The Man Who Smiled (13 page)

Wallander stiffened. He pulled his hand back and rose gingerly to his feet. For a moment he thought he had gone mad - it could not possibly be what he thought it was. That was too unlikely, too farfetched even to be considered.

He walked backwards to the French windows, placing his feet exactly where they had been before. When he got to the house he turned round. He still could not believe it was true.

"What is it?" she said.

"Please go and fetch the telephone directory," Wallander said, and he could hear his voice was tense.

"What do you want the directory for?"

"Do as I say," he said.

She went out into the hall and returned with the directory for Ystad and District. Wallander took it and weighed it in his hand. "Please go into the kitchen and stay there," he said. She did as she was told.

Wallander tried to tell himself that this was all in his imagination. If there'd been the slightest possibility that the improbability was in fact true, he ought to have reacted quite differently. He went in through the French windows and positioned himself as far back in the room as he could. Then he aimed the phone book and threw it at the spike sticking up out of the grass.

The explosion deafened him.

Afterwards, he was amazed to find the windows hadn't shattered.

He eyed the crater that had formed in the lawn. Then he hurried into the kitchen where he'd heard Mrs Dunér scream. She was standing as if petrified in the middle of the floor, her hands over her ears. He took hold of her and sat her down on one of the kitchen chairs.

"There's no danger" he said. "I'll be back in a second. I must just make a phone call."

He dialled the number to the police station. To his relief it was Ebba who answered.

"Kurt here," he said. "I have to speak to Martinsson or Svedberg. Failing that, anybody will do."

Ebba recognised his voice, he could tell. That's why she asked no questions, just did as he had asked. She had grasped how serious he was.

Martinsson answered.

"It's Kurt," Wallander said. "Any minute now the police are going to get an emergency call about a violent explosion behind the Continental Hotel. Make sure there's no emergency call-out. I don't want fire engines and ambulances rushing here. Get here quick and bring somebody with you. I'm with Mrs Dunér, Torstensson's secretary. The address is Stickgatan 26. A pink house."

"What's happened?" Martinsson said.

"You'll see when you get here," Wallander said. "You wouldn't believe me if I tried to explain." "Try me," Martinsson said.

"If I told you that somebody had planted a landmine in Mrs Dunér's back garden, would you believe me?" "No," Martinsson said. "I thought not."

Wallander hung up and went back to the French windows. The crater was still there.

CHAPTER
6

Kurt Wallander would remember Wednesday, November 3 as a day that he was never entirely convinced had existed. How could he ever have dreamed that he would one day come across a landmine buried in a garden in the middle of Ystad?

When Martinsson arrived at Mrs Dunér's house with Höglund, Wallander still had difficulty in believing it was a mine that had exploded. Martinsson, however, had greater faith in what Wallander had said on the telephone, and on the way out from the police station he had already sent a message to Nyberg, their technical expert. He arrived at the pink house only a few minutes after Martinsson and Höglund had stood transfixed before the crater in the lawn. As they couldn't be sure there weren't any more mines hidden in the grass, they all stayed close to the house wall. Off her own bat Höglund then went to the kitchen with Mrs Dunér, who was a little calmer by now, to question her.

"What's going on?" Martinsson said, indignantly.

"Are you asking me?" Wallander replied. "I have no idea."

No more was said. They continued contemplating the hole in the ground. Shortly afterwards the forensic team arrived, led by the skilful but irritable Sven Nyberg. He stopped in his tracks when he caught sight of Wallander.

"What are
you
doing here?" he said, making Wallander feel that he had committed an indecent act by returning to duty.

"Working," he said, going on the defensive.

"I thought you were packing it in?"

"So did I. But then I realised you couldn't manage without me." Nyberg was about to say something, but Wallander raised a hand to stop him.

"More important is this hole in the lawn," he said, remembering that Nyberg had served several times with Swedish troops for the UN.

"From your years of duty in Cyprus and the Middle East you can verify if this was in fact a mine. But first can you tell us if there are any more of them?"

"I'm not a dog," Nyberg said, squatting by the house wall. Wallander told him about the spike he had found with his fingers, and then the telephone book that had triggered the explosion.

Nyberg nodded. "There are very few explosive substances or compounds that are detonated on impact - apart from mines. That's the whole point of them. People or vehicles are supposed to be blown up if they put a foot or a wheel on a landmine. For an anti-personnel mine a pressure of just a few kilos can be enough - a kiddie's foot or a telephone directory will do. If the target's a vehicle, 200 kilos would be the pressure required." He stood up and looked questioningly at Wallander and Martinsson. "But what the hell kind of person lays a mine in somebody's garden? They had better be caught in very short order."

"You're quite certain it was a mine?" Wallander said.

"I'm never certain of anything," Nyberg said, "but I'll send for a mine detector from the regiment. Until it gets here nobody should set foot in this garden."

While they were waiting for the mine detector Martinsson made a few calls. Wallander sat on the sofa, trying to come to terms with what had happened. From the kitchen he could hear Höglund patiently asking Mrs Dunér questions that Mrs Dunér answered even more slowly.

Two dead lawyers, Wallander thought. Then somebody lays a mine in their secretary's garden. Even if everything else is still obscure, we can be sure of one thing: the solution must lie somewhere in the activities of the firm of solicitors. It's hardly credible any more that the private or social lives of these three individuals is relevant.

Wallander was interrupted in his train of thought by Martinsson finishing his calls.

"Björk asked me if I'd taken leave of my senses," he said, pulling a face. "I must admit that I wasn't quite sure at first how I should answer that. He says it's inconceivable that it could be a landmine. Even so, he wants one of us to update him as soon as possible."

"When we've got something to say," Wallander said. "Where's Nyberg disappeared to?"

"He's gone to the barracks himself to fetch a mine detector," Martinsson said.

Wallander looked at the time. 10.15. He thought about his visit to Farnholm Castle, but didn't really know what conclusion to draw.

Martinsson was standing in the doorway, studying the hole in the lawn. "There was an incident about 20 years ago in Soderhamn," he said. "In the municipal law courts. Do you remember?"

"Vaguely," Wallander said.

"There was an old farmer who'd spent countless years bringing just as countless a series of lawsuits against his neighbours, his relatives, anybody and everybody. It ended up by becoming a clinical obsession that nobody diagnosed as such soon enough. He thought he was being persecuted by all his imagined opponents, not least by the judge and his own solicitor. In the end he snapped. He drew a revolver in the middle of a case and shot both the judge and his solicitor. When the police tried to get into his house afterwards, it turned out he'd booby-trapped all the doors and windows. It was sheer luck that nobody was injured once the fireworks started."

Wallander remembered the incident.

"A prosecutor in Stockholm has his house blown up," Martinsson went on. "Lawyers are threatened and attacked. Not to mention police officers."

Wallander nodded without replying. Höglund emerged from the kitchen, notebook in hand. Somewhat to his surprise, Wallander noticed that she was an attractive woman. It had not occurred to him before. She sat on a chair opposite him.

"Nothing," she said. "She hadn't heard a thing during the night, but she is certain the lawn hadn't been messed with by nightfall. She's an early riser and as soon as it got light she saw that somebody had been in her garden. She says she has no idea why anybody would want to kill her. Or at the very least blow her legs off."

"Is she telling the truth?" Martinsson said.

"It's not easy to tell if a person in shock is telling the truth," Höglund said, "but I am positive she thinks the mine was put in her lawn during last night. And that she doesn't have a clue why."

"Something about it worries me," Wallander said. "I'm not sure if I can get a handle on it."

"Try" Martinsson said.

"She looks out of the window this morning and sees that somebody has been digging up her lawn. So what does she do?" "What
doesn't
she do?" Höglund said.

"Precisely," Wallander said. "The natural thing for her to do would have been to open the French windows and go out and investigate. But what does she do instead?"

"She phones the police," Martinsson said.

"As if she'd suspected there was something dangerous out there," said Höglund.

"Or known," Wallander said.

"An anti-personnel mine, for instance," Martinsson said. "She was in quite a state when she phoned the police station."

"She was in a state when I got here," Wallander said. "In fact, I've had the impression that she was nervous every time I've spoken to her. Which could be explained by all that's happened over the last week or two, of course, but I'm not convinced."

The front doorbell rang and in marched Nyberg ahead of two men in uniform carrying an implement that reminded Wallander of a vacuum cleaner. It took the soldiers a quarter of an hour to go over the little garden with the mine detector. The police officers stood at the window watching intently as the men worked. Then they announced that it was all clear, and prepared to leave. Wallander accompanied them out into the street where their car was waiting for them.

"What can you say about the mine?" he asked them. "Size, explosive power? Can you guess where it might have been made? Anything at all could be of use to us."

LUNDQVIST, CAPTAIN
, it said on the identity disc attached to the tunic of the older of the two soldiers. He was also the one who replied to Wallander's question.

"Not a particularly powerful mine," he said. "A few hundred grams of explosive at most. Enough to kill a man, though. We usually call this kind of mine a Four."

"Meaning what?" Wallander said.

"Somebody treads on a mine," Captain Lundqvist said. "You need three men to carry him out of battle. Four people removed from active duty."

"And the origin?"

"Mines aren't made the same way as other weapons," Lundqvist said. "Bofors makes them, as do all the other major arms manufacturers. But nearly every industrialised country has a factory making mines. Either they're manufactured openly under licence, or they're pirated. Terrorist groups have their own models. Before you can say anything about where the mine comes from, you have to have a fragment of the explosive and preferably also a bit of the material the casing was made from. It could be iron or plastic. Even wood."

"We'll see what we can find," Wallander said. "Then we'll get back to you."

"Not a nice weapon," Captain Lundqvist said. "They say it's the world's cheapest and most reliable soldier. You put him somewhere and he never moves from the spot, not for a hundred years if that's how you want it. He doesn't require food or drink or wages. He just exists, and waits. Until somebody comes and treads on him. Then he strikes."

"How long can a mine remain active?" Wallander asked.

"Nobody knows. Landmines that were laid in the First World War are still going off now and then."

Wallander went back into the house. Nyberg was in the garden and had already started his meticulous investigation of the crater.

"The explosive and if possible also a piece of the casing," Wallander said.

"What else do you suppose we're looking for?" Nyberg snarled. "Bits of bone?"

Wallander wondered whether he should let Mrs Dunér calm down for a few more hours before talking to her, but he was getting impatient again. Impatient at never seeming to be able to see any sign of a breakthrough, or finding any clear starting point for this investigation.

"You two had better go and put Björk in the picture," he said to Martinsson and Höglund. "This afternoon we'll go through the whole case in detail, to see where we've got to."

"Have we got anywhere at all?" Martinsson said.

"We've always got somewhere," Wallander said, "but we don't always know exactly where. Has Svedberg been talking to the lawyers going through the Torstensson archives?"

"He's been there all morning," Martinsson said. "But I reckon he'd rather be doing something else. He's not much of a one for reading papers."

"Go and help him," Wallander said. "I have an idea that it's urgent."

He went back into the house, hung up his jacket and went to the toilet in the hall. He gave a start when he saw his face in the mirror. He was unshaven and red-eyed, and his hair was on end. He wondered at the impression he must have made at Farnholm Castle. He rinsed his face in cold water, asking himself where he was going to start in order to get Mrs Dunér to understand that he knew she was holding back information - and he did not know why. I must be friendly, he decided. Otherwise she'll put up the shutters.

He went to the kitchen where she was still slumped on a chair. The forensic team were busy in the garden. Occasionally Wallander heard Nyberg's agitated voice. He had the sense of having experienced exactly what he was now seeing, feeling, a moment before, the bewildering sensation of having gone round in a circle and returned to a point way in the distant past. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he sat at the kitchen table and looked at the woman facing him. Just for a moment he thought she reminded him of his long-dead mother. The grey hair, the thin body that seemed to have been compressed inside a tiny frame. He could not conjure up a picture of his mother's face, though: it had faded from his memory.