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longer able to ignore the fact that he was now sixty years old and hence inexorably on his way into old age. He might live for another ten or twenty years, but he would never be able to experience anything but growing older and older. Youth was a distant memory, and now middle age was behind him. He was standing in the wings, waiting for his cue to go onstage to begin the third and final act, in which everything would be explained, the heroes placed in the spotlight while the villains died. He was fighting as hard as he could to avoid being forced to play the tragic role. He would prefer to leave the stage with a laugh.
    What worried him most was his forgetfulness. He would write a list when he drove to Simrishamn or Ystad to do some shopping, but when he entered the shops he would realize he had forgotten it. Had he in fact ever written one? He couldn’t remember. One day, when he was more worried than usual about his memory, he made an appointment with a doctor in Malmö who advertised herself as a specialist in “the problems of old age.” The doctor, whose name was Margareta Bengtsson, received him in an old house in the center of Malmö. In Wallander’s prejudiced view she was too young to be capable of understanding the miseries of old age. He was tempted to turn around and leave, but he controlled himself, sat down in a leather armchair and began talking about his bad memory that was getting worse all the time.
    “Do I have Alzheimer’s?” Wallander asked as the interview drew to a close.
    Margareta Bengtsson smiled, not condescendingly but in a straightforward and friendly way.
    “No,” she said. “I don’t think so. But obviously, nobody knows what’s lurking around the next corner.”
    Around the next corner, Wallander thought as he walked back to his car through the bitterly cold wind. When he got there he found a parking ticket tucked under a windshield wiper. He flung it into the car without even looking to see how much he had been fined and drove home.
    A car he didn’t recognize was waiting outside his front door. When Wallander got out of his own car, he saw Martinsson standing by the dog kennel, stroking Jussi through the bars.
    “I was just going to leave,” said Martinsson. “I left a note on the door.”
    “Have they sent you to deliver a message?”
    “Not at all—I came entirely of my own accord to see how you were.”
    They went into the house. Martinsson took a look at Wallander’s library, which had become extensive over the years. Then they sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. Wallander said nothing about his trip to Malmö and the appointment with the doctor. Martinsson nodded at his plastered hand.
    “The cast will come off next week,” said Wallander. “What does the gossip have to say?”
    “About your hand?”
    “About me. The gun at the restaurant.”
    “Lennart Mattson is an unusually taciturn man. I know nothing about what’s going on. But you can count on our support.”
    “That’s not true. You no doubt support me. But the leak must have come from somewhere. There are a lot of people at the police station who don’t like me.”
    Martinsson shrugged.
    “That’s life. There’s nothing you can do about it. Who likes me?”
    They talked about everything under the sun. It struck Wallander that Martinsson was now the only one left of the colleagues who were at the police station when he first moved to Ystad.
    Martinsson seemed depressed as he sat there at the table. Wallander wondered if he was ill.
    “No, I’m not ill,” said Martinsson. “But I’m resigned to the fact that it’s all over now. My career as a police officer, that is.”
    “Did you also leave your gun in a restaurant?”
    “I just can’t take it anymore.”
    To Wallander’s astonishment, Martinsson started crying. He sat there like a helpless child, his hands wrapped around his coffee cup as the tears ran down his cheeks. Wallander had no idea what to do. He had occasionally noticed