Free The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell

intrude, so he lowered his binoculars. Presumably they were relatives who had come to pay their respects by visiting the scene of his death. He turned and walked away.
    When they came to the scene of the accident Wallander started to wonder, just for a moment, if he had imagined it all. Perhaps it wasn't a chair leg he had found in the mud and thrown away. As he strode into the field the others stayed on the road, waiting. He could hear their voices, but not what they said.
    They think I've lost my grasp, he thought, as he searched for the leg. They wonder if I am fit to be back in my old job after all.
    But there was the chair leg, at his feet. He examined it quickly, and now he was certain. He turned and beckoned to his colleagues. Moments later they were grouped round the chair leg lying in the mud.
    "You could be right," Martinsson said, hesitantly. "I remember there was a broken chair in the boot. This could be a piece of it."
    "I think it's very odd, even so," Björk said. "Can you repeat your line of reasoning, Kurt?"
    "It's simple," Wallander said. "I read Martinsson's report. It said that the boot had been locked. There's no way that the boot could have sprung open and then reclosed and locked itself. In that case the back of the car would have been scored or dented when it hit the ground, but it isn't."
    "Have you been to look at the car?" Martinsson said, surprised.
    "I'm simply trying to catch up with the rest of you," Wallander said, and felt as if he were making excuses, as if his visit to Niklasson's had implied that he didn't trust Martinsson to conduct a simple accident investigation. Which was true, in fact, but irrelevant. "It just seems to me that a man alone in a car that rolls over and over and lands up in a field doesn't then get out, open the boot, take out a leg of a broken chair, shut the boot again, get back into the car, fasten his safety belt and then die as a result of a blow to the back of the head."
    Nobody spoke. Wallander had seen this before, many times. A veil is peeled away to reveal something nobody expected to see.
    Svedberg took a plastic bag from his overcoat pocket and carefully slotted the chair leg into it.
    "I found it about five metres from here," Wallander said, pointing. "I picked it up, and then tossed it away."
    "A bizarre way to treat a piece of evidence," Björk said.
    "I didn't know at the time that it had anything to do with the death of Gustaf Torstensson," Wallander said. "And I still don't know what the chair leg is telling us exactly."
    "If I understand you rightly," Björk said, ignoring Wallander's comment, "this must mean that somebody else was there when Torstensson's accident took place. But that doesn't necessarily mean he was murdered. Somebody might have stumbled upon the crashed car and looked to see if there was anything in the boot worth stealing. In that case it wouldn't be so odd if the person concerned didn't get in touch with the police, or if he threw away a leg from the broken chair. People who rob dead bodies very rarely publicise their activities."
    "That's true," Wallander said.
    "But you said you could prove he was murdered," Björk said. "I was overstating the case," Wallander said. "All I meant was that this goes some way towards changing the situation." They made their way back to the road.
    "We'd better have another look at the car," Martinsson said. "The forensic boys will be a bit surprised when we send them a broken kitchen chair, but that can't be helped."
    Björk made it plain that he would like to put an end to this roadside discussion. It was raining again, and the wind was getting stronger.
    "Let's decide tomorrow where we go from here," he said. "We'll investigate the various leads we've got, and unfortunately we don't have very many. I don't think we're going to get any further at the moment."
    As they returned to their cars, Höglund hung back. "Do you mind if I go in your car?" she said. "I live in Ystad itself, Martinsson has child