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the doctor's report.
    The brutal nature of the murder of Johannes Lövgren was thrown into even sharper relief, if possible, than when he had arrived in Lunnarp that morning. In the preliminary examination of the body, the doctor had not been able to determine the actual cause of death. There were too many to choose from.
    The body had received eight deep stab wounds with a sharp, serrated implement. The report suggested a compass saw. In addition, the right femur was broken, as were the left upper arm and wrist. The body showed signs of burn wounds, the scrotum was swollen, and the forehead was bashed in.
    The doctor had made a note beside the official report. "An act of madness," he had written. "This man was subjected to injuries sufficient to kill him four or five times over."
    Wallander put down the report. He was feeling worse and worse. Something here was beyond reason. Robbers who attacked old people weren't full of hate. They were after money. Why this insane degree of violence?
    When Wallander realised that he couldn't come up with a satisfactory answer, he read again through the summary he had written. Had he forgotten something? Had he overlooked some detail that would later turn out to have been significant? Even though police work was mostly a matter of patiently searching for clues that could then be combined, he had also learnt from experience that the initial impression of the scene of a crime was important. More so when the officer was one of the first there after the crime had been committed.
    There was something in his summary that puzzled him. Had he left out an important detail? He sat for a long time without managing to think what it might be.
    A woman opened the door and handed him the typed press release and the copies. On the way to the press conference he went to the men's room and looked in the mirror. He saw that he needed a haircut. His brown hair was sticking out round his ears. And he ought to lose some weight too. In the three months since his wife had left him, he had put on seven kilos. In his apathetic loneliness he had eaten nothing but takeaways and pizza, greasy hamburgers and pastries.
    "You flabby piece of shit," he said out loud. "Do you really want to look like a pitiful old man?"
    He made a decision to change his eating habits at once. If it would help him lose weight, he might even consider taking up smoking again. He wondered why almost every policeman was divorced. Why their wives left them. Sometimes, when he read a crime novel, he discovered with a sigh that things were just as bad in fiction. Policemen were divorced. That's all there was to it.
    The room where the press conference was to be held was full. He recognised most of the reporters. But there were a few unfamiliar faces too, including a young girl with a pimply face, who seemed to be casting amorous glances at him as she adjusted her tape recorder.
    Wallander passed out the press release and sat down on the little dais at one end of the room. The Ystad chief of police should have been there too, but he was on his winter holiday in Spain. If Rydberg managed to finish with the TV crews, he had promised to attend. But otherwise Wallander was on his own.
    "You've received the press release," he began. "I don't have anything to add at present."
    "Can we ask questions?" said a reporter Wallander recognised as the local stringer for The Worker.
"That's why I'm here," replied Wallander.
    "If you don't mind my saying so, this is an unusually poor press release," said the reporter. "You must be able to tell us more than this."
"We have no leads on the offenders," said Wallander.
"So there were more than one?"
"Possibly."
    "Why do you think so?" "We think there were. But we don't know." The reporter made a face, and Wallander nodded to another reporter he recognised. "How was Mr Lövgren killed?" "By external force."
"That can mean a lot of different things!"
"Well, we don't know yet. The doctors haven't finished the forensic