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large living room was split-level with an exposed-beam ceiling. He stopped at the wooden desk and looked at a sheet of paper lying on it. Since the light was poor, he picked it up carefully and went over to a window.
    It was a poem about a bird. At the bottom a date and time was written. 21 September 1994. 10.12 p.m. On that evening Wallander and his father had eaten dinner at a restaurant near the Piazza del Popolo. As he stood in the silent house, Rome felt like a remote, surreal dream.
    He put the paper back on the desk. On Wednesday night Eriksson had written a poem, even noting down the time. The next day Tyrén was supposed to deliver oil. By then he was gone, leaving the door unlocked. Wallander went outside and found the oil tank. The meter showed that it was almost empty. He went back inside the house. He sat down in an old Windsor chair and looked around. Instinct told him that Sven Tyrén was right. Holger Eriksson had truly disappeared. He wasn’t just away from home.
    After a while Wallander stood up and searched through several cupboards until he found a set of spare keys. He locked the house and left. The rain had picked up again. He was back in Ystad just before 5 p.m. He filled out the form on Holger Eriksson. Early the next morning they would start looking for him in earnest.
    Wallander drove home. On the way he stopped and bought a pizza. He ate it while he watched TV. Linda still hadn’t called. Just after 11 p.m. he went to bed and fell asleep almost at once.
    At 4 a.m. Wallander sat up abruptly in bed feeling ill. He was going to throw up. He didn’t make it to the bathroom. At the same time he realised he had diarrhoea. He didn’t know whether it was the pizza or a stomach bug he had brought home from Italy. By 7 a.m. he was so exhausted that he called the police station to report in sick. He got hold of Martinsson.
    “You heard what happened, I guess,” Martinsson said.
    “All I know is I’m puking and shitting,” Wallander replied.
    “A ferry boat sank last night,” Martinsson went on. “Somewhere off the coast of Tallinn. Hundreds of people died, they think. And most of them were Swedes. There seem to have been quite a few police officers on board.”
    Wallander was about to throw up again. But he stayed on the line.
    “Police from Ystad?” he asked.
    “No. But it’s terrible, what happened.”
    Wallander could hardly believe what Martinsson was saying. Several hundred people dead in a ferry accident? That just didn’t happen. At least not around Sweden.
    “I don’t think I can talk,” he said. “I’m going to be sick again. But there’s a note on my desk about a man named Holger Eriksson. He’s missing. One of you will have to look into it.”
    He put down the receiver and made it to the bathroom just in time. As he was on his way back to bed, the phone rang again. This time it was Mona, his ex-wife. He felt on edge at once. She never called unless something was wrong with Linda.
    “I talked to Linda,” she said. “She wasn’t on the ferry.”
    It took a moment before Wallander grasped what she meant.
    “You mean the ferry that sank?”
    “What did you think I meant? When hundreds of people die in an accident, at least I call my daughter to see if she’s all right.”
    “You’re right, of course,” Wallander said. “You’ll have to excuse me if I’m a little slow today, but I’m sick. I’m throwing up. I’ve got a stomach bug. Maybe we can talk another time.”
    “I just didn’t want you to worry,” she said.
    Wallander said goodbye and went back to bed. He was worried about Holger Eriksson, and about the ferry disaster that had occurred during the night, but he was feverish, and soon he was asleep.

CHAPTER 4
    He began to gnaw on the rope again.
    The feeling that he was about to go insane had been with him the whole time. He couldn’t see; something was tied over his eyes and made the world dark. He couldn’t hear either. Something had been forced into