Free Sidetracked by Henning Mankell

himself as Göran Lindgren. He was dressed in shorts and a thin sweater, and he seemed very agitated. They followed him down to the beach, deserted now that it had started to rain. Lindgren led them over to a big rowing boat turned upside down. On the far side there was a wide gap between the sand and the boat’s gunwale.
    “He’s under there,” said Lindgren in an unsteady voice.
    Wallander and Martinsson looked at each other, still hoping the man had imagined it. They knelt down and peered in under the boat. In the dim light they could see a body lying there.
    “We’ll have to turn the boat over,” said Martinsson in a low voice, as if afraid the dead man would hear him.
    “No,” said Wallander, “we’re not turning anything over.” He got up quickly and turned to Göran Lindgren.
    “I assume you have a torch,” he said. “Otherwise you couldn’t have described the body in such detail.”
    The man nodded in surprise and pulled a torch out of a plastic bag near the boat. Wallander bent down again and shone the light inside.
    “Holy shit,” said Martinsson at his side.
    The dead man’s face was covered with blood. But they could see that the skin from the forehead up over his skull was torn off, and Lindgren had been right. It was Wetterstedt under the boat. They stood up. Wallander handed back the torch.
    “How did you know it was Wetterstedt?” he asked.
    “He lives here,” said Lindgren, pointing up towards a villa to the left of the boat. “Besides, everyone knows him. You don’t forget a politician who was on TV all the time.”
    Wallander nodded doubtfully.
    “We’ll need a full team out here,” he said to Martinsson. “Go and call. I’ll wait here.”
    Martinsson hurried off. It was raining harder now.
    “When did you find him?” asked Wallander.
    “I don’t have a watch on me,” said Lindgren. “But it couldn’t have been more than half an hour ago.”
    “Where did you call from?”
    Lindgren pointed to the plastic bag.
    “I have a mobile phone.”
    Wallander regarded him with interest.
    “He’s lying under an overturned boat,” he said. “He’s invisible from outside. You must have bent down to be able to see him?”
    “It’s my boat,” said Lindgren simply. “Or my father’s, to be exact. I usually walk here on the beach when I finish work. Since it was starting to rain, I thought I’d put my things under the boat. When I felt the bag bump into something I bent down. At first I thought it was a plank, but then I saw him.”
    “It’s really none of my business,” said Wallander, “but I wonder why you had a torch with you?”
    “We have a summer cottage in the woods at Sandskogen,” replied Lindgren. “Over by Myrgången. We’re in the process of rewiring it, so it has no lights. My father and I are electricians.”
    Wallander nodded. “You’ll have to wait here,” he said. “We’ll have to ask you these questions again in a while. Have you touched anything?”
    Lindgren shook his head.
    “Has anyone other than you seen him?”
    “No.”
    “When did you or your father last turn over this boat?”
    Lindgren thought for a moment.
    “It was over a week ago,” he said.
    Wallander had no more questions. He stood there thinking for a moment and then left the boat and walked in a wide arc up towards the villa where Wetterstedt lived. He tried the gate. It was locked. He waved Lindgren over.
    “Do you live nearby?” he asked.
    “No,” he said. “I live in Åkesholm. My car is parked on the road.”
    “But you knew that Wetterstedt lived in this house?”
    “He used to walk along the beach here. Sometimes he stopped to watch while we were working on the boat, Dad and I. But he never spoke to us. He was rather arrogant.”
    “Was he married?”
    “Dad said that he’d read in a magazine that he was divorced.”
    Wallander nodded.
    “That’s fine,” he said. “Don’t you have a raincoat in that bag?”
    “It’s up in the car.”
    “Go ahead and