The Man Who Smiled Read Online Free

maybe even to find the strength to become a police officer again, a police officer and a human being.
    It was during that visit that he had stopped listening to opera. He would often take his little cassette player on his walks along the beach, but one day it came to him that he had had enough. When he got back to the guest house that evening he packed all his opera cassettes away into his suitcase and put it in the wardrobe. The next day he cycled into Skagen and bought some recordings of pop artists he had barely heard of. What surprised him most was that he did not miss the music that had kept him going for so many years.
    I have no space left, he thought. Something inside me has filled up to the brim, and soon the walls will burst.
    He was back in Skagen in the middle of October. He was firmly resolved this time to work out what he would do with the rest of his life. His doctor had encouraged him to return to the guest house, which obviously did his patient good. There were signs of a gradual return to health, a tentative withdrawal from the depths of depression. Without betraying his oath of confidentiality, he also intimated to Björk, Wallander's boss, that there might just possibly be a chance of the invalid coming back to work at some point.
    So Wallander went to Denmark again and set out once more on his walks along the beach. It was late autumn and the sands were deserted. He seldom encountered another human being, and the ones he did see were mostly old, apart from the occasional sweat-stained jogger; and there was a busybody regularly walking her dog. He resumed his patrols, watching over his lonely territory, marching with gathering confidence towards the just visible and constantly shifting line where the beach met the sea.
    He was well into middle age now, and the milestone of 50 was not far off. During the last year he had lost so much weight he found himself having to hunt in his wardrobe for clothes he had been unable to get into for the past seven or eight years. He was in better physical shape than he had enjoyed for ages, especially now that he had stopped drinking. That seemed to him a possible starting point for his future plans. Barring accidents, he could have at least 20 more years to live. What exercised him most was whether he would be able to return to police duties, or whether he would have to find something else to do. He refused even to consider early retirement on health grounds. That was a prospect he didn't think he could cope with. He spent his time on the beach, usually enveloped in drifting fog but with occasional days of fresh, clear air, glittering seas and gulls soaring up above. Sometimes he felt like the clockwork man who had lost the key that normally stuck out of his back, and hence lacked the possibility of being wound up, of finding new sources of energy. He pondered his options were he forced to leave the police force. He might become a security guard or the like with some firm or other. He could not see what his service as a police officer actually qualified him for, apart from chasing criminals. His options were limited, unless he decided to make a clean break and put behind him his many years of police work. But who would be willing to employ a former officer approaching 50, whose only expertise was unravelling more or less confused crime scenes?
    When he felt hungry he would leave the beach and find a sheltered spot in the dunes. He tucked into his packed lunch and used the plastic carrier bag to sit on, protecting himself from the cold sand. As he ate, he tried hard - without much success - to think of something other than his future. He made every effort to be realistic, but always he had to fend off unrealistic dreams.
    Like all other police officers, he was sometimes tempted to go over to the other side. He never ceased to be amazed by the officers who had turned criminals and yet failed to use their knowledge of fundamental police procedures that would have helped them