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oldest colleagues who happened to have been assigned to be her supervisor. They were not going to be working together, as Linda—like the other new recruits—would be assigned to a patrol car with experienced colleagues. But Martinsson was the senior officer she would turn to with questions should the need arise. Linda
remembered him from when she was little. Martinsson had been a young man then. According to her father, Martinsson had often thought of quitting. Wallander had managed to talk him out of it on at least three occasions over the last ten years.
    Linda had asked her father if he had had anything to do with Lisa Holgersson’s decision to assign Martinsson as her mentor, but he vehemently denied any involvment. His intention was to stay as far away from any matters concerning her work as possible, he said. Linda had accepted this declaration with a grain of salt. If there was one thing she feared, it was precisely that he would interfere with her work. That was the reason she had hesitated so long before deciding to apply for work in Ystad. She thought about working in another area of the country, but this was where she had ended up. In retrospect it seemed fated.
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    Martinsson met her by the front desk and escorted her to his office. He had a picture of his smiling wife and their two children on his desk. Linda wondered whose picture she was going to have on hers. That decision was part of the everyday reality waiting for her. Martinsson started by talking about the two officers she was teamed up with.
    â€œThey’re both fine officers,” he said. “Ekman can give the impression of being a bit tired and worn-out, but no one has a better grasp of police work than he does. Sundin is his polar opposite and focuses on the little things. He still tickets people who cross against a red light. But he knows what it means to be a policeman. You’ll be in good hands.”
    â€œWhat do they say about working with a woman?”
    â€œIf they have anything to say about that, ignore them. It’s not how it was even ten years ago.”
    â€œAnd my father?”
    â€œWhat about him?”
    â€œWhat do they say about my being his daughter?”
    Martinsson waited a moment before answering.
    â€œThere are probably one or two people in the station who would be happy to see you fall on your face. But you must have known that coming in.”

    Then they talked at length about the state of affairs in the Ystad police district. The “state of affairs” was something Linda had heard about at home from early childhood, as she played under the table with the sounds of clinking glass and the voice of her father and a colleague discussing the latest difficulties above her. She had never heard of a positive “state of affairs”; there was always something to lament. A substandard shipment of uniforms, detrimental changes in patrol cars or radio systems, a rise in crime statistics, poor recruitment numbers, and the like. In fact, this ongoing discussion about the “state of affairs,” about how this day was different from the day before, seemed to be central to life on the force. But it’s not an art they taught us at the academy, Linda thought. I know a lot about how to break up a fight in the main square and very little about pronouncing judgments on the general state of affairs.
    They went to the lunchroom for a cup of coffee. Martinsson’s assessment of the situation was fairly concise: there were too few officers working in the field.
    â€œCrime has never paid as well as it does today, it seems. I’ve been researching this. To find a historical equivalent you have to look back as far as the fifteenth century, before Gustav Vasa pulled the nation together. In that time, the era of small city-states, there was widespread lawlessness and criminality just as there is today. We’re not in the business of upholding law and order. We’re just trying