'That's correct,' said Wallander.

'He had an answering machine, but there was nothing on it. Nobody had tried to call him.'

'What was the message he'd recorded?' Wallander asked.

'Just the usual.'

'Well, at least we know that,' said Wallander. 'Thanks for your help. We'll come back to you if we need anything else.'

He hung up and saw from the clock that it was time for the investigative team's afternoon meeting. When he got to the conference room, Hansson and Rydberg were already there.

'I've just been speaking to Stockholm,' Wallander said as he sat down. 'They found nothing of interest in the apartment in Åsögatan.'

'I called the wife again,' said Rydberg. 'She was still unwilling to talk about her son, but when I told her we could make her come back home to assist us with our inquiries, she thawed a little. The boy was evidently beaten up in a street in the centre of Stockholm. It must have been a totally pointless attack. He wasn't even robbed.'

'I've dug up some documentation about that attack,' said Hansson. 'It hasn't yet been written off, but nobody's done anything about it for at least the last five years.'

'Are there any suspects?' Wallander wondered.

Hansson shook his head.

'None at all. There's absolutely nothing. No witnesses, nothing.'

Wallander pushed his notepad to one side.

'Just as little as we've got to go on here at the moment,' he said.

Nobody spoke. Wallander realised he would have to say something.

'You'll have to speak to the people working in his shops,' he said. 'Call Rendel from the Stockholm police and ask him for some assistance. We'll meet again tomorrow.'

They divided up the tasks that had to be done, and Wallander went back to his office. He thought he should call his father out in Löderup and apologise for the previous night. But he didn't. He couldn't get what had happened to Göran Alexandersson out of his mind. The whole situation was so preposterous that it should be explicable on those grounds alone. He knew from experience that all murders, and most other crimes as well, had something logical about them, somewhere. It was just a matter of turning over the right stones in the correct order and following up possible connections between them.

Wallander left the police station shortly before five and took the coastal road to Svarte. This time he parked further into the village. He took a pair of wellingtons out of the boot, put them on, then walked down to the beach. In the distance he could see a cargo ship steaming westward.

He started walking along the beach, examining the houses on his right side. There seemed to be somebody living in every third house. He kept on walking until he had left Svarte behind. Then he returned. He suddenly realised that he was hoping Mona would appear from nowhere, walking towards him. He thought back to the time they had gone to Skagen. That had been the best part of their life together. They had so much to talk about, things they never had time to do.

He shook off these unpleasant thoughts and forced himself to concentrate on Göran Alexandersson. As he walked along the sand he tried to make a summary of the case so far.

What did they know? That Alexandersson lived by himself, that he owned two electronics shops, that he was forty-nine years old, and that he had travelled to Ystad and stayed at the King Charles Hotel. He had told his staff he was going on holiday. While at the hotel he had received no telephone calls or visitors. Nor had he used the phone in his room himself.

Every morning he had taken a taxi out to Svarte, where he had spent the day walking up and down the beach. In the afternoon, he had returned to Ystad after borrowing Agnes Ehn's telephone. On the fourth day, he had entered the back seat of a taxi and died.

Wallander stopped and looked around. The beach was still deserted. Alexandersson is visible nearly all the time, he thought, but somewhere along the sand he disappears. Then he comes back again, and a few minutes later, he's dead.

He must have met somebody here, Wallander thought. Or rather, he must have arranged to meet somebody. You don't bump into a poisoner by accident.

Wallander started walking again. He eyed the houses along the beach. The following day they would start knocking on doors here. Somebody must have seen Alexandersson walking on the beach, somebody might have seen him meeting somebody else.

Wallander saw that he was no longer alone on the beach. An elderly man was coming towards him. He had a black Labrador trotting decorously along by his side. Wallander paused and looked at the dog. Lately he had been wondering if he should suggest to Mona that they buy a dog. But he hadn't done so because he so often found himself working unsociable hours. In all probability a dog would mean more guilt rather than more company.

The man raised his cap as he approached Wallander.

'Are we going to have any spring this year, do you think?' the man asked.

Wallander noticed that he didn't speak with a local accent.

'I expect it will show up eventually, as usual,' Wallander replied.

The man was about to continue on his way when Wallander spoke again.

'I take it you go walking along the beach every day?' he asked.

The man pointed at one of the houses.

'I've been living here ever since I retired,' he said.

'My name's Wallander and I'm a police officer in Ystad. Did you happen to see a man of about fifty walking along the sand here by himself in recent days?'

The man's eyes were blue and bright. His white hair stuck out from under his cap.

'No,' he said, with a smile. 'Who would want to come walking here? I'm the only person who walks along this beach. Now, in May, when it gets a bit warmer, it will be a different story.'

'Are you absolutely sure?' Wallander asked.

'I walk the dog three times every day,' said the man. 'And I haven't seen any man wandering around here by himself. Until you appeared, that is.'

Wallander smiled.

'Don't let me disturb you any longer,' he said.

Wallander resumed walking. When he stopped and turned round, the man with the dog had disappeared.

Where the thought – or rather, the feeling – came from, he never managed to figure out. Nevertheless, from that moment on, he was quite certain. There had been something about the man's expression, a faint, almost imperceptible movement of his eyes, when Wallander asked him if he had seen a solitary man walking along the beach. He knows something, Wallander thought. But what?

Wallander looked around once more. The beach was deserted.

He stood there motionless for several minutes.

Then he went back to his car and drove home.

Wednesday, 29 April, was the first day of spring in Skåne that year. Wallander woke up early, as usual. He was sweaty and knew he had had a nightmare but couldn't remember what it was about. Perhaps he had dreamed yet again about being chased by bulls? Or that Mona had left him? He took a shower, had a cup of coffee and leafed absentmindedly through the Ystad Chronicle.

He was in his office by six thirty. The sun was shining from a clear blue sky. Wallander hoped that Martinsson had recovered and could take over the register searches from Hansson. That usually produced better and faster results. If Martinsson was well again, Wallander could take Hansson with him to Svarte and start knocking on doors. But perhaps the most important thing just now was to try to create as accurate a picture as possible of Göran Alexandersson. Martinsson was much more thorough than Hansson when it came to contact with people who might be able to provide information. Wallander also made up his mind that they should make a serious effort to find out what had really happened when Alexandersson's son had been beaten to death.