as her farewell letter. And recently I heard of a four-year-old who tried to poke his own eyes out because he was afraid of his father.”

“That just isn’t possible,” said Wallander. “Not here in Sweden.”

“It was here, all right,” she said. “In Sweden. In the centre of the universe. In the middle of summer.”

Wallander’s eyes filled with tears.

“As we don’t know who she was, we’ll keep her here,” the doctor said.

“I have a question,” said Wallander. “Is it incredibly painful to burn to death?”

“People have known that through the ages,” she replied. “That’s why they used fire as one of the worst punishments or tortures that someone could be subjected to. They burned Joan of Arc, they burned witches. In every era people have been tortured by fire. The pain is beyond imagining. And, you don’t lose consciousness as fast as you would hope. There’s an instinct to run from the flames that’s stronger than the desire to escape the pain. That’s why your mind forces you not to pass out. Then you reach a limit. For a while the burned nerves become numbed. There are examples of people with 90 per cent of their body burned who for a brief time felt uninjured. But when the numbness wears off . . .”

She didn’t finish her sentence.

“She burned like a flare,” said Wallander.

“The best thing you can do is stop thinking about it,” she said. “Death can actually be a liberator. No matter how reluctant we are to accept that.”

When the conversation was over, Wallander got up, grabbed his jacket, and left the flat. The wind had started blowing outside. Cloud cover had moved in from the north. On the way to the station he pulled in to the M.O.T. garage and made an appointment. When he arrived at the station, he stopped at the reception desk. Ebba had recently slipped and broken her hand. He asked how she was feeling.

“It reminds me that I’m getting old,” she said.

“You’ll never get old,” said Wallander.

“That’s a nice thing to say,” she said. “But it’s not true.”

On the way to his office Wallander stopped to see Martinsson, who was sitting in front of his computer.

“They got it up and running 20 minutes ago,” he said. “I’m just checking the description to see whether there are any missing persons who fit.”

“Add that she was 163 centimetres tall,” said Wallander. “And that she was between 15 and 17 years old.”

Martinsson gave him a baffled look.

“Only 15? That can’t be possible, can it?”

“I wish it weren’t true,” said Wallander. “But for now we have to consider it a possibility. How’s it going with the initials?”

“I haven’t got that far yet,” said Martinsson. “But I was planning to stay late this evening.”

“We’re trying to make an identification,” said Wallander. “We’re not searching for a fugitive.”

“There’s no-one at home tonight anyway,” said Martinsson. “I don’t like going back to an empty house.”

Wallander left Martinsson and looked in on Höglund’s room, which was empty. He went back down the hall to the operations centre, where the emergency alerts and phone calls were received. Höglund was sitting at a table with a senior officer, going through a pile of papers.

“Any leads?” he asked.

“We’ve got a couple of tip-offs we have to look into more closely,” she said. “One is a girl from Tomelilla Folk College who’s been missing for two days.”

“Our girl was 163 centimetres tall,” said Wallander. “She had perfect teeth. She was between 15 and 17 years old.”

“That young?” she asked in amazement.

“Yep,” said Wallander. “That young.”

“Then it’s not the girl from Tomelilla, anyway,” said Höglund, putting down the paper in her hand. “She’s 23 and tall.”

She searched through the stack of papers for a moment.

“Here’s another one,” she said. “A 16-year-old girl named Mari Lippmansson. She lives here in Ystad and works in a bakery. She’s been missing from her job for three days. It was the baker who called. He was furious. Her parents evidently don’t care about