Firewall

by Henning Mankell

  He bumped into Nyberg in the corridor. Nyberg was wearing boots and a warm coat, his hair splayed in all directions. He was clearly in a bad mood.

  "I heard you found the knife," Wallander said.

  "Looks like the county can no longer afford to pay for basic upkeep," Nyberg said. "We were ankle-deep in leaves, but we eventually found it."

  "What kind of a knife?"

  "Kitchen knife. Pretty big. The tip broke off, probably from hitting a rib, so she must have used a surprising amount of force. But then again it was a cheap knife."

  Wallander shook his head.

  "It's hard to believe," Nyberg said. "I don't know what happened to the basic respect for human life. How much money did they get?"

  "We don't know yet, but probably about 600 kronor. It couldn't have been much more. Lundberg was at the beginning of his shift and he never carried a lot of cash at the start."

  Nyberg muttered something under his breath and walked away. Wallander went back to his office. For a while he sat at his desk without knowing what to do next. His throat hurt. Finally, he opened the file with a sigh. The Hökbergs lived to the west of Ystad. He wrote down the address, got up and put on his coat. As he was leaving the phone rang. He picked it up. It was Linda. The noises and clatter in the background made him think she was calling from the restaurant.

  "I got your message this morning," she said.

  "This morning?"

  "I wasn't at home last night."

  Wallander knew better than to ask her where she spent the night. It would only make her cross and she'd slam down the phone.

  "Well, I didn't call for anything special," he said. "I just wanted to know how you were."

  "I'm fine. How about you?"

  "I've got a slight cold. Otherwise things are the same. I was wondering if you had any plans to come down and visit soon?"

  "I don't have time."

  "I'm happy to pay your fare."

  "I told you, I don't have time. It's not about the money."

  Wallander realised he was not going to be able to change her mind. She was as stubborn as he was.

  "How are you doing anyway?" she said, again. "Do you have any contact with Baiba these days?"

  "That ended a long time ago. You know that."

  "It's not good for you to go on like this."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know what I mean. You're even starting to sound whiny. You never had that before."

  "You think I sound whiny?"

  "You're doing it right now. But I have a suggestion. I think you should contact a dating agency."

  "A dating agency?"

  "Where you can find someone. Otherwise you're going to turn into a whiny old man who worries about where I'm spending my nights."

  She sees right through me, he thought. I'm an open book.

  "You mean I should put an ad in the paper?"

  "Yes, or use one of those companies."

  "I'd never do that."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't believe in them."

  "And why not?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, it was just a suggestion. Think it over. I have to get back to work."

  "Where are you?"

  "At the restaurant."

  They said goodbye and hung up. Wallander did wonder where she had spent the night. A couple of years ago Linda had been involved with a young man from Kenya who was at medical school in Lund. But that was over, and since then he had not known very much at all about who she was going out with, other than that every so often she started seeing someone new. He felt a pinch of irritation and jealousy. Though the idea of putting in a personal ad or of signing up with a dating agency had occurred to him before, he had always drawn back at the last minute. It was as if making that choice would mean sinking to an unacceptable level of desperation.

  The strong wind chilled him as soon as he walked outside. He got into his car and started the engine, listening to the strange noises that were getting worse. Then he drove out to the townhouse where the Hökbergs lived. Martinsson's report had only given him the information that Hökberg's father was "self-employed". He didn't know what at. The small garden in the front was neat and tidy. He rang the doorbell. After a moment a man opened the door. Wallander knew at once that they had met before. He had a good memory for faces. But he didn't know when and where it had been. The man had also immediately recognised Wallander.

  "It's you," he said. "I knew the police would be coming out, but I didn't expect it to be you."

  He stepped to one side to let Wallander enter. He heard the sound of a television from somewhere. He could not remember where he had met this man before.

  "I take it you remember me?" Hökberg said.

  "Yes, I do," Wallander said. "But I'm having trouble placing you in the right context."

  "Erik Hökberg doesn't ring a bell?"

  Wallander searched his memory.

  "And Sten Widén?"

  Suddenly Wallander remembered. Widén, with his stud farm in Stjärnsund. And Erik. The three of them had shared a passion for the opera. Sten had been the most involved, but Erik was a childhood friend of his and had often sat around the record player with him as they listened to Verdi's operas.

  "Yes, I remember now," Wallander said. "But your name wasn't Hökberg then, was it?"

  "I took my wife's name. As a boy I was called Erik Eriksson."

  Hökberg was a large man. The coat hanger he held out to Wallander looked small in his hand. Wallander had remembered him as thin, but now he was substantial. That must have been why it had been so hard to make the connection.

  Wallander hung up his coat and followed Hökberg into the living room. There was a television in the middle of the room, but it was turned off. The sound was coming from another room. They sat down. Wallander tried to think of how to begin.

  "It's horrible what's happened," Hökberg said. "Naturally I have no idea what got into her."

  "Has she ever been violent before?"

  "Never."

  "What about your wife? Is she home?"

  Hökberg seemed to have collapsed into a heap in his chair. Behind the rolls of fat in his face Wallander thought he could sense the outline of another face from a time that now seemed immeasurably distant.

  "She took Emil and went to her sister in Höör. She couldn't stand to stay here. The reporters kept calling. They show no mercy. They called in the middle of the night, some of them."

  "I'm afraid I have to speak to her."

  "I know. I've told her the police would reach her there."

  Wallander wasn't sure how to proceed. "You and your wife must have talked about what happened."

  "She doesn't understand it any more than I do. It was a total shock."

  "You have a good relationship with Sonja?"

  "There were never any problems."

  "And between her and her mother?"

  "The same. They had fights from time to time but only stuff you would expect. There have never been any problems, at least as long as I've known her."

  Wallander furrowed his brow.

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "You knew she was my stepdaughter?"

  Wallander was sure that this had not been in the report. He would have remembered it.

  "Ruth and I had Emil together," Hökberg said. "Sonja was about two when I came on the scene. That was 17 years ago. Ruth and I met at a Christmas party."

  "Who was Sonja's father?"

  "His name was Rolf. He never cared about her. He and Ruth were never married."

  "Do you know where he is?"

  "He died a few years ago. Drank himself to death."

  Wallander looked for a pen in his coat pocket. He had already realised that he had forgotten both his glasses and notebook. There was a pile of old papers on the glass table.

  "Do you mind if I tear off a piece?"

  "Can't the police afford office supplies any more?"

  "That's a good que
stion. As it happens I've forgotten my notebook."

  Wallander used a magazine as a pad. He saw that it was an English-language financial magazine.

  "Do you mind if I ask you what you do for a living?"

  The answer was a surprise.

  "I play the stock market."

  "I see. What does that entail?"

  "I trade stocks, options, foreign currency. I also place some bets, mainly English cricket games. Sometimes American baseball."

  "So you mean you gamble?"

  "Not the usual kind. I never place bets on horses. But I suppose you can call trading stocks a form of gambling."

  "And you do all this from home?"

  Hökberg got up and gestured for Wallander to follow him. When he walked into the adjoining room Wallander paused in the doorway. There was not simply one television in this room, there were three. Various numbers flashed past in a dark ribbon on the bottom of the screens. On one wall there was a series of clocks showing the time in various parts of the world. It was like walking into an air-traffic control tower.

  "People always say technology has made the world smaller," Hökberg said. "I think that's debatable. But the fact that it's made my world bigger is beyond dispute. From this flimsy townhouse at the edge of Ystad, I can reach all the markets in the whole world. I can connect to betting centres in London or Rome. I can buy options on the Hong Kong market and sell American dollars in Jakarta."

  "Is it really so simple?"

  "Not altogether. You need permits, good contacts and knowledge. But when I step into this room I'm in the middle of the world. Whenever I choose. Strength and vulnerability go hand in hand."

  They returned to the living room.

  "I would like to see Sonja's room," Wallander said.

  Hökberg accompanied him up the stairs. They walked past a room that Wallander assumed belonged to their boy, Emil. Hökberg pointed to a door.

  "I'll wait downstairs," he said. "If you don't need me, that is."

  "No, I'll be fine."

  Wallander heard Hökberg's heavy steps going down the stairs. He pushed open the door. There was a sloping ceiling in the room and one of the windows was ajar. A thin curtain wafted in the draught. Wallander knew from long experience that the first impression was often the most valuable. A closer examination could reveal dramatic details that were not immediately visible, but the first impression was something he always came back to.

  A person lived here in this room. She was the one he was looking for. The bed was made, heaped with pink and flowery cushions. On one of the walls there was a shelf full of teddy bears. There was a mirror on the wardrobe door and a thick rug on the floor. There was a desk by the window, but there was nothing on its top. Wallander stood in the doorway for a long time and looked into the room. This was where Sonja Hökberg lived. He entered the room, kneeled by the bed and looked underneath it. There was a thin covering of dust everywhere except in one spot where an object had left an outline of itself. Wallander shivered. He suspected it was the spot where the hammer had been found. He got up and opened the drawers of the desk. None of them was locked. There weren't even any locks. He didn't know exactly what he was looking for. Maybe a diary or some photographs. But there was nothing in the desk that caught his attention. He sat down on the bed and thought about his meeting with the girl.

  There was something that had struck him as soon as he saw her room from the doorway.

  Something which didn't add up. Hökberg and her room didn't go together. He couldn't imagine her here among all the pink cushions and the teddy bears. But it was her room. He tried to work out what it could mean. Which was closer to the truth – the indifferent girl he had met at the police station, or the room where she had lived and hidden a hammer under her bed?

  Many years ago Rydberg had taught him how to listen: each room has its own life and breath. You have to listen for it. A room can tell you many secrets about the person who lives there.

  At first Wallander had been sceptical about Rydberg's advice, but in time he had come to realise that Rydberg had imparted a crucial piece of knowledge.

  Wallander's head was starting to ache, especially in his temples. He got up and opened the wardrobe door. There were clothes on hangers and shoes on the floor. On the inside of the door was a poster from a film called The Devil's Advocate. The star was Al Pacino. Wallander remembered him from The Godfather. He shut the wardrobe door and sat on the chair by the desk. That gave him a new angle from which to view the room.

  There's something missing, he thought. He remembered what Linda's room had looked like when she was a teenager. There had been some stuffed animals of course. But above all there were the pictures of her idols, who changed from time to time but were always there in some form or another.

  There was nothing like that in Hökberg's room. She was 19 and all she had was a movie poster inside her wardrobe.

  Wallander remained there for a few more minutes, then he left the room and walked back down the stairs. Hökberg looked at him carefully.

  "Did you find anything?"

  "I just wanted to have a look around."

  "What's going to happen to her?"

  Wallander shook his head. "She'll be tried as an adult. She's confessed to the crime. They're not going to be easy on her."

  Hökberg didn't say anything. Wallander could see he was pained.

  Wallander wrote down the number for Hökberg's sister-in-law in Höör. Then he left the townhouse and drove back to the station, feeling worse and worse. He was going to go home after the press conference and crawl into bed.

  As he walked into reception, Irene waved him over. Wallander saw that she was pale.

  "Something's happened?" he said.

  "I don't know," she said. "They were looking for you, and as usual you didn't have your mobile with you."

  "Who was looking for me?"

  "Everyone."

  Wallander lost his patience. "What do you mean 'everyone'? Give me some names, dammit!"

  "Martinsson. And Lisa."

  Wallander went straight to Martinsson's office. Hansson was there.

  "What's happened?"

  Martinsson said: "Hökberg has escaped."

  Wallander stared at him in disbelief. "Escaped?"

  "Gone. It happened about an hour ago. We've put all available personnel on the search, but she's disappeared into thin air."

  Wallander looked at his colleagues. Then he took off his coat and sat down.

  CHAPTER SIX