Free Sidetracked by Henning Mankell Page B

someone had pulled a hood over our eyes. It was almost shameful to be a policeman then. People seemed to worry more about how the prisoners were doing than the fact that crime was steadily on the rise.”
    “There’s a lot I can’t recall,” said Höglund. “But wasn’t he mixed up in some sort of scandal?”
    “There were a lot of rumours,” said Wallander. “About one thing and another. But nothing was ever proven. A number of police officers in Stockholm were said to be quite upset.”
    “Maybe time caught up with him,” she said.
    Wallander looked at her in surprise. But he said nothing.
    They had reached the gate.
    “I’ve been here before, you know,” she said suddenly. “He used to call the police and complain about young people sitting on the beach and singing on summer nights. One of those young people wrote a letter to the editor of Ystad Recorder to complain. Björk asked me to look into it.”
    “Look into what?”
    “I’m not really sure,” she answered. “But Björk was very sensitive to criticism.”
    “That was one of his best traits,” said Wallander. “He always defended us and that isn’t always the case.”
    They found the key and opened the gate. Wallander noticed that the light was burned out. The garden they stepped into was well tended. There were no fallen leaves on the lawn. There was a little fountain with two nude plaster children squirting water at each other from their mouths. A swing hung in the arbour. On a flagstone patio stood a marble-topped table and chairs.
    “Well cared for and expensive,” said Höglund. “What do you think a marble table like that costs?”
    Wallander didn’t answer, since he had no idea. They continued up towards the villa. He guessed that it had been built around the turn of the century. They followed the flagstone path around to the front of the house. Wallander rang the bell. He waited for over a minute before he rang again. Then he looked for the key and unlocked the door. They stepped into a lit hall. Wallander called out into the silence, but there was no-one there.
    “Wetterstedt wasn’t killed under the boat,” said Wallander. “Of course he could have been attacked on the beach. But I think it happened here.”
    “Why’s that?” she asked.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “Just a hunch.”
    They went through the house slowly, from the basement to the attic, without touching anything but the light switches. It was a cursory examination. Yet for Wallander it was important. The man who now lay dead on the beach had lived in this house. They had to seek clues as to how his death had come about.
    But they didn’t find the slightest sign of disorder. Wallander looked in vain for the place where the crime might have taken place. At the front door he had looked for signs of a break-in. As they had stood in the hall listening to the silence, Wallander had told Höglund to take off her shoes. Now they padded soundlessly through the huge villa, which seemed to grow with each step they took. Wallander could feel his colleague looking as much at him as at the objects in the rooms they passed through. He remembered how he had done the same thing with Rydberg, when he was still a young, inexperienced detective. Instead of considering it flattering, it depressed him. The changing of the guard was under way already. She was the one on the way in, he was on the way out.
    He remembered when they had first met, almost two years ago. She was a pale, plain young woman who had graduated from the police academy with top marks. But the first thing that she said to him was that he’d teach her everything that the academy couldn’t about the unpredictability of the real world. But maybe it was the other way round, he thought, as he looked at a rather blurry lithograph. Imperceptibly, the transition had taken place.
    They stopped by a window on the upper floor where they had a view of the beach. The floodlights were in place; Nyberg was gesticulating