Free One Step Behind by Henning Mankell Page A

must have heard the shot or shots.
    "You'll have to keep working on this," he said. "I have to drop by the hospital. Do you remember Svedberg's cousin, Ylva Brink? The midwife?"
    Martinsson nodded.
    "She's probably his nearest relative."
    "Didn't he have an aunt somewhere in Västergötland?"
    "I'll ask Ylva."
    Wallander went down the stairs. He needed to get some air. A reporter was waiting outside the front door. Wallander recognised him as a reporter from Ystad's daily paper.
    "What's going on? All units called out in the middle of the night to the home of a police officer by the name of Karl Evert Svedberg."
    "I can't tell you anything," Wallander said. "We're issuing a statement to the press at 11 a.m."
    "You can't say anything or you won't?"
    "I really can't."
    The reporter, whose name was Wickberg, nodded.
    "That means someone's dead, and you can't say anything until the next of kin has been notified. Am I right?"
    "If that were the case I could have picked up the phone."
    Wickberg smiled in a firm but not unfriendly way.
    "That's not how it's done. You get hold of a police minister first, if one's available. So Svedberg's dead?"
    Wallander was too tired to get angry.
    "Whatever you want to guess or think is your business," he said. "We'll release information at 11 a.m. Before then I won't say another word."
    "Where are you going?"
    "I need to get some air."
    He walked along Lilla Norregatan and continued a few blocks, then looked back. Wickberg was not following him. Wallander turned right onto Sladdergatan, then left onto Stora Norregatan. He was thirsty and had to take a leak. There were no cars around. He walked up to a building and relieved himself. Then he kept going.
    Something's wrong, he thought. Something about this whole thing is completely odd. He couldn't think of what it was, but the feeling became stronger. There was a gnawing pain in his stomach. Why had Svedberg been shot? What was it about the terrible image of the man with his head blown off that didn't add up?
    Wallander arrived at the hospital, walked around to the emergency entrance, and rang the bell. He took the elevator to the maternity ward, a rush of images of him and Svedberg on their way to talk to Ylva Brink flitting through his mind. But this time there was no Svedberg. It was as if he had never existed.
    Suddenly he caught sight of Ylva Brink through the double glass doors. She met his gaze, and he saw that it took her a couple of seconds to remember who he was. She walked over to the doors and let him in. At that moment he saw that she realised something was wrong.

CHAPTER FIVE
    They sat down in the office. It was 3 a.m. Wallander told her the facts. Svedberg was dead. He had been killed with a shotgun. Who the killer was, why it had happened and when, remained unanswered. He avoided giving her too much detail of the crime scene.
    When he finished, one of the nurses on the night shift came in to ask Ylva Brink a question.
    "Can it wait?" Wallander said. "I've just notified her of a death in the family."
    The nurse was about to leave when Wallander asked if he could have a glass of water. He was so dry that his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth.
    "We're all in shock," Wallander said after the nurse left. "It's completely incomprehensible."
    Ylva Brink didn't say anything. She was very pale but had not lost her composure. The nurse returned with the glass of water.
    "Let me know if I can do anything else," she said.
    "We're fine right now," Wallander answered.
    He emptied his glass, but it didn't quench his thirst.
    "I just can't get it into my head," she said. "I don't understand."
    "I can't either," Wallander said. "It'll be a while before that happens, if ever."
    He found a pencil in his coat pocket, but as usual he didn't have a notebook handy. There was a wastepaper basket next to the chair. He took out a piece of paper on which someone had doodled stick figures, smoothed it out, and took a magazine from the table to lean