"The situation is as I've described it," Törn said. "If you had any sense, you would realise there was no need to go on like this."

Wallander shook his head, and turned to Lovén and Rönnlund.

"What about your instructions?" he asked. "Stockholm doesn't usually send out people unless there's been a formal request for assistance, and we haven't made such a request, so far as I know. Or have we?"

Björk shook his head.

"OK, so Stockholm has decided this on its own initiative. I'd like to know why, if we're going to be working together. I'm assuming the ability of our force to conduct its business efficiently hasn't been impugned before we've even started."

Lov£n was shuffling uneasily, but it was Rönnlund who answered. Wallander detected a note of sympathy in his voice.

"The commissioner thought you might need a bit of help," he said. "Our remit is to place ourselves at your disposal. That's all. You're in charge of the investigation, and if we can be of assistance, so much the better. Neither Bertil nor I have any doubts about your ability to conduct this case on your own, and for myself, I think you've acted speedily and decisively over the last few days."

Wallander nodded in appreciation. Martinsson was grinning, and Svedberg was picking thoughtfully at his teeth with a splinter he'd broken from the conference table.

"Well, perhaps we can consider where to go from here," Björk said.

"Indeed," Wallander said. "I have a few theories I'd like to test out on you, but first I'd like to tell you about a little adventure I had during the night."

He felt calm again. He'd pitted himself against Birgitta Törn and not been vanquished. He'd find out what she was really doing here soon enough. Rönnlund's support had made him feel better. He told them about his telephone call and his visit to the fishing boat in Brantevik. He stressed that the man had been certain the life-raft could have drifted from as far as one of the Baltic states. Björk was inspired to take unexpected initiatives, and asked reception to arrange for charts of the whole area to be sent up immediately. Wallander imagined Ebba collaring the next officer that sauntered through reception, instructing him to produce the maps without delay. He poured himself another cup of coffee, and started to explain his theories.

"The evidence points to the men having been murdered on board a ship," he said. "You would expect the bodies to have been disposed of in the ocean, but I suspect that the killers wanted the bodies to be found. I find it difficult to explain why that should be so, not least because it must have been very uncertain where and when the life-raft would wash ashore. Anyway, the men were shot at close range after being tortured. People are tortured as punishment, or to extract information. The next thing to bear in mind is that both men were under the influence of drugs, amphetamines to be precise. Somehow or other, drugs are involved in this case. I have the distinct impression these men were not short of money – their clothes make that clear. By Eastern European standards they must have been pretty well off if they could afford to buy the shoes and clothes they were wearing. I'd never be able to afford their clothes."

Lovén burst out laughing at his final remark, but Birgitta Törn continued staring doggedly down at the table.

"We know quite a lot, even if we can't fit the bits of the jigsaw together to produce a picture that gives us the sequence of events and the reason the men were murdered. There's one thing we need to establish immediately: who were these men? That's what we must concentrate on. And we must also get a ballistic report on the bullets that killed them without delay. I want a check on all missing or wanted persons in Sweden and Denmark. Fingerprints, photos and descriptions of the men must be sent immediately to Interpol. Maybe we'll find something in our criminal records. And we need to contact the police in the Soviet Union and the Baltic states, assuming that hasn't happened already. Perhaps Birgitta Törn can fill us in on this?"

"That will happen later today," she said. "We'll be contacting the international division of the Moscow police."

"The police in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania must be contacted as well."

"That will happen via Moscow."

Wallander looked questioningly at her, then turned to Björk. "Didn't we have a visit from the Lithuanian police last autumn?"

"What Birgitta Törn says is no doubt correct," Björk said. "The Baltic states have their own national police forces, but it's still the Soviet police that makes the formal decisions."

"I wonder," Wallander said. "Still, I dare say that the foreign ministry knows more about this than I do."

"Yes," Törn said, "no doubt we do."

Björk brought the meeting to a close, and immediately disappeared with Birgitta Törn. A press conference had been arranged for 2 p.m. Wallander stayed behind in the conference room and went over the various tasks with the others. Svedberg fetched the plastic bag containing the bullets, and Lovén undertook to make sure that the ballistic examination happened quickly. The others split the enormous job of going through the lists of missing and wanted persons. Martinsson had contacts in the Copenhagen police, and undertook to get in touch with them.

"You don't need to bother about the press conference," Wallander said. "That'll be a headache for Björk and myself."

"Are they as unpleasant here as they are in Stockholm?" Rönnlund asked.

"I don't know what press conferences are like in Stockholm," Wallander told him, "but they're not exactly fun here."

The rest of the day was spent sending descriptions of the dead men to all police districts in Sweden and the Scandinavian countries, and working their way through various records and registers. It was soon clear that the men's fingerprints weren't in the Swedish or Danish records, but Interpol would take longer to give an answer. Wallander and Lovén weren't sure whether the East German police records had been incorporated into Interpol. Had their criminal records been transferred to a central database covering the whole of unified Germany? Come to that, had there actually been any normal criminal records in the GDR? Had there been a distinction between the vast archives of the security services and criminal records? Lovén agreed to find the answers to these questions, while Wallander prepared himself for the press conference.

When he and Björk met before the briefing was due to begin, Wallander noticed that his boss was very quiet. Why doesn't he say anything, he wondered. Did he think I was rude to that elegant lady from the foreign ministry?

A large number of journalists and television reporters gathered in the room where the press conference was going to take place. Wallander looked for the young reporter from the Express, but couldn't see him.

Björk started proceedings, as usual, launching an unexpected attack on the "incomprehensibly irresponsible" reports published by the press. Wallander's thoughts wandered to his night-time meeting with the frightened man at Brantevik harbour. When it was his turn to speak, he began by repeating his appeal for the public to contact the police if they had any information that might be relevant. A reporter asked if there had been any response so far, and Wallander said there had not. The press conference was surprisingly low key, and Björk expressed his satisfaction as they left the room.

"What's the lady from the foreign ministry doing?" Wallander asked as they walked down the corridor.

"She's on the phone nearly all the time," Björk said. "No doubt you think we ought to bug her calls."

"It wouldn't be a bad idea," Wallander muttered.

The day passed without significant developments. It was a question of being patient, of seeing whether any fish would swim into the nets they'd put out.