Firewall

by Henning Mankell

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraph

  Map 1

  Map 2

  PART 1 The Catalyst CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  PART 2 The Firewall CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  FIREWALL

  Henning Mankell was born in Stockholm in 1948. He is the prize-winning author of the eight novels in the Inspector Wallander series which has been translated into many languages and consistently tops the best-seller lists throughout Europe. His novel Sidetracked won the CWA Gold Dagger in 2001. Mankell has worked as an actor, theatre director and manager in Sweden and in Mozambique, where he is head of Teatro Avenida in Maputo.

  Ebba Segerberg teaches English at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.

  BY HENNING MANKELL

  Faceless Killers

  The Dogs of Riga

  The White Lioness

  The Man who Smiled

  Sidetracked

  The Fifth Woman

  One Step Behind

  Firewall

  The Return of the Dancing Master

  Before the Frost

  Depths

  Chronicler of the Winds

  Henning Mankell

  FIREWALL

  TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH BY

  Ebba Segerberg

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ISBN 9781407017686

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Vintage 2004

  10

  Copyright © Henning Mankell 1998

  English translation © 2002 by The New Press

  Henning Mankell has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published with the title Brandvägg by

  Ordfront Förlag, Stockholm, 1998

  English translation first published by

  The New Press, New York, 2002

  First published in Great Britain by The Harvill Press 2003

  Vintage

  Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road

  London sw1v 2SA

  www.vintage-books.co.uk

  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited

  can be found at:

  www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 9781407017686

  Version 1.0

  "A man who strays from the path of understanding comes to rest in the company of the dead"

  PROVERBS 21:16

  PART 1

  The Catalyst

  CHAPTER ONE

  The wind died down towards evening, then stopped completely.

  He was standing on the balcony. Some days he could see a sliver of ocean between the buildings across the way. Right now it was too dark. Sometimes he set up his telescope and looked into the lighted windows of the other flats. But he invariably began to feel as if someone were on to him and then he would stop.

  The stars were very clear and bright.

  It's already autumn, he thought. There may even be a touch of frost tonight, though it's early for Skåne.

  A car drove past. He shivered and went back in. The door to the balcony was hard to close and needed some adjustment. He added it to the "to do" list he kept on a pad in the kitchen.

  He walked into the living room, pausing in the doorway to look around. Since it was Sunday, the place was immaculately clean. It gave him a feeling of satisfaction.

  He sat at his desk and pulled out the thick journal he kept in one of the drawers. As usual he began by reading his entry from the night before.

  Saturday, October 4, 1997. Gusty winds, 8–10 metres per second according to the Meteorological Office. Broken cloud formations. Temperature at 6 a.m. 7°C. Temperature at 2 p.m. 8°C.

  Below that he had added four sentences: No activity in C-space today. No messages. C doesn't reply when prompted. All is calm.

  He took off the top of the ink pot and carefully dipped the nib in the ink. It had been his father's pen, saved from his early days as an assistant clerk at a bank in Tomelilla. He himself would use no other pen for writing his journal.

  The wind died away as he was writing. The thermometer outside the kitchen window read 3°C. The sky was clear. He recorded that cleaning the flat had taken three hours and 25 minutes, ten minutes faster than last Sunday.

  He had also taken a walk down to the marina, after meditating in St Maria's Church for half an hour. He hesitated, then wrote: Short walk in the evening. He pressed the blotting paper over the lines he had written, wiped the pen and put the top back on the ink pot. Before closing the journal, he glanced at the old ship's clock on the desk. It was 11.20.

  In the hall he put on his leather jacket and his old rubber boots. He checked that he had his wallet and his keys.

  Once on the street, he stood for a while in the shadows and looked about him. There was no-one there, as he had expected. He walked down to the left, as he usually did, crossing the main road to Malmö, heading towards the department stores and the red-brick building that housed the Tax Authorities. He increased his pace until he found his normal, smooth late-night rhythm. He walked more quickly in the daytime to get his heart rate up, but the late-night walks had a different purpose. This was when he tried to empty his mind, preparing for sleep and the day to come.

  Outside one of the department stores he passed a woman with an Alsatian. He almost always encountered her on his late-night walks. A car drove by at high speed, its radio blaring.

  They have no inkling of what's in store for them, he thought. All these hooligans who
drive around damaging for ever their hearing with their obnoxious music. They don't know. They know as little as that woman out walking her dog.

  The thought cheered him up. He thought about the power he wielded, the sense of being one of the chosen. He had the power to do away with the ingrained, corrupt ways of this society and create a new order, something completely unexpected.

  He stopped and looked up at the night sky.

  Nothing is truly comprehensible, he thought. My own life is as incomprehensible as the fact that the light I see now from the stars has been travelling for aeons. The only source of meaning is my own course of action, like the deal I was offered 20 years ago and that I accepted without hesitation.

  He continued on his way, going faster, because his thoughts were exciting him. He felt a growing impatience. They had waited so long for this. Now the moment was approaching when they would open the invisible dams and watch the tidal wave sweep over the world.

  But not yet. The moment was not quite here, and impatience was a weakness he would not permit himself.

  He turned round and started back. As he walked past the Tax Authority he decided to go to the cash machine in the square. He put his hand over the pocket where he kept his wallet. He wasn't going to make a withdrawal, just get an account balance and make sure all was as it should be.

  He stopped in the light by the ATM and took out his blue card. The woman with the Alsatian was long gone. A heavily loaded truck went by on the Malmö road, probably on its way to one of the Poland ferries. By the sound of it, the muffler was damaged.

  He punched in his code and selected "account balance". The machine returned his card and he put it back in his wallet. He listened to the whirring and clicking and smiled. If they only knew, he thought. If people only knew what lay in store for them.

  The paper slip showing his balance emerged from the slot. He felt around for his glasses before he realised he had left them in his other coat. He felt a twinge of irritation at this oversight.

  He walked to where the light was brightest, under the street lamp, and studied the slip of paper. There was Friday's withdrawal, as well as the cash he had taken out on Saturday. His balance was 9,765 kronor. Everything was in order.

  What happened next came without warning. It was as if he had been kicked in the chest by a horse. The pain was sudden and violent.

  He fell forward, the piece of paper clutched in his hand. As his head hit the pavement he experienced an instant of clarity. His final thought was that he couldn't understand what was happening to him. A darkness enveloped him from all sides.

  A second truck on its way to the night ferry drove past.

  Then calm returned to the streets.

  It was just after midnight on Monday, October 6, 1997.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When Kurt Wallander got into his car on Mariagatan in Ystad, on the morning of October 6, 1997, it was with reluctance. It was just gone 8 a.m. As he drove out of the city, he wondered what had possessed him to say he would go. He had such a profound dislike of funerals. And yet that was his objective. Since he had plenty of time, he decided against taking the direct route to Malmö. Instead he took the coast road by way of Svarte and Trelleborg. He glimpsed the sea on his left-hand side. A ferry was approaching the harbour.

  He thought about the fact that this was his fourth funeral in seven years. First there had been his colleague Rydberg, who died of cancer. It had been a protracted and painful end. Wallander had visited him often at home and finally at the hospital as slowly he wasted away. Rydberg's death had been a huge blow. It was Rydberg who had made a police officer of him, taught him to ask the right questions. Through watching him work, Wallander had learned how to read the information hidden at the scene of a crime. Before he started working with Rydberg, Wallander had been a very average policeman. It was only after Rydberg's death that Wallander realised he had become not only a stubborn and energetic detective, but a good one. He still held long conversations with Rydberg in his head when he tackled a new investigation and didn't know quite how to proceed. Almost every day he experienced a twinge of loss and sadness at Rydberg's absence. Those feelings would never leave him.

  Then there was his father, who had died unexpectedly. He had collapsed from a stroke in his studio. That was three years ago. Even now, Wallander sometimes had trouble grasping the fact that his father wasn't there any more, surrounded by the smell of turpentine and oil paint. The house in Löderup had been sold. Wallander had driven past it a few times since then and seen that new people had moved in. He had never stopped and taken a closer look. From time to time he went to his father's grave, always with an inexplicable feeling of guilt. These visits were getting more infrequent. It was getting harder for him to conjure up his father's face.

  A person who died eventually became a person who had never existed.

  Then there was Svedberg, one of his own officers, who had died a terrible death only a year ago. That had made him realise how little he knew about the people he worked with. During the investigation he had uncovered a more complicated network of relationships in Svedberg's life than he would ever have dreamed of.

  And now he was on his way to funeral number four, the only one he really didn't have to go to. She had called on Wednesday, just as Wallander was about to leave the office. It was late afternoon and he had a headache from concentrating on a depressing case involving smuggled cigarettes. The tracks seemed to lead to northern Greece, then went up in smoke. Wallander had exchanged information with both German and Greek police. But still they had not managed to arrest the smugglers. He realised now that the driver of the truck with the smuggled goods probably had no idea what had been in his load. All the same, he would go to jail for a couple of months at least. Nothing else would come of it. Wallander was sure contraband cigarettes landed by every ferry in Ystad. He doubted they would ever put a stop to it.

  His day had also been poisoned by an argument with the prosecutor, the man filling in for Per Åkeson, who had taken charitable work in the Sudan two years ago and seemed to be in no hurry to come back. Wallander was filled with envy each time he received a letter from Åkeson. He had actually done what Wallander had only fantasised about: starting all over again.

  Wallander was about to turn 50 and he knew, though he could scarcely admit it, that the decisive events of his life were behind him. He would never be anything but a police officer. The best he could do in the years leading up to retirement was to try to become better at solving crimes, and to pass on his knowledge to the younger generation. But there were no life-changing decisions in wait for him, no Sudan.

  He was just about to put his jacket on when the telephone rang. At first he hadn't known who she was. Then he realised she was Stefan Fredman's mother. Memories and isolated images from three years ago rushed back in the space of a few seconds. It was the case of the boy who had painted himself to look like a Native American warrior and had revenged himself on the men who had driven his sister insane and filled his younger brother with terror. One of the victims had been the boy's own father. Wallander flinched at one of the last, most disturbing images: the boy kneeling by his sister's dead body, weeping. He didn't know what had happened afterwards, except that the boy had been sent to a secure psychiatric ward rather than prison.

  Now Anette, his mother, had called to say the boy was dead. He had thrown himself out of a window. Wallander had expressed his condolences and they had been genuine, though perhaps what he felt was a sense of hopelessness and despair rather than grief. He had not yet understood why she had called him. He stood with the receiver to his ear, trying to recall her face. He had only met her on two or three occasions, in her home in a suburb of Malmö, when he had been struggling with the idea that a 14-year-old boy had committed these heinous crimes. She had been shy and tense. There was something cringing about her, as if she always expected everything to turn out for the worst. In her case it often did. Wallander remembered and wondered if she were addicted to alcoho
l or prescription medication. But he didn't know. He could hardly bring her face to mind. Her voice he did not recognise at all.

  She wanted Wallander to be at the funeral. There were so few people coming. She was the only one left now, apart from Stefan's younger brother Jens. Wallander had, after all, been someone who wished them well. He said he'd be there. He had changed his mind the moment he said it, but it was too late.