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said.
    "Sugar?"
    "Diabetes."
    For a split second Wallander was paralysed. The thought had never occurred to him.
    "You look like you weigh a little too much," the doctor said. "We'll find out if that's the case. But I want to start off by listening to your heart. Do you know if you have high blood pressure?"
    Wallander shook his head. Then he took off his shirt and lay down on the table.
    His pulse was normal, but his blood pressure was too high. 170 over 105. He got on the scale: 92 kilos. The doctor sent him for a urinalysis and a blood test. The nurse smiled at him. Wallander thought she looked like his sister Kristina. After she had finished, he went back in to see the doctor.
    "Normally you should have a blood-sugar level of between 2.5 and 6.4," Göransson said. "Yours is 15.3. That's much too high."
    Wallander started to feel sick.
    "This explains your fatigue," Göransson continued. "It explains your thirst and the leg cramps. It also explains why you need to urinate so often."
    "Is there medication for this?" Wallander asked.
    "First we'll try to control it by changing your diet," Göransson said. "We also have to reduce your blood pressure. Do you exercise frequently?"
    "No."
    "Then you'll have to start right away. Diet and exercise. If that doesn't help we'll have to go a step further. With this blood-sugar level you're wearing down your whole system."
    I'm diabetic, Wallander thought. At that moment it struck him as something shameful.
    Göransson seemed to sense his dismay. "This is something we can control," he said. "You won't die from it. At least not yet."
    They took more blood tests, and Wallander was given dietary guidelines, and was told to come back on Monday morning.
    He left the surgery at 11.30 a.m. He walked over to the cemetery and sat down on a bench. He still couldn't grasp what the doctor had told him. He found his glasses and started reading the meal plans.
    He got back to the police station at 12.30. There were some phone messages for him, but nothing that couldn't wait. He bumped into Hansson in the corridor.
    "Has Svedberg turned up?" Wallander asked.
    "Why, isn't he in?"
    Wallander didn't elaborate. Eva Hillström was supposed to come in shortly after 1 p.m. He knocked on Martinsson's half-open door, but the room was empty. The thin folder from their meeting that day was lying on the desk. Wallander took it and went into his office. He quickly leafed through the few papers there were and stared at the three postcards, but he was having trouble concentrating. He kept thinking about what the doctor had told him.
    Finally Ebba called him from the reception desk and told him that Eva Hillström had arrived. Wallander walked out to meet her. A group of older, jovial men were on their way out. Wallander guessed they were the retired marine officers who had come for a tour.
    Eva Hillström was tall and thin. Her expression was guarded. From the first time he met her, Wallander formed the impression that she was the kind of person who always expected the worst. He shook her hand and asked her to follow him to his office. On the way he asked her if she wanted a cup of coffee.
    "I don't drink coffee," she said. "My stomach can't take it."
    She sat down in the visitor's chair without taking her eyes off him.
    She thinks I have news for her, Wallander thought. And she expects the news to be bad.
    He sat down at his desk. "You spoke with my colleague yesterday," he said. "You brought by a postcard you received a couple of days earlier, signed by your daughter and sent from Vienna. But you claim it wasn't written by her. Is that correct?"
    "Yes." Her answer was forceful.
    "Martinsson said you couldn't explain why you felt this way."
    "That's right, I can't."
    Wallander took out the postcards and laid them in front of her.
    "You said that your daughter's handwriting and signature are easy to forge."
    "Try for yourself."
    "I've already done that. And I agree with you; her handwriting isn't very hard to