Sidetracked - By Henning Mankell & Steven T. Murray Page 0,25
taken place.
They stopped by a window on the upper floor where they had a view of the beach. The floodlights were in place; Nyberg was gesticulating angrily as he supervised the arrangement of a plastic canopy over the rowing boat. The cordon was guarded by policemen in raincoats. Only a few people stood outside the cordon in the driving rain.
“I’m beginning to think I was wrong,” Wallander said as he watched the canopy finally settle into place. “There are no signs that Wetterstedt was killed in here.”
“The killer might have cleaned up,” Höglund suggested.
“We’ll find that out after Nyberg goes through the house with a fine-tooth comb,” said Wallander. “But I’m sure it happened outside.”
They went back downstairs in silence.
“There was no mail on the floor inside the front door,” she said. “The property is walled off. There must be a letter box somewhere.”
“We’ll take that up later,” said Wallander.
He walked into the living-room and stood in the middle. She watched from the doorway, as though expecting him to make an impromptu speech.
“I make a habit of asking myself what I’m missing,” Wallander said. “But everything here seems in place. A man living alone in a house where everything is orderly, no bills are unpaid, and where loneliness lingers like old cigar smoke. The only thing that doesn’t fit is that the man in question is now lying dead underneath a rowing boat down on the beach.”
Then he corrected himself, “No, there’s one other thing,” he said. “The light by the garden gate isn’t working.”
“It may have just burned out,” she said, surprised.
“Right,” said Wallander, “but it still breaks the pattern.”
There was a knock on the door. When Wallander opened it, Hansson was standing there, raindrops streaming down his face.
“Neither Nyberg nor the doctor are going to get anywhere unless we turn that boat over,” he said.
“Turn it over,” said Wallander. “I’ll be right there.”
Hansson disappeared into the rain.
“We have to start looking for his relatives,” Wallander said. “He must have an address book somewhere.”
“There’s one thing that’s odd,” said Höglund. “This house is full of souvenirs from a long life with lots of travel and countless meetings with people. But there are no family photographs.”
They were back in the living-room. Wallander looked around and saw that she was right. It bothered him that he hadn’t thought of it himself.
“Maybe he didn’t want to be reminded that he was old,” Wallander said without conviction.
“A woman would never be able to live without pictures of her family,” she said. “That’s probably why I thought of it.”
There was a telephone on a table next to the sofa.
“There’s a phone in his study too,” he said, pointing. “You look in there, and I’ll start here.”
Wallander squatted by the low telephone stand. Next to the phone was the remote control for the TV. Wetterstedt could talk on the phone and watch TV at the same time, he thought. Just like me. We live in a world where people can’t bear not to be able to change channel and talk on the phone at the same time. He riffled through the phone books, but didn’t find any private notes. Next he pulled out two drawers in a bureau behind the telephone stand. In one there was a stamp album, in the other some tubes of glue and a box of napkin rings.
As he was walking towards the study, the phone rang. He stopped. Höglund appeared at once in the doorway to the study. Wallander sat down carefully on the corner of the sofa and picked up the receiver.
“Hello,” said a woman’s voice. “Gustaf? Why haven’t you called me?”
“Who’s speaking, please?” asked Wallander.
The woman’s voice suddenly turned formal. “This is Gustaf Wetterstedt’s mother calling,” she said. “With whom am I speaking?”
“My name is Kurt Wallander. I’m a police officer here in Ystad.”
He could hear the woman breathing. He realised that she must be very old if she was Gustaf Wetterstedt’s mother. He made a face at Höglund, who was standing looking at him.
“Has something happened?” asked the woman.
Wallander didn’t know how to react. It went against all written and unwritten procedures to inform the next of kin of a sudden death over the telephone. But he had already told her his name, and that he was a police officer.
“Hello?” said the woman. “Are you still there?”
Wallander didn’t answer. He stared helplessly at Höglund. Then he did something which he couldn’t decide was justified. He hung up.