One of the causes was his father, who lived alone in a house on the plain just outside Loderup. His relationship with his father had always been complicated. Things had gotten no better over the years as Kurt Wallander realized, with a growing feeling of annoyance, that he was becoming more and more like him. He tried to imagine himself at the same stage as his father, but this made him feel ill at ease. Would he also end up a sullen and unpredictable old man, capable of suddenly doing something absolutely crazy?

On Sunday afternoon Kurt Wallander had visited his father as usual. They played cards and drank coffee out on the veranda in the warm spring sunshine. Out of the blue his father announced his intention of getting married. Kurt Wallander thought at first he had misheard him.

“No,” he said, “I’m not going to get married.”

“I’m not talking about you,” his father responded, “I’m talking about me.”

Kurt Wallander stared at him in disbelief.

“You’re almost eighty,” he said. “You aren’t getting married.”

“I’m not dead yet,” interrupted his father. “I’ll do whatever I like. You’d be better off asking me who.”

Kurt Wallander did as he was told.

“You ought to be able to work it out for yourself,” said his father. “I thought cops were paid to draw conclusions?”

“But you don’t know anybody your age, do you? You keep pretty much to yourself.”

“I know one,” said his father. “And anyway, who says you have to marry somebody your own age?”

Kurt Wallander suddenly realized there was only one possibility: Gertrud Anderson, the fifty-year-old woman who came to do the cleaning and wash his father’s feet three times a week.

“Are you going to marry Gertrud?” he asked. “Have you thought of asking her if she wants to? There’s thirty years between you. How do you think you’re going to be able to live with another person? You’ve never been able to. Not even with my mother.”