Free The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell

that Martinsson was depressed over the years, but he had never broken down like this before. He decided simply to wait it out. When the phone rang he unplugged it.
    Martinsson pulled himself together and dried his face.
    “What a thing to do!” he said. “I apologize.”
    “Apologize for what? In my opinion anyone who can cry in front of another man displays great courage. Courage I don’t have, I’m afraid.”
    Martinsson explained that he felt he had lost his way. He found himself questioning more and more the value of his work as a police officer. He wasn’t dissatisfied with the work he did, but he worried about the role of the police in the Sweden of today. The gap between what the general public expected and what the police could actually do seemed to be growing wider all the time. Now he had reached a point where every night was a virtually sleepless wait for a day he knew would bring more torture.
    “I’m packing it in this summer,” he said. “There’s a firm in Malmö I’ve been in contact with. They provide security consultants for small businesses and private properties. They have a job for me. At a salary significantly higher than what I’m getting now, incidentally.”
    Wallander recalled another time many years ago when Martinsson had made up his mind to resign. On that occasion Wallander had managed to persuade him to soldier on. That must have been at least fifteen years ago. He could see that this time, it was impossible to talk his colleague out of it. It wasn’t as if his own situation made his future in the police force particularly attractive.
    “I think I understand what you mean,” he said. “And I think you’re doing the right thing. Change course while you’re still young enough to do it.”
    “I’ll be fifty in a few years’ time,” he said. “You call that young?”
    “I’m sixty,” said Wallander. “By then you’re definitely on a one-way street to old age.”
    Martinsson stayed a bit longer, talking about the work he would be doing in Malmö. Wallander realized the man was trying to show him that despite everything, he still had something to look forward to, that he hadn’t lost all his enthusiasm.
    Wallander walked him to his car.
    “Have you heard anything from Mattson?” Martinsson asked tentatively.
    “There are four possible options,” Wallander told him. “A ‘constructive reprimand,’ for instance. They can’t do that to me. That would make alaughingstock of the whole police force. A sixty-year-old officer sitting before some police commissioner like a naughty schoolboy, told to mend his ways.”
    “Surely they aren’t seriously considering that? They must be out of their minds!”
    “They could give me an official warning,” Wallander went on. “Or they could give me a fine. As a last resort, they could give me the boot. My guess is I’ll get a fine.”
    They shook hands when they came to the car. Martinsson vanished into a cloud of snow. Wallander went back into the house, leafed through his calendar, and established that three months had now passed since that unfortunate evening when he forgot his service pistol.
    He remained on sick leave even after the cast had been removed. On April 10 an orthopedic specialist at Ystad Hospital discovered that a bone in Wallander’s hand had not healed as it should have. For a brief, horrific moment Wallander thought they were going to break his wrist again, but the doctor assured him that there were other measures they could take. But it was important that Wallander not use his hand, so he couldn’t go back to work.
    After leaving the hospital, Wallander stayed in town. There was a play by a modern American dramatist on at the Ystad theater, and Wallander had been given a ticket by Linda, who had a bad cold and couldn’t go herself. As a teenager she had thought briefly about becoming an actress, but that ambition passed quickly. Now she was relieved she had realized early on that she didn’t have