Henning Mankell owns Wallander.

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Alternative ending to Hemligheten.

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This officer here… Stefan Lindman…

Kurt opens his eyes and it flashes before him, like a thought awakens one that is fast asleep and a revelation comes unsought, and he sees it.

Couldn't it be that Stefan is too personally involved? He's staying out of the case, Linda. I don't want you near him until we're done with this.

However.

A string of words. That's all it takes, really. A short sentence and a leap into the dark winter night of side-thinking. Of unlikely probabilities. Kurt's never gotten on with those, really.

Don't do anything stupid, he tells her, they're outside Magnus' home and it's dark, and Nyberg holds the vial with the slivers of dried blood like a trophy.

Dried blood, huh? Well, bloody hell he thinks, and he's ironically probably quoting, now, but he'd be damned. Dried blood, but their suspect wasn't shot; but there was someone else who was, goddamnit.

Don't do anything stupid, Linda, he tells her, but hurry the damned hell up.

And she does, for God's sake she does, hearing the urgency in his voice, and she be damned, the slight quiver of I-may-have-been-wrong in the way he says her name, like he's trying to say he's sorry.

Sorry for what?

For not telling her straight away that she's usually more right than he lets on. For bloody hell, bloody hell, he may be as well burning out too.

Don't do anything stupid, Linda, he's told her, but she's not thinking about her father when she bursts through a once shared window with a desperate cry that doesn't even sound like don't- she's not thinking.

Sometimes it's the best, just not thinking. Just kicking furniture out of the way and sending a table she knows well flying across the room, a glass and three different bottles rolling over to the ground and shattering, because everything seems to be shattering lately.

He looks at her with eyes unfocused and lips quivering, damn it all.

"Drop the gun… Stefan… drop it…"

"What's it to you?"

…but hurry the damned hell up, Linda…

She shouldn't, but she smiles at the unlikeliness of it all, wasn't this when she dropped to her knees in anguish before the still deed? It might be the only think Kurt's done well since this all mad chase began and it all started to smell fishy.

Leave it all up to her.

Something in his brain that's still anchored to this world feels her smile and has him smile back at her, yes, isn't this just where the world ends…?

"Drop the gun, and I might just as well tell you," a voice soft and thick with feeling answers him, and then she notices it was only just herself about to speak a truth too many.

"Well, for fuck's sake…"

He swears like he's only breathing, and damn it, she thinks, isn't that just so him. Something thuds on the floor, it's the gun, sending ripples through an amber puddle of whisky.

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slutet

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A/N: fy fannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn :(

slutet= the end.

Damn, I was so goddamned depressed after Stefan killed himself in Hemligheten I needed to write an alternative ending to cope with the sadness.

Hope it helps someone else eventually.

This would be the non-Swedish ending: after this, Stefan got a good lawyer and got it pretty light for being in a traumatic situation or something. Then he and Linda got married and lived happily ever after.