It is shortly 7.00 a.m. on a cool spring morning

It is shortly 7.00 a.m. on a cool Madrid spring morning. The traffic is still just a purr, though it will soon be a rumble and some time after that, the usual riot of horns, ambulance sirens, and roaring motorbike exhausts. This should be a small moment of peace in what must be one of Europe’s noisiest cities. A helicopter, however, has spent the past fifteen minutes poised noisily at roof-top level just a block down our street. The wide open well of our six-storey apartment block is acting as a sound box that amplifies the relentless chugging and clattering. Sleep in our top-floor apartment seems, under these circumstances, impossible. I lie in bed worrying about whether the helicopter – which does this every few weeks – will wake the children. It is not as though they went to bed early, even though they have school today. One of them seven year old, got out of bed to take a phone call at 10 p.m. last night. It was another seven year old, excitedly inviting him to a birthday party at the weekend. Madrid boasts that it is a party town, a city that never sleeps. But does this really have to apply to the under eights?
I go out onto the balcony to wave a fist at the sleek white helicopter- wondering why on earth it is hovering there, so low, so loud and so early. I expect all the other balconies to be filled up with angry people roused from their beds. I am, however, alone. I stand solitary, deranged and dishevelled, amongst the wilting geraniums. Even at this stage of the year, they are gasping for water. It is one of those moments when I am reminded that, although I now consider this to be my city, I am really a foreigner. Noise in Madrid, in Spain as a whole, is just background. It is part of the atmosphere, like air or daylight. I realised that I have been caught with my guard down. During the day, after I showered and slipped my daily coat of Madridness on, I would not care about the mere roar of a helicopter. Noise and bustle are normally part of what I like about this city. At night, when I sleep. Though. I am returned to my natural condition as what Spaniards like to call an AngloSaxon. This description for native English speakers –be they British, American, or from anywhere else- has always amused me. It makes me think of runes and lyres, of Beowulf and the Venerable Bede.
From the book 'Ghosts of Spain' By Giles Tremlet

Martinsson wade out into the water

Martinsson wade out into the water to pull the life raff ashore, wearing gumboots. Wallender squatted down to examine the bodies. He could see Peters trying to calm the woman. It struck him how fortunate they were that the boat hadn’t come ashore in the summer, when there would have been hundreds of children playing and swimming on the beach. What he was looking at was not a pretty sight, and there was the unmistakable stench of rotting flesh despite the fierce wind.
He took a pair of rubber gloves from his jacket and searched the men’s pockets carefully. He found nothing at all. When he opened the jacket of one of the men he could see a liver-coloured stain on the chest of the white shirt.
He looked at Martinsson.
“This is no accident,” he said. “It’s murder. This man has been shot straight through the heart.”
He stood up and moved to one side so that Norén could photograph the life raft.
“What do you reckon?” he asked Martinsson. Martinsson shook his head.
“I don’t know”
Wallender walked slowly round the boat without taking his eyes off the two dead men. Both were fair haired, probably in their early 30s. Judging by their hands and clothes, they were not manual labourers. Who were they? Why was there nothing in their pockets? He continued walking round and round the boat . occasionally exchanging a few words with Martinsson. After half an hour he decided that here was nothing more for him to discover. By then the forensic team had begun their methodical examination. A plastic tent had been put up over the rubber boat. Norén had finished taking photographs, everybody was bitterly cold and couldn’t wait to get away.
It was several hours before Wallander was able to give the ambulance men the nod, and they moved forward with their stretchers. By then , Wallander was so cold that he couldn’t stop shivering. They had no choice but to break a few bones to release the men from their embrace. When the bodies had been removed. Wallander gave the boat another thorough investigation, but found nothing , not even a paddle. He gazed out to sea, as if the solution was to be found somewhere on the horizon.
From the book ‘The dogs of Riga’ By Henning Mankell

Two minutes later

Two minutes later Wallender was on his way along the coast road. Peters and Norén were ahead of him in a patrol car, sirens blaring. Wallender shuddered as he saw the freezing breakers slamming onto the beach. He could see an ambulance in his rear-view mirror, and Martinsson in a second police car.
Mossby Strand was deserted. As he clambered out of his car, the icy wind met him head-on. The beach shop was boarded up, and the shutters were creaking and groaning in the wind. High up on the path that sloped down to the beach was a woman waving her arms about agitatedly, the dog beside her tugging at its lead. Wallander strode out, fearful as usual about what was in store for him- he would never be able to reconcile himself to the sight of dead bodies. Dead people were just like the living. Always different.
“Over there”, screeched the woman hysterically. Wallender looked in the direction she was pointing. A red life-raft was bobbing up and down at the water’s edge where it had become stuck among some rocks by the bathing jetty.
“Wait here.” Wallander told the woman. He scrambled down the slope and ran over the sand, then walked out along the jetty and looked down into the rubber boat. There were two men lying with their arms wrapped round each other, their faces ashen. He tried to capture what he saw in a mental photograph. His many years as a police officer had taught that the first impression was always important. A dead body was generally the end of a long and complicated chain of events, and sometimes it was possible to get an idea of that chain right from the start.
From the book ‘The dogs of Riga’ By Henning Mankell

Two minutes later Wallender was on his way along the coast road. Peters and Norén were ahead of him in a patrol car, sirens blaring. Wallender shuddered as he saw the freezing breakers slamming onto the beach. He could see an ambulance in his rear-view mirror, and Martinsson in a second police car.
Mossby Strand was deserted. As he cla,mbered out of his car, the icy wind met him head-on. The beach shop was boarded up, and the shutters were creaking and groaning in the wind. High up on the path that sloped down to the beach was a woman waving her arms about agitatedly, the dog beside her tugging at its lead. Wallander strode out, fearful as usual about what was in store for him- he would never be able to reconcile himself to the sight of dead bodies. Dead people were just like the living. Always different.
“Over there”, screeched the woman hysterically. Wallender looked in the direction she was pointing. A red life-raft was bobbing up and down at the water’s edge where it had become stuck among some rocks by the bathing jetty.
“Wait here.” Wallander told the woman. He scrambled down the slope and ran over the sand, then walked out along the jetty and looked down into the rubber boat. There were two men lying with their arms wrapped round each other, their faces ashen. He tried to capture what he saw in a mental photograph. His many years as a police officer had taught that the first impression was always important. A dead body was generally the end of a long and complicated chain of events, and sometimes it was possible to get an idea of that chain right from the start.
From the book ‘The dogs of Riga’ By Henning Mankell

He made up his mind quickly.

He made up his mind quickly. He unfastened a painter, leaned over the rail and tied it to the life-raft. Jakobson changed course for Ystad, and Holmgren secured the line when the dinghy was about 10 metres behind the boat and free of its wake.
When the Swedish coast came into sight, Holmgren cut the rope and the life-raft with the two dead men inside disappeared far behind. Jajobson changed course to the east, and a few hours later they chugged into the harbour at Brantevik. Jakobson collected his pay, got into his Volvo and drove off towards Svarte.
The harbour was deserted. Holmgren locked the wheelhouse and spread a tarpaulin over the cargo hatch, He checked the hawsers slowly and methodically. Then he picked up the bag containing the money, walked over to his old Ford, and coaxed the reluctant engine to life.
On the spur of the moment, he turned right and stopped at one of the phone boxes opposite the bookshop in the square. He rehearsed what he was going to say carefully. Then he dialled 999 and asked for the police. As he waited for them to answer, he watched the snow begin to fall again through de dirty glass of the phone box
From the book ‘The dogs of Riga’ By Henning Mankell

At Rome we lived in the big house

At Rome we lived in the big house which had belonged to my grandfather and which he had left in his will to my grandmother. It was on the Palatine Hill, close to Augustus’s palace and the temple of Apollo built by Augustus, where the library was. The Palatine Hill looked down on the Market Place. Under the steepest part of the cliff was the temple of the Twin Gods, Castor and Pollux. (This was the old temple, built of timber and sods, which sixteen years later Tiberius replaced, at his own expense, with a magnificent marble structure, the interior painted and gilded and furnished as sumptuously as a rich noblewoman’s boudoir . My grandmother Livia made him do this to please Augustus, I may say. Tiberius was not religious-minded and very stingy with money.) It was healthier on that hill than down in the hollow by the river; most of the houses there belonged to senators. I was a very sickly child – a very battleground of diseases, ‘ the doctors said – and perhaps only lived because the diseases could not agree as to which as to which should have the honour of carrying me off. To begin with, I was born prematurely, at only seven months, and then my fuster-nurse’s milk disagreed with me, so that my skin broke out in an ugly rash and then I had malaria, and measles, which left me slightly deaf on one ear, and erypselas, and colitis, and finally infantile paralysis, wich shortened my left so that I was condemned to a permanent limp.
From the book ‘I Claudius’, by Robert Graves

I remember once hearing

I remember once hearing two of my mother’s freedwomen discussing modern marriage from the point of view of a woman of family. What did she gain by it? They asked. Morals were so loose now that nobody took marriage seriously any longer. Granted, a few old-fashioned men respected sufficiently to have a prejudice against children being fathered on them by their friends or household servants, and a few old-fashioned women respected their husbands sufficiently to be very careful not to become pregnant to any but them. But as a rule, any good looking woman nowadays could have any man to sleep with whom she chose. If she did marry and then tired of her husband, as usually happened, and wanted someone else to amuse herself with, there might easily be her husband’s pride or jealousy to contend with. Nor in general was she better off financially after marriage. Her dowry passed into the hands of her husband, or her father-in-law as master of the households, if he happened to be alive,; and a husband , or father-in-law, was usually a more difficult person to manage than a father, or elder brother, whose foibles she had long come to understand. Being married just meant vexatious household responsibilities. As for children, who wanted them? They interfered with the lady’s health and amusement for several months before birth and, though she had a foster mother for them immediately. Afterwards. it took time to recover from the wretched business of childbirth, and it often happened that her figure was ruined after having more than a couple. Look wow the beautiful Julia had changed by obediently gratifying Augustus’s desire for descendants. An a lady’s husband, if she was fond of him, could not be expected to keep off other women throughout the time of her pregnancy, and anyway he paid very little attention to the child when it was born. And then, as if all this were not enough, fosters mothers were shockingly careless nowadays, and the child often died. What a blessing it was that those Greeks doctors were so clever, if the thing had not gone too far-they could rid any lady of an unwanted child in two or three days , and nobody be any the worse or wiser. Of course some ladies, even modern ladies, had an old-fashioned hankering for children, but they could always buy a child for adoption into their husband’s family, from some man of decent birth who was hard pressed by his creditors...
From the book ‘I Claudius’, by Robert Graves