Read Sidetracked for Free Online

herself?
    Hansson came back from the house, where he had been talking with Salomonsson.
    “We should do what they do in the States,” he said. “We should have menthol to smear under our noses. Damn, the smell in there. Old men shouldn’t be allowed to outlive their wives.”
    “Get one of the ambulance crew to ask him how he’s feeling,” said Wallander. “He must be suffering from shock.”
    Martinsson went to deliver the message. Peter Edler took off his helmet and stood next to Wallander.
    “It’s nearly out,” he said. “But I’ll leave a truck here tonight.”
    “When can we go out in the field?” asked Wallander.
    “Within an hour. The smoke will hang around for a while yet. But the field has already started to cool off.”
    Wallander took Peter Edler aside.
    “What am I going to see?” he asked. “She poured a five-litre container of petrol over herself. And the way everything exploded around her, she must have already poured more on the ground.”
    “It won’t be pretty,” Edler replied candidly. “There won’t be a lot left.”
    Wallander said nothing. He turned to Hansson.
    “No matter how we look at it, we know that it was suicide,” said Hansson. “We have the best witness we can get: a policeman.”
    “What did Salomonsson say?”
    “That he’d never seen her before she appeared at 5 a.m. this morning. There’s no reason to think he’s not telling the truth.”
    “So we don’t know who she is,” said Wallander, “and we don’t know what she was running from either.”
    Hansson looked at him in surprise.
    “Why should she be running from something?” he asked.
    “She was frightened,” said Wallander. “She was hiding. And when a policeman arrived she set herself on fire.”
    “We don’t know what she was thinking,” said Hansson. “You may be imagining that she was frightened.”
    “No,” said Wallander. “I’ve seen enough fear in my time to know what it looks like.”
    One of the ambulance crew came walking towards them.
    “We’re taking the old boy with us to the hospital,” he said. “He looks in pretty bad shape.”
    Wallander nodded.
    Soon the forensic team arrived. Wallander tried to point out where in the smoke the body might be located.
    “Maybe you should go home,” said Höglund. “You’ve seen enough this evening.”
    “No,” said Wallander. “I’ll stay.”
    Eventually the smoke had cleared, and Peter Edler said they could start their examination. Even though the summer evening was still light, Wallander had ordered floodlights to be brought in.
    “There might be something out there apart from a body,” said Wallander. “Watch your step, and everyone who doesn’t have work to do out there should stay back.”
    He realised then that he really didn’t want to do what had to be done. He would far rather have driven away and left the responsibility to the others. He walked out into the field alone. The others watched. He was afraid of what he would see, afraid that the knot he had in his stomach would burst.
    He reached her. Her arms had stiffened in the upstretched motion he had seen her make before she died, surrounded by the raging flames. Her hair and face, along with her clothes, were burned off. All that was left was a blackened body that still radiated terror and desolation. Wallander turned around and walked back across the charred ground. For a moment he was afraid he was going to faint.
    The forensic technicians started to work in the harsh glare of the floodlights, where moths swarmed. Hansson had opened Salomonsson’s kitchen window to drive out the smell. They pulled out the chairs and sat around the kitchen table. At Höglund’s suggestion they made coffee on Salomonsson’s ancient stove.
    “All he has is ground coffee,” she said after searching through the drawers and cupboards. “Is that all right?”
    “That’s fine,” said Wallander. “Just as long as it’s strong.”
    Hanging on the wall beside the ancient