Kurt Wallander squeezed the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb as he tried to process what Linda had said to him. He cleared his throat asking what she had said Sure enough, he had not been mistaken in what he had initially heard. His little girl was getting married. At first he felt a wave of anger which quickly subsided and was replaced with a cold sinking sense of abandonment.
"When am I going to see you," he asked sounding more desperate then he had intended.
"Dad, I've got to prepare for the wedding and I've got a job," Linda said on the other side of the phone followed by a long silence, "I'll come see you as soon as I can."
"Alright."
"Dad, are you okay?"
"Yeah," Kurt whispered as he ended the call.
No. He was not okay. Wallander surveyed his sparse living room and decided that he didn't want to be home. He didn't want to be alone. The room looked only half complete and it reminded him of how after Linda's mother had left his whole life felt the same. The first person he called was Rydberg but as his finger hovered over the send button guilt came over him. Poor old Rydberg had two months to live if that. As Kurt thought of the cancer eating away at Rydberg's body he couldn't think to burden him with his loneliness. Next he called Nyberg. He didn't answer. Next he called Anne-Britt but she was on a date with her husband, for the first time in months. He thumbed through the rest of his contacts and a miserable dread took hold. He was alone. Drinking would be dangerous; he kept promising himself he'd stop. He caught a quick glance of himself in the mirror. He needed to shave. There was only one place for him now. Work.
He got in the car and drove recklessly. He hoped he wouldn't run into Hansson who was on patrol that night. Making it to the station without incident he found that here too he was alone except for the skeleton crew that ran the night shift. He didn't recognize any of them except for Martinsson. There was no reason for him to still be there.
Wallander stayed late at the police station only when he was working on a case or to avoid going home. He wondered why Martinsson was still at the station. As far as he knew, Magnus hadn't been assigned a case and for the life of him he couldn't imagine what Martinsson would be avoiding. Not that he knew much about his co-workers anyway. More than ever he regretted the distance he kept from people.
He felt alone enough to try to spark a conversation with Martinsson. He had only wanted some form of human contact and at the moment he wasn't picky. The way Martinsson sat with his legs spread wide open made Wallander want to punch him. Who did he think he was anyway? He saw the way he sat as disrespectful as if Magnus didn't care about etiquette or form. Hadn't his mother taught him any manners? Kurt walked over to Magnus's desk and stood there awkwardly trying to stuff his hands in his pockets. What was he going to say? Small talked seemed too impersonal but he only wanted to feel connected to someone about something real.
"Hi," Wallander began.
"Oh, Kurt, I finished those reports…" Martinsson's voice trailed off as he focus seemed to be elsewhere.
Kurt nodded then cleared his throat, "are you- are you uh, taking care of yourself?"
Martinsson stared at him incredulously, "am I taking care of myself?
"Yeah, are you?"
"Yeah," he answered slowly giving Wallander a look that made him feel stupid.
Wallander remained silent fuming and Martinsson started and stopped many conversations but in the end the two men only discovered that they had nothing in common. Magnus returned to his work as Wallander sat at his desk. His eyes stared at the clock behind Martinsson's head and watched as the little hand approaching the three. About fifteen minutes later he received a phone call from a man named Alfven owner of the infamous Grayon Inn. He asked if Wallander would investigate a serious of mysterious deaths that he was starting to think weren't just part of the "Grayson curse".
"Magnus, we've got a case. You've heard of Grayson Inn?"
"You mean the haunted one? The bed and breakfast where you check in with a suitcase and check out in a suitcase?"
Wallandfer was annoyed at how eager Martinsson always was and how he didn't seem to take anything seriously. They agreed that in order to catch the caper they would have to go undercover. After all, every other cop that had checked out the place swore up and down that the incidents were all accidents. If there was something really going on only the guests knew about it. Since Wallander and Martinsson had not been involved in the previous investigations Lisa assigned them both to the case. She gave them fake identities as Kalle and Marten Zettesberg a father and son from Gothenburg on holiday to visit some family friends in Ystad.
"Well, hello, dad," Magnus smirked as he read their identities.