Sidetracked by Henning Mankell Page B

relationship with his mother. When he was growing up it was as though the family had been divided into two camps – his sister and his mother against him and his father. Wallander had been very close to his father until his late teens, when he decided to become a policeman. Then a rift had developed. His father had never accepted Wallander’s decision, but he couldn’t explain to his son why he was so opposed to this career, or what he wanted him to do instead. After Wallander finished his training and started on the beat in Malmö, the rift had widened to a chasm. Some years later his mother was stricken with cancer. She was diagnosed at New Year and died in May. His sister Kristina left the house the same summer and moved to Stockholm, where she got a job in a company then known as L. M. Ericsson. She married, divorced, and married again. Wallander had met her first husband once, but he had no idea what her present husband even looked like. He knew that Linda had visited their home in Kärrtorp a few times, but he got the impression that the visits were never very successful. Wallander knew that the rift from their childhood and teenage years was still there, and that the day their father died it would widen for good.
    “I’m going to see him tonight,” said Wallander, thinking about the pile of dirty laundry on his floor.
    “I’d appreciate it if you called me,” she said.
    Wallander promised he would. Then he called Riga. When the phone was picked up he thought it was Baiba at first. Then he realised that it was her housekeeper, who spoke nothing but Latvian. He hung up quickly. At the same moment his phone rang and he jumped.
    He picked up the phone and heard Martinsson’s voice.
    “I hope I’m not bothering you,” said Martinsson.
    “I just stopped by to change my shirt,” said Wallander, wondering why he always felt it necessary to excuse himself for being at home. “Has something happened?”
    “A few calls have come in about missing persons,” said Martinsson. “Ann-Britt is busy going through them.”
    “I was thinking more of what you had come up with on the computer.”
    “The mainframe has been down all morning,” Martinsson replied glumly. “I called Stockholm a while ago. Somebody there thought it might be up and running again in an hour, but he wasn’t sure.”
    “We’re not chasing crooks,” Wallander said. “We can wait.”
    “A doctor called from Malmö,” Martinsson continued. “A woman. Her name was Malmström. I promised her you’d call.”
    “Why couldn’t she talk to you?”
    “She wanted to talk to you . I suppose it’s because you were the last one to see the woman alive.”
    Wallander wrote down the number. “I was out there today,” he said. “Nyberg was on his knees in the filth, sweating. He was waiting for a police dog.”
    “He’s like a dog himself,” said Martinsson, not disguising his dislike of Nyberg.
    “He can be grumpy,” Wallander protested. “But he knows his stuff.”
    He was about to hang up when he remembered Salomonsson.
    “The farmer died,” he said.
    “Who?”
    “The man whose kitchen we were drinking coffee in last night. He had a heart attack.”
    After he hung up, Wallander went to the kitchen and drank some water. For a long time he sat at the kitchen table doing nothing. Eventually he called Malmö. He had to wait while the doctor named Malmström was called to the phone. From her voice he could hear that she was very young. Wallander introduced himself and apologised for the delay in returning her call.
    “Has any new information come to light that indicates that a crime was committed?” she asked.
    “No.”
    “In that case we won’t have to do an autopsy,” she replied. “That will make it easier. She burned herself to death using petrol – leaded.”
    Wallander felt that he was about to be sick. He imagined her blackened body, as if it were lying right next to the woman he was speaking to.
    “We don’t know who she