'The weapon was lying right next to the body.'

'So?'

Wallander didn't know what to say to this.

'You have to learn to pose the right questions,' Hemberg said. 'If you are to work as a detective. I already have enough people who don't know how to think. I don't want another one.'

Then he changed tack and adopted a friendlier tone.

'If you say it was a suicide it probably was. Where is it?'

Wallander pointed to the entrance. They went in.

Wallander attentively followed Hemberg in his work. Watched him crouch down next to the body and discuss the bullet's point of entry with the doctor who had arrived. Studied the position of the weapon, the body, the hand. Then he walked around the apartment, examining the contents in the chest of drawers, the cupboards and the clothes.

After about an hour, he was done. He signalled to Wallander to join him in the kitchen.

'It certainly looks like suicide,' Hemberg said while he absently smoothed and read the football betting form on the table.

'I heard a bang,' Wallander said. 'That must have been the shot.'

'You didn't hear anything else?'

Wallander thought it was best to tell the truth.

'I was napping,' he said. 'The sudden noise woke me up.'

'And after that? No sound of anyone running in the stairwell?'

'No.'

'Did you know him?'

Wallander told him the little he knew.

'He had no relatives?'

'None that I'm aware of.'

'We'll have to look into the matter.'

Hemberg sat quietly for a moment.

'There are no family pictures,' he went on. 'Not on the chest of drawers in there or on the walls. Nothing in the drawers. Only two old sailing books. The only thing of interest that I could find was a colourful beetle in a jar. Larger than a stag beetle. Do you know what that is?'

Wallander did not.

'The largest Swedish beetle,' Hemberg said. 'But it is nearly extinct.'