An Event in Autumn: A Kurt Wallander Mystery by Henning Mankell Read Free Book Online Page A

Spain or on the Riviera.”
    “What would you do there?”
    “Make long-pile rugs. Just think of all the slush and wet feet I’d avoid.”
    “You’d be bored stiff,” said Wallander. “You’d make your damned rugs covered in motifs depicting snowstorms, and you’d long to be back here in this shitty weather.”
    They turned into the drive leading to the pink house a few hundred meters from Karl Eriksson’s property. A middle-aged man was just about to clamber onto his tractor. He looked at them with a surprised look on his face. They all shook hands. The man introduced himself as Evert Trulsson, the owner of the neighboring farm. Wallander explained why they had come there.
    “Who would have thought anything like that about Karl?” he said when Wallander had finished.
    “Thought anything like what?”
    “That he’d have a dead body buried in his garden.”
    Wallander glanced at Martinson and tried to understand the strange logic in what Evert Trulsson had said.
    “Can you explain what you mean? Are you suggesting that he buried the body himself?”
    “I’ve no idea. What do you know about your neighbors nowadays? In the old days you used to know more or less everything about the people you had around you. But now you haven’t a clue about anything.”
    Wallander wondered if he had before him one of thoseultraconservative people who had no doubt that everything used to be better in the old days. He made up his mind not to be dragged into a pointless conversation.
    “Elin Trulsson,” he said. “Who’s she?”
    “She’s my mother.”
    “We understand that she’s been to visit Karl Eriksson in his care home.”
    “I have an old mum who cares about other people. I think she visits Karl because nobody else does.”
    “So they were friends, were they?”
    “We were neighbors. That’s not the same as being friends.”
    “But you weren’t enemies,” said Martinson.
    “No. We were neighbors. Our farms had shared borders. We had shared responsibility for this street. We looked after our own business, we said hello and we helped each other out when it was necessary. But we didn’t socialize.”
    “According to the information I have, the Erikssons came here in 1968. Thirty-four years ago. And they bought their property from somebody called Gustav Henander.”
    “I remember that. We were related to Henander. I think my dad was a half brother to someone called Henander, but Henander was an adopted child. I don’t really know much about it. My mum might remember. You should ask her. My dad died ages ago.”
    They walked to the house.
    “Gustav and Laura Henander had three children,” said Martinson. “Two boys and a girl. But was there anybody else who used to live there? A woman, perhaps?”
    “No. And we saw everybody who drove past our house. The Henanders lived on their own, and they never had any visitors.”
    They went into the warm kitchen, where two fat cats lay on a window ledge, eyeing them vigilantly. A middle-aged woman came into the room. It was Evert Trulsson’s wife. She shook hands with them and said her name was Hanna. Wallander thought her hand was completely limp.
    “There’s coffee,” said Evert Trulsson. “Sit down and I’ll fetch my mum.”
    It was fifteen minutes before Evert Trulsson returned to the kitchen with his mother Elin. Wallander and Martinson had tried to converse with Hanna Trulsson, without making much progress. It occurred to Wallander that all he had learned during that quarter of an hour was that one of the cats was called Jeppe and the other one Florry.
    Elin Trulsson was a very old woman. She had a furrowed face, and the wrinkles dug deep into her skin. It seemed to Wallander that she was very handsome—like an old tree trunk. This was not a new comparison as far as he was concerned. It had first occurred to him some time ago when he was looking at his father’s face. Therewas a sort of beauty that only comes with age. A whole life engraved into