Sidetracked - By Henning Mankell & Steven T. Murray Page 0,58

tar-paper type. Since he wasn’t sure how much weight it would hold, he crawled on all fours over to a spot where he could look straight into Wetterstedt’s study. He searched until he found the point farthest away from the window that still had a good view inside. On his hands and knees he inspected the tar-paper. Almost at once he discovered some cuts in it criss-crossing each other. He ran his fingertips across the tar-paper. Someone had slashed it with a knife. He looked around. It was impossible to be seen either from the beach or from the road above Wetterstedt’s house.

Wallander climbed down and put the ladder back. Carefully he inspected the ground next to the garage, but all he found were some tattered pages from a magazine that had blown onto the property. He went back into the house. The silence was oppressive. He went upstairs. Through the window in Wetterstedt’s bedroom he could see Lindgren and his father turning their boat right side up. He could see that it took two people to turn it over.

And yet he now knew that the killer had been alone, both here and when he killed Carlman. Though there were few clues, his intuition told him that it had been one person sitting on Wetterstedt’s roof and on the hill above Carlman’s.

I’m dealing with a lone killer, he thought. A lone man who leaves his borderland and hacks people to death so he can then take their scalps as trophies.

He left Wetterstedt’s house, emerging into the sunshine again with relief. He drove over to a café and ate lunch at the counter. A young woman at a table nearby nodded to him and said hello. He replied, unable to remember who she was. Not until he left did he recall that she was Britta-Lena Bodén, the bank teller whose excellent memory had been so important during an investigation.

By midday he was back at the station. Ann-Britt Höglund met him in the foyer.

“I saw you from my window,” she said.

Wallander knew at once that something had happened. He waited, tense, for her to continue.

“There is a point of contact,” she said. “In the late 1960s Carlman did some time in prison. At Långholmen. Wetterstedt was minister of justice at the time.”

“That isn’t enough,” said Wallander.

“I’m not finished. Carlman wrote a letter to Wetterstedt. And when he got out of prison they met.”

Wallander stood motionless.

“How do you know this?”

“Come to my office and I’ll tell you.”

Wallander knew what this meant. If there was a connection, they had broken through the hard, outermost shell of the investigation.

CHAPTER 15

It had started with a telephone call.

Ann-Britt Höglund had been on her way down the hall to talk to Martinsson when she was paged. She returned to her office and took the call. It was a man who spoke so softly that at first she thought he was sick or injured. But she understood that he wanted to talk to Wallander. No-one else would do, least of all a woman. She explained that Wallander had gone out and no-one could say when he was coming back. But the man was extremely persistent, although she didn’t understand how a man who spoke so softly could seem so strong-willed. She considered transferring the call to Martinsson and having him pretend to be Wallander. But something told her that he might know Wallander’s voice.

He said that he had important information. She asked him whether it had to do with Wetterstedt’s death. Maybe, he replied. Then she asked whether it was about Carlman. Maybe, he said once again. She knew that somehow she had to keep him talking. He had refused to give his name or phone number.

He finally resolved the impasse. He had been silent for so long that Höglund thought he had hung up, but then he asked for the station fax number. Give the fax to Wallander, the man had said. Not to anyone else.

An hour later the fax had arrived. She handed it to Wallander. To his astonishment he saw that it was sent from Skoglund’s Hardware in Stockholm.

“I looked up the number and called them,” she said. “I also thought it was strange that a hardware shop would be open on Sunday. From a message on their answer machine I got hold of the owner via his mobile phone. He had no idea either how someone could have sent a fax from his office. He was on his way to play golf but promised to