Before the Frost by Henning Mankell

young man who had half-killed his father with a sledgehammer. The boy lied about everything and suddenly I couldn’t take it anymore. I halted the interrogation and came here, and that’s when I felt that these trees had become gravestones for all the people I knew who had died. That I should come here to visit with them, not where they are actually buried. Whenever I’m here I feel a calm I don’t feel anywhere else. I can hug the dead here without them seeing me.”
    â€œI won’t tell anyone,” she said. “Thanks for sharing it with me.”
    They lingered a while longer. Linda wanted to ask about the identity of a few more of the trees but she said nothing. The sun was shining through the leaves, but the wind picked up and it immediately became colder. Linda took a deep breath and launched into the topic of Anna’s disappearance.

    â€œIt’ll drive me up the wall if you shake your head at me and tell me I’m imagining things. But if you can explain to me exactly why I’m wrong, I promise I’ll pay attention.”
    â€œThere’s something you’ll find out when you become a police officer,” he said. “The unexplainable almost never happens. Even a disappearance turns out to have a perfectly reasonable explanation. You’ll learn to differentiate between the unexplained and the merely unexpected. The unexpected can look baffling until you have the necessary background information. This is generally the case with disappearances. You don’t know what’s happened to Anna and it’s only natural that it would worry you, but my intuition tells me you should draw on the highest virtue of our profession.”
    â€œPatience?”
    â€œExactly.”
    â€œFor how long?”
    â€œA few more days. She’ll have turned up by then, or at least been in touch.”
    â€œI’m still convinced her mother was lying to me.”
    â€œI’m not sure your mother and I always stuck to the truth when we were asked about you.”
    â€œI’ll try to be patient, but I do feel like there’s more to this. It’s not right.”
    They returned to the car. It was past one o’clock and Linda suggested they stop for lunch somewhere. They chose a roadside restaurant with the funny name My Father’s Hat. Wallander had a fleeting recollection of lunching with his father at this restaurant and ending up in a huge argument. He couldn’t remember what their argument had been about.
    They were drinking their coffee when a phone rang. Linda fumbled for hers but it turned out to be her father’s. He answered, listened, and made a few notes on the back of the check.
    â€œWhat was that?”
    â€œSomeone’s been reported missing.”
    He put money on the table and tucked the bill into his pocket.
    â€œWhat do you have to do now?” Linda asked. “Who’s disappeared?”
    â€œWe’ll go back to Ystad via Skurup. A widow by the name of
Birgitta Medberg has been reported missing. Her daughter is worried.”
    â€œWhat are the circumstances?”
    â€œThe caller wasn’t sure. Apparently the woman is a historian interested in mapping old walkways and she often does extensive fieldwork, sometimes in very dense forest. An unusual occupation.”
    â€œSo she may simply be lost?”
    â€œMy first thought. We’ll soon find out.”
    Â 
    Wallander called the daughter of Birgitta Medberg to tell her he was on his way, and then they drove to Skurup. The wind was blustery. It was nine minutes past three on August 29.

12
    They stopped in front of a two-story brick building— quintessentially Swedish, Linda thought. Wherever you go in this country the houses all look the same. The central square in VästerÃ¥s could be replaced with the one in Örebro, and this Skurup apartment building could as easily be in Sollentuna .
    â€œWhere have you ever seen a building like this