While he waited for the coffee to brew, he thought about what awaited him. He always decided in advance what work he would do on a given evening. He was a methodical man who never left anything to chance.

This evening, it was the Swedish prime minister's turn. Actually it had surprised him that he had not spent an evening on him yet. But at least he had been able to prepare. For more than a week he had scoured the daily papers for the picture he was going to use. He had found it in one of the evening papers and known at once that it was the right one. It filled all of his requirements. He had photographed a copy of it a few days ago. Now it was locked in one of his desk drawers. He poured out the coffee and hummed along with the music. A piano sonata by Beethoven was playing. He preferred Bach to Beethoven. And Mozart best of all. But the piano sonata was beautiful. He could not deny it.

He sat down at the desk, adjusted the lamp and unlocked the drawers on the left. The photograph of the prime minister was inside. He had enlarged the image, as he usually did, to a size somewhat larger than a standard sheet of paper. He laid it out on the table, sipped his coffee and studied the face. Where should he start, where should he begin the distortion? The man in the picture was smiling and looking to the left. There was a touch of anxiety or uncertainty in his gaze. He decided to begin with the eyes. They could be made to look cross-eyed. And smaller. If he angled the enlarger, the face would also become thinner. He could try to place the paper in an arc in the enlarger and see what effect that had. Then he could cut and paste and excise the mouth. Or perhaps sew it up. Politicians talked too much.

He finished his coffee. The clock on the wall showed a quarter to nine. Some noisy teenagers walked by on the street outside and disturbed the music for a moment.

He put the coffee cup away. Then he started the painstaking but enjoyable work of retouching. He could slowly see the face changing.

It took him more than two hours. You could still see that it was the prime minister's face. But what had happened to it? He got up out of his chair and hung the picture on the wall. Directed the light on it. The music on the radio was different now. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. The dramatic music was fitting as he regarded his work. The face was no longer the same.

Now the most important part remained. The most enjoyable. Now he would reduce the picture. Make it small and insignificant. He put it on the glass plate and focused the light. Made it smaller and smaller. The details pulled together. But remained sharp. Only when the face started to blur did he stop.

He was done.

It was almost half past eleven when he had the finished product in front of him on the desk. The prime minister's distorted face was no bigger than a passport picture. Once again he had shrunk a power-hungry individual down to more suitable proportions. Of large men he made small men. In his world there was no one who was bigger than himself. He remade their faces, made them smaller, more ridiculous, into small and unimportant insects.

He took out the album he kept in his desk and flipped through it until he got to the first empty page. There he pasted in the picture he had just manipulated. He wrote in the day's date with a fountain pen.

He leaned back in his chair. Yet another picture had been produced. It had been a successful evening. The result had been good. And nothing had disturbed him. No restless thoughts had flown around in his head. It had been an evening in the cathedral when everything breathed peace and quiet.

He put the album back and locked the cabinet. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring had been followed by Handel. Sometimes he was irritated by the programme director's inability to make softer transitions.

At that moment he had the feeling that something wasn't right. He stood still and listened. Everything was quiet. He thought that he had imagined it. He turned off the coffee-maker and started turning off the lights. Then he stopped again. Something wasn't right. He heard a sound from the studio. Suddenly he was afraid. Had someone broken into the store? He walked carefully over to the door and listened. Everything was quiet. I'm imagining things, he thought with irritation. Who would break into a photographer's studio where there are not even any cameras for sale? At least cameras can be stolen.

He listened again. Nothing. He took his coat from the peg and put it on. The clock on the wall said nineteen minutes before midnight. Everything was normal. Now he was ready to lock up his cathedral and go home.

He looked around one more time before he turned off the last light. Then he opened the door. The studio lay in darkness. He turned on the light. It was as he had thought. There was no one there. He turned the light off again and walked out towards the shop.

Then everything happened very quickly.

Suddenly someone came at him from the shadows. Someone who had been hiding behind one of the backdrops he used for his studio portraits. He could not see who it was. Since the shadow was blocking the exit there was only one thing left for him to do. Flee into the back room and lock the door. He also had a phone in there. He could call for help.

He turned round. But he never made it to the door. The shadow was quicker. Something struck him in the back of the head, something that made the world explode in a white light, then become total darkness.

He was dead before he hit the ground.

The time was seventeen minutes to midnight.

The cleaning woman's name was Hilda Waldén. She arrived at Simon Lamberg's studio shortly after five o'clock, when she began her morning round. She leaned her bike next to the entrance and locked it carefully with a chain. It was drizzling and had grown colder, and she shivered as she searched for the right key. Spring was taking its time. She opened the door and stepped inside. The floor was dirty after the latest rain shower. She put her handbag on the counter next to the cash register and put her coat on the chair next to the little newspaper table.

There was a cupboard in the studio where she kept her cleaning coat as well as her equipment. Lamberg would have to buy her a new vacuum cleaner soon. This one was getting too weak.

She saw him as soon as she walked into the studio. She immediately understood that he was dead. The blood had run out around his body.

Then she ran out onto the street. A retired bank director who had been ordered to take regular walks by his doctor anxiously asked her what had happened, after he managed to calm her down somewhat.

She was shaking all over, and he ran to a telephone booth on the nearest street corner and dialled emergency.

It was twenty minutes past five.

A drizzling rain, with a gusty wind from the south-west.

It was Martinsson who called and woke up Wallander. It was three minutes past six. Wallander knew from long experience that when the phone rang this early something serious must have happened. Normally he was awake before six. But this morning he was sleeping and he woke up with a start when the telephone rang. The main reason he wasn't already awake was that he had bitten off part of his tooth the night before and had been in pain during the night. He had only fallen asleep around four after having been up several times to take pills for the pain. Before he picked up the receiver he noted that the pain was still there.

'Did I wake you?' Martinsson asked.

'Yes,' Wallander said and was surprised that he answered truthfully for once. 'You did, actually. What's happened?'

'The night shift called me at home. Sometime around half past five they received an unclear emergency call about a supposed murder by St Gertrude's Square. A patrol unit was dispatched.'