The Pyramid (31 page)

Rydberg left. It was starting to get light. One of the technicians was photographing the wreck from various angles. Peter Edler had delegated his responsibilities to someone else and returned to Ystad in one of the fire engines.

Wallander saw Hansson talking to several reporters down on the dirt road. He was happy not to have to do it himself. Then he spotted
Martinsson tramping back through the mud. Wallander walked over to meet him.

'You were right,' Martinsson said. 'There's an old man in there who lives by himself. Robert Haverberg. Seventies, alone with nine dogs. To be honest, it smelled like hell in there.'

'What did he say?'

'He heard the roar of a plane. Then it got quiet. And then the sound returned. But at that point it sounded more like a whine. And then he heard the crash.'

Wallander often felt that Martinsson was bad at formulating simple and clear explanations.

'Let's go over this again,' Wallander said. 'Robert Haverberg heard the engine noise?'

'Yes.'

'When was this?'

'He had just woken up. Sometime around five o'clock.'

Wallander frowned.

'But the plane crashed half an hour later?'

'That's what I said. But he was very firm on this point. First he heard the sound of a passing plane, at a low altitude. Then it grew quiet.
He made some coffee. And then the sound returned, and then the explosion.'

Wallander reflected on this. What Martinsson had told him was clearly significant.

'How much time elapsed between the first time he heard the sound and the subsequent crash?'

'We worked out that it must have taken around twenty minutes.'

Wallander looked at Martinsson.

'How do you account for that?'

'I don't know.'

'Did the old man seem sharp?'

'Yes. He also has good hearing.'

'Do you have a map in your car?' Wallander asked.

Martinsson nodded. They walked up to the dirt road where Hansson was still talking with the media. One of them saw Wallander and started approaching him. Wallander waved dismissively.

'I have nothing to say,' he called out.

They got into Martinsson's car and unfolded the map. Wallander studied it in silence. He thought about what Rydberg had said, about aeroplanes on illegal missions, beyond authorised air lanes and control towers.

'One could imagine the following,' Wallander said. 'A plane comes in low over the coast, passes by and continues out of earshot. Returns shortly thereafter. And then it goes straight down.'

'You mean it dropped something off somewhere? And then turned back?' Martinsson asked.

'Something like that.'

Wallander folded the map back up.

'We know too little. Rydberg is on his way to Sturup. Then we have to try to identify the bodies, as well as the plane itself. We can't do any more at the moment.'

'I've always been a nervous flyer,' Martinsson said. 'It doesn't exactly help to see things like this. But it's even worse when Teres talks about becoming a pilot.'

Teres was Martinsson's daughter. He also had a son. Martinsson was a real family man. He was always worried that something might have happened and called home several times a day. Often he went home for lunch. Sometimes Wallander was a little envious of his colleague's seemingly problem-free marriage.

'Tell Nyberg we're going now,' he said to Martinsson.

Wallander waited in the car. The landscape around him was grey and desolate. He shivered. Life goes on, he thought. I've just turned forty-two.
Will I end up like Rydberg? A lonely old man with rheumatism?

Wallander shook off these thoughts.

Martinsson returned and they drove back to Ystad.

At eleven o'clock Wallander stood up to go to the room where a suspected drug dealer by the name of Yngve Leonard Holm was waiting for him. At that moment Rydberg came in. He never bothered to knock.
He sat down in the visitor's chair and got straight to the point.

'I've talked to an air traffic controller by the name of Lycke,' he said.
'He claimed to know you.'

'I've spoken to him before, I don't remember the context.'

'He was very firm, in any case,' Rydberg continued. 'No single-engine plane was cleared to pass over Mossby at five o'clock this morning.
They have also not received any emergency broadcast from any pilot.
The radar screens have been empty. There were no strange signals that may have indicated the presence of an unidentified plane. According to Lycke, the plane that crashed did not exist. They have already reported this both to the defence department and to God knows how many other authorities. Customs, probably.'

'So you were right,' Wallander said. 'Someone was out on an illegal mission.'

'We don't know that,' Rydberg objected. 'Someone was flying illegally. But if it was also an illegal mission, we don't know.'

'Who would be out flying around in the dark without a particular reason?'

'There are so many idiots,' Rydberg said. 'You should know that.'

Wallander looked closer at him.

'You don't believe that for a minute, do you?'

'Of course not,' Rydberg said. 'But until we know who they were or identify the plane, we can't do anything. This has to go to Interpol.
I'm willing to wager a pretty penny that the plane came from the outside.'

Rydberg left.

Wallander mulled over what he had said.

Then he stood up, took his papers and walked to the room where
Yngve Leonard Holm was waiting with his lawyer.

It was exactly a quarter past eleven when Wallander started the tape recorder and began his interrogation.

Wallander turned off the tape recorder after one hour and ten minutes.
He had had enough of Yngve Leonard Holm. Both because of the man's attitude and the fact that they were going to have to release him.
Wallander was convinced that the man on the other side of the table was guilty of repeated and serious drug offences. But there was not one prosecutor in the world who would judge their pre-investigation worthy of taking to trial. Certainly not Per Åkeson, to whom Wallander was going to submit his report.

Yngve Leonard Holm was thirty-seven years old. He was born in
Ronneby but had been registered as a resident of Ystad since the mid-
1980s. He listed his profession as a paperback-book salesman at outdoor summer markets, specialising in the 'Manhattan series'. For the last few years he had declared a negligible income. At the same time, he was having a large villa built in an area close to the police station. The house was taxed at several million kronor. Holm claimed to be financing the house with large gambling profits from both the Jägersro and Solvalla tracks, as well as various racetracks in Germany and
France. Predictably, he had no receipts for his wins. They had disappeared when the trailer where he had stored his financial records caught fire. The only receipt he could show was a lesser one for 4,993 kronor that he had claimed a couple of weeks earlier. Possibly, Wallander thought, this indicated that Holm knew something about horses. But it hardly meant more than that. Hansson should have been sitting here in my place. He is also interested in racing. They could have talked horses to each other.

Nothing of this altered Wallander's conviction that Holm was the final link in a chain that imported and sold significant amounts of drugs in southern Sweden. The circumstantial evidence was overwhelming.
But Holm's arrest had been very poorly organised. The raids should have been synchronised to take place at the same time. One at
Holm's house, the other at the warehouse in an industrial area in
Malmö where he rented space for his paperbacks. It had been a coordinated operation between the police in Ystad and their colleagues in Malmö.

But something had gone wrong from the start. The warehouse space had been empty, except for a lone box of old, well-thumbed Manhattan books. Holm had been watching TV in his house when they rang the bell. A young woman was curled up at his feet, massaging his toes, while the police searched the house. They found nothing. One of the drug-sniffing dogs they had brought in from customs had spent a long time sniffing a handkerchief they had found in the rubbish. Chemical analysis had only been able to establish that the cloth could have come into contact with a drug. In some way, Holm had been tipped off about the raid. Wallander did not doubt that the man was both intelligent and good at covering up his activities.

'We have to let you go,' he said. 'But our suspicion of you remains.
Or, to be precise, I'm convinced that you're involved in extensive drug trafficking in Skåne. Sooner or later, we will get you.'

The lawyer, who resembled a weasel, straightened up.

'My client doesn't have to put up with this,' he said. 'Slander of this kind against my client is inadmissible under the law.'

'Of course it is,' Wallander said. 'You're welcome to try to have me arrested.'

Holm, who was unshaven and appeared sick of the whole situation, stopped his lawyer from continuing.

'I understand that the police are simply doing their job,' he said.
'Unfortunately you made a mistake in directing your suspicions at me.
I'm a simple citizen who knows a lot about horses and bookselling.
Nothing else. Moreover, I regularly donate money to Save the Children.'

Wallander left the room. Holm would go home and have his feet massaged. Drugs would continue to stream into Skåne. We will never win this battle, Wallander thought as he walked down the corridor.
The only room for hope is if future generations of young people reject it entirely.

It was now half past twelve. He felt hungry and regretted not having taken the car this morning. He could see through the window that it had started to rain. There was snow mixed in with the rain. The thought of walking all the way downtown and back in order to eat was not appealing. He pulled out a desk drawer and found the menu of a pizzeria that delivered. He eyed the menu without being able to decide on anything. Finally he closed his eyes and placed his index finger down somewhere at random. He called and ordered the pizza that fate had selected for him. Then he walked over to the window and stared at the water tower on the other side of the road.

The phone rang. He sat down at his desk and picked up. It was his father, calling from Löderup.

'I thought we had agreed that you would come by here last night,' his father said.

Wallander sighed quietly.

'We didn't agree to anything.'

'Yes we did, I remember it very well,' his father said. 'You're the one who's starting to get forgetful. I thought the police had notepads. Can't you write down that you're planning to arrest me? Then maybe you'll remember.'

Wallander didn't have the energy to get angry.

'I'll come by tonight,' he said. 'But we had
not
arranged that I was coming over last night.'

'It's possible I made a mistake,' his father replied, suddenly surprisingly meek.

'I'll be there around seven,' Wallander said. 'Right now I have a lot to do.' He hung up. My father engages in finely tuned emotional blackmail,
Wallander thought. And the worst thing about it is that he's continually successful.

The pizza arrived. Wallander paid and took the box back to the break room. Per Åkeson was sitting at a table eating some porridge.
Wallander sat down across from him.

'I thought you were going to come by and talk about Holm,' Åkeson said.

'And I will. But we had to release him.'

'That doesn't surprise me. The whole operation was exceedingly poorly executed.'

'You'll have to talk to Björk about that,' Wallander said. 'I wasn't involved.'

To Wallander's surprise, Åkeson salted his porridge.

'I'm taking a leave of absence in three weeks,' Åkeson said.

'I haven't forgotten,' Wallander replied.

'A young woman will be replacing me. Anette Brolin is her name.
From Stockholm.'

'I'm going to miss you,' Wallander said. 'I'm also wondering how a female prosecutor is going to work out.'

'Why would that be a problem?'

Wallander shrugged.

'Prejudice, I guess.'

'Six months goes by fast. I have to admit that I'm looking forward to getting away for a while. I need to think.'

'I thought you were getting some additional education?'

'I am. But that won't stop me from thinking about the future. Should
I continue as a public prosecutor for the rest of my life? Or is there something else I should do?'

'You could learn to sail and become a vagabond of the seas.'

Åkeson shook his head energetically.

'Nothing like that. But I am thinking about applying for something overseas. Perhaps in a project where one feels one is really making a difference. Perhaps I could be part of building a workable justice system where there was none before? In Czechoslovakia, for example.'

'I hope you write and tell me,' Wallander said. 'Sometimes I also wonder about the future, if I'm going to stay in this business until I retire. Or do something else.'

The pizza was tasteless. Åkeson, however, was tucking into his porridge with gusto.

'What's the story with that plane?' Åkeson asked.

Wallander told him what they knew.

'That sounds strange,' Åkeson said when Wallander had finished.
'Could it be drugs?'

'Yes, it could,' Wallander replied and regretted not having asked
Holm if he owned an aeroplane. If he could afford to build a house he could probably afford to keep a private plane. Drug profits could be astronomical.

They stood at the sink together and cleaned their plates. Wallander had left half of his pizza uneaten. The divorce was still having an effect on his appetite.

'Holm is a criminal,' Wallander said. 'We'll get him sooner or later.'

'I'm not so sure of that,' Åkeson said. 'But of course I hope you're right.'

Wallander was back in his office a little after one o'clock. He considered calling Mona in Malmö. Linda lived with her right now.
She was the one Wallander wanted to talk to. It had been almost a week since they talked last. She was nineteen and a little lost. Lately, she was back to thinking she wanted to work upholstering furniture.
Wallander suspected she would change her mind many more times.

Instead Wallander called Martinsson and asked him to come by.
Together they went over the events of the morning. It was Martinsson who was going to write the report.

'People have called both from Sturup and the Department of
Defence,' he said. 'There is something not right about that plane. It doesn't seem to have existed. And it seems you were right in thinking the wings and fuselage had been painted over.'

'We'll see what Nyberg comes up with,' Wallander said.

'The bodies are in Lund,' Martinsson went on. 'The only way we have of identifying them is through dental records. The bodies were so badly burned they fell to pieces when they were moved onto stretchers.'

'We'll have to wait and see, in other words,' Wallander said. 'I was going to suggest to Björk that you act as our representative in the accident commission. Do you have anything against that?'

'I'll always learn something new,' Martinsson said.

When Wallander was alone again he ended up thinking about the difference between Martinsson and himself. Wallander's ambition had always been to become a good criminal investigator. And he had succeeded in this. But Martinsson had other ambitions. What tempted him was the post of chief of police in a not-too-distant future. To perform well in the field was for him only a step in his career.

Wallander dropped his thoughts about Martinsson, yawned, and listlessly pulled over the folder that was at the top of the pile on his desk. It still irritated him that he hadn't asked Holm about the plane.
At least to get to see his reaction. But Holm was probably lying in his whirlpool by now. Or enjoying a delicious lunch at the Continental with his lawyer.

The folder remained unopened in front of Wallander. He decided he might as well talk to Björk about Martinsson and the accident commission. Then that could be checked off the list. He walked to the end of the corridor where Björk had his office. The door was open.
Björk was on his way out.

'Do you have time?' Wallander asked.

'A few minutes. I'm on my way to a church to give a speech.'

Wallander knew that Björk was constantly giving lectures in the most unexpected settings. Apparently he loved performing in public, something that Wallander disliked intensely. Press conferences were a constant scourge. Wallander started to tell him about the morning's events, but apparently Björk had already been briefed. He had no objection to Martinsson's being appointed as police representative to the accident commission.

'I take it the plane was not shot down,' Björk said.

'Nothing so far indicates that it was anything other than an accident,'
Wallander answered. 'But there is definitely something fishy about that flight.'

'We'll do what we can,' Björk said, indicating that the conversation was over. 'But we won't exert more of an effort than we have to. We have enough to do as it is.'

Björk left in a cloud of aftershave. Wallander shuffled back to his office. On the way he looked into Rydberg's and Hansson's offices.
Neither one was around. He got himself a cup of coffee and then spent several hours reviewing the assault case that had occurred the week before in Skurup. New information had turned up that seemed to ensure that the man who had beaten up his sister-in-law could actually be charged with battery. Wallander organised the material and decided he would hand it over to Åkeson tomorrow.

It was a quarter to five. The police station seemed unusually deserted this day. Wallander decided he would go home and get his car and then go shopping. He would still have time to make it to his father's by seven. If he wasn't there on the dot, his father would burst out in a long tirade of accusations about how badly his son treated him.

Wallander took his coat and walked home. The snow-slush had increased. He pulled up his hood. When he sat down in his car he checked that he still had the grocery list in his pocket. The car was hard to start and he would soon have to get a new one. But where would he get the money? He managed to get the engine going and was about to put it in gear when he was struck by a thought. Even though he realised that what he wanted to do was meaningless, his curiosity proved too strong. He decided to put his shopping trip on hold. Instead he turned out onto Österleden and drove in the direction of Löderup.

The thought that had struck him was very simple. In a house just past the Strandskogen Forest, there lived a retired air traffic controller
Wallander had got to know a few years earlier. Linda had been friends with his youngest daughter. It occurred to Wallander that he might be able to answer a question that Wallander had been thinking about ever since he had stood next to the wrecked plane and listened to
Martinsson's summary of his conversation with Haverberg.

Wallander turned into the driveway of the house where Herbert
Blomell lived. As Wallander got out of his car, he saw Blomell standing on a ladder, in the process of repairing a gutter. He nodded pleasantly when he saw who it was and carefully climbed down onto the ground.

'A broken hip can be devastating at my age,' he said. 'How are things with Linda?'

'Fine,' Wallander said. 'She's with Mona in Malmö.'

They went in and sat in the kitchen.

'A plane crashed outside Mossby this morning,' Wallander said.

Blomell nodded and pointed to a radio on the windowsill.

'It was a Piper Cherokee,' Wallander continued. 'A single-engine plane. I know that you weren't just an air traffic controller in your day.
You also had a pilot's licence.'