Sidetracked - By Henning Mankell & Steven T. Murray Page 0,43
road where he had left his moped leaning against one of the road workers’ huts.
Two hours later he buried the scalp next to the other one, beneath his sister’s window.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the wind had died completely. Midsummer Day would be both fair and warm. Summer had arrived. More quickly than anyone could have imagined.
Skåne
25–28 June 1994
CHAPTER 11
The emergency call came in to the Ystad station just after 2 a.m.
Thomas Brolin had just scored for Sweden in the match against Russia. He rammed in a penalty kick. A cheer rose in the Swedish summer night. It had been an unusually calm Midsummer Eve. The officer who received the call did so standing, since he had leapt to his feet shouting. But he realised at once that the call was serious. The woman shrieking in his ear seemed sober. Her hysteria was real. The officer sent for Hansson, who had felt his temporary appointment as police chief to be such a responsibility that he hadn’t risked leaving the station on Midsummer Eve. He’d been busy weighing how his limited resources could best be employed on each case. At 11 p.m. fights had broken out at two different parties. One was caused by jealousy. In the other the Swedish goalkeeper, Ravelli, was the cause of the tumult. In a report later drafted by Svedberg, he stated that it was Ravelli’s action in the game against Cameroon, when Cameroon scored their second goal, that triggered a violent argument that left three people in hospital.
Hansson went out to the operations centre and spoke with the officer who had taken the call.
“Did she really say that a man had his head split in half?”
The officer nodded. Hansson pondered this.
“We’ll have to ask Svedberg to drive out there,” he said.
“But isn’t he busy with that domestic violence case in Svarte?”
“Right, I forgot,” said Hansson. “Call Wallander.”
For the first time in over a week Wallander had managed to get to sleep before midnight. In a moment of weakness he considered joining the rest of the country watching the match against Russia. But he fell asleep while he was waiting for the players to take the field. When the telephone rang, he didn’t know where he was for a moment. He fumbled on the table next to the bed.
“Did I wake you up?” asked Hansson.
“Yes,” replied Wallander. “What is it?”
Wallander was surprised at himself. He usually claimed that he was awake when someone called, no matter what time it was.
Hansson told him about the call. Later Wallander would brood over why he hadn’t immediately made the connection between what had happened in Bjäresjö and Wetterstedt’s murder. Was it because he didn’t want to believe that they had a serial killer on their hands? Or was he simply incapable of imagining that a murder like Wetterstedt’s could be anything but an isolated event? The only thing he did now was to ask Hansson to dispatch a squad car to the scene ahead of him.
Just before 3 a.m. he pulled up outside the farm in Bjäresjö. On the car radio he heard Martin Dahlin score his second goal against Russia. He realised that Sweden was going to win and that he had lost another 100 kronor.
He saw Norén running over to him, and knew at once that it was serious. But it wasn’t until he went into the garden and passed a number of people who were either hysterical or dumbstruck that he grasped the full extent of the horror. The man who had been sitting on the bench in the arbour had actually had his head split in half. On the left half of his head, someone had also sliced off a large piece of skin and hair.
Wallander stood there completely motionless for more than a minute. Norén said something, but it didn’t register. He stared at the dead man and knew without doubt that it was the same killer who had axed Wetterstedt to death. Then for a brief moment he felt an indescribable sorrow.
Later, talking to Baiba, he tried to explain the unexpected and very un-policeman-like feeling that had struck him. It was as though a dam inside him had burst, and he knew that there were no longer invisible lines dividing Sweden. The violence of the large cities had reached his own police district once and for all. The world had shrunk and expanded at the same time.
Then sorrow gave way to horror. He turned to Norén, who was very pale.